The Juliet (18 page)

“That is the most depressed drug dealer I ever saw,” said Tony.

“He’s a wreck over Dexon,” Scottie said. “He was a fan I think. If he hadn’t shot me I’d feel sorry for him.”

“Now
that
is a generous disposition, Mr. Nash.” But Tony knew what his friend meant. Watching Carter stumble through his grief alone was like watching an old dog crawl under the porch to die.

* * *

March 23, 2005: Beatty, CA

Carter tried to remember how full his heart was when he said goodbye to Rigg Dexon, but it didn’t do any good. He was devastated. And afraid.

Carter kept the television on twenty-four hours a day, hoping for some shred of new information to be revealed, but the only thing the reporters would say was that it did not appear that Inyo County officials were actively investigating Dexon’s death as a homicide. Video of officers moving in and out of Dexon’s house was intercut with clips from the actor’s westerns and television appearances. When the profiles addressed his declining career, they highlighted his final role in a 90s era made-for-cable science fiction feature that had been filmed out in Trona. There was no mention of his stint in adult entertainment.

“The question remains,” said the announcer, “what was one of America’s most beloved actors doing in the brutal heart of Death Valley, holed up in a run-down shack known only as ‘The Mystery House’?”

It was reported that Rigg’s daughter, Debra, a middle-aged homemaker who lived in North Carolina, was heartbroken and that she disapproved of her father’s isolation out in the desert. Efforts from videographers to find a sinister angle on The Mystery House failed, so there was no shortage of clichéd fill-in shots of lizards darting in and out of the eyeholes of bleached animal skulls propped up on the salt flats. Carter wondered how they’d managed to get wide shots without flowers, but they did.

In his receipt-cluttered, grease-stained office, Carter surfed the internet to learn the most he could about the emerald’s cursed history. Next to his computer, The Juliet rested in a chunky glass ashtray with an Ed Hardy “Love Kills” decal on the bottom. Even sitting in ash stains, the stone glowed.

He wondered how baked he’d have to be to start believing in magic.

Dexon had been one classy bastard, and Carter wasn’t sure he’d ever get over killing him.

Hours of booze, pot, and porn. Normally a fellow would dive steadily downward into unconsciousness, but Dexon was bouncing on the waves, up and down, up and down. Amazing. Carter was almost out for the count when Dexon started talking about The Juliet, using all his storytelling skills to retrace her danger-filled legend. Dexon made Carter feel like a kid again, and he settled into the sofa to watch the cowboy actor draw invisible pictures in the air while he made many pasts come alive with his deep, beery drawl.

Then Dexon paused and said, “You feel that, son?”

Carter wasn’t sure what was being asked of him. Dexon leaned forward to explain, his oak-colored hands hanging loose over the knees of his blue jeans. He spoke from behind his mustache, and Carter couldn’t see his lips move. “That little folded feeling in your heart, that little breathlessness.”

Damn. Carter felt it all right. A gulpy, fluttery something.

“Like the first edge of falling in love. That’s how she comes, The Juliet. I pity those people who talk about nameless desires.”

It had been a day since Carter shot the innkeeper, and three since Dexon died. Carter spent the time alone with his thoughts, ignoring emails and calls, turning out the lights if anyone pulled in, and otherwise cycling through states of mind. On the back of an envelope, he’d drawn a crude pie chart that, at three in the morning, seemed profoundly therapeutic. It featured a 35% wedge for grief, 20% confusion, 45% guilt. No percent for the supernatural. He simply could not bring himself to a point where he embraced the influence of cosmic forces.

Not like the bozos on the World Wide Web. Those people were nuts. Still, it was a damn pretty stone. A little cartoon prospector danced across the bottom of his screen to tinkling music.

Carter struggled to keep up his end of the conversation. He wanted to know what Dexon was going to do with the stone when he found it.

The cowboy actor grinned and said, “When you’re done you’re done.”

And then all of a sudden Dexon was saying his goodbyes. He was trying to tell Carter to stay put, he’d let himself out, but that was unacceptable after such a wonderful evening.

Carter scrambled into the back and returned with a white paper sack. “Something for the road,” he joked. And that was it. The fatal hand off.

Carter said goodbye to Rigg Dexon with a full heart. And in the morning he discovered The Juliet, waiting for him in the little refrigerator like the last egg.

The man had given him something to remember him by: a named desire. And it was almost painful, just as promised.

He had given the old man the wrong bag.

A mix up that Carter hadn’t realized until it was too late. He’d built a specialty kit for a call girl who planned to party her procurer into a coma while she ransacked his crib and fled the country.

Rigg Dexon gave Carter The Juliet, and in return Carter had given Rigg a bag of death.

Carter had no idea what he was supposed to do. When he went online he learned some things about The Juliet, like how this was only half of the original stone. That bit of trivia made his brain swarm with possibilities, the main one being that if Dexon had only known he didn’t have the whole emerald, he might have put a little effort into living longer. Sometimes Carter rationalized that Dexon had decided to die, and that when he saw what was in the goodie bag he found his opportunity, like an unlocked door. Maybe he didn’t even have time to consider the consequences for those he left behind.

Maybe he didn’t want to. “Leave like you ain’t coming back,” Carter murmured.

Carter heard the rumble of gravel that meant another customer to ignore. He doodled on the pie chart, rejiggering the numbers to adjust for a 5% increase in guilt.

Whoever it was pounded on the glass door despite a clearly posted sign that said CLOSED. The pounding stopped and started again. Someone yelled, “Hey in there!” A woman’s voice.

Carter got up slowly, his fist already curled and primed to deliver a middle finger salute, but when he saw the woman with the long steel hair and the dog, he was surprised.

She leaned on the glass with her hand cupped over her eyes. By her side on a short leash was a big red dog, so excited it looked like it was playing bongos. The woman’s head tilted when she spotted Carter in the shadows.

“My dog, Mister! She needs water!”

Carter stepped forward and began undoing the locks, noticing the pudgy man behind the woman and the old blue Subaru wagon parked crazy in his lot as if it had spun out and died. When he opened the door, the woman dropped the leash, and the dog bounded inside, galloping into the hallway and disappearing all the way back into the shop. As it passed, the dog had managed to spin Carter halfway around, so when he stabilized he clung to the strange-looking woman’s smile. The man came in behind her.

“Thank you, thank you,” the woman said. She took Carter’s hands in hers and held onto him.

The man pushed by them both and yelled, “Missy!”

“Go find her, dear.”

“Wait,” said Carter. “No, wait—” But the man was already gone, hot on Missy’s trail. And the woman wouldn’t let go. Her hands were steel, just like her hair.

“Hey,” said Carter.

“Hey yourself.”

“What the hell is going on?” Carter could hear the commotion of things falling over, the dog barking, the man cursing. He managed to pull away from the woman, but she never once stopped smiling. She scared him, and not in the way that old ladies usually scared him. She was like a witch or something, super skinny and hard. And her eyes were young, as if she’d stolen them from a child.

Carter broke free of her gaze and ran back to the garage. There was the dog, standing almost exactly where Scottie had fallen. It was lapping water out of a bent hubcap. The tap over the work sink was still dribbling.

So the dog did need water. Carter relaxed a little.

And then he heard laughter. From another room, the man was laughing, the sound rising.

When Carter returned to the narrow, cluttered hallway, the man and the woman were there, waiting for him. The man was red-faced from whatever had amused him. He yelled again, “Missy!”

The dog returned, running, knocking Carter into a wall of boxes. When Carter recovered, Missy was leashed again, and her spooky mistress was leading her away. The man remained to stare Carter down.

The man said, “Thanks for making it easy.”

“Making what easy?”

The man looked like he wanted to explain because it would give him pleasure, but from behind the woman’s disembodied voice said, “Baron, please.”

Baron shrugged slightly before pulling a Walther P99 from the waistband of his plaid shorts. “Dexon’s gun,” he said. “Almost makes it right.”

He pulled the trigger.

Carter was hit in the meat just under the collarbone, and he spun before he hit the floor. These people liked him twirling. He landed with his head on the threshold of his office. He could see his computer. The screensaver had kicked on. The pattern was rain spattering on a windshield with wipers intermittently clearing the view of a country road. He could also see the ashtray. It was empty.
Easy
, he thought.

The woman’s voice was an icicle in the desert. “Do it again.”

LILY JOY

Chapter 7

January 2, 1907: Centenary, NV

The train called the Pacific Star was halfway to her destination, shuddering too fast over the plains, and in the dining car a refined, older gentleman known as Marcus Skinner was busy managing his tea in one hand and a broadside in the other. He’d picked up the rag in Kansas City on a whistle stop, and now he was absorbed by the lies it contained.
The Centenary Prospect
was full of glowing reports of the ore flowing out of the Apollo mines, and the accounts were peppered with quotes by experts whose names were familiar, if not exact matches, to entrepreneurs of national repute. Alongside these items were bits of social news and photographs, several of which featured robust fellows accompanied by tiny burros. Burros could find water anywhere, and apparently it was not uncommon for desert homesteaders to become bonded with the little creatures. Centenary was presenting itself as the most precious little mining town in Death Valley.

Skinner would learn to adjust. Back east, eccentricity and depravity went hand in hand, easily traced back to one or more incestuous but productive liaisons among the well-heeled. However, the further west he travelled, Skinner observed that the unique madness called the “pioneer spirit” prevailed.

There was nothing to blame but ambition itself. Marcus liked that. He looked forward to a change of pace. He even had ambitions. He’d heard that in these new mining towns it was relatively easy for a man of his skills to win a judgeship, and that judges were just one election cycle away from the Mayor’s house.

Marcus was the only passenger in the dining car without a luncheon companion, so he was not surprised when the porter said, “I’m sorry to interrupt, Mr. Skinner, but will you be so kind as to share your setting with another guest?”

Skinner nodded his permission. It was customary under these conditions. The porter had more to say on the matter, though. “It’s a young lady sir.” He lowered his tone. “Traveling alone, I’m afraid.”

Skinner appraised the porter’s scandalized demeanor. “I’m from the city,” he said. “These matters don’t trouble me.”

“Thank you sir.”

In a moment, the porter returned with a woman in mourning clothes, but the luminosity of her youth belied the trappings of grief. Her red curls poked out from under her traveling bonnet, and her brown eyes were big and bright over cheeks fat as a baby’s.

Skinner rose, bowed to the teenager and sat down again.

The porter said, “This is Mr. Skinner. Mr. Skinner, this is Miss Akins. Please.” He gestured to the bench on the other side of the table, and the girl shyly took the place offered her. “Thank you,” she said, but the porter couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge her. Instead he offered her a choice of ham roll or cream of asparagus soup. She requested the soup. Throughout the entire exchange she held herself very still, as if she were afraid someone might slap her for giving the wrong answer.

Skinner was mildly amused. No one else in the dining car seemed to care about the apparent social breach. The car was full of ambitious men, some with their young families in tow. They were all on their way to a new world, and though they wore their finest suits and hats, not one of them had been brought up well enough to care about Miss Akins’ independence.

The porter brought the soup and placed it before the girl without a word before attending to other diners. Skinner could tell it was cold. “I think he must be from the south,” he said.

“Sir?” Miss Akins had drawn a spoon through the soup and was staring into it as if she had no idea how to consume it.

“His manners are all for show.” He knew she wouldn’t dare respond. She kept her eyes down as she worked through her meager meal, and Skinner took her measure. She was a strong girl, he could tell that much. He saw that her hands were used and useful. On her index finger was a slim silver band, cheap and worn. Her mother’s wedding ring, perhaps?

Skinner decided he could be bold with her. She wouldn’t know any better. “Where are you headed Miss Akins?”

She looked stricken. It could have been the soup. She nodded toward the broadside. “Centenary, I hope. Or Rhyolite. One hears such wonderful things.”

Skinner was surprised. He’d expected her mission to be better defined. “Pardon me, but are you saying you don’t have a situation?”

“No sir, not yet.”

Now
there
was a scandal. “And you want to find employment in a mining town.”