Lone Rock

by Duane Lindsay

  “It’s in the bottom,” Wally howled. “The other side.”

  Corley shoved his chair rudely and jerked at the desk. The drawer exposed a half full bottle of Dewar’s scotch, a box of cigars and, underneath, a small silver pistol. He slipped it from the bag and held it to the light like a talisman, the solution to all his problems.

  Wally reached for the gun. Corley held it higher in one hand like a game of keep away and punched Wally back into the chair with it. Wally sagged back, bleeding from a deep tear at his forehead. Red blood dripped on his yellow shirt near the green alligator. “I’m flying to Utah and I’m going to take care of our Adrian Fucking Beck.”

  “You can’t,” Wally groaned.

  “Oh, but I can.”

  “You can’t take a gun on an airplane.”

  “I can’t—” Corley stopped. He stared at the gun. “Shit.” His eyes darted around while he thought. “This is what we’ll do.” He leaned down and dropped the gun on Wally’s lap. “You’ll keep her here while I go fix Beck. I’ll fly back and we’ll decide what to do with her.”

  “Corley, you can’t do this. Listen to me; you can’t do this.”

  “I’ll be back in a day or so. Thirty-six hours. Then we can go on. Help me tie her up.”

  “Tie her up? Are you insane? Nobody ties people up! It’s kidnaping, we’ll go to jail.”

  “What do you think will happen if we get caught? Reform school? A slap on the wrist? We’re going to prison if we’re caught, do you understand that? Prison. For stealing a couple million dollars. So kidnaping doesn’t mean a whole lot to me right this minute.”

  Wally sagged back, deflated. Prison! Until now the robbery scheme had been just that, a scheme ; a little conniving, a way to get ahead. He’d never thought about the consequences. He couldn’t face them now.

  “What are we gonna do?”

  “What I told you. You’re going to keep Ruth here and I’m going to Utah. When I get back we’ll deal with her. So help me get her tied up.” He spun and left the office, returning a minute later with a role of nylon cord from the shop. Wally had helped Ruth up and sat her in his chair. Corley wrapped the cord around her wrists, and around the chair. He stood back when he was done and looked down at her.

  Ruth’s spirt had revived. she began to struggle and protest loudly. “Let me go! Are you out of your fucking mind? You can’t hold me here.”

  Corley picked up the gun from the desk. He cocked the hammer with an audible click and everybody froze. The sound of it made the gun real. Ruth’s eyes widened. So did Wally’s. Neither wanted to face what they were involved in, and they averted their gaze, as if not seeing would make it all go away.

  “Right,” said Corley. He shoved the gun at Wally who took it with great reluctance. “I’m going to Utah.”

  Two hours later, in a moment of very bad luck for everyone, he was told that a late flight was boarding in just ten minutes.

  “Lone Rock,” Adrian said, pointing. The yellow Studebaker was buzzing along Interstate 80 like a bee over a sidewalk. The engine droned, the radio played country rock and Maggie stared at the bump in the distance.

  “You’ve climbed that?” she asked.

  “It’s bigger close up.”

  “It must be. Men are always exaggerating the size of things.” It was the first humor since they’d left Salt Lake City. A little while later Adrian pointed again and said, “That’s the incinerator out there on the horizon.”

  “Is anything close by?” Maggie asked. “It’s so desolate out here.”

  “That’s the idea. Where better to put a toxic waste plant?”

  “Be nice if we didn’t have to put one anywhere.” she suggested.

  “Dreamer.”

  “Adrian, what are we going to do?” An abrupt subject change.

  “About Corley?”

  “About Corley. About Control-logics. They’ve committed a crime and this Corley guy’s dangerous. I haven’t met him yet, but from what you said; ugh.”

  “Ugh indeed,” Adrian agreed. He recalled their first meeting, that almost electric current that had passed between them, and he flinched at the idea of crossing him.

  “Today’s Friday. I’m done at the plant. Let’s go to the Casino, have dinner and talk. Maybe we can figure something out.”

  “Sound s fine to me.” She stretched and looked around at the vast dry scenery. “Pull over. Let me drive this thing.”

  The parking Gods smiled: Maggie found a space near the door. The weather, mercurial at best, had swung from cool and sunny to cold and threatening. The sky had in an instant turned to gunmetal gray and occasional streaks of lightning lashed the sky. The ten story tower of the Stateline Hotel couldn’t have been more welcome.

  By the time she parked, the snow began, a tenuous and unconvincing storm, as if nature was merely bored. It made the lobby of the Casino feel cozy and the room an oasis. Maggie checked them in while Adrian lugged her suitcases out of the Lark

  Later, in their room, they dragged a small brocaded love seat to the patio door and huddled under a blanket to watch the white flurries dance against the glass.

  “It’s going to get worse,” Adrian said, eyeing the leaden sky to the West.

  “Are you talking about the weather?” Maggie asked.

  Corley paused at the gate, uncertain what to do next. The guard, a skinny rent-a-cop named Lester, with an insolent altitude and a heavy black gun that threatened to pull his pants down said, “Adrian Beck? He’s not here today.”

  “Why not?” Corley had stayed in Tooele the night before, expecting Adrian to be there. He’d never heard of the change to Wendover as the new base of operations and wasted until eight in the morning to talk to the day manager. He drove to the waste plant.

  “Do I look like his keeper?” asked Lester with scorn. He hadn’t been a guard long, but he already had the bearing of a cop. He stared at the guy in the rented Camaro. “Maybe cause it’s Saturday.”

  “Has he been here at all?” Corley persisted

  “Buddy, I told you; I don’t keep track of your people. Maybe you should call your office and leave me alone. Better yet, maybe you should just leave?”

  “Fuck you,” Corley growled, not caring if it was drowned out in the squeal of his tires or the scattering of gravel on Lester’s polished shoes.

  But now what to do? He felt a huge pressure of time. Wally would be going to pieces back in Denver and Ruth couldn’t be held for long. He had to find Adrian Beck and...and...what?

  He clicked on the radio to distract himself from the simple fact that he had no idea of what he was going to do. So far an adrenalin high and the impulse to smash something had kept him moving. He had a fear that if he stopped, even for a minute, he’d have to make decisions.

  He sped back down the highway, trying with sheer speed to outrun the image of a very bleak future. The Camaro hit one hundred, a silver streak of metal, like a space age road runner, and still couldn’t outrun his thoughts.

  It wasn’t fair, he thought, as the needle hit one twenty. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t—fucking—fair. All of this was Adrian Beck’s doing. In his mind Corley had transferred all his worry, fears, anxieties and rage into one all-purpose emotion. It wouldn’t stand the light of even a moment of reason, but it was all he had, and he nursed it the way a drunk savors a last sip of cheap rum.

  His trip lasted less than an hour; he was back at Tooele. He burst into the manager’s office, nearly breaking the door. “Where the hell is he?” he yelled at the bewildered man.

  “Who?” asked the manager, reasonably. Management school had trained him to calm upset guests. but they always assumed the guest was at the other side of the counter and not big, angry and mean looking.

  “Adrian Beck.” Corley raised a fist menacingly.

  “I don’t know anybody by that name.” He flinched in fear. “I really don’t.”

  “A skinny guy, blond hair, scar on his right cheek.” Corley traced an imagina
ry line down his own face.

  “Oh, him! I know him! He was part of that group of guys, worked out at the plant near Clive. I can give you directions, he’s probably out there.”

  “I looked there, already.”

  “Oh.” The manager’s heart thudded in his chest. “Wait, those guys. They all left. Stopped staying here and went to...to—” he lit up with happy memory. “Wendover! They went to stay in Wendover. At the Casino there.”

  “Which one?”

  “ I don’t know. But it’s Wendover, how many can there be?”

  Corley kicked the door on his way out. He checked his watch with a risings sense of losing a race against time. He had to get back! Two o’ Clock; God damn it.

  “There’s a Subway,” Maggie said.

  “That’s about all there is in this town.” Which was, Casinos excepted, pretty much true. Wendover had started as a gas station with a slot machine, taking advantage of Nevada’s gambling laws. Over the years it became Casinos with gas stations, larger, but essentially the same.

  “I like Subway,” Maggie protested. “And since it’s two and you haven’t fed me, I suggest you pilot this battered yellow car into that parking lot right now.”

  Nestled in the red plastic booth, they ate sandwiches and chips and talked about their future. “What do you want to do when this is over?”

  “I don’t know.” Adrian took a bite of turkey, dripped mustard on his shirt and wiped it with a napkin. “Can’t take me anywhere.” he muttered. “I’ve been thinking about it since all this...happened. I think there’s going to be a management opportunity at Control-logics. I want to fill it.”

  “A management opportunity? You call the imminent jailing of the owner and chief executive officer a ‘ management opportunity?’’’ She smiled at him appraisingly. “I may have misjudged you, Mr. Beck. I seem to remember this timid creature who wouldn’t say ‘boo’ to a mouse.”

  “Times change, little lady, a man’s gotta change with ‘em.”

  “Was that Bogart?”

  “No,” Adrian said sullenly. But it had been. She nudged him playfully in the ribs and laughed. “I do a better Bogart.” She pointed to a kid moping the floor. “He does a better Bogart.”

  The Camaro streaked West. The speedometer topped out at one-twenty. The tach was red lined at 7800 RPM and Corley smoked his twenty-third unfiltered Camel of the day.

  And swore.

  A tree appeared on the horizon, catching his attention briefly since it was the only one he’d seen out here. Glancing out the window as he shot past he saw that it was made of concrete. with large round balls like ornaments scattered at its base. “What the Hell—?” As it disappeared behind him.

  A low ridge of foothills appeared and a sign said. “Wendover—3 miles.” Other signs advertised Casinos. Corley let off the gas and coasted at a relatively decorous seventy-five off a long exit ramp, curving back over the highway. It became the main street of a one street town.

  He ducked his head to see out the side windows, craning his neck back and forth to get the feel of the town on his first pass. Adrian Beck was here somewhere, and Corley would find him. His stomach cramped with nervous tension and his throat burned. His eyes were red rimmed and felt filled with sand. He would find him, but he refused to think of what would happen then.

  He passed a pair of tall buildings, the largest in town evidently, connected by a sky bridge stretching out over the street. The one on the right, the Stateline, had an enormous metal cowboy standing on the side, waving a neon greeting to gamblers. The building on the left was more sedate, merely displaying a gigantic sign welcoming the retired Teamsters of Ogden, Local chapter number 19, and featuring Paul Anka in the Silversmith Lounge.

  The road crested under the sky bridge and dropped down to the desert, lined with rows of Casinos on both sides. For a moment Corley groaned. “How many can there be?” He looked in his mirror at the tall buildings, toward the sunset over the road, making it glow orange between the structures. Where should he start? East or west, big or little? He decided it didn’t matter and spun the Camaro in a tight circle, randomly parking at the Silversmith.

  The time on the dashboard display read 5:15.

  At 5:10 Adrian said, “C’mon, I want to show you something.”

  He waited by the door of their room and Maggie came to join him, picking up her purse on the way.

  “Oops, just a sec.” She spun on her heel back into the room, returning a minute later with a brown sweater under one arm.” It gets cold out there.”

  They waited for the elevator and watched the cowboy wave into the distance through the glass wall as they descended.

  Adrian led her through the lobby and out to the car. He slid the seat back for his longer legs, carefully adjusted the single mirror—they weren’t concerned much with safety in 1960—and drove out onto Main street. The sun was an orange ball at the tip of the hills, looking as if it was a cat nibbling on the earth. The clouds framed it, making it glow brighter by comparison.

  Adrian drove slowly into the glare and Maggie put on dark sunglasses. He turned right, curved around the entrance ramp to the highway, turning on a gravel road that suddenly appeared. The road went past a poor rusted group of ten trailers parked amid rocks, before spinning around onto a ledge that faced west.

  The view, overlooking the entire valley, was spectacular. The sun’s gleam, the cloud’s cotton padding, the beams of light shining like spotlights through the edge of twilight, all combined to make an inspired painting, a masterful watercolor.

  “Oh, Adrian.” whispered Maggie. The scene called for reverential silence, as if it was a cathedral. “It’s beautiful.”

  “I found it one trip. The guys all hung out together and I got tired of being alone in my room, so I came out here one afternoon.”

  “You were alone a lot. Weren’t you?”

  “I suppose. I never noticed it before you. I was too busy or too distracted.” He looked at her closely. “Or too stupid.” He leaned forward and kissed her. She settled against his shoulder and they watched the sunset, felling a deep sense of very misguided safety.

  “Guy with a scar on his cheek,” Corley said to the desk clerk of the seventeenth motel in Wendover. “Name’s Adrian Beck. Is he registered here?”

  The guy pushed his tongue into his cheek and stared into space as if thinking. He looked like he was sucking a lemon. “Noooo, I don’t think so. I think I would have remembered a scar.”

  “You want to check the register?” Corley indicated a bank of computer screens. His hands were clenched into fists to keep him from reaching across the desk to strangle this latest impasse. How many can there be? ran through his head like a reproach. It seemed like the Casinos went on forever and he was trapped in a sort of Hell. And now this jerk, frowning indignantly at the screen as if Corley was inconveniencing him.

  “Sorry,” he said, not meaning it. Corley dug a nail into his palm and grimaced a taut, “Thank you” before going back out into the dark night. 7:26 and he hadn’t had dinner. Too upset to even think about eating, Corley felt like a time bomb set to go off at any time. The twin drives—find Adrian and get back to Denver before Wally freaked out and did something stupid—pulled at him. The options of what ‘something’ might be turned more and more violent the longer he searched this two bit one street pretense of civilization.

  He jerked the car out of its spot at the curb and a jarring bump tore his mind back to the present. He’d hit something. Or something had hit him. With a bellow of frustrated rage Corley leaped from the car. A red and white taxi had its bumper buried in the side of the Camaro’s grill. The two cars seemed locked in a kiss.

  The driver, a short man in western clothes, felt hat and huge belt buckle, charged around the front and bent to inspect the damage. “You hit me!” He yelled. “You just pulled right out and hit me!”

  Corley had to circle around the back of his car to reach the damage. The cab was only scratched, the Camaro had a broken hea
dlight and dented grill. No big deal if this little twerp would just shut up. The man’s voice was a high pitched squeak that perforated Corley’s brain like a dental drill.

  He straightened up, still pointing at his car. Even in boots he barely reached Corley’s shoulders. He bellowed like a wounded cow, “You hit me.” and that’s when Corley did. Not so much a punch as a slap, it rocked the man’s head back. His hat flew off and his eyes bulged. Corley stepped closer to tower over him.

  “Listen, Chico. it’s no big deal. My car’s worse than yours. Let’s just call it even, okay?” While he talked he peeled five hundred dollar bills from his wallet and held them out. “Okay?”

  The man, dazed by the slap or the money, glanced at the damage, checked out Corley’s expression, and decided retreat was the best idea.

  “Sure,” he said. “Yeah, sure. Right.” He kept on muttering agreement as he grabbed the money, picked up his hat and scurried to his car. With a faint metallic whine the cars separated and he drove away.

  Corley breathed in and out, calming himself. The last thing he needed was a police report.

  At eight fifteen Maggie and Adrian were in the bar at the Silversmith Casino listening to a man and woman sing ‘Muskrat Love’. The man played guitar and sang and evidently had an advanced degree in electronics; he kept adjusting a series of buttons and knobs on a complicated box, which produced the sounds of an entire band. The woman sang lead and played little percussive things and looked pretty. A sign with a professional picture said The Jerome and Amber Experience.

  Maggie was pensive and slightly envious. After tepid applause—the singers were good but it was Muskrat Love, after all—she said, “I’ve been thinking about what you said.”

  “Hmmm...?” Adrian sipped a beer and returned his attention from Amber’s dress. How did that stay up?

  “About performing. You’re right; I am afraid.” Jerome began to sing Unchained Melody.

  “I want to do this,” Maggie said. “Not this, this—I don’t want to play in a Casino; but perform live. I’ve always wanted to.”