Deceit

TWENTY-FIVE

Marv was right.

My Miata did look like the Beverly Hillbillies’ jalopy. He’d hammered out the dents, but the metal was as wrinkled as used aluminum foil. He’d replaced my front bumper with one from another car-evidently not a Miata-that was lopsided and several inches too wide.

The engine seemed pretty much intact.

I was currently doing a respectable seventy miles an hour on the Pacific Coast Highway, on my way north to see John Wren.

He’d called me back a few days later.

He’d looked for his notes. Just as he’d alluded to, there were some interesting things in there. He’d weighed his distaste for me against his belief in the story. The story won. There was a catch: if I wanted his notes, I’d have to come get them. He didn’t own a fax machine, and the nearest one was a good forty miles away, as he’d retired to a deserted fishing camp on a remote lake.

My impression was he’d holed himself up somewhere, Anna had told me. Apparently, he’d turned recluse in earnest.

I told Hinch I was taking a few days off.

I didn’t tell him what I was really doing, because I was afraid he might laugh at me. Then fire me on the spot.

I suppose I could’ve taken a plane, but money was tight, and like Herman Wentworth, I was looking forward to a change in scenery.

When you drive the PCH North, you experience several of them.

The million-dollar beach cottages, ratty surfer motels, volleyball nets, and honky-tonk piers disappear. The coastline becomes steeper, craggier, and altogether more spectacular, as if California has been sanded down in a southerly direction. Past San Francisco, towering pines actually blot out the surf, but you can hear its steady roar even above the traffic.

I stopped only once, at a motel in Big Sur, where I was given a key to the last room available, the one closest to the road. It had its own natural stereo system-engines on one side, ocean on the other-an audio surf and turf that created a stereophonic balance capable of rocking me into a semblance of sleep. I had noisy dreams filled with vivid colors-none of which I remembered when I woke to a gray light filtering in through the loosely drawn blinds. The mattress was soaked through from the sea air.

I needed two coffees to shake the cobwebs out of my brain.

I’d never been this far north in California. States take on each other’s characteristics the closer you get to their borders. I might’ve technically been in California-it felt more like Oregon. It was almost July, but I could feel a raw chill in the air. The surrounding vegetation was lush and tangled and reeked of decay.

I’d meticulously plotted out the route to Wren’s front door.

I still got lost. Went past the correct exit and didn’t discover my mistake till I’d gone twenty miles out of the way. One section of forest looked pretty much like another-I had the sensation of being inside one of those topiary mazes, turning left and right and back and forth but getting nowhere fast, continuously coming up against another impenetrable wall of green.

Eventually I retraced my route and got it right.

I followed the sign to Bluemount Lake.

Soon I glimpsed slivers of cool blue through the pines. Only the one-lane road seemed to circle the lake forever, offering no way in.

Then after twenty minutes or so, another sign: Bluemount Fishing Camp-turnoff 20 yards.

I slowed, peering ahead for the actual turnoff, which wasn’t easy because the light was rapidly leaving and the thick pines put everything in shadow.

It was hardly there.

Just a bare indentation in the crawling ferns.

I stopped, finally made out the crudely drawn sign nailed to a tree-a black arrow pointing thataway.

My Miata wasn’t meant for offroad exploring. Even when it was new, a status symbol emblematic of its riding-high owner, it wouldn’t have negotiated the twisting, bumpy terrain much better than it did now.

But now its shocks were pretty much moribund.

Every yard gained was accompanied by a bone-jarring jolt. Strange sounds emanated from the undercarriage-creaks, squeals, and sick-sounding moans. It sounded like my muffler was dragging directly on the ground. At one point, I considered just leaving the car where it was and hoofing it the rest of the way. But the forest seemed less inviting outside the car than in it. Besides, the lake was getting closer; I could smell it.

I made a twisting turn around a thick ancient oak, and suddenly I was staring at a row of log cabins perched on the shore of Bluemount Lake. No longer blue exactly-more mottled purple in the evening light.

One cabin had smoke billowing out of its chimney.

I drove up to the side of the cabin, my tires spitting gravel, and stopped.

When I got out, no one came out of the door to greet me.

Odd.

My beat-up Miata must’ve made a terrible racket, especially out here where the loudest sounds probably came from hungry loons.

“John?” I called out, for some reason uneasy about just walking up and knocking on his door.

No response.

I called his name again. Still nothing.

I walked up to the cabin, negotiated the three steps up to the porch, and gave a good knock at the door.

No answer.

I rapped again. “Mr. Wren, it’s Tom Valle. Are you in there?”

After waiting awhile, I pushed against the door-there was no doorknob, just a plank of rough wood nailed to the door.

It trickled open.

A real mess. A pack rat’s lair, reminding me of the way my basement looked when I’d first taken over the house. Mounds of clutter spread over a bed, couch, table, even the floor. A cast-iron stove radiated a bare modicum of heat.

No Wren.

I turned around and peered out at the lake.

Nothing-no boats or swimmers. No fishermen, either. Just tiny skittish ripples being stirred up by a rapidly growing breeze. Which reminded me-it was certifiably cold now. I was wearing proper attire for Littleton in June. A faded New York Yankees T-shirt with Pettitte on the back-a testament to Steinbrenner’s formidable wheeling and dealing, since Andy Pettitte, like me, was long gone from New York-but not much protection against a Bluemount Lake night. I had a windbreaker in the trunk, but I wasn’t sure if it would help much.

What to do?

I felt funny about just walking in and making myself at home. It wasn’t my home-it belonged to somebody else. Not a friend, either. Someone who’d called me a fraud and meant it. He might not like coming home and seeing this selfsame fraud sitting on his couch. It might offend him.

I went back to my car, took my windbreaker out of the trunk, and quickly pulled it on. I slid into the front seat, made sure the windows were rolled up tight, and began waiting it out.

It quickly got dark.

It was worse than desert dark. There you had the moon. Here it was blotted out by the overhanging trees, though I could see its reflection flickering on the far edges of the lake like hot licks of flame.

I put on the radio for comfort, but managed to get only the faint echo of a classical station from Sacramento. Now for some Debussy, the gravel-voiced host intoned. Which reminded me of a joke I couldn’t quite recall, something about men being attracted to strange Debussy, something like that, trying to reconstruct it in order to have something to do.

I wondered if I’d gotten the day wrong. Had I told him next week? No, I clearly remembered telling him I’d be coming up today-probably late, depending on traffic, but today for sure.

So where was he?

Maybe he’d gone fishing and had an accident. The boat tipped over, he hit his head on a rock, and right this minute he was lying unconscious somewhere out on the lake. Or worse.

What then?

I couldn’t sit out here in the car forever.

I could drive back.

One look at the solid wall of black that was the surrounding forest instantly dissuaded me.

You couldn’t tell where the road in was. Not anymore. Besides, road was being generous. I pictured my Miata stuck in some unseen hole, myself stumbling around the tree trunks like Tom Hanks in Cast Away-the second half of the movie, when he’d already begun conversing with bloodstained volleyballs.

I stayed put.

I listened to Beethoven, Liszt, Chopin.

My mom had signed me up for piano lessons when I was 11, after a teacher going door-to-door selling the benefits of a musical education had caught her at the opportune time-half-coherent and full of magnanimity. I’d liked the lessons about as much as the teacher, who had to constantly hound my mom to pay her, and occasionally had to ride the right pedal in order to drown out the sounds of a furiously squeaking upstairs bed.

“And now a lovely little concerto from Schubert,” the radio host whispered, like a PGA announcer during a crucial putt, classical music evidently demanding a kind of hushed reverence.

Was I sleeping by then? I don’t know.

I heard the forest whispering at me. The wind through the leaves.

But it seemed to be saying something.

Listen.

The crunch of boots on dead leaves. Someone had walked up to the car. Someone was standing there.

Outside my window. Looking in at me.

He’s sleeping…

The person was carrying something. He raised it up over his shoulder. A long-handled ax? A mud-covered shovel? Something long, heavy, and lethal.

He was going to shatter the windshield into smithereens.

He was going to smash me to bits.

Stop…

When I sputtered awake, no one was there.

I was shivering.

I left the car and walked back up the porch into the cabin.

The cast-iron stove was still going, but barely. There was a pile of chopped wood in the back of the room. I threw two logs into the stove and stood there as the fire combusted again, rubbing my arms in an attempt to wring the chill out.

I pushed some books aside to make a place to sit down. The couch smelled faintly of fish.

After a while, I began leafing through some of his stuff. Anything in arm’s range. Why not-I was bored. The books reflected the same eclectic taste I’d seen in my basement-everything from a paperback of Lolita to a biography of Enrico Fermi. They were stuffed with ad hoc bookmarks-a grocery list, a movie ticket stub, a letter. I opened the letter and peeked, wondering if any minute Wren would come charging through the door to discover me reading his personal correspondence. From a Dearborne Labs in Flint, Michigan: To Mr. Wren, it said in the dry, passionless tone of official bad news. Preliminary results of your specimens have confirmed your concerns. Please see attached lab workup.

Was Wren sick? Was that why he’d gone off the deep end back in Littleton? Why he’d buried himself out here?

The attached workup was no longer attached.

I was looking for it when my cell phone rang.

“You there yet?” a voice said.

There where? I thought. It took me a second to realize it was Wren. He didn’t sound particularly friendly.

“Yes. I’m in your cabin. Where are you?”

“How long you been waiting?” he asked.

“A couple of hours, I guess.”

“Uh-huh. I had to go into Fishbein for supplies.”

Fishbein. I thought, where’s that?

“My truck broke down,” he said. “Can’t get it fixed till tomorrow.”

“You’re in Fishbein?”

“That’s right. Why?”

“I thought…”

“What?”

“I thought someone walked up to my car before. I must’ve been dreaming.”

“Uh-huh. So, you’re sitting in my cabin?”

I thought there was something lurking in his tone. “Yes. Nice fishing rods,” I said, attempting to deflect it.

There were three of them leaning against the wall.

I’d done a story on a trout-fishing contest in Vermont-a legitimate story, actually getting on a plane and traveling two hours down back roads to a roaring stream near the Canadian border. Professional fishermen were as protective of their rods as professional baseball players were of their Louisville Sluggers. The ones against the wall looked kind of expensive.

“They’re okay,” Wren answered.

I asked him what kind they were. Trout rods, he said. Then I asked him if he lived alone.

“That’s right,” he said. “Why?” When I didn’t respond, he said: “Oh, the voice mail.”

We’re out fishing, but if you’d like to leave a message, fine.

“Old habit,” he said. “Always pretend there’s more than one of you-if someone’s planning to rob you, it’ll make them think twice.”

I wondered who might want to rob a cabin in the middle of nowhere. A fishing-rod thief, maybe.

“Well,” I said, “are you coming back?”

“I told you. My truck broke down. I can’t get it fixed till tomorrow.”

“Oh.”

I’d traveled two days; Wren wasn’t here.

“Well, maybe I can come to you?” I asked.

“Sure. If you want to get lost, you could. Drive into the woods now and they won’t find you till next year.”

“That’s great. I drove a long way to see you. All the way from Littleton.”

“Boo hoo,” he said. “You came for my notes. I found them.”

Judging by the look of the place, that might’ve been more difficult than it sounded. There was stuff everywhere-newspapers, dirty clothes, ripped magazines, scribbled-on legal pads. Not to mention dire-sounding notes from laboratories in Michigan.

I heard him light a match, then the sound of him puffing away interrupted by a cough. Lung cancer?

“You know,” he said, “after the flood, they did a major investigation.”

“I know,” I said. “I read about it. They set up some kind of government commission.”

“Some kind, sure. They subpoenaed the construction company. Hired their own engineering experts to review the dam blueprints, check the requisition orders, the whole nine yards. One thing. The hearings were closed-door. Not open to the public.”

“Was that so unusual?”

“For a Public Works project, very. They said reputations were at stake. No one had been proven guilty of anything. Not yet. They didn’t want anyone’s name dragged through the mud.”

“That’s not unreasonable, is it? I mean, you could make a case for that.”

“You could make a case for anything.” He coughed again. “Let me ask you something. The first time you did it… any pangs of guilt?”

“Did what?”

“Lied. Did it prick your conscience or not?”

“Yes,” I said, “it pricked my conscience.”

“But you did it again.”

“Yes, I did it again.”

“Why?”

It was evidently the question of the week. First Anna, now him.

“What’s the difference? I did it. Pick any reason you’d like. Look, why don’t we stick to…”

“I read them.”

“What?”

“Your canon of deceit. You know, they’re still online, in that internal review your paper put out there to show the world how diligent it was being. I noticed something. How your stories got progressively wackier. You had a geometrically increasing suspension of disbelief. Nothing was too hard to swallow at first-but later on? Come on. That story about the abortion clinic-bombing pediatrician? Anagrams, secret meetings in deserted fields. It reads like a bad movie. I just wondered if accelerating the outrageousness was on purpose? Maybe you wanted to get caught.”

“I needed to feed the beast.” I said. “That’s all.”

The beast was frightening and ever-voracious, I could’ve added. After a while, I found myself in a game of Can You Top This, only I was playing against myself. It was ultimately exhausting.

I heard him take another puff-the muted background clink-clink of silverware scraping plates. A diner?

“Where was I?” he said.

“The closed-door commission.”

“Right, the commission. They took their testimony and made their report, and in the end they got their pound of flesh. Someone went to jail.”

“I didn’t know that. Who?”

“An engineer. Lloyd Steiner. Interesting guy-a borderline genius. One of those left-leaning, Lower-East-Side Communist summer camp kids-back in the thirties, when it was all the rage.”

“Was he guilty?”

“Of what? Being a liberal Jew? Sure.”

“Of building a dangerous dam?”

“I don’t know. He was the assistant to the assistant engineer. Hard to imagine he had enough control over anything to be guilty.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“I’m not sure.” Then he lowered his voice, making him sound nearly conspiratorial; evidently he didn’t want other diners to hear. “I can tell you he went to prison for ten years, and when he got out, his family had moved from a one-bedroom apartment in a government subdivision to a four-bedroom split-level adobe in La Jolla. I checked. He couldn’t get a job as an engineer, of course. Not anymore. He took auto-mechanic classes in jail-that’s what he ended up doing when he got out. Must’ve been excruciating for him. The boy-wonder engineer, fixing cars for a living. He must’ve had the only blue collar in the neighborhood.”

“You think he was paid off? That he was some kind of patsy?”

“I told you. I don’t know. Unlike your method of journalism, I can’t say if he was or he wasn’t. I can’t go put it in print. I’d need proof. It does make you wonder. Think about it-they could’ve hit him with all the Communist crap, summer camps where everyone wore red in color war. Remember, we’re talking 1954-McCarthy, bomb shelters, all that paranoia. And if he still felt like not playing ball? They entice him. A little payoff for his loved ones. The carrot and the stick. You do this, because if you don’t, we’ll bury you. But just to show our heart’s in the right place, we’ll let your family realize the American dream and get their house in the suburbs. I’ve seen the house in La Jolla — it’s some suburbs. I stopped there when I went to interview the girl. You remember her?”

“Space robots in the water.”

“Right.”

“Is he still alive? Lloyd Steiner?”

“Barely.”

“Did you try to speak with him?”

“Uh-huh. Let’s just say he’s not talking.”

“So you think Lloyd Steiner went to jail for ten years to appease the public and kept his mouth shut all that time?”

“It’s plausible. More plausible than a bomb-throwing pediatrician, don’t you think?”

Sticks and stones may break my bones…

“Is there anything else?”

“There’s always something else,” he said. “You just have to find it.”

He put the phone down; I heard him ask for the check. When he came back on, he nearly whispered: “I’m out of the game. Not you. They’ve let you back in. You said you want to repay the debt. Go ahead. Repay it. If you can.”

A shutter banged against the wall of the cabin; it sounded like a gunshot. It was certifiably spooky up here.

I asked him about the girl.

“What about her?”

“Your interview with her-it’s in your notes?”

“Among other things.”

“And she still believes all that stuff-about the space robots rescuing her out of the water?”

“See for yourself. They’re on my desk.”

I looked over at his rolltop antique. Like something blown up-but I thought I could just make out a small spiral notebook peeking out from the top of the trash, like the winner of King of the Hill.

“Why bother,” I said. “We can safely assume spacemen didn’t make a visit to Littleton Flats.”

“Not unless you believe in fairy tales,” he said. “Do you?”

“What?”

“Believe in fairy tales?”

“No.”

“Ever read one as an adult?”

“Can’t say I have.”

“Maybe you should. Even when you stop believing in goblins, they can scare the shit out of you. Especially when you stop believing in goblins.”

I didn’t know quite how to respond to that.

“I guess you’re going to want to stay the night?” he asked.

“If it’s not too much trouble.”

“No trouble. You have six empty cabins to choose from.”

I said thanks. Wished him luck with his truck in Fishbein.

“My notes,” he said. “You can copy them or memorize them. I want them back where I left them. I’d pick a cabin with wood inside. Sweet dreams.”