Chapter Twenty-two

Friday, October 20, 1:10 p.m.

Eastern Oregon was dry and nearly flat, with scattered clumps of low vegetation instead of forests of fir, pine, and spruce. When Don had taken his first courier job, at the age of nineteen, it had also been the first time he had been east of the Cascade Mountains. In the beginning, all that empty space, all that solitude, had bugged him. Miles of nothing, broken up only occasionally by clusters of manufactured homes with a gas station or two, maybe a general store, and a restaurant that nearly always advertised “home-made pies.” Sometimes you couldn’t even pick up a radio station. Taking Barry along with him had not only offered Don a measure of safety, but also someone to talk to.

Don looked over at Barry now. He had cranked up the cheap stereo on the tan Ford Tempo (a car they had immediately christened “The Lumper”) and was now tapping both hands on top of the steering wheel, singing along with Foreigner’s “Double Vision.” Maybe that was why Don still spent time with Barry, because when he was with him, Don could pretend he was still fifteen. He could go back to some less complicated time when life had seemed full of possibilities instead of a careful tightrope walk that never ended.

Nine days. Nine days to produce the money. Don had already done as much as he could without actually having the money in his possession. The paper trail was all ready - but it was useless without the cash to back it up.

While Barry drove, Don spent an hour with a calculator, a Mont Blanc pen and a notepad, considering if there was some way he could scare up enough to replace the missing money with his own. Maybe if he sold the house for half its value? Could he find someone who would hand over the money – in cash - in nine days? On paper, his businesses were probably each worth as much as what was missing – but it might take him months to find an interested buyer. And anyone who went over his books with a fine-tooth comb might begin to realize that there was no way Don was making the amount of money his balance sheets showed.

Sure, Don had lots of other stuff - cars, stereos, an in-home theater system, leather furniture, designer clothes, custom golf clubs - but nothing that could be easily turned into cash money. Certainly not what it was worth. And he couldn’t exactly hold a garage sale.

In the end, it was clear there was no way he could get his hands on that much money, that fast. Which left just one alternative, the original one. Find out who had taken his money - and take it back from them.

But who did have his money? He had already ruled out Jamie’s parents. They had given birth to their son, but knew nothing about him. He had called them yesterday in Seattle, after the Oregonian said they had identified the body as that of their missing son, Jamie. Jamie’s mother was a waitress in a coffee shop, his father a janitor who worked nights. They had no other children.

Giving a made-up name, Don told them that he was seeking his own daughter, and that she matched the description of the girl thought to have been with Jamie during the accident. They were shattered, bewildered - and clueless. Why had Jamie been caught up in a car accident five hours away from Portland? What had he been doing out in the middle of nowhere? And why had there been a girl in his car? As far as they knew, Jamie wasn’t dating anyone. And they knew nothing about a bag. They had reclaimed only his body and the clothes that had been cut off it.

Don had also put a tap on Carly’s phone, but the expense hadn’t been worth it. If she knew anything about Jamie’s death or where the missing money had gone to, Carly was smart enough not to talk about it. For two days, Don had had Barry get someone to fill in for him at Java Jiant while he followed Carly around. The only places she had gone were to the grocery store and to her job. At My Fair Ladys (the misspelling grated on Don), guys paid one-hundred dollars to watch Carly “model” lingerie while they sat in a chair draped with towels (changed after every customer) and were encouraged to get “comfortable” while she took off her own clothes. The second day, Barry even went in to see exactly what Carly did, terming it ‘research.’ He reported that he thought Carly’s tits were real, but that she was a bit full through the ass. Then he had the balls to ask Don to be reimbursed. It was such a Barry thing to do that Don had just laughed and peeled off two fifties from his wallet.

So if Jamie’s friends and family didn’t know anything about the missing money, that meant that Don had to start out at the scene of the accident and figure out if and where the money had gone after that. More and more, this girl with the nose ring looked like his best chance, his only chance. He had decided to start at the beginning, which he figured was Jamie’s car. Yesterday, Don had called the Clark City police station and asked where the cars from the wreck were being stored. He had been prepared with a story about how he was a relative who just wanted to see where his cousin had died, but the clerk hadn’t questioned him. She just said all the vehicles were at the local tow yard. He had thanked her for the information and then hung up the pay phone that was located nowhere near his home or any of his businesses. He didn’t know whether they routinely logged incoming phone calls, but Don liked to be careful.

#

Now Don gave Barry the last of the directions he had printed off the Internet. Five minutes later, they parked to one side of a sprawling compound. Behind a chain link fence topped with razor wire, hundreds of cars were slowly rusting. Don had Barry stay in the car. It was easier to keep a story straight if just one of them were telling it. He went over and knocked on the door of the shack that stood next to the gate.

The man who opened the door was dressed in black polyester pants and a white polyester short-sleeved shirt, with the word “Dave” embroidered over his left breast pocket. His square face sported white bushy eyebrows that looked like two strips of fake fur. Even though the temperature couldn’t have been above thirty, he wasn’t wearing a coat. “What can I do ya for?”

“I hear you folks are storing the cars that were involved in that big pile-up on 84,”

“Yep, we got ‘em all. You with an insurance company?”

Don had considered and rejected this approach, ultimately deciding he didn’t know enough about the business to lie convincingly. “I’m a family member. We just want to see where - where it happened.” He looked away, as if overcome with emotion. He had dressed down for this occasion, wearing a black Trail Blazers sweatshirt and Levi’s. He wore a ballcap on his head, both to cover his bald head and to shade his face.

Dave didn’t seem interested in his reasons. “Kinda car is it?”

“1989 Honda Accord. Brown.”

“Plate number?”

“Oregon plate SVT 983.”

After consulting a pile of papers blotched with greasy fingerprints, Dave reached down for the ring of keys that was hooked to his belt loop on a retractable lead. He picked one out and used it to open the padlock.

The gate swung open. Stepping over puddles of rusty-colored water, skimmed with ice, Don followed as Dave picked his way among the dozens of disabled vehicles. Some looked like they might be driveable, but the vast majority were crumpled, ruptured or crushed too badly to ever drive again. Others were slowly being parted out, with missing tires or hoods that gaped to reveal absent engines.

Dave finally came to a stop in front of a large section of freshly churned mud that had been marked off with sagging lines of yellow caution tape. The space held about four dozen cars, SUVs, and light pickups and a dozen truck cabs and trailers. Some of the cars appeared relatively undamaged, but the rest bore impact marks at all angles, making it clear each car had been struck numerous times. About a third of the vehicles had been burned down to nothing but the frame. Most of the rest were scorched, with blistered paint and tires melted flat.

Dave waved his hand. “I think the Honda’s in the back there someplace. You want I leave you alone for a few minutes?”

“I would appreciate that,” Don said, his eyes on the ground, as if he were overcome with sadness. He figured the less time Dave spent looking at his face, the better. The problem with having alopecia was that people seemed to remember you better, even if they didn’t consciously know that they were noting your total lack of hair.

After the other man left, Don found himself distracted by the terrible tales the cars told. Doors were ripped off and bumpers torn away. On one mini-van, crumpled to almost half of its original length, he could even read the word Kenilworth, stamped into the metal of the trunk in reverse. What might have once been a station wagon was now so flattened that it wasn’t any more than three feet high. The driver’s side had been sliced into and peeled back by the Jaws of Life, although in this case there couldn’t have been any life left to find.

When Don finally tore his gaze away from the station wagon cut open like a tin can, he spotted Jamie’s Honda. It was badly damaged. The windshield had been reduced to a few broken bits around the edges. A sock money dangled from the rearview mirror. Since there were only a few pieces of glass on the inside, he figured Jamie must have flown through the windshield. Slowly, he circled the car. Blue paint had been tattooed on the driver’s side door, but the door had kept its shape, so the two cars must have only grazed each other as they moved in the same direction.

Don continued his circuit of the car. In addition to the missing windshield, the front of the car was damaged across the full width, heavier on the passenger’s side. The hood had assumed a noticeable V-shape. On the passenger side, another impact had punched a hole in the rear corner. On the back seat of the car, something caught the light. Learning forward, Don shielded his eyes to look inside. It took him a minute to identify it as part of a turn signal assembly from another car. He moved up to check the front seating area. There was nothing on the seat itself, but on the floor he saw a pair of binoculars and an oversized paperback book. He squinted. Gambol’s Field Guide to Birds of the Western States.

From this angle, he saw something else. A black and red bag tucked far under the dash, out of sight. He looked around. The yard seemed empty – no sign of Dave or any customers. Both doors refused to yield, so he had to lean far in, avoiding the broken glass, and grope unseeing for the bag. When he finally snagged it, Don set the bag on the hood. Even before he opened it, he knew whatever it held inside wasn’t what he was looking for. The weight was wrong, for one thing. And the bag itself wasn’t the Nike bag they used. This one said Converse on the side in three-inch wide letters.

The bag held two pairs of silk boxers, a pair of Hilfiger jeans, a balled up pair of socks, and the latest issues of Maxim and Vanity Fair. In addition, there was a whole bunch of personal grooming aids that Don didn’t need any more – a razor, lime-scented shaving lotion, and no less than three different hair products. Don bundled all the stuff back in the bag and put it on the front seat. Presumably they would eventually ship it all back to his parents, and he knew they would be torn between keeping it and throwing it all away. Don knew what it was like to be left with only scraps of a person. After Rachel had gone, he had thrown her things in the trash, white hot with anger and despair that she had left him. But for two years afterward he found pieces of her that he had missed – an earring lost in a corner, panties that had somehow fallen behind the headboard, a tube of red lipstick that had rolled to the back of a drawer. Each time, he had been pierced to the heart, the pain as fresh as ever.

Don drew a deep breath. He was here on a mission. If he spent too much more time here, old Dave might come wandering back out to see what was up.

In the end, the most interesting thing was not what the Honda held, but the fact that it was here at all, and more or less in one battered piece. Except for some faint scorching on the passenger side, there was no sign of fire. The things inside the car had been untouched by the flames. If the money had been left in this car, it certainly hadn’t burned up. It was possible that the money had flown out of the windshield at the same time Jamie did. And if so, then the fire that had only licked the Honda, which was made of metal, might have entirely consumed a bag full of what was essentially paper.

Don walked back through the gate and over to the shack’s half-open door, where Dave was listening to Mozart on the radio, his hands cutting through the air as he conducted an imaginary symphony. He flinched when he realized Don had appeared behind him.

“I just wanted to thank you for letting me look.”

“I hope you found closure.” The word sounded funny coming out of Dave’s old-timey mouth.

Don nodded, although he was leaving with just as many questions as he had brought with him. When he walked back to the Lumper, he found that Barry had tilted the driver’s seat all the way back and was sound asleep. The tangled long blond curls had a lot of gray in them now, and, without his spirit to animate it, Barry’s sleeping face fell into lines of age. It was kind of a shock to see him looking like an old man.