The house was just where Vernon said it would be, out on the edge of preposterous Palmdale, where the gridded empty streets exhaust themselves into the desert. A small, orange-painted house no bigger than a railroad watchman’s, backed by dark mesquite-pooled foothills and staggered on all sides with crooked, bladed Joshua trees. There were two cars outside: a grimed Land Rover and a primer-spotted El Dorado. The windows of the house were blank black squares, the color of the moonless sky above but without its stars. I shut the car off at the side of the road a few hundred yards away. For a moment I just sat, breathing, waiting, the windows rolled down. Sweat poured down my face and I wiped it away with the cuffs of my shirt. The dry chirp of the desert insects filled the air. I stepped out into the thick air and walked a little off the road, then paced slowly toward the house, scanning its dark windows for a feeling, for a suggestion of life. There was none. Something small rattled the mesquite in its haste to get away from me.
I was close now, just behind the cars, watching the dim gray rectangle of the front door. Nothing moved. I could hear, far off, the steady sighing of cars crisscrossing the town. The house was far removed from the bustle, far enough that whatever had gone on here, days before, may still have gone unnoticed. I crept along the car and, in a crouch that made my ribs cry out, worked my way to the porch, my gun out and ready.
The door was slightly ajar, and from that small crack, the smell hit me.
I kicked the door. It opened a foot and thumped listlessly against something. A lazy sound of buzzing came from inside.
Unbuttoning my shirt, I pulled my undershirt over my mouth and nose. I switched on my penlight and slid inside.
There were five of them.
The first lay by the door, face-up — although the face was as black as the back of his head, massed with sleepily shifting flies. His bloated white hands looked like beached starfish.
There were two more on the couch, lying with their heads back. Their skin writhed under the beam of my penlight. Their blood added a second pattern to the faded floral print of the wallpaper behind them.
The fourth lay in the entrance to the kitchen. He’d caught it in the back and crawled — what was left of him had crawled — and spilled himself all over the floor. The rats liked him the best, and they chattered at me, one of them standing on the back of his head and squealing angrily before making off for safety.
The last one had dragged himself into the bathroom, wrapped his hands around his knees, and cowered in the corner. There were bullet holes in the bathroom door. He’d gotten it in the stomach and the throat. The linoleum was a burnt-sienna pool. His revolver, all of its chambers still full, was still clutched in his hand.
The bedroom, off to one side, was empty except for a mattress on the floor and piles of filthy clothes. There was a dirty rig and a glass pipe that had been shattered by someone’s foot. The gunmen had strewn everything around, looking for something — probably the money. The rest of the house was the same. They hadn’t found it. The destruction of their search was total, and showed signs of frustrated rage.
The rear door was open, hanging broken off of one hinge.
I could not see the woodpile from the back of the house. The ground rose steeply, pitted in places by excavations around the size that a dog might make, and dotted with rusting metal — coils of salvaged barbed wire, the split, handleless head of a shovel, various intricate cast-away auto parts, even the corroded body of a ’30s farm truck, its windshield, tires and interior long since gone. Small startled shapes crested the hill at the sight of me and were gone. Jackrabbits. I followed their path through the sparse underbrush.
The woodpile was a stack of fence-slats and posts pricked with rusted nails.
The jackrabbits watched me, glow-eyed and sullen, from the safety of the next hill as I found the place where the wood had been shifted and pushed it aside. Beneath was the obvious rough rectangle hacked into the earth. I was able to kick most of the dirt away with my shoe, then scraped the rest out of the hole with one of the slats. It whined against the leather of the briefcase. I bent down, shoveling away dirt from the edges of the thing, eagerly now, aware of my own labored breathing.
I pulled the suitcase from its shallow grave. Setting it on top of the woodpile, I snapped its clasps and lifted the lid.
It was all there — $100,000 in $500 bundles of twenties, those bundles banded together in stacks of four. There were fifty of the $2,000 stacks. They were all old bills. In itself, the money held as much meaning to me as the dust I had brushed off of the suitcase. But what I really saw in those bills was Gracie’s life. I closed the case and started back toward the house. Something near my foot hissed at me and made its winding escape through the dry underbrush.
From the top of the hill that hid the woodpile, I had a clear view of the house and the road. The lights of an approaching car cut off a fraction of a second too late. I watched its dark shape slowing, indigo, its engine a low purr as it pulled off to the side of the road, just behind my car. From my vantage point I could see the driver’s side door open and a black-clothed, anonymous figure get out, cutting away from the road and toward the foothills just as I had before, then arcing back toward the house. The figure moved quickly, its dark clothes blending with the blotted landscape.
I crept the rest of the way back to the house, careful now of every step and every sound that I made. The Browning was back in my hand. I slid past the dangling back door. The death-filled air of the house pushed its way into my pores, my nose, and my eyes.
I made my way through the dark house, holding my breath. I slid the suitcase underneath the couch, between the legs of its occupants.
The figure outside, by my estimation, was probably halfway to the house by now. In a hard crouch, I made my way out the open door. Whoever it was would be watching the house, of course. I was relying on the high frame of the Land Rover to help cover my exit. I crossed the gap between the house and the car and hid myself behind the driver’s side wheel. My palms were sweating so much I feared losing my grip on the gun.
A faint rustle in the underbrush above the house announced the figure’s approach to me. It showed itself, a black-masked shape creeping around the house’s corner, a small nickel-plated automatic that seemed to collect and broadcast light clutched in one gloved hand. It moved carefully, ducking under the window and creeping along the front of the house, nearing the front door. Whoever it was was skilled and quiet, although the gun was loud and obvious. The figure positioned itself near the porch, its back to me, not more than six feet away.
The mask half-turned at the sound of my charge. There was time for a sharp intake of breath before I smacked its head against the wall of the house, driving it back with all my weight. The head made a hollow sound against the plastered drywall. The legs kicked out and the figure slumped to the ground.
I could have guessed who it was by the silly nickel-plated automatic. I had seen it before.
I yanked the mask off.
It was the kid. His eyes were closed and his breathing was even. Two pin-streams of blood trailed from his nose and over his lips.
I uncurled his hand and removed the gun. I put the safety on and stuck it in my pocket. I patted the kid down. He had a Saturday night special, more likely to blow his hand off than put its .22 bullet in anyone, tucked in a cheap fake-leather calf holster. I emptied its clip, cleared the bullet from its chamber, and let him keep it.
Pushing him over on his side, I took his wallet from his back pocket. It had a few hundred in twenties and tens, some credit and bank cards, and two driver’s licenses. One — a fake — identified him as David Dupree, whose name was also on half of the cards. The other one, state-issued, named him as Walter Lee Porter. Walter was too formal. With a gun in his hand, he might be a Walter. Without his gun, I decided that Wally would suit him better.
I went inside and retrieved the suitcase. Then, leaning against the hood of the Land Rover, I waited.
It was ten minutes before he came around.
He had no idea where he was. He coughed and blinked and tried to stand up too quickly and fell back. He found the blood running from his nose and went white, wiping it away fearfully on his shirt.
Finally he looked up and saw me holding the gun on him. It all came back to him.
“Hi Wally,” I said. “How’s tricks?”
He didn’t have anything to say.
“Stand up real slow and we’ll march to the car. Okay?”
He could feel that he still had his little gun on his leg. He showed me his teeth. “All right. But take it easy. It isn’t what it looks like. I just wanted to be sure . . . ”
“Well, now you’re sure.”
He stood up slow and I walked him back to my car. I tossed him the keys after opening my door.
“Get in. We can talk on the way.” I tossed the briefcase in the back, and we got in. He started the engine and pulled away, watching the road and watching for any opportunity. I kept the gun leveled at his chest. He didn’t have to be told where we were going. He drove out along the quiet desert road away from Palmdale. “So this is the way I figure it, Wally. You tell me where I have it wrong. Vernon Green works for you, delivering methamphetamine. He has a regular little route. Sundays out here to Palmdale, where he delivers to the bunch of ex-drug dealers in the house back there. Tuesdays he goes out to San Bernardino and does business with Sailor and his friend in the suit at The Hiphugger. Only this week was different. This week you leak it to Sailor that the deal in Palmdale is bigger, and you want all of it — the hundred thousand they were going to give you, and your drugs back. So you send little Vernon out here to make the delivery. Only this time he’s going to get it with the rest of them, and you and Sailor and The Man take the drugs for yourself. The thing is, Vernon gets out the back with the money while Sailor and The Man are tied up trying to — ”
“Can I smoke?” Sweat was pouring from his forehead, and he had the shakes. What he was hearing was getting him down.
“Sure.”
He reached gingerly into his pocket and brought out a pack of cigarettes. He shook one out and stuck it between his teeth, and lit it with a cheap white Bic. It was his last one.
“So while they’re finishing the boys in the house off, Vernon skips out with the money. He’s always been good at that — skipping out on things, I mean. But he doesn’t know who the shooters are. So after burying the money, he calls Sailor and The Man up. He has a bullet in him, and he needs help. He can’t go to the hospital, he’s a wanted man, and they have to report gunshot wounds. But he knows that The Man has connections. He knows he can count on them to get him out of a jam. And he’s in a worse jam than you thought — you see, just before he went on this little run for you he offed his girlfriend and Gary Hill. He’s scared — things are closing in on him. He was being blackmailed for murder, and he was ready to make a break. Maybe after the deal went wrong he was even thinking of keeping that money for himself — a little stake to get him running again. So The Man comes and picks him up. He takes him out to the Wigwam and sets him up in a room and says everything is going to be all right. Only nothing is going to be all right. There’s a hundred thousand dollars missing and everyone’s scrambling to find it. And Vernon knows where it is. They take the bullet out of him, sure. Then they tie him to a chair and start working on him. Meanwhile, you’re as far away as you can be. You’re out in the Mojave. You think Vernon might have run home with the money, and instead you find a dead girl, and a dead man out at Thousand Palms. You realize Vernon’s screwing up. You realize that everything is fucked up, and maybe you’re going to lose the money and everything else, once the cops start following the corpses. That’s when you run into me, out looking for Vernon too. You know his history, you know who I am. You know how I feel about him. So you send me out to look for him. Only here’s the catch: around this time, you already know where he is. Somebody tipped you off. And it wasn’t Sailor or the Man. That pisses you off.”
He swiped a sleeve across his forehead, cleaning the sweat off. More poured out to replace it. I had done the same, an hour ago. It was better watching someone else do it. He dragged on the cigarette. It caught in his throat, and he coughed.
“You all right?”
“F–fine.”
“So you grab Gracie, to make sure I’ll go through with what you want. You know that Sailor and The Man have Vernon at the Wigwam, and you want them dead. Not just Vernon — all of them. No more worrying about who’s walking behind you. You figure there’s a chance that I can pull it off. And if I can’t, you’re no worse off than you were before. They can’t connect me to you, I’m just after Vernon. I’m just a PI with a grudge. So you take a chance on me. You can keep tabs on me easy — you’re already in San Bernardino waiting before I even get there. Close by, but not too close. Just hovering. And I pull it off, just the way you hoped I would. The Man gets it, Sailor gets it, Vernon gets it. I find out where the money is, and I go after it. And you’re right there behind me, hovering. Waiting. Because it’s no good, having me around, and Gracie. Sure, you could turn her over to me, but it would always nag you. It would be better if you could get rid of the both of us. And skip — take a long vacation until it all cools down. Because the whole thing has gotten out of control, now — everyone’s burning to keep the money and the drugs, and everyone is trying to keep it for himself. Too many people involved. It’s a mess, and you can only see one way out of it. You kill me, you close the whole book. No more Sailor, no more Man, no more Vernon, who was too much of a liability for you to keep around anyway, and no more me. Just a hundred thousand dollars for you and your partner to split.”
He nodded.“That’s it. I guess you have it pretty much figured. That’s the whole mess.” He glanced at the gun and my face, and it looked like he couldn’t decide which was worse.
“So I’ll tell you what, Wally. You take me to Gracie, and you can keep your fucking money. I never wanted it. And if you get away, fine.”
He nodded, but he didn’t trust me. It was the truth, but for him it couldn’t be that way. So I knew how it was going to play out.