The Witch Tree, page 22
And he told her. All of it.
After, Carol took him to Dr. Miller’s safe. In the garage. Hidden under two feet of concrete.
She should stay with family, he told her. He was worried what would happen when the doctor returned home. Or, he would take her somewhere in the Cities, anywhere.
“It’s not safe,” he said.
Carol laughed. It was a strange, high, bitter laugh. “Oh, I’m not worried about being safe,” she said.
50
Back in Tonto Town, Buck climbed the stairs to Eli’s unit where, at the door, he paused before going in.
He held the pawnshop .38 in front of him, then stepped inside and slung the door closed.
Spots swam in his eyes. In the moonlight, things were but weightless intimations of themselves, couch and television, kitchen table and chairs, floating, the windows open, and the curtains, caught in a breeze, billowing. He went up the hallway, to Eli and Jen’s bedroom. The room had been ransacked, the dresser overturned and its contents, clothing, strewn across the floor and the bed torn apart, the luggage he’d seen, when he’d arrived so long ago, broken open.
Up the hallway, outside his room, there was something glossy on the floor, lit in moonlight.
He ran his finger through it. Dry on the edges, slick in the center. He lifted his finger to his nose – blood.
With his foot, he nudged the door open, bent in. A body lay on his cot, an arm flung wide, its legs splayed, in the room the stink of Jenny’s lotion, now sickly sweet, cloying, funereal. He didn’t want to, but he stepped closer. Saw it was Cleve, the knife he’d left out jutting like a lever from his chest.
He nudged Cleve with his foot, then went up the hallway, and something shifted at the windows.
“Come on out,” Ambrose said, “where I can see you. And no heroics,” he added. “Put your gun down, kick it over here.”
He did that, and a match flared. Round face, braids. Ambrose perched on the couch, smoking, a gun trained on him.
“So,” he said. “Live cartridges and blanks. Nice trick,” he said, “taking Eli out like that.
“And since you don’t have what you said you’d get,” Ambrose said, “I’d say you played us, didn’t you.”
“Or, it’s you playin’ me,” he replied.
This Ambrose considered, and a look of disgust crossed his face. “Think I’d do that?”
“Did you?”
“So where, then, is it? What Eli got on Miller?”
“You’ll let him and his girl go?”
“They’re already long, long gone,” Ambrose said, “took a cab, oh, a good hour ago.
“Eli’s got a bad powder burn on his face, thanks to you,” he said. “But that’s about it. Even went to the trouble to take that… bird with him. So he couldn’t be doing too badly.”
Buck reached into his pocket, removed his keys and set them aclatter on the kitchen table.
“Three blocks over on Emerson, in Eli’s trunk. There’s all of what he got hold of, and what I got from Miller’s wife, both.”
Ambrose took the keys and went out, and he waited in the dark, in him an exhaustion not unlike those he’d experienced after games, overcoming him, night sounds filtering through the windows, a far off siren, a ratty motorcycle, laughter, a car going by in the street, a distorted tune stretched behind it like a badly flying kite.
For what seemed the space of a second he nodded off, then heard steps in the hallway and got to his feet. By the clock on the kitchen counter a good half hour had passed.
Ambrose let himself in, then stood facing him in the dark, his eyes shiny, unreadable.
“It was all there. Just like you said it would be. Had to call it in. We’re waiting outside now.”
“For what?
“We’ve spotted Miller headed out of town on a back road, one that’ll take him right to us. They’re as good as in the bag. Should have Miller, Lester, and Vern within the hour.”
Buck shrugged. “Sure.” He got a vague sense of satisfaction. Well. The wheels of justice would take care of things.
“But we’ve got the rest of the rats,” Ambrose added, “the low rank, comin’ over here now – last chance to shut you up.”
Which left the matter of what Ambrose intended to do with him. He had, after all, stepped over the line.
Out front, in the street, cars pulled up, engines idling. The engines died, and there were quick footsteps on pavement, then closer. A scuffling, and the door two flights down creaked.
“They’re comin up, Lester’s lieutenants, and best you not be around when they get here,” Ambrose said. “I got a whole SWAT team’s gonna light this place up like a three tent circus.”
“So, what about me?”
“You? You’re walkin’ out of here with me,” he added. “And don’t fight me on it, or things could go way wrong.”
In his room, he swept up his duffle and the album from under his cot and they went out the back.
At Ambrose’s sedan, they stood a good arm’s length apart, having come to something.
“Well,” Buck said, “I guess this is it. You gotta do what you gotta do, and there’s no use in me running. There’s you, to witness what went on here.” He nodded. “And the record’ll show it, too.
“So, you going to take me in, or are we going to stand here all night?”
Ambrose laughed. “You forget?” he said. “None of us were ever at the Paradise, we shinobs. There are no ‘records’ of you bein’ there. We were all paid off the books, right?
“We’re just ghosts to them, nobodies, if even that.”
Far off a bird warbled forlornly.
“I’ll take care of it from here,” Ambrose said. “We’ll run Miller and the others down. And you….”
“Yeah, ” Buck said, “what about me?”
“You,” Ambrose replied, “were never here.”
He put out his hand and, with a quick, crushing shake, Ambrose set him free, then ducked into his car and got it started and went up the block and, turning, was gone.
Buck lifted his head. Just the sound of the city, in it the distant rush of traffic, now just more business.
A whole world of it.
BOOK III
51
In Sally’s car they were having one of their circular conversations, Sally making little if any sense. Dark circles under her eyes, and her hair pressed greasily flat, she looked terrible. And there was none of that earlier charming girlishness in her, only a staring, rambling anxiety.
That she’d moved her car to Archie’s, to the alley in back behind a dumpster, said it all.
Someone had come after her, she told him, someone with weird, different colored eyes.
Vern. Which meant they’d seen him with her. Had known her car. It scared him a little. Back in Cleveland, when the mob wanted to get to you, they went after your family.
But what of it? Even as they were fighting now over nothing, like an old couple, Ambrose was rounding them up. Miller, Lester, Vern.
“I just… can’t,” Sally said. “I can’t go. And, anyway, I wouldn’t trust myself to drive now.”
“And why is that?”
“I just… can’t,” she said, “any more than I can… fly like some… fucking… spider.”
“Of course you can, Sally,” he said. He didn’t want to take the Goat, you could spot it a mile off, or worse. “Just put this barge in gear, Cap’n, and we’ll sail out of here, Warp Factor Five.
“It’s safe now. I promise. They’re not out there.”
She drummed on the dashboard, like she’d done that first night they met, and he put his hand over hers to stop it.
“Sally.”
“What?”
She played with the electric windows. Up, down, motors whirring. “Listen,” he said, taking her hand.
“You asked if I’d come for you when I left,” he said, “to take you out of here. So, here I am.”
“But – why? Why do we have to go? Couldn’t we just… find another place? Here?”
They had a long drive ahead of them, first, all the way up to the North Shore of Superior, but he couldn’t tell her about that. No, she was in a state already; something… horrible had happened to her, and she was suffering for it–
“Sally,” he said, “you quit, remember? Your job?”
“Oh,” she said, “right. I forgot about that.”
“Start the car,” he told her.
He reached over and turned the key in the ignition and the car sprang to life with a rumble. The sun was up now, and the traffic coming on, and the City stirring, in it a grinding hum. A cook came out, in a white smock and hat, smoked a cigarette, aware of them in the alley.
Far off, a siren wailed. There was a slamming of a car door and loud conversation. The day was wasting. They needed to go.
“Can you do it?” Sally asked.
“I’m right here,” he replied. “You have to do it. You have to step back into your life, Sally.
“Do it,” he said.
“But I can’t.”
“Then, for us?” he said, hating himself for saying it. “Again?”
She glanced over at him. Then, settling herself behind the wheel, she put the car in gear, swung into the street.
“Stay on the black stuff and off to the right of the stripes down the middle,” he joked.
Sally swerved around the car ahead of them, then hit the gas, worked the big car through the rush. Whatever had gotten into her, he thought, it was bad, but, damn, if she couldn’t drive now.
It was a little scary, just how off she was. How angry. Which, maybe, was better than being scared.
52
Mid-morning they stopped at a shopping center, the lot busy, customers everywhere, and a too-brightness in the day. He gave Sally two tens and pointed to a grocery.
“Get us some food, can you?” he said. “And a paper.”
Now the road was smooth and winding. “Take 15 to St. Cloud,” he told Sally at an exit.
He lifted the paper. Rifled through it, then found on page three: Wife of Fugitive Doctor Dead of Apparent Suicide. Scanned the column. Shocked. Then found in the side bar to the right:
…year’s long investigation… acquisition of evidence from the deceased wife of Dr. William Miller… has led to the arrest of co-conspirators… auto theft ring operating out of … counts of murder, extortion… alleged staged accidents and…
…FBI investigation is ongoing…
The Vikings had signed a new quarterback, rain was forecast for the coming week.
Alongside Sally, Buck folded the paper, then dropped it, like something spent, over the seat. Was shocked at the thought of what Carol had done, and the difficulty of it. Was that what had happened? Or – had Dr. Miller – and the day darkened, and he shook himself.
Here the road was clear and broad, cut through rolling hills and picturesque farms and everything greening and the windows open, a breeze ruffling through the car and the morning sun bright.
He thought of Eli, Jen alongside him, Jen reading from a map on her knees, Eli’s eyes fixed on the road unfurling under them.
Eli saying, “Hey, Beautiful, stop?” and Jen replying, “soon, Sweetheart mine,” and both meaning it.
Later, passing through a farm town, the homes boxy ranches, and split level, uniformly white but for the color of the shutters either side of their windows, self same little houses, Sally clung to the wheel, her eyes angry slits, and she hiccupped, then again, and then so suddenly, so uncontrollably, she was struggling to so much as breathe, was gasping, and he had to take the wheel, guide the car onto the shoulder where they stopped, and he turned to her.
“Oh, Sally,” he said, sickened at what must have happened, “you went home, didn’t you. And it was bad, wasn’t it.”
He took her in his arms and she let go a sharp, animal cry, and he held her while she wept.
Sally had pasted a bright look on her face, become, once again, the perky girl on the go.
A thought, unbidden, came to him. He was enjoying her company; no, it was more than that.
“Turn here?” she said.
There was a road sign, Duluth, 5 Miles. He glanced at the road behind them, just more open highway.
“So tell me, can you,” Sally asked, “why are we going through Duluth to get to Seattle?”
“Unfinished business,” he said.
They were a good distance out of the city, Buck driving the car, when Sally reached for the wheel, turning it so the car veered to the left.
“Come on,” Sally said. “I want to see the REAL INDIAN MADE ITEMS. Just like it says. Look, it’s right over there!”
Buck, at the wheel, found himself smiling, amused. Though Sally, in the last few hours, had sometimes fallen under the spell of whatever terrible thing she’d faced at home, they’d been funning with each other, and in it was a leaning into something neither of them could say.
But they’d been saying it, anyway, in glances, and sitting all but shoulder to shoulder, in Sally’s throwing her head back, wind in her hair.
She did that now, joking. “Come on, can’t we? There’s another one, stop, all right?” she said.
He looked past her – god, but she was pretty, he thought – off to their right a trading post, garishly colored flags, gewgaws in the windows, and life-sized wooden statues of braves and trusty Voyageurs.
And cars everywhere. A whole slew of them, so that it could be a problem if they needed to shoot back onto the highway.
“Not interested,” he said. “And, anyway, for your information all that shit’s made in… Formosa, or wherever.”
“It’s Taiwan now, if you haven’t heard,” Sally replied, and smiled. She reached into the dash, got another station. “Enough news already. How about some music, okay?”
She searched, spinning the dial, found a station playing pop tunes, now “Physical,” and they looked ahead, up the road. As if embarrassed, but all the closer for it.
All morning he’d listened for news of Dr. Miller, but there’d been nothing. Sally beside him, he’d been vigilant, even distracted as he’d been, Sally flirting, all but come into her own.
He’d scoured every side road, every parking lot, and every gas station they passed for a waiting car, or someone loitering. At times, he’d taken secondary two lane highways.
A sign sped at them now. GATEWAY TO THE NORTH WOODS, it read, under the white letters an Indian with a painted face.
“Now, do I have a honker like that?” he asked.
When Sally didn’t answer, only grinned, they both laughed, then glanced over at each other and laughed again.
So, all right, he had a big, busted-up crooked nose. Still, it was an awful caricature.
They crested a vast, alluvial escarpment, here the Laurentian Divide, drove down into pine, and water, and stone. His arm thrown over the seat, he drove as if at ease, Sally beside him, the Memorial Day crowd out, clustered around the resorts, busy as bees. Shorts and tennis shoes. Ice cream cones. Babies in strollers. Parents shooing gaggles of kids here and there.
Sally beside him, he could almost believe he was driving her up to the lodge, thought to set his hand on her shoulder. Then thought – not to.
“Hey,” Sally said now, and pointed through the windshield, “there’s an Eldorado, just like ours! Same year and–”
Buck looked. His breath caught, before he even knew what he was looking at, his hands hard on the wheel, as if clinging to it. At a motel a stone’s throw in from the road was a yellow Cadillac, and there, too, Dr. Miller at the rear, checking the plate. Lester behind him, Vern off to the side.
They were arguing about something, Dr. Miller jabbing his finger into his palm and Lester nodding.
It was all he could do not to step on the gas and rocket away, his heart hammering as if to burst in his chest. Moments later, with a certain dread in him he glanced into the mirror.
There just the pavement winding out behind like his long-lost life, which was no relief at all. And all that that had been going on in the car – the stupidity of it, his dopey mooning over Sally – gone.
Blinking, he tried to calm himself. Not only was Dr. Miller out there, he’d followed them somehow. He just needed to get what Ruben’d left for Eli, and they could truly run.
Somewhere to the west, where he could send Sally off on her own. And finally end it.
“What?” Sally said. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“No,” he said, “just something I forgot. Something I’m gonna have to deal with, so…. Okay?”
“Okay what?”
But neither of them was about to say it – she’d be dropping him off, and soon, because of it.
53
The windows open, they turned up a dirt road, one so narrow the pines on either side scratched the car.
He hadn’t been to the tree, he thought, in what seemed a lifetime. Recalled Od driving that big, ruined Continental, Od and Joe speaking in the old language. Joking. At times singing.
To the tree. And thinking on it, now, he laughed, darkly, to himself. Tani ma mitig!
“What’s so funny?” Sally asked.
“Nothing,” he said.
It must have driven Eli near mad to be so… close, but so far from what he’d been after. Manido Giizhigance was what shinobs called it, The Little Cedar Spirit Tree. It had been priests who’d named it The Witch Tree, trying to warn their native converts away.
Here, he thought, passing a hollow, in it birch trees, and butter yellow marsh marigolds, and blooming bloodroot, this is the place, and he turned off at a stand of pines and stopped.
They got out of the car, and the wind off Superior made a lonesome rushing, a sighing. His head cocked, he listened for the whine of a motor, voices, anything, but there was only the wind.
“Should I stay?” Sally asked.
“No,” he told her, and directed her onto the path, adjusting the revolver in his belt at the small of his back.
The path dropped, then rose, then dropped again onto Hat Point, a stone promontory over the lake, The Tree, vastly old and twisted, just there as if a green fire bursting from a fissure in the granite.
