Way Down on the High Lonely

6

Neal found Harley McCall the next afternoon.

He might have found him in the morning, except that he stayed late in Karen Hawley’s bed. He woke to the sound of wind chimes and water. The chimes jangled in Karen’s small backyard; the water came from Karen vigorously brushing her teeth in the bathroom two giant steps from the bed.

Karen’s house occupied a little knoll on the north edge of town. It was a small, white one-story clapboard affair, a little ramshackle on the outside but clean and well furnished. Her small kitchen had all of the modern appliances, the living room had a sofa that looked new, an expensive stereo system, and well-framed Gorman prints on the wall. The bedroom was just large enough for the bed and a chest of drawers.

“Can I give you a lift back out to the Mills’?” she asked as she came back into the bedroom. Then she added, “I have lesson plans to do.”

“If you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind. After all, I practically kidnapped you.”

She gave him a breakfast of blueberry muffins and coffee, then gave him the ride back out to the Mills’ place.

“You don’t mind if I don’t come in,” she said as she pulled into their drive. “I don’t think I could stand to see Peggy’s smug smile.”

“Your honor is safe with me.”

“Better not be.” She kissed him lightly. “So I think one of us is supposed to say ‘When will I see you again?’”

“When will I see you again?”

“When do you want to?” Karen asked.

“I usually get into town on Saturdays.”

“You should get a car.”

“I should.”

Somehow they had started kissing again, and somewhere in there they agreed to see each other on Saturday, unless Karen had a chance to pop out to the ranch before that. And somewhere in there-maybe it was while looking at her smiling eyes-Neal felt a tug he hadn’t felt in a long time. Maybe he had never felt it before.

Neal got out of the car, Karen put the Jeep into a swift and skillful K-turn, and Peggy Mills made a precisely timed appearance on the porch under the guise of shaking out a rug.

“Next time you see Karen,” she said as Neal tried to sneak past the house, “you tell her I said she’s a coward. You are seeing her again, aren’t you?”

“Saturday.”

“You’d better work that smile down before your face breaks in half,” Peggy said. “You be good to her.”

“Yes ma’am.”

Peggy rolled her eyes, smiled at him, and disappeared back into the house. Neal figured that she wouldn’t let Steve come out and make any smart remarks.

Neal hiked back toward the cabin. He was almost there when the coyote appeared.

“Sorry I’m late,” Neal said.

The animal ignored him. It was acting strangely, prancing around the brush, tossing its head and celebrating like a dog with a bone. Neal looked closer and saw that it did have something in its mouth. The coyote tossed its head again, almost as if it were trying to show off its acquisition.

Neal trotted into the cabin and got his binoculars. It took a moment for him to find the coyote again and another moment to focus the glasses, and then he saw what the coyote had in its mouth.

A human arm. Half a human arm, anyway, from the elbow joint down.

Neal struggled to hold the focus as his own hands shook and the coyote jumped and danced in triumph. He twisted the focusing dial again and then could make out the distinct shape of human fingers against the coyote’s white teeth.

Neal ducked back inside the cabin, grabbed the Marlin, jumped off the porch, and ran toward the coyote. The animal dropped down on its forelegs like a dog getting ready to play a good game of keep-away. He waited until Neal got within twenty yards and then sprang sideways, let Neal get within ten, and then juked the other way.

But the forearm was a heavier load than the coyote was used to managing, and it fell out of his mouth. He picked it back up as the man kept charging, then decided it was time to get out of there. He started straight away at a trot, dragging the arm, the elbow joint bouncing in the dirt.

Neal raised the rifle and fired.

The coyote jumped at the noise, gave Neal a look of betrayal, and scampered off at full speed.

Neal took a deep breath and walked over to where the arm lay in the sagebrush.

It was badly decomposed, a putrid gray-green. Neal could tell that the coyote had dug it up from the dirt that still clung to the rotting flesh. Neal forced himself to get down on his knees to examine the arm more closely, and that’s where he saw the stain of color showing up through the putrefaction. It was a tattoo: “Don’t tread on me.”

Neal turned away and vomited.

When he was finished, his eyes watering from his retching and the stench of the severed limb, he took off a shoe and a sock, put the shoe back on, and slipped the sock over his hand. He picked up the arm, fighting back another round of vomiting, and carried it back to the cabin. He wrapped the arm in one of his T-shirts, dug a deep hole on the slope in back of the cabin, and dropped the arm into it. He put some rocks in, filled the hole back up, and then put some more rocks on top.

Thus Neal Carey buried what was left of Harlcy McCall.

“Why do you think Hansen or his men were involved in the killing?” Ethan Kitteredge asked. “How do you know it was a homicide at all? McCall might have wandered off into the wild and met with some mishap.”

He was sitting in an enormous leather wing-back chair in his study at the family house on the east side of Providence, Rhode Island. Ed Levine sat uncomfortably in a matching chair. A fire of birch logs crackled in the fireplace.

One reason for Ed’s discomfiture was Kitteredge’s dress: pajamas, a maroon robe, and slippers. Levine had called him in the middle of the evening-as soon as he got Neal Carey’s call-and Kitteredge had sent a helicopter for him, insisting that he come right away. Ed had never been to Kitteredge’s home before and felt awkward from the moment Liz Kitteredge, the former Liz Chase, answered the door. She greeted him warmly, ushered him into the study, inquired if he preferred coffee, tea, or a brandy, and padded off to fetch Ethan.

Now Levine was sipping coffee, hoping not to spill any on the priceless Oriental rug at his feet and trying to brief his boss on the intricacies of a very complicated case.

“Neal thinks that Strekker was lying when he said that McCall had moved on. That, combined with the fact that Neal found the body just a couple of miles from the Hansen place,” Ed answered.

“But what would be the motive?” Kitteredge asked. “Wasn’t McCall one of these people?”

“Sir, we’re not talking about rational men here. We’re talking about a virulent combination of racism and religion. The picture that’s beginning to emerge here is that Carter’s church has combed the prisons and jails for violent men to match a violent creed and placed them in these ‘cells’ in remote parts of the West.”

Kitteredge raised his eyebrows. “The church militant.”

“Exactly,” Ed answered. “Right now we can only speculate as to how McCall fell afoul of these people, but there are some questions we need to address immediately.”

“Quite.”

“For one, do we alert the authorities?”

“We have found a body, here, Ed We do have certain responsibilities as citizens.”

“Absolutely. On the other hand, sir, do we really want local cops, state troopers, or the FBI to go plodding in there? That might get these nuts edgy enough to kill the boy.”

“Assuming he’s still alive.”

“And assuming they have him.”

Kitteredge looked into the fire. “But you think he’s dead, don’t you?”

Ed shifted in his chair. “Yes, sir,” he answered, “I’m afraid I do.”

“Tragic,” Kitteredge said.

Ed didn’t think that required an answer. He knew Kitteredge’s expression well enough to let the silence go on. He knew that Kitteredge was analyzing the information, sorting out fact from supposition, testing various possible actions against the duties and responsibilities Friends of the Family had to its clients.

Ed munched on a shortbread cookie while Ethan Kitteredge thought.

“You say that Neal Carey has penetrated this group?” Kitteredge asked.

“Yes and no,” Ed answered. “Neal likened it to circles within circles. He feels that he has penetrated the first circle but is nowhere near the center.”

“And you trust his analysis.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Scottish,” said Kitteredge.

“Sorry?”

“The cookie.”

“It’s very good.”

“Yes,” Kitteredge said. “Carey’s been undercover for a long time, hasn’t he?”

“Three months or so,” Ed admitted.

“Is it your evaluation that he is capable of sustaining this role for another extended period of time?”

Ed took another long sip of coffee and another bite of the cookie before answering. He had to be careful here, because he knew-and he knew that Kitteredge knew-that three months was a long undercover assignment, movies and television notwithstanding. And Carey had been out there alone with no handler to talk to-no human contact. An undercover operative tends to forget what’s real and what’s make believe. He gets lonely, insecure, and paranoid. But not Neal Carey.

“Neal Carey,” Ed said, “is the perfect undercover. He has no character.”d;

Kitteredge raised his eyebrows at the supposed insult.

“Neal has lots of personality,” Ed explained, although he felt that most of Neal’s personality was more or less hemorrhoidal, “but no character of his own. He was just a kid when he started with us. When other kids his age were building character, Neal was building cover stories. He’s a chameleon-he takes on the coloring of his surroundings. In that sense, sir, Neal is always undercover, whether he’s on assignment or not.”

“Is he capable of carrying out this assignment?”

“If anyone is.”

Kitteredge lapsed into silence.

When he started to speak, he put the tips of his fingers together in front of his lips in an unconsciously prayerful gesture. Ed knew that he had made his decision.

“Yes… ahhh… I despise these creatures, Mr. Levine. They are an offense to our flag, to our religion, and to our humanity.”

“Yes, sir,” Ed answered, ignoring the religious reference, or assuming it referred to a general Judeo-Christian tradition.

“Therefore I am authorizing your plan. Infiltrate them totally, ascertain the fate of Cody McCall, then destroy them.”

Ed felt a wave of relief sweep through him. Something else, too. Excitement.

“Yes, sir. Thank you.”

“Do have another shortbread.”

“I’m on a diet, sir.”

“I did think you looked a bit thin.”

Ed set his coffee down and heard the cup rattle in the saucer. He realized that there was a tremor in his hand.

“Sir,” he asked, “are you authorizing the use of terminal remedies?”

“If necessary,” Kitteredge answered.

In fifteen years with the company, Ed had never received, nor had he sought, permission to kill anyone.

Kitteredge selected a shortbread cookie, bit off a tiny piece, and chewed it twenty-eight times before swallowing. “And if it develops that any of these creatures are culpable in the death of Cody McCall, then a terminal remedy will be necessary. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Ed answered. I understand perfectly. We’re talking Old Testament justice here.

“Will you be staying the night or should I ring for the helicopter?” Kitteredge asked.

“I should get back to New York,” Ed said. He had a lot of work to do.

“Of course,” Kitteredge answered.

“Uh, sir… should I call Anne Kelley, or would you prefer to do that?”

“I don’t see any purpose to be served by terrifying Miss Kelley at this point, until we know about the fate of the boy.”

“Yes, sir. Uh, may I use the phone?”

“Of course.”

Joe Graham picked up the phone. He usually didn’t like calls, but this one came as a relief. The small room in the cheap SRO hotel was beginning to close in on him. The rug needed a shampoo, the mattress was mushy and the springs were shot, and about all he could see from his window was a fire escape and the doughnut shop and liquor store across the street. The guy in the next room sounded like he was going through the heebie-jeebies, the toilet was running, and a car alarm had been going off now for at least ten minutes.

“Hello,” Graham said sourly.

“Hello, sweetheart.”

“Get bent, Ed.”

“We’re operational.”

Graham sat straight up in the bed. “What?”

“We’re operational,” Ed repeated.

“How’s our boy?” Graham asked. If they were operational it meant that Neal had orders to take the operation into an active phase. A dangerously active phase.

“I haven’t heard from him,” Levine said.

Graham felt the sticky, nauseating anxiety come over him. He didn’t like this at all. I’m Neal’s handler, not Ed, he thought. Ed is good, Ed is thorough and careful, but he doesn’t know Neal as well as I do. Nobody does. And now the kid’s out there-he’s rusty and he’s hurried, and that’s a bad combination. You hurry and you make mistakes.

“Are you monitoring?” he asked Levine, even though the answer was obvious.

“Of course.”

“You-”

“I’ll let you know the second I hear. Get ready to move.”

You’re damn right, Eddy boy.

“Another thing,” Ed added. “We might be going in heavy.”

“How heavy is heavy?”

There was a pause. Graham heard Ed sucking on a cigarette.

“If our client is terminal… very heavy.”

Jesus Christ, Graham thought. This started as a simple custody bag job. Now Ed is talking about killing people. If the boy is dead.

Another thought hit him. “Hey… what if our boy doesn’t make it out? Do we still go in heavy?”

Another drag of smoke.

“No,” Ed replied. “That’s just the business, right?”

Graham hung up the phone. No, Ed, he thought. That isn’t right.

Neal Carey stood inside the gas station and fed nickels into a slot machine. His mind wasn’t on the game, it was on the telephone outside.

Finally it rang. He listened to it ring for thirty seconds before it stopped. He glanced at his watch. Thirty seconds later it rang again.

Once: ditch the operation, come back.

Twice: stay in place and wait.

Three times: destroy them.

He walked out and got into Peggy’s Volvo. He thought for a couple of minutes and then drove up to Karen’s house, where Peggy had assumed he was going anyway when he asked to borrow her car. He sat outside for a minute, got his nerve up, and knocked on her door.

She was wearing a gray sweater over old jeans. She was barefoot. She had her glasses on and a pen stuck behind her ear. He could tell by the look on her face that she didn’t know whether to be pleased or annoyed.

“Did I give you my phone number?” she asked. “I’m in the book, anyway.”

“I’m sorry. I should have called.”

“Now that we’ve agreed on that, would you like to come in?”

“Just for a minute.”

He stood awkwardly in her living room, not knowing what to say or do, not knowing why he was even there.

“You interrupted my work,” she said. “You at least owe me a passionate embrace. Come here.”

He held her as tightly as he could.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“Dark night of the soul?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“No fun. You wanna mess around?”

“I want to make love.”

“Darlin’, don’t you know it’s the woman who’s supposed to use the L-word first?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know much about this at all.”

She took him by the hand and headed for the bedroom. “Then it’s a good thing you got yourself a teacher,” she said.

They got up an hour or so later, she to go back to her work, he to go back to his.

The woman smiled her professional smile as she opened the door. “Hi, I’m Bobby, what’s-” She stopped suddenly as she saw that the three men in the doorway were wearing masks.

Neal stuck a pistol under her nose. “Hi, Bobby. This is a stickup.”

Randy Carlisle grabbed her, swept her out of the doorway, and put a forearm choke hold around her neck. The bouncer in the black hat and shades woke up and tried to get his boots off the footstool as he reached for his gun.

“Uh-uhn,” Cal warned. He was pointing his own pistol at the bouncer’s head. He stepped into the room and ripped the phone cord out of the wall.

The bouncer put his hands up. Neal walked over, took the bouncer’s cowboy hat and shades off, and pushed him to the floor. Then he stepped on the shades, crushing them under the heel of his boot.

“We just want the money,” Neal said. “We don’t want to hurt anyone.”

Bobby warned, “You don’t know who you’re messing with.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, you’re mobbed up, right?” Neal asked. “Isn’t everyone? Where do you keep the money?”

Bobby made a show of folding her arms across her breasts and clamping her mouth shut.

Neal pointed his revolver at the bouncer’s head and cocked the hammer. He smiled at Bobby and said, “Your choice.”

Bobby let out a disgusted sigh. “A safe in the office.”

“Show me.”

She led Neal down the hallway into a cramped office. He held the gun to her head as she dialed the combination.

“Put it in the bag,” he said as she pulled stacks of bills from the safe.

She did what he ordered but said, “You’re really getting into big trouble, cowboy.

“I’m terrified.”

“Y’oughta be.”

When they got back to the corral, Neal leaned over the bouncer and asked, “You live here, stud?”

“No.”

Neal put his boot down on the bouncer’s hand. “Maybe in a trailer out back?”

“Maybe.”

“Let’s go.” Neal gestured to Cal. “Come on.”

The bouncer walked them back to a cheap aluminum trailer. Cal opened the door and pushed the bouncer inside. Doreen was asleep on a hide-a-bed. The bouncer shook her awake.

“We got company,” he said.

Cal covered them while Neal searched the trailer. He found what was left of his money, about three hundred dollars, on a shelf in the bathroom.

Doreen gave her boyfriend one withering dirty look when she saw the cash.

“They got the drop on me,” he explained.

“You was asleep, I’ll bet,” she accused.

As they marched the bouncer back out Neal heard Doreen mutter, “This ain’t no life for a white girl.”

They went back to the corral. Randy left as Neal and Cal covered him. Cal went out next-Neal didn’t want him shooting anyone just for laughs. With Bekke and Vetter covering him from the car, Neal backed out and then jumped in the front seat.

“Head west,” he said to Dave Bekke, who was behind the wheel.

“But-”

“Do what I tell you,” Neal ordered. “They’re going to figure the robbers came from Reno. Might as well oblige them. We can double back later.”

“Whooee!” Randy hollered. He was counting the money.

Neal asked how much.

“Looks like about eleven thousand!”

“Not bad,” Neal said.

“Not bad?”

“Not bad,” Neal repeated, “for a warm-up.”

“But we’re only going to rob from vice mongers, Jews, and race traitors, right, Neal?” Craig Vetter asked anxiously.

“You bet, Craig,” Neal answered. He and Cal exchanged amused looks.

Craig added, “Otherwise it would be immoral.”

“We sure wouldn’t want to be immoral,” Cal said.

The occupants of the car broke into laughter, yells, and whoops of general merriment as they rolled down the highway.

Thus the Sons of Seth struck their first blow against the Zionist Occupation Government in the form of a low-rent cathouse, and Neal Carey touched off the great north central Nevada crime wave.