The man looked disappointed, but then a new idea lit up his face. “Is this Carrara near the port city of Livorno?”
“I think Livorno’s up the coast a ways,” Michael replied.
“All right,” Higgins said to himself, whipping out his cell phone, “this could still all fit together.” Stepping into the living room for privacy, he called someone and asked, “Say, didn’t Razin board that merchant ship for New York in Livorno?”
Michael was left in the kitchen with the Iranian’s ghost.
* * *
One thing had to be said for smog: It made gorgeous dusks in satiny pastels. Had the meeting at the FBI field office gone on any longer, Michael would’ve missed the chance to experience these late-afternoon atmospherics from the rolling green of the Los Angeles National Cemetery. Fortunately, the federal building was just across Wilshire Boulevard from it, so he had only to drive around the corner and park to enter the grounds.
He hadn’t learned much at the meeting, just that Higgins was assigned to the L.A. office and, thus, lowly placed in the global war on terror. The “R.J.” stood for Rupert James.
Michael started down Row 319 through the marble markers, holding a glass ashtray he’d pinched from the motel where he was staying. He knew from previous visits here that an elevated portion of the cemetery called San Juan Hill was the resting place of veterans of the Indian wars, among them soldiers from units that had fought the Shoshone. Many were the black troopers known as buffalo soldiers. But it was good that old foes lay together. It brought closure.
At last, Michael came to the marker he was seeking:
Michael Long Shore
California
U.S. Navy
1952 – 1999
He made sure he had this part of the cemetery to himself, then said quietly, “Hey, Pop. It’s me. Sorry it’s been a while, but you know how it goes. Usually, I’ve got to tie these visits in with business...and...” But then Michael fell silent, trying to visualize his father’s face the last time he saw him. It was getting harder with the years. “I’m bullshitting you. I just didn’t feel the need until lately to see you. You know how it is —you didn’t make it back home from the test site for weeks on end, leaving Mama alone...” Those last words came out sounding more resentful than he’d intended. That and the self-consciousness he felt in talking to a faceless stone monument made Michael go on silently: Let me burn some sage for you, Pop. Not from home, but it came off the desert north of Red Rock... He set the ashtray on the grass and slipped from his pants pocket the small bundle of sage he’d fashioned from the sprigs he’d picked on the drive down. He touched a butane lighter to the leaves. They’d already been cured by the July heat, and he easily lit one end, blew out the flame, and watched the pungent smoke curl around the marker, hopefully reminding his father of Death Valley. He believed that if, the dead had preferences, they still preferred home to paradise. In the absence of a Shoshone cemetery inside the national park, he’d been buried here.
Something happened since I was last came down, Michael carried on with the internal, prayer-like flow of words against the whisper of traffic on the nearby Santa Monica Freeway. It concerns Jimmy. Things haven’t turned out well for him. I know Mama named him after her dad, hoping he’d turn out to be a good man like Giacomo... Michael took a moment, wondering how to fairly describe his grown-up brother. He wanted to be fair about this. Jimmy’s still psycho as hell, but he can be charming when he needs to be. As you know, when Mama began to lose her grip on things, she spoke nothing but Italian to us. Jimmy and I learned it pretty well. Well, that opened some doors for him in Vegas I wish he’d never gone through. He fell in with the wrong people. A couple minor screw-ups followed, a stretch in Clark County jail. Then Jimmy screwed up royally—
Something made Michael look around again. An inkling that he was being watched. He was still within view of the federal high-rise, but all the windows were tinted and nothing was visible behind them.
He tried to shrug off the feeling.
Anyway, Pop, I was on duty in Independence when a dick from San Bernardino County called. He knew Jimmy is my brother and wanted to tell me personally that they were issuing a no-bail warrant for him. Trafficking. Like an idiot, Jimmy sold coke to some undercover cops down in Adelanto. Well, I’d spoken to Grandma Florence on the phone that afternoon and knew he was staying with her for a couple days. The warrant was already entered into the system, but I made a copy without notifying anybody else in the department. I know that was wrong. But the deputy assigned to Furnace Creek was a hard-ass, and I was afraid how Jimmy would react to him. That temper of his. So I kept the warrant to myself and drove to the rez as fast as I could.
Movement drew Michael’s eye to the columbarium, the house for cremated remains. A male figure was hanging around it, a bald and thickset man, seemingly studying the inscriptions on some of the urns. Yet once, momentarily, he turned and stared across the rows of markers at Michael, who ignored him.
I found Jimmy in Grandma’s trailer, everybody around the table. The kind of dinner only she can make—pork with grease-bread, mesquite-bean cakes, parched corn. Jimmy grinning, the center of attention. See, he’s become a big shot over the past several years, dropping in from Vegas with his pockets stuffed with cash, fixing up the basketball court for the tribe. Nobody asked where the money came from, except me, and then he always laughed it off.
I motioned for him to step outside Grandma’s trailer.
It was one of those perfect winter evenings in the valley. You remember. Cool but not cold, clear and still, the snow on top of Telescope Peak all pink. Why do bad things seem to happen in such beautiful weather?
I told Jimmy there was a warrant for his arrest. He said this was all bullshit and his lawyer would have it cleared up in no time. Then, incredibly, he thanked me for giving him a heads-up before the deputies showed. Like I wasn’t a deputy. If the roads were already blocked, he’d take off on foot across the salt pan—his biggest worry was that one of the kids would wreck his Maserati while he was on the lam.
I told him this wasn’t a “heads-up.” I’d come to arrest him. He didn’t believe I’d do something like that. I remember how he looked to the front window of the trailer, where the whole family was pressed up against the glass, staring out at us, worried. Jimmy said that he was going to turn slowly, keep his hands in sight, and walk out into the salt. I could tell the other deputies that I’d come here to nab him, but he’d rabbited on me...
Unconsciously, Michael stopped telling and began reliving the minutes that followed:
For the first few hundred yards, the surface of the playa was smooth and hard under Michael’s shoes. It felt like running on a tennis court. Jimmy continued at a trot, even though he’d glanced back to see that Michael was pursuing him. His reaction had been a surprised laugh. Deeper in the lake bed, where seasonal flooding curdled the salt into hummocks, their feet began crunching several inches into the crust. The going got tougher, and soon Michael had enough of not being taken seriously. He drew his pistol and shouted for Jimmy to halt. But after checking behind, Jimmy picked up the pace. He was headed toward Hanaupah Canyon, the ancient escape route up into the Panamint Range. Once there, he would be difficult to track and even more difficult to run to ground. He knew where the water was and could get by on pine nuts until he eventually broke from the mountains for freedom.
Michael thought about firing a warning shot but felt sure Jimmy would only call this bluff. Instead, he holstered his weapon and slogged on after him. Eventually, the Vegas high life began to wear down his brother’s natural athleticism. Michael caught up with him a few yards short of where the surface turned even rougher, the beginning of a jumbled expanse of massive rock salt that would have been as hard to cross as an Artic ice field. He lunged from the crown of a hummock and tackled Jimmy on the fly. They rolled together into a shallow swale. It felt much like wrestling when they were boys, except that in the middle of the scuffle Michael discovered Jim
my was packing heat, a pistol tucked in the waistband of his Armani slacks...
I pulled. He pulled. The gun went off. A moment followed in which neither of us moved. Then Jimmy grinned in a way I’d never seen before, and I knew that he’d been hit. In the gut, I found out. Applying direct pressure to the wound over his intestines would have been useless, so right away I packed him over my shoulders for the return to the trailer. Florence had heard the shot and realized right away what it meant. She phoned for an ambulance. It was touch-and-go for some weeks, but Jimmy pulled through.
Michael realized that the sage bundle had burned out. He didn’t relight it, for he’d come to the end of his story.
I’ve been banished, Pop. It’s the big thing again on all the reservations, just like the old days. I’ve been banished by both camps. You see, the sheriff nailed me too. For covering up the warrant and then making a felony take-down without notifying the department. I got put back on probation, which means I’m treated like a rookie again. And I got assigned to Furnace Creek. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t mind, but the transfer was part of the sheriff’s plan to get me to quit. He knew how things stood with me and the tribe, and he dumped me back in the valley so I could stew in my own juices...
Michael groaned under his breath.
All I want to know, Pop—how do I fucking get back home again?
He was listening for the negligible possibility of a reply when he saw that the bald man had stepped out from the columbarium and was waving a dark-gloved hand for him to approach.
Chapter Nine
By the time Michael reached the columbarium, the man had ducked inside. He was standing along one wall of the cool, marble-clad space, running his eyes over the face plates to the niches for the urns. “Interesting,” he said, obviously sensing Michael’s presence but not turning to greet him. “You learn something every day, kiddo.”
“Such as?” Michael asked.
“Those Greek vase-type things on the outside of this building.” He held up a pamphlet, still without facing Michael. “Brochure from the office says they’re called cenotaphs. That means there are no remains inside them. The families just set a jar in the outside wall to remember them by. And the great pea and shell game goes on.” At last, he regarded Michael with a genial smile. He was a stout but still muscular man in his fifties with a bald pate and ragged mustache. His business suit needed pressing. No apparent bulge of a weapon showing around his waist, but then again his jacket was badly rumpled. “Know what I mean?”
“No,” Michael said.
“Where’s my little pea? Buried by an artillery round?
Lying at the bottom of the sea? Floating in the clouds? Where or where can my little pea be...?” He strolled farther along the wall, perusing the cover plates. “At least these families have something. A pound or two of ashes. But it’s the knowing where your loved one is that makes going on easier.”
Michael asked, “Have we met?”
“It’s possible, but don’t go racking your brains.”
“You have a name?”
The man stared up into the vaulted ceiling, thinking. “How about Carson?” he finally said. “Yeah, you can call me Carson. Don’t press me for my name until we get to know each other better, Long Shore. That’d be a deal breaker.”
“What deal?”
Sitting on a bench, Carson brushed his gloved palm over the smooth stone. Despite the summer warmth, he was wearing black leather gloves. “Nice marble.”
“Have any weapons on you?” Michael demanded.
“Of course. But listen—you’re a helluva lot safer with me than you are with the FBI. I should know. I used to work for the bastards.”
“Which office?”
“Two of them actually,” the man replied. “Cincinnati and Las Vegas.”
“What’s the street address of the Vegas field office?”
“One-Seven-Eight-Seven West Lake Mead Boulevard. You want the address of the old office on Charleston Boulevard? That’s where I spent most of my time.”
“What made you leave the bureau?”
“Well, kiddo,” Carson said, stretching his legs out in front of him and crossing his feet, “let’s just say it’s a better fit for me with my present employer.”
Michael noted his shoe size, nine probably, and the diamond pattern on the soles. Often, when agents jumped ship, it was to the state equivalent of the FBI. “Are you with the Investigation Division out of Carson City, Mr. Carson?”
“I look out for Nevada’s interests. Let’s not get side-tracked by the resume stuff, Mr. Long Shore, and leave it at that.”
Michael found a stretch of wall that had yet to be filled with cinerary urns and leaned against it. “What do you know about me, other than my name?”
“You’re on shaky ground with Inyo County. Granted, it was a chicken-shit rap, but the long and the short is that you’re back on probation. Nobody has fewer rights than a probie cop. All you have to do is look cross-eyed at Gorman and you’re out the door. Know what I mean...?”
One thing was becoming clear: Carson had a number of potential informants. Probably one with the L.A. field office of the FBI, who had forewarned him that Michael was coming down, for it didn’t seem likely that the man had tagged him all the way south from Death Valley yesterday. And, possibly, he had a mole within Michael’s own department, if not Gorman himself.
“Don’t you agree, kiddo?”
“With what?”
“That the chances aren’t good you’ll last much longer with good old Inyo County? You can’t dance on thin ice, and sooner or later any cop worth his salt feels the need to kick up his heels. The devil makes us do it.”
“I didn’t know the department was letting me go. What’d you hear that I haven’t?”
“Bear with me, okay? All I’m saying is that, in the event the sheriff cans your ass, it wouldn’t prejudice my employer against hiring you. In fact, as familiar as he is with your boss, getting fired by Cole Gorman would up your value in his eyes.”
Michael realized that Gorman could be scratched off the list of Tiffany’s potential snitches within the sheriff’s department. Even a corrupt rat won’t rat on himself. And to Michael’s knowledge, there was only one prominent Nevadan who’d take a terminated employee’s side against Gorman—the former district attorney of Clark County. Michael had still been in his teens when this hard-charging prosecutor had tried to sic the FBI on Gorman, accusing him of being in bed with a Vegas capo who needed a convenient dumping ground for his homicide victims and a blind eye from local law enforcement. The case collapsed when a key informant disappeared. Gorman stayed in power in Inyo County, and the Clark County D.A. went on to become governor of Nevada.
Carson broke the reflective pause. “Are we up to speed now?”
Not quite. Michael couldn’t figure out why the governor of the Silver State would be interested in such a petty piece of unfinished business as nailing a boondocks sheriff in California. That was it, wasn’t it? The governor saw an opening in the discovery of Razin’s remains to settle an old score with Gorman? No mystery how he’d learned about the recovery of the Iranian-American at the Lucky Boy Mine: The autopsy had been performed in Las Vegas, utilizing the services of the state-run lab there. “And what am I supposed to do,” Michael asked, “quit my job now or wait around until Gorman lets me go?”
“Wait around, of course, and keep your eyes peeled.”
“What’s so important about Nastour Razin that your boss is willing to offer a job to damaged goods like me?”
“Who the fuck is Nastour Razin?”
“Are you serious?”
“Of course I’m serious.”
Michael explained, “Razin is the latest DB found in Death Valley. Isn’t that the case your boss wants to keep informed about?”
“No, kiddo,” Carson said, chortling, “he doesn’t give a crap if dead bodies are falling out of the sky over Death Valley.”
“Then what?”
“He wants
to be kept up to speed on the Carl Kincannon disappearance. I’ll make that real easy for you. I’m going to reach in my jacket pocket now, okay?”
Michael nodded but made sure his right hand was close to his own pistol grips.
Carson produced a cell phone. He tossed it to Michael. “I’m telling you up front, we won’t try to track you with it. Prepaid, so you can’t turn the tables and ID me or my employer off the number. Keep it charged.”
“What do I need it for?” Michael asked.
“Discretion, kiddo. So you can contact me anytime you want without my number showing up on your Inyo County bill. Probie’s get audited for everything, especially personal calls on company minutes, right? My number’s already on the speed dial. Nobody is to know that we’re in touch, Long Shore. Nobody. You keep me informed on a regular basis, and my boss will make sure you have a nice, soft landing when Gorman jettisons you. You might start with AEI up in Inyokern. I got nowhere with them, so it might require a local cop’s touch to find out what they really know about the good doctor. Ah, here we go—closing time,” he said, standing as taps drifted over the public address system. “Walk me to my busteed?”
Gladly, Michael thought, falling in beside him. Busteed, or bureau steed, was FBI slang for a cruiser. Even if Carson’s vehicle had exempt or public-service license plates, it would be a lead on his true identity.
But as they halted on the sidewalk along Sepulveda Boulevard, which fronted the cemetery, Carson gave an sharp whistle and waved for a cab that was parked across Wilshire. Obviously, the driver had been waiting on his orders. He pulled up, and Carson opened the back door for himself. He stood there a moment, one foot in and one out of the taxi, as he said, “Get cracking, kiddo, and find out what the hell happened to Carl Kincannon. I’m always just a phone call away.”
Chapter Ten
Michael awoke to the crunch of tires coming toward him over gravel. Unable to open his eyes for the moment, he sensed that he was no longer breathing the moist air of the coast. It was the sharp, dry atmosphere of the desert carrying the stink of sun-drenched creosote bushes. Home. Or close to it.
Under the Killer Sun: A Death Valley Mystery Page 7