The Knights of the Cornerstone (11 page)

“That would be de Charney? Of severed-head fame?”

“That’s right. Only in this case it’s de Charney the elder. He tried to buy New Cyprus outright. I mean the
whole
of New Cyprus. He challenged the deed that the Knights had been granted, which was essentially a land grant of some kind, written up fifty years earlier. The place allegedly wasn’t worth anything at all outside of the value of the houses themselves. Nothing around here was worth anything till twenty years ago or so. There were rumors, though, that there were mines under New Cyprus. A lot of nonsense, maybe, depending on who you talk to, but de Charney had to be after something.”

“Was there actually some kind of
battle
, or is the title just artistic?”

“According to the book, which was written by my father, there
was
a battle of some kind, but it was kept on the down-low. The last thing the Knights wanted was the authorities poking around.
Neither
side wanted that, and still don’t. The Knights are an independent crowd. That’s what got them in hot water with the Pope back when they burned de Molay and the rest of them at the stake.”

Calvin nodded. “Now you’re talking about the Knights Templar, the historical Knights Templar.”

“That’s just what I’m talking about.”

“All right. So let me guess. This challenge of de Charney’s failed, and so old de Charney and his crowd were out, and a few years later de Charney’s son made some kind of magical play for power involving the reenactment of the death of John the Baptist, which in this case was John Nazarite, the preacher from—where was it? Redlands or somewhere?”

‘That’s the long and the short of it. Old de Charney disappeared—maybe dead in the fighting, but there were rumors that his son murdered him, although it might have been your man Baldwin. Another story says he was struck by lightning, which is so perfect it might be true. Whatever happened back then, these people weren’t screwing around. I tell you that for your own good, because they’re
still
not screwing around. Something’s happening out there now, though. It’s all coming to pass.”

“And that’s why you were out on the island? You wanted to see what was coming to pass?”

“You could say that, although I already
know
what’s happening, or at least part of it. I know what it was they brought in, and I can tell you there’s a book in it—maybe a larger print run. The Templars are big news right now. Ten years ago nobody but historians and conspiracy nuts ever even heard of them, and now housewives know all there is to know, or at least think they do.”

Calvin found that his mind hadn’t moved on with the conversation, but had remained hovering around the phrase
what it was they brought in
. … “What kind of photos are you looking for?” he asked.

“I’m looking for anything out of the ordinary. Old things, maybe—antiquities out of the Holy Land, let’s say. Whatever. People say they hear things at night from up in the hills, like someone’s still working the stone. Nobody
ever sees anyone. I’ve been up there half a dozen times, and
I’ve
heard things, but then there’s nothing there—just the standing stones, maybe a coyote looking around. Hell of a creepy place when you’re out there alone. Makes you understand what the word
haunted
means.”

“I bet it does,” Calvin said, but he was thinking about falling asleep last night, hearing what had sounded like dwarfs chiseling away deep in a mine. This morning it had seemed a lot like an aural hallucination. Now it sounded like he didn’t know what. “I doubt I’ll stick around long enough to take any photos,” he told Morris.

“Well, that’s the smartest thing you’ve said since you came in here.” Morris got up and walked around from behind the counter, moving across to where he could look out through the tinted-glass door into the parking lot. “If you come up with something, though, give me a call. I’ve got some overstock I can part with. But we’ll find someplace else to meet.” He handed Calvin a business card. “That’s my cell number. I’ll ask you not to share it with anyone.”

“Sure,” Calvin said, and he edged past him, pushing open the door and squinting in the sunlight, just then remembering the Saucerian and Futura Press pamphlets that were still on rack inside. There was no going back in now, though. Maybe later he’d make another trip across the river, although the mail would work just as well.

“One more thing,” Morris said, and Calvin stopped and turned around, holding open the door. “Just for fun, ask one of the checkers in the Safeway if they felt that quake.”

T
hey hadn’t felt the quake. They didn’t get quakes out here in Bullhead City very often. Maybe, the checker told him, Calvin should call it a night a little earlier over at the Colorado Belle. Those free drinks and all that noise from the slots could make anyone tipsy.

“I didn’t want to leave before I hit the big one,” Calvin said cheerfully.

“Did you hit it?” she asked.

“No,” he said. Then the checker told him that her sister-in-law had hit thirty thousand on the Big Spin, and it was just like that—her last spin of the night, and right when she was telling herself that she should have gone home an hour ago. How was that for irony?

“That’s irony,” Calvin said, “but going home an hour ago is almost always good advice anyway.” He went out with a bulky double sack containing the coffee, pie, and peppermint stars, and thinking that despite the Big Spin he
should write the admonition down on a three-by-five card and carry it in his back pocket: “Go home an hour ago.”
Better yet
, he thought,
don’t leave home at all.

He headed along the shaded front of the store toward the hill that led down to the ferry, wondering whether he should call Shirley Fowler again. It had been an hour, after all, and it wouldn’t take but a moment. No need to leave a second message if she wasn’t there …

He glanced over at the pay phone, and nearly turned in that direction, when he saw that there was someone already talking on it—Bob Postum, who was looking straight at him, smiling through his beard. The man waved, said some last thing, and hung up the phone. Calvin waved back and picked up the pace. He could easily make it to the ferry dock ahead of him, and if the ferry was there, there was no way Postum would get on board, just like Morris had said. Then he saw that there was a small man loitering at the top of the hill, smoking a cigarette, getting fried by the sun and apparently doing nothing at all. Except that no one stood around in the Arizona sun without a reason.

Calvin stopped, opened his grocery sack and looked down into it, then slapped himself in the forehead. “I’ll be damned,” he said out loud, and reversed direction, heading hurriedly back into the store. The automatic door closed behind him. “Restroom?” he asked the checker with the lucky sister-in-law.

“In the back,” she said. “Center of the store. In meats.”

“In meats!” he said stupidly, forcing himself not to look back and making his way down the bread aisle. The butcher counter loomed ahead of him, and he saw a wide passage alongside it, leading into the back. He had no intention of going into the restroom and being shot to death in a toilet stall, but somewhere back here there had to be a way out.

A sign read “Restrooms” and pointed into an interior hallway cluttered with unopened boxes and without any apparent exit. He walked straight past it, spotting a pair of double-wide doors ahead, sheathed in steel and with small windows in each, glowing with sunshine. A butcher came around the corner out of what was apparently a cooler, and started to say something to him, pointing back toward the corridor to the restroom, but Calvin redoubled his pace, ignoring the man, and pushed straight through the doors, finding himself outside again on a four-foot-high concrete loading ramp.

He could see the ferry dock easily now. It was empty, and there was no sign of the ferry either up or down the river. Of course there wasn’t. The ferry was hourly, and it probably wasn’t the top of the hour, although he couldn’t know for sure because he had put away his watch and cell phone in order to be copacetic with the Knights. He told himself that Postum wouldn’t try anything in broad daylight, although what he meant by “try anything,” he couldn’t say. Morris had spooked him with the pistol and the obscure warnings. But then Morris had also said that he was probably being watched, and clearly he was.

Calvin jumped down from the end of the loading dock and walked downriver fast, taking a quick look behind him at the asphalt expanse of the lot. There were pallets of flattened cardboard and trash bins and scattered pieces of steel ribbon and packing materials. He thought of hiding in a trash bin, except that it would merely provide a convenient place to ditch his body. On his right lay the river itself, with the casinos on the far side. Ten quick steps and he could be in the water, swept away toward New Cyprus. Hard luck for the groceries.

He stopped at the edge of the Safeway, the lot still empty behind him, and looked up along the wall toward the front
parking lot. No one. He went on farther, past the front of Morris’s pickup and boat and behind the row of cinder-block shops that housed the bookstore, walking along the edge of the river itself. He thought briefly of simply going in and asking Morris to hide him, but he ditched the idea. He couldn’t betray the man’s trust like that, especially when it probably wasn’t necessary anyway. Within moments Calvin was angling across a weedy lot, away from the river toward the highway. He looked back, but saw no sign of Postum or the small man.

There was no reason in the world, of course, that the small man and Postum knew each other. Nor was there any reason, he told himself, to think that Postum wasn’t simply buying groceries. Then he remembered Hosmer’s
not-by-chance
warning, and right now Hosmer was looking more and more sane, and the decoy was looking like a by-God duck again. Playing stupid would have been far more useful than hiding behind buildings, but it was too late now.

He found himself in the parking lot of the Coronet store, with a lot of dime-store ads painted onto the front windows. He hurried inside. He could browse around until the top of the hour and then head straight for the ferry at a run. There was a teenage girl leaning on the counter, and she looked up from a book of Sudoku puzzles and smiled pleasantly at him. “Do you have the time?” he asked, and she pointed toward the wall behind him, where there was a big round schoolroom clock. Twelve minutes till ten.

“Can I help you find something?” she asked.

“Just browsing,” he said, and he wandered toward the back of the store, spotting the hallway to what must be a stockroom. There was no visible rear exit this time, but there
had
to be one. They wouldn’t haul stock through the
front of the store. He came to rest in a small aquarium section, with five- and ten-gallon tanks containing common tropical fish and goldfish. It smelled weedy and wet, like the river in the evening, and there was the comfortable sound of bubbling on the air. He watched several fat fantail goldfish swim awkwardly in their tank, and after a time he glanced up again at the clock, surprised to see that only three minutes had crept by.

“Front or back?” he asked himself. Front was a sure thing. The back exit, if it existed, might easily have an alarm. Also, Postum would know that sooner or later Calvin would try for the ferry. All Postum had to do was wait him out, and if that was the case, then bolting out the back door made no particular sense. “Front door,” he said to himself, and, as if it had been a command, the front door opened, and Postum himself walked in addressing a hearty hello to the girl behind the counter, calling her by name.

“Cal Bryson!” he shouted, waving at Calvin. “You old son of a gun!”

Back door
, Calvin told himself. He set out down the aisle through the yardage section, his eye on the door to the stockroom. When he was five feet from it he smelled cigarette smoke, although he couldn’t see anyone. Postum was ten steps behind him, moving along quickly. Calvin turned up a perpendicular aisle through shelves full of wading pools and swim fins and swimmer’s goggles, and then, glancing at Postum, he turned again toward the front of the store. Postum smiled and jerked his thumb toward the door, and Calvin saw that there was a third man standing just outside. Of course there was. Calvin was out of options. He nearly shouted at the girl to call the police, but then remembered Morris’s statement about neither side
wanting to involve the authorities. And anyway, there was no crime going on, only Bob Postum, old-timer, having a chat with Cal Bryson, old son of a gun.

“You’re
a slippery fish,” Postum said to him when he caught up.

Calvin blinked at him. “Just out doing a little shopping.”

“Just like yesterday down at the Gas’n’Go! You must have burned through all them little bitty toilet lids already. Pays to buy the economy size package down at the Wal-Mart. I’ve got a proposition for you, though, and then I’ll let you get back to your shopping. I’ve been doing some checking up, and I find that you’re an innocent man.”

“Innocent of what?”

“I mean to say that I’m
fully
convinced you’re just out here paying a visit, like you told me yesterday. Now, I don’t know what you were doing in the bookstore talking to Lamar Morris, but right now I’ll give you the benefit of my good nature and say that maybe you’re just a man who likes books.”

“That’s exactly right. I’m a collector. Californiana. The Fourteen Carats Press is at the top of my list.”

“I’ll bet it is. It’s at the top of my list, too. Morris’s daddy used to be at the top of the list, but he disappeared off it. The good news is that unlike his son Lamar, you’re not on the list at all yet. There’s no reason for you to be on it. But what I wanted to tell you is that there’s a rumor going around that someone stole your artifact out of the back of your car yesterday while you and I were inside the store chewing the fat. I feel a little bit responsible, holding you up like that while someone purloined your property.”

“I appreciate your concern.”