New River Blues (10 page)

‘Um . . . let's see, which one was it?' Another sip. ‘Wait, I've got my checkout slip here someplace.' He dug through his briefcase till he found a crumpled receipt.

‘Good.' She smoothed the paper in front of her like some praiseworthy piece of homework. ‘This was a work-related meeting?'

‘Well . . . sure. It was hosted by a company that makes . . . wait.' He groped through his pockets till he found a brochure that touted the advantages of a brand of metal framing that was lighter, stronger, went up faster and easier . . . the brochure didn't specify which products suffered by these comparisons.

‘Thank you. And were you . . . at this hotel at the meeting the whole time, or did you visit friends while you were there?'

‘Friends?' His expression suggested that no reasonable person would have friends in Phoenix. ‘I got in late Friday night. Saturday I had a breakfast meeting and listened to a panel of builders and company reps until noon. I met with some bankers in the afternoon and then we had one of those terrible dinners with speeches. I snuck out and went to bed early.'

She stared down at the lines on her empty legal pad. ‘And Sunday?' She sounded ridiculous to herself, naming off the days of a weekend to a grown man. But she had the feeling if she stopped he might run himself mentally into some corner and sit there spinning his wheels. ‘After all the speeches, were there still more meetings?'

‘Sunday.' He cleared his throat, shuffled his feet some more. Sunday was going to be a slog, evidently. ‘I was supposed to be here at home for Pat's birthday party. She's mad at me because I didn't make it. She's eighteen, I guess that's kind of a milestone. But I got to thinking . . .' the dead-air pause again . . . ‘about a piece of property I've been interested in for some time. I decided I'd like to have another look at it by myself before I contacted the brokers. So I drove out Sunday and walked around it.' He shrugged ironically and said, ‘Bad old Dad.'

‘Anybody with you while you walked?'

‘What? No, I just told you,' he frowned impatiently, ‘I wanted to see it by myself.'

‘I see. May I have the address?'

‘It doesn't exactly have one. It's just a piece of land, out in the middle of the desert. It was only about fifty miles out of my way, so—'

‘You could show me on a map?'

‘Sure. Got it marked up on a topo map, right here, just a minute.' He dug in the briefcase a few seconds before he sat back and said, ‘I forgot. It's in the door pocket in the other car.'

‘The one that got wrecked?'

‘Yes.' He looked at her over the half-rims he'd put on to look through his briefcase, as if he'd just realized she might not believe him.
Roger Henderson, you are either pretty dense or very clever.
Either way, she had his full attention now. ‘Soon as I get back to my office,' he said, ‘I can find another map and show you where I was. It's an interesting location, right in the middle of an area that's predicted to see explosive growth in the next – oh, well, I guess you're not interested in that.'

‘Oh, I'd be interested, sure.' She looked down at her notes, sat back in her chair and said, ‘Where's your shotgun?'

‘What?'

‘The shotgun that fits in the rack in your den, where is it?'

His whole face got darker. ‘You saying it's missing?'

‘You saying you didn't know that?'

‘Well, no, goddamn it, of course I didn't know that. Is that what – you mean somebody used my own gun to kill Eloise? Is that what happened?' He gave her one long look of shock and disbelief and then his features seemed to crumble. He buried his face in his big hands and gave vent to racking sobs that shook him and the chair he sat in. Tears ran out through his fingers and pooled on the knees of his neatly pressed pants.

It was hard to watch, but Sarah never looked away. One of the worst cases she had ever worked involved an extended-care facility operated by a grandmotherly woman named Dolly Mulligan, who murdered a half-dozen elderly retirees and went on collecting their Medicare payments for several years. Sweet-faced in pastel dresses and pearls, Dolly told teary, sentimental stories about the happy times her aged clients had enjoyed in her house, while she led Sarah's team of gagging detectives to their burial sites in the yard.

So while Roger Henderson wept, Sarah Burke sat calmly across the table from him, waiting, her steel-blue eyes as still as a pond.

‘Couple minutes under the shower'll do it,' Nino promised himself. The room swayed alarmingly around him when he stood up. He clutched the bedstead and plotted a careful course to the bathroom door.

The miserable lukewarm trickle in the shower got him just wet enough to be chilled, and the worn-out gray towel was sodden before he was dry. Living conditions above the theater were no worse than yesterday, but he felt the grubbiness more now because he was scared and sick and alone.

Or not quite alone, actually. The ghost of Pauly had begun to appear dimly from time to time, sitting cross-legged on the bed across the room, dripping blood from the front of its head.

‘Why'd you have to go and shoot my face off like that?' it whispered. A few seconds later it added, improbably, ‘Gimme a cigarette, willya?'

‘I'm all out myself,' Nino said. Startled to hear himself talking out loud to a phantom, he whimpered in alarm.

He found jeans and a T-shirt, not too dirty, hanging from hooks in the closet. There was even a clean pair of socks in a dresser drawer. Probably Pauly's but – ‘You already killed me, you silly shit,' the ghost on the bed whispered, ‘you think I'm going to care if you swipe my socks?'

Don't listen to him.
The black shoes he'd worn last night were under the bed. When he pulled them out, he saw a smear of something across the toe of the right one, some lint stuck to it and a pebble. He held it up and realized the shoe had dried blood on it – that's what the trash was sticking to.

‘That's my blood,' the ghost whispered. Nino put it down fast.

There was a pair of old sneakers in the closet. They had holes, but . . . he put them on. They fit all right. The black shoes, though, he couldn't leave them here, could he? They might be . . . evidence. The word made his balls shrivel.

He was going to run. He always ran when there was trouble. If he could get out of town he might just be forgotten . . . he hadn't been around long, hardly anybody even knew who he was. Pauly was the only person in Tucson who'd cared about him, and now Pauly was sitting over there whispering out of a mouth he didn't have any more.

How was he going to get rid of the black shoes? A bag! There was a plastic bag under Pauly's bed, from the last six-pack they'd brought home. He gritted his teeth, reaching under the ghost, but it faded when he came near. Good, then, he wasn't really crazy. He was just freaked, and why wouldn't he be? He put the shoes in the bag. Now where was the nearest garbage container? God, he needed a beer. He began to search the room for money.

He remembered they'd spent almost all they had in the Spotted Pony Saturday night, telling each other there'd be food and some tips at the party Sunday, and the bartender at the Pony would let them run a tab for a few meals till payday. Still, there must be a little money around here somewhere. In pockets?

No money in the jeans. He found the black pants he'd worn to the job yesterday. Nothing in those pockets either. Whatever he'd been carrying must have fallen out while he was lying on the floor by the . . . he kept wincing away from thoughts about the bodies. But he needed desperately to make sense of it –
Why can't I remember shooting that gun?
– but he couldn't. His memory went as far as the dancing, with nothing beyond that but a fluffy white cloud till Zack was shaking him awake.

He found one bent quarter under the cushion of their only chair. What good was that? He pocketed it anyway and tucked the plastic bagful of shoes under his left arm. Sweating with fear, he eased his door open and tiptoed down the stairs.

Felicity caught him on the third step from the bottom, swooping into the stairwell like a breathless swan. She posed there, tossing her hair back, turning her head a little to the right because she knew the left three-quarter view was best. ‘Ah, good, here you are. Come on, time to boogie! Derek'll be here any minute with all those damn dancers in boots –' she laid the back of her narrow right hand against her forehead in a why-was-I-born gesture – ‘and that ghastly green sofa is still on the stage!'

‘I ain't moving any furniture,' Nino said, ‘till I get me a beer.' He said it mostly to stall; he had no money for beer, and he had no plan. But instinct told him to find a way around her, so he said the first thing that occurred to him.

Felicity had instincts too, though, which evidently told her that if Nino had money for beer, he would have pushed past her by now and be sprinting for the corner. ‘Help me move the sofa,' she said, suddenly flinty-eyed as a pit boss, ‘and I'll get you a beer and a bacon cheeseburger while you sweep the floor.'

Nino's stomach growled at the mention of food and the stairwell swayed vertiginously before his eyes. Gripping the railing to stay upright, he waited a few seconds for the world to settle down, glowered down at her and said, ‘Deal.'

The sofa was not as hard to move as it looked; an earlier crew member with back problems had fitted its legs with rollers. One grunting heave got it out of its caster cups, and they rolled it thunderously backstage. Felicity produced a push-broom from the shadows. ‘Just set the small stuff out of the way and sweep the stage. I'll be right back with your food, and then I'll call for your ride.' Her long hair streamed out behind her as she pushed open the stage door and stepped out, into sunshine so brilliant it set off his nausea again.

Half his brain urged him to run away as soon as she was out of sight. But every molecule of his body was crying out for the food and beer she had promised him. He felt he might die without it. And what did she mean about calling his ride? Was she talking about Zack, had they made plans for getting him out of town? How could they when he didn't know yet where he was going? But she hadn't sounded threatening or anything, had she? His head hurt, it was hard to think.

He began sweeping trash off the stage randomly, pushing it under curtains and off into the dark. What the fuck, they could pick it up later. And suddenly Felicity was back, popping the top on a cold beer. He would have kissed her foot for it, but she handed it to him gracefully with a little smile. He dropped the broom and drank half the can in one long swallow. Then he lowered the can, belched, waited a couple of beats to make sure it was going to stay down, and said, ‘What about my burger?'

‘Zack's bringing it,' she said, ‘and another beer. I found him in the Spotted Pony, wasn't that lucky? Let's see, what do we need first here? A couple of hay bales to start, I guess.'

A great many car doors slammed outside the stage door, and voices began calling to each other. Derek DeVoe, the bellowing stage manager, unlocked the stage door and strutted in, followed by a chattering horde of dancers and actors. The sight of Nino standing on the half-swept stage with an open beer can set him off at once. He began berating them both, calling the condition of the theater
absolutely unacceptable
and promising to have their jobs if they didn't hop to it
right this instant
. Nino and Felicity, in a rare moment of unanimity, met each other's eyes and muttered, ‘Bullshit.' Stagehand jobs paid so miserably they attracted only drifters like Nino and Pauly, who, when they moved on to jobs in fast-food restaurants, considered it a step up. The theater was perpetually short-handed; nobody ever got fired.

Felicity took the broom from Nino's hands and pushed him to the door saying, ‘I can handle the rest of this.' On the step, shouting above the chatter of many dancers, she told him Zack was waiting around the corner.

Getting away from the director's hectoring voice felt like a miraculous escape. Nearly blinded by the blazing sunshine after the dusk of the theater, Nino stumbled around the corner. And there, like some grubby dream come true, sat the catering van with Zack in the driver's seat.

‘Strap in,' he said, as Nino climbed unsteadily on to the high seat. ‘Your burger's in the sack, and there's plenty more beer in the cooler back there.'

Hardly able to believe his luck, Nino pawed open a white paper sack holding a juicy burger. There were fries, too, and plenty of salt and catsup. He was so hungry he ate the first half of the burger without pausing to breathe. He popped a second beer to wash it down and asked where they were going.

‘Up north a ways, a few miles east of Globe.'

‘What's there?'

‘I've got a motor home parked at the Apache Gold Casino where you can stay the night. Nobody's going to look for you there.'

‘Zack, I gotta get farther away than—'

‘Oh, I know. Here, by the way, I paid you in cash for the last two parties you worked. Your share of the tip's in there, too. From the motorhome park you can get a free ride to Phoenix, the casino runs buses all the time.'

‘Why would I want to go to Phoenix?'

‘For the bus depot. So you can get a ticket to –' he waved a hand – ‘wherever.'

Nino belched profoundly, waited while the world did its rocking and settling thing, and asked a thoughtful question. ‘How come you're being so nice to me?'

‘Hey, we pass it around, right?'

‘You'd do the same for me.'