No Man's Land (28 page)

Problem today was the old girl lost her momentum when he stopped
to let Silent Bob out back in Jenner Peak. The idea was to get her in
third gear down on the flats and keep it there all the way to the
top. Long as you kept her cruising along at about thirty in third,
she was happy as a clam. This time, however, what with stopping right
in the middle of the steepest part of the grade, he wasn’t able to
muster enough revs to get out of second gear and so had spent the
past half hour doing maybe twenty miles an hour No Man’s Land and
watching the temperature gauge inch its way toward the red zone,
until it got so bad he’d had no choice but to pull into a turn out
and shut her down.

Ray climbed down off the bumper and stuck the hat back on his
head. He felt a curse coming on. It was going to be at least and hour
before he could fire her up and get on his way. Not only that but he
had to make a stop way the hell out at the Lodge at White Lake.
They’d hosted wedding receptions the past two weekends and needed a
trash run. By itself, the Lodge was an extra hour each way. By the
time he got back to the yard, the shank of the day was going to be
history. He kicked a piece of loose gravel and watched as it rolled
under the guardrail and over the edge of the embankment. The vista
beyond stopped him in his tracks. The easterly wind had prevented
L.A.’s airborne sludge from working its way up the canyons today.
The air was crisp and clean. From where he stood he could see the
southern edge of the Sierra Nevada, the knobby spine that ran damn
near the whole length of the state. From there, it wasn’t hard to
imagine the North American and Pacific Plates grinding on each other,
shoving the Pacific Plate down into the bowels of the earth, down
into the ocean of molten magma that covers the sphere, uplifting the
North American Plate and tilting it westward. Ray smiled and sat down
on the guardrail. “Who could get mad on a day like this?”

he asked himself.

Corso set the breakfast bags on the concrete sidewalk to the right
of the door. The smell of fresh coffee called to his nostrils as he
reached into his pocket. His hand trembled as he fished out the room
key and fit it into the opening. He stood to one side as he swung the
door open and peeked into the room.

From that vantage point everything looked more or less like he’d
left it. Except that Melanie was gone. He came into the room slowly,
looking for any sign of haste or desperation. The air inside the room
smelled of her. Of perfume and body lotion and whatever other oils
and unguents she used. Her coat lay on the floor, so wherever she’d
gone to, she’d gone naked. He pushed open the bathroom door. Empty.
He couldn’t decide whether to be relieved or terrified.

And then he suddenly felt foolish and melodramatic. Standing there
like a bird dog on point. Maybe . . . there’d been a . . . maybe
she’d . . . but, no matter how he tried, he couldn’t finish the
sentence. The tingle of fear began to inch up again. He strode
quickly out of the room, turned right and began to hurry toward
Marty’s room and the motel office. The door to unit seven was ajar.
Corso could hear the shower running. He stepped inside and called
Marty’s name, then again, louder this time. Corso hustled to the
back of the room and pushed open the bathroom door. The shower was
going full blast, but the stall was empty. Corso reached in and
turned off the water. The floor was awash in soapy water.

He moved quickly now. Back across the room, toward the door. A
quick glance to his left sent another shiver down his spine. The
little table next to the window held Marty’s cell phone, a handful
of pocket change, the room key and the keys to the rental car.
Marty’s jacket was thrown over the seat of the chair because the
chair back was already holding his shirt and trousers. Corso’s head
was spinning, trying desperately to come up with a scenario to fit
the situation and failing miserably. He walked over and picked up the
cell phone and the car keys. He stashed them in his jacket pockets
and began to pat himself down, looking for the business card he’d
stuck in one of his pockets the day before. He found it in the back
pocket of his jeans, pulled out the cell phone and began to dial the
number. Nothing. No bars. No service. He cursed and scooped the
change from the tabletop. He jogged to the phone booth, braced the
receiver between his shoulder and his ear and dialed the number. An
electronic voice informed him the call would cost a dollar
ninety-five for three minutes. He dumped the handful of coins on the
burnished metal shelf beneath the phone and used his forefinger to
sort out two bucks’ worth of quarters.

As he lifted the first coin toward the slot a flash of white among
the weeds caught his attention. He palmed the coin and hung up the
receiver. His body tingled, his legs were heavy and sluggish as he
covered the twenty feet.

He stood looking down for a moment and then dropped to one knee.
Towels. Two of them. White unmarked towels, nappy and rough like you
get back from a commercial laundry. He picked one up. Brought it to
his face and sniffed. He winced. No doubt about it. They smelled of
sweat . . . sweat and gun oil. He grabbed the other towel and got to
his feet. Ten seconds later, he was dropping quarters into the slot
as fast as he was able.

Martin Wells wore nothing but his shoes. He sat with his back to
the bathroom door, with his legs curled tightly against his chest. He
kept his mouth shut and face buried in his kneecaps, hoping to avoid
another swipe of the gun butt, a casual motion of the arms, which had
lifted a bloody flap of skin from his scalp and reduced his will to
resist to slightly less than zero. Nakedness was a state unlike any
other. More honest. More to the point. A state in which one had to
come to grips with oneself. Had to swim down into the waters of
self-esteem as it were, hoping like hell what you had always imagined
as a River of Resolve was not, in reality, a Sump of Self-Doubt.

As he cowered there in the back of the RV, Marty realized he was
more concerned about being seen in the nude than he was about being
killed. Sixty-three-year-old TV producers were never intended to be
seen naked in public. That he went to the gym three times a week and
was probably in better shape than the majority of his peers held no
solace whatsoever. The experience of having had a shotgun jammed in
his face and subsequently being clubbed to his knees had sent his
privates squealing for sanctuary. Shriveled his dick up like a roll
of dimes, as it were. No Man’s Land The blood from his head wound
dripped steadily onto his thigh. The frothy smell of soap mixed
uneasily with the acrid odor of adrenaline, creating the incongruous
atmosphere of freshscrubbed fear. In the best of times, Marty was
modest. At his club, he always kept his towel in place, telling
himself it was a matter of class and taste, rather than any
misgivings he might have possessed regarding his own shortcomings.
Guys like Barry Levin . . . always parading around . . . swinging it
in everybody’s face . . . they disgusted him. Martin Wells shivered
in the cold. He peeked between his knees but could not see his
tormenter. Only Melanie’s bare back, her muscles rippling slightly
as she worked the steering wheel.

Special Agent Ronald Rosen held the towels at arm’s length, as
if he’d unexpectedly been handed a turd.

“Let me see if I’ve got this straight,” he began. “You’re
trying to tell me that these towels are proof positive that Timothy
Driver has arrived here and has kidnapped your girlfriend and her
producer and is now holding them hostage somewhere locally.”

He waited a beat. “Is that it?”

“Yeah,” Corso said. “That’s about it.”

Rosen thrust the towels back in Corso’s face. “What the hell
is the matter with you? “ He didn’t wait for an answer. “You’re
out of your mind. You know that? You called us back here over this?
You told me Driver was here.”

“I told you he’d
been
here.”

“According to who?”

“The RV’s gone.”

Rosen and Westerman laughed together. “Maybe your charms weren’t
all you thought they were, Lothario,” Westerman said with a smirk.
“Maybe they just dumped your ass and headed back to La La land. You
ever think of that?”

“Naked?”

“I’m betting they had fresh clothes in the motor home. The
stuff he left behind in the room was a mess.”

“He left his cell phone and the rental car.”

Rosen shrugged. “In a hurry. Trying to get lost before you got
back. Nothing there that can’t be paid for or replaced.”

“Driver’s here. I’m telling you.”

Rosen made a rude noise with his lips. “Bullshit,” he spit.

“What you need to do, Mr. Corso, is to go back to wherever you
came from and get to doing whatever it is you do. That way you can
leave Mr. Driver and his friends to us and stop making an ass of
yourself.”

He turned on his heel and walked away. Westerman lingered for a
moment.

“What he said,” she offered before turning and following in
his footsteps.

Corso stood and watched them leave. He took deep breaths, trying
to control his temper. He watched as Rosen got into the passenger
seat and Westerman slid behind the wheel. Equal opportunity. All very
PC these days. Inside the car, Rosen buckled himself in and turned to
Westerman. “Check with the units at either end of the highway,”
he said. “Tell them to let us know when that RV comes by.”

“If they’re headed for L.A., they must be driving west.”

Rosen checked his watch. “It’s forty-five minutes from here to
the bottom of the western slope. Unless they stopped for something,
they ought to be rolling by there sometime in the next fifteen
minutes. Tell them I want to hear about it.”

Westerman reached for her phone. “Get the unit with the
transponder,” Rosen went on. “Send them down the western slope.
See if they don’t pick up the signal from the RV. Once they get out
of the mountains, they ought to come through loud and clear. I want a
location on that damn thing. Yesterday.”

A moment later, the driver’s door opened and Westerman stepped
out. She wandered about, removing the cell phone from her ear now and
then, moving in one direction and then another, looking for service
like a dog looks for a place to pee. She eventually settled on a spot
in front of the right headlight, whence she made three rather
animated phone calls.

Corso waited until she got back in the car and started the engine.
As soon as the Lincoln began to roll, Corso started walking back
toward the rooms, bypassing Melanie’s, then his own. Continuing all
the way up to Marty’s, where he grabbed the rental car keys from
the table, turned off the lights and made sure the door was locked on
his way out.

Wasn’t until he was about to drive out onto the highway that all
of a sudden he had a spasm of lucidity . . . a moment of clarity so
powerful it brought him to a standstill.

In that dark insular moment, Corso realized he had absolutely no
idea where he was going or what it was he should do next. Ray Lofton
had been to the promised land. He’d been to the mountain. All the
way to the summit, where he’d picked up the trash and started back
down. The old truck had barely made it to the top. The temperature
needle had just crept into the red zone when he’d pulled into the
summit. From here on it was all downhill.

He shook the Elk Creek Dumpster one last time and eased the lever
back, setting it gently on the ground, before rolling it back into
its little alcove in the blackberry bushes. On his way past the truck
he reached in and turned off the engine. Might as well shoot the
breeze with Kenny for a while, he figured . . . What with the trip
all the way up to White Lake, hell, the morning was gone anyway. So
he slammed the door and headed into the store.

“Hey, big fella,” Ray shouted as he came through the door.

“Ray Ray . . . I thought I heard you grindin’ away out there.”

Before Ray could open his mouth, Kenny asked. “You seen this on
the TV?”

Ray walked around the end of the counter. A Stay-Fresh Maxi Pad
commercial was on the tube. “You seen anything about those cops
killers runnin’ all over Nevada?”

“Yeah . . . yeah . . . ,” Ray chanted. “Ones where one bunch
rescued the other from the cops.”

“That’s it, bro.” He waggled a hand at the TV. “They just
busted into the program for like this bulletin about them and like
they had this picture of this guy who was like kidnapped by them a
few days ago but got away . . .”

“Yeah?”

“That guy came in the store here last night.”

“No shit.”

Kenny crossed his heart with a long finger. “Swear to God,”

he said. “He stood right there on the other side of the counter.
We talked about being tall and all.”

“What’d he want?”

“Gas and a map.” Kenny pointed up at the TV. “Here . . .
here . . . here . . . It’s coming back on,” he said. Across the
bottom of the screen . . . photos of Driver, Kehoe, Harry and Heidi.
The voice-over was doing the usual armed and dangerous routine. Then
a picture of Corso.

“Him,” Kenny said. “That’s the guy right there. He don’t
have the ponytail anymore, but that’s him for sure.”

Ray Lofton’s face was the picture of stupefaction. He pointed up
at the TV.

“Wait,” he said. “Bring it back.”

“It’s regular TV, man. I can’t roll it back.”

“The first guy.”

“What about him.”

The TV returned to its regular programming. Montel.

Ray rubbed the corners of his mouth with his thumb and forefinger.
“Swear to God I saw that first guy.”

“Give it a break man,” Kenny scoffed.

“No . . . swear to God.” He pointed at the screen again. “He
shaved his head and grew a little beard, but I swear that’s the
same guy I gave a ride to this morning on the way up.” Before Kenny
could respond, Ray went on. “Crazy bastard. Just sat there mumbling
to himself the whole way up the damn hill.”