Bleeders

21

It was one of those little crossroads spots you still find occasionally in the California backcountry, several miles east of Hollister on the way to the Pinnacles National Monument. Relics of another era; old dying things with precious little time left before they crumble or are bulldozed to make room for something new and not half as appealing. Weathered wooden store building, gas pumps, a detached service garage, some warped little tourist cabins clustered close behind; a couple of junk-car husks and a stand of shade trees. Its name, Outback Oasis, was spelled out on a pocked metal sign on the store roof. There were four cabins, and the shade trees were cottonwoods.

I expected it to be closed by the time I got there at 7:15, but that wasn’t the case. Lights showed inside the store, and a big Open sign was displayed in the front window. Sodium vapor lights and the powdery white shine from a nearly full moon sharpened details and created pockets of deep shadow. The cabins were dark except for night lights over the entrances.

No cars were visible back there, and the parking apron was deserted. I pulled up on the near side of the pumps, outside the pooled glare of the sodium vapor arcs, and sat there for a time, flexing cramped muscles and rubbing away eye grit. I was dead tired and drum tight from all the long-haul driving, the buildup of tension. Close to the end of it now. You get so you can feel it, more a kind of bone-deep ache than conscious intuition. Maybe not here, maybe not tonight or tomorrow, but soon. Soon.

I’d put the Colt back in its dash clip, as I always do when driving; I removed it yet again, held it balanced in the palm of my hand. God, I was sick of that gun, its cold, slick surfaces and its deadly contents. The more I carried it with me into uncertain circumstances, the greater the odds that I’d be forced to use it. I did not want to shoot Harold Manganaris; it would rip me up, keep me bleeding, if he died by my hand and my gun. Yet the driving need to find and confront him was as powerful as ever.

This time I tucked the .38 into my belt at the small of my back. I preferred not to carry a weapon that way, but the front sight had a tendency to hang up in my pocket; and unless I kept my fingers around it, it made conspicuous bulge besides. Hold a gun in your hand long enough, and it can turn you paranoid, increase your inclination to use it.

A warm, dry breeze, heavy with the scents of earth and dry grass, greeted me when I stepped out. In the distance, moonlight made black cutout shapes of the hills of the Diablo Range. It was flat here, and dust-blown, and quiet. The feeling I had was one of isolation, emptiness, displacement in time. Normally I would not have minded that; I like touching the past, the sense of history that seems to elude most people these days. But tonight it served only to whet the edges in me.

It was too warm inside the store. Wood fire crackling inside an ancient pot-bellied stove, despite the fact that the night held no hint of chill. The air had a stale, hanging quality that was heavy in the lungs. The old man behind the counter at the rear had the same leaden aspect. He was slumped on a stool, studying a book of some kind that was open on the countertop. A bell had tinkled to announce my arrival, but at first he didn’t look up. As I crossed the room, he turned a page; it made a dry rustling sound. The page was black, with what appeared to be photographs and paper items affixed to it. A scrapbook.

When I reached him, he shut the book. It had a brown, simulated leather cover, the word Memories embossed on it in gilt. The gilt had flaked and faded, the ersatz leather was cracked: the scrapbook was almost as old as he was. Over seventy, I judged. Thin, stoop-shouldered, white hair as fine as rabbit fur. Deeply seamed face. Bent left arm that was also knobbed and crooked at the wrist, as if it had been badly broken once and hadn’t healed properly. When he finally raised his head, his rheumy gray eyes held weariness and something else that I could not define.

“Evening,” he said. Torpid voice, too. “Help you?”

“Are you Adam Manganaris?”

“I am.” His accent was discernible but faint, blurred by his years on U.S. soil; if I hadn’t known he was Australian, I might not have been able to identify it.

I told him who I was. Nothing changed in his face or eyes, yet I had the sense that he recognized my name. I tried to give him one of my business cards; he wouldn’t take it. So I laid it on the counter, face up, and pushed it toward him. He pretended it wasn’t there.

“I’m looking for your son, Mr. Manganaris.”

No response. His gaze held steady on mine.

“Is he here?”

No response.

“Been here recently?”

No response.

“How long since you’ve seen or heard from him?”

He said slowly, “I have no son.”

“Harold. Also known as Dingo.”

No response.

“He’s in trouble. The worst kind of trouble.”

Face like a chunk of eroded limestone, eyes like cloudy imbedded agates. “I have no son,” he said again.

Enough pussyfooting around. I did not want to hurt the old man, but I’d been hurt too much myself to pull any punches. If the brutal approach was the only way to rouse answers out of him, then that was the one I’d use and the hell with it.

“Do you read the San Francisco papers, Mr. Manganaris?”

“No.”

“Sure you do. You also watch TV, I’ll bet. You know there’s an ongoing police investigation involving two murders and the theft of seventy-five thousand dollars in cash entrusted to my care. You also know that I came close to being a third murder victim myself.”

Silence.

“The man who pulled the trigger on me and on Carolyn Dain and Jay Cohalan is your son. Like it or not, that’s God’s honest truth.”

Not a flicker of reaction.

“Harold and a woman named Annette Byers planned the whole thing. They had the cash for a while, but neither of them has it any more. She’s already in custody. It’s only a matter of time until he’s caught, but I want to see it happen before anyone else dies or gets hurt.”

Silence.

“I think there’s a good chance he came here,” I said. “You’re his father and the only person who can give him what he needs — money, shelter, a place to hide out.”

Adam Manganaris pushed off his stool in slow, arthritic movements, picked up the scrapbook and laid it on a shelf behind him. Several regular hardback books lined the rest of the shelf, all of them old and well read.

“Aiding and abetting a fugitive is a felony,” I said to his back. “What’s the sense in getting yourself in trouble with the law, too? Tell me where he is. It’s the best thing for you, the best thing for your son.”

Without turning: “How many times do I have to tell you, mate? I have no son.”

“In one of the cabins out back, maybe? A fugitive could hole up there for a while if he was careful.”

“None of the cabins is occupied.”

“How about I go out there and have a look?”

“I can’t stop you, can I.”

“No, you can’t.”

I left him and went outside. A big rig pounded past on the highway; otherwise I had the night to myself. I crossed to the closed-up service garage, tried the doors. Secure. There were two windows in the nearside wall, both dusty and speckled with ground-in dirt. I held my pencil flash up to the glass of one, but the light reflected off as much as penetrated the opaque surface. Same thing at the other window. I could make out the shapes of two vehicles inside, but that was all. It was impossible to determine makes or models.

The stand of cottonwoods grew beyond the garage and an unpaved road that led back to the cabins. I moved over into the trees, made my way behind the two cabins on the south side. Both had blank rear walls and uncurtained side and front windows; I took my time approaching each, the .38 held down tight against my right leg. The cabins’ window glass was cleaner, and quick flicks of the flash beam showed me sparse furnishings, no indication of occupancy.

The direct route to the other two cabins was across open ground. I didn’t care for the idea of that, so I went the long way — back through the trees, across the front of the garage, around on the far side of the store. Unnecessary precaution. The farthest of the north-side cabins was identical to the opposite pair, inside and out. The nearest cabin was dark and silent as well, but with a difference: the curtains were tightly drawn across both windows. I eased around to the door and tried the latch. Locked as tightly as the garage.

As I started back to the store, a car pulled in off the highway. I halted in the shadows as it rolled over to the gas pumps, but it was nothing for me to be concerned with — a battered DeSoto, the finned variety, driven by a lean young guy in a cowboy shirt and straw hat. His attention was on the pump when I came around the corner and went inside.

Adam Manganaris was back on his stool, eating a candy bar in little nibbling bites. He had loose false teeth, and on each bite they clicked like beads on a string. He didn’t stop eating as I approached him, said through a mouth full of chocolate, “Didn’t find anything, did you.”

“You told me all the cabins were empty. Why are the curtains closed in one of them?”

“That’s where I live.”

“Is that right? Alone?”

“Wife died eight years ago.”

“No relatives staying with you?”

“Don’t have any relatives. All dead.”

“You have a son.”

“No one, here or Down Under.”

“What part of Australia are you from?”

“Town near Brisbane. Why?”

“How long have you lived in this country?”

“Thirty-some years. Thirty-five, about.”

“So Harold was born in Australia.”

Instead of answering that, he took another bite of the candy bar. The sound his dentures made seemed subtly different to me now: the clicks were more like those of a revolver’s hammer cocking, then falling.

The bell over the door tinkled, and the guy in the cowboy shirt entered. He went to a side-wall cooler, extracted a six-pack of beer, brought it to the counter. “Hey, Adam,” he said. “How you been? Gettin’ much?”

“Only what you’re missin’, mate.”

Cowboy Shirt thought that was pretty funny. When he finished laughing he said, “Fifteen gallons unleaded. And a pack of Marlboros to go with this brew.”

Manganaris served him, rang up the sale.

“Only what I’m missin’,” Cowboy Shirt said, and laughed again, and went away and left us alone.

I said, “How much per night for one of your cabins?”

Surprise animated the cloudy eyes briefly. “Why?”

“I’m tired and I need a place to stay.”

“Here?”

“Why not? Unless you have a reason not to rent me a cabin.”

Manganaris thought about it. “Forty dollars,” he said.

“Fair enough.”

“In advance.”

I laid two twenties on the counter. He made them disappear into the cash register before he produced a key on a chain attached to a four-inch block of oak. The numeral 4 was burnt into the wood.

“Number Four the one next to yours?”

“No. Second in line across the way.”

“Nice and private.”

“Right. Nice and private.”

“There a cafe or truck stop nearby? I haven’t had dinner yet.”

“None open now. Closest is in Hollister.”

“I don’t feel much like driving that far. You have any packaged sandwiches?”

He gestured to the side-wall cooler. Skimpy selection: egg salad, lettuce and tomato, ham and cheese. I took the ham and cheese, added a small bag of potato chips from a rack on my way back to the counter.

“Nothing to drink?” Manganaris asked.

“Hot coffee, if you have it.”

“No hot coffee.”

I went and got a half-pint of milk. He rang up the sale, I paid him, he made change and bagged the items with his good left hand. Deliberately, then, he turned his back on me and picked up and opened one of the hardback books. I caught a glimpse of the title. A Masque of Mercy by Robert Frost. An Australian country storekeeper who read pastoral American poetry. Well, why not? People don’t fit into easy little stereotypes. I knew that as well as, if not better than, anyone.

In the car, I called Kerry and told her where I was and that I was staying the night and didn’t know yet how long I would be away. She’d spoken to Tamara so she knew how some of the day had gone; I filled her in quickly on the rest. I told her not to worry, and she told me to watch myself, and when I hung up I felt very much alone.

I drove down to cabin four, parked in front, and locked the car. Inside there was a bed, a dresser, a nightstand, a twenty-year-old TV on a stand, and a single sturdy-looking chair. I closed the curtains, bolted the door, set the chair under the knob for added security. The Colt Bodyguard I laid on the nightstand. Then I sat on the bed and ate my meager dinner: half the sandwich, a few of the chips, most of the milk.

It was quiet there, the highway far enough away so I couldn’t hear the traffic sounds. I kept listening and hearing nothing but an occasional creak or rattle or wind whisper. After a while I lay down, the meal like a clot under my breastbone, and wondered if I were wasting my time. I didn’t think so. There was something for me at the Outback Oasis — either Dingo himself or a line on his whereabouts. I was convinced of it.

And yet I could not quite get a handle on the old man. Why had he kept saying that he had no son? Knew what Dingo was and was ashamed of him? Maybe. But then why hadn’t he been more straightforward with me? Why force me to play cat and mouse?

I got up and took a quick shower in mostly cold water and turned out the lights and slipped into bed in my underwear, transferring the .38 to a place under the second pillow where I could get at it more easily. And then I lay there, listening and waiting.

Nothing happened.

Eventually I slept, jerked awake at some sound, real or imaginary, slept and woke and slept and woke for most of the night. Toward morning, I slept soundly for a couple of hours. Nothing had happened, nothing was going to happen — and nothing did.