The Searcher

by Simon Toyne

  He checked his own phone, making sure the Skype app was still running. Tío had said he was going to call some people then call him back, but that wasn’t why he was checking. His pop still hadn’t called.

  “How come your phone’s still switched on, pendejo?”

  Mulcahy stared out at the day, felt the heat of the outside burning through the window and the cool air from the ancient air-con unit blowing feebly against his legs.

  “I asked you a question, motherfucker.”

  He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. If he had to kill Javier in the next few minutes—which was entirely possible—it would definitely be the highlight of an otherwise shitty day. “Papa Tío doesn’t pay my bill,” he said. “He doesn’t pay my bill, so he doesn’t know the number or the network, and I called him on Skype so it would take him at least a few hours to trace the call and I don’t plan on being here in two hours’ time. But the main reason I’ve still got it switched on is because he said he was going to call me back—on Skype—so if I switched my phone off he wouldn’t be able to, would he? And if he couldn’t get hold of me he might get all suspicious and send a bunch of guys around to find out why I’d turned my phone off. And he’d know exactly where to find me because you’re too cheap to pay your own bill. That answer your question . . . motherfucker?”

  “Shit, man. Oh shit, shit.” Carlos was rising to his feet and pointing at the screen.

  A shaky aerial shot of a big fire in the desert filled the screen. It wobbled unsteadily behind a caption saying: BREAKING NEWS—Plane Crash Starts Large Wildfire Outside Redemption, Az.

  “Where’s the remote?” Javier had stopped pacing, his eyes fixed to the screen now. “Where’s the fuckin’ remote at?” Carlos held it up. “Turn it up, man.” Javier jabbed his finger at the screen.

  Carlos pointed the remote at the TV, nudged up the volume, and the room filled with the somber tones of someone reporting on something serious. Mulcahy stared at the twisted wreckage of the plane, fuel and desert burning all around it, catching snatches of what the reporter was saying:

  . . . believed to have been a vintage airliner . . . en route to the aircraft museum outside Redemption . . .

  This was not how it was supposed to happen. The plane crash was not in the script. It was most likely an accident, it was an old plane, old planes crashed more than new ones, he imagined. Except Papa Tío didn’t believe in accidents. He didn’t believe in coincidences or apologies either. If something went wrong, then there was always a reason and there was always someone who had to pay.

  And Tío hadn’t called back yet.

  And neither had his pop.

  He turned to study the traffic out on the road, a slow-flowing river of metal and glass, and felt envious of the safe little lives each car contained. He wanted to join them and slide away from here, but that wasn’t going to happen. He knew that as soon as he saw the truck ease off the road and up the ramp toward the motel. It was a Jeep Grand Cherokee, just like his. Black-tinted windows, just like his. It slowed to a stop at the top of the ramp by the reception building, but the two men inside showed no interest in going in. They were checking the parked cars, looking for someone.

  Looking for him.

  17

  CASSIDY DROVE, SOLOMON SAT IN THE PASSENGER SEAT, HIS WINDOW WOUND right down so he could feel the wind on his face. It was an old car, leather seats, chrome trim, lots of space.

  Lincoln Continental Mark V, Solomon’s mind informed him.

  It was nicer than being in the ambulance, the leather seats and padded doors made the experience less synthetic, but he still didn’t like it.

  “Would you mind closing the window, the air-conditioning doesn’t work so well with it open.”

  Solomon pressed the button to raise the window. He was thinking about the church and the altar cross and the words written on the wall, all of it revolving around the remembered image of his reflected self, the stranger in the mirror, the big mystery at the center of it all. The church was peculiar. Maybe that was why he felt an affinity for it. For a start, it was way too big for a town this size, like it had been built as a declaration of something grand or maybe to compensate for something. The interior was odd too, the fresco more reminiscent of a medieval European basilica than a church from the Old West. And then there was the strange collection of memorabilia cluttering up the entrance like an afterthought.

  “Why have a mining exhibition in a church?” he wondered out loud, his toes gripping the carpet as his sense of confinement started to gnaw at him.

  “Tourists,” Cassidy replied, like he was cursing. “About a year back we moved some of the exhibits from the museum into the church to try and get more people through the door, on account of people being far more interested in treasure than God these days, and ain’t that a sorry state of affairs?”

  Solomon nodded and gripped the edge of his seat, trying to relax away his growing nausea.

  “A lot of folks thought it was inappropriate, said it’s not what the church is for. They cash the subsidy checks the trusts give out, but they don’t want to think about where that money comes from. One of the joys of being mayor, all the grief and none of the credit. Like being a parent, I guess.”

  “You don’t have children?”

  “Never was blessed. Are you okay? You seem kind of uncomfortable.”

  “I’m fine,” Solomon said. “Just don’t like being confined.”

  Cassidy looked across at him like he was afraid he might throw up in his nice antique car. “Leave the window open if it makes you happy.”

  “Thanks.” Solomon opened it all the way down again and relished the wind on his face. It carried the smell of smoke with it now and he could see it ahead of them, a curtain of darkness spreading right across the sky with tiny figures and vehicles spread out in front of it. “Only those who face the fire,” he murmured, “can hope to escape the inferno.”

  “You know who wrote that?” Cassidy asked.

  Solomon dredged his mind and was surprised to discover that he didn’t. And in the perverse nature of his teeming brain he regarded any knowledge that didn’t come easily to him as significant. “No,” he said. “No, I don’t.”

  “It was Jack Cassidy. He designed the whole church then painted the frescoes too. He was what you might call a Renaissance man. Could turn his hand to anything: miner, businessman, architect, painter, author—you name it, he tried it. And most likely mastered it too. Not bad for a man who started life as a locksmith.”

  “Quite a troubled man too, I think. A man with his fair share of demons.”

  “Well, he . . . maybe so, but . . . what makes you think that?”

  “The figures in the fresco. The black words he wrote on a dark, dark sky. The fact that he painted hell as so vast and vivid and heaven so small and distant.”

  “He was complicated, I would say. A serious man. You should read his memoir.”

  Solomon pulled his copy from his pocket and turned it over in his hand. “I have.” He opened it to the dedication page, felt the familiar stab of pain in his arm when he read James Coronado’s name. “What about James Coronado, was he a troubled man?”

  “Jim? No, I wouldn’t say so. I would call him pretty straightforward.”

  “Was he in some sort of trouble?”

  “No.”

  “You sure?”

  “He was very well liked.”

  “That’s not what I asked. What about his death—is there any question hanging over that?”

  “No,” Cassidy snapped, a little too quickly, then got hold of himself. “Listen, I don’t know what ideas you have about how you might save him, but he’s gone. Jim Coronado is dead. It was an accident, is all. A terrible, terrible accident. He was driving at night, he crashed his car. That’s all there is. There ain’t no point in raking up the mud searching for something that ain’t there. You’re only going to hurt people who been hurt bad enough already.”

  He said it as though he was pushing
a door closed and Solomon left it shut. The mayor clearly didn’t want to talk about it and Solomon didn’t think he’d get anything out of him anyway. The person he really wanted to talk to was James Coronado’s widow. Maybe she would be at the city limits along with everybody else, lining up to try to save the town from the fire.

  They rounded a corner and started dropping down toward the edge of town. Beyond it the whole world was on fire. The smoke was so high it blotted out the sun, and the flames at the base twisted and leaped in the air as the bright line of fire slithered closer. The fire crews were positioned half a mile out of town and about the same from the fire, working in lines, their forms smudged almost to nothing by the dust they were stirring up with rake and shovel as they cleared the ground of anything that might burn in an attempt to stop the flames from advancing. To the left of the road, a tractor was creeping like a clockwork toy, plowing up the ground behind it. It was making its slow way toward a concrete storm drain that cut across the ground in a straight line all the way to the slopes of the mountains. To the right a grader was struggling over uneven terrain it wasn’t built for toward the anemic piles of crushed stone that rose sterile and ugly around a tall skinny tower with a lifting wheel at the top. Between the mine works and the storm drain the flanks were pretty well protected, but there was nothing in the center but a mile or so of clear ground and dry vegetation. Two vehicles and maybe a hundred men against an army of flame.

  “You should tell everyone to clear out,” Solomon said.

  “Be a waste of breath,” Cassidy replied. “The folks here are kind of stubborn that way. Most of ’em would rather burn than abandon their town.”

  “Then they may well get their wish.”

  They pulled off the road and came to a halt next to a line of parked cars and trucks. Cassidy cut the engine and Solomon was already out of the door, desperate to feel the ground beneath his feet again. The wind gusted a greeting, roaring out of the desert and bringing the smell of the fire with it.

  “Now I appreciate you volunteering to help here, Mr. Creed, I really do,” Cassidy said, climbing out of the driver’s side and fixing his hat on his head. “But if you want to help us fight this fire, then you’re going to need something on your feet.” He pointed to a pickup parked over by an ambulance that had lots of activity buzzing around it. “See that man in the green shirt? His name’s Billy Walker. Tell him I sent you over and ask if he’s got a pair of work boots he can loan you, then report to one of the fire crews. Sorry to cut and leave, but I’ve got a town to try to save and people look to me to lead.” He walked away, heading over to where Chief Morgan was standing by a tow truck, his stricken cruiser perched drunkenly on the back.

  Shouts drifted from the desert. Out on the control line someone was pointing up at the sky where the yellow tanker was leveling out and getting ready for another run. It settled into position and the sky behind it turned red, as though the wings had sliced through the flesh of it and made it bleed. A bright scarlet cloud spread and fell onto a section of desert, then the vapor trail sputtered out. The red line had covered a little less than a quarter of the leading edge of the fire on one side of the road and the air around Solomon was already starting to thicken with ash and embers falling softly around him like black snow. He held out his hand and caught one, rubbing it to nothing with his fingers. It was warm, most of the heat blown out of it by the wind, but the ashes falling closer to the control line would be fresh from the fire, maybe even still glowing as they settled on the dry grass. Soon there would be spot fires breaking out all over the control zone. It would need only one to take hold and the fire would have breached the thin line they were drawing in the sand. They were in the wrong position, wasting time and energy with what they were doing. At this rate the whole town was going to burn, along with everything in it. Then where would he be? What answers might he sift from the embers?

  The wind roared again, twisting the distant flames into columns of orange and red, and Solomon felt as if the fire was sniffing him out, searching for him. He headed over to the ambulance and into the welcome shade of the billboard.

  The man in the green shirt was helping set up a makeshift field hospital around the ambulance. Men and women in green scrubs and white rubber clogs were weaving in and out of each other, checking lists, carrying boxes of supplies, filling movable stands stacked with suture packs and dressings. Solomon recognized Gloria. She was unpacking boxes of gel dressings and FAST1 infusion kits.

  “Billy Walker,” Solomon said, and the man in the green shirt turned around. “Mayor Cassidy sent me over to see you.”

  The man looked him up and down, his eyes lingering on Solomon’s bare feet. “Lemme guess—pair of boots, right?”

  “Actually no, I was hoping you might have a hat.” Walker shook his head then loped off toward his truck.

  The wind surged again, so hard it rocked the billboard and drove the smell of smoke into Solomon’s face like a threat. There was something else there too, something ominous and familiar.

  Gloria appeared at his side. “You feeling okay now, Mr. Creed?”

  “I’m fine,” he said, sniffing the air again. “How ready are you here?”

  She looked around at all the activity. “About as ready as we’ll ever be, I guess.”

  “Good. You’re about to get busy, I think.” The sound of a distant siren whooped out in the desert and the radio in the ambulance crackled to life.

  Incoming, a voice said with an urgency that made everyone else go silent. “The grader got caught in a fire surge. The driver’s hurt bad. We’re bringing him to you now.”

  18

  MULCAHY’S EYES NEVER LEFT THE JEEP.

  The angle of the sun and the tinted windows turned the two men inside into dark shapes. It was impossible to see if anyone else was in back. There could be two or three more guys in there, but he doubted it. One maybe: two to do the job, one to stay in the car, ready to roll when it was done. He had a pretty good idea what the job was too. He guessed they were on the phone right now, talking to whoever had sent them. He had a pretty good idea about that too.

  They were staring over in his direction, toward the parked Jeep. He wondered if they could see the movement of the curtain and thought about shutting the air-con off. If he did, Javier would pick up on it and he didn’t want him to know what was unfolding outside. He’d freak out most likely, start shooting, and they’d end up in a siege situation that no one would walk away from.

  The passenger door of the Jeep opened and a short, solid Mexican man slid out. He had a Mike Tyson–style tattoo curling around his left eye and rolled his neck like a boxer preparing to spar as he sauntered over to the reception building, no doubt to ask the clerk about the Jeep parked over by G block. Mulcahy imagined him walking up to the desk now and flashing some fake ID—FBI or Border Patrol. The clerk was probably illegal anyway and likely to freeze in the face of anything official. He would do whatever the guy asked, tell him whatever he wanted, even give him a master key. Except that wasn’t what happened.

  Tyson reappeared, walking fast, tucking something into his jacket, and Mulcahy knew he had been wrong. All wrong. There had been no fake ID because there had been no need for one. He hadn’t heard a gunshot, but over this distance and with the TV noise he might have missed it. More likely they were carrying suppressed weapons. Assassination pieces.

  Tyson climbed back into the Jeep and leaned over to talk to the driver. Then the Jeep started to move.

  “Anyone want ice?” he said, moving toward the door, forcing himself not to hurry. “I’m going to get a bucket and stick it on this shitty unit. Might cool us all down a little. Who knows how long we’re going to be stuck here, right?” He placed the car keys down on the counter by the door and made sure Javier saw him do it.

  Javier stared at them. “Yeah, ice,” he said, like it was his idea. He sounded guarded, all the strut ground out of him by the flow of bad news from the TV, his face rippling with drug-tweaked tics and sus
picion. He knew that being third cousin—or whatever the hell he was—was going to cut him zero slack in their current situation. Tío’s relatives might get a leg up in the organization, but if they messed up, they paid the same price as anyone else. “Don’t be long,” he said, like he was in charge.

  “Be right back,” Mulcahy said, looking out through the window in the door. He watched the Jeep make a right past the reception building and disappear from sight, then he opened the door in a burst of heat and sunlight, stepped outside, and closed it quickly behind him.

  He forced himself to saunter past the window because he knew Javier would be watching, his amphetamine-sharpened paranoia ready to catch the slightest whiff of haste. It would take ten seconds for the Jeep to clear the east side of the complex and swing back into view; he knew because he’d spent a whole afternoon on a previous stay timing cars, watching the sedans peel off the highway and work their tired way around the one-way system. But if the guys in the Jeep had left a body back at reception, they’d be in more of a hurry to get this done and get out.

  Call it five seconds.

  The moment he cleared the window he took off, running smoothly and keeping low, past the ice machine in the shadow of the stairwell, feeling in his pocket for a second set of keys.

  Four seconds.

  The lights flashed on a two-year-old white Chevy Cruze sedan parked near the end of the block, the backup vehicle he had intended to drive away in—the one he still intended to drive away in. It was America’s third most popular car, painted in its favorite color—utterly unremarkable, totally unmemorable, perfect. He glanced back toward C block, at the spot where the Jeep would reappear. Still no sign.

  Three seconds.

  He reached the Chevy and moved along the passenger side, squeezing alongside a Pontiac that had parked too tightly against it.

  Two.

  He grabbed the handle, opened the door, and squeezed through the narrow gap and into the car.