The Prince Of Deadly Weapons Read online

  "I have to know about Nathan's relationship with that kid. Because there were questions, serious questions, Ivy, that could have an effect on us, that Nathan wouldn't answer."

  Here we are with Dane, she thought, living out a surreal horror. Life was literally duplicating itself. It was as if some logical mind, some uncanny force was pouring a little fire onto their hubris.

  She hesitated. "Go on."

  "If Rudd opened that box like Nathan said, why did he make the Fenns open it?"

  Ivy sat there like a blank tape. About this, Nathan had not said a word.

  * * *

  I HAVE to fly down to Mexico with Nathan… Punta Final… Nathan says one thing, but I sense another…"

  Dane sat on the edge of the well stones on the hill above Taylor's house. Even though the line was staticky he thought he could pickup a sea change in their voices.

  "I don't know which airport we'll be stopping at before we cross… I'm worried, yeah… No, don't have any of your people at the airport…'Cause your people look like your people."

  Dane intentionally softened his voice when he asked, "I'm not starting to earn your respect, am I?… Yeah, maybe under different circumstances we could be friends… But we're not, are we?… Under different circumstances."

  He looked up at the windmill. There was the slightest breeze, it barely moved, the wood clicking off in minutes, rather than seconds. It made the very idea of time seem even more intense, and more powerfully expansive.

  "I made all the pitches," said Dane. "I was a Nathan for the next generation. And here I am, face to face with the ultimate sales pitch… Do I sound different? Well…"

  A speedboat rode a crest of white foam coming down the slough. It sent a rippling tide out toward the little island. Dane watched the boat as it rushed toward the sun. The light was so intense it almost burned his eyes.

  "Just like anybody, I'm trying to earn this private little dream I'd like to fly away to…"

  Chapter Forty-Six

  WHAT THE FUCK is all the way down in Punta Final?" Paul asked.

  Nathan sat at The Burrow bar waiting for Dane. He nursed a scotch and tried to short talk Caruso. "Potential investors for the center have a beach house there. Dane and I are gonna go do a dog-and-pony show."

  Nathan looked across the tarmac avoiding Caruso's stare.

  "And Shane Fenn is gonna fly you?"

  "That's right."

  Caruso scanned the line of corrugated hangars, one of which was Taylor's. "I don't know why you'd fly anywhere with a piece of shit like that."

  It was a testing question that Caruso had no right at all to ask and Nathan answered by acting as if Caruso had no right at all to ask. In the silence that followed Nathan considered the thing that he was. How he'd allowed his son to be used unknowingly as a conduit for every kind of sellable illegality. But the twistings of self he went through to deal with his immediate needs turned a reality that should have made him recoil into a mere matter of record.

  That level of coldness he felt was no coincidence. He'd felt it before, in times when he had to reach into the sample case of character traits that helped him survive and excel at what he did. He was, inside, preparing for Punta Final.

  "You still do search and rescue, Paul?"

  "When they need me."

  "So you keep the floats on that Cessna of yours?"

  "Yeah."

  "Maybe sometime you and the old lady fly up to Trinity Lake. A guy paid off a debt by giving me the time-share on his cabin."

  Caruso knew this was just so much chat to kill a certain line of conversation. "Sure," he said.

  Nathan hid behind his drink. Caruso glanced out the window. The Fenns were getting their Skyhawk ready for the trip. The influence of the past months, the little moments either seen or felt, the old rumors about Nathan, the conversations he had with Sancho Maria that a parallel world was being played out right before their eyes caused Paul to tell Nathan, "When you're down in nowhere land, make sure nothing happens to Dane."

  Nathan checked the time on his watch. Caruso had been brazenly direct, as if he understood there were unspoken difficulties. "What could happen?" said Nathan.

  Nathan's left arm was resting flat on the bar. Caruso draped his hand across Nathan's wrist. The pressure he exerted possessed more than a touch of passing interest. "I mean it, Nathan. I like that boy. Sancho Maria likes that boy. Very fuckin' much."

  The bar was relatively quiet. No one noticed the odd and uncomfortably executed moment as Nathan's arm had to bend its way loose of Paul's grasp. Caruso pursued it no further as he saw Dane enter from the coffee shop side.

  Dane walked between both men. "Good morning," he said. He seemed to be unaware of what had just taken place. "Sorry I'm a little late, but the outboard wasn't cooperating this morning."

  "It's all right," said Nathan.

  "Sure," said Paul, keeping a tight stare on Nathan. "It gave a couple of old thieves time to just hang. Isn't that right, Nathan?"

  Nathan let the comment pass and stood. "I'm gonna piss, then we'll get out of here." He pointed to a small gray carryall he'd brought that was on the floor by his bar stool. "Grab that will you."

  Dane looked down at the carryall, then up at Caruso. Once they were alone Paul asked, "Ready to go sales trippin'?"

  About this sudden urgent trip Dane could surmise almost anything as a reason, but he put on a necessary smile for Paul. "Do you think I'm better suited to playing the dog, or the pony?"

  Paul shook his head, then waved to a pilot crossing the bar toward the coffee shop. "I did too much yard time." Caruso looked out the window to where the Fenns were filling up their Skyhawk with gas. He made sure Dane knew where he was looking and who he was looking at. "Be careful, all right. You're goin' down to the forgotten end of the world, and I don't buy this sales trip bullshit, okay. Maybe I'm just a fool, but… if there's trouble, you call me. Get your ass clear if you can and call me, all right?"

  "All right," said Dane.

  "And I don't mean for you to say all right like it's some fuckin' afterthought… all right?"

  "All right," said Dane again.

  All the dints and scars on Caruso's face were highlighted in his tight stare. Dane passed around him. As he did Paul noticed the boy again glance at the carryall, at the bathroom hallway. Then Dane took to looking over one of Caruso's copies of the labyrinth on The Burrow wall. The original seemed to have been etched during the Middle Ages with the dour flair of the European churches from that time.

  In the dusty bowels of those stone passages, on the walls which formed its center, there waited a shadow beast, inexact and shapeless as any dream, and the more fearful for it. "I read once," said Dane, "that certain labyrinths were conceived for the purpose of luring in devils, so that they might never escape."

  "You read too fuckin' much, or too fuckin' little." Paul watched the boy as his hands dug down into the back pockets of his black jeans, as the tension in his arms rose to the deep gash across that tattoo flexing at the border of his black shirtsleeve, and the facial features as they prowled private dramas, unspoken difficulties. Paul could track his own youth there in the stormy silence and calm strains.

  "Imagine," said Dane, "if there was no monster at the center of that maze. No monster, no beast. How senseless it would all be."

  "This is strictly institutional talk, all right. I'm gonna jump past it." Paul glanced at the bathroom hallway. He sat on the bar stool right behind where Dane stood. "Sancho Maria and I know something is going on here. Maybe it has to do with Taylor."

  Dane turned to face him. Caruso kicked at the carryall. "I'm trying to watch out for you."

  Dane gave him a cursive looking over. "Where's your war glove?"

  "What?"

  "When we met at your hangar the first day. You were trying to get at that maneater of a kitten hiding in the wall. And you were wearing a huge old leather 'war glove' to protect your hand."

  Paul understood. His face belligerently b
ent to a smile that had secret to it, and sadness. "God shouldn't have made you so smart. It ain't right. As a matter of fact it's worse than ain't right. It's downtown fuckin' dangerous 'cause it makes you believe too much in yourself, and usually when you can least afford to."

  Dane stood there silently. Caruso saw Nathan had only half drunk his scotch. Caruso reached for the glass and finished it in one swallow. "I don't want to see you destroyed, son."

  Dane nodded. "You know, Paul. The time being around you is gonna be the bread of an awful lot of good memories for me. And I'm not sure how in hell I deserve it."

  * * *

  LATE MORNING shadows fell across the asphalt where Dane followed Nathan. The Fenns were waiting by their four-seater Skyhawk. A doctrine of folded arms and sunglasses. A tentative surveillance.

  "Let's get going," Nathan told Shane.

  Tommy Fenn suggested, "Why don't I fly you down there instead?"

  "You're better off being quiet, boy. Now back away."

  Tommy backed away. Nathan bent under the wing and opened the cabin door. He shoved the carryall into the back seat and motioned for Dane to follow suit.

  An anxious look passed between the brothers. Their movements were pinched, sullen. Shane walked around to the far side of the plane, Dane to the cabin door where Nathan waited. Nothing more was said, but Dane knew now what the trip to Mexico really meant.

  * * *

  ESSIE HAD promised Dane she would not be at the airport when he left. Concerned as she was, Dane had acted like he believed with certainty things would be all right.

  There is no word more hideous for the assurances it arouses than certainty. It is a word whose history of credentials has proven to be miserably limited.

  At one end of the Rio Vista Airport was a grove of trees and the leftover sheds of an airplane stripping and painting business. It was from there she watched the Skyhawk come around and start up the runway, from there she watched the blue-white plane climb through gaps in the trees. She watched till all sight and sound of it dissolved in the silent, pale distance.

  She walked the pathway between sheds deciding what to do next. She saw the bones and fur of something dead in a weedy patch cluttered with empty paint cans. An irreducible strangeness came over her.

  Essie called the yacht club bookkeeper to tell her she was sick and would not be back the rest of the afternoon. She went to her garage. She faced a wall of boxes where she stored the records of Taylor's importing business.

  She began the search for an invoice, the one meant for Charles Gill. Invoice after invoice, streaked with dusty light, invoice after invoice, and all the while the irreducible strangeness she had felt seeing that rot of carcass and bone stayed with her.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  THEY FLEW THE Central Valley south in silence but for the sound of the engines. A dense noise that made the inside of the small cabin all that much more claustrophobic. A storm was moving in from the east they hoped to beat by hours.

  Dane, alone in the back with the carryall, watched both men's reflections in the glass and more than once when he could traced the nylon skin with his fingers as if he might discover what it held by touch. At that, he was unsuccessful.

  The Delta, and the valley floor, all he saw that first dusk with Paul Caruso seemed to spill on toward the end of the world. From there the earth looked even now to have been groomed by the hand of a painter. Skyborn, even now, it appeared beyond all the manifest destiny of greeds. Something that could never be contrived by human fictions, or portioned with deceit. Something that could never be lavished upon impostors, or given to those who lied their way to truth.

  It wasn't long before Nathan leaned around the seat and Dane saw in Nathan's face an intensely drawn harshness he hadn't before leveled right at him. "We're not going to Mexico for a sales pitch. At least not the kind you're used to."

  * * *

  CHARLES TRIED to remain oblivious to his anxiety but there are men whose character is too narrowly built, whose self-deception in these regards is always at the abyss of that wrong decision.

  He was working through this little stage of hell waiting for word from Mexico when he saw Claudia crossing the bank lobby. He had no idea why she'd come, as she never did, and then only to bring the girls and she would call beforehand.

  "Let's go up to the Rock-and-Roll Museum and talk," she said.

  "Is anything wrong with the girls?"

  "The girls are fine. But you're in a very bad place, Charles. Very bad."

  She scanned his office walls before she spoke.

  "In light of our last conversation," said Charles, "these guitars have taken on a new significance."

  Of that she was certain. She pointed toward the window. "My father is downstairs."

  His eyes followed, as did he. The gray family Mercedes waited in the handicapped parking that fronted the bank. He tried to spot the old man's yellowish skull.

  "I don't have a grand view of the world, Charles. I've told you that. I only hope you care for the girls as much as I do."

  * * *

  DANE DID not see the small billy club that Nathan took from his right coat pocket. He did not see anything until Nathan's hand came up and the black fist-size baton struck Shane right across the mouth and jaw.

  Shane's head slapped sideways and from his throat came a cracked gasp. The wheel controls he held onto followed the snap and sag of his body. The plane banked hard left, sped up, then began to dive.

  The clouds raced toward and over the plane and soon all they saw ahead was earth. The cabin was a chaos of cramped motions and clutter. Dane had been thrown and jammed into the corner of the back seat, the carryall had tumbled down and clipped the side of his head. And when the Skyhawk began to dive Dane was dropped onto the back of Shane's seat and it hit his chest like a shield and drove the air right out of him.

  Nathan yelled for him to pry Shane loose from the wheel. To do that Dane had to manage both arms around the seat and lift that half-conscious, groping, fighting weight against the pull of gravity. All Dane could hear was the diving whine of the engine, all he could see was a long hollow of ground in jeweled and muddy colors coming for them.

  He grunted and tore at arms that fought back convulsively, autonomically. Nathan used his free hand to reach for a small revolver in his coat pocket and with that hand took hold of the wheel controls in front of his own seat.

  As Shane was pried loose Nathan began to right the Skyhawk. The earth stalled then started to roll away, the diving whine straightened into a fleshing soar. Shane's head shook and lolled and there were slaverings of blood from his mouth down his shirt and across Dane's hands.

  Shane managed what sounded like a drunken cry. "You dirty fuckin'—"

  Nathan answered by hitting him across the chin with that sap. The skin snapped apart. It was a grim and heartless triumph of sure-handed speed.

  Shane wailed at the pain and Nathan yelled over the wail, "If I have a fuckin' thief in this plane I'm gonna find out!"

  Nathan had the gun in the hand riding the wheel, in the other that black beating stick. His face made a sweep of the tiny cabin. And Dane finally saw— the essence inside the illusion was loose. What could happen to one, could happen to the other. Yeah, it was down to the ragged violent ugly. The white frost stare with the fired eyes that would chase you into any hole, anywhere, anytime. No dreams there. Just a flesh and blood scion of impure truths— Dane saw.

  "Somebody," said Nathan, holding that billy toward Dane, "Somebody ripped diamonds from that box you delivered to the Fenns. Somebody! Somebody!"

  He waved the black stick across the cabin. Shane's arm came up, whether to protect himself or to fight back, but as fast as it did Nathan struck it down. Then he struck at it again and Shane coiled up in his seat to avoid the blows screaming, "It wasn't us! It wasn't us!"

  "I could fly you over the ocean—!"

  "It wasn't us."

  "I could toss your runny ass from this plane at ten thousand fee
t—!"

  "I swear it wasn't us!"

  * * *

  FOR WHAT he was about to do, the self-hate the old man felt could only be blamed on the dirty thing that had married his daughter and was sitting next to him in the back of the family Mercedes.

  "Everything… you've done," said the General, "… has… ended up… inone… total problem for us… all."

  "The cause goes back before me," Charles told him. "I know it was your cunt that got me busted. So… I'm what you fought for, right!"

  A brutish recognition came to the old man looking into a gray sky and he thought to himself, wished really, that all skies all the time should be gray. That's how angry he was, how conscious of death he was, how hateful of death he was, feeling as he did.

  The old man put up a steely patina. "If Nathan finds… out your… connection…" The General's hands tried for a demonstrative flourish, "… with that Romero… and, and… there's a chance… he will… now, you… understand."

  Charles sat there and acted as if this fact were unreal, or strictly insignificant.

  "I want… my family… intact."

  "Your family?"

  "So… I'm going to… give up… a man who was closer, closer… tome… than you could… ever—"

  "And how do I get fucked over this time?" Charles saw the old man was now looking past him. He turned. Claudia was in the bank doorway watching.

  "Claudia wants you… out of… her life… and out… of the girls' life… for good."

  Charles understood how completely this conversation had been preordained. "You Hands are all alike. You're either in someone's pocket, or at their throats."

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  NATHAN LANDED THE Skyhawk at Brown Field, which is just east of San Ysidro and a few miles north of the Mexican border. On roll out, after landing, he said, "You both stay with the plane." Then Nathan went off alone.

  At the fueling area Shane sat on the lip of the open cockpit door. The lower part of his jaw had gotten grotesquely swollen and purple. The gash on his chin looked to be in dire need of stitching. Dane stood off from the wing in the sunlight and smoked. Nathan had not thrown Fenn out of the plane, but both were certain this was not the end of it.