Down Solo (15 page)

Too much has happened too fast and I haven’t had time to digest the indigestible, to process the impossible and unacceptable fact of my experience.

I reach in my pocket and pull out my battered and nearly empty wallet. Daniel’s card is barely readable. I dial the number.

After two rings a woman’s recorded voice says, “Please enjoy the music while we locate the party you’re calling,” and I hear the Beatles singing, “Baby you’re a rich man, baby you’re a rich man . . .”

“Hello? Charlie, how dey be hangin’?”

“Cut the shtick, Daniel, I’m in trouble here.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I almost killed a man in a rage a few hours ago, I nearly broke down leaving my daughter, and now I’m frozen. I’m overwhelmed and I can’t move.” I watch Dave leave the restaurant and walk unsteadily to his car.

“It sounds to me as if you had a glitch in your repair job.” He talks like he’s describing a computer hardware problem.

“What kind of glitch?” I think back to my session in front of the mirror in the mine bunker, and the voice feeding me weird technical instructions.

“It has to do with the chemistry regulating emotions. Glutamate uptake transporters, that kind of thing. Once a strong feeling takes hold, it takes over and you don’t have the mechanism to modulate it.”

“What can I do about it?”

“Nothing right now. You’ll need my help and some time in a safe environment.”

“So why do you do this anyway? Follow me around and help me?”

“It’s an obligation. I think it helps keep me alive. It’ll be like that for you, too.”

“Terrific. Now what?”

“Follow your plan. Depend on no one.”

“That’s it?”

“One thing. If you are gravely threatened, leave the body before it gets damaged.”

Dave is fumbling with his keys. I don’t have a good feeling about this.

¤ ¤ ¤

Tanya answers her door in a pale blue silk kimono. Her hair is loose, and without her boots she looks small and fragile. She has a drink in her hand and stands in my way as I try to walk in, her hand on my chest as she says, “Charlie, I’m so glad you called me.”

I phoned her from the restaurant parking lot after signing off with Daniel, telling her I had her phone, did she want it? You bet she did.

She has music playing again, something exotic and slinky, a woman’s smoky voice half singing, half talking in Portuguese. Scented candles barely illuminate the room and leave the edges in shadow. Tanya leads me by the hand as if we were on a dance floor, moving in time to the congas and acoustic bass coming from the speakers. She turns to me and lets the robe fall open. I place a hand on her breast and she moves in close. Her hair smells of fresh lemon with a hint of bergamot; I breathe it in and am transported. We dance in a cocoon of warmth and safety, there are no emergencies, there is no world outside of her scent and my hand on her breast and our slow movement and the voice singing
Eu
te amo, estou enlouquecendo
. Desire floods my veins, more powerful than any drug I’ve known. From somewhere inside myself I watch and want to say
No, not now, not this
, but I’m only an observer and don’t have a vote.

The sofa is covered with upholstery that’s soft as velvet. Her skin, the fabric, my skin, the mix of fragrances, her slick wetness, my hunger, all become a hypnotic blend of sensation. Her beauty fascinates me; her body clings to me ferociously; we enter a timeless delirium where even my silent observer gets lost in the dream.

The music finally stops. A muscle in my leg twitches to its own rhythm. We lie drenched in sweat, staring at the moving shadows on the ceiling. Tanya rolls toward me and props herself up on an elbow. She runs a fingernail lightly across my chest.

I excuse myself and take my clothes to the bathroom. Jason Hamel’s phone is in the left pocket of my jeans. I use it to text Dave: Hamel house, gate/path from street, quiet, now. I use Tanya’s phone and find Alan Hunter’s number, then text him: Hamel house, the money, front yard, now. I delete the record of the message and put on my clothes.

In the living room, I tell Tanya, “Get dressed. I have a surprise for you.” She walks, stunningly naked in the half-light, to her bedroom.

¤ ¤ ¤

We take her car. The Oceana is on Ocean Avenue, the street that runs the length of Palisades Park, a strip of green that runs along the top of the cliffs overlooking the Pacific a hundred feet below. The north end of Ocean Avenue feeds down into Santa Monica Canyon. We arrive at Hamel’s house in about three minutes. It’s midnight, and I hope Dave is closer than Hunter.

Sitting in the BMW, I pull the key from the ignition and ponder the scene. The house is dark and protected from view from the street. I turn toward Tanya.

“Didn’t you wonder why there were two reports with conflicting conclusions?” I still don’t know how much she knew, and when.

“Alan told me that Jason faked the positive report so that he could buy time with the investors.”

Something’s rotten in Denmark, but I can’t quite sniff it out.

Tanya follows me around the house to the place where I left the shovel. We walk to the front yard and I hand Herbie’s flashlight to Tanya and point at the roses.

“Watch this.”

Tanya watches in silence. I dig up the plants and set them aside. The flashlight illuminates the patch as it gets deeper.

Tanya says, “I’m sorry I got you into this.”

I have no answer for her. The dirt piles up and I step into the recess as if into a shallow grave.

“Is your daughter okay?”

“Yes, thank you. My house has seen better days.”

“I can help you with that if this is what I think it is . . .” She gestures with the beam of light.

“Money in the ground.”

“Jason didn’t trust the banks and he didn’t trust cash. I should have figured this out.”

“That’s what private investigators are for.” I look up and see that she’s smiling.

I ask, “What are you going to do with it?” I feel the shovel hit the plywood cover.

“Cash out and run. Want to go with me, Charlie Miner?”

I dig out the dirt at the edges of the plywood and pull it out of the ground.

“I know a place in Puerto Vallarta. We could live there and travel. Bali, Majorca, Buenos Aires, we could do them all.”

For some reason, the story of the frog and the scorpion occurs to me. I pull up the tarp and Tanya steps up to the edge of hole and plays the flashlight over the chests.

A burst of light floods my vision. I shield my eyes and look up to see Alan Hunter shining his own flashlight in my face. He’s ten feet away. In his other hand is a gun with a silencer, also pointing at me.

“Well done, Charlie. I knew you’d come through in the end.”

Alan Hunter is about five and a half feet tall, which puts him head to head with Tanya with her boots on. I squint down at him and wonder where Dave is.

“Actually, I had to connect the dots before I figured it out.”

Hunter shifts his light to Tanya, who has turned around and is standing at the end of the hole, in front of the pile of uprooted rose bushes. She, too, shields her eyes, and says, “Alan, darling . . .”

He interrupts her and says, “Yes, Tanya, darling. Unpredictable as ever, but well done!”

She starts to step toward him, but now the silencer swings toward her and Hunter says, “No, Tanya, not this time. You stay where you are.”

Tanya glances at me, confused, not in possession of all the information. For the first time since I met her, I see her unsure of herself, struggling for dominance at the wrong end of a gun. She says, “What are you going to do?” with a tremor in her voice.

“Tie up the loose ends and get back to the plan, Tanya. Everything was on track until you started meddling.” He turns back to me. “Well, Charlie, how about you start piling those nice little chests over here?” He gestures with the light toward a spot on the path to the driveway. I pull the first chest out of the ground and place it on the path.

“So you had my daughter kidnapped and my house burned down.”

“Yes to the first part. I needed the reports back. I already told you, the kid started the fire on his own. Then he went psycho on me and took off with your daughter. He said he wanted to marry her. Anyway, you caused all your own problems when you substituted copies for the real documents.” He gestures, this time with the gun, at the hole. “Keep moving.”

“I was looking out for my client. Something wasn’t right; I just didn’t know what it was.” I pull another case out of the ground and look up at him. “And the dead geologists? What was that about?”

Hunter shakes his head and says, “You still don’t get the whole picture, do you?”

I shrug and say, “I’m completely in the dark.” I hope Dave’s got my back, and that he’s got a recorder on.

“Hasn’t it occurred to you to wonder why there are two reports?”

“Yeah, it occurred to me. The positive one never made any sense. I thought maybe it was a forgery to show investors and keep them quiet.” I pull out another case and put it on the ground.

Hunter bares his teeth, a hyena imitating George Clooney. “The negative report that Jason and Mickey wanted so badly to suppress is a fabrication. As managing partner, I was the first to hear the results of the report, which I assume you still have. It states that there are over six million ounces of gold at Santa Clarita, high grade and easily mineable. After expenses, that’s probably a billion dollars. So I gave James a hundred thousand in cash and a promise of shares in the new company I was going to form if he would write an official report that the mine was a failure. He needed the money and took the deal.”

“But he kept the original.”

“We recovered it during his funeral.”

Tanya’s mouth is hanging open. She stamps her boot and says, “You miserable little prick. You were going to fuck all of us over!”

Hunter turns the gun back to Tanya. I watch her eyes go wide as Hunter says, “Lights out, baby,” and shoots her in the forehead. The sound of the bullet striking bone and splashing into soft wet tissue is louder than the report from the muzzle. Tanya falls into the bed of thorns and roses. I stand, frozen, next to the hole, and wonder where Dave is.

Hunter swings the gun back my way and shoots me in the stomach. I fall backward on top of the remaining chests of gold and land splayed over them, my head propped against the edge of the hole. Hunter stands over me and shows teeth again.

“Ironic, isn’t it?”

“What’s that?” My nicely repaired body registers pain in a way I haven’t experienced since I broke my back. It focuses me: Dave isn’t here to help me; Daniel’s voice is telling me
If you are gravely threatened, leave the body before it gets damaged
. But not yet. Hunter wants to gloat; he wants to tell his clever story.

“Ironic that we can have a nice conversation while you bleed out, just like you had with Jason.”

“Yes, we should break out some cognac and have a toast to irony.” I’m feeling light-headed. Like Jason’s, my blood is seeping between my fingers as I hold my hand over the wound.

“When I called Jason and told him the bad news, he begged me to hold off on releasing the report. He wanted to use new money to drill more and show that the mine was feasible.”

“So why kill the geologists?”

“The other brother, Mark, wouldn’t cooperate. They argued and Mark was going to report what he knew to Jason and Mickey. When he died, James got cold feet and started threatening to talk, so we had to take care of that too.”

I wish I had Jason Hamel’s faith. The man had devoted his life to an idea I could never understand, but when his last moment came he was ready. I’m not.

“And the kid? Why did he do your dirty work?”

“His father talked Jesus at him until he wanted to pull the wings off flies. I taught him how to have fun. And his father gave him a few hundred here and there to do errands for him. I offered him ten thousand bucks to get me the reports by any means possible.”

“Well, like you said, he sounds like a bit of a loose cannon.” My voice is a pathetic croak. Fucking Dave.

“Yes he was.”

“What do you mean, ‘was’?”

“We’ve got a site manager down in Ensenada. He checks the mine property once every couple of weeks. He’s got friends in the local police department, and boy did he have a story to tell. Dead bodies, explosions, and one crazy meth head jabbering about a guy looking for his daughter. But no Jason or Luke. Anyway, there’s a loose end I’m guessing you tied up for me.”

“And I’m your final loose end.” I’m losing interest in this narcissist and his smug attitude.

“Not anymore.” Hunter aims the gun at my forehead and starts to pull the trigger. I leave the body and rise into the night sky until Jason Hamel’s house and yard are the size of a page in a book, and I watch pictures moving on the page as Alan Hunter’s silenced gun twitches three times and my head snaps back and bounces forward as the bullets strike it. I rise farther until something seems ready to snap and I stop. Daniel’s voice chimes in my head:
Commune with your spirit
. Ha! What else is there?

A miniature Alan Hunter far below me goes through my pockets, presumably looking for the geologist’s reports. He pushes my body out of the way and begins to pull the remaining cases of gold out of the ground. There’s movement from the other side of the house and I see Dave staggering up the path, his gun drawn. He nears the house and moves around it carefully until he is around the corner of the garage from where Hunter is scrounging in the hole.

Dave rounds the corner, gun pointing ahead of him. He stops. Hunter looks up. Do they exchange words? I don’t know. Hunter’s gun comes up, but not fast enough, and Dave fires. Hunter crumples into the hole that I had dug for him and Dave stands hunched over him, shoulders sagging, his gun at his side.

I hover, barely tethered. A shape approaches, an absence of light against the black sky, a triangle of darkness twice my size. I want to flee at top roaming speed, whatever that is, but once again I’m paralyzed. We’re ten feet apart, drifting slightly toward each other; dread gives way to surrender and, like Jason Hamel, I am at last free of all resistance.