Down Solo (9 page)

I’ve got the Z doing eighty down the toll road, past Ensenada. I should be coming up to San Vicente, the last town on the map before I go off the grid and onto dirt roads, into the mountains, flying blind. I want to crank it up to a hundred, climb on the roof, and howl at the moon, but there is no moon and the Z coughs and stutters in the darkness. It loses speed, and flooring the pedal doesn’t help. The gas gauge says I have half a tank, so something is seriously wrong. Now we’re chugging along at about twenty miles an hour. There’s smoke billowing out behind me. The Z is a perfect metaphor for my life, lurching forward into barely illuminated gloom, the rear view a murky nothingness. A metallic bang signals the end, and I’m coasting, the sudden silence as big as the pitch-black sky.

The Z rolls to a stop on the side of the toll road. I turn the key off and kill the lights. Ensenada is far behind me. I haven’t seen a car or an electric light in almost half an hour.

On a hunch, I pull out Jason Hamel’s phone. It’s down to one bar, but it’s got GPS and I am thirty-eight miles south of Ensenada, with eight miles to go before I get to San Vicente. If I had a plan, it’s changed, but it never included sitting in a dead car until something happened.

I grab Mo’s gun from under my seat, along with DeShaun’s. It’s a Ruger .380 semi-auto, actually a pretty handy backup piece, if I need one. I step out of the Z and tuck the Ruger under my belt, up against the small of my back. Mo’s 9 goes in front, enough to the side that my jacket covers it. I pocket all three cell phones and say goodbye to the Z. No way will it be there in the morning.

¤ ¤ ¤

The Z was my divorce present to myself. Actually, it was all I could afford after turning in the Lexus I could no longer make payments on. It was a red 1978 Datsun 280Z, the last of its kind, and it’s been my friend for the past three years. Now it’s road kill, carrion for scavengers who at best will leave a wheel-less frame on the side of the road.

I start walking in the dark.

My mind wanders.

There’s something wrong with the whole picture from the start. Tanya used me as an intermediary in a blackmail scheme. She wanted to recover her husband’s investment and keep it for herself. Jason Hamel wanted to destroy a report that would demolish his dream of a huge gold discovery and the Christian ministry that it would finance. The Caffeys were just about to publish their drilling results and were “very excited,” according to James Caffey’s widow. So why did they produce a report saying the mine has no value? And how did Tanya get both reports?

A memory.

¤ ¤ ¤

My first experience with heroin. I was at my physical therapy session. Two Hydrocodone tabs usually made PT tolerable, but this time they were useless. I sat in the waiting room with my head in my hands; I knew I couldn’t go through with the session. I must have groaned or something, because this huge guy in the seat across from me said, “That bad, huh?”

I shook my head and said, “It gets like this once in a while.”

He said, “Yeah, I know what you mean. I was eating Vicodin like candy.”

And we were off and running, swapping stories about how we got hurt, how bad it was, how you can’t crap on Vicodin and how not crapping gives you killer headaches. Finally, Jimmy said, “Yeah, it got to where I couldn’t stand it anymore.”

His use of the past tense got my attention. I asked him what he meant and he nodded toward the door. We got up and went out to the hallway to the men’s room.

At this point, my new friend Jimmy Ortiz changed my life. I would get pain management at the cost of being tethered to heroin maintenance like a dog on a choke-chain: try to pull away, feel the pain.

Jimmy reached in his coat pocket and pulled out an amber vial with a black screw-on cap. From his jeans pocket he produced a mini Swiss Army knife. I watched, mesmerized, as he unscrewed the cap, dipped the tip of his blade into the vial, pulled out a tiny mound of white powder, and brought it to his nostril. A discreet whiff and the white powder disappeared.

Then it was my turn.

¤ ¤ ¤

I wonder what would happen if I left the body and just roamed into the night, as far from here as possible. What limit is there? Is it like there’s an elastic cord that stretches thinner and thinner until it snaps? And then what? Didn’t Daniel tell me not to leave my body for too long? What’s too long? I think I’ve pushed the limit a couple of times, and I didn’t like the feeling.

A sound from behind. I keep walking. Now I’m casting a shadow, and the highway becomes visible as I trudge toward nowhere. A dirty, rusted pickup pulls up next to me.

“Hey, that your 280 back there?” It’s a guy with long dirty hair, American. There’s a blonde in the car with him. I show some teeth to signal that I’m friendly.

“Yeah. So far, anyway.” I don’t know how long I’ve been walking. The only reason the car is still there is that no one has seen it yet. Until now.

“Where’ya headed?” The blonde’s teeth aren’t so great, but she shows them all anyway. Signaling that she’s friendly too, I suppose.

“San Vicente.”

“Reservations at the Hilton?” They both start cackling. I don’t like it.

I shrug.

“Well hey,” the guy says. “You’re fucked out here, so hop in.” The blonde opens the door and slides toward the driver. I slide in and shut the door.

“Your car’ll be gone in the morning.” The guy’s chewing gum like his life depends on it. The index finger of his left hand is wrapped in gauze and duct tape. He has a beer between his legs, and now he takes a swig from it and offers it to the blonde.

“Not much I can do about it.”

“I don’t know what your plans are in San Vicente, but you might be better off staying with us for the night. The town’s shut down for the evening and there’s nothin’ there anyway. We got a place right up here a ways . . .” He gestures off into the darkness.

The blonde is tapping Heavy Metal rhythms with her fingers on her knee and bobbing her head like a pigeon. I consider my options, a speedy operation, like dividing a number by zero on a calculator: the answer is always “error.”

“I’d appreciate that,” I hear myself saying. But I know crazy when I see it.

The driver says, “Right on,” and fishes a joint out of his pocket. He fires it up and passes it to me, sputtering, “Name’s Herbie. This is Melinda. We got a place not far from here. It’s your lucky night, pardner.”

I take a hit off the joint just to be friendly, and say, “Charlie Miner.”

Herbie and Melinda laugh their cackling laugh and Herbie stomps on the accelerator. The pickup lurches forward with astonishing power and veers left onto a dirt road that I didn’t even see coming. Herbie turns off his headlights and we hurtle into oblivion with a roar, shaking and bouncing and kicking up rocks that hammer the undercarriage like a hailstorm.

Melinda takes the joint from me and hits on it like it’s going to save her life. We hit something soft and bump over it, then a rise that sends us airborne. Herbie yells, “That’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout, motherfucker!” He finally slows down and turns the headlights back on. We turn left again, this time onto a narrow track between clusters of bushes that scrape the side of the truck. The path snakes around and uphill for a few minutes and we come to a stop at a gate. It’s a crude contraption of two-by-fours and chickenwire, with barbed wire on top. In the glare of the headlights, I can see a level clearing butting up to the side of a cliff. There’s a wooden shack on the left and, maybe twenty yards away, an RV on the right. In between, there’s a recent-model Saturn with California plates.

Herbie gets out of the truck, saying, “Home sweet home,” and opens the gate. He reaches in the back of the truck and pulls out a backpack, which he slings over his shoulder. Melinda scoots over and drives the truck in. She parks and gets out, taking a big flashlight from the glove box.

Herbie catches up with us and, guided by the beam of the flashlight, we go to the back of the shack. Herbie opens the door to a shed and starts the generator inside; it’s a new, expensive-looking one that purrs as the lights go on in the shack. He goes back to the truck and gets a plastic cooler out of the back.

We go into home-sweet-home. Two lamps with ridiculous dried spiny blowfish shades show me a room about twenty feet square. It’s got a concrete floor, but there’s a sofa and a table with three chairs. To the left, there’s a doorway to a dark hall. Straight ahead, there’s a work bench with a laptop and a printer. An ice chest, a hot plate, and a microwave define the kitchen area to the right. Next to the ice chest, there’s a rusted U-bolt sticking out of the concrete.

I’m standing looking at the room when suddenly there’s an arm around my neck. I arch my back so Herbie won’t feel the Ruger. Melinda pats me down and finds Mo’s 9.

“Hey, whatcha got here? Well lookie, lookie.” She checks the slide like a pro and puts the gun to my head. She’s working her lips over her teeth in a weird way and her eyes have the demented look of a kid about to set a cat on fire.

I know she’d love to shoot me, but Herbie says, “Hey, stay cool,” and she backs off. Herbie takes the gun from her and says, “Check it out! A P38-K. Always wanted one of these. Why, thank you, Charlie Miner.” He winks at me. He’s got a three-day beard, a soul-patch, and teeth as bad as his girlfriend’s.

Melinda takes the phones out of my pockets and puts them on the table. She opens a drawer under the table and pulls out a pair of handcuffs. Herbie puts the barrel of the gun up to my right nostril and pushes me toward the ice chest. I stumble backward and land sitting on the floor.

“Get comfy, Charlie. It’s gonna be a long night.” Now he’s got the gun pointed down at the top of my head. Melinda slaps one ring of the cuffs onto my left wrist and attaches the other to the U-bolt. I lean back against the wall, the Ruger safe behind me. I wonder how this is going to play out.

Herbie shines his beam on a six-inch glass tube half-f of shiny white crystals. He grabs the tube and heads back to the main house.

“Hey, wake up!” Melinda slaps me in the face just as I re-enter the body. I want to break her wrist, but now’s not the time. My ex-wife was a slapper, my mother had a right hand like a cobra, and I feel a fury in my gut every time I see a slap in a movie.

Herbie comes back in and empties the contents of the plastic cooler—ice and cans of Coke and bottles of beer—into the ice chest. He looks down at me and laughs while he does it. He tosses the cooler aside and goes to the table. There’s a glass pipe and a butane torch there, and Melinda’s pacing around the table and chewing on the inside of her cheek.

“Sit the fuck down, Mel,” Herbie commands, and she does, staring at the pipe like a dog waiting to be fed. Herbie pulls the rubber stopper off the vial and shakes some of the crystal into the bowl of the pipe. He fires up the butane torch and it looks like Melinda’s going to bark like a trained seal.

Somewhere within ten miles of where I’m sitting, my daughter is being held captive by a psychotic untethered from any of the restraints that bind us to the social contract. The only thing on my side is that he’s expecting his father to arrive. I notice that none of the cell phones have rung; for once it’s helpful to be out of service range.

I expect the meth to get Herbie and Melinda even more agitated, but instead it seems to calm them down. Herbie comes over to me and kneels. “It’s gonna be okay,” he says. “We got a plan for you.” He opens the ice chest next to me and pulls out a bottle of Jack Daniels. “So what’s with the gun, matey?”

So now he’s a pirate. Close to the truth seems as good as any story I could make up, so I tell him, “My daughter got kidnapped by her psycho boyfriend. I’m here to get her back. That’s what the gun is for.” Herbie’s face is inches from mine, his breath an unpleasant mix of gum rot, cigarettes, and something metallic. It’s the olfactory equivalent of chewing on tin foil.

“So how are you gonna find her down here?”

“She’s at a mine. It’s called Santa Clarita. Should be right near here.”

“Yep. If we’d kept going instead of turning left we’d ’a wound up there. End of the road, can’t miss it. Place is a fuckin’ dump.”

We’re nose to nose now. I wonder if I could get the gun out and shoot them both, but I’m not feeling it. Instead, I say, “I’ll pay you to let me go. Really. I’m desperate.”

“Well, bum trip, Lone Ranger, your mission’s gonna have to wait.” I’ve seen the look in his eyes before, the glint of madness barely restrained, a hint of delight at the mayhem to come. He gets up and disappears into wherever the dark hallway goes.

When he comes back, he’s got a four-foot rod with a white sheet furled around it. He opens the backpack and pulls out a digital camera. Melinda’s fondling Mo’s gun but puts it down when Herbie hands her the rod with the sheet. She unrolls it and tells me to lean forward, then she hangs it on the wall behind me.

Herbie’s crouching in front of me now, aiming the camera at me. “Okay, smile,” he says, and when I don’t he says, “Okay don’t, whatever,” and clicks away. The flash goes off five times. After each flash he looks at the back of the camera and shakes his head. “You look like shit, dude,” he says, and he gets up and takes the memory card out of the camera before putting it back in the pack.

Now Herbie goes to the workbench and fires up the printer and the laptop. He inserts the memory card into the laptop’s port and uploads the photos. I watch as Photoshop loads and he sizes the images, then saves them and hits Print.

“That Blackberry on the table’s got Global Positioning. The guys I hired to help me are within fifteen miles of here, and pretty soon they’ll find me.” It’s worth a try.

Herbie steps over to where I’m sitting and his boot lashes out between my legs, catching me square in the huevos. I clamp my knees together and trap his foot, then I roll to my side. Herbie goes down and Melinda’s got the gun in my face in a heartbeat.

Herbie gets up and brushes himself off. “You’ll fuckin’ pay for that, that’s a fuckin’ promise. But first you’re gonna make a delivery.” He hobbles over to the workbench and says, “Fuck! I think I got a sprained ankle.”

I look up at Melinda. She wants to shoot me. There’s something in her that wants to take this all the way, commit an irrevocable act, and seal the deal with her demons. Maybe she’s done it before, but I don’t think so; there’s a war going on in Melinda’s head. I tell her, “Hey, I’ve got a delivery to make,” and she backs off and sits at the table. I watch her chew on her cheeks and fidget. The adrenaline must be messing with her high. She tilts the bottle of Jack and drains about a quarter of it and then smacks me in the head with the butt of the gun.

It’s a good excuse to zone out. I play unconscious for a while, but all I hear is the butane torch hissing, the crackling of the meth in the bowl of the pipe, a cough, a long exhalation, and what sounds strangely like a sob.