The Faceless One (21 page)

Stan laughed. “You’re as bad as that kid thinking it was a bomb.”

Richie snorted derisively. “Fuckin’ pothead.”

“How do you know that?”

“ ’Cause I went to school with potheads like that. Fuck, I used to be a pothead like that.”

“Tsk-tsk
, and now here you are, a detective first grade with New York’s Finest.”

“That, my friend, is because I rose above.” Richie pointed up ahead. “There’s the exit.”

The exit at Cheshire took them into the outskirts of a residential area. The streetlights were infrequent, and vast pools of darkness waited between clumps of homes huddled under the light. Rather than turn left and head for the eastbound on-ramp, Stan drove onto a frontage road that featured darkened shops and private storage areas.

“You’re not going to find a restaurant in this shit hole.” Richie warned. “Why don’t we head back to town and go to Manny’s?”

“Why, so you can make a mockery of the rest of Jewish cuisine?”

“I don’t think my taste in food is any worse than yours,” Richie countered.

Stan snorted. “I’m not the sick fuck who orders peanut-butter omelets.”

“I swear to God, you try it once, and you’ll never go back to that crap you eat.”

“Richie, remind me to drop you off at Bellevue after we get back.”

Richie laughed. They had been partners for three years now, and that partnership had spilled over into their private lives as the best of friendships. Stan had saved Richie’s life last Christmas, blowing away a perp who had been about to stab the younger man. In gratitude, Richie had made Stan the godfather of his daughter Kaley.

Richie peered out at the darkness. They were passing a Laundromat with its lights still on. An elderly woman watched clothes tumble in the dryer. She turned and watched them pass, as if sensing them behind her. One of the windows was covered by a sheet of plywood and soon hid her from view. It gave Richie the creeps.

Stan stopped at a stop sign. The street was empty.

“Shit, partner, we’re not going to find anything out here,” Richie complained. He turned back and was surprised to see that Stan had his gun out.

Stan fired once. Richie rocked to the side, and his window was covered with a bright splash of blood and brains. It was the same gun Stan had used to save him last December. He put the gun back into the holster under his left armpit. Looking around, he saw that no one was watching. He popped the trunk, then got out and walked around to Richie’s side of the car. He opened the door, and the body tumbled out. Stan caught it, then dragged it around to the back. He grunted as he lifted the body and placed it as gently as possible in the open trunk. He tried not to get any of Richie’s blood on him, but a bright smear was left on the front of his shirt and tie. He got Richie into the trunk, then reached out and patted him gently on the shoulder. He had been a good kid.

Stan Roberts closed the trunk, then went and closed the passenger door. He got back into the car and waited, as if needing some signal to proceed. While he waited, he glanced over at the stained and dripping window. He had no rags or cleaning solvents with him. He thumbed the control, and the window rolled down, the rubber seal acting as a squeegee, leaving a bloody residue on the door. Stan grabbed Richie’s coat and wiped up as much of the blood as he could. He balled up the coat and threw it into the footwell in the back, careful not to disturb the package on the backseat. The night was warm, so he could leave the window down until he could wash it off at a gas station.

He sat quietly, looking straight ahead.

After ten minutes, he made a U-turn and headed back to the highway. He got on and drove at a sedate pace, heading west.

To California.

George had been unable to lift any liquor from the beverage cart on their flight and was feeling cranky about it. Jimmy had reminded him that they probably had enough for a bottle of decent whiskey at a liquor store in Los Angeles, but this did not mollify George.

“It’s the principle of the thing, Jimmy, don’t you understand that?”

“What, that you can steal liquor from a girl young enough to be your granddaughter?”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! I am talking about sticking it to the Man.”

Jimmy looked at him.

“You’ve been watching
Shaft
again,” he concluded.

“Yes I have, and so what? If there’s anyone on this plane who should understand putting the screws to the white man, it should be you, Injun Joe.”

“Samuel Jackson or Richard Roundtree?”

“Richard Roundtree, fool! Samuel Jackson is a major badass, I’ll give you that. But Richard Roundtree made that role when they were still calling us ‘coons’ and ‘niggers.’ ”

Jimmy knew that George had valid points, but he also knew that his friend was afraid to fly. He usually blustered through his fear with political rhetoric or his charm. The rhetoric was just making him agitated, and Jimmy saw no point to that.

“I like Samuel Jackson. I liked him in that
Pulp
movie with the kid from Kotter.”

George shook his head.

“It’s Ving Rhames you should be watching in that one,
kemosabe.
”

“Knock off that ‘kemosabe’ shit, or I’ll toss you out the emergency door.”

George grinned.

“Even if I went kersplat, I’d still be prettier than you, Pocahontas.”

Jimmy grinned, and George nodded. They sat back, two old men embarking on a great adventure.

A frown crossed George’s face.

“Hey, Jimmy, how come there aren’t any Tlingit actors?”

“Because the black man is keeping us down.”

That cracked George up. He ordered them each a J&B on the rocks. The stewardess took his order but kept herself between him and the cart. She either had a sixth sense about George, or
someone had seen him trying to help himself earlier.

Once they had their drinks, George insisted they toast.

“To good friends,” he said sincerely.

Jimmy nodded, and they drank. It felt good going down, like woodsmoke and liquid fire.

George put on his headphones and was soon crooning quietly to Al Green.

Jimmy wondered what lay ahead.

He felt ill prepared. He had saved the shamanic totems and dress that had belonged to his uncle, but they were in storage in Anchorage. He had thought of trying to swing by and get them but had a feeling that would take too much time. Truth to tell, he wasn’t sure he could remember all the rituals. He had spent too much time in warm rooms with filtered air, eating canned food and watching shit on television. Not exactly acceptable preparations for a sacred journey.

He looked over at George. George’s eyes were closed, and his head swayed gently in time to some pleasing melody. George had become a better friend to him than any of the people he had grown up with in Yanut. Maybe it was because, for all the hardship of the Tlingit people, they still lived on their land. They might face restrictions on fishing and hunting, but the land was much the same. Take away the televisions and stereos, cars and convenience foods, and you had a life there pretty much unchanged since he was a boy. The Tlingit could cling to that, and it made hardships more endurable.

He and George had had their lands taken away, in a sense. They were stripped of most of their positions, their pride, their dignity. This bonded them in a way that he could not have shared with his people. Even when the U.S. Navy had fired on the village of Angoon, the Tlingit had kept their pride and dignity. The people of his village were no different. They would not have understood his remaining at Golden Summer.

Except that the village was gone now, he realized. The land was there, the people were not.

Maybe he should have been there. Perhaps it was the will of the gods he had not been. No one else had the heritage he did, not even other Tlingit. Old
Naas shagee Yéil
had certainly taken a shine to him, appearing in cryptic vision after cryptic vision. Yéil the Raven had brought light to the world, he had stolen the moon and stars and sun from a great chief. But he was also a Trickster, he liked to keep things moving, mixed up. For all Jimmy knew,
Yéil
was leading him into a screwup to end all screwups.

He found himself thinking of Thomas and feeling sad they had argued. Perhaps he should call him from Los Angeles if he got a chance. Thomas was his only family. He might deny the proud blood of Salmon and Killer Whale people in his veins, but it ran there all the same. Maybe if this turned out to be a silly trick of Raven, or if everything came out okay, he could visit his son and granddaughter.

He didn’t think that would happen, but it was nice to think about.

He could tell little Molly about their people, about
Yéil
the Raven and the Killer Whale people and the Chief of the Salmon. Good stories, colorful tales with much to teach.

He closed his eyes, thinking of the things he would do as a grampa if he got the chance.

He smiled.

* * *

George opened his eyes and glanced at his friend. He saw Jimmy smile and smiled himself. This trip was good for him, Lord knew. Ever since that ungrateful son of Jimmy’s had dumped him off at Golden Summer, there had been a profound sadness in the man.

At first, George had sought Jimmy out because he was the only other nonwhite resident there. Jimmy had been courteous but wary. George’s legendary charm had not worked on him, and he had thought he might have to turn to television for company. Jimmy had surprised him by showing up at his room with a deck of cards. Friendly games for matches had led to games for pennies or nickels. Once they had gotten up to quarters, they knew each other pretty well. They had taken to fleecing Fred Deutschendorf, who had more money than God as far as George was concerned.

So old Fred, formerly the Old Fart, had been wise to them the whole time. This hurt George a bit because he thought they had been cleverer than Fred. He supposed he felt a little shame, too, at their trying to take advantage of the old man.

George thought of Maddy, as he often did when he got introspective. Maddy had been his wife but had not been his first love. He had met his first love when he was a teenager. He had been swept off his feet by an older woman named Renee Devereaux. Renee had been a singer in Harlem jazz clubs and had made a fairly good living. She had been tall and beautiful, with caramel skin and high, firm breasts. Renee had managed to steer clear of various abuses that shortened the life of her peers and was saving toward a home in the tropics. She had seen George when he was sixteen, dancing at the Starlight Lounge with his girl, Mina Jeffries. Renee had sent them a bottle of champagne and asked Mina if she would mind if she and George had one dance. Mina had graciously loaned George. One dance was all it had taken. Her beauty, her sensuality, her worldly quality, the way her skin smelled like cinnamon and honeysuckle, these things had bound George to her. He called her Queen of the Nile and Nubian Princess, phrases he had picked up from Edgar Rice Burroughs’s novels. She had called him her little jitterbug. After four months together, George had begged her to marry him. She had laughed at George, and he had gotten angry, hurt that she would laugh at his proposal. She told him to stop fussing and come to
bed, but he had stormed out, breaking her antique mirror on his way out with a slam of his fist. He had had to have six stitches in his hand. His pride wounded, he had stayed away for two months, hoping she would call to see how he was. When he finally went around to her place, she was keeping company with Peach Purdue, a nightclub owner. She made it clear that she had no time for a child, and George was heartbroken.

He had gone into the army, the recruiter promising he’d get a “whole new family” and see the world. He had wound up at Camp Drum in New York State, peeling potatoes and scrubbing pots and pans for the duration of his hitch. And his new family? Hell, he got treated worse there than when he was growing up in the South.

After the army, he returned home to Georgia. There he met a nice girl that his folks knew, Maddy Timmons, who worked as a waitress at a little diner on Route 17. George wanted something solid after his days in the service and had courted and married her. But he had never felt about her the way he had about Renee. He often wondered about Renee, and wondered if she ever thought of him. Maddy had died twelve years ago, and George’s kids had found Golden Summer to be within their means. They had treated it like they had bought him his own private island. He knew he was being a cranky s.o.b., but he had only gotten calls from two of the kids last year. Maybe they thought he was dead. Maybe they wished he were.

He missed Maddy, the way she would rub his back when he was troubled, her large brown eyes. She had never stirred him like Renee, and he had always felt a bit guilty about that. But he had told her he loved her every day, and after years of that, he was surprised to find he really did love her. Though there had been little heat, roots had grown and spread just the same. He had cried when she died, locked himself in a room with a bottle and not come out for a week. The girl who had not been as flashy as Renee had stolen his heart when he wasn’t looking. He had realized he would trade all his hot and wild nights with Renee for just one of Maddy’s smiles, just to hear her giggle, and say “Oh, George” one more time.

Life could be a real shit-box, that was for sure. You got old and everything you loved withered away—your loves, your friends, your looks, even your pecker.

These were the Golden Years? Shit, more like the Rust Years.

George settled back, listening now to “Superstition” by Stevie Wonder. He thought again about the things Jimmy had told him.

He didn’t really believe in ravens that sent secret messages and faceless gods who were supposed to be locked away in ice. He didn’t think that killer whales lived as people down under the ocean and that otters were demonic creatures of both land and sea. But he believed that a man had been born to a virgin and that by being nailed to a cross, he had taken the burden of the sins of all people onto his shoulders. Were his beliefs any more reasonable? Raven steals the sun; a star guides wise men to a manger. A demon leads a man out into the ocean where he becomes a
sort of living dead. Jesus walks on water, later returns from the dead. George guessed it was all a matter of perspective. He hadn’t grown up like Jimmy had, in a boat on icy waters fishing for salmon, learning about his gods from his uncle. And Jimmy hadn’t attended Grace First Baptist Church in Moultrie, Georgia, sweating in his good suit while the Reverend Lawrence screamed about hellfire and redemption and the blood of the Lamb.