Tapping the Source (38 page)

Ike turned back to the window. The sun was gone now. A single band of reddish light lay on the horizon, beneath a quickly darkening sky. The trees were dark now too, black and wild against a deep purple sea, and from beneath their branches a light mist had begun to rise. He didn’t know why Hound was telling him all this. There was always a reason. But Ike was tired of Hound’s games, and of his own. “And your sister, Janet,” he said, speaking slowly. “You brought her here too?”

Hound Adams was a moment in replying, as if for once Ike had taken him completely by surprise. “Yes,” he said at last.

“And then to Mexico?”

“Yes.”

“And Ellen Tucker. Did you bring her here too or just to Mexico?” The feeling Ike had as he spoke was not unlike what he’d felt on the highway with Preston—the adrenaline rush of a trip to the edge.

Hound just looked at him but his first slightly stunned expression had begun to shift. There was now the shadow of a smile in his eyes. “I think you’ve got it all wrong, brah,” Hound said. “I didn’t take your sister anywhere, though she may have gone to Mexico on her own. She might be there now.” He smiled and spread his hands.

“And you’ve known all along that she was my sister.”

“No. Not at first. I had heard her mention a brother, but I had gotten the impression that you were older. Then I got a look at you one morning in that cafe. After that I saw you nosing around down on the beach, sticking out like a goddamn sore thumb. Then I saw you at my party. Bad hick vibes. Lots of paranoia. I began to think that Ellen had lied, or exaggerated, or that there was another brother. Those first questions I asked you that night were intuitive, but you were giving me the right answers. Then there was that bit about somebody ripping off your board. I did a little checking up on the nose rider we found at the ranch, finally ran it down to that kid who had sold it to you.” He stopped to laugh. “Preston must have put the fear of God into that kid; he was still sweating the return of the crazed biker.”

“So why didn’t you ever say anything?”

Hound was still smiling—an obnoxious, knowing sort of smile now. “A good game always makes life a little more interesting. I could see that you were playing one. I decided to let you play your hand. But what makes you think I took your sister to Mexico?”

Ike stared back into Hound’s smile, wondering about what to say. Should he mention those combs? Or perhaps the kid in the white Camaro? Cat and mouse one more time. But then he was set upon by the sudden notion that the combs should go unmentioned, at least for the moment. “Someone told us,” he said. “A guy drove out to the desert and told us that Ellen had gone to Mexico with some guys from Huntington Beach, that she had not come back.”

“He said I took her?”

Ike tried to pick his words carefully. “Just that she went, that you might know what happened.”

“Who was he?”

“I don’t know.”

Hound appeared genuinely puzzled for a moment. “I would say you were lied to, brah. I don’t know why. Your sister was on the run, Ike, from the desert, from the people who raised her, from you.” He let that last word hang there for a moment between them, and then went on. “She passed through,” he said. “We had a few laughs.”

“Like you had a few laughs with Janet?” Ike could feel that adrenaline surge building once again, but he didn’t like the way the conversation was going. Hound was simply putting him together, laying down bullshit, as Ike had always known he would. He just wanted to wipe that smile off Hound Adams’s face one more time.

It worked. Hound came a step closer, so that his chest was almost touching Ike’s, but the smile was gone. “You’re pushing it, aren’t you?” he asked. “I don’t know what you think you’re hip to about Janet, and I don’t know who told you, but I’ll tell you something about her, and about your sister. And about Preston, too, as far as that goes. They all chose, man. Their own paths. They chose what they wanted. Your sister could have stayed. I liked her. She chose differently. Janet chose too.”

“And what did she choose?” But even as he was asking he realized that he had not been specific. Janet or Ellen? He waited on Hound.

“She chose to die,” Hound said. His voice was softer now and when it fell away the room was very quiet. “Death because she was afraid of life,” he added. “You see, things got complicated for her that time in Mexico. They were not really that way. Only in her own head.” Hound paused and tapped his temple. “Things were not complicated; they were new, for all of us. It was a voyage of discovery, brah. I mean that. And Janet was there with us. She began very free and loving, but she made the mistake of stopping, of falling back on the thoughts of others. She stopped listening to her own heart.” He shrugged. “And it killed her.” He looked past Ike and into the blackness of the window. “Now maybe you can see more about what I was trying to tell you that day in your room—that business about letting others do your thinking. It’s all in here,” he said, and stabbed at Ike’s chest with his hand, hard enough to be uncomfortable. “You see, most people never make the kind of trip I’m talking about. They never even start out. What they really do is spend their lives hiding from themselves. And because of that—and because they’re the ones who set the standards, it’s a lonely trip, Jack. You’re out there on your own and it can get weird and I’ve seen people flipped out by it. They get halfway, man, and they lose faith. They can’t handle it. Janet couldn’t handle it. Preston sure as hell couldn’t handle it. With Janet the complications began around something as simple as not knowing who the father of her child was.” He stopped and shrugged once more. “But it’s what I’ve been trying to tell you all along. This is your trip, brah. And it’s your choice.”

Ike waited for Hound to go on, to say more about the choice, but he didn’t. Hound turned away from the window in silence and retreated a few steps into the center of the room. When he turned once more, his voice had taken on a more conversational tone. “You know, Milo likes you,” he said. “And you’ve done all right this summer—with one minor exception that need not be mentioned. You’ve done as well as could be expected. I mean, we’ve worked pretty well together, haven’t we? And I could use someone new around the shop. I don’t mean just working there, I mean really looking after things. I want to travel some more, but I want to know things are in good hands when I’m gone.”

“What about Frank?”

Hound made that shrugging motion once more. His reply was surprising. “Frank’s a loser,” Hound said. “I mean, he’s around. That’s all. Shit. He’s always been around. But you want to know something? Frank Baker doesn’t even have his own key to that damn gate out there. I could swing that for you. I mean it, brah. Your own goddamn key. You could have it all, man.” And he nodded into the blackened window beyond which the forests and ocean were now invisible, so that it seemed to Ike that Hound spoke only of the darkness. “But remember what I told you, brah. You’ll have to choose. Think about it.”

Hound left then. He went out into the hall and left Ike alone in Milo Trax’s study. He left the door ajar and Ike watched a thin shaft of yellow light fall across the carpet to break upon the polished leather of his shoes.

39

Ike walked to Milo’s desk and turned on a lamp. The light made mirrors now of the tall arched panes of glass that faced the sea, and in them Ike could see himself reflected, a stranger in expensive clothes. So what, he thought, if he made that choice right now? What if when Milo returned there were two sets of expensive clothes on the floor of his study? And what if by then Ike and Michelle were already gone? Down to the beach and up through the ravine. There was still some money left in Huntington Beach, enough for bus tickets. By morning they could be on their way to another place. Anywhere. It didn’t really matter. He would tell Preston, and they would keep in touch, and if anything was ever found, Preston would let him know. It would be as Preston had said. He went out of the room and into the hall.

•   •   •

There were noises in the house now that he had not noticed in the room. Someone was playing music in one of the outside patios, and there were voices—Milo’s guests, he supposed. The party had begun.

Most of the voices were indistinct and drifted to him from remote parts of the house. One voice, however, made itself separate and he recognized it as Milo’s. The voice was closer than the others, suddenly almost below him, and he stepped to the railing that lined the balcony to look down.

He was above the stone entry upon which he and Hound and Michelle had stood earlier in the day. There were four men below him now. Hound, Milo, and two other men he had not seen before. One of the men was wide and dark. He stood slightly apart from the others with his hands at his sides. The other man was tall and rather thin, but wiry and tan. He wore white slacks and a blue blazer jacket. Above the jacket, his hair was a very fine shade of gray—nearly silver, beneath the lights of the entry. The two strangers had apparently just arrived and were being escorted into the house by Milo and Hound. They passed almost directly below Ike and Milo’s voice reached him once more, clearly enough to be heard distinctly.

“Yes,” Milo was saying. “I have some men working on it right now. It will be ready.”

The silver-haired man nodded. When he spoke, his voice was softer than Milo’s, and serious. “These people?” he asked. “The real thing?”

“Oh, yes. Some, anyway.”

“And you can handle them?” The men were turning now, moving back beneath the railing and out of Ike’s sight. “I rely heavily upon Hound,” Milo said. “But don’t worry. I think you’ll find it interesting.” The silver-haired man said something else, but Ike was unable to make it out. He remained at the rail a moment longer and was about to leave it when he saw Milo and Hound once again. The two men were walking back across the stone floor beneath him. Milo walked with his hand at Hound’s back. It was held there in an odd way, as if he were guiding Hound across the floor and through the doorway on the other side, and Ike was struck by the gesture. It was the way a man might put his hand on the back of a child, he thought, or a lover.

•   •   •

Ike stepped quickly away from the railing and entered the doorway at the far end of the balcony. It was dark there and he waited a moment for his eyes to adjust. He did not know what to make of the things he had heard. What he found himself thinking about was that final image of Hound and Milo as they passed through the door, Milo’s hand at Hound’s back. It seemed to connect for him to other things—to those letters he’d once seen scratched into the metal partition of a bathroom in Huntington Beach, to what Michelle had told him on the boat, to Hound’s abstinence at his own parties. And he found himself wondering what Hound would have to say about it. Quite a line of bullshit, no doubt—one more stop perhaps on the road to discovery. Or maybe Ike was wrong, maybe it explained nothing.

There was a window open somewhere. He could feel the damp draft on his face. He could smell the sea and a trace of bougainvillaea. There were several doors along the hall. One stood partially open. Ike went to the door and stopped. He whispered. When there was no answer, he pushed it open and walked inside.

The room was large, empty, and dark, though saved from total darkness by a pair of tall French doors that stood open upon a small balcony. The fog seemed to have lifted a bit and the doors emitted a pale light. He could make out a few pieces of furniture—a bed, dresser, a small nightstand, a pair of large chairs. The scent of the gardens was strong in the room. He was about to leave when he noticed what appeared to be a white dress hung against the blackness of the closet. At first glance he thought that the dress was the one he had seen Michelle in that afternoon. But moving closer, he saw it was not. The style was slightly different. And then he noticed a second dress draped over a chair. This dress was white as well, also similar in style to Michelle’s. He held aside the dress that hung in the closet’s doorway. The small space was filled with women’s clothes—or girls’ clothes, because there was something in the general cut and color of the fabrics that suggested youth. Pushing through them, he was aware of the pulse in his hand, of the coolness of the fabrics against his skin.

From the closet he moved to the dresser. There were some toilet articles on top—brushes, a hand mirror. Opening a drawer, he saw that it was filled with jewelry, with bracelets and ornaments for the hair. He moved them about with his fingers, listening to the soft scraping sounds they made upon the wood, suddenly seeing Milo Trax doing the very same thing, standing in this same spot, searching for some trinket and selecting the ivory combs—they were, judging by what he saw here now, the nicest, the most expensive. It had been that simple. The combs had not been given to Michelle to bait him. Hound Adams was probably not even aware of them and Ike had been right not to catch him in his lie. His hunch at least had bought him some time. And yet there was something in that now which struck him as little more than a cruel joke. He had entered the trap, and he could not believe now that he had not seen it before, had not sensed the evil of this place from the beginning. He had, he supposed, always been too sidetracked by other things. On this particular trip he had thought only of the chance to talk to Michelle, to save her from some dread trip to Mexico. Save her. Jesus. There had been no trips to Mexico for Ellen Tucker. Preston had been right: the kid in the white car had lied. Or, Ike thought, perhaps he had only been wrong. But then it really made no difference now. He had been right on the beach: Ellen had been here and this is what there was. A party at the ranch. And the ranch was the end of the line.