Tapping the Source (44 page)

They moved together along the wall, Ike punching, Frank alternately trying to punch and then to hold. At last they stumbled into a rack of wet suits and went down together, their feet tangled in the debris. Ike managed to keep his man turned, however, to come down hard on top of him, and when they landed he could feel Frank lose what was left of his wind. Ike rolled away. He kicked his legs free of the suits and then sat back on his haunches, his hands on his thighs. It had all happened more quickly than he had expected—short but intense. And yet there had been a kind of release in that intensity. Now he waited to see if Frank wanted it to go on.

Frank stayed on the floor a moment longer, then rolled away in the opposite direction, finally winding up in a seated position, his arms out behind him. The funny thing was, he still didn’t look angry. He brought one hand up to his face and touched his lip, which was cut and beginning to swell. “Shit, you’re still a fucking punk,” he said. He was breathing hard, talking in short bursts. “And yeah, I told him some things about the ranch.” He paused for breath, shaking his head. “But I didn’t set him up. I didn’t know he was going up there until after it happened.” He stopped and spit some blood on the floor.

Ike was still breathing hard himself. He leaned forward now, on his knees in the fine gray dust that covered the floor, his hands still on his legs. “So what did you tell him?”

“Come on, man. What the fuck is this? You’re trying to tell me you don’t know? You were with him, the way I heard it.”

“Just tell me what you told Preston.”

“Shit.” Frank shook his head once more. “Let’s just say Preston and I traded stories. He showed up one night, out there, in the alley.” He nodded toward the back of the shop. “Christ, I hadn’t talked to the guy in years. Scared the shit out of me, if you want to know. He claimed he was trying to find out something about this chick, Ellen, and he wanted to trade stories with me. What happened to Ellen in exchange for his version of what happened to Janet Adams.”

Ike was silent for a moment. “But you were with them,” he said. “You told me that. You took the damn picture. Remember.”

“The day before I split.” He paused, watching Ike, and Ike could see that he was trying to decide on something. He turned his head and looked at the far wall of the shop and when he looked back at Ike there was a slightly altered expression on his face, as if he had thought it over and made up his mind.

“I was the youngest,” Frank said. “Younger than Hound or Preston, a year younger than Janet. I never did dig Milo. The trip began to get weird. Just kinky sort of stuff. And drugs. I got scared and split. I pretended to get this phone call from home. Preston knew I hadn’t, but he went along with it, even told them that he was onshore with me when I got the call. I tried later to get Janet to come with me. She stayed. I came back and waited. I saw them come back without her.” He paused. “You didn’t know her,” he said. “She was something special. I never did know what really happened. I mean, I’d heard Hound’s version. But somehow I always knew Preston’s would be different, if he talked. After the trip he’d just packed it in, joined the Marines, and split.”

But Ike was having a hard time concentrating on Frank’s story at the moment. There was something else, some long, slow tremor of recognition snaking through his consciousness. Suddenly he knew why Preston had looked so strange the first time Ike had repeated what the kid in the white Camaro had told him, and why Preston had never believed the kid’s story, and why, too, he had gone to Frank Baker. It was not just, as Ike had once believed, that the two stories were similar. It was that they were the same.

“It was your story,” Ike said. For a moment Frank looked puzzled. Then he smiled. His swollen lip made the smile a crooked one. “Preston came to you because he wanted to know why some kid in the desert was telling your story.”

Frank touched his lip once more. “Funny how that worked out, isn’t it? But it wasn’t really my story. It just came out sounding that way.”

“And the kid?”

Frank shrugged. “He had the hots for that sister of yours. When she split for a weekend with Hound and didn’t come back, he got upset. Hound told him the chick had split on her own, that the subject was closed. He didn’t buy it, finally got this wild hair up his ass to go get Ellen’s brother. I was the one who told him they went to Mexico. I also told him that what he was thinking about was dumb, but that if he went through with it, he’d better plan on staying gone for a while.”

“You told him?”

Frank spread his hands. “What could I do? The asshole was my brother.”

“But he said you were one of the ones she went with.”

“Like I said, he’s an asshole. He was also in love. Know what I mean? He thought I was putting him off like everyone else.”

“But why your name and not Milo’s?”

“Jesus, don’t you see? He didn’t know a fucking thing about Milo Trax, or the ranch, or anything else. He was better off that way. Let him think it was Terry and Hound, me even. Let him go get Ellen’s brother. Who gives a shit? Hound could have handled that.”

Okay, Ike thought, but they had come full circle, back to what Frank had told Preston. Still, there was a dull ache in his stomach when he asked again what Frank had known about Ellen.

Frank met his stare. “You were there,” he said.

“Just tell me what you told him.”

“I told him there were graves at the ranch.”

“Graves.” Ike repeated the word slowly, his voice scarcely above a whisper.

“Rumors,” Frank said, but he suddenly seemed angry now for the first time. “Who knows what to believe about that shit. I didn’t know for sure what was going on up there and I didn’t want to know. I’d just heard things.”

“Like?”

“Like Milo having gotten in with some cult—rich fuckers, people into some very weird shit who were willing to lay down bread for the use of his land. Milo didn’t have that much left, you know. He’d done some time. He’d pissed away most of his old man’s money.”

“What about the movies?”

“Hound’s?” Frank shrugged. “Hound made those things around the house to sell to the greasers, but he had his eye out, too, looking for people he could turn Milo and his friends on to, as near as I could tell.”

“But Milo was filming that shit at the ranch, too.”

“I told you, man, I wouldn’t know about that. I wouldn’t want to. Maybe it was just something his friends could use to get their rocks off with between sessions. Or maybe he’d found some twisted buyer for them. Who knows? It’s over now.”

Ike was silent for a moment. “And you told Preston.”

“Yeah,” Frank said. “I told him.” And there was something defensive in the way he said it. “I told the asshole and I laid it on thick, and it wasn’t because I was scared—not really—and it wasn’t even because I wanted to know about Janet. I just wanted him to hear it, man. I wanted him to know.” He stopped and shook his head and when he spoke again there was a note of urgency in his voice Ike had not heard before. “I was here,” Frank said. “In the beginning,” and he pointed at the concrete beneath them, a quick, jabbing motion. “Those two guys had something, man. Not just bread. A goddamn lifestyle—that was what it was about then. And those two dumb fuckers had it. They didn’t need Milo Trax. But they blew it, and no one knew that any better than Preston. Shit, he could never handle what happened to Janet. I wanted him to see just how far it had gone. I didn’t tell him because I wanted to set him up. I told him because he deserved to hear it. I wasn’t even sure if he was going to believe me.” Frank paused. “But then, that was before I heard his version of Mexico.”

Ike waited. He wondered if he would have to ask about that, too, but Frank was talking now; he was letting it out. “He said Milo killed some cunt down there. Some Mexican whore he’d gotten down on the beach with them. They were all stoned and Milo just pulled out this blade and did it, before anyone even knew what was happening. Janet saw it. She OD’d that same night.” Frank stopped. “But then he never did tell you any of this shit, did he? So tell me something. What the fuck did you think you were doing at the ranch when you went up there with him?”

Ike was suddenly feeling very beat-up. His head was starting to feel swollen and slightly misshapen. “Surfing,” he said. The word had an odd ring to it in the emptiness of the shop.

“Surfing? You mean you two actually surfed up there? Preston surfed?”

“It was the end of that good swell. He never said a damn thing about any graves. He said he wanted to show me what it could be like. He wanted to talk me out of hanging around Huntington Beach.”

Frank shook his head once more. He tested his bad lip with his finger. “What it could be like, huh? Tapping the old source. Was that it?” But he went on before Ike could reply. “Yeah, well, that’s cool. It’s cool. But you want to know what’s funny about it, about all of that tapping-the-source shit? It wasn’t either Hound or Preston who thought that one up. It was Janet. And it was dope. That was the only source she had in mind, brother. Righteous grass, shrooms, pure cocaine. Some good shit. And with Milo pulling the strings, a goddamn endless supply and they were plugged into it. See, Hound and Preston had started out on their own, just a little business on the side—running a little grass back across the border in their cars. It was Milo who turned it into a big operation. And it was Janet who coined the phrase. Tapping the Source. Hound and Preston could dig it. They could see how people would take it and how it would be this in-joke. They only used it on the boards for about a year. Then Janet died and Preston split and I guess even Hound didn’t think it was so funny after that.” He paused for a moment, then went on, his voice a bit softer. “Don’t kid yourself, man. Hound may have been full of horseshit, but he knew they’d blown it too. I don’t care what he said. They both knew. They just went crazy in different ways.”

They stared at each other in silence for what seemed like a long time after that. It didn’t seem to Ike that there was much left to say. What he kept thinking about was Hound Adams working his way up that damn ravine to open the gate for Preston Marsh. “So how did Preston know about Milo’s party?” Ike asked at last. “Did you tell him about that, too?”

Frank smiled. “I sent him an invitation.”

“And that’s why you split?”

Frank’s lip finally came apart on him and began to bleed. He did nothing to stop it and the blood colored his smile. “I told you, man. I always split. But that night, I had a hunch.”

48

He didn’t know how long they stayed in the shop—only that he had this feeling there was something between them, that they had been a part of something that had ended, and that when this, the talking, was ended too, it would be over and it would not be spoken of by either of them in just the same way again. And in a funny sort of way, he had the idea that Frank felt it too. He hadn’t beaten anything out of him. It had all been there, waiting to come out for a long time. It had just been hard stuff to let go of. Somehow the fight had been part of the letting go. And who was there besides Ike to tell it to?

It was finally Frank who pulled himself off the floor. He made a rather halfhearted attempt at brushing some of the dirt from his pants, then he walked to the register and picked up one of the photographs that lay there. He held it up and Ike saw that it was the shot of Hound, Preston, and Janet. “New owners are coming in tomorrow,” Frank told him. “Fucking punks from down the street. I didn’t want them to have it.”

“What about all the others?”

Frank shrugged. “Ghosts,” he said. “If there’s anything in here you want, take it. Just lock the door on your way out.”

Ike was standing now, moving his legs to work out the cramps. He spoke to Frank once more as Frank moved past him, toward the door. “Will you tell anyone else, about the graves?”

“I don’t know. Cop considerations aside, and that doesn’t really mean shit to me anymore, I’m not sure people really want to know that kind of stuff. Your sister might be up there. Do you want to know?”

“I don’t know.”

“There you are.” He went to the door and stopped. “See you around?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Got any plans?”

“Not really, just leaving.”

Frank nodded. “What I should have done,” he said. “A long time ago.” He moved his shoulders. “Time flies.” He turned his back to Ike and went out into the alley. Ike could hear the door slam shut on the van. He could hear the engine turn over and at last fade into the night. Then he was alone in the empty shop, with just the occasional sound of a passing car, and in the distance, the muted crack of the surf.