Nightbird (16 page)

Lainie sat up as Danny pulled under the lighted overhang of the Rio Bravo Inn. He waited while Lainie casually put on her
sweater. He told her to meet him inside at the bar; he’d park and register. She grabbed her purse and stepped out. When she
was safely inside he floored it and drove away. Lainie Moss-berg would find a way home. She could take care of herself.

D
anny wasn’t surprised to see lights on all over the Stone house. No one slept on funeral days. The Stone compound in Scottsdale
was a low-slung grouping of stucco buildings set well back off the road behind iron gates, against the foot of a small beige
mountain. He stared at the place where Gillian grew up, remembering pictures of her outside in front of the saguaro cactus,
wearing prom gowns, graduation gowns, play costumes.

He remembered her pelican story, which he refused to believe. But it’s true, she’d always squealed. She’d said that after
a big storm blew in from the west, they’d find pelicans on their property. Pelicans were weak fliers, and they’d get caught
up in the strong winds over the Pacific and get carried all the way to the desert. Local people crated them up. America West
flew them back to California. After every big storm Gillian borrowed her father’s Jeep and scoured the desert, searching for
lost pelicans.

As the sun rose, in the hours before Gillian’s funeral, Danny cruised the geometric streets, talking into his tape recorder.
The first thing he noticed was the cleanliness, everything squared off neatly. A strip mall on every block, a gas station
and convenience store on every corner. Plants, trees, grass along the highways, somehow growing out of sand. And flat. So
flat you could clearly see a traffic light miles ahead.

At Gillian’s high school he took the opportunity to get out and brush Lainie’s makeup off his pants. He walked around the
concrete-block school building that covered enough real estate for two city blocks. Underground sprinklers hissed over an
inconceivably green lawn. He made a note that the students’ lockers were outside the school, along the outer walls of the
building under a small overhang. He could imagine Gillian, a stack of books under her arms, long legs racing to catch her
friends, yelling, “But it’s true!”

Back in the car, the air conditioner seemed to be losing the battle to the climbing thermometer. Maybe if he kept driving.
Everybody seemed to be driving; the freeways were filled with fast-moving cars. Nine out of ten of the cars were white, the
drivers hidden behind dark, tinted windows. He whizzed past a road-killed jackrabbit, one long ear stuck upright, waving in
the breeze.

The main streets of the Valley of the Sun were endless and arrow straight, flanked by wide, clean, concrete sidewalks. No
bums, no vendors, no litter or graffiti. In fact, nothing. No people, no dogs, cats, or signs of life. Just miles and miles
of empty sidewalk, houses hidden behind endless block walls. It struck him that except for Lainie Mossberg, the last human
being he’d seen was the lizard king, Soto of Avis. Marginally eerie. Where the hell was everybody?

Danny’s sources on the
Arizona Republic
had told him that the Stone family had opted for a closed ceremony in a private chapel. It was scheduled for ten
A.M.
, followed by burial in the family plot. He drove straight to the cemetery, thinking he’d get a few minutes of shut-eye before
the crowd arrived.

The cemetery was situated between a freeway and a cotton field. All the headstones were flat for easy maintenance. Two rows
of chairs were set up under a dark blue canopy. He parked beneath an olive tree, cranked the AC to the max, and waited for
Gillian. The last time he’d ever wait for Gillian.

Exhausted, Danny reclined the seat back as far as it would go. He was glad he’d picked a big, comfortable car. A short nap
would do the trick. Then he caught a glimpse of something on the floor of the backseat. Something pink. Lainie Moss-berg’s
duffel bag.

Hoping for an address, he unzipped it. The bag contained dirty clothes, makeup, and hairspray. The side pocket had a tube
of lipstick called Pagan Pink and a tightly rolled joint. He sniffed the joint; it had the horseshit aroma of quality marijuana.
Maybe he’d check the phone book or just mail it to twin forty-fours. He figured the mailmen would know. He tossed it into
the backseat.

He’d just started to doze when a long line of cars followed the hearse around a circular driveway. Danny waited until the
very last minute, until the pallbearers reached the bier. Then he got out of the chilled Chrysler.

He squinted into the sun as he approached the rear of the crowd. Bits of raw cotton stuck to bushes and gathered against fences
and curbs. He wished he’d left his blazer in the car. All the men looked cool in short-sleeved shirts and linen pants; the
women looked like money and aerobics. Everybody, including the priest, sported dark sunglasses.

Danny stood at the back of the crowd, rolling a piece of raw cotton between his fingers. He was too far back to enjoy the
shade of the canopy, too far back to make out the words of the priest. The priest faced the rows of folding chairs, incanting
the rhythms of Scripture. Evan Stone sat in the first row, his arm around Lynnette. Lynnette Stone looked dazed.

Six hours and 117 miles after he arrived, Danny stood in a sparsely treed cemetery somewhere on the outskirts of Phoenix,
Arizona, trying to figure out what he’d learned, if anything. He felt far removed from Gillian in this strange place. The
girl he knew was a city girl; she loved New York City.

For the first time in his life he felt the sun burning his scalp and wondered how many years he had left on his hairline.
He touched it gingerly, wishing his fingertips could spout ice water. Then he tried not to think of ice water, his throat
drier than a wine hangover. The priest droned on, and Danny could feel the heat from each individual blade of grass radiating
up through the soles of his shoes. The worst was that Lainie Mossberg was right: he was ready to sell his soul for a pair
of sunglasses.

He knew the priest’s remarks had ended when the crowd started to murmur, then move. The women formed a line behind Lynnette,
each holding a single white rose. One by one they placed them on the blond wood coffin. In the crowd movement, Danny lost
sight of Evan Stone.

He peeled off to the right and saw Stone alone, walking toward the fence overlooking the freeway. He had his back turned as
Danny approached. He turned, looking startled, then took a panicky step back into the fence. Danny extended his hand.

“I’m Danny Eumont, from New York. I’m sorry….”

Stone’s overhand right caught Danny in the left temple. He went down hard, stunned more by the act than the blow. He rolled
over on his bad right shoulder, and it almost brought tears to his eyes.

“You have the balls to come here, now?” Stone growled. “At a time like this? What kind of scum are you?”

He started kicking Danny, stomping him on his back and shoulders. Danny rolled toward the fence and got to his knees.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know anything was wrong with her. I should have noticed, I know. But I hadn’t seen her in
months.”

From his knees he tried to look up at Stone, but the sun was right in his eyes. The freeway roared in his ears, little black
specks floated across his field of vision.

“Who the hell are you?” Stone said.

“I told you, Danny Eumont.”

Men in white shirts and dark glasses sprinted toward them, asking Evan if
he
were okay. Danny felt like an asshole from New York in a woolen blazer with brass buttons hot enough to brand cattle.

“Oh, Danny, I’m sorry, so sorry,” Evan Stone said, dropping to his own knees and putting his arms around Danny. “I thought
you were someone else.”

Danny knew his mouth was open as if words were coming out, but none did. Maybe he’d missed something in the glare of the sun.
He wanted to scream something at the righteous bastards surrounding them, in their Ray-Bans and linen, but he was too tired
and sore to care. He felt like a pelican, a weak flier caught up in a storm he couldn’t handle. All that came to mind was:
“Somebody, please… turn down the goddamn lights!”

T
he water of Crotona Pool glistened blue green in the morning sun. It lapped at the white-tiled edges rhythmically, peacefully.
Victor knew that peace wouldn’t last. Soon the wild children of the Bronx would occupy every inch of water. Many would climb
over the fence rather than pay, then they’d go running and screaming, kicking and punching like savages. They didn’t swim
but leaped in recklessly, then bobbed up and down, often fully dressed in pants and shirts, some with sneakers on. The boys
would grab the girls by the hair or breasts or brutally lock an arm around their necks and yank them to the edge of the pool.
Or a band of them would mob a girl, hold her high in the air, hand to crotch, and throw her toward the water without regard
for her safety, without conscience.

He hated these people; they were ignorant, and they’d always be ignorant. Victor knew he didn’t belong among them. They had
no self-respect. No class. Poverty would be all they would ever know. Welfare their only hope.

He longed for the better life he would soon be living. He remembered his swims as a boy in the Sea of Cortés. For hours he’d
swim alongside sea turtles and dolphins. The clear blue water showcased the Technicolor spectacle of the sea, the colors of
fish brighter and more iridescent than one could imagine. All he wanted was this life again, but this time a life that reflected
his accomplishments. He was once the greatest aerialist in the world. He wanted the admiration he deserved. So many people
had more than he, and they were never the greatest anything.

Victor had not been greedy. A quarter of a million dollars was not a lot of money for a man as rich as Winters. He would not
miss it any more than the crumbs that blew off his table. Men like Winters had access to incredible wealth, more than these
savages around the pool could ever imagine. Most people could not comprehend the true wealth of some people. People who owned
five or six mansions around the world. Victor had been in their company. As a young man he’d been introduced to people who
had more money than they’d ever need. He’d seen the way they carried themselves, and he wanted that life. It wasn’t right
that so few had so much. All Victor wanted was enough. Enough to live a simple, elegant life as a man of respect. He deserved
it, and no one was going to stop him from getting it.

He’d come to Crotona Pool to work out and stretch his sore muscles in the warm water. He needed the sense of peace that water
should impart. The warmth of it, to be enveloped by it. To cut out all distraction, because he needed to think of a plan.
A foolproof escape plan. One that was flexible, one that allowed for a variety of contingencies. He wondered how Alain Charnier
had eluded the police in
The French Connection
. He’d disappeared on Ward’s Island somehow. The movie never explained his escape. Victor knew he could figure it out.

He did a flip turn at the end of the pool and headed back. The sheen of his tanned muscular body glinted as he stroked high
in the water. He could hear rap music from the boom boxes. Victor missed the music of Mexico, with its soft trumpets and guitars.
Music should be about love, not hate. He could hear it in his head, as he felt the good burn in his shoulders. It was his
fiftieth lap.

A commotion by the pool gate drew everyone’s attention. A gang of young savages pushed their way through the turnstiles. Victor
went underwater to get a last minute of serenity. Swimming underwater was the only peace one could find in this city. That
was the last thing he’d told Pinto as he’d dropped his weighted body into the Hudson. Be grateful for the peace, my Russian
friend.

When he raised his head his eyes stung from the massive dose of chlorine. He pulled himself up at the end of the pool. Groups
of adults and teenagers had staked out portions of space, like refugees, around the fence. His towel was gone. A group of
young girls giggled and pointed at him, some making that wet smacking noise they made with their lips that was supposed to
be seductive. The air was heavy with marijuana smoke. He walked dripping into the locker room, doing all he could to control
his rage. He prayed one of their boyfriends would be in the locker room and would bump him or mouth off. He’d show them what
violence truly was. He consoled himself with the thought that he’d completed his last swim among the ignorant rabble of this
city.

I
shoulda knocked that dwarf cop on his ass,” Joe Gregory said as they entered Buster Scorza’s pink neon world of the Pussycat
Palace. “You see the look on that kid’s face? Like we’re here on some shakedown scam.”

They’d parked the Buick in a bus stop on Eighth Avenue directly in front of the three-story sex emporium. Two young uniformed
cops from Mid-Town South had pulled up behind them. Using their radio car’s bullhorn, they’d ordered the detectives to move
the Buick, drive on. Gregory got out and flashed his gold shield and Irish smile. “We’re working a case!” he’d yelled, being
friendly. He didn’t have to tell them anything.

“Bullshit,” one cop yelled back.

“They teach them that in the academy,” Ryan said. “Cops our age are evil incarnate.”

“And that’s exactly why they’re getting in trouble out there. When we came on the job, we had cops fifty and sixty years old
working in uniform, around the clock. Guys with military service and ‘boo coo’ experience. Taught you how to analyze a situation
with common sense. Treat people with respect.”

The Pussycat Palace was the McDonald’s of porn, all chrome and happy plastic. A mere dollar got the customer in the door,
and he got four tokens in the bargain. Gregory flashed his badge, and they strolled past the token seller at the entrance.

The long dark hallway leading to the back was lined with small booths. Above each door was a red light. The red light glowed
while money was being fed into the machine, and security came knocking when the light went out. One token worth twenty-five
cents bought a minute of filmed sex, the perversion of your choice. Each booth advertised access to 360 flicks on four simultaneous
screens. It sounded as if you’d stumbled into a medieval torture chamber. A cacophony of moans, groans, grunts, whimpers,
and screams, all coming from behind fifty locked doors.