The Last Good Guy

17

They worked unhurriedly from building to building, carefully bracing the tall ladders, bearing down with dripping sponges, drying their squeegees between strokes. One of the uniformed guards followed them from wall to wall, watching for funny business, but was called away by cell phone just before the high square windows of the hangar were finished. Burt waved to him and called down as he walked off, and the guard waved back. Burt pulled a dry shop cloth from his pants pocket to scour out the dried-on bugs and conceal his phone while he took pictures through the glass.

When he climbed down, I saw a wasp nest stuck to the wall up near the eaves, where Burt had been window washing: Clevenger’s handiwork, not a nest but a motion-activated video camera that could live-stream back to us through satellite and cell signals. Clevenger was a former Irregular, an Emmy-winning nature documentarian, a terrible Ping-Pong player, but a good man. He was working on a wasp segment for Spy in the Wild. When I told him about the beating I’d taken at a mysterious date farm in pursuit of a missing fourteen-year-old, Clevenger had insisted we take four of his handmade video cameras for a better look around. And a dedicated laptop to receive the feeds. No charge.

I kept an eye up for drones. The doves were flying in this still-early part of the morning, out to get their water and feed from the Imperial Valley fields before the temperature put even them in the shade. Scores of doves, zero drones.

Sipped water, ate a couple candy bars, thought of Daley Rideout. I still couldn’t figure out who was in charge — Daley or the SNR men who couldn’t control her but wouldn’t let her go. Much like Penelope with her spirited little sister.

I watched Burt and Frank. Frank, gangly and teenaged, seemed unfazed by balance issues, breeze, heat, or altitude. I wondered if he might start his own window-washing business, but Salvadoran refugees were out of favor in today’s federal America. Asylum was rare and work permits few.

The farmworkers worked the Medjool harvest. High up in the trees, the men picked the ripe dates by hand and filled wicker baskets, then lowered them by rope to the packers on the ground. When their bins were full, the trucks carried them to the packing house.

Shotgun blasts came from my right, coming gradually closer and closer. Hunters hiding in the greasewood, like me. I shot doves with Dad when I was a boy, and I remembered how the birds would funnel through a certain spot, so you’d sneak over there when the skies were momentarily empty, hopefully unseen. Doves have good eyes. And once the first shotgun blast has broken the silence of dawn, the birds fly faster and higher and longer without stopping. By eleven a.m. all you can do is watch them fly out of range over you. By then it’s too hot to be standing like a fool in one of the world’s hottest deserts anyway, hoping to kill small birds for dinner with shotgun shells that cost twelve bucks a box when you could buy a whole cooked chicken for seven. As the shooters moved closer to me I knew I’d have to abandon my bunker, take up my shotgun — brought half for disguise and half for self-defense — and pretend to be hunting.

Burt and Frank finished the windows of the main house, the hangar, and the red barn. I saw two more new wasp nests, one on the barn and one more on the hangar, making two. Burt went back to get a few problem windows of the house, which meant photo ops that he’d not had with the guard standing watch over him.

Then on to the bunkhouses, which were small and low and looked to go quickly. Burt let Frank handle these while he used a spray bottle and shop rags to work on the dust-caked windows of the cottages. Seemed to spend a lot of time with those windows, working them over two times each. A new wasp nest appeared.

When he was finished he stood back as if to admire his work, then he hooked the spray bottle to his belt and pulled out his phone.

A moment later my own phone chimed. His pictures arrived slowly in this great sparse desert, three in all, apparently shot through a crack in the cottage window blinds: four garage-size freezers, white and clean. Five feet by four, judging by the look of them. They had been modified: intake hoses protruding from what looked like recirculation units fitted on their left-hand sides. A small timer/keypad beside each assembly. The freezers were spaced in the room for easy access. Hanging from nails in the walls were long-armed rubber gloves, protective suits of some kind, and military combat masks that defend against blowing sand, dust, and chemicals.

Burt: “How are the windows looking?”

I told him he’d missed a spot by the house’s front door.

“Just in case my phone and I don’t get out of here in one piece, you should have these pictures.”

“What’s in the freezers?” I asked. “TV dinners?”

“I doubt that. I couldn’t contract for the interior windows, so we can’t get inside. Later if ever, boss.”

I watched and wondered. Looked at the pictures on my phone again, shading the screen with one hand, trying to make sense of the freezers, suits, gloves, and gas masks.

A steady string of cars began arriving at about eight forty, all with children aboard. They parked near the main house and the kids hopped out with their backpacks and lunch pails. Several men, women, and children began emerging from the bunkhouse and the cottages.

The adults were all young, well groomed, and conservatively dressed. Something of an earlier America about them. Their children likewise. Backpacks and book bags. Some had hair still damp from the shower. Most of them stopped for a moment after getting out of the vehicles, as if stunned by the fierce morning sunlight. Then hustled to the big red barn.

A middle-aged couple stood before the open barn door and welcomed the children in. He was large and burly and wore a short-sleeved white shirt with a tie; she was almost as tall but slender, in a long summer dress. Her hair up in a bun. Much talking and shaking of hands among the adults as the kids disappeared inside.

The drop-off cars headed back toward the gate.

Two men in khaki pants and black golf shirts, wearing black boots and carrying duffels, came from the main house and got into one of the silver Expeditions. Adam Revell and another young man, both in blue SNR security guard uniforms, climbed into a second Expedition and followed the first down the road.

Everybody coming or going, I thought. Neat people. Brisk people. They seemed to have a purpose. Or at least a routine.

The dove hunters stumbled onto me a few minutes later, following a steady stream of birds flying straight over my position.

“Oh, sorry,” said the older one. “Didn’t even see you here.” He eyed me suspiciously from behind yellow shooting glasses, considered my shotgun, and looked in the direction of my telescope, well hidden under dead branches and a handy tumbleweed.

Up came his son, certainly, same shape and sharp eyes, same yellow glasses. “How you doing so far?” he asked.

“A little slow here,” I said.

“They’ve been flying right over you for twenty minutes,” said Dad.

“Are you sure?”

“You should have your eyes checked,” said Dad. “Seriously.” His eyes roamed my face.

I shrugged.

A drone flew past in front of us, west to east, a couple hundred yards out. Right along the Paradise Date Farm fence line.

“Fish and Game,” said Son.

“We don’t know that for sure,” said the father. “Those drones don’t come out past the fence.”

“Are they out here often?” I asked.

“The drones? Now and then,” said Dad.

Took my time, didn’t want to seem too interested. “Do you ever talk to the date farm people?”

“No,” said Son, shaking his head. “Dove season is harvest time for them.”

“There must be lots of trucks heading out for market,” I said.

“Trucks come and go all the time,” said Dad. “So do a lot of nice silver SUVs, and plenty of passenger cars. People living there. Not just workers. More than you’d think.”

We exchanged hunters’ pleasantries for a minute or two: How’s the twenty-gauge Red Label swing? You shooting seven-and-a-halfs or eights? They had killed a rattler last week early morning, a big one, and told me to watch out.

“Well, nice talking,” said Dad. “But get those eyes of yours checked. You could have had your limit by now.”

“I’ll do that.”

“Later,” said the son.

Burt and Frank finished up work at two. Loaded up the old white truck and stood in the front-porch shade for a few minutes, awaiting pay. Burt wore his sweat-soaked painter’s cap in a mission-accomplished style, bill upward.

Finally a man came out and handed Burt a check. I recognized him. I’d watched him through the window of Pastor Reggie Atlas’s office last Sunday, tidying up the Cathedral by the Sea courtyard after the hot dog, burger, and donut extravaganza. Same clothes. Same blond buzz cut, ruddy face, and pit-bull ears. Same black golf shirt and khakis and shiny black duty boots.

Burt examined the check and seemed to be trying to get Pit Bull Ears into a conversation, but no luck. The man looked down at Burt with undisguised amusement and I wondered if things would escalate. Burt hates being treated like he’s short. It’s one of the few things that gets to him.

But the man went back inside without incident, and the front door closed silently. Burt slid the check into his wallet with the bills. The window washers got into their truck.

A moment later the dust and the shimmering waves of heat swallowed that truck whole, and it was gone.