Going Nowhere Fast (16 page)

"I haven't. I've told you everything I know, believe me."

He got quiet again, but this time he made a point of allowing me to see his eyes. "You really don't know who Filly Gee is?"

"No. I really don't." I shook my head until I thought it was going to fly off.

"And you'd never seen the man in Bettis's photographs before? Here in the park, or anywhere else?"

"No. Never."

"What about your husband, or your son Theodore? Could they have recognized him, do you think?"

"No. They'd never seen him before either. He was a stranger to all of us, I'm certain of it."

Medavoy sighed, slapped his thigh, and said, "All right then, Mrs. Loudermilk. In that case, I only have one more question for you. Think you can handle that?" He smiled his J. Edgar Hoover game show host smile at me again.

"Sure. I don't see why not."

He pulled another eight-by-ten from his envelope and handed it to me. "Tell me. Have you ever seen this woman before? Around the park here, or maybe even down in Flagstaff somewhere?"

She was stepping into the back seat of a taxi. She wore a white cotton dress cut well above the knee, form-fitting and designed for show, and a matching, large-brimmed white hat that washed her face in deep shadow. A mane of what appeared to be golden-yellow hair spilled out of the hat and fell softly to her shoulders; you could almost smell the sweet scent of soap in it, it looked so clean and well kept.

I'd never seen the lady before, and I told Medavoy so.

"Who is she? Mrs. Philly Gee?" I asked him.

He took all the photographs from my hands and said, "You might call her that." He seemed to want to say more, but he didn't.

That was just fine by me.

"Well, that's it," he said simply. "If I can think of any more questions to ask you later, Mrs. Loudermilk, I'll see you in the morning out at the trailer park before you leave. Otherwise, this is good-bye. And thank you." He reached out and shook my hand; then he walked me to the door.

"You aren't going to tell me what this was all about?" I asked, more than a little naively.

"No ma'am. It'd be best for all concerned if I didn't. You'll just have to trust me on that."

"But if Ray and Phil were really the ones who killed Mr. Bettis—"

"I never suggested that they were. I merely asked you if they ever implicated themselves in Mr. Bettis's murder, and you assured me that they did not."

"Yes, but—"

"Mrs. Loudermilk. Please. Everything is under control here, I promise you. So relax."

He put his hand on my shoulder with one hand and opened the door with the other. I was tempted to hold my ground just to illustrate how little I cared for being treated so condescendingly, but I knew there'd be no point. He had told me all he was going to. and nothing was going to change that.

"All right, Mr. Medavoy," I said. "I guess I'll just have to trust you. as you say."

"Yes rna'am."

"But do me a favor, will you? Please don't come looking for me in the morning. As tired as I am right now, I plan to sleep in until noon tomorrow, at least. You want to talk to me, come by anytime after one. I should be fine by then."

I laughed, but Medavoy let me do it all by myself.

"I'm afraid you misunderstand. You'll be leaving in the morning, as I said. Bright and early."

"Excuse me?"

"What I'm trying to say here, .Mrs. Loudermilk, is that if you and your family aren't off the park grounds by nine-thirty tomorrow morning, I'll have you arrested and charged with obstruction of justice. Among other things. Do you get my meaning, ma'am?"

The smile on his face now was not the same one he'd shown me earlier. This one had teeth in it. The sharp, serrated kind of teeth great white sharks like to use to slit open their prey before devouring the intestines in one bite.

I told the FBI man I got his meaning, and made fast tracks for Lucille.

*     *     *     *

"I don't like this," I said, one more time.

I wasn't keeping count, but Bad Dog apparently was. "You've said that a hundred times, Moms. 'I don't like this.' 'I don't like this.' 'I don't like this.' Man, change the recording already, please."

"That's 'record,' " Big Joe said.

"What?"

"The expression is 'change the
record
.' Not 'the recording.' "

"Oh. Like in 'world record,' huh?"

"No. Like in 'broken record.' A musical record, a forty-five or an LP."

"Ah, I gotcha."

"Only this record's got a scratch on it, so the needle's always jumpin' backward and playin' the same thing over an' over again. 'I don't like this,
brippp
, I don't like this,
brippp
, I don't like this,
brippp
—' "

"All right, all right," I said, bouncing a palm off the side of my husband's head. "I get the point. You want me to shut up, I'll shut up." I gave them both a chance to actually say it—
Shut up
—but neither man took the bait. "But I don't like what we're doing here, and neither do you. It just doesn't feel right."

We were on our way to Texas. We'd been driving south along Interstate 17 for about an hour now, after having seen Dog's playmate Dozer Meadows off at the Grand Canyon airport on our way out of the park. Meadows intended to use the money we'd given him to fly out to Pittsburgh in time for the Steelers game tomorrow afternoon. He still wasn't going to be able to play, he said, but he missed the team too much to just watch the game on TV from his home back in Los Angeles. He told us he was going to walk the sidelines down on the field and, depending on how the Raiders were doing, kick ass where and when it needed to be kicked.

"Later, Mrs. Loudermilk," he had said at the boarding gate, smothering me in a bear hug big enough to warm the state of Montana. I could have dozed off in there, it felt so good.

The big man was worried about me. He was afraid he had scarred me for life dispatching Phil the way he had before my horrified eyes, but I told him he was just being silly. After all, if he had not come looking for Dog and me when he did, having grown impatient waiting for our return to the trailer park with his money, it would have very likely been
our
bodies the authorities were endeavoring to raise from the dry Canyon floor this day, and not Phil's. Meadows had done the only thing he could do under the circumstances, I promised him, and there was no need to worry about me; I was just fine.

I think he believed the first part, but would always doubt the last, no matter what I said.

Dog, meanwhile, wanted to go with him, of course, but Joe said he was going to have to go folded up inside a Samsonite bag if he did, because his father and I were too tapped out to buy him a ticket. We ended up agreeing to take him along with us to Texas, and from there we'd fly him to the destination of his choice once his sister Mo had wired us some fresh cash.

Alex Medavoy hadn't shown up to see it, but we had fled the Canyon's trailer park at eight sharp, well within our nine-thirty deadline. It had been a hard thing for me to do, run for high ground like a mouse catching sight of a cat, just because a government man snapped his fingers, but Joe, surprisingly, had taken the insult far worse than I. He had been ready to leave for three days now, so much so that I thought he might even appreciate Agent Medavoy's assistance in finally persuading me to go, but no. Joe had become incensed instead. Why I hadn't fully expected this reaction, I don't know; the best way to light a fire under Joe has always been to try and tell him what is and is not his business. Especially when the person doing the telling is a badge-flashing government stooge. Still, we tucked our tails beneath us and obeyed orders, on time and without complaint. In less than seven days, we had dodged more bullets than the Allied forces had at Normandy, and we knew we'd be pressing our luck to remain sitting targets at the Canyon for so much as one more day. Leaving the park now, under duress, would exact a certain cost in terms of wounded pride and unsatisfied curiosity, yes, but we could live with these annoyances, given time. The same could not be said for a five-year stretch in the Gulag, courtesy of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Hard time and old convicts don't mix all that well.

Putting something behind you and putting it out of your mind, however, is not always the same thing. Try as I might to think about something else, I just couldn't shake the feeling that our fleeing the Canyon at the FBI's request was leaving the door open for something terrible to happen. That they had sent us packing to cover up something they did not want widely known was obvious; what was not were the possible consequences of letting them have their way. And that was the doubt that nagged at me: Who was going to pay for the damage control job we were helping the Bureau pull off at the Grand Canyon, and at what price?

A human life, perhaps?

It was a question worth worrying about, as far as I was concerned, and so worry I did, as our exile to Texas came closer and closer to reality with each passing mile marker. "I don't like this," I kept saying, over and over again, until Dog and Joe had finally been forced to voice their sarcastic objections. Eventually, I found the willpower to stop saying the words—but I never could make the thought itself go away.

*     *     *     *

We made our first stop for gas in Black Canyon City, Arizona, a few minutes past ten in the morning, and while Joe worked the pumps and Dog used the men's room, I found a pay phone and called Mo. I had promised her the night before that I would fax her the photos and line drawing her brother had removed from Geoffry Bettis's safety deposit box on Thursday, but these items were no longer mine to fax; Medavoy had confiscated them. As it happened, that was just as well, though, for once Mo heard me say "FBI," she lost all interest in the photos and drawing, or anything else pertaining to the late Mr. Bettis.

"Mother, just hang up the phone and start driving again," she said when I'd brought her up-to-date on the latest events of our Grand Canyon adventure. "Get the heck out of Arizona, and don't ever look back."

"Mo, you're acting silly," I said.

"No I'm not. I'm being smart. You don't mess around with the FBI, Mom. The FBI squashed Al Capone—they wouldn't think twice about squashing the likes of you. Now, I don't know what they have to do with what happened to you and Daddy at the Grand Canyon, and I don't care. All I know is, they let you go in one piece, and I want you both to stay that way. Understand?"

"I understand perfectly. You don't want us to get hurt."

"That's right. I don't."

"But you don't mind if someone else does."

"Mother, please."

"They're trying to hide something, Mo, and I think we both know what it is. Don't we?"

"Mother—"

"That man the Coconino County Sheriff's Department has in jail back in Flagstaff didn't kill Geoffry Bettis, Mo. Somebody else did. And whoever that somebody else is, the FBI is going out of their way to protect them. Even if it means an innocent man has to go to prison for a crime he didn't commit."

"Mother, for God's sake! You were almost killed by two Mafia hit men last night!"

"They weren't hit men. They were couriers," I said.

"Fine. They were couriers. With guns. Who nearly showed you and Bad Dog the fastest way down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon!"

She said it as if I needed to be reminded.

"Mother, listen to me. Please. Whatever's going on up there, you don't want any part of it. If you even think about interfering, they'll stop you, one way or another. They'll either throw you in jail, as promised, or use somebody you care about as leverage to keep you in line. And nobody—least of all me—would be able to stop them from doing it. Believe me when I tell you that. Now—is that what you want? Really?"

I didn't say anything.

"Well?"

"Of course that's not what I want. But—"

"No buts, Mother. I don't want to hear any buts. All I want to hear you say is that you understand what I'm telling you completely, and that you and Daddy are going to go on ahead to Texas as planned and forget all about the Grand Canyon. Aren't you?"

Again, I fell silent.

"I want to hear you say it, Mother," Mo said sternly.

I told her we were going to continue on to Texas and forget all about the Grand Canyon.

"Thank you," she said, her voice filled with relief.

"We're going to need you to wire some money ahead to San Antonio," I said, changing the subject before she could get around to questioning my sincerity.

"Fine. How much?"

"About eight hundred should do it."

"Eight hundred? Isn't that a little—" She stopped herself, struck by a sudden thought. "Oh. I forgot. You've got the human debt machine with you, don't you?"

"Mo, don't start. I'm not in any mood."

"I've never seen anything like him. He can take fresh cash and turn it into confetti in less time than it takes the average man or woman to inhale. And still you and Daddy keep right on bankrolling him."

"We're not bankrolling him. We're just… helping him find his way."

"His way
where?
To the poorhouse? The boy is jinxed, Mother. He couldn't make an honest dollar from a deal if he were the last rice salesman in China. All he ever does with all the ammo you two give him is shoot himself in the foot."

"That's enough, Mo. I don't want to hear any more."

"I know you don't. But as the one you and Daddy turn to every time one of that knothead's 'investments' turns sour—"

"You feel it's your duty to advise us against giving him any more money. Of course. Little girl, I understand what you're saying, and I agree with you completely. That's why we're not giving him anything this time but his airfare home. Or didn't I mention that?"

Now Mo was the one not talking.

"No, I guess I didn't. You never gave me a chance to, did you?"

She maintained her stubborn silence a full moment longer, then said, "I guess you think I owe you an apology now, huh?"

"You guess right. You
do
owe me an apology. Your father, too. "