Way Down on the High Lonely (18 page)

“Or is she
your
woman now?” the nice guy demanded.

“I think she’s probably her own woman,” Neal said, trying to keep his voice low and calm, because maybe if he kept it low enough, no one would hear it shaking. He saw Steve Mills work his way toward the front of the crowd and place himself between Cal Strekker and the impromptu boxing ring. The band had come to the end of the slow song and didn’t bother to start a new one. New Red was probably searching his memory for a country-western dirge.

“You want to take this outside, or settle it right here?” Charlie demanded.

“Uhh … what’s behind door number three?”

There was a titter of laughter from the crowd, but no one stepped forward to stop the upcoming fight.

I don’t believe this, Neal thought. Stuff like this just doesn’t happen. This is so goddamn stupid.

“I’m going to beat the shit out of you,” said Charlie.

Why does everybody want to beat the shit out of me tonight? “Too late,” Neal said. “You already scared the shit out of me.”

Another chuckle from the onlookers. Charlie wasn’t laughing, though, he just looked puzzled.

“Are you afraid to fight me?” he asked. It was the ultimate challenge.

“Of course I’m afraid to fight you. I’m a lousy fighter and fighting hurts, even when you win. I never fight unless I absolutely have to.”

“You’re chicken, yellowbelly!”

“You’re not really getting it, are you, Charlie? And by the way, that was a mixed metaphor.”

Neal felt that awful sensation of having every eye in the place on him, including Karen’s.

“Hold on a second, Charlie,” he said, giving him the time-out signal before turning back to Karen. “Do you want me to fight him? Something about your honor or my honor or something?”

“Of course not. Would you fight him just because I wanted you to?”

“Of course not. Do you want to just get out of here?”

Charlie put his hands up and started forward.

“Just a second, Charlie,” Neal said. “Can’t you see I’m having a conversation here? Jesus.”

Charlie stopped cold, his hands still up in the fighting position.

“Yes,” Karen said, “I would like to get out of here.”

“Let’s go,” Neal said, taking her arm. As they walked past Charlie, he said, “See? You lost.”

As they went through the swinging doors into the street, Neal could hear the roar of laughter from the bar and the music starting up again. Well, he thought, John Wayne might not have approved, but Cary Grant would have loved it.

Karen pushed him up against a pickup parked along the sidewalk.

“That,” she said, “was great.”

She grabbed his face with both her hands and kissed him long and hard.

“You’re not going back to that stupid cabin tonight,” she said.

“I’m not?”

“No, you’re not.”

“Tell me,” she said as she nestled in his arm under the sheets of her old iron frame bed, “if it isn’t too personal a question, how long has it been since you … uh …”

“Since I was with somebody?”

“Okay.”

“Almost four years.”

She thought about that for a couple of seconds.

“Well, that explains it,” she said, and then she started to laugh. She laughed until her body shook and he started laughing, and they laughed until she reached for him and observed, “Well, there are some good things about this four-year gap, too. Lucky me.”

So much for my monklike existence, Neal thought. Good riddance.

Joe Graham meandered out of his cheap room into downtown Hollywood, which looked like a lot of downtowns on a late Saturday night. The winners had already gone home, the losers sulked in anticipation of the dreaded “last call.” The cops pulled out of the doughnut shops to collect their quotas of Dill’s along the strips, the emergency room crews took a breather in the last quiet minutes before closing time brought the rush hour of stitches and cold compresses. On the sidewalks, the working girls circled like vultures, waiting to feed on the defeated men who were skulking away from the singles bars still single. In the back rooms of the biker clubs the boys made low-ball dope deals, while heavy metal teenagers in sleeveless T-shirts scuffled to pick up nickel bags of grass. In gravel parking lots old rivalries burst into new fights, and in the AA club the old-timers and the newcomers drank coffee, smoked cigarettes, and thanked their higher powers that for this twenty-four hours, anyway, they were out of it, out of the old cycle of fresh hopes and stale disappointments that was Saturday night in America.

Back on The High Lonely, Neal Carey slept in Karen Hawley’s warm arms and warm bed, while out on the sagebrush flats the coyotes sniffed, pawed, and whined in an excitement that turned into a howling frenzy.

6

N
eal found Harley McCall the next afternoon.

He might have found him in the morning, except that he stayed late in Karen Hawley’s bed. He woke to the sound of wind chimes and water. The chimes jangled in Karen’s small backyard; the water came from Karen vigorously brushing her teeth in the bathroom two giant steps from the bed.

Karen’s house occupied a little knoll on the north edge of town. It was a small, white one-story clapboard affair, a little ramshackle on the outside but clean and well furnished. Her small kitchen had all of the modern appliances, the living room had a sofa that looked new, an expensive stereo system, and well-framed Gorman prints on the wall. The bedroom was just large enough for the bed and a chest of drawers.

“Can I give you a lift back out to the Mills’?” she asked as she came back into the bedroom. Then she added, “I have lesson plans to do.”

“If you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind. After all, I practically kidnapped you.”

She gave him a breakfast of blueberry muffins and coffee, then gave him the ride back out to the Mills’ place.

“You don’t mind if I don’t come in,” she said as she pulled into their drive. “I don’t think I could stand to see Peggy’s smug smile.”

“Your honor is safe with me.”

“Better not be.” She kissed him lightly. “So I think one of us is supposed to say ‘When will I see you again?’”

“When will I see you again?”

“When do you want to?” Karen asked.

“I usually get into town on Saturdays.”

“You should get a car.”

“I should.”

Somehow they had started kissing again, and somewhere in there they agreed to see each other on Saturday, unless Karen had a chance to pop out to the ranch before that. And somewhere in there—maybe it was while looking at her smiling eyes—Neal felt a tug he hadn’t felt in a long time. Maybe he had never felt it before.

Neal got out of the car, Karen put the Jeep into a swift and skillful K-turn, and Peggy Mills made a precisely timed appearance on the porch under the guise of shaking out a rug.

“Next time you see Karen,” she said as Neal tried to sneak past the house, “you tell her I said she’s a coward. You are seeing her again, aren’t you?”

“Saturday.”

“You’d better work that smile down before your face breaks in half,” Peggy said. “You be good to her.”

“Yes ma’am.”

Peggy rolled her eyes, smiled at him, and disappeared back into the house. Neal figured that she wouldn’t let Steve come out and make any smart remarks.

Neal hiked back toward the cabin. He was almost there when the coyote appeared.

“Sorry I’m late,” Neal said.

The animal ignored him. It was acting strangely, prancing around the brush, tossing its head and celebrating like a dog with a bone. Neal looked closer and saw that it did have something in its mouth. The coyote tossed its head again, almost as if it were trying to show off its acquisition.

Neal trotted into the cabin and got his binoculars. It took a moment for him to find the coyote again and another moment to focus the glasses, and then he saw what the coyote had in its mouth.

A human arm. Half a human arm, anyway, from the elbow joint down.

Neal struggled to hold the focus as his own hands shook and the coyote jumped and danced in triumph. He twisted the focusing dial again and then could make out the distinct shape of human fingers against the coyote’s white teeth.

Neal ducked back inside the cabin, grabbed the Marlin, jumped off the porch, and ran toward the coyote. The animal dropped down on its forelegs like a dog getting ready to play a good game of keep-away. He waited until Neal got within twenty yards and then sprang sideways, let Neal get within ten, and then juked the other way.

But the forearm was a heavier load than the coyote was used to managing, and it fell out of his mouth. He picked it back up as the man kept charging, then decided it was time to get out of there. He started straight away at a trot, dragging the arm, the elbow joint bouncing in the dirt.

Neal raised the rifle and fired.

The coyote jumped at the noise, gave Neal a look of betrayal, and scampered off at full speed.

Neal took a deep breath and walked over to where the arm lay in the sagebrush.

It was badly decomposed, a putrid gray-green. Neal could tell that the coyote had dug it up from the dirt that still clung to the rotting flesh. Neal forced himself to get down on his knees to examine the arm more closely, and that’s where he saw the stain of color showing up through the putrefaction. It was a tattoo: “Don’t tread on me.”

Neal turned away and vomited.

When he was finished, his eyes watering from his retching and the stench of the severed limb, he took off a shoe and a sock, put the shoe back on, and slipped the sock over his hand. He picked up the arm, fighting back another round of vomiting, and carried it back to the cabin. He wrapped the arm in one of his T-shirts, dug a deep hole on the slope in back of the cabin, and dropped the arm into it. He put some rocks in, filled the hole back up, and then put some more rocks on top.

Thus Neal Carey buried what was left of Harlcy McCall.

“Why do you think Hansen or his men were involved in the killing?” Ethan Kitteredge asked. “How do you know it was a homicide at all? McCall might have wandered off into the wild and met with some mishap.”

He was sitting in an enormous leather wing-back chair in his study at the family house on the east side of Providence, Rhode Island. Ed Levine sat uncomfortably in a matching chair. A fire of birch logs crackled in the fireplace.

One reason for Ed’s discomfiture was Kitteredge’s dress: pajamas, a maroon robe, and slippers. Levine had called him in the middle of the evening—as soon as he got Neal Carey’s call—and Kitteredge had sent a helicopter for him, insisting that he come right away. Ed had never been to Kitteredge’s home before and felt awkward from the moment Liz Kitteredge, the former Liz Chase, answered the door. She greeted him warmly, ushered him into the study, inquired if he preferred coffee, tea, or a brandy, and padded off to fetch Ethan.

Now Levine was sipping coffee, hoping not to spill any on the priceless Oriental rug at his feet and trying to brief his boss on the intricacies of a very complicated case.

“Neal thinks that Strekker was lying when he said that McCall had moved on. That, combined with the fact that Neal found the body just a couple of miles from the Hansen place,” Ed answered.

“But what would be the motive?” Kitteredge asked. “Wasn’t McCall one of these people?”

“Sir, we’re not talking about rational men here. We’re talking about a virulent combination of racism and religion. The picture that’s beginning to emerge here is that Carter’s church has combed the prisons and jails for violent men to match a violent creed and placed them in these ‘cells’ in remote parts of the West.”

Kitteredge raised his eyebrows. “The church militant.”

“Exactly,” Ed answered. “Right now we can only speculate as to how McCall fell afoul of these people, but there are some questions we need to address immediately.”

“Quite.”

“For one, do we alert the authorities?”

“We have found a body, here, Ed We do have certain responsibilities as citizens.”

“Absolutely. On the other hand, sir, do we really want local cops, state troopers, or the FBI to go plodding in there? That might get these nuts edgy enough to kill the boy.”

“Assuming he’s still alive.”

“And assuming they have him.”

Kitteredge looked into the fire. “But you think he’s dead, don’t you?”

Ed shifted in his chair. “Yes, sir,” he answered, “I’m afraid I do.”

“Tragic,” Kitteredge said.

Ed didn’t think that required an answer. He knew Kitteredge’s expression well enough to let the silence go on. He knew that Kitteredge was analyzing the information, sorting out fact from supposition, testing various possible actions against the duties and responsibilities Friends of the Family had to its clients.

Ed munched on a shortbread cookie while Ethan Kitteredge thought.

“You say that Neal Carey has penetrated this group?” Kitteredge asked.

“Yes and no,” Ed answered. “Neal likened it to circles within circles. He feels that he has penetrated the first circle but is nowhere near the center.”

“And you trust his analysis.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Scottish,” said Kitteredge.

“Sorry?”

“The cookie.”

“It’s very good.”

“Yes,” Kitteredge said. “Carey’s been undercover for a long time, hasn’t he?”

“Three months or so,” Ed admitted.

“Is it your evaluation that he is capable of sustaining this role for another extended period of time?”

Ed took another long sip of coffee and another bite of the cookie before answering. He had to be careful here, because he knew—and he knew that Kitteredge knew—that three months was a long undercover assignment, movies and television notwithstanding. And Carey had been out there alone with no handler to talk to—no human contact. An undercover operative tends to forget what’s real and what’s make believe. He gets lonely, insecure, and paranoid. But not Neal Carey.

“Neal Carey,” Ed said, “is the perfect undercover. He has no character.”d;

Kitteredge raised his eyebrows at the supposed insult.

“Neal has lots of personality,” Ed explained, although he felt that most of Neal’s personality was more or less hemorrhoidal, “but no character of his own. He was just a kid when he started with us. When other kids his age were building character, Neal was building cover stories. He’s a chameleon—he takes on the coloring of his surroundings. In that sense, sir, Neal is always undercover, whether he’s on assignment or not.”