Lost Man's River (51 page)

“Oh boy,” Rob said.

“I'd like this power of attorney endorsed. And the petition documents on the claim should be signed by
all
the Watson heirs. No exceptions,” Dyer added, and he turned to Rob. “Not even you.” Extending his pen, he contemplated Rob's shocked expression with real pleasure. “Well, Robert?” he said. “How about it?”

Rob was sure that Lucius had betrayed him. “I'm not signing a fucking thing,” he told Dyer hoarsely. He rose in a lurch of plates, overturning his water glass, but before he escaped, the Major grasped him by the shirt and yanked him forward over the table, his fork points inches from Rob's face. “Sit down,” he ordered. And he took out yet another document and laid it beside Rob's plate and rapped it, sharply, with his middle knuckle.

Rob glanced at the new document, dropped it back on the table. He gazed at Lucius, a heavy shadow on his face. Then he got up and headed for the door, where he paused briefly to remonstrate about the carver—in vain, it seemed, for after a noisy arm-waving dispute Rob left the room.

Dyer turned to his sour cream and baked potato, which he ate in silence. “How much do you know about him?” he asked finally. “Or should I say, How much do you
want
to know?”

Lucius struggled to compose himself. “I guess if I'd wanted to know more, I would have asked him.”

“But you suspected something, right?” Dyer ate again, then put his fork down to make a note while he finished his slow mouthful. “Why did you never tell me he was Robert Watson?”

“I didn't know that when we spoke last—not that I would have told you anyway without his permission.”

“And you don't know why he changed his name?”

“Hated his father. Ran away. Took his mother's name.”

“He's still running away.” Dyer handed him the prison record, which Lucius glanced at and tossed back at him. “Not interested in how I found this out?”

“Now that I know your cop mentality, I can guess. You lifted his fingerprints. Lake City. The Golden Dinner, right? You swiped his spoon.”

“
Cheap
Golden Dinner.” Dyer nodded. “Fork.”

“You check everybody's prints? On general principle?”

“When it's appropriate.” Dyer retrieved the sheet and returned it to his briefcase. “So you are saying you never knew that Robert Watson did a lot of time? Bootlegging during Prohibition? Driver in a warehouse robbery in which a guard was killed? Prison escape? Fugitive from justice almost twenty years?”

Lucius shook his head, disgusted. “Come on, Dyer! He was only the driver! And he's an old man! You going to turn him in?”

Dyer processed another mouthful, talking through it. “As an attorney and friend of the court, and as a reserve officer in the United States Marines, I don't really have much choice about it.” And he ate some more.

“You pledged allegiance to your flag and to the republic for which it stands, is that correct?”

“Don't get snotty with me just because you're drunk.” He pointed an accusing finger at Lucius's whiskey. “It may surprise you that a great many of your fellow citizens are proud to pledge allegiance to our flag. And worship at church and revere our Constitution. And feel no need for intoxicating spirits.” He raised his arm and pointed his finger straight at Lucius's eyes, and his own eyes sparkled with a cold blue fire. “Anyway, I sure do hate to hear any American talk sarcastically about our flag. I really
hate
that.”

Lucius was startled by Dyer's face, which was actually swollen and clotted with a fervid hatred. He took a deep breath. “What are you saying, Dyer? If Rob signs the land claim petition and endorses your power of attorney, you'll set aside your bounden duty to report him, that what you're getting at? Let him go his way?”

“We'll see.” The Major nodded as he scraped his plate and masticated his last forkful. “Tell me,” he said casually, “will he be at Naples?”

“I have no idea.”

“You have no idea.” Dyer leaned back in his chair and suppressed a belch. “If I were you, I would see to it that he accompanies you to Naples.” He nodded, as if falling asleep. “And when you are sure about it, I'll expect a call.” He wrote a number on his paper napkin. “No need to leave your name, just his location.” The Major squinted at him. “All you have to do is call and then you're out of it.”

“All I have to do is call and then I'm out of it.” Lucius stood up. “God, what a prick you are.” And he reached down and seized Dyer's pen and crisscrossed and blotted out his own signature on the power of attorney.

Major Dyer blew like a surfacing manatee as he arose. He wiped his
mouth, drank down his water. For all his self-control, he was incensed, and his napkin was still clutched in his fist when he left the table. Hearing a frightened “Sir?” behind him, he hurled the balled napkin at the waitress.

Overtaking Lucius in the lobby, Dyer took hold of the back of his upper arm. “You're drunk. You better think this over,” he growled, propelling Lucius forward ever so slightly, as if he meant to run him out the door. “For your brother's sake, I mean.”

“How about you? Aren't you a Watson? Shouldn't you be signing your damned documents, too?”

Releasing him, Dyer said in a thick voice, “Let me tell you something. You don't want me for an enemy.” His moon face looked swollen again, and the shivers appeared in the skin around the mouth. “I'll bring fresh documents to Naples,” Dyer said, and kept on going.

Rob's old-style satchel was wide open on the bed, and a revolver cartridge glinted on the floor. Before Lucius could react, an explosion shook the bathroom door. “Oh Christ, Rob!” he yelled, socked in the heart. But he heard no body slump and fall, only a curse, then a second shot, a third, then a wild yell. Scared voices and the screech of tires rose from outside and below as Lucius forced the door. At the window, Rob blew smoke from the revolver muzzle, gunslinger-style, then gave another rebel yell—
ya-hee!
—and broke up in hoots of drunken laughter.

Lucius leaned from the window in time to see a big black car moving out into the street with both rear tires punctured, dully thumpeting. It traveled some distance before coming to a stop at a red light, where silhouetted figures approached cautiously from the street shadows, black as ants in the pool of light. The stick figures bent to look in at the windows. Nobody got out. The green light came and then the red and then the green again.

In the parking lot, people had gathered. One man was shouting, pointing up at Lucius, who kept his head and leaned farther out the window. “What's going on down there?” he yelled, before retreating.

Rob was drunkenly crowing in the bedroom, waving the gun around. “Ran that sonofabitch clean off the property! Had him skedaddling like a damn duck!” Lucius grabbed the gun and collared the old man and rushed him across the corridor to the fire stairs. He gave him the name of a local bar where he should wait until Lucius came to get him.

“How about my stuff?” Rob yelled, back up the stairwell.

Rob's stuff consisted of a spare pair of cheap under shorts, spare socks, spare shirt, a few loose cartridges, a rusty razor, worn toothbrush but no paste, and an old sweater. Beneath these was an empty cartridge box, a large
envelope of manuscript, and a folded yellowed packet, sadly stained—the list. Lucius glanced at it, took a deep breath, refolded it—there were soft torn slits where the dark creases had worn through—and tucked it into his breast pocket.

The big envelope held a handwritten manuscript with Lucius's name scrawled on the outside—had Rob written his “story,” as he'd threatened? He hefted it, stood there a moment, put it back, then took the posse list out of his pocket and returned that, too. He had no right to these things, after all. He had no right to read that manuscript until Rob gave it to him of his own accord, wasn't that true? He closed the satchel and went back to the window.

A rain which had threatened since late afternoon had begun softly, shining the pavements under the hard lights. The black car had not stirred and the crowd was larger, but whether Dyer was still inside the car—whether he had gotten out or had been removed from it—Lucius could not tell. On the fire stairs, he heard loud clangorous footsteps and the shouts of people bursting into corridors. In the parking lot, as he started his car, he heard the first siren of an ambulance.

Lucius set his glass on the dark wood of the booth and cupped it between his hands. “I hope you missed him, Rob.”

“I never shot at him. I shot his tires out, is all. Nailed both rear wheels on a moving vee-hickle with three damn rounds of a revolver!” He grinned at Lucius with wry pride. “Know who taught me? Seeing his boy shoot that way would have made ol' Bloody proud!”

Lucius nodded but did not smile back. “Why should Dyer believe that you weren't shooting at him?”

“Who gives a shit what he believes! It's the damned truth!”

Lucius nodded. “That car's still right there at the stoplight. As far as I know, nobody got out. That's the damned truth, too.” They listened a moment to the sirens. “Let's go,” he said, rising from the booth.

“You don't believe me?”

“You think the law is going to accept that story? Slugs ricocheting all over the damn parking lot? Suppose one hit him?”

“Lucius?” The old man retreated deeper into the booth, as if to hide himself in the warm whiskey darkness. “It was kind of a joke,” he pleaded.

“Tell 'em it was a joke. See if they laugh.” Lucius tossed a few bills on the table. “You have a record, dammit! You're a fugitive! At the very least they will rack your mean old ass for reckless endangerment or whatever they call it—firing a lethal weapon in a public place.”

He went outside. Rob darted out behind him. “Where we heading for? I'm not going to Chatham Bend with you, I'll tell you that!”

Lucius unlocked the car door. “We're going home.” He spoke without much heart. “They won't come to Caxambas before morning.”

In the car, the old man was subdued. “I'm too damn old to be going back to prison, Lucius. And don't start telling me I should have thought of that!”

“All right,” Lucius said. “I won't.”

It was raining harder. For the next few miles, south on the Trail, they passed in silence through a wiper-washed phantasmagoria of strip development. Half-seen drowned buildings, lights, and signs streamed past in pools and glimmerings of gold-red light—as if they were newcomers to hell, thought Lucius, and were on their way in from the airport. In the tire slick and glare of the night highway, a dull dread had worn away the whiskey. He knew that Rob was doomed, and their flight useless.

Rob was banging on the outside of his door. “This here's my stop,” he said. Lucius pulled in at the roadhouse, thinking the old man might need the toilet, but Rob was dragging his old satchel over the seat top. He clambered out and slammed the door. A warm waft of deep-fried foods carried across the rain. Rob spread his arms wide to the lights and rain as if summoning the night highways of America to take him back. “Don't disappear, all right?” Lucius called. “You have a home now, Rob! You belong with your own family!”

“You're my family?”

The old drifter bent to contemplate his brother, ignoring the rain that descended the deep furrows of his face. He, too, had sobered. “If they come hunting me, they'll drag you into it. You get back to the hotel, work on your alibi, okay, Luke?” Rob was the only person who had ever used that name, which Lucius had not heard since early boyhood.
“Luke!”
he exclaimed, to conceal his emotion.

“All right,” Rob said, trying to smile. “I'll be there tomorrow, Luke. I'll be right there in the mob, throwing rotten eggs,” he yelled, voice rising in indignation. “Us folks won't tolerate your damn whitewash of Ed Watson!”