A Catskill Eagle

CHAPTER 49

on Route 55 toward Placerville. We parked our lease car on the shoulder of a barren stretch of road and looked down into a valley in the rolling foothill terrain.

“Map say here,” Hawk said. He held a U.S. Topographical Survey map with detailed directions written in Rachel Wallace’s neat circular hand. The valley ran north and south and the road curved along, the rim of the eastern slope. A stream ran along the valley floor and along its west bank a narrow road curved with it toward a stand of western pine that obscured the north end of the valley.

“That end,” Hawk said. “Behind the trees.” He sat in front with me. Susan sat in the back wearing enormous sunglasses with lavender rims. I put the car in drive and we moved along the rim until we could see around the trees as the valley turned slightly east and the road followed.

I stopped the car and we sat looking down maybe half a mile at the mine entrance. It was square and dark, and even from here looked newly timbered and shipshape. To the right was a helicopter pad, and to the left a wide parking lot. A hundred yards down the road toward us from the entrance was a high chain link fence that encircled the entry area and was manned by a guardhouse. There were concrete vehicle barriers set up in front of the gate in a kind of labyrinth, so that a vehicle could get through, but only very slowly, to the gate. Around the mine entrance the face of the hill had been sheared so that it rose straight up for maybe a thousand feet and some kind of steel wire mesh had been stretched over it to retard erosion. There was a large sign outside the guardhouse but it was too far away to read.

“Bet it doesn’t say ‘Welcome,”’ I said.

“Might say `Step into my parlor,‘ ” Hawk said. We sat quietly looking at the mine entrance.

“We could go down the cliff face,” I said.

“If they don’t have people on top,” Hawk said.

“Or if they do and we can take them out,” I said.

“Without they let anybody know down below,” Hawk said.

“Or we could land in a helicopter inside there,” I said.

“If we find a guy willing to fly one in there and get shot dead,” Hawk said.

“Pilots charge an arm and a leg for that,” I said. “And even then we’re only inside the fence.”

We looked at the mine some more. On the crest of the hill above the mine, across the valley, a man appeared with a dog and a rifle. He stood looking across at our car.

“They got people on top,” Hawk said.

“Time to go,” I said and put the car in drive. “What I wonder,” I said as we headed back toward Boise, “is if Jerry Costigan knows we know where he is.” I looked back briefly over my shoulder at Susan.

“I don’t know,” Susan said. “I can’t figure out what he’s doing.” He always meant Russell. I didn’t question it. “He’s ambivalent about his father.”

“How so,” I said.

“He loves him and hates him, wants to be him, fears he isn’t man enough,” Susan said. “The other side of Oedipus.”

“You shrinks ever look for motive?” I said.

“Yes, but not always in the same place you do,” she said.

“What’s he get out of this? Out of telling me where his father is holed up?”

“Maybe he lying,” Hawk said.

“Right,” I said. “Maybe he is. Maybe it’s a way to steer us away from Jerry and out here in the great West where we’re easy to find and make a good target. But the only way we find that out is to test it, and we have to test it by assuming Jerry’s here.”

Hawk said, “Un huh.”

“So back to the question. What’s Russell get out of helping us?”

“The good feeling that comes from being a nice person,” Hawk said.

“Besides that,” I said.

Hawk looked back at Susan. I glanced back at her. She nodded at Hawk.

“If you get killed,” she said, “he has no competition for me.”

Hawk nodded.

“And if we kill Jerry?” I said.

“He has no competition for Grace,” Susan said.

Hawk and I were silent as we came into Boise. Susan didn’t add to her comment. In downtown Boise I pulled the car in and parked on the street outside the Idanha Hotel. I looked at Susan.

“Is there any chance,” I said, “that Russell might have been found on a hillside with his ankles pierced?”

Susan smiled painfully and shook her head. “I can’t joke about it, even a little,” she said. “I know you’re trying to make it easier.”

“Okay,” I said. “You’re saying that whether I get killed or Jerry gets killed, or we both get killed, Russell wins.”

The afternoon was beginning to darken. It was autumn in Boise. Actually it was autumn in most of the hemisphere, but I only noticed it in Boise. The sun still shone full on the upper stories of the low downtown buildings, but the streets were shadowed. There wasn’t much traffic. I had a sense that maybe there never was much traffic in Boise.

“This is the first time my ass may depend on whether Freud was right.”

“And Sophocles,” Susan said.

“Him too.”