Heading south out of Terre Haute, he cruises past cornfields, chicken coops, Shakamak State Park. Past a rifle range, stone quarry, battered blue pickup straight out of a demolition derby riding the smooth wake of an unblemished Cadillac Seville.
Hoosiers on the loose on a damp Sunday morning. Bound for church. Or a tractor pull.
Ground zero. The fabled heartland’s straight-as-a-staff backbone on full display. Bible thumpers, feed stores, flags at half-mast. Nixon’s silent majority? Apparently this is where they live, and Chance the contrarian figures that maybe he should too. Get back to the land. Wake up in the morning and milk a cow. Catch a catfish. Shuck an ear of corn.
Is it too late for him to change the outcome that now seems inevitable? Is there still time for his karma to kick in? An upbeat conclusion seems highly unlikely, requiring the kind of improbable fictional twist even a writer as imaginative as Dieter would surely shy away from. Yet it’s not that difficult for Chance to imagine Faye in a farmhouse here in the heartland after all of this is over doing . . . what? Churning butter? Baking a rhubarb pie? Glancing out the window as her beloved stacks a cord of wood or fine-tunes the carburetor of what their jovial Swedish neighbors affectionately refer to as his Yon Deere?
A young man with a perplexed expression is standing next to a pickup parked on the shoulder of the road. One of the truck’s back wheels is jacked up a foot off the ground but the guy’s just standing there with a tire iron in his hand. Did he forget his spare? Chug one too many Bloody Marys for breakfast today? Chance slows, frowning: c’mon, dude, you’re a Hoosier, you’re supposed to carry a spare. He considers stopping but what would be the point? Visualizing the hayseed’s aw shucks gratitude, he stomps down on the accelerator, whipping by.
His own spare is fully pressurized and locked in place. He knows this because he double checked at the Drury Inn this morning when he secured his cleaned and oiled handgun, a Walther .380, behind a false panel in the Monte Carlo’s roomy trunk. You’re only as good as your tools, his father used to say. But he doesn’t want to think about that now. He’d rather shift his Shaolin focus into idle, rather concentrate not on the daunting task ahead but on the image that keeps streaming through his mind: Faye, like his mother, pinning his shirts to a clothesline on the edge of a cornfield just south of the town she once again calls home.
Pulling into the parking lot of a roadside emporium featuring, among other questionable items, log rolls (whatever those are), he flips open the road atlas, props it on the dash, and traces his current route south to I-64 then due east to Louisville. Then south again. Or he could cut over sooner than that on state road 150, which would take him through Loogootee (Christ, what kind of cornpone name is that?), French Lick (hey, isn’t that where Larry Bird’s from?), and Paoli. He opts for the interstate. The back roads through the heartland have been a pleasant diversion but it’s time to move on.
As he follows the circular ramp onto I-64, the rain blows over, the clouds disappear, and wet fields on either side of the highway shine like diamonds in the sudden morning sun. Shifting into cruise control, he slips on his sunglasses, recalling the day he boarded the ferry to Isla Mujeres to meet with Pablo Mestival. Fittingly, the weather on that particular morning could not have been less inviting. A steady downpour, ominous thunder, not a sunbreak in sight.
Standing next to a black Lincoln at the landing, Señor squinted through his horned-rims, waiting for the ferry to shudder to a stop. Then he signaled Chance, who hurried across the parking lot, splashing through puddles of rain.
Before he flung open the Lincoln’s shiny back door, Señor stared down in disdain at the gringo’s muddy boots. In response, Chance smiled sarcastically and said buenos días, it’s a pleasure to see you again too. Then he slid into the Lincoln and waited, like an honored guest, for his handler to shut the door. Mano a mano, he thought. Let the macho dance begin.
The windshield wipers flailed back and forth and the tires sang on the wet pavement as they sped down the coastal road past stretches of rainy beach, the local aeropuerto, a pair of tin shacks painted swimming-pool blue. No one was out. No bicyclists on the road. No divers clinging to the ladder of a dive boat. No dive boats.
The safe house on Isla Mujeres was pale, boxy, and charmless. Off-white walls. Open ceilings soaring to nowhere. Narrow windows allowing in too little light.
A woman in her thirties, a no-nonsense business type—readers on the bridge of her nose, a strict blouse and skirt ensemble, sensible shoes—ushered him out to a back deck facing a sandy yard, a sweep of flooded beach, and the turbulent channel he had just crossed on the ferry. The woman indicated one of two patio chairs separated by a small wooden table underneath an eave of plexiglass panels that kept that section of the deck dry. She asked him if he would care for a refreshment and he responded cerveza, por favor. Brisk and efficient, she returned in less than a minute carrying a pint glass topped with a finger of foam.
An hour south of Louisville, he glances idly out the window and sees a chestnut mare trot across a dusty paddock, a young boy in the shadow of a sturdy Dutch barn twirl a lasso, the delicate whips of a willow sweep the surface of a shallow pond. Horse country. Low rolling hills and lush bluegrass pastures. Elegant ranch houses set back off the highway in the cool shade of maples and elms.
There’s something intriguing, and slightly unreal, about such an orderly landscape. Symmetrical hedges, half-moon gravel driveways, freshly painted homes. He pictures Burl Ives sipping a mint julep out on his verandah while the horse trainer and a housemaid scurry out to the stable to get down to business in one of the stalls.
With an ingratiating smile Pablo Mestival waltzed out to the back deck and offered his guest his hand. Chance, my old friend, welcome.
A strong, confident grip, fearless gaze, Zen-like bearing. Fit, fifty, with a military buzz haircut and a black polo shirt open at the collar, the drug kingpin projected casual authority and an aura of myth. Before sitting down, he asked Chance if he would like another cerveza, and when Chance said why not, he surprised his guest by going back inside and pouring it himself.
Chance reminded himself to drink moderately. He needed to keep a clear head and should have probably stopped at one, but the beer helped steady his nerves. He took a modest sip and set the glass down. Then he leaned forward and lowered his voice respectfully.
I am sorry, he said, to hear about your troubles. With the girl.
Mestival shrugged, wearily. A sad business, my friend. A sad affair.
Naturally his first glimpse of Nashville’s skyline reminds him of Dylan. And naturally this makes him blue. Nashville Skyline was one of the handful of albums Angelina brought with her to Mexico, and on those rare occasions when Chance was invited to her and Jen’s house at the edge of the village it wasn’t unusual to hear Lay Lady Lay playing in the background. He recalls the photo on the back cover, the same grey buildings he’s looking at now.
Irritated, he punches buttons on the radio, one country crooner after another, until he fastens onto Tom T. Hall. That’s what I’m talkin’ about, he mumbles: old dogs and children and watermelon wine. Roots music. Americana. Songs that passed the test of time. Even the hippies on the Powder River, whose musical tastes ran toward psychedelia, raved about this stuff. Cash and Haggard, Chet Atkins, Doc Watson, Patsy Cline.
When Mestival announced his proposal, Chance the samurai refused to buckle. No worries, his inner voice cautioned. No sweat.
Relaxed now that his cards were on the table, the kingpin gazed across the rainy channel at the lavish hotels of Cancun rising, like pale monsters, out of the gouged land. Of course this little problem of yours, he announced breezily. . . Well, let’s just say when you come back from your visit up north that little problem will no longer exist.
Gracias, Señor.
De nada, Mestival replied. One hand, how does it go, washes the other?
Chance smiled, weakly, his little problem weighing on his mind. How, he wondered not for the first time, had his initial, seemingly harmless flirtation with gambling spun so quickly out of control? It had started out as nothing more than a diversion, a Saturday night lark. Casual bets on a jai alai match in Tijuana. A small wager on the Super Bowl. Occasional cock fights. Yet only a blind man would fail to see how those innocuous early forays led to his eventual downfall at a poker table in the back room of a cantina in Oaxaca. Blackjack. Texas Hold’em. Five-card stud. How many times could you double down in a single fucking night? Eventually, on a busted flush, he lost it all. And more.
Bewildered by the enormity of what he had just done (or more precisely, undone) he had stumbled back to his hotel and drifted into fitful sleep, only to wake a few hours later with an overwhelming sense of dread. He was deep in Mestival’s pocket now, the last person on the planet you wanted to owe.
On the back deck the kingpin turned the full glare of his smile on his guest. But Chance wasn’t fooled by that glitter of fangs.
Elimination, sí?
Sick at heart, Chance replied, sí.
After wolfing down a mediocre plate of sweet and sour chicken at an Asian restaurant just off the highway, he follows the ramp back onto I-75. But the food does not sit well. He feels weak and nauseated and a little afraid. What if the chicken he just ate was undercooked and he has food poisoning? Or worse, salmonella. He winces, his stomach muscles a tangle of cramps, wondering why in the world he had thought a Chinese restaurant in Cordele, Georgia was a good idea.
Up ahead he spots a sign for a cluster of motels and flips on his blinker. Salmonella? Really? More likely the root of his indigestion is the interminable drive and the stress of the assignment. Or maybe in the back of his mind he’s more worried about Faye Lindstrom than he cares to admit. What if she didn’t go to Crooked River after all? What if she has a friend in Tallahassee she plans to visit instead?
There were too many unknowns, too many variables. What if Dieter isn’t even in Florida? Didn’t the writer tell him on the phone a few months ago that he spent part of the year up north? He snaps a right at the bottom of the off ramp and gasps. Cold chills. More cramps. A jolt of fear. If he loses her, he’s not sure he can face Pablo Mestival again. Because the Capo would never forgive him, he’s certain of that. He would give him an ultimatum, a matter of weeks to pay off his debt or face the dire consequences. As he clings to the steering wheel with sweaty hands, another wave of cramps doubles him over. No, if he fails, he won’t be able to go back to the Yucatan. But how could he make a living anywhere else? If he puts out feelers, Mestival will likely hear about them and send one of his flunkies to finish him off. He jerks the wheel hard to the left and swerves into the parking lot of the first motel he comes to. The bottom line is simple: he has to quit wasting his time on idle fantasies and face the brutal truth. His fate is sealed. If Faye Lindstrom isn’t in Crooked River, he’s fucked. And if she is, he’ll have no choice but to complete his stomach-churning task.
Elimination, sí?
Sick at heart, Chance replied, sí.