The Albuquerque Turkey: A Novel (10 page)

While Allie walked Boy, I spent some time online, investigating both Woody Hoverlander and Jay Wolfredian. Most of the hits on Woody revealed the expected courtroom detritus of dropped charges and bargained pleas. Reading between the lines of court records, I could see the general outline of snaggles he preferred: investment schemes that walked the line between wild speculations and pure pyramids. I particularly admired one called Celebrity Holdings, LLC, which promised to ghost the moneymaking strategies of the Hollywood elite but had no more congruence with reality than Maps to the Stars’ Homes.

One oddball datum surprised me greatly, for it contained my picture. Following a link to the scanned newsletter archives of Southern California Keglers, a bowling affinity group, I found a 1986 blurb congratulating Woody on rolling a perfect game. There was a photo of him high-fiving five-year-old me, and a caption that read, “Woody Hoverlander celebrates twelfth strike with son, Randy.” I didn’t know if “Randy” was a typo or the work of some affronted editor trying to impose normalcy on my name. But in any case,
You bowled, Woody? Where was the percentage in that?

Wolfredian, meanwhile, came across as a power executive on a steep trajectory. With just ten years in the industry, he’d already held positions of importance in casino security and strategic planning, and had lately joined Gaia Gaming, Las Vegas’s first carbon-neutral casino, as vice president of special projects. Gaia’s investor relations webpage lauded his achievements—all the right MBA and consulting tickets punched—and occluded in a cloud of PR bafflegab his chief responsibility: keeping Gaia whales happily swimming in Gaia seas. His photo showed him to be shirted, suited, and tied just like the rest of the white-bread Gaia management team. He didn’t read heinous or threatening. He read kind of dull.

There was, though, one curiosity. When I ran Jay’s name through the same public database that coughed up Woody’s arrest record, it likewise coughed, from some dozen years ago, a dismissed charge of criminal misconduct against Jay, which could be anything from carjacking to carnal knowledge of a minor. Since I made him to be in his mid-thirties now, you could chalk it up to youthful indiscretion, but I had a problem with the place, Palo Alto, contemporaneous with Woody’s own time there. Another coincidence, and we know how we feel about those. But parsing public records is a bit like reading tea leaves; you think you’re reading, but you’re maybe just reading in. Best not to make assumptions. Latest possible decision, right?

Allie and I went to bed that night like any other couple, taking turns in the bathroom, reading for a while, then turning out the light.
Boy lay at the foot of the bed, curled up in a ball and steeped in dog dreams. The mundane domesticity of the moment almost moved me to tears. I understand that some people become weary of such routines, but at that moment I couldn’t imagine ever taking it for granted.

“It’s about a ten-hour drive to Vegas,” I said, cradling Allie’s head and stroking her hair. “We’ll get our gear together in the morning and get gone by afternoon. Think we can trust Boy with Vic?”

“Radar, no.”

“Come on, he’s not that incompetent. Plus, he’s got Zoe to back his play.”

“No, I mean no, I’m not going.”

“What? Why not?”

“Remember the other day, up at the Cross? When I used the tourist stooge on those guys?”

“Of course I remember. I saw the light in your eyes.”

“I know you saw it. And I’ll bet you were thinking it changed things.”

“Changed how?”

“Changed like I was ready to get back in the game. Like I dug it.”

“And did you?”

“I did. But I’m not.” She snuggled down against me, talking to my chest. “Part of this business of going straight is for us, but part is for me. I tried once before, you know.”

I knew. Back in her late teens, she’d done the whole college coed trip. Might’ve ended up a flight attendant, but she fell (okay, jumped) in with a bad crowd. “You’re stronger now,” I said. “You know your own mind.”

“Yeah, I do. That’s why I’m not going. I’m strong enough to know how strong I’m not.” It didn’t make much sense semantically, but I understood. “Radar, I don’t know if you know it, but I’m a woman of modest ambitions. A man to love. A dog to walk. An honest way to spend my days. Some tranquility to fix my broken parts. Nothing more than that. Really. Give me that and I’m fine.”

“Do you want me not to go?”

“No, you have to. I get that.” I felt her thigh rub against mine, smooth against rough. “Look, I don’t doubt that your father needs help—maybe not the help he represents needing, but something. But I also don’t doubt that you’re psyched to see if your tools still work. I’m sure they do. You’re Radar fucking Hoverlander. I’m just hoping you’ll get it out of your system, that’s all. I’m hoping it’s an interlude.”

“But thinking it’s a test.”

She propped herself up on one elbow and smiled at me. “Radar fucking Hoverlander. Always the brightest bulb on the bush. Yeah, a test. So pass it, huh? Pass it and come back home.”

We made love with a special intensity that night, some of the old animal carnality mixed in with the new intimacy. I felt like a soldier getting a send-off. And maybe that’s what I was.

Oddly, Mirplo wouldn’t roll with, either. He was staying in town to work the victim angle. Or rather, have it worked for him. This he told me as I walked the aisles of a big Smith’s supermarket, buying supplies for the road. “They’re organizing Vic Aid,” he said. “Can you believe that?”

“Who?” I asked.

“The artsy-fartsies. Zoe’s friends. Her dad’s friends. They’re having a charity dinner. Silent auction. Special guest performance by Zoe and me.”

“Oh, man, you’re not going to repeat that horrible—”

“No, come on, that’s yesterday’s news. We have to homage the blaze. I’ve got this Huehueteotl thing worked out.”

“Huehueteotl?”

“Aztec god of fire, Radar. Try to keep up. I’m building a volcano. Zoe’s going to be a human sacrifice. It’s gonna blow their tiny minds. And all proceeds go to the benefit of”—he touched his fingertips to his puffed-up chest—
“moi.”

“Huehueteotl,” I said. “Where’d you come up with that?”

“Duh, Wikipedia. I’ve figured it out, Radar. You don’t have to be smarter than everyone, just a page ahead in the textbook. They’ll roll
right over for you if you just throw a few details at ’em and dress it all up in humbo gumbo.”

“You mean mumbo jumbo?”

Vic cast the knowingest, most self-assured smile I’d ever seen him cast. “Used to be mumbo jumbo,” he asserted. “Now it’s humbo gumbo. We’ll see how long it takes to catch on.”

“Oh, so now you control the language, too?”

“Of course I do. Which you of all people should appreciate, Mr. Bafflegab.”

Just then I had to admire him. He still couldn’t draw a straight line with a ruler, of that I was sure, but he’d caught on to the power of perception. There was growth there. Real, honest to God, grifter growth. But still I had to ask, “Where are you in this, Vic? Do you really want to be an artist, or are you just gaming the rubes?”

Instead of answering directly, Vic drew my attention to a nearby product display, a solid wall of cereal boxes, rows and shelves of them, in perfect rectilinear order. “Is this art?” he asked.

“No.”

He took one of the cereal boxes, turned it upside down, and put it back in place. “How about now?”

“Still no.”

“What if I took a picture of it and hung it in a museum?”

I paused, then committed. “Not art.”

“Are you sure?”

“No,” I admitted. “No, I’m not.”

“Me neither,” said Vic, “but I want to find out.”

Okay, so that answered that. Or it didn’t.

We hit the checkout line. I had bottled water and caffeinated cola, energy bars, jerky of various dead animals, and my personal undoing, Cheetos. Everything I needed for the haul across the desert.

Everything but company.

It was going to be a long trip.

I
’d said a lot of good-byes in my life. All kinds. The kind where “See you soon” means “Not in this lifetime.” Where “I’ll miss you” means “Later, sucker!” The kind where “I’ll remember you forever” means “I forgot you already.” They all amounted to the same thing: greasing the getaway, for when the snuke is done, you just run. Without sentimentality and without delay, because usually the roof is about to collapse. Really, since my grandmother died, I’d never said good-bye to anyone who meant much to me, and even with her, she was so far gone before she went, Alzheimer’s having perforated her brain, that she no longer knew me, so what did that even mean? In fairness, back then, I didn’t know me, either. I was a punk kid, toddler-trained in the snuke by Woody, self-mentored after that. I had a teenager’s arrogance and a grifter’s gall. I sold beat bags and money boxes, ran rogue moving vans, did self-help and slim-quick tricks, and ran three-card monte games. I was a machine. And like a machine, I was utterly unaware of my own existence. I won’t say Allie woke me up. I like to think I was at least half awake before then. She certainly woke me up to the possibilities of real human contact. And on that June afternoon in Santa Fe, she woke me up good to the pain of good-bye.

I’d packed Carol with my travel necessaries, including all that junk food and water, a sleeping bag for car camping, plus clothes of various utilities, and an overabundance of liquid asset—cash—for while it grieved me to contemplate that Woody was putting the paltry,
indelicate touch on me, I couldn’t dismiss the possibility that maybe he was that hard up. If so, I’d just pay him off and get gone. This was a clumsy play; in other circumstances I would have regarded it as cheap capitulation and failure, but given Allie’s and my bloated bank account it augured negligible impact, so whatever. In the upshot, anyone stealing the Swing would find an unexpected payday in the spare-tire well.

And then there was Allie, with Boy by her side, standing outside our little adobe cocoon, and the sight of her engendered in me a new and entirely foreign feeling of forlorn. “Be careful,” she said. “Write when you find work.” This was a joke, of sorts, but it died in the silence.

I took her hands. “What will you do while I’m gone?”

She looked down at Boy. “Walk the dog.”

So, all in all, a clumsy farewell. I guess she was no better at them than I was. I got in the Swing, fired it up, and pulled away from the curb. Glancing in the side mirror, I saw her step out into the street to wave good-bye. A white Song Sharp hybrid veered silently around her. Insane mileage, the Sharp, but a body made of cardboard. This one, I noticed, had a deep, V-shaped dent—a gash, really—in the front end. My mind wandered to the recent ubiquity of the Sharp, how out of nowhere they suddenly seemed to be everywhere. I wondered if there mightn’t be a resurgent market for the hundred-mile-per-gallon carburetor scam.
Shut up, Radar. You’re out of that line of work
.

I dropped by to see Vic on my way out of town. (Passing six more Sharps along the way—they really were everywhere, especially in a crunchy granola town like Santa Fe.) He’d already set up a makeshift studio in Zoe’s garage, and I found him sitting atop a ladder, contentedly glopping layers of native clay onto a huge, cone-shaped lattice of lath and hex netting. He climbed down from his perch to demo the eruption mechanism he planned to use for his volcano, the classic formula of baking soda, dish soap, and vinegar.

“It’s great,” I said, “but isn’t it really just a science project?”

“Not after I apply these bad boys,” he said, showing me sheets of
butcher paper covered with sketches of primitive glyphs. “I’ll carve them in when I’m done.”

“What do they mean?”

Again that devilish light in his eyes. “Anything I want.”

Credit the man with having fun inventing reality.

So we said our good-byes, and I hit the road, heading southwest out of Santa Fe until I reached the valley of the Rio Grande and followed it down to Albuquerque. More Sharps; I set an over/under line on how many I’d see per mile. I took the under and lost.

It felt odd to be on the road all alone. Made me nostalgic for my first full summer in the grift when I drove coast to coast, hanging bad paper and seeing the sights. I used to go into bars at night and represent myself as a member of whatever state’s Alcohol Control Board. That’s good for free drinks, but mostly I just did it for company. Now I had company—quality company, with love to boot—that I was leaving behind, but I couldn’t deny the rush of all that open space in front.

I scarfed down some Cheetos and didn’t worry about my breath.

The drive west out of Albuquerque was a brutal battle against the afternoon sun. Two hours of it left me drained, so I pulled into a rest stop west of Gallup to recharge my batteries. I hit the john, then walked around for a minute, waking up my legs. Returning to Carol, I noticed a white Song Sharp parked beside her. Yet another one; I wouldn’t have given it a second look, but for the gash in the hood. Deep. In the shape of a V.

Okay, Radar, don’t panic. You said yourself these things are made of cardboard. What’s to keep two from being dented?
Even as I thought that, I knew I wasn’t prepared to buy it. A coincidence too far. My head jerked around toward the bathroom. Had the driver gone in there? Had I noticed? People come and go; you can’t notice everyone.

On the spur of the moment, I decided to ping the target: create a situation to gain some information. I opened the hood of my Swing and propped it up on its prop rod. Then I grabbed a bottle of water and dumped it all over the hot engine compartment. A plume of white vapor spewed up, creating the reasonable impression of a cooked radiator.
You see this dodge used all the time in gas stations by low-level snukes working the car-trouble scam. I’d long considered such short cons beneath me, but these were special circumstances. I bent over the engine, studying its parts with an air of concern while I waited for the driver of the dinged Sharp to return to his car.