Step to the Graveyard Easy (16 page)

“My freedom,” Cape said. “The law thinks I had something to do with setting up the robbery.”

Raised eyebrow. “You didn’t, did you?”

“No. But I’m stuck here until they realize it.”

“Poor baby. What’s a few days out of your life?”

“A hell of a lot if days turn into weeks and you’re running low on funds.”

“So get a job for the duration. I know a pit boss at Harrah’s. He’d put you on as a dealer if I asked him.”

Again Cape was silent.

“Beneath you? I guess you’d prefer a nice, cushy sales job instead.”

He said, “Not funny at all today,” and turned away from her.

“Look me up if you change your mind.”

He stopped, glanced back. “How about if I get lonely? Feel the need of some TLC?”

“Uh-uh. You had all you’re going to get from me.”

“You seemed to like it well enough the other night.”

“That was the other night. This is now. So long, salesman.”

Snake eyes again.

Mahannah.

Not home. Sheriff’s deputy on guard to keep the morbidly curious away from the crime scene. The deputy had no idea where Mahannah had gone.

D’Anzello.

In his office in Carson City, and willing to talk. But not willing to bend.

“I can’t tell you yet how long you’ll have to stay in the area, Mr. Cape. We don’t get many homicide cases in this county, and when we do, they take time and patience.”

“For you, but why for me?”

“There’s no place you have to be, is there? Nothing urgent on your agenda?”

“That’s not the point. I tell you, I’m not involved in what happened last night.”

“Then we’ll confirm that eventually, and you can be on your way.”

“At least tell me if you’re making any progress so far.”

“Some.”

“What kind?”

“I can’t go into details,” D’Anzello said. “But I will tell you this.
Your man Boone Judson has a felony record that includes prison terms in New Jersey and Arizona.”

“He’s not my man. And I’m not surprised.”

“Mostly fraud connected with gambling scams, but one conviction was for armed assault. Short step from there to armed robbery and murder.”

“You really think he’d take that step throwing his own name around?”

“He used his name in San Francisco, you said, not in connection with anybody up here. Besides, only some career criminals use an alias. Most of them are egomaniacs and not very smart.”

“Would I have told you his real name if I was mixed up with him and his goddamn scheme?”

“You might if you thought it would make you look innocent”

Cape said wearily, “I am innocent. And Judson wasn’t the mar in the ski mask. How many times do I have to say it?”

“Until we can prove otherwise. Go back to Tahoe, Mr. Cape. Relax, enjoy the attractions the area has to offer. I’ll contact you when the time comes, one way or another.”

Relax, enjoy. Bullshit.

Plenty of options, all right, but none of them had any appeal.

Stay in Carson City.

Check out Reno.

Return to Stateline.

Prowl the Pioneer Trail/Black Bart Road section again.

Gamble.

Get drunk.

Find a quiet church to sit in.

Give Justine another try.

Sit in his room, stare at the four walls until they started to close in on him.

He didn’t make a conscious decision, except to take Highway 50 back through the mountains to Tahoe. Late afternoon by the time he reached Stateline, and he hadn’t eaten all day. Hunger pangs and swarming weekend crowds sent him over into South Lake Tahoe. He stopped at the first place he saw, a brew pub, and swallowed a sandwich and a couple of beers.

Back into the Vette, more restless than ever. Dry salt taste in his mouth from the barbecued sandwich meat. Neon bar sign ahead; another stop, another beer. Then he knew what he was going to do.

Pub crawl.

He’d done it before when he was feeling this way, in New Orleans and Oklahoma and the Texas border towns. Hunt up a tavern, beer or two in each, some conversation if there was anybody worth talking to, and on to the next place. Part of the game was that each one had to be a little seedier than the last. Not looking for trouble, just moving and soaking up native atmosphere. Like descending through levels of rock strata until you had a good look at what was crawling around on the bottom.

The bottom of South Lake Tahoe was at the southwest end, beyond the junction of Highways 50 and 89. Semi-industrial, trailer parks, taverns with barred windows. The Hip-Hop Bar: dirty wood booths, cigarette burns scarring the plank, flickery TV blaring in one corner, half a dozen patrons who looked as though they’d taken root on their seats. And that was where he got into the discussion with the hollow-cheeked, half-drunk old man on the stool next to him.

He’d had just enough beer to bemoan his restricted freedom, without going into details. That was how it started. The old man squinted at him out of bloodshot thyroidal eyes, scratched at a bald pate speckled with liver spots, sucked at a straight shot of cheap well bourbon, wiped his mouth with the back of a gnarled hand, and made a noise like a chicken having its neck wrung.

“Freedom?” he said. “What you think that is, sonny, freedom?”

“Just another word for nothing left to lose.”

“Huh?”

“Line from a Kristofferson song.”

“Who the hell is Kristofferson? What’s he know about freedom? Listen, you want to know about freedom, you ask somebody who does know. You ask me.”

“All right, you tell me what it is.”

“It
ain’t
that’s what. Ain’t no such thing. It don’t friggin’ exist. One of them magician’s tricks… what you call ’em?”

“Illusions?”

“Yeah, illusions. Buy me a drink, I’ll tell you why.”

Cape bought him a drink.

“Everybody wants freedom,” the old man said. “That’s what they think they want. Go anywhere, do any damn thing they please any old time. Be their own boss. That about it?”

“More or less.”

“More or less, my ass. That’s it in a nutshell. But what they don’t understand, not until they been around the horn a few times, not until they get to my age, is that life don’t allow it. You hear me, sonny? Life don’t ever allow freedom, so it don’t exist except in people’s minds.”

“Why doesn’t life allow it?” Cape asked him.

“Restraints, by Christ. Shackles. Chains. That’s what life is—yours, mine, everybody’s. Whole lot of big rusty links tying us up start to finish, first squall to your last. Don’t matter where we go, what we do.” The old man licked his lips with his mouth wide open; what teeth he had left were the color of tobacco in the dim light. “Buy me another drink, I’ll give you some for-instances.”

Cape bought him another drink.

“When I was a punk kid I joined the merchant marine,” the old man said. “Salt in my blood, adventure in my eye. Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean, South China Sea, Pacific Ocean—I been up and down and across ’em all. Been through the Panama Canal more times’n I can count. You think I had your so-called freedom the whole time I was helping haul freight halfway around the friggin’ world?”

“You tell me.”

“Hell, no, I didn’t. Wasn’t no different than when I lived at home. People all the time telling me what to do, when to do it, how to do it. Captains, first mates, second mates, dock bosses, pissants and dumbfucks and niggers. Putting chains on me, every one of ’em.”

Cape said, “You didn’t have to keep wearing them.”

“Is that a fact?”

“Could’ve thrown them off any time, couldn’t you?”

“How? Jump ship in some banana port?”

“That’s one way.”

“I thought so, too, and that’s what I did when I had all I could stand. Jumped ship in Venezuela, spent six months boozing and beachcombing, gettin’ my ashes hauled and taking on odd jobs when the money run out. You think I had any of your freedom then?”

“You tell me.”

“Hell, no, I didn’t. Still had the chains put on. Bartenders, whores, cops, immigration assholes, people I did the odd jobs for. Do this, do that, don’t do this, don’t do that. Same thing when I finally come back stateside, same thing until I got too goddamn old to work ships or any other man’s job—somebody always around to put on the chains. You want to know what the heaviest chain of all is, the one ties up a man the tightest? Buy me a drink, and I’ll tell you.”

Cape bought him another drink.

“Money,” the old man said. “Green stuff, filthy lucre. Can’t go nowhere, can’t do nothing, without it. Got to have money, and that means you got to carry the chain. No getting rid of them heavy links no matter what you do.”

“How about cutting all your ties, moving out into the wilderness, living off the land?”

“That don’t save your ass. Chains out there, too. Nature’s one—storms, floods, blizzards, wildfires. Sickness. Accidents. Not enough food, nobody to talk to. Don’t think loneliness ain’t a chain, sonny, because it is.”

“I know it,” Cape said.

“Damn straight. Women, there’s another big one. You married?”

“Not anymore.”

“Quit her or she quit you?”

“I quit her.”

“Good for you,” the old man said. “I had three wives, quit all three. And two live-in girlfriends and more one-night stands than you could shake a dick at. Couldn’t wait to get rid of one so I could go whoring after another. What you think I called it when I shed a woman?”

“Getting your freedom back.”

“That’s it. Only soon as I got rid of one set of female shackles, there I was all wrapped up in another. Linked to this or that one for nearly fifty years, and for what? Ten times more whining and complaining than fucking, that’s what for. I look back on it now, I figure I’d’ve been better off if I hadn’t laid a single one of ’em. Just yanked my shank, pulled my pud, jerked my joint instead.”

“No freedom in that, either, I suppose.”

Strangling chicken noise. “Hell, no. Just a hairy palm and a sore pecker.”

“You live alone now?” Cape asked.

“Wish I did. Chains there, too, but not as heavy as the ones my son puts on me. Live with him and his bitch of a wife. She hates my guts, don’t want me in her house—house, she says, it’s only a friggin’ trailer. Calls me a dirty, drunken old man to my face. Which is what I am, and proud of it, but I don’t want to hear it from her. Davey, that’s my son, he was an accident, only accident I ever had and not my fault, but he took pity on me and brought me up here from San Pedro a couple of years ago. I liked it better in Pedro, chains weren’t so heavy down there, like I said, but I couldn’t afford to live alone no more. Drank up all my Social Security money. So here I am in Tahoe, drinkin’ on a goddamn allowance. Allowance! Like when I was a snot-nose kid. Last place I’ll ever be, settin’ on this stool most days and nights until my liver gives out and Davey and his trailer trash can plant me for good.”

“Sad story,” Cape said sardonically. “Loaded with pathos.”

“You think so? Well, you’re wrong. I had my life, and it wasn’t so bad, neither, chains and all. I’d do it all over again, except maybe for the women. No, hell, the women too. I ain’t really no pud-puller. No, I’m not complaining, sonny. Not like you. You’re the one feelin’ sorry for himself.”

“Me? The hell with that.”

“What else you been doing since we started gabbing? Cryin’ about how you been boxed in, can’t leave Tahoe, can’t get your freedom back. If that ain’t feelin’ sorry for yourself, I dunno what is.”

“You don’t know me, old man.”

“Don’t I? I seen a thousand like you in my time. Didn’t I tell you I was the same myself once? Fighting the chains, chasing around after something nobody’s gonna find because it don’t exist.”

“You don’t know what I’m looking for, either.”

“Freedom. Ain’t that what you been pissing and moaning about?”

“More than that,” Cape said. “A lot more than that.”

“Such as what?”

“New places, new experiences.”

“More chains.”

“Life by the balls,” Cape said, “with both hands.”

“Hah! That’s a good one, that is. Life by the balls with both
hands. Life’s gonna grab
you
by the balls with both hands, you don’t watch out.”

“Maybe it already has. Maybe that’s why I want to grab back.”

“There you go again, sonny. Pissing and moaning and feelin’ sorry for yourself.”

“I tell you I’m not. Not anymore.”

“Sure sounds like it to me. What’s eatin’ on you, anyhow? More than just that freedom crap, ain’t it?”

“No.”

The old man showed his tobacco-colored teeth in a sudden grin. “Why, hell, I bet I know what it is. You ain’t chasing so much as you’re being chased. You’re on the run.”

“Wrong. Nobody’s chasing me, old man.”

“On the run, by God. How come? What you running from?”

Cape swallowed the last of his beer.

“Listen,” the old man said slyly, “I can help you. I been on the run myself a time or two, I know a few tricks. Buy me another drink, I’ll tell you what they are.”

Cape shoved off his stool, picked up what was left of his change, and walked out of there.

Damn old man. Damn corrupt, wiseass, half-smart old reprobate.

He was wrong about freedom, and he was wrong about one other thing. The heaviest chains weren’t made of money or the demands or expectations of others.