The Prince Of Deadly Weapons Read online

  Dane turned to him. Nathan held out another beer for Dane, which he took. He also saw Nathan had been bitten by his own words.

  "I understand, Nathan; it's all right."

  Nathan tried not to think of his own son. "Yeah… yeah." He coated up a bit of a smile. "I'm going to help you. 'Cause I want your life to be successfully achieved."

  "You've been helping me in more ways than you know."

  "I appreciate your loyalty to me… and to Taylor."

  "Loyalty is important."

  "And I appreciate your honesty."

  "Honesty is important. Of course I don't mean to go overboard." On Nathan's uncertain look, "I'm talking about last night."

  "Yes… last night."

  Again Dane turned away. He opened his beer. The boy on the bike now had the kite. With one arm extended skyward, and the other guiding the handlebars he raced down the ridge top and over ground shaped like the swells of a risky sea.

  "Is that what you brought me out here to talk about?"

  "I brought you out here because a part of this is you. And it could be more of you. I wanted to offer you a chance to reach into all of this and take from it what you're willing to work for. And sacrifice for. To become, ultimately, the right hand of my business."

  As if he had not heard anything Nathan said and was solely focused on the cowboy ride of bike, boy and kite toward the river, Dane remarked, "When I was a kid I hated kites. I think maybe because the sky was too remote for me." He drank some more beer. "What about Taylor?" Dane turned to Nathan. "As a kid, was he into kites?"

  Nathan's hand came up and covered the lower part of his face as he realized he didn't know or couldn't remember and he told Dane so honestly. Then he looked at his hand as if what had been expressed on his face lay there staring backup at him in an indictment of mercenary understanding.

  "I want to see the center completed. After that, whatever happens, happens."

  "Self-pity can be a dangerous form of selfishness. And easily seen through."

  Nathan's face took on a few trenchant edges. "Was that how it sounded?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, you see how invaluable you are to me. I need that kind of loyalty."

  "And that kind of honesty?"

  "Are we going to celebrate or commiserate?"

  The boy on the bike made a stretch of dirt road and was speeding wildly to the river with the red and black paper bird high above and chasing him.

  "Before we do either, Nathan, I need to tell you that… I've lied to you."

  Nathan had a rocky feeling. He put his beer down on the bulldozer treads and striking a nonjudgmental pose, waited.

  "I was in serious trouble once. It wasn't long after the incident on the subway and I knew I was going to lose my sight. Money was a big issue. I was in college then. And not that 'Berkeley to Harvard' dance which I use to avoid the subject as best I can.

  "I was studying law at Princeton. I worked for a criminal attorney part-time and summers. I was sent once to pickup a packet that belonged to a client of his during a request for production. There was information in that packet that if the attorney had in his possession could have led to the discovery of admissible evidence that would have certainly indicted his client."

  The smaller boy and girl jackrabbited through the brush to try and catch the bike, but had no chance.

  "I was paid by the attorney to make sure the packet went 'undiscovered.'"

  The road was a mine field of holes. It was a beautiful wild temptation for that mustang of a boy and bike to swerve and jump.

  "Things went bad. The attorney never implicated me, but the school… I was very quietly gotten rid of."

  The road ran straight into a dry wash with a five-foot drop, and the boy on the bike with whiterimmed teeth and whiterimmed eyes and one hand gripping his handlebars and one holding the rope line went for it.

  "So you see, Nathan, I am a perfect accomplice for anyone who has not led a perfect life."

  It was a landless moment with the wind rattling through the boy's ears and at the moment he knew the bike could go no farther, no higher, he let go of the rope line.

  Nathan said nothing. He rose up and his shadow extended out from the bulldozer and it looked as if this beastly piece of machinery had grown a head and chest.

  The bike hit hard and the boy was chucked up from the seat and the wheels made crude herky jerky metallic sounds as they skidded and bounced along the rocky bottom.

  Nathan was face to face with Dane now. Nathan was the taller, broader, stronger looking man. "The night of the tribute, when I humiliated myself by coming down hard on you 'cause I thought you were there about the wine delivery, and then when we were alone and seeing you the first time I was just so overcome I started to cry, you said to me, and I never forgot it, you said, 'You're safe with me.'"

  The smaller boy and girl reached the edge of that craggy shelving and saw their friend lying on the rocky ground with the bike beside him, its front wheel spinning wildly.

  Nathan put his hand on Dane's shoulder. "Well… you're safe with me. More than anyone, ever, you are, and will be, safe with me… now."

  The smaller boy and girl ran to their friend yelling if he were all right but they got no answer until their winded shadows rushed across his face and they saw he was smiling.

  "And one more thing, Dane," said Nathan. "I won't ever compromise you. No matter what happens to me. I won't ever. You, at least, will be able to walk away and protect 'all this.' I'll see to it. I swear."

  The smaller boy and girl dropped beside their friend who tried to shake the sting from his cut hands, and the girl slapped at him for scaring her but he just kept watching the sky.

  * * *

  WHILE THEY walked toward the cars Dane said, "Nathan, this is hard for me, but—"

  Nathan stopped. Dane hesitated.

  "Wouldn't you like to know what really happened to your son?"

  Those dusky movie theater looks bruised over.

  The boy hobbled along leading his bike, the two small friends beside him. The girl still slapped at his back for scaring her as they made their way toward the river to follow that black and red bird's escape.

  "Doesn't it eat at you? I'd like to think that I could pay your son back, some day, with that little bit of knowledge."

  Nathan said nothing. He turned and walked to his car. His broad shoulders flexed uncomfortably. The wind blew dust through the distance between them and Dane wondered if he had not pushed it that much too far.

  Nathan took something from the glove compartment. He stepped away from the car and held out his hand. In it lay a gun. And while Dane stared at the black weapon, on a bench of sand at the shore three children watched a paper bird they had given life to ride the thermals, be carried along on the wind toward forever, or at least until it fell.

  "That's how much I want to know," said Nathan, "that's how much. And don't ever forget it."

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  HOW MANY TIMES, Essie thought, have I sat in this very same booth? How many times have I looked out this very same window? There was blood and bone in those memories.

  On her table were an open briefcase, notes, a beer, an uneaten lunch. She waited for Dane while brilliant sunlight waterfalled down the glass and she was forced to squint as she stared across the tarmac toward Taylor's hangar.

  It was almost empty now, the last few items gathering up darkness until she could sell them off.

  Moments remembered are emotions relived. She had been in this very same booth alone, despondent, emotionally beaten, the morning after Roy and Flesh had taken her to dinner in Lodi to break the news before she read it in the papers that "the investigation had failed to furnish any legitimate evidence that Taylor's death was—"

  Written on the weights of pain, anger and bitterness, in full measure. Enough to drown you, if you don't swim on. Moments relived are emotions remembered.

  "… The investigation failed to furnish—"

  Her
gray-green eyes blinked, and blinked again at the pulse of a thought. Then, with camera shutter quickness, simple disconnected details were caught in a breathless clarity.

  "… failed to furnish—"

  The Fenns opening Taylor's hangar door— their callous stares looking for an antique bureau— destination Charles Gill— its question mark end in a Dumpster— to the night in her garage Dane found it missing a dowel.

  She grabbed her note pad and began to write:

  Check invoice to find name of shipper for delivery to Gill. See if there are any connections between that and

  — A voice behind her ear, "Slide over."

  Her head jerked sideways.

  "Sorry," said Dane.

  She swept back her hair and slid toward the window. "Is it all right?"

  He slipped down in next to her.

  "What happened?"

  He took her beer and drank. He was still riding fumes of nervous energy. He saw Paul through the open doorway to the packed coffee shop. He was scooping dirty plates from a table into a bin to keep the turnover moving. Paul nodded and gave Dane a work-tired smile, then he hoisted up that bin and headed for the kitchen.

  "Nathan offered me a future."

  "What does that mean?"

  "He wants me to stay and leave an imprint. He wants my allegiance. My loyalty. A better word would be fealty. He wants to qualify for goodness by having me as a stamp of approval on his businesses. I'm the chip he wants to use to hedge his bet. He wants what he never had in the first place. He wants to imagine someone real." Dane took another drink of beer. He sat the glass down and with spare sadness said, "He wants a son back."

  "Did he come right out and tell you what he does? Were the words said? Was there a confrontation about what you saw?"

  Dane rested his forearms on the table. He studied the beer glass, the uneaten lunch, the note pads, the briefcase, his hands, as if some inexorable answer lay hidden in those simple still lifes, or that by staring long enough he could get whatever he felt out from inside him.

  "It was a beautiful day in Lathrop," he said. "And there were these kids with a kite. They were running along a ridge top. They were just colors moving across the sky and one kid on a bike held the rope line as he rode and the kite tailed high behind him and you could see the river."

  Dane looked at Essie. "That night in the garage, you were right. It would be great to be twenty-five without all the baggage."

  She extended her hand toward his. "How did you get him to believe you could be trusted?"

  Dane leaned his head back. The booth seat was anchored to one wall and he rested his head against it. "I know the right kind of lies to make myself vulnerable to someone. And Nathan wants a chance to… play God, without all the legwork."

  When her hand touched his, his head dropped down and came to rest on her shoulder.

  "We see Nathan for what he's done, for what he is. But I could imagine another Nathan. And another. One not so sad, not so pathetic. One that does not use the lie as a vital character trait. Although I'd be evading the obvious by forgetting what he's capable of."

  "Do you think he suspects what we're trying to do?"

  "You… no. Me… yes. I came out and asked him if he ever wanted to know what happened to his son."

  Essie leaned forward and Dane's head was forced up from her shoulder. Those gray-green eyes searched for the why behind what he'd done and Dane saw she was not at all sure this had not been a terrible mistake.

  "What did he say?"

  "He went to his car and showed me a gun."

  "Jesus Christ."

  "He wants to know, as long as he thinks he's safe."

  "What if he starts to think he isn't safe with you?"

  "I'm sure that's another reason why he showed me the gun."

  Chapter Forty

  CARUSO WAS COMING out of the kitchen by way of the bar, wiping his hands on a filthy apron. Sancho Maria was serving drinks and nabbed his attention with a look that pointed her chin in Essie and Dane's direction.

  The last booth was a tightly knit silence. Shoulder to shoulder they seemed lost to everyone and everything except themselves.

  * * *

  IT WILL be all right."

  Essie heard Dane, but she felt the gap between probability and certitude that something bad could happen had been drastically reduced.

  "What is all this?" he said, pointing to her notes.

  She suddenly remembered the last few minutes before he sat down. "In my garage. The antique with a missing dowel or front piece. The one sent to Charles that ended up in a Dumpster after the Fenns picked it up." She handed him the note to herself. As he read she kept on, "What if that's how they were shipping something when Taylor found out? What if that caused him to confront Charles or the Fenns? Not even suspecting his own father—"

  "Yes… yes."

  Dane noticed another page from the yellow legal pad. On this she had taped the bar napkin where he had written the name of the boat— PLYMOUTH ROC— he'd chased. Beneath it was a series of phone numbers. He held the page out for her to explain.

  "Boats," she said, "are registered through the DMV. They have numbers on their bow or stern like license plates. CA and a number… AZ and a number… NV and a number. For each state. The bad news is they're registered by number and there's no correlation to the name."

  "I didn't know," he said. "Otherwise I would have tried—"

  "No, listen. I went to the Coast Guard office this morning in Tracy. Boats are also federally documented. It's usually done for larger boats, but this form of registration is done by name.

  "There's a number in Virginia you call." She pointed to the number she had written down. "You give them the name of the boat and through the Freedom of Information Act they will fax you the name of the owner. The only problem is, more than one boat could have the same name."

  Her finger coursed down to where she had noted his description of the boat.

  "This may narrow the possibilities, and we might be able to find out who it was the Fenns met. And how all this fits together."

  His first reaction was to tell her how smart she had been to piece this out, his second was to write on a new note page a name— William Singleton. To that he added an e-mail address.

  She was practically breathing on his arm as he wrote, and when she asked, "Who is this?"

  "The old truck I drive belongs to him. He also has that funky website passing for an internet magazine I told you about."

  Dane slid the page along the table and between her hands. "One of Singleton's friends… had a father… who worked with the kinds of government people that would be interested in what is going on here.

  "If something were to happen to me, feed him everything. But not so you can ever be connected to me. I have a lap top at the house. Only use that. And never say anything about who you are."

  Staring at the torn page of yellow legal paper, at the name, the contact details, there was little need for conjecture on her part. Dane had directly and exactly not said what he meant.

  She pushed the page back toward him. "I don't like this." She shook her head. Her mouth kept repeating silently 'I don't like this.'

  Dane reached for the beer. "It's not to be liked, it's to be done."

  * * *

  IKNOW my life isn't nearly as exciting as yours." Caruso dropped down into the booth seat across from both of them, "but there is something to be said for the mundane mindless work that fills so much of our lives."

  Caruso's Graduate of the Men's Colony T-shirt was appropriately stained. He was wiping his hands on his apron when he asked Dane, "How you doin'? And none of that doublespeak like last night, okay?"

  Dane took the page with Singleton's name and information and folded it in half. "I heard you about the Boyz."

  "Hearing me, and hearing me are two different things."

  Dane folded the paper again and slipped it into Essie's open briefcase. The helpless proximity of the pure truth, she could do litt
le at that moment but watch. Caruso noticed the tension in her face as she did.

  Caruso rested his forearms on the table. The tips of his broken thick fingers tapped together. He sat there like some blue-collar inquisitor looking from Dane to Essie, then back to Dane. "The old lady and me would have to be brain dead not to be feel in' the vibe coming off this table. Do you think we don't have any idea what the hell is going on?"

  Sancho Maria passed by and placed two beers on the table. Caruso asked his wife, "You talk to 'em?"

  The blockish set of the jaw, the deeply blackish guarding eyes, Sancho Maria had the look of someone who would not be hurried along by impulses she would later have to justify or defend. She had withstood too many of life's uncertainties for that.

  "They won't listen," she said. "Their minds are set." Her voice trailed off toward a much more intimately felt point. "I just pray it won't take something else terrible to change them."

  Sancho Maria went about her work and Paul leaned back. He pointed to those collaged walls dedicated to that mythic prison and maze. "What are the magic words? What? What do I always say? Don't fly too—"

  From the booth behind him a cellular rang. A big softly shaped man answered and got talking. Everyone in the bar who knew Paul knew what would come next. Caruso swung around and faced a large balding head with wisps of soft blond hair. He tapped the man on the shoulder. The man turned. He was young, puttyish, with glasses.

  "You want to kill that call?"

  "Excuse me?"

  Caruso aimed a finger at the cellular CEASE AND DESIST sign on the far wall. The man told the party at the other end to hold on. He then said to Caruso, "There's no law in California that says you can't talk on a cellular phone in a restaurant."

  That was it. He went back to his call. Caruso was already in a black mood at having left no imprint whatsoever on Dane, and now Essie.

  Paul's face tightened up. He was mumbling to himself, "No law in California… fuckin' pompous wuss…"

  He reached for Dane's mug of beer. He drank the glass down partway and stood. As he did, Dane noticed Tommy Fenn crossing the tarmac with a couple of scruffy airport regulars. They were coming toward The Burrow.