by Leo W. Banks
FORTY-NINE
Two days passed with Opal glued to my hip. She was afraid Angel would return and do something terrible to us. She didn’t spell out what that was. When I told her he was probably dead, she said, “You can’t kill a thing like that.”
Not even a boy. A “thing.”
Over and over, I ran the facts through my mind, trying to find what I was missing. I kept going back to that night at Melody’s house, his car screeching down the alley, Ed Bolt and his partner following me to Double Wide thinking I’d taken something important from the house.
That something was the key to Mayflower’s side of the conspiracy. The holy grail, Melody called it. Mayflower and Bolt desperately wanted it back. They researched Melody the same way I did—online—and found Annie Patterson, and Bolt beat me to her with questions on the professor’s whereabouts.
On the second night after the flood, I was lying in bed with Melody’s alley getaway looping through my head. Because of Angel, Opal was afraid to stay at her place, so I set her up on the foldout. She was asleep.
Chico lay on the floor beside my bed, close enough so I could reach over and scratch his ear. I’d scratch, he’d settle into a snooze, and then he’d whimper until I scratched again. The only way to stop the cycle was to lift him into the bed with me, which I did.
He curled up with his chin on my knee, looking up at me with great satisfaction.
“You’re shameless, Chico,” I said. “Go to sleep.”
I went back to thinking about Arthur Melody’s alley. In my mind, I saw his hand reaching out the driver’s window of his big white boat of a car, the white of his arm flashing in the darkness as the hand arced over the roof.
That hand must’ve held something.
In the house, he’d said he was going to rid himself of the contents of that black bag and maybe that’s what he did. The darkness hid its flight, and the grinding of his tires on the dirt muffled the sound of its landing.
It could still be there in the brush along the road or in the backyard on the other side of the chain-link fence.
The next morning, I shook Opal awake and told her I was going to look for Dr. Melody’s black bag. Not wanting to stay at Double Wide with Angel, she was dressed and in the Bronco before I could ask if she wanted to come.
FIFTY
At 8:00 a.m., we pulled into the twelve-foot-wide alley that separated Melody’s backyard from his neighbor’s. A high chain-link fence bordered the neighbor’s property, with shrubbery at the bottom growing to the knees.
Opal and I started at different ends of the alley and walked toward one another, kicking through the weeds as we went. No black bag. We peered through the chain-link fence to see if the bag might’ve landed in the neighbor’s yard and stayed hidden under a bush or a tree.
After half an hour, we returned to the Bronco and sat for a minute. The scene played again in my head. Melody’s car shooting out of the garage and stopping an inch from my leg, the arm reaching out the window and heaving the black bag over the roof.
From the location of Melody’s car, the landing spot could’ve been the flat roof of the metal storage shed at the back of the neighbor’s yard. It bumped right against the alley fence and stood about ten feet high.
I pulled the Bronco tight against the fence, jumped onto the hood, stepped onto the Bronco’s windshield frame, double gripped the edge of the shed roof, and climbed up.
The black bag was there. “Got it!” I hollered down to Opal. “I’ve got it!”
I loosened the drawstrings and pulled out a silver .38-caliber Smith & Wesson. Also in the bag was a soft white substance wrapped in cellophane, about the size of a bar of soap.
A voice called, “Hey, over there! What all you doing on my roof, partner?”
The speaker was invisible, hidden by the four Arizona cypress trees shading the rear of the house that belonged with the shed. A few seconds later, a man walked between the trees. He wore a white T-shirt, blue sweatpants, black socks, and black slippers. He was gangly, bald, unshaven. His narrow face looked like a long crack in a crumbling adobe wall.
“Gathering up my belongings is all,” I said.
“Something fall out the sky, did it? Land on my roof?”
I didn’t see the rifle until he came closer. That changed everything. Rifles usually do. I had the pistol in one hand and the black bag in the other, and from his perspective, I can see where the rifle might’ve seemed essential.
“Hold on,” I said. “I know what this looks like. But I left my bag up here, and that’s all there is to this.” That made no sense, of course. How do you leave a bag on a roof? But I was stalling for time and thought it’d be nice if he didn’t shoot me.
He stepped closer and squinted up at me. “You a Red Sox fan?”
“No, I’m not a Red Sox fan.”
He pointed with the rifle. “You got on that there Red Sox T-shirt.”
“Oh.” I’d forgotten I had it on. “It was in my drawer, that’s all. I pitched a season for their AAA club in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.”
“What a coincidence. Me too.” He turned his head and squinted, watching me carefully. “My wife’s inside on her laptop. You think I should have her call the police? Figure they might want to talk to a Red Sox fan with a gun standing on my roof for no good reason.”
It had to be 130 degrees on that roof. The sweat ran down my back like a waterfall.
“First off, don’t call me a fan,” I said. “I don’t like that word. I quit being a fan of any sports team a long time ago. I’ve seen too much.”
“Right, when you were pitching in Pawtucket.”
“Pawtucket and a lot of other places. I’m Whip Stark.” There it was—the name bomb. If the planets were aligned, everything would click in his brain, and the problem would be solved.
“Very glad to know you, Whip Stark. I’m Walter Howell Pinckney, and I’m telling you not to move one inch too awful quick until I figure out what you’re doing on my roof with a pistol. Who in the hell is Whip Stark?”
“I pitched in the big leagues. I pitched for the Tucson Thunder.”
“I drove a truck cross-country. Got disability for my back. Thirty-one years.”
“Will you put that gun down? You look twitchy.”
“Not until you tell me why you’re on my roof.” Pinckney shouted to his wife. “Honey, we got Whip Stark on our roof! Says he’s famous. What should I do?” She shouted something that I didn’t hear and Pinckney said, “She don’t know you either. The police are on the way.”
That wasn’t good. I was standing on a roof with a gun and what looked like a bag of drugs. “Why don’t you tell your wife to type my name into her computer? Plenty of information will come up, pictures and everything. You’ll see who I am.”
The wife must’ve heard me. Before he could respond, she said something, and Pinckney said, “Mama’s gonna look you up on the Google.”
Sirens wailed in the distance and I realized I’d made a big mistake. She’d see the cocaine stories, and here I was on a roof with a suspicious white substance and a gun.
“We don’t need the police,” I said. “If you let me, I’ll get off this roof and we can talk. I’ll put this gun back in this bag, and we can meet properly. Like gentlemen.”
Holding the gun by my fingertips, I dropped it into the bag and held my hands wide and backed away slowly. “Now take it easy, Mr. Pinckney,” I said, and inched back to the edge of the roof. “You’re not going to shoot me, are you?”
“I’m pondering that with all my mental faculties.” He spoke over his shoulder to his wife again. “Honey, should I shoot this Red Sox fan?”
The wife shrieked a response that indicated she wasn’t necessarily opposed to the idea.
Right then I heard a loud wolf whistle. It was Opal. She had raised her Tweety Bird T-shirt and pressed her big floppy breasts against the chain-link fence.
Walter Howell Pinkney’s eyes popped, his face dissolving in shock. He looked like a m
an riding a high roller coaster in a lightning storm. Turning, he bellowed over his shoulder: “Better get out here, Mama!”
With his attention focused entirely on Opal, he couldn’t have squeezed the trigger with the finger of Hercules. I could’ve line danced away and he wouldn’t have noticed.
I jumped onto the hood of the Bronco, scrambled into the driver’s seat, and fishtailed back to Opal, dragging a pile of dust with me. She was stuck to the fence showing Pinkney the goods and didn’t look to be in any hurry to stop.
Leaning across the seat, I shoved open the passenger door. “Opal! Let’s go!”
I whistled again and hit the horn. She stayed put. Another long horn blast got her away from the fence, and she jumped in. I booked it down the alley with Opal shrieking like a kid on a wild ride at Disneyland.
“Yeeee-hahhh! Did you see that? I bamboozled him good! I saved you!” She bounced in the seat. “Did you see that, Mr. Whip! Yeeee-hahhh!”
I tried to keep to the speed limit, and it wasn’t easy with Opal having a seizure beside me. I got off the side streets and onto Speedway Boulevard and blended into the solid line of traffic.
“I can’t catch my breath!” Opal said, fanning herself. She corkscrewed her shoulders, looked quickly behind us and back again. She buried her face in her hands. “I can’t believe what just happened!”
“I can’t either,” I said. “That was fast thinking.”
“I did good, didn’t I, Mr. Whip?”
“You sure did.”
“I saved you, didn’t I?”
“Yes, yes, you saved me. Yes, you did.”
FIFTY-ONE
I drove along, checking my mirrors to make sure we were clear of Walter Howell Pinckney and the police. Opal began to cry. I thought I should say something but couldn’t think of anything. She reached over and grabbed my hand.
I said, “Why are you crying? I don’t like it when a girl cries.”
“I’m happy. I’m really happy.”
“Well, then, you should be smiling. You’re all mixed up.” I squeezed her hand. “Come on, knock it off, okay? I’ve got to drive here. This traffic.”
At that, her cry became a shoulder-shaking sob. I supposed they were tears of joy. She’d jumped into hot water to rescue me. She’d pulled one over on a world that didn’t have much use for her, and that small triumph set off powerful emotions.
I pulled into the parking lot of a Taco Bell and waited, remembering the number of times I’d been in a Taco Bell parking lot with a woman crying in the seat beside me. I counted three.
Opal said, “I know I should’ve called you, but I just didn’t. I don’t know why!”
“Called me? What are you talking about?”
Two cop cars whizzed by, sirens wailing.
“When I went with the Gelmans.”
“I don’t care about that. Forget about that. Just quit blubbering.”
Opal kept a tight grip on my hand. After a minute I said, “Okay, are we done now?”
She sniffed and wiped away tears. “I’m soaking wet. I’m drenched. I’m a girl all wet and crying in your car. I’m sorry. Do you have, like, a towel?” She snorted and laughed.
“Can I have my hand back?”
“Sorry, I forget stuff sometimes. I’m goofy today, Mr. Whip.”
I grabbed the black bag out of the backseat and opened it. I peeled the cellophane off the white bar and manipulated it with my fingers. Breaking off a small piece, I could tell right away it wasn’t cocaine. Being around Rolando had made me something of an expert.
I held the piece under my nose. No smell. Opal smelled it, too, and pressed it against her tongue, immediately pulling away.
“Tastes like cough medicine,” she said, wrinkling her face. “We drank that stuff at school.” She caught herself. “Some of my friends did anyways. Crazy, huh? What is it?”
“Dr. Melody’s holy grail,” I said. “I know a chemist who might be able to tell us exactly what this is. How about we go for a ride?”
We ate Taco Bell takeout as we went, and an hour later we were at Izzy Bonheimer’s ranch on the backside of the Catalinas.
The sound of the Bronco nearing Bonheimer’s electronic gate brought her hounds running. Opal spotted them and said, “Look at the beautiful animals!”
She was out of the Bronco and throwing a leg over the gate before I could stop her. The dogs growled and bared their teeth as Opal walked toward them. She didn’t hesitate or show any fear, and when she got to them, she leaned down and petted them.
“Nice pooches!” she said. “Hello there, pooches! Nice pooches!”
The dogs danced at her feet, tails wagging. Opal sat on the ground, folded her legs underneath her, and played with them.
“Never seen that before.”
The voice belonged to Bonheimer. She came around the side of the house wearing a blue railroad shirt that snapped up the front and had embroidered red roses above the chest pockets. She wore brown leather gloves and carried a gardening trowel.
“Did I tell you not to come back here?” She wiped her brow with her sleeve. “If I didn’t, I have a feeling it was a mistake I’ll regret the rest of my life.”
I had the brick in my pocket. I peeled away the cellophane and took the portion I’d already broken off and held it up to her. “I’ll pay you good money to tell me what this is.” In my other hand, I held Melody’s paper from Bunny’s house. “And this. It’s one of Dr. Melody’s research papers. It might help you.”
“You want to hire me?”
“That’s right.”
Opal and the dogs were cooing. Bonheimer looked at them with annoyance, pulled off her gloves and tucked them under her arm, and let out a shrill, two-fingered whistle. The dogs tucked their tails and ran back inside.
“Dr. Melody invented this, and he's on the run because of it,” I said, and handed her the substance.
She made no move to take it. “Arthur referred to a gum he was working on, but that’s the limit of my knowledge. As I said, he didn’t discuss his project with me, and I had no part in creating it.”
“It might have to do with steroids, something to juice up an athlete. Do you know about steroidal saponins?”
She looked at me with perfect disgust. “I know about everything, Whip Stark.”
Holding the substance close to her, I said, “Please. Dr. Melody’s life could depend on it.”
Sighing, Bonheimer grabbed it and inspected it with genuine curiosity, as if seeing it for the first time. She rubbed the tips of her fingers over the smooth white surface and sniffed them, rubbed again, and touched her fingertips to her tongue.
As she did that, I checked the back bumper of the white Lincoln for a glue outline. Nothing. Clean as could be. It looked like the car belonged to her, not Melody.
I handed her the six pages of Melody’s research and she took it. All I had in my wallet was sixty dollars. I should’ve stopped on the way to get more cash. I handed her the money anyway.
“You’ve already taken up more than sixty dollars of my time,” Bonheimer said.
With her newfound confidence, Opal stepped forward. “What about this?” She pulled the Gelman roll from her pocket and handed it to Bonheimer. “Is this enough?”
Bonheimer snatched it away. Her fingers did a dance number with the bills as her eyes ballooned.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “That has to be a thousand dollars. We should negotiate a price.”
“We just did,” Bonheimer said, flipping through the bills. “What a coincidence. This is the exact amount I had in mind.”
Opal put her hands in her pockets and beamed. She’d rescued me again.
I said to Bonheimer, “I need this as soon as you can do it.”
“It’ll take several days at least.”
“How about tomorrow?”
Bonheimer let out a cackling laugh that sounded like fine crystal shattering. “I’ve got to clear brush out of the creek or the next rain will wash me away. Four days.�
��
“Dangerous men are hunting that stuff,” I said. “You need to keep your wits.”
She gazed at the solitude of the mountains, unbroken in every direction. “Who the hell’s going to bother me out here, the birdies?” She turned and walked back to the house, wiggling four bony fingers over her shoulder.
“Four days, Whip Stark.”
FIFTY-TWO
Monsoon storms stayed away the next two days, enough time for the ground to dry out on Paradise Mountain. I drove back up there to look for Rolando’s hand, and Cash came too. He was still wobbly from his wound but tired of sitting around. He had a white bandage around his head and looked like the flute player from the famous Revolutionary War painting.
Even if Angel had tossed the hand into the well as he claimed, Roscoe Rincon had likely removed it by now. But I had to check for myself. And I wanted to look for Angel or his remains, if it worked out that way.
If he had somehow made it through the flood, he was my best chance of finding Rolando.
But the flood had boosted the water level to almost overflowing, and there was nothing to see but floating debris.
We drove into Crooked Canyon, both of us hanging out the windows for any sign of Angel. Not far along, the road disappeared, replaced by tossed boulders, tree branches sticking out of the ground, and sand berms sloping against the rock walls on either side.
We got out and walked another half mile or so. Cash kept his eyes mostly on the top of the canyon. But when he spotted something colorful in the debris, he kicked at the ground, thinking it might be his lost hat.
“You’re making me crazy with this hat business,” I said.
“My mom told me when you find a hat that fits good, you’re living life.”
“Your mom said that? Well, okay, then. Why didn’t you say so?”
“She stood six foot four. Could clean out the gutters with just a folding chair.”
“She sounds like a wonderful woman.”
Cash bent over to pull at a debris pile. “Weighed ninety-seven pounds with Johnnie Walker in one pocket and Smith & Wesson in the other.”