Vineland (39 page)

“Yeah, or the father.”

“Who makes sure of it.”

They'd been smoking up a storm and could see each other only dimly through the nicotine weather, despite the strong light from overhead. Somewhere down the road from this federal facility, carried by the midnight wind from a bikers' bar called Knucklehead Jack's, came live, loud rock and roll, ever-breaking waves of notes in squealing screaming guitar solos that defied any number of rules, that also lifted the blood and reassured the soul of locked-up Zoyd, who now had to reassess the nature of the threat and could still not believe Brock was telling him the terms of an actual deal. Were they plea bargaining? Did Brock really
not
want Prairie?

“I don't worry about Sasha, because she'll never let Frenesi near the baby, not anymore . . . but let me share what worries me about you. Say I were to let you resume your dubious parenting of this child—squalid surroundings, drug abuse, irregular work hours, and undesirable companions, hm? all on the assumption that we understood each other, and then—who knows? she calls up one night, the moon happens to be full, you start talking more and more softly, singing those golden oldies together, hm? next thing you know, there's the three of you, out at the all-night Burger King, dribbling food, having all that fun, the basic triangle, the holy family, all together, heartwarming, hm? they make a commercial, you're all in it, you get famous, and finally that's when it comes to my attention, you see? The point is, somehow I would always find out.”

“But if I took my daughter and just—”

Brock shrugged. “Disappeared. We might not find you for a while. Quite a while. You could get married again, have a life?”

“Is this what Frenesi wants?”

“It's what I tell you. I have her power of attorney, she gave me that even before she gave me her body, so don't waste my time here, question pending is do you want to go inside forever, because there's a bed open on the top tier in cellblock D, waiting just for you, your cellmate's name is Leroy, he is a convicted murderer, and next to eating watermelon, his favorite pastime is attempting to insert his oversized member into the anus of the nearest white male, in this case, you. Are you getting any clearer sense of your options here?”

Zoyd wouldn't look him in the face. The son of a bitch wanted an answer out loud. “OK.”

“Believe me,” Brock with the salesman's instinct for congratulating the customer on his purchase, “she'd have done the same to you.”

“Helps a lot, thanks.”

“So . . . I'll just get the paperwork started on this. But we'll have to do something about your tone of voice.” Brock went to the door and hollered, “Ron?” Bootsteps approached, and Ron, a large athletic U.S. Marshal, unlocked. “Ron, are you cleared for nonjudicial motivation?”

“Sure am, Mr. Vond.”

“Hit him,” Brock ordered on his way out the door.

“Yes, sir. How many—”

“Oh, once will be plenty,” a fading steel echo.

Ron wasted no time, chasing Zoyd to the corner of the cell and hitting him with a blinding solar-plexus punch that sent him down into paralysis and pain, and unable to breathe. Ron stood awhile, as if evaluating the job—Zoyd could presently make out in a blur his motionless boots and, still too desolate even to cry out, waited for a kick. But Ron turned and left, locking up, and shortly after that the lights went off. And Zoyd curled in anguish and looked for his breath, and didn't drift under till just before the count at 5:30
A.M.

Hector showed up right after breakfast, beaming at him over a mustache the maintenance of whose microstructure back then was costing him twenty minutes a day of precious time. “Political office decides they don't need you after all. But even if we call you the mule, you're still lookín at a zip six indeterminate for that half a metric ton in your house, and somebody figured I could be of help. . . . You look like shit, by the way.”

“Get yourself bounced by Wyatt Earp out there, see how you feel.” Zoyd exhaled loudly through his nose, red-eyed, accusative. “Really a fuckin' late hit, man . . . all these years I thought you respected me enough not to force me to snitch. Now, what's so fuckin' important, to make you do this?”

A strange trick of the light, no doubt, or else Zoyd was inopportunely hallucinating, but the highlights on each of Hector's eyeballs had vanished, the shine faded to matte surfaces that were now absorbing all light that fell on them. “You know what, I got to start thinkín about lunch. Do we have to keep playín fuck-fuck with this?
Órale
, get you the right judge, dig it! a nice minimum joint, a farm, you can grow vegetables? flowers, you people like flowers, right? All's I need, really Zoyd, is to know the story on this gentleman, a mutual contact I am sure, name of . . . Shorty?”

“Christ, Hector,” croaking, shaking his head, “only Shorty I ever knew lives out in Hemet now and since his Vietnam days is takin' zero chances, won't even fly on the airplane no more, not too promising for you, outside of a little Darvon he cops off his ol' lady, he ain't even good for a Class III beef far 's I know.”

“That's him!” cried Hector, “that's the fucker all right, down in EPT they know him as Shorty the Bad, and it took supersnitch potential like yours to just break this case wi-i-i-ide open!
Muy de aquellos
, wait'll I tell my boss—you got a future in this business,
ése!
”

It occurred to Zoyd more belatedly than usual that Hector could all along have been running some exercise in narc humor for his own entertainment. He risked, “Why this thing about popping my cherry, Hector, can't you see I have a kid to look after now, no choice, I had to turn into a straight citizen and go on the natch anymore, no time for these hardened criminal drug dealers I used to hang out with, I'm totally reformed, man.”

“Yeah, some natch, chain-smokín pot, acid on weekends, when you gonna cut your hair? Quit playín that shit music, learn a couple nice Agustín Lara tunes? Li'l
conjunto?
And really start thinkín about gettín married again too, Zoyd. Debbi and me was both each other's second time around, and we could not be happier,
palabra.
”

“Now you tell me about your sister-in-law, the one you always try to fix up with everybody, even those you arrest.”

“Naw, she's livín in Oxnard now, married one of
los vatos de Chiques.
Debbi says it's in their blood, all the women in her family, they can't resist a suave, romantic Latino.”

“Sure hope you're keepin' her away from anybody like that.”

“
Ay muere
, give me a break,” shaking his head, flinging wide the door of Zoyd's cell, “go on, get out of here.”

So that evening around sunset he was at Sasha's, in a fragrant street lined with older palm trees, with a light desert wind blowing in the sounds of late-rush-hour traffic from the choke point miles up Wilshire and suppertime blooming in side windows up and down the long blocks. Prairie was all gussied up in some kind of brand-new toddler outfit, including shoes and hat, that her grandmother had bought for her, in Beverly Hills no doubt, and when she saw Zoyd she hollered, though not exactly in welcome. “Dah Dee no!”

“Say Slick,” down on one knee, holding his arms open.

Prairie scooted around behind Sasha and regarded him with her lower jaw pushed forward and her eyes bright. “No!”

“Aw, Prairie.”

“ 'Ippie
bum!
”

“
You
taught her that, I knew it, got your meathooks on her for one day—” But after Brock Vond and his colleagues, this was not the humiliation it might've been in times of peace.

“Zoyd, what happened, you look terrible.”

“Oh . . . ,” creaking up on his feet, “that fuckin' Brock Vond, man. Your daughter can sure pick 'em.” He didn't know if he'd share the final routine Brock had put him through. Before he was to be cut quite loose, Zoyd had had to stand between two marshals, one of them his assailant, Ron, unobserved in the afternoon shade, while Brock led out into the parking lot a steadfastly smiling Frenesi—who'd been somewhere inside all along, in Brock's custody—sun in her hair and face, those bare legs so poised and smooth . . . obliged to watch her go down, the smile held every step of the way, dapper pastel Brock in his custom shades opening the rear door of the car for her, to watch him then seize her hair, how Zoyd had loved that hair, to guide her head below the roofline and into the padded shadows, though not exactly to notice the way her neck was bent, the anticipation, the long erotic baring of nape, as if willingly, for some high-fashion leather collar. . . .

“I just defrosted a pizza, come on in.”

Prairie finally came to kiss him hello after all, and then later good night. When she was asleep in the spare room, Zoyd told Sasha about the deal he thought he'd made.

“But you can't really disappear,” Sasha said.

Right—which is where the mental-disability arrangement came in. “Just a way for us to know where you are,” Hector had explained, “long as you're pickín up those checks, nobody'll bother you—but if you stop for even one time, the alarm goes off and we know you're tryín to skip.”

Zoyd looked miserable enough about it for Sasha to lean, sock him in a precise, friendly way on the shoulder, and say, “All that fascist prick wants is to keep Frenesi from seeing her child again. Usual thing, men making arrangements with men about the fates of women. Would you really help keep them apart?”

“I don't think I could. How about you? Brock says you're no problem, you'll never let her near Prairie.”

“ 'Cause I'm an old push-button lefty, ideology before family, well let him think so, gives us that much more room to breathe. Listen, what about this?” And she told him about Vineland, how they all used to visit in the summers when Frenesi was little and how she'd loved to explore, must have followed every creek on that whole piece of coast as far up into Vineland each time as she could get, disappearing for days on end with a canteen of Kool-Aid and a backpack full of peanut-butter-and-marshmallow sandwiches.

“Seems a lot of folks heading that way lately,” Zoyd nodded.

“Well, once a year we still all get together up there, cook out, play poker, carry on, all the Traverses and Beckers, my parents and their relatives. It used to be the high point of Frenesi's year, but she stopped coming after high school. You know, there'd be worse places for you and the ol' bundle to live, have a home, beautiful country, only a short spin up or down 101 from everything, from the Two Street honky-tonks to the eateries of Arcata to the surfing at Shelter Cove, and you'd have a social life, 'cause lately this mass migration of freaks you spoke of, nothing personal, from L.A. north is spilling over into Vineland, so you'd have free baby-sitting too, dope connections, an inexhaustible guitar-player pool?”

“Sounds groovy for sure, but the only jobs are fishing and lumbering, right, and I'm a piano player.”

“You might have to live by your wits, then.”

“How's the hiding?”

“Half the interior hasn't even been surveyed—plenty of redwoods left to get lost in, ghost towns old and new blocked up behind slides that are generations old and no Corps of Engineers'll ever clear, a whole web of logging roads, fire roads, Indian trails for you to learn. You can hide, all right. So could she, then and now. Which is why, any year now, say even around Becker-Traverse reunion time, who knows, she might show up. Loverboy's charm has to wear off sometime.”

“Didn't notice much of that.”

“About the only thing'll get a fascist through's his charm. The newsfolks love it.”

“And you think she'll come to Vineland. And Prairie and me'll just happen to be there. . . .” Sure, well where'd he ever have been without fantasies like that to help bridge him across the bad moments when they came? That night on Sasha's phone he talked to Van Meter, who, himself demoralized by Zoyd's arrest, was joining the trek northward, happy to take along Zoyd's car, stereo, albums, and so forth. They agreed to connect soon at one of the phone numbers Van Meter gave him.

With Prairie hanging off him like a monkey in a tree, he waved goodbye to Sasha at the nearest Santa Monica Freeway exit and immediately got picked up by a VW bus painted all over with flowers, ringed planets, R. Crumb-style faces and feet, and less recognizable forms, all headed for the Sacramento Delta country, where flourished a commune, deep in, beyond the shallowest of boat drafts, sanctuary for folks on the run from court orders, process servers and skip tracers, not to mention higher and more dangerous levels of enforcement. This refuge from government happened to be lodged in the heart of a regionwide network of military installations that included nuclear-weapons depots and waste dumps, mothball fleets, submarine bases, ordnance factories, and airfields for all branches of the service, from SAC down to the Marines, whose flying stock, none of it equipped with noise suppressors, roared overhead without letup day and night.

They decided to stay a night or two, though the baby was not crazy about all the racket in the sky. For a while she hollered back but finally went looking for shelter inside Zoyd's perimeter, by then running on the tight side. People came to their door at unexpected hours looking for parties that could easily have been fantasies of the mind. A population of dogs and cats carried on their own often far from domestic dramas likewise without apparent reference to clock time. Sulfurous fogs came and stayed all day, everything smelled like diesel and chemicals, now and then Zoyd'd have to take his shirt off, wring it out, and put it back on again. When the ducks made highball and comeback quacks in intervals between airplane sorties, Prairie at their voices might begin to perk up, but then in over the patchwork rooftops, too loud and sudden, would come throbbing another chorus of national security, and she'd start to cry again, which eventually, more than the mindshattering roar, got Zoyd wondering just how desperate he was. Mosquitoes whined, sweat ran, Prairie kept waking up every couple hours, all the way back to her old baby ways, partygoers bellowed and shrieked, distant muffled explosions ripped the night, the worst stations on the dial played background music, dogs contended in the beaten mud shadows for thirdhand remnants of road kills. In the morning, gonging with insomniac beer and tobacco headache, Zoyd stumbled to the residence of the Commune Elder and gave notice. “How's that?” cupping an ear as an F-4 Phantom came screaming, invisible in the swamp haze.