Bleeders

22

Restlessness drove me out of bed and into my clothes at seven o’clock. With the gun in my coat pocket, I went outside for a look around. The morning was clear, chilly, and empty except for a couple of passing cars. But Adam Manganaris was up; his cabin, like the store, was outfitted with a woodstove because smoke drifted from a squat chimney.

I walked along the driveway, taking my time, and cut over along the side wall of the garage. The first of the windows was too dirty to see through even in daylight, but at the second I found a fairly clear spot on a lower pane. One of the vehicles inside was a dented, rusted pickup that no doubt belonged to the old man. The other, what I could make out of it, had the right lines to be an Olds Cutlass. I couldn’t be sure, though, and I couldn’t see the license plate.

I considered breaking in, but if Adam Manganaris caught me, it would give him a means to get rid of me and end the stalemate. Besides, it didn’t really matter if the car was Dingo’s Olds or some other make that belonged to him. There wouldn’t be anything left in it to tell me where he was. The only way I was going to find that out was from the old man.

Brace him again now? No. Let him stew awhile longer, give him something to think about.

Back at cabin four, I left the key inside and then started the car and let it warm up, revving the engine in case he hadn’t already been alerted. The door to his cabin stayed shut. After four or five minutes, I drove out to the highway and turned west toward Hollister.

It took me a while to find a cafe. Coffee, orange juice, some toast. Two refills on the coffee. And then a leisurely return trip to the Outback Oasis. The whole process took the better part of two hours. It was just nine o’clock when I parked near the store.

Manganaris had already opened for business; the Open sign was prominent in the window. Inside I found him on his stool, reading. Nothing changed in his expression when he looked up and saw me. He seemed just as listless and stoic today.

“So you’re back,” he said.

“You think I’d gone away for good?”

“Didn’t think much about it at all.”

Sure you didn’t. “You’re open early,” I said.

“Nine to nine, every day except Monday.”

“Long hours, unless you have an employee.”

“Just me. At my age, what else am I going to do with my time except read and eat? And I can do those here as well as anywhere.”

I said, “I took a look inside your garage this morning.”

He didn’t say anything.

“Through one of the windows. The car in there belongs to your son.

“Think so, do you?”

“Where is he, Mr. Manganaris?”

No response.

“I’m not going away, you know. Not today or any day until you tell me where he is.”

No response.

“He murdered my client in cold blood, a woman who never did him or anyone else any harm. Forced her to lie facedown on her bed and pressed a gun to the back of her head and executed her. He did the same thing to Jay Cohalan. Would have done the same to me except that the gun jammed. That’s why I won’t go away.”

Emotion, like a ghost image, flickered in his eyes and for an instant changed the shape of his expression. He said, “The bloody gun jammed on you?”

“That’s right. By the grace of God. Otherwise I wouldn’t be standing here right now. You believe in God?”

He nodded.

“How about justice?”

Another nod.

“Then tell me where Harold is. Put an end to this before it’s too late and he kills somebody else.”

“He won’t kill anyone else,” Manganaris said.

“He might. He’s psychotic, whether you want to believe it or not.”

“I believe it.”

“Well then?”

For almost a minute he looked at me, or through me, without blinking. Then he said in blunted tones, “You win, mister. No point in lying to you anymore. It’s the same as lying to myself.”

“Where is he?”

“I’ll take you to him.”

“Just tell me where I can find him.”

“No. I’ll take you. My way or not at all.”

I weighed it on both sides. If I pushed him, he might change his mind and close off again. And with the old man along, there would seem to be less chance of a violent confrontation. Unless this was some kind of trap. To look at him, frail and dispassionate, with that crippled wrist, you wouldn’t take him for a dangerous or deceitful man. But Dingo was still his flesh and blood. Some men would do anything, anything at all, to protect a loved one.

I said, “You know that I’m armed.”

“Figured you were.”

“I won’t hesitate to use my weapon if I have to.”

“You won’t have to.”

“No?”

“He don’t have his gun anymore.”

“What happened to it?”

“I’ve got it. In my cabin.”

“How’d you get it away from him?”

No reply.

“Is he hurt in some way? Sick?”

“You’ll see when we get where we’re going.”

I would not pry anything more out of him there, that was plain. And I intended to make the trip no matter what the situation; this q. and a. was only prolonging things. I said, “All right,” and Manganaris hoisted himself off the stool and came out from behind the counter.

While he reversed the sign in the window, I took a good look at his clothing: rumpled pair of slacks, white shirt, old, patched pullover sweater. The sweater was tight enough around his thin torso so that a concealed weapon was unlikely. He could have had a hideout gun strapped to his ankle under a pants leg, but that was paranoid thinking. In his arthritic condition, with that bad wrist, how could he hope to get at it and then use it?

Outside, I asked him as he locked up, “How far do we have to go?”

“Not far.”

“I’ll drive, you tell me where.”

We got into my car. He directed me east on the highway, and we rode in silence for a few miles. Manganaris sat bent-backed, eyes straight ahead, hands gripping his knees. In the bright daylight, the knobbed bone on his wrist looked as big as a plum.

Abruptly he said, more to himself than to me, “’Home is the place where.’ ”

“How’s that again?”

“ ‘Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.’ ”

“Sounds like a quotation.”

‘“Tis. From a poem by Robert Frost, ‘The Death of the Hired Man.‘ You read Frost?”

“Not since I was a kid.”

“I like him. Makes sense to me, more than a lot of them.”

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. The words ran around inside my head like song lyrics. No, like a chant or an invocation — all subtle rhythm and gathering power. The nature and meaning of the quote were plain enough. Now I knew something more about Adam Manganaris, and something more about his relationship with his son.

We turned off on a county road, traveled another couple of silent miles through sun-struck farmland. Alfalfa and wine grapes, mostly. A private farm road came up on the right; Manganaris told me to turn there. It had once been a good road, unpaved but well graded, but that had been a long time ago. Now there were deep grooves in it and weeds and thistles and tall grass between the ruts. Not used much these days. It led along the shoulder of a bare hill, then up to the crest. From there I could see where it terminated.

The Outback Oasis was a dying place, with not much time left. The farm below was already dead — years dead. The buildings were grouped alongside a shallow creek where willows and cottonwoods grew, in the tuck where two hillocks came together: farmhouse, barn, two chicken coops, a shedlike outbuilding. Skeletons now, all of them, broken and half-hidden by high grass and shrubs and tangles of wild berry vines. Climbing primroses covered part of the house from foundation to roof, bright pink in the sunlight even at this time of year, like a gaudy fungus.

“Your property?” I asked him.

“My brother and me built it with our own hands,” he said. “Frank came here from Down Under in the fifties, when the land was cheap hereabouts. Bought a parcel big enough for both of us. Took him ten years to convince me to join him. Raised chickens, alfalfa, apples, the both of us. You can see there’s still part of my orchard left.”

The apple trees numbered a dozen or so, stretching away behind the barn. Gnarled, bent, twisted, but still capable of producing fruit. Ignored and long-rotted fruit.

“Frank died twelve years ago,” Manganaris said. “My wife, eight years ago. That was when I moved to the Outback. Couldn’t stand to live here without Betty. Couldn’t bring myself to sell the place, even so.” He paused, drew a quavery breath, let it out in a kind of whistle. “Don’t come out here much anymore. Twice a year to visit her grave and Frank’s grave, is all.”

There were no other cars in sight, but I could make out where one had angled off the roadway and mashed down an irregular swath of grass not long ago. I followed the same route when we reached the farmyard. The swath stopped ten yards from what was left of the farmhouse’s front porch. So did I.

I had my window rolled down, but there was nothing to hear except birds and insects. The air was thick with the moist smells of growing things. I watched the house’s front door; it stayed shut. And a tattered shade over the one facing window remained motionless.

“He inside the house?”

“Around back,” Manganaris said.

“Where around back?”

“Beat-down path over yonder. Follow that.”

“Not alone. You come with me.”

“No need for that.”

“Both of us, together.”

He said, “As you’ll have it, then,” and eased himself out through the passenger door. I had the .38 drawn and down against my leg when he came around to where I stood. He saw it and said, “Told you, mate, you won’t need that.”

“Just lead the way.”

He set off stiffly through the tangled vegetation. I followed at a wary distance, keening, trying to watch everywhere at once. Nothing made noise, and nothing moved but the two of us. A faint fermented-apple smell came to me as we rounded the house to the rear; bees swarmed back there under the trees. Near where the orchard began, the path veered off toward a huge weeping willow that grew on the creek bank.

“Over there,” the old man said. “Under the willow.”

Graves, three of them.

Two were old and well-tended, marked by marble headstones etched with words that I didn’t read. The other was new, the earth so freshly turned some of the clods on top were still moist. That one bore no marker of any kind.

I jerked my head around to stare at Manganaris.

“Now you know,” he said without emotion or irony. “I didn’t lie to you when I said I have no son.”

I did not know what to think or feel. It was like being electrically shocked: confusion, temporary disorientation. I heard myself say, “He’s dead? Why didn’t you tell me he was dead?”

“Wanted you to see the grave for yourself.”

“How do I know he’s really in there? Some kind of trick...”

“Dig him up if you’re a mind to. But I won’t help or watch if you do.”

He wasn’t lying; it was not a trick. The truth was plain in his face, in his voice — a darkling thing.

“How long has he been dead?”

“Three days.”

Three days. All the running around I’d done, all the tension and anxiety and hungry anticipation and driving need, and the whole time Dingo, Harold Manganaris, the man who’d murdered me... dead and buried himself. No confrontation now. Nothing now, finished now. Dead, goddamn it, dead dead dead.

“How did he die?”

“I shot him,” the old man said.

“You shot him?”

“With my old service pistol. Two rounds, one through the heart.”

“Why, what happened?”

“He brought me trouble and heartache, same as before.”

“Put it in plainer words.”

A little silence. Then, “He was bad, Harold was. Mean and wicked from birth. You said it true this morning — psychotic. Stealing, breaking up property, taking drugs, hurting other boys. Hurting his mother.” Manganaris held up his crooked left arm. “Hurting me.”

“He did that to you?”

“When he was eighteen. Broke my arm in three places. Two operations, and the wrist still wouldn’t heal proper.”

“What made him do it?”

“Wanted money, I wouldn’t give it to him. So he hurt me to get it. I told him before he ran off, don’t ever come back, you’re not welcome in my house again, you’re no longer my son. And he didn’t come back. Not until last Sunday.”

Dead and gone. Dead under those clods of dirt beneath the willow. I still could not seem to come to terms with it.

“He wanted money again, is that it? Tried to hurt you again when you wouldn’t give it to him?”

“Punched me in the belly,” Manganaris said. “Still aches when I move sudden. So I went and got my pistol. He laughed when I pointed it at him and told him to get out. ‘Won’t shoot me, you old fuck,’ he said. ‘Your own son. But I’ll sure as hell shoot you if you don’t tell me where you got your money hid.’ Then he showed me that gun of his. Two of us standing there pointing guns at each other, like in a bloody cowboy movie. Makes me sick to remember it.”

Won’t shoot me, you old fuck. Lay still, you old fuck.

I said, “What happened?”

“He tried to take the pistol away from me and I shot him. Once, in the chest. Stopped him, but only for a second. Then he shot me.”

“Shot you? But...”

“His gun jammed. Didn’t go off.”

“... My God.”

“That’s right, mate. That’s the real reason I brought you out here, why I’m talking to you like this. He killed both of us, Harold did, only God stepped in and we’re both still alive. I reckoned God put the job of vengeance in my hands, so I fired again — shot my son through his evil heart. I didn’t know then about the people he’d murdered. When I found out, I was all the more certain I’d been God’s instrument, but after what you told me this morning...”

He rubbed his face with gnarled fingers. Now I understood that look in his eyes, the one I hadn’t been able to define. It was pain, and it was blood. Another bleeder, Adam Manganaris, the same kind as me.

“I loaded his body into my truck,” he said, “drove out here, brought him to the creek in a wheelbarrow, dug the grave, and buried him. Hard work, hardest I’ve ever had to do.”

“Why bury him next to his mother and your brother?”

“Told you before. ‘Home is the place where.’ I had to take him in, didn’t I? For the last time?”

I walked away from him. Not going anywhere, just needing to move. How did I feel? Relieved, yes. And a little angry and let down, the way you do when you’ve been cheated out of something that was rightfully yours. For Adam Manganaris it had all ended with a bang; for me, with a whimper. No confrontation, no satisfaction in helping to put Dingo away in a cage, no sense of personal vindication. Yet it was stupid to feel that way. There were no guarantees that I would have been able to bring about the finish I’d envisioned; that more blood, my blood, would not have been spilled. The bottom line was that Harold Manganaris had paid for his sins without anyone else except this poor old man being harmed. Closure, Kerry had called it. Right. Justice served, case closed.

Manganaris was standing under the willow, looking down at one of the graves. When I rejoined him I saw that it was his wife’s and that there were tears in his eyes. The moist earth and rotted-apple smells seemed to have grown stronger in my nostrils; the skeletal buildings and fungoid primroses were ugly reminders of death. I did not want to be here any longer — not another minute in this place.

“We’ll go back to the car now,” I said.

He nodded, wiped his eyes with the back of one hand. “Then where?”

“The car first.”

We retraced the path, buckled in. I jammed the .38 into the dash clip and then backed the car around and drove fast up and over the hill without a glance in the rearview mirror. Neither of us spoke until I turned off the county road onto the highway.

Manganaris asked then, “You planning to notify the sheriff?” Matter-of-factly; not as if he cared.

“No,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Your son’s dead and buried. I don’t see any reason not to leave him right where he is.”

“But I killed him. Shot him down like a dog. I deserve punishment, eh?”

Old and dying like his crossroads store, like his farm. Precious little time left. Where was the sense — or the additional justice — in forcing him to leave the Outback and die in prison? But all I said was, “Not by anyone on this earth. God’s instrument, you said. All right. We’ll let God make the final judgment.”