The Hammer of Eden (6 page)

He went into the trailer.

The office was busy. Two jug team supervisors stood over a computer as a color map of the area slowly emerged from the printer. Today they would collect their equipment from the field and begin to move it to Clovis. A surveyor was arguing on the phone in Spanish, and Lenny’s secretary, Diana, was checking a list.

Priest stepped through an open door into the inner office. Lenny was drinking coffee with a phone to his ear. His eyes were bloodshot and his face blotchy after last night’s drinking. He acknowledged Priest with a barely perceptible nod.

Priest stood by the door, waiting for Lenny to finish. His heart was in his mouth. He knew roughly what he was going to say. But would Lenny take the bait? Everything depended on it.

After a minute, Lenny hung up the phone and said: “Hey, Ricky—you seen Mario this mornin’?” His tone was annoyed. “He should’ve left here a half hour ago.”

“Yeah, I seen him,” Priest said. “I hate to bring you bad news this friggin’ early, but he’s let you down.”

“What are you talking about?”

Priest told the story that had come into his mind, in a flash of inspiration, just before he picked up the wrench and went after Mario. “He was missing his wife and kids so bad, he got into his old pickup and left town.”

“Aw, shit, that’s great. How did you find out?”

“He passed me on the street, early this morning, headed for El Paso.”

“Why the hell didn’t he call me?”

“Too embarrassed about letting you down.”

“Well, I just hope he keeps going across the border and doesn’t stop until he drives into the goddamn ocean.” Lenny rubbed his eyes with his knuckles.

Priest began to improvise. “Listen, Lenny, he’s got a young family, don’t be too hard on him.”

“Hard? Are you serious? He’s history.”

“He really needs this job.”

“And I need someone to drive his rig all the damn way to New Mexico.”

“He’s saving up to buy a house with a pool.”

Lenny became sarcastic. “Knock it off, Ricky, you’re making me cry.”

“Try this.” Priest swallowed and tried to sound casual. “I’ll drive the damn truck to Clovis if you promise to give Mario his job back.” He held his breath.

Lenny stared at Priest without saying anything.

“Mario ain’t a bad guy, you know that,” Priest went on.
Don’t gabble, you sound nervous, try to seem relaxed!

Lenny said: “You have a commercial driver’s license, class B?”

“Since I was twenty-one years old.” Priest took out his billfold, extracted the license, and tossed it on the desk. It was a forgery. Star had one just like it. Hers was a forgery, too. Paul Beale knew where to get such things.

Lenny checked it, then looked up and said suspiciously: “So, what are you after? I thought you didn’t want to go to New Mexico.”

Don’t screw around, Lenny, tell me yes or no!
“Suddenly I could use another five hundred bucks.”

“I don’t know.…”

You son of a bitch, I killed a man for this, come on!

“Would you do it for two hundred?”

Yes! Thank you! Thank you!
He pretended to hesitate. “Two hundred is low for three days’ work.”

“It’s two days, maybe two and a half. I’ll give you two fifty.”

Anything! Just give me the keys!
“Listen, I’m going to do it anyway, whatever you pay me, because Mario’s a nice kid and I want to help him. So just pay me whatever you genuinely think the job’s worth.”

“All right, you sly mother, three hundred.”

“You got a deal.”
And I’ve got a seismic vibrator
.

Lenny said: “Hey, thanks for helping me out. I sure appreciate it.”

Priest tried not to beam triumphantly. “You bet.”

Lenny opened a drawer, took out a sheet of paper, and tossed it over the desk. “Just fill out this form for insurance.”

Priest froze.

He could not read or write.

He stared at the form in fear.

Lenny said impatiently: “Come on, take it, for Christ’s sake, it ain’t a rattlesnake.”

I can’t understand it, I’m sorry, those squiggles and lines on the paper just jump and dance, and I can’t make them keep still!

Lenny looked at the wall and spoke to an invisible audience. “A minute ago I would of swore the man was wide awake.”

Ley, tor, pur-doy-kor …

Priest reached out slowly and took the form.

Lenny said: “Now, what was so hard about that?”

Priest said: “Uh, I was just thinking about Mario. Do you suppose he’s okay?”

“Forget him. Fill out the form and get going. I want to see that truck in Clovis.”

“Yeah.” Priest stood up. “I’ll do it outside.”

“Right, let me get to my other fifty-seven friggin’ problems.”

Priest walked out of Lenny’s room into the main office.

You’ve had this scene a hundred times before, just calm down, you know how to deal with it
.

He stopped outside Lenny’s door. Nobody noticed him; they were all busy.

He looked at the form.
The big letters stick up, like trees among the bushes. If they’re sticking down, you got the form upside-down
.

He had the form upside-down. He turned it around.

Sometimes there was a big X, printed very heavy, or written in pencil or red ink, to show you where to put your name; but this form did not have that easy-to-spot mark. Priest could write his name, sort of. It took him a while, and he knew it was kind of a scrawl, but he could do it.

However, he could not write anything else.

As a kid he was so smart he did not need to read and write. He could add up in his head faster than anyone, even though he could not read figures on paper. His memory was infallible. He could always get people to do what he wanted without writing anything down. In school he managed to find ways to avoid reading aloud. When there was a writing assignment he might get another kid to do it for him, but if that failed, he had a thousand excuses, and the teachers eventually shrugged and said that if a child really did not want to work, they could not force him. He got a reputation for laziness, and when he saw a crisis approaching he would play hooky.

Later on, he had managed to run a thriving liquor wholesaling business. He never wrote a letter but did everything on the phone and in person. He kept dozens of phone numbers in his head until he could afford a secretary to place calls for him. He knew exactly how much money was in the till and how much in the bank. If a salesman presented him with an order form, he would say: “I’ll tell you what I need and you fill out the form.” He had an accountant and a lawyer to deal with the government. He had made a million dollars at the age of twenty-one. He had lost it all by the time he met Star and joined the commune—not because he was illiterate, but because he defrauded
his customers and failed to pay his taxes and borrowed money from the Mob.

Getting an insurance form filled out had to be easy.

He sat down in front of Lenny’s secretary’s desk and smiled at Diana. “You look tired this morning, honey,” he said.

She sighed. She was a plump blonde in her thirties, married to a roustabout, with three teenage kids. She was quick to rebuff crude advances from the men who came into the trailer, but Priest knew she was susceptible to polite charm. “Ricky, I got so much to do this morning, I wish I had two brains.”

He put on a crestfallen look. “That’s bad news—I was going to ask you to help me with something.”

She hesitated, then smiled ruefully. “What is it?”

“My handwriting’s so poor, I wanted you to fill out this form for me. I sure hate to trouble you when you’re so busy.”

“Well, I’ll make a deal with you.” She pointed to a neat stack of carefully labeled cardboard boxes up against the wall. “I’ll help you with the form if you’ll put all those files in the green Chevy Astro Van outside.”

“You got it,” Priest said gratefully. He gave her the form.

She looked at it. “You going to drive the seismic vibrator?”

“Yeah, Mario got homesick and went to El Paso.”

She frowned. “That’s not like him.”

“It sure ain’t. I hope he’s okay.”

She shrugged and picked up her pen. “Now, first we need your full name and date and place of birth.”

Priest gave her the information, and she filled out the blanks on the form. It was easy. Why had he panicked? It was just that he had not expected the form. Lenny had surprised him, and for a moment he had given way to fear.

He was experienced at concealing his disability. He even used libraries. That was how he had found out about seismic vibrators. He had gone to the central library on I Street in downtown Sacramento—a big, busy place where his face probably would not be remembered. At the reception desk he had learned that science was up on the second
floor. There, he had suffered a stab of anxiety when he looked at the long aisles of bookshelves and the rows of people sitting at computer screens. Then he had caught the eye of a friendly-looking woman librarian about his own age. “I’m looking for information on seismic exploration,” he had said with a warm smile. “Could you help me?”

She had taken him to the right shelf, picked out a book, and with a little encouragement found the relevant chapter. “I’m interested in how they generate the shock waves,” he had explained. “I wonder if this book has that information.”

She had leafed through the pages with him. “There seem to be three ways,” she had said. “An underground explosion, a weight drop, or a seismic vibrator.”

“Seismic vibrator?” he had said with just the hint of a twinkle in his eye. “What’s that?”

She had pointed to a photograph. Priest had stared, fascinated. The librarian had said: “It looks pretty much like a truck.”

To Priest it had looked like a miracle.

“Can I photocopy some of these pages?” he had asked.

“Sure.”

If you were smart enough, there was always a way to get someone else to do the reading and writing.

Diana finished the form, drew a big X next to a dotted line, handed the paper to him, and said: “You sign here.”

He took her pen and wrote laboriously. The “R” for Richard was like a showgirl with a big bust kicking out one leg. Then the “G” for Granger was like a billhook with a big round blade and a short handle. After “RG” he just did a wavy line like a snake. It was not pretty, but people accepted it. A lot of folk signed their names with a scrawl, he had learned: signatures did not have to be written clearly, thank God.

This was why his forged license had to be in his own name: it was the only one he could write.

He looked up. Diana was watching him curiously, surprised at how slowly he wrote. When she caught his eye, she reddened and looked away.

He gave her back the form. “Thanks for your help, Diana, I sure appreciate it.”

“You’re welcome. I’ll get you the keys to the truck as soon as Lenny gets off the phone.” The keys were kept in the boss’s office.

Priest remembered that he had promised to move the boxes for her. He picked one up and took it outside. The green van stood in the yard with its rear door open. He loaded the box and went back for another.

Each time he came back in, he checked her desk. The form was still there, and no keys were visible.

After he had loaded all the boxes, he sat in front of her again. She was on the phone, talking to someone about motel reservations in Clovis.

Priest ground his teeth. He was almost there, he nearly had the keys in his hand, and he was listening to crap about motel rooms! He forced himself to sit still.

At last she hung up. “I’ll ask Lenny for those keys,” she said. She took the form into the inner office.

A fat bulldozer driver called Chew came in. The trailer shook with the impact of his work boots on the floor. “Hey, Ricky,” he said, “I didn’t know you were married.” He laughed. The other men in the office looked up, interested.

Shit, what’s this?
Priest said: “Now, where did you hear a thing like that?”

“Saw you get out of a car outside Susan’s a while back. Then I had breakfast with the salesman that gave you a ride.”

Damn, what did he tell you?

Diana emerged from Lenny’s office with a key ring in her hand. Priest wanted to snatch it from her, but he pretended to be more interested in talking to Chew.

Chew went on: “You know, Susan’s western omelet is really something.” He lifted his leg and farted, then looked up and saw the secretary standing in the doorway, listening. “ ’Scuse me, Diana. Anyhow, this youngster was saying how he picked you up out near the dump.”

Hell!

“You were walking in the desert alone at six-thirty, on account of how you quarreled with your wife and stopped the car and got out.” Chew looked around at the other men, making sure he had their attention. “Then she up and drove off and left you there!” He grinned broadly, and the others laughed.

Priest stood up. He did not want people remembering that he was out near the dump on the day Mario disappeared. He needed to kill this talk dead. He put on a hurt look. “Well, Chew, I’m going to tell you something. If I ever happen to learn anything about your private affairs, specially something a little embarrassing, I promise I won’t shout about it all over the office. Now, what do you think of that?”

Chew said: “Ain’t no call to get sensitive.”

The other men looked shamefaced. No one wanted to talk about this anymore.

There was an awkward silence. Priest did not want to exit in a bad atmosphere, so he said: “Hell, Chew, no hard feelings.”

Chew shrugged. “No offense intended, Ricky.”

The tension eased.

Diana handed Priest the keys to the seismic vibrator.

He closed his fist over the bunch. “Thank you,” he said, trying to keep the elation out of his voice. He could hardly wait to get out of there and sit behind the wheel. “Bye, everyone. See you in New Mexico.”

“You drive safely, now, you hear?” Diana said as he reached the door.

“Oh, I’ll do that,” Priest replied. “You can count on it.”

He stepped outside. The sun was up, and the day was getting warmer. He resisted the temptation to do a victory dance around the truck. He climbed in and turned over the engine. He checked the gauges. Mario must have filled the tank last night. The truck was ready for the road.