Lizardskin (45 page)

He twisted his arm until he could get some starlight on the face. The motion sent another jagged blue bolt of agony up the side of his skull, and the image blurred. He fought to stay conscious, to concentrate on the dial, on the faintly glowing numbers.

If he had come down from the hill on Monday evening … 
and then it had gone badly … if this was right, he had been in the … grave. Call it that. That’s what it was. For a full day and most of the following night.

For thirty-three, perhaps thirty-four hours.

And the thought came to him, slammed into his mind, left him trembling in its wake, that there was nothing miraculous about his resurrection, because it hadn’t happened.

The bullet that should have killed him
did
kill him.

Was
killing him now.

Maybe he was dying now … in the moment when the round struck him and all of this was just a few fleeting seconds of hallucinatory intensity, the last flaring of light and heat in a disintegrating brain. Maybe he was still falling through the air and the ground was rushing up at him … he felt his mind slipping, felt the thin cord of continuity and remembrance that binds the fragmentary images and disconnected moments of a man’s life begin to fray and twist. He could hear the thin high shriek as the silver wire stretched and snapped, and every glittering image, every memory and incident that had composed the life and times of Gabriel Picketwire went spinning off into a deep blue immensity. Weakness went through his arms and legs, and he fell backward onto the grass and watched the shards and splinters of his life shattering, like a mirror, into the night. They burned and turned, a fiery radiance that shimmered, dimmed, flared, and sparkled and faded.

A rising wind stirred the grasses, hissing and rustling, feathering across his shattered cheek. The dog got up and trotted away down the slope toward the lights of Joe Bell’s cabin. He looked back and whimpered.

Gabriel sat up.

Pain.

The pain was very real.

Gabriel managed to get to his feet.

The sky wheeled and steadied. He could see the warm yellow lights of the main house, bright against the purple hills under the pearl and opal sky.

He took a step, staggered, caught his balance. The dog moved a little farther off, and waited.

Gabriel pulled in a breath. His face felt like a mask of cracked ice and blood.

He also felt hunger.

If this was a kind of death, there were rules to it.

He could still remember the black bulk of the gun and the dark shape of the other man against the evening sky, and Joe Bell with a shovel in his hand.

The dog had been watching him, and now, seeing him moving, it ran a few yards down the slope, careless and buoyant. Gabriel came down behind it, his boots cutting a dark green trail through the silver grasses.

As he reached the bottom land, he remembered that there had been a sensation—it seemed a year or more in the past, a part of someone else’s memory—of something beside him, of a bending in the daylight. It was gone now, he knew, gone back into the sea-green grassy hills that had carried him like a drowning man, that had taken him down beneath them and held him in the darkness and the silences and then raised him up again into the world of changing light and scented breezes.

He smiled—the pain cut at him, and the ruined fragments of teeth and jawbone grated against his wound.

Well, home is the sailor, home from the sea.

And the hunter home from the hill.

Beau ate an early breakfast in the hotel coffee shop, watching the tourist buses fill up with old men and women in lurid pastel combinations, dragging themselves up into the darkened interior of the bus, looking oddly like children in their shorts and flowered shirts, children zapped with an age ray on their way to a birthday party.

The windows of the coffee shop were tinted dark gray, and the room was chilly with recycled air.

A fiftysomething waitress in a Snow White costume plowed through the tables toward Beau, leather-faced under her heavy makeup. She pulled a pen out of her Snow White hair-ribbon.

“That’ll be it for you, Tex?”

“You know, I never trusted that prince.”

“Huh?” Snow White’s pen stopped on the notepad.

“Your prince. He took off, left you with the palace and the bills?”

She sighed and looked down at her costume. “Disneyland’s down the road. The tourists like it.”

“Listen, the Seven Dwarfs are visiting the Vatican, right?”

She cocked her hip and leaned against the banquette. “Okay. The Seven Dwarfs are visiting the Vatican.”

“And they’re there for a few days, you know, seeing the city, looking at St. Peter’s, doing the tour, and finally on the third day, they get an audience with the Pope.”

“You gonna have anything else?”

“No, that’s it. So each of the dwarfs gets to ask the Pope one question.”

“One question.” She had her head down, writing.

“Yeah. And it comes round to Dopey, he wants to know, does the Pope have any midget nuns?”

“Yeah?”

“And the Pope says, no, no midget nuns. So Dopey says, okay, you have any
dwarf
nuns? The Pope says no. So Dopey starts to look really worried, and he says, do you have any real real
short
nuns? Again, the Pope says no. And from the back of the line, Grumpy yells out—‘
Dopey screwed a penguin!
’ ”

She grinned at him, her teeth too bright and even, Hollywood teeth. She dropped the bill on his table.

“Yeah? Well, Dopey was always like that. Have a nice day.”

Eustace Meagher watched the pickup truck work its way over the landscape toward him. It was like watching a bug crawl across a tabletop. Meagher took another pull from his Thermos and wiped the back of his neck. The wind out here was as steady as a river, smelling of dust and clay and grass. In the far southwest sky, a low bank of black clouds shimmered in the heat haze. Heavy weather back in Montana.

He looked around him. Parmelee, South Dakota. An outpost of peeling cement-block stores lined up like tombstones on a rotting asphalt street. Treeless and flat, South Dakota stretched away in every direction until it faded into a blue horizon of heat and wind. A few miles to the south, Nebraska offered more of the same.

In the town, a few old Sioux men sat under the shade of a sheet-metal porch and rocked and talked in low thick voices. Meagher figured he was the most exciting thing to happen in Parmelee since the end of the Indian wars. A buffalo soldier in a tan uniform, driving a blue Lincoln with Montana plates.

They’d talk about it for weeks.

He looked back up the highway. The pickup was closer now, maybe only a mile away. George Cut Arms and his people.

Or a scalping party?

Meagher wiped the sweat off his bald head.

Well, he was safe, anyway.

Moses Harper leaned back in the oak swivel chair and threw a ball of waxed paper at a framed picture of Henry Kissinger. Kissinger was smiling. Someone had drawn a tiny pen-wiper moustache on his lip. He looked a lot like Hitler’s older brother.

Harper had his gun off, and his harness was hanging from the back of the chair. The Highway Patrol squad room was nearly empty this morning. It was close to ten, and the shift change was over. The six-to-six night shift had gone home, and the overlap units were wandering around in the yard outside, cleaning out their squad cars and eyeing the storm building up in the southwest. Sergeant Sugar was off this morning, and Meagher’s office was empty, the door locked. Somehow, his chair seemed to radiate authority even without Meagher in it. It was strange for Harper, sitting around with all these state boys. There was a friendly rivalry between the two units, but deep in their hearts the Big Horn guys always felt a little like poor cousins next to the well-funded state troopers. Now here he was, one-third of a three-man task force. Served him right for volunteering.

Moses went back to his paperwork.

Farwest Beef and Dairy.

Kellerman Cold Haulers.

Merced Industries.

And Danny Burt.

They’d put out a bulletin on Danny Burt. He wasn’t anywhere around. Bob Gentile hadn’t seen him for a week, but he wasn’t surprised. Danny had taken a week off after the Arrow Creek thing, saying he was too nervous to work. Gentile figured that was fair. Anyway, Gentile was having enough trouble without having Danny around asking stupid questions. Gentile was being sued by Peter Hinsdale’s mother,
and
he
wanted his goddamned morgue wagon back from evidence storage.

So far, nobody knew where Danny Burt was. The cars were out, and he’d turn up sooner or later.

Harper dialed the number of the
Billings Gazette
again and sat back listening to it ring. Kissinger leered at him. Out in the hall, somebody laughed out loud, and another male voice said
shit
, and then something dropped on the terrazzo floor. Through the plate-glass window, Harper could see the two female dispatchers in their computer stations—headsets on, screens blinking—leaning back in their chairs and talking to each other.

One of them was Beth Gollanz. Harper had once spent a week in Freeport with Beth. She was a nice lady, but she wasn’t going to marry a cop. Sleep with one, maybe, but no marriage.

“Hello?”

Harper leaned forward and picked up the papers in front of him. “Can I talk to Sig Tarr?”

“This is Tarr. What can I do for you?”

“Mr. Tarr, my name is Moses Harper. I’m with the Highway Patrol.”

“I wanna lawyer.”

Harper laughed. “You don’t need a lawyer, sir. I’m calling for Sergeant McAllister.”

“That bastard! What’s he need? Bail?”

“No, no, sir. Actually, he wanted you to do something for him.”

“Oh, jeez,” said Tarr, chuckling. “Hide the virgins!”

Balboa Boulevard paralleled Sepulveda, climbing into the Santa Susana Mountains. Beau could see the bowl of L.A. in his rearview, a Jurassic swamp of yellow fog and freeways. Granada Hills was in a better part of town, close to the entertainment offices and the lush neighborhoods of Glendale and Mission Hills. 1550 Balboa Boulevard was a bunker of rose-colored
granite and tinted windows, retreating from the busy street in a series of rectangular recessions softened with expensive greenery and royal palms. A small brass plaque on the wall by the door read:

Rigid Rooster?

Beau pulled the heavy glass doors back and walked into a cool sepulcher of polished stone. A Persian rug in vivid reds and blues ran all the way down the long hall toward a glass-block desk where a young man in a silk shirt was answering a bank of beeping phones.

As Beau came toward the reception desk, the hall widened into a waiting area where a couple of boys in punker outfits were lounging on a gray leather couch, perfecting their chill. They watched Beau walk up to the desk from behind their acid-blue sunglasses. One of them popped his gum at Beau and said “cop” in the kind of tone you use when you’ve found half a cockroach in your grilled cheese sandwich.

The boy behind the counter looked up at Beau over his circular glasses. “May I help you, sir?”

Beau showed his badge.

One of the Lizard-Boys made a pig-snorting sound.

“I’m Sergeant McAllister. I need to see your personnel officer.”

“Miss Haydon is busy right now, sir. May I tell her what it concerns?”

Beau set his file folder down and extracted the wedding picture. He held it up for the boy to see.

“This man here. His name is Edward Gall. He’s an employee of Offshore Films. He’s been in an accident, and I am investigating it. It’s a police matter, and I’d like to see Miss Haydon right away.”

“Is Eddie all right?” The boy seemed genuinely interested.

“You know him?”

“Of course. He’s one of our people. He’s in Montana scouting a film location. Is he all right? What happened to him?”

“I think I ought to tell it to Miss Haydon first. If you don’t mind?”

The boy unhooked his headset and got up. “I’ll go and tell her you’re here.” He punched a button on the phone bank and hurried away down the hall.

Lizard-Boy One made another pig-snuffle sound, and his friend laughed again, louder.

Beau turned to look at them. They began to laugh harder.

Beau walked over to them, leaned down, and took the sunglasses off Lizard-Boy One. The kid said “hey,” but by that time Beau had pinched his nose between his thumb and index finger.

He shook it three times, back and forth, hard.

The kid’s eyes teared up, and his face went bright red.

Beau let go of the kid’s nose. “Is that better? You had a bad sniffle there.”

The Lizard-Boys stared up at him. Lizard-Boy One had a nosebleed. Lizard-Boy Two looked like he was about to faint.

Beau handed Lizard-Boy One a Kleenex.

“There you go, son. That’s a nasty cold you got there.”

“Sergeant McAllister?”

Beau turned around. The receptionist was back. A young woman in jeans and an aquamarine blouse was standing behind the desk, staring at him.

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Is there a problem here?”

Beau looked at the Lizard-Boys. “Is there a problem, guys?”

They shook their heads in unison.

“Okay, then. You get that cold looked at, son.”

The woman studied the scene in silence. She turned to the receptionist. “Dylan, see if the doctor has a moment.”

She sent Beau a look freighted with warning.

Beau smiled at her, a gundog smile, full of innocent joy and good-heartedness.

“If you’ll come this way, Sergeant?” Miss Haydon turned and walked down the hall.

Beau followed her, admiring her figure in the jeans, and grinning to himself. Sometimes this job was almost worth the trouble.

Beth Gollanz came into the squad room carrying a sheaf of computer paper. She dropped it on Harper’s desk, in the middle of his papers and pens. It was about an inch thick.

“There it is. Took Motor Vehicles all morning to print this out. You should see the teletype. It’s smoking!”