Cutting Loose, page 16
She smiled.
“So, as I say, what’s left for Carey Astaire?”
“In this country? A needle. Maybe, if I get to South America, I could disappear.”
“The Butch Cassidy endgame.”
“It doesn’t have be that way.”
“Dead in a cabin in the Andes? Let’s hope not.”
“And Lou, here you are . . . a straight citizen now.”
“I made a choice. I was wasting my life doing something I no longer believed in.”
“All right.”
She saw him eye the bottle, and noted the broken veins in his cheeks.
“So, Lou―what’s a slick way over the border?”
“Sure. Well, there’s talk of tightening things up but right now the border is porous as tissue paper.”
“Uh huh.”
“Slick, not so much. Listen―you’ve not driven through Carrizo―this is just outside―and odds are, you’d have been stopped if you did. This right here is a dead-end road, but it’ll take you about twenty miles. It becomes a track but it’s drivable. From there, if you can read a compass, it’s about another ten miles on foot, more or less west-south-west. There are places where you can ford the Rio Grande, but watch yourself. If you decide yes, if Sol is up to it, start at first light. You’ll need tough shoes and, needless to say, water. I’ve got some Mexican currency, a few dollars’ worth. It’ll get you on a bus.”
Sounds pricked her dream; consciousness jumped, and she saw a yellow sliver of light under the door. Voices were raised high in argument. She pulled on pants and a shirt and went to the door, then walked along a short corridor that led to the living room. Sol and Webern were standing there, glasses in hand.
“Guys,” she said, padding into the room in bare feet. “What’s up?”
“Yeah,” said Webern, focusing slowly on her.
The bottle of Jack Daniel’s, she saw, was empty, and a bottle of red wine was going the same way.
“Let me pour you a glass,” said Webern.
“Sure.”
He took a glass from a sideboard and poured. “There you go.”
“Thanks.”
“No, really, it’s okay. Sorry to wake you. I’m just saying―fuck, Sol, what am I saying?”
“You were saying, it’s time for bed.”
“No, I wasn’t. I was saying, I loathe these creeps who think they’ve got all the answers.”
“Right,” said Carey. “They’re a pain in the neck.”
“Carey, you’re right. Also, hot.”
“Thanks, Lou.”
“Mr. Natural right here will tell you exactly how to fix the world.”
“Yeah, he has a perspective.”
“Perspective? No. No, no, no. If you think you can kill people, it’s more than a perspective. You’re saying, I’m right, and your views are for shit.”
“Be cool, Lou,” she said.
“Are my views for shit, Sol?”
“Lou, there’s a range of views.”
“A range of views, a range of views . . . But if someone has the wrong fucking view, it’s okay to kill him. Is that right, Sol?”
“No one thinks that.”
“What a fucking relief. But say, like in Bakersfield, Sol, in Bakersfield, there’s some collateral damage, is that okay? Tell me if that’s okay, Sol?”
“Look, sometimes―”
“Sometimes, Sol, sometimes, a citizen gets his or her brains shot out? Is that it, Sol, sometimes?”
“Lou, you know the arguments as well as I.”
“As well as I. The grammar is perfect even when you kill innocent people. As well as I. The peasants who get shot lack that fine education, Sol.”
“I had no fine education, Lou.”
“No, but you imitated the ways of the educated people. You sucked it up like a sponge, like someone desperate to belong―someone from the wrong side of the tracks who craves it and hates it at the same time. That accent always there, like a scar.”
“Lou, you’re full of shit. You misread me then and you’re misreading me now. If you think this is some kind of self-hate on my part, you know nothing about me. And I have no problem with my background.”
Webern started laughing. Carey put a hand on Sol’s shoulder, and he turned and nodded.
“Lou,” said Sol. “Let’s turn in. We’ve all said enough. Tomorrow is tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow will be the same, Sol. I was with you guys for a while. We were young―change the world―paradise on earth―but Sol, that’s bunk, the whole thing. You think it’s that easy? Destroy, destroy, then purity and love will do the rest? If you believe that stuff past your twenty fifth birthday, you’re a twerp.”
“This is a sophomoric view of my position.”
“Yeah? Listen, you guys are twerps with guns, and there’s no one more dangerous.”
“Let’s call it a day, Lou.”
“No, listen, tell you what, this is a great idea―surrender to the cops. Be a martyr for the cause. Stand up for your beliefs. Have that noble look on your puss when they say, ‘Guilty as fuck.’”
“Enough, Lou.”
“Really? Enough? Maybe not. Maybe that’s the answer.” He took another sip of his wine. “Man, this stuff clears the decks."
“Lou, good night.” Sol raised a hand.
“Guns are the answer, Sol? That’s your position? Who knows, maybe you’ve got something. Yeah. I’m beginning to think you’re right. Look―”
He turned and went into his study.
“Oh, fuck,” said Sol and put a hand to his pocket. “It’s going south.”
Carey ran to her bedroom and grabbed her Colt. Webern came back in with a side-by-side shotgun, broken open, and he was putting two shells into it.
“Lou,” said Sol. “Don’t be a fool. Put it down.”
“No, really, Sol. I really think this may be the answer. Really, really. Give yourselves up. No more bloodshed. Hasn’t there been enough?”
Sol had a Smith and Wesson in his right hand. “Put it down.”
“That’s my line, Sol.” He snapped the shotgun closed.
“Please, Lou,” said Carey.
“Someone like you, doing the Jane Fonda shit? What a waste. The stuff you could have done with your life. All those advantages. But no. So now it’s this.” He sighed. “What a mess.”
“How about we all put our weapons down?” said Sol.
“Nah, I’m content. Logistical task here, guys.” He sat at a table and rested the shotgun barrel across it. “Juggle a shotgun and a phone.”
“Lou,” said Sol, “if you lift that phone, it’s a point of no return. I’m begging you not to.”
“Enough bloodshed, Sol. Really.”
“Lou, we’re right here with guns. Are you crazy?”
“I’m asking you to do the right thing, Sol,” he said and lifted the phone.
Webern dialed the first digit.
“Lou, for Christ’s sake―”
He dialed the second digit, and Sol fired. Webern’s head flipped back. Blood spurted from his forehead. Sol dropped the gun and fell to his knees, howling like a lunatic.
Carey was frozen. It had all happened so fast. No, she told herself―rewind those moments. Make it go back. Please, please, put it back. Blood, though, was pooling under Webern’s chair, and Sol was pounding his fists against the floor.
In a daze, she was aware she was walking to the bathroom, taking towels, and returning to the living room. She wrapped one of them around Webern’s head, whispering, “I’m so sorry, Lou,” then began mopping the blood under the chair.
Sol became still; he knelt there, hunched over. Carey found a bucket of water and a mop in the kitchen and cleaned the floor thoroughly, but blood still flowed from the towel round Webern’s head, so she found a plastic bag and hunted until she found parcel tape, then put the bag over Webern’s head and wrapped the tape around his neck.
She seemed apart from herself. Was this Carey doing this, putting a bag over a murder victim’s head? Was this Carey Astaire? It was happening in another universe that she did not recognize. It was someone else performing these coolly practical acts.
Sol was standing, staring at the wall.
“Sol, get the personal things he’d need if he were leaving.”
He turned and said, “Sure.”
After that, it was all business. They gathered the documents they could find, wiped every surface they thought they had touched, and arranged the furniture neatly. Carey had found the Mexican currency in a bureau. Sol, using a cloth, returned the shotgun to the study, then he found a plastic sheet, and they gently slid Webern’s body onto it, avoiding each other’s eyes.
Finally, they stood there looking at that scene―the elegant room, the thoughtfully-selected paintings, and the body on the floor. If police used luminol, they would see the blood, but, short of that, it seemed nothing untoward had happened there. A clock chimed three times.
They went to their bedrooms without a word.
There was a rap on the door and she came awake. Nausea rose as memory returned. She dressed quickly. In the kitchen, Sol was preparing breakfast.
“It’s five o’ clock,” he said, as the toaster pinged. “Coffee right there.”
“Sure.”
It was still dark outside. They had only managed a short sleep, and Carey was still groggy with fatigue. Bacon was sizzling. Sol cracked a couple of eggs into a pan.
“We’ll need food for the road, too.”
“I’ll get something together,” she said.
“Eat first.”
Sipping her coffee, she said, “We’ll have to leave Lou’s car. We can’t leave ours here.”
Sol thought about it. “It doesn’t work either way. Yeah, we’ll take ours.”
After breakfast they emptied the trunk of the Plymouth and put their weapons into garden-waste bags, which they put on the back seat. Then they slid Webern’s body out of the house through the back door, and dragged it to the car. Carey found a couple of planks which they laid against the back of the Plymouth, and they pulled the body, on the plastic sheet, up them and into the trunk. Light was beginning to break through the sky by that time.
“Okay. Our bags,” Sol Said. “And a last look round. See what we’ve forgotten.”
There was nothing. Carey drove the Plymouth onto the road, while Sol used a rake to hide their tire tracks.
“Okay. That’s it. Let’s go.”
She nodded.
Soon the blacktop gave way to a dirt track, and Carey nursed the car around the ruts. They came to a deserted mine, and she watched as Sol took the bags containing the guns and walked away with them.
Later, they came to a stretch where the road had been eroded so much they had to make a detour.
Sol said, “Maybe here.”
They got out and walked around. After a few minutes, Carey called out, “There’s a gulch back here.”
“Okay.”
Webern’s body was heavy, and Sol could not carry it alone. Carey helped, and they managed to move it to the edge where the land fell away. She used a knife to cut away the plastic bag and gagged when she saw the face.
“Oh, God.”
They pushed the body, and it slid and tumbled downward. Coyotes would do the rest.
Where the track ran out, Carey stopped, and they took out their emergency bags and canteens. Finally, she inched the car toward an incline, then free-wheeled forward to a point where it was hidden behind boulders. She glanced at Sol, standing about thirty yards behind her, then took the spare gas-can and emptied it over the seats and the rugs. The flame from her lighter flickered and caught, and she walked back up the slope.
“So.”
“Yeah,” he said.
They put the canteens in their bags and started south. After a while, there was an explosion behind them.
“Ten miles?”
“Give or take,” she said, staring at the bleak land ahead.
Webern’s death haunted her on that long walk. The terrain was unforgiving, and the sun baked them dry. Perhaps they were walking to a jail cell. None of that seemed to matter: it was Webern who would not leave her be. Nothing would be the same after his killing. Though Sol had pulled the trigger, she was equally complicit. She knew she would have fired if he had not.
They stopped a few times and sat in the shade as helicopters following the border crossed their path. When they came to the Rio Grande, they walked along it until they found a stretch where shallows and gravel bars meant they could wade across, holding their bags aloft. On the far side, they stopped again to rest and eat, letting their clothes dry on them. A few miles beyond it, they saw a farmer driving a pickup with chickens in a cage. They thumbed a ride, and he took them to a village and dropped them off near a bus stop. They sat on a bench nearby, and a kid in a straw hat leaned out of a window to stare at them. Sol nodded at the bus stop and said, “Destino?”
“Sabinas.” The kid pointed south.
They bought a couple of beers and waited for two hours.
A week later, they were in Mexico City.
They stayed in separate apartments so they would not be seen as a couple, and met only when necessary. Sol shaved his hair off and put on weight. Carey already had her new look. He used his contacts to get them both new IDs, and they used them to fly, on different days, to Argentina. There, in Rio, they again took separate apartments, and Sol looked for a specialist who could change their IDs once more. After a couple of months, he found someone he believed he could trust. Photos were taken, identities were decided on, and half the price was paid in advance.
Carey had picked the name Marie James; Sol’s choice was Simeon Appelbaum. When they paid the second installment, they were happy with the results. Over a take-away meal of matambre arrollado, washed down with Quilmes beer, they decided that, for security reasons, they would meet only when unavoidable. The meal ended with tequila, and Sol raised his glass to her.
“Be safe, Carey.”
“You too.”
It was a couple of years before they met again. They had both found work, Carey as personal assistant to a Mexican with a beef-processing company, and Sol as financial adviser to a record label conglomerate. The money they had brought with them was largely untouched and had been filtered slowly into accounts at Goldman Sachs, but both of them were feeling footloose and unsatisfied. They moved north to Peru, then Colombia, then Venezuela; it was as though the U.S. was drawing them north. Four years after crossing the border into Mexico, they arrived in Belize. They lived, as always, separately, in Belize City, where Sol met a plastic surgeon named Almanzar, who had a good reputation, and whose rates were not excessive. Almanzar did the operation, and when Carey saw the result, she told Sol it was good.
“So, Carey,” Sol said one evening. “We’re going home?”
She sighed. “We’re crazy, but yes, I guess we are.”
One day in June, 1972, they took separate flights back to the United States. They kept in touch for a while, until both of them decided they would meet once more and then have no further contact. She flew into Waco, Texas, in April of 1974, and took a cab to a motel. They met there and talked for hours. They carried on talking at an Italian restaurant nearby. In the morning, he offered to drive her to the airport. There they hugged and said their final goodbyes. Carey watched as Sol opened the door. Their eyes met that one last time. She raised a hand, and Sol smiled and drove away.
.
EIGHT
“Got us a visitor, sir,” said Touchette.
Wetherspoon looked up from his desk. “Yeah?”
“Jimmy Chacon.”
“Bring him in.”
Chacon was solidly-built, with an expressionless face formed of hard, sharp angles. Wetherspoon stood and shook his hand.
“Jimmy, hi. Good to see you. Let me fix you a drink.”
“Yeah, sir. Uh―whiskey.”
“Sure.”
Wetherspoon went to a sideboard and fixed a couple of drinks.
“So, Jimmy, you’ve been busy.”
“Yeah.”
“There you go.”
“Thanks.”
“Come sit down.”
Chacon had a feral quality somewhere behind the eyes, in spite of his calm manner and the neat, sober clothes.
“Yeah,” said Chacon. “Not a tough job. Sir, can we talk here?”
“This is secure.”
“Okay. I’ll get straight to it. He has the two apartments, like you know, both on the same floor. He put in a connecting door. Guess he didn’t want a neighbor listening through the wall or whatever. Plus, there’s two ways out. I looked through both apartments. He had some precautions, but nothing that gave me a hard time. Guy reads a lot. Book cases on most of the walls. Mostly politics, art, music. College professor stuff. Not the kind of crib I see a lot of. Old TV, like that’s not important to him. Great audio system. But, okay, let’s get to the gravy. There were a couple of desks, there was a safe. Possible there was stuff elsewhere, like in the pages of books, but I done what I could. I had an hour twenty, tops. Like you said, I took nothing. All I have is the photos―and I shot every document I could in the time I had.”
He leaned over and opened an attachė case.
“Yeah, right here.”
“This is good, Jimmy.”
“Wait, sir. You may be disappointed. Like I say, I done what I could.”
“That’s all I can ask.”
“So.” He took three manila envelopes from the case and put them on Wetherspoon’s desk. “If these are of use then I’m happy.”
Wetherspoon looked at the envelopes and smiled; the envelopes were full.
“Sir, you pay for confidentiality and that’s what you get.”
“I know it, Jimmy.”
Wetherspoon reached into a drawer, took out a wad of notes, and pushed it across the desk. “Second half right here, Jimmy.”
“Appreciate it, sir.”
“So . . . Thank you.”
“Anytime, sir. You have my number.”
An hour later, Wetherspoon had the photos in separate piles laid out on his dining table. He had told Touchette to take the rest of the day off so he could concentrate on the task before him. Business dealings in the name of Appelbaum were in one pile; letters of a social nature from recent years were in another; and everything else, much of it undated, was in the third and final group.
