$200 and a Cadillac

XIV



The sign above the bar read: “This is the year of the rat.”

Hank thought of Howie Lugano and smiled. The paper placemat in front of him with the Chinese calendar on it said the last year of the rat had been 1996. That might have been six years ago, but it was truer now than ever.

At seven o’clock, the lounge at the Golden Dragon Mandarin Palace was hopping, but the woman from the real estate office wasn’t there. Hank hunched over a plate of pan-fried noodles with chicken and vegetables and glanced behind him from time to time, hoping to see her. He assumed she would make a scene when she arrived because there were mostly men in the place.

The lounge had been remodeled sometime in the mid-80s with lots of smoked glass and mirrors, splashes of neon color accenting the ragged black and chrome furniture. It was a decorating nightmare. A Spuds McKenzie poster of the bull terrier—poolside with a bucket of iced-down bottles of Bud, surrounded by women in pastel bikinis—was tacked to the wall behind the bar. Hank wondered for a moment—whatever happened to that dog?—then he turned around to check for her again. He wanted her to be there more than he knew was healthy.

But she wasn’t. The place was stocked with rough looking desert rats hovering around the pool table in the back, drinking pitchers and missing half their shots. There were some tired old men slumped against the wall, talking quietly and sipping cheap well drinks, their faces tanned like leather, taut, the loose parts long since eroded away by years of blowing sand. A couple of burnouts in the corner by the door were deep in an intense conversation. And there was a large group of cocky young guys crowding some tables in the middle near the black and white tiled dance floor—guys in jeans, wearing T-shirts a size too small, who looked like frat boys who never went to college, hipster rednecks who thought they’d been around the block—who leaned their chairs back on two legs and laughed at everything everyone said, as though life were a commercial, an inside joke.

Hank smiled at the sign again, ordered a second beer, and thought of the other two rats he’d already gotten rid of as part of the same assignment. Both of them had flipped on Fazioli and both of them had to pay, just like Lugano. It was the code they lived by, and even they knew that turning on Fazioli was a death sentence. But the years on death row would be spent in a quiet town somewhere where they’d work a job and watch TV, maybe join a bowling league or take up golf, and desperately cling to a life that might have been theirs all along if only they’d never signed on with Fazioli in the first place. Hank imagined that, in some ways, that kind of life was worse than prison because the rats always knew that a guy like Hank would show up one day—from out of nowhere—step out of the shadows of their past, and end it all. But then, maybe that constant fear made them appreciate each moment more. Maybe it made them accept their fate a little easier when that final moment came.

Five weeks earlier, in an apartment building in Lynnwood, Washington, Paul Bruno had admitted as much without words. At two in the morning he awoke with a start—the old senses still working, but rusty—to see Hank standing over him in the darkness. The streetlamp outside threw enough light in the room to illuminate the state of play and Paul Bruno just stared up at Hank with that knowing look the rats always seem to get and simply laid his head back down on the pillow, folded his hands across his chest, and waited. He didn’t close his eyes. He just lay there in the queen-sized bed with the dust ruffle, surrounded by the cherry colored bedroom set and the Crate and Barrel curtains, and waited.

It was the same with Mel Castro a month before Paul Bruno. Staying late at his barber shop in Montgomery, Alabama, he was sweeping the floor when he heard the chimes on the door. He turned to see Hank in the doorway and knew the game was up without saying a word. He turned to sprint out the back, slipped on the pile of hair he’d just collected, and went down so hard Hank could hear the man’s wrist snap against the cold tile. But Hank wasn’t in a hurry. He walked slow as Mel fled down the hallway to find the back door blocked by the front end of Hank’s rented Jeep. After ramming his shoulder against the door, he knew it was over. Mel Castro just turned to face Hank and stood like a man about to receive a sentence, resigned to the finality of it.

And it was a sentence. At least that’s how Hank saw it. They might all live outside the law, but that didn’t mean there weren’t rules. His job was no different than any police officer. It was only that the penalties were more severe—usually because the infractions were of the worst kind. Breaching the trust. Turning on your fellow man. He had heard the arguments before—murder is murder; it’s always wrong—but Hank dismissed them as childish. It wasn’t murder if it was consensual, if everyone agreed to the rules on the front-end. And they all did, just as everyone else agreed to the rules of the road when they got in their cars. Starting the engine was an act of consent. Working for Fazioli was the same damned thing.

Once a guy crossed the line, he knew what he was in for and he knew there was no going back. It was an all or nothing deal, you couldn’t just choose the parts you liked. Just like a guy who drove his car on the left side of the road couldn’t defend himself by saying it was legal in England, a guy who worked for Fazioli couldn’t turn his back on the society he was a part of, he couldn’t cross back over and claim the protections of the regular system.

Everyone knew that, especially the guys who did it. The Paul Brunos and Mel Castros of the world always knew what they were in for. They always knew that one day a guy like Hank would walk up to them and turn their head inside out without even giving them a chance to say good-bye. That was just the way it was. The fundamental ethos of their tribe.

Hank checked his watch and wondered where the woman was. He wasn’t eager to sit in the lounge all night, letting every a*shole in town get a good long look at him. Then some guy with glasses, dressed in a suit without a tie, took the stool next to him and looked around like he was trying to figure out how he got there. Hank guessed everyone in the place knew each other and knew who wasn’t local and this guy would attract even more attention. Hank tried not to look at the guy, but he couldn’t help himself. Then their eyes met—two strangers on the road, bellying up to the local bar—and the guy nodded at Hank and said, “Hey, how’s it going?”

One of those, Hank thought, and then said, “Not bad.”

“Food any good in this place?”

“First time here.” Hank smiled, debating whether to slide off the stool and find the gal in the real estate office in the morning. Then the guy glanced down at Hank’s empty plate, so Hank added: “I had the chicken chow mein. It was alright.”

The guy grinned back at him and seemed uncomfortable, like he wasn’t sure how to behave around people. “Oh, great.” He nodded. Then, when the bartender finally came over, the guy ordered a beer and said, “And give this gentleman here another of what he’s having.”

Great. Now he was stuck. Hank thanked the guy and checked his watch again. Then looked back over his shoulder at the pool table and everyone else who had nothing better to do on an otherwise normal weeknight. The guy next to him ordered the chow mein and sipped his beer for a minute without saying anything. Then he started in again.

“So you’re not from around here either?”

“Knoxville.” Hank smiled, and took a drink.

“Really? Just out here on vacation?”

“Work. I’m a surveyor. Out here to take some measurements of the National Monument.” Hank hoped that would satisfy him, but he could see the guy really wanted to have a friendly chat in the neighborhood bar. He didn’t look like a man who got out of the house much.

“Some place to get sent for work, huh? Me too. This morning I was in my office in Long Beach and had no idea I’d end up out here.” The guy stuck out his hand. “Ted Ross, I’m a chemist.”

“Hank Norton.” He shook the guy’s hand and smiled. Then he added, “Thanks for the beer.”

A minute later there was a swell of voices when Janie walked in. Someone hooted. Another whistled. Everyone turned to see what was going on. The guys around the pool table obviously knew her and she waved to them. Then she went over to the two burnouts in the corner and interrupted their summit meeting. She hadn’t seen him yet, but she was carrying a file folder under her arm. Hank watched her walk, and when she stopped walking, he watched her stand and talk to the two guys at the table by the door.

Eli looked up when Janie walked in. “Your sister’s here, man.”

Eddie turned and smiled at her, raising one hand in a half-assed wave as she walked over. “Hey.”

“What’re you two losers doing here? The rats finally run you out of the trailer?” She smiled at them. They were less annoying now that they weren’t coming around the house all the time. Then, noticing the bruise below Eli’s eye, she added, “What the f*ck happened to you? Girl must have really had to fight to get away.”

“What’s that?” Eli nodded at the file folder. “Trying to make a list of all the dirt bags you’ve slept with?”

“You’re just jealous you’ll never be on the list.” She sneered at Eli and smacked her brother on the shoulder. “You’ve got a shitload of mail at the house you need to pick up.”

Always the bossy one, Eli thought, looking her up and down—the muscular little body of a rock climber—he would like to be on the list, there was no doubt about that. She talked to Eddie for a minute and Eli just watched her movements, ran his eyes over the curves of her thighs, up through her waist and over the tight shirt that cut low down over the little bit of cleavage she had to show. Yeah, a lot of guys would like to be on that list. Like all the grease monkeys and meth freaks hanging around the pool table. Like Frank, the bartender (who Eli suspected might actually be on the list). Like the old dude sitting at the bar, watching her from across the room.

Then his trance was broken by her voice. “Quit staring at my ass, you f*cking perv.” She thumped him on the head with the file folder and spoke to her brother as she walked away. “I don’t know why you spend so much time with him, Eddie.”

Eli watched her walk away, just like he’d been doing most of his life. Then he watched her walk right up to the old dude at the bar like she knew him. “Who the hell is that guy?”

Eddie turned to look. “I dunno.”

“I’ve never seen him around town before. He doesn’t work at Monarch, does he?”

“I dunno.” Then, after a lengthy pause, and as if answering the question for the first time, Eddie added, “I’ve never seen him out at Monarch.”

They watched her give him the file folder and stand there with her hand on her hip, talking to the guy and motioning around the bar with her hand. Eli watched the guy’s face. He seemed interested, not necessarily in what she had to say, but in how she looked, and moved.

“What I can’t figure out,” Eddie said, turning back to face the table, “is what the rush is. I mean, we’ve been working as fast as we can. Those old tanker trucks don’t just fix themselves. Equipment has to be repaired. And there’s only two of us. It can only go so fast. It’s not like we’ve just been sitting on our asses.”

Eddie had broken his trance and Eli shifted his focus back to the important stuff. He rubbed his hand over his swollen cheek. It hurt with even the slightest pressure and the pain made him angry. “Look,” he spoke suddenly. “I’m serious. This guy’s crazy. I don’t know who he is or what he’s doing working out at Monarch, but I know he’s the kind of guy no one will miss if he simply disappears.”

“Dude. Are you out of your mind? I can’t believe you’re even talking like that.” Eddie leaned in over the table, whispering, but making as much noise as if he’d spoken in a plain voice. “I know he’s an a*shole, but we can’t—” Eddie cut himself off and looked around. “We can’t just kill the guy.”

“Why not? You saw what he did to the hitchhiker. He’s an animal. If anything, he’s just getting what he’s already got coming to him.”

“Look, man, we’re not the police.”

“Man, f*ck the police. What difference does it make who does it? You and I saw him do it. There’s no question the guy’s a murderer. There ain’t no need for a jury to decide a damned thing about the guy. And there’s no question he won’t do the same thing to us. I mean, look at it like this. We bust our ass for the next two weeks and get this a*shole his hundred grand, who’s to say he’s not going to do the same thing to us? I mean, why wouldn’t he? Why keep us around so we can identify him if something goes wrong? He takes his sack of cash. We disappear. Even if they eventually find the well, no one will ever connect it to him.” Eli shook his head, leaned back in his chair, and took a long drink from his beer. There wasn’t anything else to say as far as he was concerned.

Eddie stared over at the pool table, lost in thought, as if trying to figure out what the men with the long sticks were doing. Eli could see he was thinking it through, remembering the hitchhiker, listening to Ron’s threats again, watching him kick Eli in the face and leave him writhing in the dirt. Eli knew that Eddie would reach the same conclusion. All he needed was a little more time to get there. There wasn’t another way out. It wasn’t like he relished the idea of killing the guy. It wasn’t like he even felt sure he could do it. But it was the right decision no matter what.

Finally, after another minute of sipping his beer, Eddie turned to him and asked, “How would we even do it, anyway?”

Eli didn’t have an answer for that, and he shrugged his shoulders. “Haven’t thought about it, but I know one thing, we won’t make the same mistake he made. This time we’ll bury the body.”

Janie walked over slow, smiling. She was the only thing worth looking at in the bar, and she knew it. Being the only attractive woman in a small town had given her a certain confidence among men and she wielded it with precision. The way she stood with a hip out. The way she cocked her head downward and looked up at him with those big eyes. It was a good act, and probably a necessary one in a town like Nickelback, but it didn’t fool Hank. At least, he didn’t think it did.

“I guess you can at least buy me a drink for my troubles,” she said, handing him the folder. Hank still had most of the beer the chemist had bought him, and he could feel the guy watching the two of them. He could also see the two guys she’d been talking to watching her come over to him. They looked like they were talking about him. The serious looking one with the wild, curly hair seemed particularly interested. That was just what he needed. Hank wondered who else might be watching, but he didn’t look around the room to find out.

Hank turned to get the bartender’s attention and saw that he was already delivering a cocktail. It looked like a gin and tonic. The bartender set it between Hank and the chemist and looked at Hank. He supposed he could just get up and walk out, but that would turn him into the evening’s main topic of conversation. He wondered if it even mattered now, after the car wreck, everyone seemed to know about him anyway. He decided he had to play along, act normal, do whatever it took to not be the first person people thought of when Howie Lugano turned up missing or dead.

Janie smiled and reached between Hank and the chemist to grab her drink. Hank glanced up and his eyes met the chemist’s, who was watching the both of them. Hank thought the guy looked nervous, having a woman like Janie that close to him. They could smell her, warm and tropical, coco butter and pineapple, some kind of lotion—not perfume. The chemist raised his eyebrows and gave him a shit-eating grin. Just got to town, eh? Hank nodded to him, gave him a slight wink.

He said, “You make quite an entrance.”

She laughed a little. “Yeah, well, there are only about ten single women in this town, and eight of them are fat.”

“And the other one?”

“She knows better than to come in here.”

“What about you?”

“I grew up here. I went to school with most of these guys, so it’s fine. I’ve been playing this game since the summer my tits showed up. They leer. I tell them to come back when they pull their heads out of their asses and get real jobs. It’s a kind of redneck détente.” She took a sip of the fizzing drink and raised her eyes up at him. The curl of hair she brushed away in her office was hanging down over one eye again. It almost looked posed.

Hank chuckled and sipped his beer. She was coy. Smart. And he asked himself again what in the hell she was doing in a town like this. He supposed growing up there explained it, but it didn’t seem right. There had to be more to it than that. Janie had moved around to the barstool on the other side of Hank, away from the chemist, and Hank turned all the way toward her. He took another drink and leaned his elbow on the bar.

“You seem like an odd person to be running a real estate agency in a town like this.”

“Well, that was never the plan, but life never seems to care too much about my plans.”

Hank smiled at that and thought, she has no idea how right she is. “So what does that mean? What’s the story behind the story, so to speak?”

“Ah, well, nothing too interesting. I was living in San Diego. Dad had split a number of years before, ran off with someone we didn’t know. No explanation, no forwarding address, just dropped off the face of the Earth. Then Mom got sick, so I moved back to take care of her.” She motioned with her head back toward the corner of the bar. “I knew my brother was going to be useless when it came to taking care of things.” Then she shrugged. “Hell, I wasn’t much use either. Mom died about six months after I came back.”

Hank looked back at the two guys she’d spoken with when she came in. “One of those guys your brother?”

“The one with his back to us. Eddie. The other guy is Eli. They live together in a shitty trailer out on the edge of town. I don’t know why my brother spends all his time out there. Neither of them is working anymore, both of them got laid off from the refinery awhile back. Now they just smoke pot all day and look for ways to get in trouble.” She glanced at Hank and smiled, “I look out for him in my own way. Try to make sure the trouble he gets in is relatively safe.”

Hank took a drink and looked back at her. “Well, I suppose trouble is about all there is around here if you’re not working.”

“Yeah, trouble and death by boredom. Living at the end of the world like this, people have too much time on their hands and no hope of ever leaving. It makes people do crazy things.” She glanced back at her brother again. “It’s sad though. I don’t know why he doesn’t get out of here. He’s a wiz of a mechanic—did a lot of work on the old drilling equipment when he was in high school—I’m sure he could make a living anywhere.”

There was his opening. “Maybe he stays for the same reason you do. Why haven’t you gone back to San Diego? What were you doing there, anyway?”

She laughed and shook her head, looking around the bar. “Shit. I guess it’s just inertia.” She smiled at him. “You know, Isaac Newton? An object at rest stays at rest.” Hank gave her a funny look and she snorted a laugh and shook her head with a mixture of remembrance and disbelief.

“What?” Hank asked, draining the last of his beer.

“You won’t believe it, but I was getting a master’s degree in physics at the University of San Diego. Astrophysics, if you can believe that. But then my mom needed help, so I took a semester off and, well, here I am, damned near five years later.” She polished off her drink and waved the empty at the bartender, who started making her another. “Now, hell, I’d have to start all over if I tried to go back to school and, I dunno, that all seems like a different lifetime, someone else’s life. I just don’t think I’m interested in it anymore. I can’t imagine going back to school now.”

Hank watched her talk. She seemed as surprised by her own past as he was. As though she had never discussed it with anyone and was now pouring it out on a stranger in a bar. He felt the need to say something to her, but everything that came to mind sounded like an old man dispensing advice. He found himself resisting the urge to call attention to the generation gap between them. She was probably only thirty; he was nearly fifty. Christ, he could be her father. He shook his head slightly and she saw it.

“What?” She smiled, embarrassed. “I’m talking too much, aren’t I? And to a total stranger too.”

“No, that’s not it. It’s nothing. I was just thinking. That’s all.”

“About what?”

“Oh, nothing really. I don’t know. About how life is funny, or messy, I guess. How listening to you makes me feel like an old man. How old are you?”

“Don’t you know you’re never supposed to ask a woman that?” Hank shrugged at her. Then she said, “I’m thirty-two.”

“I’m forty-nine. And let me tell you, it never gets any easier to figure out the answers. If anything, it gets harder, you start to feel like you’re running out of time and the realization that you might never get it right or figure it out or whatever you think you’re supposed to do starts to get to you.” Hank ordered another beer and Janie sipped her drink quietly for a minute. She watched him shifting the file folder around on the bar, absent-mindedly moving it to the exact center and placing a wicker basket of salted peanuts on either side of it—in perfect balance—then setting his empty beer glass in the exact center of the space between the top of the folder and the edge of the bar away from them, so the entire arrangement made a kind of cross on the bar.

“Very precise,” she said. Hank gave her a confused look and she nodded at the folder.

“Oh.” He smiled. “I do that. I guess I like things organized.”

“Funny coming from a guy who just said life is messy.” She gave him a kind of half-wink and leaned on the bar with her elbows. The curl of hair was still hanging down and Hank felt a sudden urge to reach over and brush it back, but the intimacy of the act seemed horribly inappropriate and he resisted.

“Well, I guess, but we all have things like that, don’t we? I mean, you were studying astrophysics. That’s all about rules and formulas and precision and the ability to calculate the trajectory of objects through space but, in the end, what does it matter? None of us live out there. We all have to get up and deal with traffic patterns and weather systems, and human beings who don’t seem to behave according to any set of rules at all. But I suppose for a physicist, being able to know and prove that a comet is going to pass within a very precise distance from the Earth at a certain precise date in the future makes a physicist feel like there really is order in the universe, like, on some level, everything really does make sense—or at least might make sense if only people would think hard enough about it and figure it out.” Hank took a deep breath and a swallow of beer and added, “But in the meantime, we all have to live in a world filled with people and governments and armies and whatever else, and none of them are particularly predictable, and there isn’t really a set of rules—or if there is, people are free to break them—and you get older and you realize it’s just never going to make any sense. You start to wonder what the hell you’ve been doing with your life.”

Janie had finished her drink and ordered a third and she leaned her hip against the counter, cocking her head sideways at him. “What did you say you were doing out here anyway?”

Hank hadn’t said, but he responded with, “I’m a surveyor.”

She laughed. “I totally did not expect you to say that. I never thought about it, but I guess surveyors have existential crises too.”

“Why, what did you think I did?”

She paused and took a sip of the fresh drink the bartender had brought and looked like she was giving it some serious thought. “I suppose if I had to guess, I’d have said you were a cop, or maybe a spy.” She grinned.

Hank gave her a wide smile and said, “Is there anything to spy on around here?”

She cocked her head to the side and said, “Not really. The only thing worth looking at is standing right here.”

What could he say to that?

It got late in a hurry. Hank had a few more beers. The crowd thinned out. Three more hours faded into the oblivion of history as Janie fed the jukebox quarters, and Hank and the chemist shot pool and smoked cigarettes and started to feel good and loose. Hank knew it was the worst thing he could do when he was on a job. But why not? What the hell? Everything had gone wrong anyway. The car crash. Everybody talking about him. He was already making a spectacle of himself. It was just turning out to be one of those jobs. And besides, this was the middle of nowhere. By the time anyone started paying attention—if anyone started paying attention—he’d be just another guy people got drunk with one night and no one could remember later.

Hank watched the chemist lean over the table, take too much time to line up a bank shot, and miss badly. The guy wasn’t much of a pool player. “I guess I need to get out more,” he offered, pushing his glasses back up his nose. But that wasn’t the guy’s problem. He wasn’t loose. He tried to make everything too precise. Pool was all about feeling it. Hank smiled and thought of his older brother, years before, in a pool hall near Columbia University. You have to become one with the cue, his brother used to say. You look at the situation. Maybe you walk around the table once or twice. You take everything in. But then you lean over and do it. You just take the shot. Hank always thought that playing pool was kind of like pulling a trigger. When the time came, when the moment finally arrived, you had to be able to get it done without thinking.

“What are you smirking about?” Janie asked from the other side of the table, swaying a little to Rolling Stones’ Let it Bleed.

“Nothing. I was just thinking about playing pool. My older brother and I used to play a lot, back when he was in college.”

“Where was that?”

“Columbia.” Then he added without thinking, “We all went there, everyone in my family.”

“Is your brother a surveyor too?” She winked at him.

“No.” Hank leaned over the table, lined up his shot, and added, “He’s dead.” Then he threw his weight into a two ball combo, filling the room with the crack of colliding balls. He stood and watched them race around the table for a few seconds. He could see out of the corner of his eye that Janie’s smile was gone. He could see she was wondering what to say next. He hadn’t meant to ruin the mood, it just came out. He picked up the chalk and looked for his next shot.

“It’s not a big deal. It was a hell of a long time ago. Vietnam. It happened to a lot of people. A lot of families.” Hank tried to cut the six in the side pocket and missed.

The chemist had been listening. When he got up to take his shot, he said, “I had three cousins got killed within three months of each other over there. I was just a kid, but I remember going to a lot of funerals that summer.”

Janie didn’t seem to have much to say. She had stopped swaying to the jukebox, and the song had switched to Steely Dan’s “Hey Nineteen,” which seemed oddly appropriate to Hank. The chemist missed and Hank leaned over the table again. Finally, Janie asked, “How old was he?”

“Oh, I guess he was twenty-one.” Hank thought about it for a second. “Yeah, twenty-one.”

“What happened to Columbia? Shouldn’t he have been in school?” She asked it like there must have been some kind of injustice at play. As though the war itself wasn’t injustice enough, as though the real culprit was the university or something else entirely.

“He dropped out and signed up. I think he did it to spite our old man. You know, I’ll show you, I’ll join the Marines. That kind of thing.” Hank said it matter-of-factly, because that’s all it was now, after so many years, just a simple fact like so many others.

She said she knew what he meant about spiting the old man, but Hank doubted she did. They watched each other across the table, each asking themselves what the evening had been about. There was nothing between them but twenty years and a pool table and a few thin strands of conversation running wispy and delicate as a spider’s web. Was that a connection? Was it anything at all? Janie could feel herself getting tired. Perhaps it was the hour or the beer or this strange man she’d met who at once seemed odd and interesting and deeply saddened by a past she knew nothing about.

He was fascinating and frightening. He had a past he was hiding, or shielding, and at the same time it seemed to ooze from his pores. He was thoughtful and reflective in a way that just didn’t seem right for a surveyor named Hank. There were contradictions everywhere. He walked around the pool table like a shark. He was precise, deliberate, focused, and then he talked about being lost in a universe that made no sense, almost a nihilist. And somewhere, at the center of it all, Janie could sense power, a fierceness, a dangerous disregard for playing it safe. Somewhere inside him was a different set of rules, a universe governed by laws that did not include inertia.