The Wrong Goodbye

28.

Problem was, my dowsing rod was gone.

By the time I hit the edge of town, the sun hung high overhead, baking cracks into the earth and obliterating all trace of the numbing chill of desert night. I’d stripped my filthy, tattered suit coat off during the ride, letting it flutter away on the breeze to be claimed by the desert. Once a somber, tasteful black, it’d ended up as dun-colored as the arid wasteland in which I left it —as dun-colored as the once-red Cadillac I drove. I chucked my one remaining shoe as well, this dead man’s dress socks stuffed inside. Even barefoot and in rolled-up shirtsleeves, I was sweating, and I could feel my face and neck begin to burn under a sun that shone as hard and bright as a lamp without a shade.

The Caddy creaked as though arthritic when I braked to a halt in front of the squat, its brakes and shocks no doubt as full of grit as my eyes and clothes, as the lines and creases of my skin. The paved drive way was soft and hot beneath my feet, scorching my soles as I stepped out of the car and setting me highstepping toward the door.

Inside, the squat was still and dark, and stuffy as well —the air heavy and ill-smelling from the breath and sweat of people too long confined. “Gio?” I tried to call, but my voice came out a dry croak. “Hello?”

My feet made little sound as I padded through the skeletal interior of the half-finished house. I strained to hear any signs of life, but there were none. The Gio I knew was not a slight or nimble man; surely, if he were here, I’d hear him. And what of Roscoe? That old coot couldn’t go ten seconds without shouting his fool head off.

No. They were gone. They had to be. Hell, I’d told Gio to do exactly that before I’d left. Of course, I hadn’t realized by doing so I’d be consigning myself to an eternity of Nothingness. Without Gio, I had no way to locate Danny. Without Gio, I was toast.

I strolled the house less cautiously now that I’d convinced myself there was nothing there to find. I remained convinced of that right up until a bloodcurdling scream pierced the air —so loud and so close, if I’d been wearing socks, I would’ve jumped clean out of them.

I turned and caught a glimpse of denim-clad fury. Then a wide, rectangular something swung downward toward me, blotting out my field of vision. I threw my hands up to block the coming assault, but I was too late. The rectangular something connected with my face in a squish of poky bristles and a plume of stale, woody house dust.

I sneezed —which maybe, on reflection, doesn’t do justice to the ferocity or effectiveness of the fwacking I’d received. I mean to say I sneezed a lot.

“Sam?” drawled my attacker, his thick Texas accent somehow finding a second syllable I never knew Sam had. “Sam, is that you?”

Next thing I knew, I was the unwitting recipient of one hell of a bear-hug, the old man levering me off the floor with his prodigious gut and squeezing so hard I couldn’t find the breath to sneeze.

When I’d last seen Roscoe, he’d been tied to the toilet, pleading for his life. Guess absence really does make the heart grow fonder.

“Jesus, Sam, it’s good to see you!” he said, once he finally released me from his grasp.

“Thanks,” I said, brushing myself off and trying to get the tickling in my nose under control. “What the hell’d you hit me with?”

“Push broom,” he said.

“And you were gonna what —sweep me to death with it?”

He scowled at me, faux anger hiding embarrassment. “By the look a you, you could maybe use a decent brooming. And besides, it was all I could find by way a weapons in this place. A man gets mighty paranoid, holed up too long alone.”

“Alone? Roscoe, where’s Gio?”

“Left late yesterday, and don’t you go blamin’ him for it, neither. The both of us done thought you were a goner, an’ yet that boy stayed anyways, for as long as he could stand.”

“If you both thought I was dead, what’re you still doing here? I told Gio if I didn’t come back, he was supposed to let you go.”

Roscoe did a little soft-shoe, showing off his unbound limbs. “You see anythin’ keeping me here? I stayed because I wanted to. Was the only way I could get that boy to go. He said someone oughta be here in case you came back.”

“No offense, Roscoe, but why? I mean, I appreciate your sticking around and all, but we kidnapped you. We tied you up. Why on earth would you decide to help us out?”

“Figured I owed you,” he said.

“How’s that?”

“Now, Sam, I ain’t the most religious man, but I do believe the good Lord sent you two boys to rattle my cage a bit, shake me off the path I was on. I made some decisions I ain’t proud of lately —decisions that wound up with me passing out piss-drunk in a strip club parking lot. And even then, I didn’t see I’d hit rock bottom. But then you two jokers come along, and of all the cars in the world you coulda jacked, you wound up taking mine. You and Gio, you showed me ain’t no good can come of the life that I was leadin’, and aside a sticking me in the trunk a while, you boys treated me just fine. Least I can do to show my thanks is help you two find your own way.”

“That’s sweet and all, but I’ve gotta tell you, me and Gio are no messengers from God. We took your car because it was pretty and it was there to take —and believe me when I tell you, we had no idea you were passed out in back. And unfortunately, as far as finding my own way, there’s nobody who can help with that but Gio, and he’s long gone.”

Roscoe shook his head and smiled. “Just ’cause you don’t know the good Lord sent you don’t mean it ain’t so. And as for finding Gio,” he said, nudging me with his elbow like we were co-conspirators, “maybe I can help with that. ’Fore he left, he gave me a message to give to you.”

“Yeah?”

He screwed up his face, like he was trying to get it right. “’Though she is blind, she has the sight. Her visions, they are always right. Into the future, she will peek, and put you on the path you seek.’”

I blinked at him a moment. Wondered was this some kind of joke. But if it was, he wasn’t letting on. “Roscoe, what the fuck am I supposed to do with that?”

“How the hell should I know? You two are the spooky Reaper types. Thought maybe it was like some kinda magic words or somethin’ —’specially after he made me say it back so many times, till he was sure I had it right. Figured it’d mean something to you. Foolish a me, I guess. Sounds more like some bullshit psychic-hotline jingle than anything else.”

Well, I’ll be damned, I thought. That’s exactly what it sounded like.

“Roscoe, you’re a genius!”

He laughed. “Ain’t nobody accused me a that one before. You sayin’ you know where you can find him?”

“No, but I’ve got an idea. I’m afraid I’m gonna need a favor, though.”

“The car?” he asked. I nodded. “Take her,” he said. “Me and Bertha, we had a good run, but there’s only one woman in this world for me, and that’s my Jolene.”

“The same Jolene you called a thieving devilwoman not two days back?”

“Hey, ain’t none of us’re perfect, Sam. And the fact is, you can’t help who you’re meant to be with —or, for that matter, who you’re meant to be.”

Truer words were never spoken.

“You want a lift somewhere, at least?”

Roscoe squinted at me and cocked his head. “Look at this Grim Reapin’ sumbitch, up against some kinda scary deadline, God knows what-all nipping at his heels, and he’s still got manners enough to offer me a ride. You know what, Sam? You’re all right. And speakin’ of, I’ll be all right too —don’t you worry none for me. Now, git.”

We shook hands and parted friends.

Then I headed north, following the breadcrumbs Gio left behind.

Las Cruces to Las Vegas is eleven hours on a good day, I-10 cutting a jagged northwest diagonal out of southwestern New Mexico and clear up to the southernmost tip of Nevada —bisecting Arizona like a through-and-through. Eleven hours of khaki-colored desert interrupted only by the occasional, reluctant green that accompanied human settlement, jutting from the arid soil like weeds through a sidewalk crack. Eleven hours between me and my only hope of finding Danny.

I made the drive in nine.

Not bad, I’ll admit —but I could’ve shaved off another half hour if I hadn’t had to stop for gas, money, and a change of clothes. I was so focused on my task, I damn near forgot this battleship of a car ate gas like Gio’s meat-suit went through Ring Dings. But somewhere outside of Tucson, the engine started sputtering, and I realized the needle was on E.

And me without a penny to my name.

Took another ten minutes for me to spot a truck stop, and by then, poor Bertha was on fumes. I doubt she could’ve gone another mile. Hell, I thought she was going to quit long before she did, but that old girl took pity on me. I was grateful. I’d spent far too long in the desert the past two days to relish the thought of hoofing it.

The truck stop was huge: three acres of fresh-lined pavement, pumps, and gleaming big rigs, all rippling in the late morning heat. At the center of the automotive sprawl loomed a massive central building trimmed in red neon piping and boasting a lunch counter, a convenience store, a set of jumbo-sized car wash bays, and —if the signs were to be believed —shower facilities both hot and clean. Why in God’s name hot was a selling point six inches from the surface of the sun was beyond me.

I pulled the Caddy up to a pump out of sight of the main building next to a municipal truck stacked high with orange traffic barrels and caked with hot-mix asphalt. The faded state seal stenciled across the side of the truck bed read Ditat Deus. God Enriches, if my rusty Latin served. Though as I watched the trucks belch black diesel fumes into the cloudless sky and set out across the lifeless earth, I didn’t see much evidence to support that claim.

Even in the shade, the pavement burned my soles. I trotted barefoot to the door, thinking inconspicuous thoughts. Turns out, I needn’t have bothered; bare feet aside, I wasn’t any rougher around the edges than half their clientele.

The store inside was more Walmart than 7-Eleven. Everything from tube socks and trucker caps to televisions and toaster ovens, the latter two made special to plug into a truck’s cigarette lighter. The clothes —mostly novelty Ts and off-brand jeans —weren’t much my style, but they were tempting nonetheless. Still, tough to walk off with a whole outfit hidden in your pants, so instead I settled on pocketing a hammer and a flat-head screwdriver. Wish I could’ve snagged some aloe vera while I was at it; after two hours of being chased westward by the sunrise, the back of my neck was hot enough to fry an egg. But all pharmacy items were on a rack up by the register. Guess they didn’t want the truckers lifting the No-Doz.

The signs for the showers led me down a long, narrow white-tiled hallway, cracked here and there and yellowed with age, but clean enough not to put the lie to the signs outside. As I pushed through the swinging door to the men’s locker room, I heard the sound of running water. The locker room was only slightly wider than the hall, with two benches running parallel to one another in the center, and a wall of lockers on either side. To my right, a doorway led to a series of toilet stalls, a wall of sinks and mirrors opposite. Another doorway on the far left of the room led to the showers, if the steam billowing through the aperture was any indication.

Sounded like at least a couple of them were running, which I was psyched about. Meant I’d have me some selection. Occasionally, one of the showers’ occupants let slip a line or two of Skynyrd, neither tuneful nor lyrically accurate. That I could’ve lived without.

I turned my attention to the lockers. Two banks of small, square boxes, painted institutional gray. The kind where you put in quarters and take the key, which was perfect for my purposes, since a) you can tell at a glance which ones are occupied, and b) they’re by far the shittiest-constructed type of lockers on the planet.

Three of them were occupied. I popped ’em each in turn. A nosy parent with a paperclip would’ve had more trouble with their daughter’s diary than I had with these bad boys. Insert screwdriver in lock and tap with hammer, as easy as you please. Hell, I even had the sound of running water to drown out my hammering, and its sudden absence would let me know if the owners of this crap were coming back. My only worry in the world right then was that these guys would be too short or too fat for their clothes to fit.

I laid out the contents of the lockers on the wooden bench nearest me. Grayed with age and damp and mildew, the bench was bolted to the floor nonetheless. Who’d want to take the fucking thing was beyond me, and that’s even granting my only purpose for being there was to steal shit.

I played Goldilocks a second, poked through my potential haul. A pair of cargo shorts, size 48: too big. Bright red shirt, all fringe and piping, and some skinny ink-blue jeans to match: too cowboy. Wellworn pair of boot-cut Levis and plain black T-shirt: just right.

I dressed quickly. The shirt smelled of sweat, but likely far less than did I —and anyways, it fit, or near enough. The pants were maybe a size or two too big, but had a studded belt threaded through their loops. I buckled it, and all was well.

The shoe situation was a tougher nut to crack. I looked to be a twelve at least. But all I had to work with was a pair of steel-toe work boots, pair of cowboys, and a ratty pair of high-tops —nines, tens, and (I shit you not) seven-and-a-halfs, respectively. The tiny high-tops came from the same locker as the tent-like cargos. I wondered how the guy stayed upright.

Cowboy had a travel stick of Old Spice. I slathered some on. Big Dude and Just Right had left their wallets in their lockers; I guess Cowboy left his in his truck. I thumbed through them, fixing to take them both, but something stopped me.

Pictures, encased in those cheap-ass clear vinyl books that you get with wallets —the ones most folks throw out. Big Dude hadn’t, though. Instead, he’d stuffed them full of shots of him and his little girls. Smiling, happy. Had a smiling wife, too. In a couple pics, they had themselves a dog —a handsome little mutt, all ears and lolling tongue. Even he looked like he was smiling.

I swiped his cash and cards, but left his wallet on the bench. What I took, he could replace. But those vinyl-wrapped pictures were like happy trapped in amber. Like little glinting slivers of skim, only without the nasty comedown. Last thing I wanted to do was deprive Big Dude of that.

The only picture in Just Right’s wallet was torn out of a girly magazine. That one I kept.

The wallet, I mean. Jesus.

I strolled out of the locker room whistling before one of them shut off the tap. Grabbed some jerky, bottled water, and a pair of flimsy flip-flops, and brought them to the counter. Told the kid behind the register to grab me one of the pre-paid cell phones hanging up behind him, and paid for fifty bucks in gas. Then I said, “Fuck it,” and had him ring up some aloe vera while he was at it.

I was in and out in less than seven minutes, and long gone before the shouting started. Of course, I didn’t realize at the time I’d just taken a star turn on no fewer than two dozen security cameras, or that the cops who’d spotted us lowriding through the Rosita’s parking lot would ID me from that footage right around the time I stopped in Phoenix to take a leak. I didn’t know that they’d tie Bertha —and by extension, me —to the explosion at the strip club, or that a piece of shrapnel containing the Fiesta’s VIN would lead the Feds to Ethan’s doorstep around the time I hit the Nevada state line. The way I hear it, Ethan’s breathless (if not entirely sensical) statement to the Federales tied a bow around the whole damned affair and set some junior G-man salivating at the prospect of nabbing the nefarious perpetrator of a real-live transcontinental crime spree.

Said perpetrator being me, in case that wasn’t clear.

But like I said, I wasn’t aware of any of that. I just drove blithely on toward Vegas, as one by one the pieces clicked into place.

As I pushed open the storefront door, I was greeted by the sound of crashing surf. After two days of wandering in the desert like some latter-day Moses —you know, if Moses were undead and damned and playing for the black-hats and, OK maybe it ain’t the best comparison after all —I thought maybe God was mocking me. Then a pan-flute sounded, and I spotted the boom box on the counter by the register. Propped against it was a CD case that read Reaching Elysium: Divinity Through Relaxation. That’s when I knew for sure that God was mocking me.

The place wasn’t much to look at. Outside, it was a bland commercial storefront in a bland commercial district of Las Vegas, cut off from the glamor of the Strip —and the benefit of its tourist dollars —by the Las Vegas Freeway. Sandwiched as it was between a nail emporium and an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet, the reek of chemicals and cooking oil seemed designed to speed what little foot-traffic might happen by on their way without a second glance. Not that a second glance would’ve done much good. The sign over the door was cheap, hand-lettered, and simply read: PALMISTRY TAROT DIVINATION PSYCHIC READINGS LOST ITEMS FOUND. No name, no phone number, no punctuation. But from what I could dig up online on my piece-of-shit cell phone, the place had been in business for five years, and the ratings I’d read were glowing to a one. Maybe there was more to the place than its appearance would suggest.

There fucking oughta be, I thought, or I just spent half of my last day on Earth running down a bogus lead.

It was Gio who brought me here. With that stupid rhyme he made Roscoe memorize. With something he said back in Las Cruces. This research shit would go a hell of a lot faster if you had an iPhone, he’d told me. A little Google access would make your life a whole lot easier.

So I took his advice. Googled as much as I could remember of Roscoe’s poem. Turned out, it really was a jingle —not for a psychic hotline, but for a real, live psychic hailing from Gio’s old stomping grounds. She had an ad in the online edition of the Las Vegas Weekly, sandwiched between one touting the loosest slots in town, and one the loosest women. So if this lead didn’t pan out, maybe I’d spend my last remaining hours on one of those.

Inside, the shop was dim and close, the air-conditioned air thick with musky incense. The walls were lined with shelves stacked high with crystals and candles, charms and amulets, books of spells and jars of herbs. The ceiling was draped with fabric —an ornate batik in blue and purple. The tapestry was not quite as large as the dimensions of the ceiling itself, and was set at a forty-five degree angle to the room so that yellow-stained acoustical tiles showed in all four corners.

At the center of the shop was a table and two chairs. The table was small and round and covered in raw silk of vibrant orange. Atop it sat a deck of Tarot cards and a wooden incense burner filled with ash. The chair nearest me looked to be one scavenged from a dining set. The one opposite the table was a threadbare lime-green wing-backed armchair.

In the armchair was a woman. Damn near seven feet of woman.

Honestly, I don’t know how I’d missed her. Her stillness, perhaps, or the fact that her garish outfit blended into the chromatic assault of the room at large. Though she was seated, she and I were nearly eye-to-eye. Her naked shoulders were even with the top of the chair back, and the yellow head wrap that hid her hair dimpled the tapestry above. She wore a scant halter of the same yellow as the head wrap and a pair of low-slung Daisy Dukes. The outfit would’ve been revealing on a woman half her height. Dark brown and well-muscled, she sat cockeyed on the armchair, nestled in the crook of wing and backrest, one arm slung across the chair back. Her broad shoulders and strong jaw bordered on masculine. A good six inches of cleavage tipped the scale the other way. Her legs were crossed at the knee such that one of her platform heels touched the floor, while the other dangled a ways off the ground, her shin a long diagonal. A pair of oversized Jackie O sunglasses hid her eyes from sight. As she tilted her head toward me, I caught a glimpse of my own matched-pair reflections staring back at me —twin strangers who stirred in me neither memory nor sentiment.

“Can I help you, sugar?” she asked. Her voice was husky and well modulated. She spoke without looking at me, her head angled slightly as though listening carefully to my every move.

“You’re Lady Theresa?”

“That’s right.”

“Then I believe you can. I’m looking for someone,” I said, and before I could continue, she raised a hand to hush me.

“Darlin’, ain’t we all.” She gestured toward the seat opposite her, cut the deck on the table. “Please, sit down.”

I sat down. She drew herself upright, and swung her legs around to face me. Seated across from her, I felt like a child. She shuffled the cards with a showman’s flourish, and laid one down —a man and woman intertwined. The Lovers. “The first card dealt represents the question you’ve come to ask,” she said. “It would seem yours centers on a matter of the heart.”

“How can you tell?”

She smiled. “The cards know all,” she said, misunderstanding my question.

“No,” I said. “What I meant was, your ad claims you’re blind. How can you tell what card you just laid down?”

“Ah —I see. You’re a skeptic. Of course, when I say, ‘I see,’” she said, sliding down her sunglasses to reveal a tangle of mottled scar tissue surrounding eyes clouded white by cataracts, “you understand I’m speaking figuratively.” She slid her glasses back up on her nose. “The cards speak to me,” she said. “In fact, I’m pretty sure they speak to everyone. Most just don’t listen well enough to hear them.”

She laid down another card, this one above the first. A woman among the clouds with a staff in each hand, surrounded by a wreath of some sort —or perhaps an ouroboros, a serpent eating itself. “The World,” she said. “It represents an ending, completion —or perhaps the culmination of a quest.”

To the left of the first card she placed The Devil, in which a winged, horned demon held captive a man and woman, chains biting their naked flesh. She claimed it represented ignorance, obsession, lust, and hedonism. I thought it was a tad more literal than that.

To the right she placed Judgment, which depicted an angel sounding a trumpet, while below, gray figures rose up from stone tombs. What she said of it I didn’t hear —I was too entranced by the background image of the card itself. For far behind the rising dead was a massive wave, cresting high above them all.

Below The Lovers, rounding out the cardinal points, she laid the card of Death.

I’d seen enough. I pushed back from the table, my chair toppling as I rose suddenly to my feet.

“Is something wrong?” asked Lady Theresa. Her voice and manner were calm, as though I hadn’t just freaked out and knocked over my chair. In fact, her only physical response was to slouch against the wing of the chair —legs once more out to one side, right arm draped casually over the chair back so that her hand hung out of sight.

“I don’t have time for this,” I said, my voice shakier than I would’ve liked. “I’m looking for Francis Giordano. Do you know where I can find him?”

I’ll tell you, for a blind chick, she could move. One second, she’s stretched out like a housecat in a patch of sunlight, and the next, I’m flat on my back. The table that had until recently separated us was now upturned, and cards lay scattered across the floor. One platform heel ground against my Adam’s apple. And that arm she’d draped so casually over the chair back had returned holding a sawed-off shotgun that, unless I was much mistaken, had until recently been Velcroed to her chair back.

“Listen to me, you son of a bitch —you ain’t taking my Gio from me again, you hear? You tell your people he’s my man, and hell can’t have him.”

Oh. Good. He told her, then.

I tried to argue. To explain I wasn’t here to collect him. But that was kind of hard, seeing as how she’d stuffed the barrel of the shotgun in my mouth. So instead, I settled for thrashing around like an idiot and making frantic mmmmfthftfhing noises.

“Damn right you should be scared. Now, I understand your kind can’t die, but you feel pain the same as anybody else. So I want you to remember something before you come sniffing around here for my man again, OK?”

I mmmmed some more. I guess she took it as a good enough response.

“I want you to remember what buckshot tastes like.”

I watched her finger tighten on the trigger. Felt a sudden rush of warm dry air, cutting through the chilly air-conditioned shop like a knife. Something hit the ground behind me, and then the gun went off, my world disintegrating in a sudden roar of thunder.

It took me a couple minutes to realize I wasn’t dead. A couple more before I could bring myself to open my eyes. My face stung like hell, but a quick check indicated everything was more or less where it was supposed to be. The left side of my face was pretty scraped up, and my ears were bleeding, too, but all in all, a shotgun blast to the face wasn’t as bad as I’d anticipated.

Then I saw the crater in the floor beside me —ruined tile and pitted subfloor —and realized she’d missed.

I tried to piece together what had happened. Saw the shop door still swinging open, two paper bags of groceries lying just inside. One was upright, and stuffed to overflowing. The other was on its side, its contents scattered across the floor. A pool of milk spread slowly out around it like a photo-negative of someone bleeding out in an old black-and-white horror movie.

Lady Theresa was lying on her back beside me, her shotgun out of reach. She seemed content to let it stay there. Of course, it’s not like she had a choice, what with Gio sitting on her chest.

The boy looked good, I’d give him that. Maybe being on the lam suited him. He’d ditched his funeral duds, swapping out his suit for a pair of navy blue Bermuda shorts and a silk bowling shirt. Looked like he’d had himself a shower and a shave as well. Lady Theresa, however, looked a little worse for being tackled. Her hair wrap had come undone, setting loose a good two feet of unruly Afro. Her sunglasses sat crooked on her head, leaving one pale white eye exposed. And she looked pissed. From all the gesticulating the two of them were doing, it was clear they were having a discussion, and a heated one at that. But my ears were ringing like Notre Dame at Christmas, so it took me some serious concentrating before I could piece together what they were saying.

“– I mean Jesus fuck, Ter, what the shit were you thinking?"

“I was thinking I was saving your fat ass, darlin’. How was I supposed to know this guy was friendly?”

“I told you keep an eye out for him!”

“No, you told me to keep an eye out for some dude in a suit all beat to shit. This guy strolled in all healthy-like in jeans.”

“Yeah, well, thanks to you, he looks halfway back to beat to shit.”

“I’M FINE,” I said, from like a thousand miles away.

“Fine, huh?” asked Gio, smirking. “Then why the hell’re you yelling?”

“I’M YELLING?”

“Yeah.”

“AM I STILL?”

“A bit, dude.”

“OH. DID YOU MISS ME?”

“For the sake of politeness, let’s say yeah. Hey,” he said, nodding toward the still-upright bag of gro eries, “you wanna beer?”

“GOOD LORD YES.”