Chapter Seven
"Now wasn't that queer," Lance said
as Dan banged the gear shift and putted back onto the highway.
"Queer, yes, and frightening," Dan
said, glancing into the driver's side mirror as Sweeny and the other cop shrank
against the back drop of sandy soil and dusty buildings. "Sweeny's a
hard-nosed bastard, a regular bulldog and for him to let us go means something
big is up."
"Big? Like what" Sarah asked, her
hands shaking as she struggled to open her purse. Lance's hands moved to close
around hers, but she pushed them away.
Dan dragged his attention away from the mirror
and towards the road ahead. The faces beside him on the front seat were grim.
There was something tragic in these two, their wide eyes a little too innocent
for the times, still bearing the expression of mid-west love children looking
for peace and flowers in the city.
"As much as I love Mike," Dan said.
"The boy does exaggerate a little. I mean, sure he's wanted by the authorities.
But not as much as he makes out. He bombed banks and stole his kid, but none of
that lately. Even the Weather Underground wouldn't warrant something this
strange."
"I don't understand," Lance said.
"Damn it," Dan grumbled, more to
himself and his own disbelief than at theirs. "They let us go. They knew
where we'd come from. They knew who we were. They should have dragged us off to
jail and their rubber hoses, and yet, they still let us go."
"Why?" asked Sarah.
"That, my dear," Dan said, hand falling
onto her thigh, "is the sixty four thousand dollar question."
***********
"So where are they?" Mike asked,
pacing up and down the short stretch of sidewalk, downtown business district
building bulging on either side like an imitation
"I'm not a mind reader, Mike," Chris
said, sitting on the stoop of a closed store front, her hair pressed down by an
oil-stained bandanna. She might have been any of the local indians in town for
a drink after a hard day in the citrus groves, or a run-away Chicano looking
for a place to sleep. "But if Dan said he'd meet you, he will."
Marie's heals clicked as she returned from the
corner store sipping soda pop. She stood out against the backdrop, as thickly
painted as local prostitutes get. More than one car had slowed for a peep,
redneck cowboys hooting. All Mike needed was a cop to catch a glimpse. He
wanted to hide her, or force the make-up off of her. He could do neither.
Something melted in him when he saw her.
Chris proved less kind, growling for her to
sit down. "You want to get us busted?" she asked.
Marie stared, something hard forming deep in
her eyes. "Why would I do that?"
"Because you look like a whore. Or a
billboard for your father's storm troopers."
"Leave my Daddy out of this."
"I wish we could," Chris grumbled.
"But God knows they infest places like insects. One word gets out about
you being in town, and they'll swarm all over us."
"Stop trying to scare her, Chris,"
Mike said. "They aren't on our trail."
"But they could be," Chris said.
"They could be sneaking up on us this very minute ready to...."
"I said stop!"
"Okay," Chris said with a shrug. "But
don't say I didn't warn you."
Good old Chris. She never let a chance to
swipe at Mike's lovers, always in competition, always trying to snatch him
back. Mike should have scolded her more strongly, telling her just how evil
she'd become. She persisted in believing she could win him back. Yet each time
he looked to closely into her eyes, he saw his child being led away.
I ought to kill you for giving him up,
Mike had once screamed.
But I couldn't keep him, Mike, she'd
protested. The cops were at the door.
You could have fought.
The way she fought the white man now over land
rights and indian privilege. She spoke about blood, and the need to protect it,
but the one true representative of her blood line she let drip through her finger
like polluted water.
She smiled at him, her eyes full of victory,
as if she had scored a point. Marie curled up under his arm, shuttering, like a
deeply wounded puppy.
"You father isn't out there, honey,"
he whispered softly.
Yet others were. Waiting and watching. He
could feel them. He could smell their breath. Cops and others who had become
part of the establishment here over the years. Any one of whom would know Mike
and scream the moment they saw him.
"There they are!" Chris yelped and
leaped to her feet, one of her two suitcases falling from her lap as she waved.
The battered red, white & blue van rumbled up to the square from the
direction of the highway, a curl of bluish smoke rising from its rear.
The machine looked about to die, though gave
Mike a pleasant thrill as it pulled up to the curb, Dan's gnarled face behind
the wheel.
"Get in, quick," Dan growled, a note
of anxiety in his voice.
"What happened?" Mike asked, his
elation diving into panic. "Something go wrong?"
"Just get in, I'll tell you while we're
moving."
Mike scrabbled in the side doors behind the
others. The smell of fresh pot lingered in the air, making him want a taste of
it for his nerves. The van started forward as Mike fell into the chair behind
the driver.
"Out with it, boy," he said.
"Did you find Gil or what?"
"We made contract, all right," Dan
said, slamming the gear shift into second. "But it took a lot to set up a
meeting. We're hot, Mike. Every cop in creation knows about this van. And
Demetre's in town. I'm sure of it."
Dan related his meeting with Sweeny. Mike's
long brows folded down towards his eyes as he stared at passing
Where?
If Demetre wanted him badly enough, Demetre
would have him. He and Mike had come nose to nose before, always a chess game
of nerves from which Mike just barely escaped. With the onslaught of weariness,
Mike might not do so this time.
"But Gil agreed to meet us?" Mike
asked.
"Under certain conditions."
"Like what?"
"He set the time and place, and he
doesn't want us followed."
"Like we can help that in a van like
this!"
"That's what I told them. So they've made
arrangements to pick up you and Chris on the South end tonight."
"Me and Chris?"
"That's what they said."
Mike caught a reflection of his own alarm in
Chris' eyes, her instinct reacting as he did.
"What about you?" Mike asked.
"You're the one who knows these people."
Dan shrugged. "I'm only telling you what
they told me."
"I don't like it. I want somebody
covering my back. Maybe we should just skip town and forget Gil."
"No," Chris said sharply.
"We've got things to tell him."
"Not like this, Chris," Mike
protested. "It smells like one big trap."
"Fine," Chris said. "Then work
around the details. But meeting Gil is important. He's big cheese in these
parts."
"Whoa there!," Dan said. "I'm
not sticking my neck in any noose. Gil's a big cheese, all right. And a careful
one. A lot of cops in this town would snatch him up as quick as you."
Mike pondered things for a moment, then
sighed. "What time did they want the meeting for?"
"Dusk," Dan said. "I guess that
would be around eight."
"Fine, then I'll meet you at six-- no,
five. Just where exactly did they say?"
Dan stared angrily into the rear view mirror.
"Down where route ten turns south. It's an incomplete section near
Guadalupe. Are you going somewhere?"
"Yes," Mike said, recalling the
area, remembering vaguely a park and a jutting piece of red stone which marked
the south boundary of the city, a one-time holy place of his mother's people.
Now it gathered flocks of camping tourists.
"Where?"
"Never mind the details," Mike said.
"Just let me out." Marie gathered her purse, but Mike shook his head.
"You stay with them."
"But Mikie...."
"Don't argue. What I have to do, I'll do
best alone."
He slipped out the side door as Dan slowed,
banging the rear of the van the moment he was free. It picked up speed and
vanished into the dust. Mike sagged, his legs aching from too many jumps. But
it would be some time before he could truly rest. He stuck his thumb out and an
old green ford pulled over, its driver motioning him in.
***********
The cold air bit Lance through his jacket. From
one extreme to another. Desert life as unpredictable as the jungle. He could
see the dim glow of an icy mountain top just above them. Not the
Dan parked the van on the side of the road.
Before them, slanting down, the half constructed highway stared back like a
ghost town, heavy equipment in place of broken-down saloon and black smith
shop. A few dirt lanes extended down into the valley in neat slices between the
trees, wounds from which the forest would never heal.
"This is crazy, Dan," Lance
protested. "Nobody's going to believe I'm Mike. I don't even look like him."
"It's the way Mike wants it," Dan
said stiffly. "Argue with him when he gets back."
"If it's a trap, we won't be alive to
argue," Chris said, hand on the side door waiting for Mike's signal to
exit the van. "God knows the pacifist won't help me in a fight."
"But Mike will," Dan snapped.
"He's out there somewhere, waiting and watching."
Mike had met them at five, down the road from
where they were to meet Gil, shutting Dan aside in a series of whispers. Secret
strategies from which this foolish plan had emerged.
"Don't worry," Lance said, bitterly.
"If it is a trap, I'll make sure they shoot you first. That way you won't
have to worry about what I'm doing."
Chris stared up startled. Point one for Lance
who had heard pacifist insults since his first day in basic and had learned to
fight back.
"Both of you shut up," Dan hissed.
"Someone's coming."
Tapping sounded from the walls of the van,
glimpses of men in ski masks showed at the windows, each man armed with a
rifle. One yanked open the side door, weapons poking in.
"Which of you are going?" the man
asked gruffly with a Mexican or indian accent.
"Those two," Dan said, pointing at
Lance and Chris.
"All right then, out," he said, his
men stepping back with their weapons raise. Starlight made ghosts of them,
though Lance saw anger in their darting glances.
"Now, Mister L.A.," the masked
figure said to Dan through the open passenger window. "Why don't you just
drive off and forget you ever saw us. Okay?"
"What about them? Where do I pick them up
when you're through?"
The man laughed. "The morgue if they're
lucky. Just forget them, too," he said and banged the glass with the
barrel of his gun. "Unless you want to join them."
Chris, who stood close to Lance's shoulder,
shifted, her arms suddenly taunt as her hands gripped something deep in her
jacket pockets, the point through fabric suggesting the captured pistols. The
ache came roaring into his head, filling the vacuum that came before every fire
fight. His stomach tightened with a tinge of fear. Someone was going to die,
and no matter how fast Lance was, or how good his medicine, he could not save
that life.
He touched Chris' elbow. She glared at him and
shook off his hand.
Dan glared through the windshield, his grim
face just barely exposed under the brim of his hat in the star light. He
engaged the gears and turned the van back up the way it had come, wheels
spurting soil as it completed its three-point turn. The rear right fender
struck one of the gun men. The man nearest Lance lost his face, a bullet making
its exit where the nose should have been. The echo of the shot set the others
loose into a firing frenzy, shooting at the shadows out of which the shots had
come. Sparks lit up the night as Chris dragged Lance down, her own two pistols
active. Mike rolled out from under the van, his own pistol popping. The fury
shook the masked men and they ran back into the hills.
Lance rushed to one of the fallen men, his
hands pressing closed a gaping wound in his chest. The heart pumped out the
blood through his fingers. The man moaned from under the mask.
"He's dying, damn it!" Lance shouted
as Chris rose up beside him. "Do something."
The man's eyes opened and stared up at her
face. Blood bubbled out from the corner of his mouth. The eyes widened.
"You?" he groaned.
Chris lifted her pistol and fired into the
tattered mask. The heart and moans ceased.
"You--You bitch!" Lance roared and
rose. "You didn't have to kill him?"
"It's what they intended for us,
friend," Chris said.
"But we're not supposed to..."
"This isn't the army now," Chris
said, pushing her pistols back into her pockets. "We don't have rules
here. We survive."
The firing went on in the hills as other,
unmasked strangers appeared out of the shadows on the far side of the road,
climbing up after the masked men like a small army.
One of this group paused near them.
"Where's Mike?" he asked.
Chris motioned towards Mike who was still near
the van.
"Took you people long enough," Mike
said, pocketing his own pistol. "I thought we were going to have to do
them in all by ourselves."
"You expected these people?" Chris
said, obviously angry. "And didn't tell us?"
"I wasn't sure they would get here in
time," Mike said. "And they almost didn't. What happened?"
"Road blocks," the stranger said,
glancing around, the star light revealing the mingled features of a mixed breed
indian. His soiled blue jeans and work shirt suggested an immigrant worker from
the citrus groves. But his steady gaze reminded Lance of the Ranger units from
missions deep in the jungle, as shaggy and ill-kept as displaces villagers, yet
deadly. "The cops know something's up and are trying to snag people to
find out what."
"I don't understand," Lance said.
"Why were those people trying to kill us? And who are you?"
"I'm from Gil," the indian said.
"And those others are one of the many rival gangs, looking to make a name
for themselves. You friend got careless in trying to contact us."
Dan lit a cigarette and said nothing, though
his half-shaded face might have been blushing.
"They figured on snatching me as a
prize," Mike said. "Word's out that I'm back, and they figured they
might get some kind of reward from the cops."
"So now do we get to see Gil?" Chris
asked. The killing fire had died in her eyes and she looked somewhat tired.
"Yes," the stranger said. "I'm
Gil."
"You?" Chris said, glaring at the
man, her gaze moving up his slim form in obvious disbelief. "How do we
know?"
The indian smiled. His face had a chiseled
look, with the mouth and cheek bones protruding too much to ever seem handsome.
"Because I told you," he said. "Though Michael was wise enough
to seek me out. But come, this is no time for talk. The authorities will have
heard the shooting. We must leave here quickly."
Gil paused. Lance's face must have betrayed
some of his horror. He couldn't shake the shooting from his head. Even Vietnam,
he'd not seen worse, except maybe from the CIA men.
"What's wrong with this one?" Gil
asked, his soft voice puzzled.
"Nothing," Chris said. "He's
pacifist. All this violence makes him cry like a baby."
"They're dead," Lance mumbled-- his
words coming back to him like an echo from a great distance. "They're all
dead."
He wasn't sure of whom he meant. The few
broken figures on the mountain side, or the mounds of bodies he'd seen rotting
at the edge of the jungle. The green and black seemed to mingle into a confused
mass inside his head. "And I couldn't save them."
Gil's features softened, his long fingers
touching the wet streaks rolling down Lance's cheeks.
"Yes, they're dead," he whispered.
"But there are some in this world not worth saving. Come now. We shall
heal your wounds later."
***********
The van bucked slightly as it climbed up out
of the ravine, the dirt road turning into gravel, then asphalt. The jeep in
front of the little caravan blinked out each turn like a command. Behind the
van, a half dozen other jeeps followed, soldier green, nearly invisible in the
darkness.
"A lot of help you were back there,"
Chris said, seated beside him in the front. Mike and Marie sat on the bed in
back, like buffers to the battle of silence between Lance and Sarah. "I
expected the pacifist to stand by and watch, but you?"
Dan glanced sidewards at the cruel twist of Chris'
mouth. She reminded him of his ex-wife, making his ache worse. He hadn't been
laid since the road to Denver, and then only a quickly with a hitch-hiking
hippie chick. He missed the regularity of L.A. and the parade of mid-west girls
from which to pick. But his ex-wife had always been able to turn him on, in the
mood or not.
"You expected me to charge out into the
middle of all that shooting with only a knife?"
"Why not?" Chris asked, her eyes
suggesting Dan might well have a chance. "You got us into the mess."
"Leave him alone," Mike said.
"You wouldn't have done any better in his place. Those people have been
waiting for weeks. They thought we were bringing in the shipment from
Denver."
"What?" Dan said, glancing up at the
silhouette of Mike in the rearview mirror. The jeeps had turned on their lights
for travel on the more conventional roads.
"Looks like the drug company put out the
word on you, Dan," Mike said.
"But they were looking to take you and
Chris," Dan said.
"I know. Once they heard we were in town,
they changed their plans. Me and Chris go way back in this state. I guess they
figured we were here to start up business again. And the last thing they needed
was more competition. Gil's quite enough."
"But if the company knows I'm here...?"
Dan mumbled, his hands shaking on the wheel and not from rough ground.
"Still, there's something queer in all
this," Mike said. "Everybody acts as if we really do have the drugs.
Even Gil."
"Well you heard those men in the
pass," Chris said, looking over her shoulder. "They said the
shipment's still back at the house."
"Maybe," Mike said. "But I
don't think they are. Who else was in that house, anyway?"
"Demetre was," Chris said.
"He wouldn't take them."
"Maybe he's using them to trace out the
rest of the circuit," Dan suggested.
"I don't think Demetre would take the
chance," Mike said.
"Look," Chris said. "They're
signalling for us to stop."
"So they are," Dan said, slamming
his feet down on the brake and clutch, feeling an odd tingle as if someone,
somewhere near was watching the whole transaction. But who? And from where? And
for what purpose?
***********
Gil came to the driver's side window, his
gaunt face haunting in the spray of headlights. "We have to leave your van
here," he said, glancing around the interior. "It's much too obvious
on the road."
"Where exactly are we?" Chris asked,
drawing the full focus of the man's eyes.
"Just an old warehouse in the
desert," Gil said.
"Which leaves our transportation up to
you?" she asked.
"I can provide what you'll need while in
Phoenix."
"And perhaps more than we want?"
"Chris!" Mike snapped from behind
her. "Quit badgering the man."
"Oh my, you've gotten trusting in your
old age," Chris said, "leaving your survival in someone else's
hands."
"If I didn't trust him, we wouldn't be
here," Mike said, glaring at her, his tone carrying with it every bit of
hate from Detroit. She wanted cry at his feet and beg him to understand. But he
never would. Not with the bitch beside him, propping him up like a Jesse James.
"You wanted to meet with Gil," Dan
pointed out.
"But not like this," Chris said.
"Not with us helpless."
"If you want our protection, it must be
on our terms," Gil said, looking a little annoyed. "But make up your
mind quickly. The police will put out the net after the shooting."
"And if anybody saw our van by the site,
it won't be hard for Sweeny or Demetre to put us in the middle of it," Dan
said. "I vote to take the man up on his offer."
"All right," Chris grumbled.
"Drive us into the lion's den! But don't say later I didn't warn
you."
***********
As warehouse, the building had long ceased its
purpose, and once the van's headlights blinked out, only the narrow beams of several
hand-held flashlights showed the dust and devastation, canvas-covered machines
and sagging work benches.
Chris stepped down onto the gritty floor. The
desert had crawled in through the crack, leaving piles of sand beneath the
broken windows and mis-hung doors. The air smelled and tasted of sand, of night
things and dead things, and thing which remained unseen. It reminded her of the
reservation when she was a girl, the stagnant, terrible life of her mother's
people dying before her eyes, and her father dancing ghost dances in an empty
gesture of war, unpainted and drunk, taking pot-shots at passing trucks along
the highway.
"This way," Gil said from behind one
of the lights. Dan hesitated, looking nervously at the dented van. "Your
vehicle will be quite safe. One of my men watches this place always."
"Why?" Chris asked. "What's
worth watching?"
"The future," Gil said. "But
come. It grows cold and we still have some way to travel." He motioned
them with the light towards what had once been a double door. The yellow face
of a hand-cranked pallet-jack grinned from between the rooms, its double
tongues jammed under a rotting wooden pallet. They stepped around it and into a
smaller room, the smell of oil and gasoline suggesting recent use. Indeed, a cream-colored
Ford sat before the closed garage door waiting on them.
"Hey!" Chris said, stopping
abruptly. "That's a cop car!"
"Of course it is," Gil said with a
note of impatience. "It's how we move freely around the city."
"Or maybe you're a cop," Chris said.
"And if I am?" Gil asked sharply,
pieces of his face showing from around the light. "What do you think you
could do about it now?"
Chris touched the butts of her pistols.
"You wouldn't live to draw your
weapons," Gil said softly. "But if I was a cop, you wouldn't have
them to draw. I have many resources at my disposal. Police cars are one of
them. You travel with friends, despite your suspicions. And safely, if you
hurry."
She saw the impatience in the others, too,
Mike's eyes gleaming with added anger in the reflected light.
"All right," she said with a sigh,
and slid into the back of the car, Dan, Lance, and Sarah beside her. Mike and
Marie sat up front. Gil did not climb behind the wheel, but a red-haired
youngster who grinned back at them like a taxi driver.
"Next stop, the hideout," he said.
***********
The car pulled out into the desert air,
starlight competing with its headlights as someone closed the garage door
behind. Lance rested his head against the glass, trying to glimpse the sky. But
he saw other shapes moving onto the road in front and behind them, the way the
jeeps had earlier-- only these had the tell-tale light racks of police cars on
their tops.
"Hey!" Dan groaned, catching sight
of the other cars as well, Chris' paranoia spreading through them in a single
rush of alarm. "What's going on here?"
"Relax," the jovial driver said,
easing their car into line with the others. "It's all part of the
plan."
"What plan?" Dan asked. "One
cop car's a plan, this many's downright unlucky."
"You miss the point," the driver
insisted. "It's all arranged. We got clearance."
"From who?" Mike asked, perched in
the front seat as if ready to leap out.
"From the very top," the driver
said. "The other cars are insurance. Anyone seeing us'll think we're
escorting the mayor."
Mike sat back in the seat and shook his head.
"It's crazy," he said.
"It's bold," the driver argued.
"Bold is the way Mister Gil does everything. He's one smart cookie, and
he's got connections, too."
"That much is obvious," Chris said.
Lance detected something bitter in her voice, though her face seemed untouched.
He turned back to the darkness and the string of cars headed for the flat heart
of Phoenix proper, like a serpent of lights slithering in the sand and
darkness. Silence reigned around them-- and so did Gil apparently."
**********
The other cars vanished one by one, turning
off at various intersections along the northerly route. They had passed
downtown and now signs for Glendale and Peoria leaped out into their headlights
in bright green faces. Signs for schools and hospitals came and went as well.
The desert had vanished, too, replaced by a suburban sprawl not so different
from the out-skirts of L.A.
Finally, the lone car turned into a street of
single stories ranch-styled houses, lazy estates on half-acre lots outlined in
fences and dying hedges. Beyond these, a modest wildness came, of pine trees
and sand dunes and a single winding drive between them. In the center of this,
a larger building appeared, this one curved into the shape of a horseshoe with
a gate at its open end.
The driver beeped the horn; the gate swung
outward, dark figures motioning them in and closing the gate behind. Inside,
the building proved a small fortress, cars packed along a covered wooden
walkway. A full two dozen doorways and windows looked in on the court, men
seated upon the walkway rails with rifles across their knees.
"What the hell is this, some kind of
commune?" Dan moaned.
"We call it our fortress," the
driver said, parking the car western style, nose towards the walkway. He hopped
out and motioned for the others to do the same.
Lance stumbled out, limbs stiff from the tight
ride. He drew odd stares from some of the armed men, his clothing caked with
dried blood. Gil stood among the men on the walkway, arms folded as he studied
them
"You live here?" Sarah asked,
turning around as if visiting Disneyland.
"All my life," Gil said. "My
great grandfather build the place back when people thought there was gold north
of here."
Sarah's eyes sparked, her gaze poking into the
shadowed crannies, looking every bit the little girl her father used to take on
tours of the country. Lance remembered her odd fantasy of maybe someday retiring
to a long cabin somewhere in the woods, though he supposed that had vanished
with her retreat from Denver, too. She couldn't stand the silence.
"But I am forgetting my manners,"
Gil said. "Here I am, set to question you about your travels. You people must
be exhausted."
"And starved?" Dan asked. "Any
restaurants near here?"
"No," a laughing Gil said. "But
we have refreshment." He motioned towards their red-headed driver.
"Jimmy, take care of these people-- and make sure they get food. We can
all talk better at a more reasonable hour. And someone take back the cop car
before they miss it."
***********
Jimmy led them to the "bunk house,"
a multi-room apartment occupying the inner southwest corner of the building.
Its string of rooms all faced in on the courtyard. Lance felt safe here, though
didn't know exactly why-- since the place also served the function of jail with
no access to the street or any other part of the house without exiting to the
yard.
"Mister Gil calls this place Fort
Apache," Jimmy said as he took them from room to room. The three bedrooms
made arrangements slightly difficult, assuming three men and three women would
break down into specific couples. Chris balked over sharing a room with Dan.
"I know him," she growled.
"He's all hands."
"All right, I'll sleep on the
couch," Dan said with obvious disappointment.
But Chris still grumbled. "All this looks
as if Gil intends to keep us here a while."
"Until things cool down," Jimmy
said.
"Then we're going to need our things from
the van. Like extra clothing, towels and female stuff."
Jimmy blushed. "I'm sure we can arrange
something later," he said. "Mister Gil was more concerned with
getting you people out of sight. For the moment, we have towels and--" he
looked at Lance. "Some spare clothing. As for your female stuff, you might
speak with Miss Grace in the morning."
"Miss Grace?" Sarah asked from
across the room.
"Mister Gil's woman," Jimmy said.
"Oh," Sarah mumbled, looking
disappointed.