Caravan of Thieves (10 page)

“My mother.”

“How sweet.”

“I think she might not be as dead as she used to be.”

S
he slept. I thought. The road was straight and flat and empty. A lake appeared on the left. With the mountains in the west and the lake just a few yards on the other side of the road, it felt as if the world were slanted and we would slide into the water unless I held tight against the tilt.

The open road, a wallet full of money, and a woman by my side: I smiled at the picture. The ghost of my father, leaning in and repeating his clues, demanded to be included. I was not ready for the clues yet, so he whispered, “
Not just a woman. A willing woman. Paid for.
” Maybe she was, and I didn’t hold it against her. I’m not one of those guys who brags that he has never paid for sex. I have paid, though usually, not always, I prefer not to. The Marines shipped me to Germany for a month of training and my first night out a German girl picked me up in a bar. She spoke no English, none. We went to her apartment, had sex. I was on my way to the same bar a few nights later, the well where I drew water, but a prostitute stopped me and I started talking to her and she was funny. She said, “I like Americans because they believe all dicks are equal.” We
settled on a price and I had a terrific time. Not because of the sex, that was fine, but because I had been lonely. Horny and lonely. I didn’t care that I had to pay for the company.

Arranged pairs and dowries, old guys with somebody’s daughter, money lubricates. The stigma sinks to the low-end transactions. A captain lectured me that prostitutes were abused as children, are drug addicts, abused by pimps and beaten by johns. I told him I didn’t think that was a reason to deprive them of a living and the feeling that they were bringing some joy to the world, and he said he would pray for me. Everyone, even the whiniest excuse maker, knows deep down how awful he is. It’s only that knowledge that keeps kids at home, despite all parents being abusive in one way or another. I learned not to decide why people act the way they do until I know someone pretty well, and even then, it’s a foolish gamble.

Nineteen, riding shotgun in a car full of guys, a night of fake IDs and other lies, and we pulled up to a bar in a strip mall in Tucson. The Raven. To the left of the entrance, near the edge of the building, I saw a guy pull back his elbow, make a fist, and slug the girl next to him in the stomach. She doubled over. He held her up, slapped her. One guy in the car said, “That’s Cora Burkle.” Another said, “Yeah, I’ve seen her with that guy.” I said, “Let’s go.”

I was halfway to the couple when I noticed I was alone. All my pals had stayed in the car. The hitter and the girl stopped their dance to stare at me. “What are you staring at?” he said.

“Leave her alone.”

He was bigger than me and thick, but his middle was soft. He had long hair pulled back in a ponytail, fat cheeks, and the light from the bar showed the pockmarks. The girl, Cora, was thin. She
wore a blue halter top, tight jeans, and a red choker. Her face was the opposite of his, smooth skin and thin features. He turned his back on her to face me. She didn’t try to run away from him, which should have been a hint, but even if I’d understood the meaning of that, I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself. I came forward within inches of the guy.

“Mind your own fucking business,” he said.

I slugged him in the gut, then kneed him in the face when he doubled over. I let him stagger for a second and that was all it took for Cora to attack me. She was pounding on me with two fists like I was the locked door to the medicine cabinet.

“Leave him alone. Get the fuck outta here.” And more.

I backed up a few steps to get away from her. The guy had recovered. He pushed her aside and came at me. “Leave her alone, you asshole,” he said.

He tried to hit me, but I blocked it and slapped him hard across the face, which always hurts more than people think it will. Cora screamed, “No…” as if he had been shot. And she flew onto him, holding him back, protecting him. She hissed at me, “Just mind your own fucking business.” She pulled his hand off his cheek and kissed it where I had slapped him. I shrugged and went back to the car. It was empty. My pals were in the bar. When I asked why they didn’t help, two said they had slept with Cora in the past month and didn’t want the guy to know. I don’t know why any of us, including me, did what they did.

Signs announced diminishing distances to Las Vegas, and I chose to believe them so I didn’t feel like I was on a treadmill. I tried to focus on Dan’s clues, which meant conjuring him: relaxed on the boat, fit and tanned, and in the cell, beaten pale, eyes swollen
to slits. If Dan suddenly suggested I get to know who I am, then I knew I better take a close look at who everybody was. Dan could always claim he gave his partners fair warning.

We arrived in Phoenix before dawn. I checked into a downtown motel for a few hours’ rest before the Office of Vital Records opened at nine. I showered and fell right to sleep, not worrying about how Shannon spent her time.

The Office of Vital Records reminded me of a high school, a four-story brick and stone building stretched out along the whole block, with a wide, well-tended lawn and a flagpole. One woman occupied the information desk just inside the glass doors. “You have to show some relation to the deceased or that you represent the estate to access the death records,” she said. I knew my mother’s name from my birth certificate: Gloria Marie Waters, formerly Henning, born 1962 in Tucson. After a little go-round with another clerk, we found my birth certificate and with that, along with my service ID, he felt it was safe to look up Gloria’s death information. “I’m sorry,” he said. “If she died, it didn’t happen in Arizona. There are databases that list obituaries from around the country, but they aren’t perfect. They charge.…You can use those computers.” He pointed across the room.

Dan had mentioned a couple of times that my mother was dead and I remember questioning him only once. “Cancer,” he said. There was no reason to think she was dead at all. Shannon had a credit card, which meant McColl would be in on the search. No combination of names and ages matched the Gloria Henning Waters I was looking for in the death records. The only living Gloria Henning was just twenty-six. I found four living women named
Gloria Waters in Arizona. Three were too old; one was just the right age.

The town house was in a stylish white stucco building in south Scottsdale. I parked down the street and watched it for a minute. Shannon said, “You want me to wait here?”

“Suit yourself.”

“I just thought…”

“What?”

“It’s your mother, maybe anyway and…”

“You don’t want to intrude. That’s fine. Thanks.” A phony act, but I couldn’t see why I cared. I left her in the car. Gloria Waters had an end unit, Number 8. A sprinkler missed the small bushes spaced along the edge of the building. An old man walked his poodle, leash in one hand, plastic bag in another. The poodle pissed on a bush that wasn’t getting watered. The old man wanted me to smile at the cuteness of it, so I did.

The front door to Number 8 was ajar. I pushed it open and called out, “Hello?” No answer. Shards of mirror littered the marble entrance floor. A small table was knocked over. I stepped inside.

Even with walls punctured, furniture overturned, pillows gouged, drawers and cupboards emptied onto the floor, you could tell this place had been nicely put together. I didn’t want to step on the debris because it all looked like such good stuff. Every vase was smashed, every picture slashed. In the kitchen, a bag of Peet’s Coffee had been emptied onto the floor. Next to it lay the vacuum cleaner with the bag slashed open. They weren’t looking for twenty-five million dollars. They must have gotten the idea of clues into their heads, and unsure what that meant, they binged on the notion of thoroughness and the luxury of their power. They were like
morons at an all-you-can-eat buffet, piling their plates because no one could stop them.

She was taped to a chair in the master bedroom upstairs. A slightly plump woman with dyed red hair cut short, she was wearing a skirt and a bra; she must have been getting ready for work when they came in. Her heavy makeup was smeared. Her eyes burned with fear at seeing me. She struggled against the tape to scream.

“Gloria Waters?”

She nodded.

“I’m not with whoever this was. I’m going to come over there and free you. Is that okay? I’m not going to hurt you.”

She nodded again. I moved behind her and pulled my knife and slit the tape binding her to the chair. I pulled it away from her arms. That must have hurt a bit, but she just sat there. “I’m going to pull the tape off your mouth, okay?” She nodded. I looked right into her eyes, which had calmed down. I yanked the tape. She started to sob open-mouthed with aching gasps. On the back of the tape, the smudged lipstick matched her hair color. I found a short jacket on the floor that might have belonged with her skirt and helped her put it on. She was able to say “Thank you” in a weak voice.

I found a glass that wasn’t broken and brought her water. She had picked up the remains of her phone. “What did they want? What did they want? I don’t know what they wanted.”

“I don’t have my phone, but I’ll contact the police for you.”

“Who are you?”

I probably stared at her too long. Maybe I was trying to summon some feeling, some connection. It would have been fake. I felt sorry for her. That was all. Maybe the rest would come later, though
it was hard to imagine this woman with Dan. Her eyes darted around to confirm that escape was impossible.

“My name is Rollie Waters.”

Her expression softened, her shoulders slumped, and I admit that for one quick moment I was confused by a feeling I was unfamiliar with. She rose, her jaw jutting out, and her eyes lost their fear. It was rage.

“Get out of here! Get out of here!”

Not what I was hoping for. “Aren’t you Gloria Waters? I’m—”

“My son died twenty-three years ago with my husband. How dare you? How dare you come in here? Get out.”

So I was the guy who helped make this the second worst day of her life. And I knew who I wasn’t.

Shannon wasn’t in the car. I found her about five minutes later at a bus stop on McClintock Drive The bus arrived just after I did. I managed to grab Shannon before she could push her way on board. A mother ushered her two young kids up the steps and past the driver. The driver looked at me, but I shook my head and said, “Don’t.” He closed the door and drove off.

I backed Shannon against the jeep. “Call them. Call them right now.”

“I will.”

“Right now.”

“I told you. If they find out you know I’m with them…”

“That’s over. Call.”

She pulled her phone from her purse, called McColl, and handed it to me. McColl answered. “You’re tracking me. I don’t care. You’ve sent me a companion. I don’t care. I’m going to find the
money and then we can deal with each other. But don’t ever pull another stunt like you did on that woman today. Never.”

“Or what?”

Thank you for asking. “I’ll quit looking. Just walk away. And you can torture me until your pants are so wet they fall down. As we both know, it won’t do any good because I don’t know where the money is.”

Silence. I handed the phone back to Shannon. “You ran because you knew.”

“I ran because I guessed. When I was sitting there, I just had a bad feeling.”

I should have ditched her at that moment. They would not trust her anymore, but if she kept feeding them information, it would create doubt. I thought I could turn her to my side. I should have ditched her.

W
hy are you sitting at the edge of the booth?”

“There’s a spring broken in the middle and it’s really uncomfortable.”

“It’s near the window on this side. We could switch.”

“They’re all the same.”

I was only six years old when Dan first took me to Chui’s Diner. Since that time, they had not made one improvement, bought one new dish or utensil, or repaired one fixture. Most of the customers were the same, too. Chui was a big man in his sixties. His belly has always hung over his belt, and he always wore a bolo tie that sometimes swung into your face when he leaned over to inspect your plate and ask how you liked your meal. In a pinch, Dan would leave me there for the day while he attended to business, which meant I attended to business also, standing on a chair at the sink so I could wash dishes and silverware. Those day sessions eventually developed into sessions lasting days. Chui and his wife, Rosa, lived behind the diner. I would bathe there and watch TV with them in the evening, then sleep in a booth. Along the way, I learned every
job in the restaurant, including cook. I don’t know if what I cooked was any good, but I could turn it out fast and accurate. Of course, I ate the mistakes before Chui noticed, or before I saw him notice. I’ve done about a million crummy things so far in my life, but the one I regret, or at least the one I think about most, is stealing a packet of frozen chicken breasts and selling them out the back door. Chui caught me and I had not been back for more than ten years.