Way Down on the High Lonely (35 page)
B
rogan poured another glass of whiskey as the stranger listened in rapt attention. Brogan had sold a lot of booze telling the story of the battle of Reese River valley.
The stranger, a salesman from Bishop, laid another five down and looked around the grungy, colorful saloon. A mammoth dog lay sleeping behind the bar. The only other customer was a bearded, long-haired man who sat at the last bar stool drinking coffee and reading a dog-eared paperback book.
“So then what happened?” the salesman asked Brogan.
Brogan went on to tell him how Milkowski had found the money somewhere to buy the Hansen place and so now owned the whole valley, and how the daughter had gone off to college at Brown, which he thought was in Rhode Island or one of them little East Coast states. The boy got back to his momma, who sent a postcard a few weeks ago saying he was coming along well, was going to be just fine. The one-armed man and the big bear of a guy just disappeared, and for a while the feds were all over town, asking a lot of questions. Then there was a whole herd of types from the state museum who went poking around the cave measuring shit and stuff, and they were just puzzled as hell about that Indian’s body, because he came from a tribe that was supposed to have been extinct for about a hundred years. And Karen Hawley … well, she found herself a new man.
Brogan leaned over the bar, smiled, shook his head at the wonder of his own story, and waited for the question that always came so he could give the kicker.
Sure enough, the stranger asked, “And what happened to Neal Carey?”
Brogan shrugged dramatically, leaned over a little more, and said, “Nobody knows. Some say he froze to death out there. Others say he’s still alive somewhere up in them caves. But no one ever saw him again.”
Brogan left the man shaking his head and sidled down the bar. He poured more coffee into the bearded man’s cup and smiled at him.
Neal finished the cup, climbed off the stool, nodded to the salesman, and headed out. Brezhnev lifted his head, and if Neal hadn’t known better he’d have sworn the dog winked.
Neal would like to have had another cup, read a few more pages of
Roderick Random,
and maybe chewed the shit with Brogan for a while, but there wasn’t time.
He pushed open the door, stepped out into the cool air, and walked up the hill to meet Karen for dinner. It was chili night at Wong’s.
Don Winslow is the
New York Times
bestselling author of thirteen crime and mystery novels as well as a number of short stories and screenplays. His first novel,
A Cool Breeze on the Underground
(1991), was nominated for an Edgar Award, and
California Fire and Life
(1999) received the Shamus Award, which honors the year’s best detective novel.
Winslow was born in 1953 in New York City, and he grew up in Perryville, Rhode Island, a small coastal town. His mother was a librarian and his father a Navy officer. Both parents instilled in Winslow a love of storytelling, and the bookshelves at home were well stocked with literary classics, which Winslow was encouraged to explore. When his father stayed up late swapping sailor stories with his buddies, Winslow would hide under the dining room table to eavesdrop.
Winslow had an unusually varied career before becoming a fulltime writer, beginning with a series of jobs as a child actor. After high school, he attended the University of Nebraska and majored in African history. He then moved back to New York City where he managed movie theaters and became a private investigator. Winslow moonlighted as a PI while pursuing a master’s degree in military history. He also lived for a time in Africa, where he worked as a safari guide, and in China, where he led hiking tours. Winslow completed
A Cool Breeze on the Underground
while in China.
A Cool Breeze
draws from Winslow’s experiences tracking missing persons while in New York. Protagonist Neal Carey is a graduate student studying English literature who is drawn by past underworld connections into a career as a private investigator. Winslow went on to write four other novels with Neal Carey as the main character, often set in locales where the author had resided at some point.
The Trail to Buddha’s Mirror
(1992) has Carey chasing a scientist through China.
Way Down on the High Lonely
(1993) and
While Drowning in the Desert
(1996) are set on the west coast of the United States, where Winslow moved after marrying his wife, Jean, and publishing his first novel.
Winslow’s recent fiction is often set in Southern California, where he currently lives. The cross-border drug war, California organized crime, and surf culture are common themes in his later work. His style bears the spirit of his settings, and his prose is notable for its spare dialogue and deadpan narration, as well as the technical accuracy that comes from his many years working as a private investigator.
A number of Winslow’s novels have been adapted for film. A 2007 movie based on
The Death and Life of Bobby Z
(1997) starred Laurence Fishburne, and
The Winter of Frankie Machine
(2006) is under production and set to star Robert DeNiro. Winslow’s latest novel,
Savages
(2010), has received stellar reviews, and the author is currently adapting the novel for film with Oliver Stone.
A Winslow family photo taken in Rhode Island in the 1960s. Winslow (front left) is seen here with his father, mother, both sets of grandparents, sister (Kristine Rolofson, also a novelist), and dog.
Winslow in his 1972 high school yearbook photo.
Winslow juggling at his nephew Ben’s birthday party in Beyond Hope, Idaho, where he lived off and on in the mid-1970s. He ran cattle but also “had a very macho job driving a salad-dressing truck. There would have been no Thousand Island dressing in Libby, Montana, without men like me.” It was in a cabin in Beyond Hope that Winslow started writing
Cool Breeze on the Underground
.
Winslow fishing on Sandy Brook, near his old home in Riverton, Connecticut, in the early 1990s. He says he was “lousy at it, but was an enthusiastic trout fisherman back in the day.” Winslow also claims that he “set a record of failing to catch a single fish on four continents in a single calendar year.”
Winslow with his two dogs, Bud and Lou, on the deck of his house in Riverton, Connecticut, in the early 1990s. Riverton, a small, postcard New England town, has one general store—the Riverton General Store—that, Winslow says, “made the best sandwiches in the world.”
Winslow with his late friend Quentin Keynes and his son at Christmas around 2003. Keynes was a safari guide, filmmaker, rare-book collector, and the great-grandson of Charles Darwin. The London flat in
Cool Breeze on the Underground
was based on Keynes’s, where Winslow lived for several summers in the 1970s while Keynes was away in Africa. One of the characters in the book—Simon Keyes—was also based on Keynes.
Winslow at a book signing for
The Winter of Frankie Machine
in 2006.