Not everyone can kill a man, Ferry thought, let alone do it right—in the back, Christ, an old man. Over a girl the kid had never even talked to. Barely a step up from drowning cats.
Turning into the storage facility’s driveway, Ferry punched in the code and the tall gate shuddered back. Steering the van past the empty aisles to the last row, he turned down and stopped midway to the end. Getting out, he glanced up, saw wisps of white cloud sailing east in a brisk wind. Gusty but clear, he thought. And warm for this early in the day. All things considered, good fire weather. As good as he could hope for this time of year.
The storage space was street-level, full-size, the kind rented by vintage car freaks, antique dealers, gun show vendors. The van blended well enough—Ferry’d bought it at a bankruptcy auction and it still had the plumbing company’s logo on the side. Nobody ever puzzled much over a plumber’s van roaming around, whenever, wherever.
Manny stayed put in the passenger seat as Ferry worked the combination on the padlock. The sliding door rolled up with a howl, slid home on its runners along the ceiling, then rocked a little. Ferry walked up to the driver’s side window, knocked hard, saying through the glass, “Now’s the time.”
Once Manny was inside, Ferry rolled down the door again and switched on the timer for the overhead light. There were a dozen five-gallon plastic buckets in the locker, the kind used for powdered laundry detergent, and an equal number of five-gallon jerricans filled with diesel fuel. Bags of ammonium perchlorate, a box of road flares, and three sacks of aluminum cans collected from a recycling Dumpster comprised the rest of the materials.
That was the great thing about storage facilities, Ferry mused. Everybody has a secret locked up here. You could hold black masses, use naked virgins for altars, eat their flesh, and make marionettes out of their skeletons afterward—as long as you paid your rent and didn’t bum too many cigarettes, no one said boo.
Sensing that he might need to be ready at a moment’s notice, Ferry had bought all the bomb components once Manny had started his arson spree. It seemed eerily prescient now. I should have kept closer tabs on the kid, he thought. Should have played the pal, encouraged him to unburden his moldy little feelings. Maybe then I might have seen it coming.
The diesel fuel gave off a dense, greasy smell that hung heavy in the closed space. For some reason, it alerted Ferry to the fact that he’d just lost his last decent chance to back out. Manny knew where the locker was now, could describe exactly what was in it. Even if Ferry tried to be nice about it—pay him a little on-your-way money, drive him back to his car, tell him, “Too bad, didn’t work out, maybe next time”—Manny wouldn’t go quiet. He’d cause a scene, he was scared. And on his own, loose in the world, the kid posed a real threat. Tagged out there somewhere, as was sure to happen, maybe soon, he’d hand up Ferry in a heartbeat.
It rankled, the fact that a perfectly good plan, an excellent plan, could fall apart because a dog fart like Manny Turpin committed the world’s most mindless screwup. It wasn’t right. You’re better than that, Ferry told himself. Smarter than that. No such thing as a plan that fails, just planners who can’t think on their feet fast enough. You have to know how to improvise. You can do this. It’s your peculiar gift, turning crap into gold.
For the next forty minutes, he showed Manny how to mix the powder oxidizer with the diesel fuel, stirring it slowly till the slurry stood thick enough to support one of the road flares straight up. Next, a half-inch floater of diesel fuel to serve as a timed fuse. Any more than that, the smoke would tip off neighbors or passersby. Any less, the thing might go up before you’re far enough away.
“Cut the cans up with these,” Ferry said, digging a pair of tin snips from a small toolbox he brought in from the van. “Put the shredded-up pieces in the mix. That’ll speed up the burn rate.” Finally, he showed Manny how deep to plant the flares for a five-minute fuse. “Okay, that’s how it’s done. Do the full dozen.”
Manny looked torn. Resentful of being bossed, intrigued by the task. “This stuff isn’t motion-sensitive, right?” With his foot he nudged the one completed bomb just slightly. “Needs flame.”
Ferry wiped his hands on a rag. “Be a good idea not to smoke. And stay out of sight. I gotta figure out how much the locals know about you.”
• • •
The truck stop was named Tullibee’s, located along Route 37, the two-lane highway that scrolled west across the salt marshes and the wildlife refuge to the Sears Point Speedway and Sonoma County. The tables sported blue-and-white checked tablecloths, the windows clouded with steam. The waitress on duty had her hair pulled back in a sloppy bun and patrolled the room bearing two coffeepots. “Regular or irregular?” she asked before pouring.
Only four tables were occupied at that hour—a pair of long haulers sitting together, a deliveryman by himself, a woman with a wasted, naked face that spoke of drink. At the last table sat a cop. Ferry always made it a point to befriend someone in local law enforcement. This one’s name was Gilroy.
Off-shift but still in his blues, he sat by himself at a four-top along the wall, attacking a breakfast known as the Sixteen Wheeler: four-egg omelet, four rashers of bacon, four link sausages, two biscuits with gravy, and a short stack. Ferry joined him and, when the waitress appeared, turned his cup over in its saucer and told her preemptively, “Regular.” Once she was gone, he said to Gilroy, “Hear you guys had a shooting up on the hill last night.”
That’s all it took. Gilroy liked talking. He launched into a monologue of what had happened, gracing the narrative with homely truisms and folksy metaphors that often made no sense. Ferry imagined Gilroy regaling himself with much the same monologue as he drove around in his car. As the story wound on, Ferry examined Polaroids of a kid named Arlie Thigpen. Gilroy had shot the pictures through the grating of his squad car. Souvenirs.
“Kid’s part of a crew linked to some guy named Long Walk Mooney. Name ring a bell?”
“Yeah,” Ferry said. Manny had brought it up, said the guys he bought from knew him, worked for him, something along those lines. It was addled, cryptic, and vague, like much of what Manny said.
“Guy like him? Mooney, I mean. We had the money and the manpower, he wouldn’t be out there, doing what he does, hiding behind this rave promoter bullshit. He’d be locked in a box, where he belongs.”
Ferry half listened as Gilroy went on, bemoaning now the general state of local law enforcement, the gutless chief, the two-faced mayor, the tightfisted council, the ungrateful public. The diatribe wasn’t hard to tune out. Ferry had more important worries—like what a load of bad news this was, the fact the main suspect at this point had ties to the same group of losers who knew Manny. Sooner rather than later, somebody’d let it be known that Manny had been crashing right next door to where the murder took place. And then all eyes would turn.
Ferry put the pictures down. “So this Thigpen kid, he’s everybody’s best idea at this point.”
“So far? Sure. Yeah.” Gilroy chewed quickly and hard. It made his huge ears move in an unsettling way. The flattop didn’t help.
“That mean they’re laying off the son?”
Gilroy downed an inch of juice, then wiped pulp off his chin. “So-called son.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I hear his claim to being family is a reach.”
“From who?”
Gilroy whirled his fork in the air. “Seriously. You ever talk to jigs about their family?”
Ferry sighed. Gilroy launched on.
“So-and-so’s the second cousin of the half sister who married Aunt Nibby’s stepbrother’s nephew’s grandson’s uncle on his mother’s side.” He shook his head, stabbed a sausage. “They say hillbillies are inbred. You’re writing it down, somebody rattles off that kind of crap? Hard enough to take it seriously, let alone make sense out of it.”
“Back to my question, though. This kid the chief suspect or not?”
“For now, yeah, maybe.
Him or his pals in the Mooney crew.” Gilroy poured syrup over his hotcakes, catching the last drip from the pitcher with his finger, licking it.
“Give me the story on the guys working the investigation,” Ferry said, gesturing to the waitress for a refill.
“Murchison, he’s primary. Dick Tracy without the squint and chin. Grew up here. Thinks he’s a genius. Worse, thinks he’s everybody’s boss. Righteous fucking know-it-all.”
“This the rust-haired guy you pointed out to me last time?”
“Right. Him.”
The waitress appeared, refilled Ferry’s cup, and shot him a bleary smile of jagged teeth before trudging off to another table.
“What about his partner?”
“Stluka. Head case asshole. Former LAPD.”
“How’d he end up here?”
“Way I heard it, he only moved north after the Ramparts scandal. Wife’s idea. Get out now, before it all turns to hell, or save your off days for visitation.”
“He know what he’s doing?”
Gilroy shrugged. “There’s one good thing to say about him—he makes no bones about the Third Worlders. Told this bitch from the public defender’s office once, I swear to God, ‘Soon as they stop acting like animals, we’ll stop putting them in cages.’” Gilroy shook his head, admiration in his smile. “That said, he’s a prick with a problem. Gets along with just about nobody.”
“Except Murchison.”
“I don’t know that either one of those guys ‘gets along’ with anybody. Even each other. I mean, a joke here and there, palsy-walsy, but nothing tight.”
“And this detective-in-waiting, the one running the scene?”
An ugly light came on in Gilroy’s eyes. “Marion Holmes. Stluka calls him Sherlock. Affirmative action promo fuck. Kind of guy makes you wanna turn in your tin.”
“Okay, but—”
“Watching his back big-time, so damn scared he’s gonna blow it. Sticks his neck out for nobody.”
“Which means, relative to what we’re talking about?”
“This case closes out, won’t be because of him. He’ll wait in line for a good idea.”
Ferry thought all this through. Within tight parameters, he trusted Gilroy’s judgment. He was reliably paranoid, hostile but not unstable, with a decent eye for things around him, an eye informed more by self-preservation than ambition. That lack of ambition, it was why he’d never make it out on his own. Needed the security of the big blue brotherhood, even though he despised or distrusted most of the guys in it.
“Realistically, how close do you think they are? To closing this thing out, I mean.”
“Close?” Gilroy howled through a mouthful of food. “Little banger piece of shit lawyers down the minute Murch gets close enough to say boo. Gotta chase down the rest of his set at this point. Got the whole Sunday morning squad out on a mutt hunt, known associates.”
Ah, Christ, Ferry thought. “Any luck?”
“Beats me. I’m off-duty.” Gilroy chafed a napkin across his lips. “But one other thing? After the Thigpen kid hunkers down, Murchison hauls the mother in. I swear, if ugly was a stick we could’ve booked her for assault.”
“They brought the mother in? Whose idea was that?”
“Murchison’s, I guess.”
Ferry chuckled and looked off. “People versus Mayfield.”
Gilroy blinked, puzzled. “Percy Mayfield?”
“People,” Ferry corrected. “People versus Mayfield. It’s case law. You bring a family member in, like the mom, let her talk to the suspect, then try to break her down afterward. Mom’s not a suspect, no Miranda warning required. Constraints are a little more fluid.”
Using his last wedge of toast, Gilroy sopped up the bleeding pools of egg yolk, syrup, and meat grease on his plate. “Whatever.”
“You say Murchison thought of that?” Ferry was impressed. “That shows smarts.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Gilroy popped the last corner of toast in his mouth, chewed with abandon, then sat back, studying his immaculate plate. “If farts were smarts we’d all be Einstein.”
“Where do you get these things?”
“Not like it led anywhere. Little banger denies all. Momma screams, ‘Set my baby free!’ Fucking joke. And that’s another thing. Murchison may think he’s Eliot Ness, but—and this ain’t just me who says this—he goes into a room with a suspect? You’ll see ducks big as trucks before he walks out with a confession.”
Okay, Ferry thought. We’ve established you won’t be having the guy’s child. “What about the girl you mentioned? The one they found at the scene? What’s her story?”
Gilroy shook his head. “From what I caught during the shift change? She’s strictly a case of see-no, hear-no. And wiggy to boot.”
Finally, Ferry thought. A little tiny bit of good news. He drained the last of his coffee, gesturing to the waitress for the check. “Before we wrap this up, tell me the rest about Murchison.”
Gilroy stared at him like he’d asked for the radius of the moon. “The rest? Like what?”
“Like start with anything you can think of. And when you get to everything you know, stop.”
They walked side by side down the hospital corridor, the nurse—her name was Marjorie, Nadya had learned—keeping a dutiful pace. Movement still came sluggishly, Nadya’s legs working only in jerk-step. The slippers didn’t help. Made of paper, they felt like envelopes on her skin, and if she didn’t drag her feet they came off, tripping her up.
Sunday morning, the hallways were heavy with shadow and deserted. Patients slept or had their TVs turned down low, just the flickering screens and a humming undertone. The vast space, the long corridors, the quiet—it felt a little like the end of the world.
“They said I called nine-one-one. I don’t remember that. I don’t remember a lot.”
Marjorie reached over, pulled a strand of hair off Nadya’s forehead, smoothed it back against her skull. “I can’t say about nine-one-one. And what I know I can only guess at from what one of the EMTs said when they brought you in. That and the way you looked.” Her voice was calm, a throaty alto. “You were covered in blood, young lady. Your skirt, your sweater, your face. Your hair. I know, because I’m the one dealt with your clothes and scrubbed you off.”
Nadya felt her heart start to pound, her breath grow short, but the panic didn’t rise up and choke her like before.
“Some people remember these kinds of things crystal clear. Others, like you, go blank. At least at first. It’ll come back, nighttime especially, in bits and pieces.” Marjorie guided Nadya around a corner, said hello softly to a white-haired man and his gaunt wife with her IV pole, shuffling the opposite way. “We remember the things we can talk to ourselves about. This is how it started, then this, and so on. Things like you went through, when it just runs right over you, the mind hits overload. You’ll be piecing it all together for the next few days, weeks. Months, maybe. Emotions coming at you left and right, you’re gonna feel like you’re dodging traffic. Buses, not bicycles.”
“What if the memory’s gone forever?”
It was a strangely hopeful thought. Marjorie’s eyes, though, said no.
“What troubles me, little lady, is the stuff you’re forgetting. You tried to save the man’s life. You ran out, knelt down in his blood, turned him over, tried to breathe life into him, he coughed it all right back into your face. What you did, it was courageous, dear. But that you don’t recall. I believe you should. Maybe you’re stronger than you care to admit.”
They came to an empty waiting room, its chairs arranged along the wall, a table with jigsaw puzzles and board games piled atop it. What caught Nadya’s eye, though, was the piano.
“I’d like to sit here, just a little while, if I could.”
Marjorie checked her watch. “I need to get back to the nurses’ station.”
“I’ll be fine. Really.”
Nadya guided herself along the chairs to the piano bench, pulled it out from the keyboard, and
sat. A sad old upright, scarred from years of schoolroom use, its wood dull, its keys yellowed, three with the ivory chipped and the low C-sharp gone altogether. A simple test of octaves revealed, to her surprise, it didn’t need tuning too badly.
She centered herself, raised her hands to the keys, and began. Once again: Brahms, the Eleventh Hungarian Dance. Originally written for four hands, she played the transcription for solo piano made famous by Julius Katchen, just as she had the night before, waiting for Toby’s father to return home. No matter what comes up, she thought, no matter how fierce, how awful, keep playing. You may not have a story for what happened, not yet. But you have this.
She forced her fingers deep into the keys. The sound became the backdrop to a kind of movie—whimsical but sad, the old modal church harmonies mixing with Romany tremolos and displaced accents. In time, the images arose—the house, its lamplit interior, this same music. The gate outside opening, once, twice. Shots.
She stopped playing, as she had last night. Sat there stock-still. How long? Finally rushing to the window, the curtain pulled back. There, in the yard. Toby’s father.
Play what you know.
Her skin beaded with sweat. It took her several moments before she could swallow. This is your life now, she thought. Pounding heart, cold wet skin, the gooey sweet copper smell of blood. Make peace. Make peace with it and try again. Remember. Toppling backward from the window, yes. Tripping over the ottoman, I suppose, yes. The phone, dialing the phone—was she really remembering it now or simply fabricating images to coincide with what they’d told her?
Did it matter? Of course it mattered.
“Why did you stop?”
Nadya jumped at the sound. Turning, she saw him in the doorway. “Toby.” A whisper. His shirt collar open, jacket unbuttoned, he looked spent and rumpled and wonderful. Except—
“What’s wrong?” she said.
She saw something in his eyes. A terrified revulsion.
“No.” He shook it off. “Nothing’s wrong. Are you—”
Done for a Dime Page 18