Mojave Desert Sanctuary

by Gary J George

  “Yeah? You want I should have Sal pay her a visit, unstring her?”

  “No, no. That’s all right. Car will be on its way as soon as I hang up.”

  “Be in your office when I get there. And have them suites ready. I need to get some shuteye after we talk.”

  Forty minutes later, Eddie was in his office when Thomaso Cortese and Salvatore “The Wolf” Lupo walked in.

  Eddie stood up.

  “Hello, Thomaso.”

  Thomaso nodded. “Eddie, you know Salvatore?”

  “Never met him. Heard of him.”

  “Young man on the rise. Got forza!”

  Eddie extended his hand to a big man with a smirk on his face.

  “Eddie Mazzetti, Salvatore.”

  Salvatore waved his hand dismissively.

  “Yeah.”

  Thomaso turned and stared at the young man.

  Salvatore didn’t say anything at first, but as the silence stretched on, he got uncomfortable.

  “What?”

  Thomaso slapped him hard on the back of the head.

  “Show some respect, you little stronza. This man worked with Al Capone. Capone went to jail. Eddie didn’t. Maybe you could learn somethin’ here.

  Now, get out until I call for you. I’m gonna talk with my associate.”

  Thomaso waited until Salvatore was out of the room.

  “All right. Why can’t your crew do one simple thing? I shoulda smacked you instead of Salvatore. Almost three months you’ve had to find the little Jap killed Frankie, and you got nothin’.”

  “We’re not the only ones can’t find her. All the families are lookin’ for her. You got a contract, ten large on her. What’s anybody come up with?

  Same as us. Nothin'.”

  “There’s a difference, Eddie.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You’re sittin’ out here fat, dumb and happy. You don’t gotta hear the remarks when the Commission meets. How the Chicago Outfit let a tiny little woman kill Frankie “The Whale” and walk away.

  I’m tellin’ ya, Eddie, we’re losin’ respect. Losin’ respect is dangerous in our business.”

  “I’m sorry, Thomaso. Believe me, we’re doin' the best we can.”

  “Yeah? Not what I hear.”

  Eddie was very still.

  “Who’d you hear it from?”

  Thomaso gave Eddie a long, appraising look.

  “You know, Eddie, there’s always people lookin’ to get ahead in the organization. And sometimes they got guts go over your head, come right to me. Even if they know you’ll hear about it.”

  “Madone! Fiore Abbatini, that figilio di puttana! I’ll have his ass for this.”

  “No, you won’t. Was right, come to me. Tell you the truth, Eddie, he didn’t complain about you. Not in so many words. Complained one a your top guys.”

  “He bitched out Clemente?”

  Thomaso laughed. It was not a pleasant sound. “Not even Fiore’s that crazy.

  No. Tells me was times Guido didn’t push hard enough. Let some chances get away.”

  “Get away how?”

  “Fiore says Guido’s losin’ it. No fire in the belly no more. Hell, Fiore says he let some old man run him off with a shotgun. Didn’t go back, square it.”

  “Thomaso, Fiore’s a hot head. His dumb moves already brought the law into my office. The kind of law I can’t buy and can’t control.”

  “Yeah. Heard you was fronted by some hick deputy from California.”

  “Alicia!”

  “Hey, just lookin’ for the best chance like everyone else.”

  “I’ll give her a chance! She’ll be humpin’ drinks to quarter slot players by tomorrow.”

  “No, she won’t. Just like Fiore, want her right where she is. I return favors with favors.”

  “You here to run the show?”

  “Not the casino or the hotel. None a that stuff. That’s still you and Meyer.

  Here to make sure we find that girl.”

  “But why here? Why not run it from Chicago?”

  Thomaso was silent for a moment.

  “Tell you why. You always was a good thinker, Eddie. Always. Al went down; you landed on your feet. Now you got this gig. Good food, good broads, big house, new cars, all the money you need. And you’re good at this thing. We got no complaints, your operation. Keep the money rollin’ in.

  But you’re not hard enough, Eddie.”

  “So, you want tough like Fiore?”

  “Nah. Fiore couldn’t think his way outta a closet. For instance, thinks your idea is nuts.”

  “What idea is that?”

  “About the girl goin' to ground out there somewhere.” Thomaso waved his hand toward the desert.

  “But I think you’re onta somethin’. I think she’s out there, laughin’ her ass off. Waitin’ for us to forget her. But Tommy Bones don’t forget. Not ever. And no one laughs at Tommy Bones, stays above ground.

  So, Salvatore and me, we’re gonna be your guests for a while. I need a little vacation anyway. Take in some shows, squeeze some a them showgirls, play some golf. Cause I got a feelin’ Eddie. Got a feelin’ somethin’s gonna break soon. And I trust my gut. When it breaks, I’m gonna send the guys with an edge after it. Fiore Abbatini and Salvatore Lupo.”

  His voice dropped to a whisper again.

  “There won’t be no more soft shoe. That little whore is goin’ down.”

  Thomaso walked out of the room.

  Eddie didn’t like having Thomaso Cortese and Salvatore Lupo in his town. Eddie loved Las Vegas, and he was afraid they would ruin it for him. Eddie thought he was the luckiest man in the world to be the Casino Manager at the Serengeti and even own a small percentage of the operation. There was nothing like the feeling he got walking across the floor of his casino. The noise, the smoke, the excited faces of the gamblers, the flashing lights and clanging of the slot machines.

  He loved watching the parade of fools. Loved to watch them come in, beaming in anticipation, eyes glistening with excitement. Hurrying to the tables. Hurrying to jam money into his slot machines. Hurrying to buy more chips from the very dealer at the blackjack table who had just taken everything they had in front of them.

  Part of it was the light. The light inside his casino was deceptive.

  When people came in off the street, it seemed dim inside. It took their eyes a moment to adjust, and then it seemed normal. The light was that way for a reason. It was designed to lull gamblers into an otherworldly, somnambulant state. A twilight state, somewhere between wakefulness and dozing. A state where chips were not hard-earned money but heavy, reassuring objects that felt good in the hand. Objects to be tossed with abandon in exciting games. Objects you had to have. If you lost them, you bought more. Bought more until you’d spent every nickel and found yourself outside again, dazed, unbelieving. Devastated. Trying to think of a way to get more money and buy more chips.

  The light had no obvious source. It was soft, but it came from every angle. There were no shadows in Eddie’s casino. No place to hide any kind of deceptive act. And the light was forgiving. Made the gamblers and the friendly dealers and the cocktail waitresses look good. The cocktail waitresses who brought the free drinks to help you loosen up and forget how much you were losing.

  Eddie controlled the light and everything else about the world inside his casino. The gamblers existed in an air conditioned bubble, the smoke-filled air circulating and re-circulating. No way to know if it was hot or cold outside. No way to know whether it was day or night. No way to know what time it was because there were no clocks.

  And the sound was different. The casino was noisy, but the loud sounds were baffled. The carpeting and the ceilings caught the sounds and kept them from bouncing back. Even playing the slot machines with their incessant beeping and ringing and coins rattling in the trays, it was possible to carry on a conversation in a normal voice with the person next to you. No need to raise your voice.

  And beneath th
e noise of the slots, the croupiers calling for bets, the shouts from the crap tables, the sounds of roulette wheels spinning and cards being shuffled and dealt, was the sound Eddie loved most of all. It was the sound of desperation. A constant, sub rosa background murmur. Voices heard but never quite understood. An endless, repetitious mumble that never stopped. The sound that meant The House was winning.

  All the risks he had taken in the Capone organization back in the old days in Chicago. Bringing in illegal booze. Selling it to the speakeasies. The times he had almost been arrested. The times he had almost been killed by rival gangs. All that was behind him now. A Nevada gambling license was a license to steal! Eddie was amazed it was legal.

  Sometimes, he would have his driver take him up and down the strip at midnight or one or two in the morning. The streets jammed with cars, the sidewalks packed with pedestrians. You could live for years in Las Vegas and never once see the night sky because of the glare from the millions of lights. All those people under those bright lights. People who should have been at home in bed in West Covina or Peoria or Phoenix. All those people in an exquisite hurry to lose their money and go home and tell everybody they had won a few bucks. Or broke even. Or made enough to pay for their trip. Or any other lie to keep from admitting to themselves they were suckers.

  Chapter 12

  Smoke Tree, California

  And the mountains

  Of the Eastern Mojave Desert

  June 25, 1961

  Aeden Snow

  When I arrived at the Box S at sunrise the following Sunday morning, there were hundreds and hundreds of adobe bricks lying flat on the hardpan between the barn and the house. Joe Medrano was already at work on the east side of the house, marking out an area with metal stakes and white twine. I pulled on my work gloves as I got out of the car.

  He was finishing the task as I walked up.

  “Ade.”

  “Mr. Medrano.”

  “Joe’s easier.”

  “Yessir. Joe, then.”

  He gestured toward the bricks scattered all over the ground.

  “Solid. Turn on edge.”

  We went to work. Because the bricks were ten inches thick, they stayed upright when we turned them.

  When we had them all standing, Joe said, “Cure in a week, this sun.

  Foundation now.”

  We walked to the area Joe had marked. There were two picks and two spades leaning against the house.

  “String’s the inside edge. Need a trench foot and a half deep, foot wide.”

  Joe started on one side. I started on the other.

  If you’ve never attacked desert hardpan with a pick and shovel, you’ve been spared a lot of frustration. The whole experience gave me an appreciation for prospectors and hard-rock miners. It was very slow going, and we often had to resort to a pry bar to get stubborn rocks out of the way.

  Halfway between the house and the southeast corner of the planned addition, I came across a huge rock. I was getting nowhere with the pry bar, so Joe came over to help. Even the two of us together could not budge it. Fortunately, I only had another six inches to go to reach the depth Joe wanted for the trench, so I used a chisel and a hand-held sledge to create a foot-wide, three-foot-long groove in the massive rock. Part of the foundation was going to be very solidly anchored!

  We were almost finished with the trenching when Kiko came out and invited us in for a lunch of cold tamales and fiery-hot salsa washed down with iced tea. We were back at work when John Stonebridge drove up the driveway and walked over.

  “Joe. Ade.”

  We both nodded.

  John walked inside the trenched area and stood staring toward where the north wall of the addition would be. He turned to Joe.

  “Just realized. It would be nice if Kiko had a fireplace.”

  Joe nodded.

  “Be good.”

  “If I order a factory-built fireplace, could you frame it into the north wall?”

  “Other two are stone. Could build you one from stone.”

  “That would be great.”

  “Be hotter than the ones you have.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Make drafts?”

  “Yes. The fires are pretty, but when it’s really cold, you have to stand right next to them to get warm and then only one side at a time.”

  “Make a better one.”

  “How?”

  Joe picked up a stick. He got down on one knee to draw in the dirt. John got down beside him.

  Kiko came outside. She walked over to where Joe was kneeling and casually sat down on the other side of him with her feet flat on the ground and her arms on her knees. I had never seen anyone sit like that before, but I was sure there was no way I could ever get in such a position.

  Joe sketched out a U-shaped design. He talked as he drew.

  “Two of these. One each side. Threaded, three-inch pipe. Elbows for turns, elbows on top. Mesh screen spot welded on the outside elbow. Keep things out. Other elbow sticks up inside. Open end points to the fire.

  Start a fire. Heat pulls cold air in from outside. Fire gets hotter. More air comes in. Fire gets even hotter. No air pulled across the floor. No drafts.”

  “Very clever. Never heard of it before.”

  “Iroquois hunting lodges.’

  “You’ve visited the Iroquois?”

  Joe nodded.

  “Depression. Rode the rails. Visited lots of reservations. Kept me from starving sometimes. Indians never turn you away.”

  “Always good when people help each other.”

  Joe nodded.

  “Need anything but the pipe?”

  “Steel plate. Torch and a welder in the barn. Build a flue.”

  John smiled.

  “Joe, is there anything you can’t build?”

  Joe thought for a moment.

  “Cars.”

  John laughed.

  “Okay. Give Ade the measurements.”

  John turned his head and looked up at me.

  “Ade, I’m being presumptuous by assuming you’re coming up next Sunday.”

  “I’ll be here.”

  “Okay, bring what Joe tells you. I’ll give you a signed check. Fill in the amount and bring me an invoice.

  Anything else, Joe?”

  “Rocks. Lots of rocks. Volcanic rock is best.”

  “Ade, can you haul some rocks?”

  “Okay.”

  “Kiko, maybe you could help?”

  “Sounds like fun.”

  I wondered if John realized how happy he had just made me.

  “Joe, I’m going to have to pay you more to add this to the room.”

  Joe nodded.

  “Put a price together.

  And I’m adding you to the payroll, Ade. All your days off have turned into work days.”

  “I’m learning a lot from Joe. That’s payment enough.”

  “I know you’re learning, but I won’t feel right if I don’t pay you. We’ll settle on an amount.”

  John turned and walked toward the jeep.

  Kiko rose to her feet in one smooth movement and went with him. She didn’t push off with her hands. Just uncoiled and was on her feet.

  Joe caught me staring at her and almost smiled.

  “Trenches for pipes now.”

  We dug the new trenches and then blocked them with wood to keep the cement from filling them in. We mixed concrete and created the foundation for the room. We put inverted bolts in the wet cement so we could anchor the sill plate for the framing. We weren’t finished until after sundown.

  I stayed over for dinner again. John barbecued steaks and cooked foil-wrapped, sweet corn in the coals. When we went out to the veranda for coffee, the gibbous moon was dipping toward the western horizon.

  Joe drank his coffee quickly and took his cup into the house. When he came back out he said, “Many thanks,” and walked off down the driveway. It was not long before he disappeared from sight.

  Even though I ha
d seen him walk away, I hadn’t heard him.

  “Does Joe usually sit and talk with you after dinner?”

  “Joe mostly listens. It’s pretty rare to get more than a word or two out of him. Only time I heard him say much was when Kiko asked him a question related to the war.”

  “What did you ask him?”

  “I was curious about something. I’ve had some unfriendly reactions from men I assume were veterans of the war in the Pacific. And I know Joe is a veteran.”

  “Unfriendly how?”

  “I’ll give you an example.

  When I was a freshman at Cal Berkeley, I was dating an upperclassman. He took me to the Stanford game. Steve told me we were going to meet his parents there.

  We were already in our seats when they showed up. His dad took one look at me and turned around and walked back up the steps and out of the stadium. Didn’t say a word. His wife tried to make excuses for him, but I had seen that look before. I knew what it meant. Then she left too.”

  “What did your date say?”

  “Said his dad was in the Pacific during the war. Hated Japanese people. He didn’t know Steve was dating me. Steve thought if his dad met me and got to know me, he’d be okay with it.

  The week after the game, Steve and his dad got in a big argument. His dad said Steve had to stop seeing me. We went out a few more times, and I guess his dad heard about it somehow. When the next semester started, Steve didn’t come back to Cal. His frat brothers told me he’d transferred to a college on the east coast because his father wouldn’t pay Steve’s tuition if he came back to Cal.

  I never heard from him again.”

  Except for the sound of the evening breeze, we sat in silence for a while.

  “What did you ask Joe?”

  “I asked him why he didn’t seem to have those kinds of feelings, especially after the way he looked at me the first day we met.

  He said, ‘well, missy,’ that’s what he calls me now, ‘missy,’ ‘well, missy, your cousins joined up’.”

  “Yes,’ I told him, ‘but I think there’s more.’ He gave me one of those Joe almost-smiles. Then he said, ‘Chemehuevi believe the woman who created us brought us across the ocean and dropped us in the desert. Chemehuevi believe she came from somewhere near where your ancestors lived