This Wicked World (37 page)

“Oh, baby,” she said. “What the fuck have I gone and done?” She never should have left the ranch, never should have let her anger get the best of her. As soon as she’d driven away, she’d known it was a mistake. It was awful being apart and scary how much she missed him. Didn’t he feel it too, that this thing between them was so much stronger than anything either of them had ever had before?

Of course he did. He was all alone in the middle of nowhere, all alone in the world, and his secret weakness, Olivia knew, was that he needed someone to care about and someone who cared about him in order to feel human. Without that, every time he looked in the mirror he saw an animal staring back at him, a low and vicious beast, and despised himself for his savagery.

“Let me come home,” she said. “You can deal with me however you see fit, but let me come home to you.”

Taggert was silent for a long time, then finally growled, “Do whatever the hell you want,” and ended the call.

He’s not going to kill me, Olivia assures herself. Anybody else, maybe, but not me. If she’s misread him, though, she’s dead. Simple as that. He’ll cut off her head and hands and scatter her bones. But that’s the risk you run when you try to steal the monster’s treasure.

She reaches up to pull down the visor. The sun’s right in her eyes. The van’s air conditioner makes lots of noise, but no cold air. When she rolls down the window, seeking a little relief, the blast of gritty wind just makes her hotter. The sand outside glows white. The top floors of the Indian casino look like they’re about to burst into flame.

For a second Olivia wishes she was headed there instead of the ranch. She imagines checking into a room, eating a nice dinner, and playing blackjack, like in the commercials. Thing is, she only has forty dollars to her name.

She could go ahead and stop, but dinner will be McDonald’s, and she’ll lose all her cash in the first hour and spend the rest of the night hustling drinks and video poker money from the truck drivers and retirees there for the seafood buffet. One of them will ask if she’s working, and if she’s drunk and desperate enough, she’ll turn a trick, then pass out in the van until she wakes up sweaty and hungover to a sun so bright it shows every secret.

Not again, she thinks as she rattles past the casino. Never again. This time tomorrow, she’ll be a whole new person, someone with money and choices, someone who has and keeps things. A bug hits the windshield and explodes red and yellow like a skyrocket. She drifts into the next lane trying to turn on the wipers, and a car behind her honks. She sure wishes the radio worked.

B
OONE DRIVES BACK
to Hollywood. The wind is picking up. Jumpy as hell, he slams on his brakes to avoid a cardboard box skittering across Franklin like a wounded animal; almost gets rear-ended. The giant inflatable tooth perched on the roof of the dental clinic strains at its tethers. He parks in front of Cyberplace. Three different gutter punks ask for change while he’s feeding the meter.

A computer search for the Mojave Preserve turns up a map. It’s out past Baker, nestled between the 15 and 40 freeways, a million and a half acres of desert, hundreds of miles of road, a dozen ghost towns. He and Robo and Carl will head out toward the preserve and hope that Olivia’s call comes somewhere along the way. If not, they’ll gas up in Baker and wait there to hear from her.

After printing out the information Boone walks down the boulevard to the army surplus store to pick up ski masks. “Knocking over a bank?” the burly guy behind the counter jokes.

“Liquor store,” Boone replies.

“Careful of those security cameras.”

His next stop is Food For Less. He pulls into the parking lot and chases down a cart. The little plastic flags strung between the light poles snap like firecrackers in the wind.

The music is too loud in the store, some kind of happy-dappy smooth jazz, and the air conditioner is cranked all the way up. Boone hurries down the aisles, grabbing jugs of water and Gatorade, a loaf of bread, packets of ham and bologna, a jar of mustard, and a couple bags of ice.

Back at the bungalow, he pulls his sleeping bag off his bed and brings in a cooler from the shed. He dumps some ice in the cooler, along with the food that needs to be kept cold, sets the cooler by the door. He adds a hoodie to the pile, and the flashlight he keeps under the kitchen sink. And a machete. Always good to have a machete. Joto follows him around like he knows Boone’s leaving soon.

Carl insisted they take his Xterra to the desert because he doesn’t trust the Olds to make the trip. “I don’t want to be making a call to the Auto Club with a load of guns and counterfeit money,” he said, and Boone couldn’t argue with that. Carl arrives at two. His knock startles Boone, makes him bite his tongue.

“You’re not fucking around, are you?” Boone says when he opens the door and sees Carl’s desert cammies.

“Are
you?
” Carl replies, clearly displeased by the grin on Boone’s face.

“Absolutely not,” Boone says, gesturing at the gear and supplies he’s collected. “I’m ready to do this thing.”

“What’s all that?” Carl asks.

“Food,” Boone says. “Water.”

“Come on, man,” Carl scoffs. “You’re a Marine, not a Boy Scout. Grab the water and your sleeping bag. I’ve got enough MREs for all of us.”

Boone opens a couple of cans of food for Joto, then he and Carl toss his stuff into the Xterra and drive out to the valley. Boone calls to let Robo know they’re on their way.

When they arrive, Robo is sweating on the curb, a cooler, a propane stove, and firewood heaped on the sidewalk behind him.

“It’s only one night,” Boone says.

“One long-ass night,” Robo replies.

Boone introduces Robo to Carl while they sort through Robo’s piles, picking out the essentials. The two men shake hands.

“Good to meet you,” Carl says.

“You too,” Robo replies.

When they’ve loaded the truck, Robo lifts a last duffel bag and unzips it just enough that Boone catches a glimpse of black steel and plastic and smells gun oil.

“The
cuetes,
” Robo says. “Two M-16s, a 12-gauge, and a couple nines for backup.”

“I’m covered there,” Carl says and pats his favorite Smith & Wesson .45, which is nestled in a shoulder rig under his cammies.

“Daddy!”

The men turn to watch Robo’s son Junior stagger toward them, struggling to carry a shovel twice his size.

“Do you need this for your hunting?” he asks.

Robo takes the shovel and kneels in front of the boy.

“I don’t think we’re going to be digging any holes,
mijo
,” he says.

“Uh-huh, to hide in,” Junior says.

“They got bushes and stuff for that,” Robo replies.

Boone watches as he scoops up the kid and carries him to the duplex. If anything happens to him tomorrow, or to Carl — Boone doesn’t want to, can’t let himself, think about that.

It’s purely for show that he asked them to come along anyway, a couple of big guys with big guns. During the actual robbery, he’ll be the one to step out while they remain under cover. Before Taggert and the others even figure out what’s going on, he, Robo, and Carl will be safely on their way.

Robo stands in the doorway, kissing his wife and babies, then breaks free and lumbers out to the Xterra.

“
Vámonos
,” he says. “They act like I’m leaving for a year.”

Boone takes the passenger seat, and Robo squeezes his bulk in back, with the weapons and some of the gear. Carl drives to the 101, gets on heading south. There’s a rattle in the cargo bay, and Robo reaches back and rearranges the load until it stops.

“You guys like tamales?” he says when he’s finished. “ ’Cause my old lady made me bring a shitload of them.”

T
HE SUN IS
still high when Olivia reaches the turnoff to the ranch, and the surrounding hills are being scoured by the wind. Fear catches up to Olivia, the sudden taste of it sour on her tongue, as she drives the dirt road through the scrub. She tops the last rise, and the ranch comes into view. The heat bears down on it like a boot heel. She hates this place, always has.

The compound looks deserted. No movement at all except for what the wind’s got hold of. Taggert’s old truck sits in the yard, and the bullet-riddled corpse of his new one. T.K.’s Explorer is up at the bunkhouse. Olivia’s heart judders behind her ribs when the road spits her onto the property. She kills the engine and steps out with her arms crossed protectively over her chest.

The dogs are raising hell over at the barn. Olivia approaches the house slowly. “Bill?” she calls out, hating the quaver in her voice but knowing it’s something Taggert will be listening for. The man doesn’t miss much.

“I’m here,” he says.

She can barely make him out, slumped there on the car seat under the awning, a beer in his hand. She moves toward him, unsure what to do now, what to say. Before she can come up with something, her legs give way, and she sinks to the ground in front of him. He doesn’t stir when she rests her cheek on his thigh and begins to cry. The tears are mostly from fear, but he doesn’t know that. Olivia lets them come. They’re a good addition to her act.

“I’m sorry,” she sobs.

Something brushes the back of her head, and she tenses up. She doesn’t want to die. Not here. Not now. Not on her knees in front of this man, any man. It’s only Taggert’s fingers, though, lightly stroking her hair.

“I never told you I had a son,” he says.

“No,” Olivia replies. “You didn’t.”

“Bill Junior. Billy. By my first wife, Clara, the girl I married right after graduation, back in Kentucky.”

Olivia sniffs and reaches up to wipe her nose. She can see the sky from here, full of dust, no color she can name.

“We didn’t last long,” Taggert continues. “Things were rotten between us before I went into the army and got worse when I mustered out. I’d blown a man’s head off from five feet away, and Clara was worried about what to make for Sunday supper. She had this idea of the way things ought to be, and it was a joke. Shit jobs, a little house, church — that stuff just made me laugh. The rules didn’t apply to me anymore, and she thought the rules were all there was.”

Taggert falls silent, and Olivia hears him sip his beer. He’s been at it a while, she can tell. His voice has that lazy drawl it gets.

“Billy was born while I was in the jungle,” he says. “He was about six months old when I first saw him and screamed bloody murder every time I tried to pick him up. Only wanted his momma. I resented that. It’s crazy, a baby and all, but I did, I resented it. ‘How dare the little fucker?’ You know? I wouldn’t hardly have anything to do with him.

“When me and Clara split up a year later, she took Billy with her to her mom’s. I was killing myself in the mine back then, running wild when I wasn’t. Clara got her child support every month, and I’d stop by now and then with a toy or a box of Pampers, but, truthfully, I didn’t feel nothing for the kid, and he didn’t feel nothing for me. He’d rather watch cartoons than visit. Wouldn’t say two words to me when I showed up.

“I moved to Louisville when I was twenty-one, and pretty soon it got down to birthday cards and a check at Christmas. Every year a school picture of Billy would come in the mail, and I’d take the old one out of my wallet and put in the new one. Didn’t mean shit, but it did, you know?”

Taggert pauses again. The car seat creaks as he shifts his weight. Olivia’s never seen him this deep in his past. He’s telling the kinds of stories she’s been prodding him for since they met, giving the details he’s always claimed to have forgotten, swearing that he runs lean and mean when it comes to memories, tossing overboard any that might weigh him down.

“He called me once, when he was about twelve,” he says. “Out of the blue, Sunday afternoon. I was living in San Diego. Clara got my number from my brother, told him it was an emergency.

“It started out as catching up. He was playing Pop Warner. His grades weren’t too good, but he was going to summer school to bring them up. I asked if he had a girlfriend, and he said, ‘Hell no!’ Just like that: ‘Hell no!’

“Then I heard his momma: ‘Tell him. Tell him now.’

“Turned out he’d been arrested riding a stolen motorcycle. He didn’t know it was stolen, of course, had borrowed it from a friend or some such horseshit, lying like a rug. I knew Clara wanted me to give him hell, do the daddy thing, but I was sitting there with a kilo of coke and two machine guns on the table in front of me. Cracked my ass up. That woman, man, she never did get it.…”

His voice trails off once more. Olivia’s still too frightened to raise her head, but she squeezes his leg and murmurs, “So what’d you say to him?”

“I said, ‘Be more careful next time, son. Don’t get caught.’ ”

“Really?”

Taggert drinks his beer, doesn’t answer. The dogs are going crazy now. Must be a mountain lion prowling nearby.

“I was pissed Clara had tracked me down,” Taggert says. “Thought I was being funny. That was the last time I ever heard from him. I got a newspaper article from my brother two years later. Billy’d shot himself in the head at a party, in front of all his friends. They think it might have been an accident because there was no note or anything. I hope it was.”

Olivia looks up at him. He’s gazing out at the barn with a haunted look.

“People claimed we had the same eyes,” he says, “but I never saw it.”

Olivia scrambles onto the car seat, throws her arms around him, and buries her face in his neck. Now’s the time to be the good girlfriend, to hold him tight and tell him that all the bad shit that’s happened to him isn’t his fault. Her heart is as cold as the moonlight that’s never warmed anyone, and Taggert knows it, but he’s so tangled in his own web right now, he’s not even thinking straight. All she has to do is mouth the words he wants to hear.

“You ever considered kids?” he says.

“I don’t know,” Olivia says. “Why?”

“Once I’m out of the game, I’d kind of like to give it another shot.”

Olivia thinks about tomorrow, about all that money coming together. She keeps her face hidden so Taggert can’t see her smile and whispers, “Oh, Bill, you’re gonna get me crying again.”