Badwater

13

Roy Jardine had a problem.

There was hot cargo in the bed of his pickup, and his pickup was registered in his name, and that was not being incognito.

Last night, sitting at home in his Lazy-boy, he had wrestled with the problem of the resin cask. After the showdown with Beltzman, after things went critical, he had decided the safe thing was to leave the cask where it was, in the talc mine. Then this morning, Jardine had gone undercover at the dump to do recon — and that turned out to be a real smart decision. He’d learned what the enemies were up to. He’d had a bad moment when Mister FBI questioned him, but he’d played that real cool. The real danger was the geologists with their talc-sniffing noses.

That changed everything. He’d barely had time to get to the mine and recover the cask.

But he’d aced it.

And then he had to decide what to do with it.

He couldn’t deliver it for use in the grand mission because he needed the trailer rig, and that loser Beltzman had crippled it.

This cask was an orphan now.

Orphaned cask. New enemies. The math was clear. The only thing that wasn’t clear was how and when he would use it against them. Until that became clear, he needed to store it.

So here he was traveling this two-lane road with a hot cargo, checking the rearview mirror so often his neck hurt. Nobody on this road but jackrabbits. And him. He checked the rearview. The cask rode low because he had loaded it on its side so it would look incognito under the tarp. He was proud how he’d improvised. He’d used a lead curtain from the supply box — and the curtain had grommets! And he had bungee cords in his toolbox! And voila, as snooty people say. And the tarp did more than just shield the cask. He’d filled the pickup bed with talc, for more shielding, and the tarp kept the talc from flying away. Tarp and talc, two layers of shielding. In job eighteen redundancy was a lifesaver that he’d taken to heart. He would have liked to stay dressed out — triple redundancy — but that wouldn’t be incognito.

Where he was going, he had to look normal.

He needed a safe place to store the pickup and its cargo and then he needed to rent a car. He needed to do these two things without drawing attention. The best place to do this, he’d decided, was Las Vegas.

He took jackrabbit roads when he could. When he hit the highway he drove the speed limit.

When he reached Vegas all went smoothly. The clerk at the self-storage warehouse didn’t give a crap what was under the tarp. The clerk at the Hertz didn’t give a crap who he was, didn’t notice that his name was fake because he’d planned weeks ago that he’d need a cover and he’d spent time on the details of the perfect fake ID.

How about that. The skills of his eleventh crap job — clerk at the DMV — turned out to be useful all these years later.

After leaving Vegas he tooled along the highway riding high. Incognito in his crap rental car, with his ponytail tucked up under the Budweiser ballcap he’d bought at the Rite-Aid. He’d be at his hideout in a few hours and when he got there he’d treat himself to a sponge bath.

He made a call on his cell phone. Nothing new, he was told. Call me when there is, he said. He hung up; it was illegal to talk on the phone while driving.

He drove all the way into Death Valley, just another tourist in his cheap rental car, and he parked at the Ranch motel in Furnace Creek in plain sight with all the other rental cars. From there, he had a long hike ahead of him. His nerves were strung tight until he cleared the settlement and disappeared into the canyons.

He hiked up to a ridgetop for good cell reception and phoned again. It rang and rang. Okay, that just meant no privacy to answer his call. How obvious was that? He’d try again in five minutes.

It sure was hot. He opened his pack and selected a foil bag but he couldn’t tear it open with sweaty fingers.

He got out the Buck knife.

He tensed, waiting for a vision of Jersey to rise up and hurt him. He should have buried the knife along with his dog. But he’d had the knife longer than he’d had Jersey. It was a clip-point hunting knife that he’d bought the first time he went camping. He’d gone alone, seventeen-year-old kid setting out from home, seventeen-year-old man when he returned. He’d hunted and skinned a squirrel for his dinner. He’d whittled a stick to roast marshmallows. He’d cut rope to hang his food away from animals. It was a useful knife.

Jersey wouldn’t mind if he kept it.

He knifed open the foil bag and tapped out a handful of pink chunks. He ate them all at once. Hideous. Tasted nothing like strawberry. Tasted nothing like ice cream. But he began to cool off. He understood this was a mental thing — the words on the bag carried their own power. Ice cream. Even freeze-dried cooled him, a bit.

He’d live on kibbles if he needed until his grand vision was fulfilled.

He checked his watch. Four minutes gone. He decided waiting the full five would be obsessive. He called.

It was answered on the first ring. What took you so long?

He didn’t want to sound worried. He said, real cool, “I was eating ice cream.”

A muffled sound. A laugh.

He ignored that. “What did they say?”

They know who you are.

He went rigid. “How?”

You fucked up.

“You don’t want to address me that way.”

Get real.

Roy Jardine maintained a frigid silence.

You there?

He should make some smarty joke but he couldn’t think of one so all he said was, “Keep me posted.”

He shut the phone. He picked up his Buck knife and held it blade out — not that anybody was going to storm the ridge but no harm in the practice. The knife calmed him. So they know. So what? They’ll never find you, Roy. You’re a shadow. You’re ace. You’re going to sit here and finish your ice cream and wait for the next call and then you’re going to ground, at Hole-in-the-Wall. You’re really an outlaw now, Roy Jardine.

He straightened his back.

He wondered what the female geologist thought about him now. Females could get swept off their feet by outlaws — look at Etta Place and the Sundance Kid. That wasn’t just a movie. That was in the history books. He closed his eyes. He’d worked side by side with the female, partners almost. Close enough to smell her. Sweat, sure, but something else. Some kind of female shampoo. Strawberry?

He put a chunk of strawberry ice cream on his tongue.

And now the female smiled at him and he smiled at her and offered her real strawberry ice cream and then suddenly it was Jersey, and not the female, begging him, and the stuff in his mouth turned back to paste.

His phone rang.

He opened his eyes and answered the call.

Guess what they just found?

“I don’t guess. Just tell me.”

He listened — at first not understanding — and then finally when he understood he bent over and vomited up strawberry chunks.

What’s that sound? You there? Say something.

He couldn’t. He was too sick to talk. He wiped his mouth, heartsick.

This is bad, you get it?

He said he’d have to call back. He said the signal was breaking up.

It was Roy Jardine who was breaking up. He couldn’t believe they could figure out stuff like that. From dirt under the fenders?

He rested his head on his knees and when his insides stopped crawling he put himself back together. It’s not a real map, he told himself. It’s dirt. They’d have to be magicians to follow that dirt. His head swam. His grand vision was flickering like one of those desert mirages. If he didn’t do something his vision was going to disappear.

He said, out loud, the geologists are not magicians.

But you have to make sure. Put on your thinking cap, Roy.

He put it on. And the answer came.