3
The air is bell-clear outside the smog bowl of Las Vegas, and maybe even has a slight magnifying effect, because by the time Billy is closing in on the compound’s main gate the house looks like it’s rearing back so it won’t fall on him. The wall is too high to see over, but he knows there’s a lookout post just inside and if it’s manned, his old beater is probably already on video.
Cherokee Drive ends at Promontory Point. Before it does, a dirt track splits off to the left. There are two signs flanking this track. The one on the left says MAINTENANCE & DELIVERY. The other says AUTHORIZED VEHICLES ONLY. ONLY is in red.
Billy turns onto the track, not neglecting to set his hat a little higher on his head. He also pats the front pocket of the overalls (silenced Ruger) and side pocket (Glock). Sighting the guns in would be a joke, handguns are really only good for close work, but he realizes he hasn’t test-fired either of them or examined the loads. It would be a fine joke on him if he had to use the Glock and it jammed. Or if the Ruger’s silencer, maybe made in the garage of some guy with a taste for meth, plugged the gun’s barrel and caused it to blow up in his hand. Too late to worry about any of that now.
The compound’s wall is on his right. On the left, piñons grow close enough for their branches to thwap the sides of his truck. Billy can imagine bigger vehicles – trash haulers, propane gas delivery, a septic pumper – waddling their way along, their drivers cursing a blue streak every time they have to make this trip.
Then the wall makes a right angle turn and the trees end. The 20-degree grade does, too. He’s now on a plateau, probably bulldozed flat especially for the house and grounds. The maintenance road loops out, then curves back toward the much humbler gate Billy is looking for. Beyond the wall he can see the upper fifteen feet or so of the barn, painted rustic red. The roof is metal, heliographing the sun. Billy keeps his eyes off it after one quick look, not wanting to compromise his vision.
The gate is open. There are flowerbeds on either side of it. There’s a security camera mounted on the wall, but it’s hanging down like a bird with a broken neck. Billy likes it. He thought Nick might be relaxing, letting down his guard a bit, and here’s proof.
In the flowerbed on the left, a Mexican woman in a big blue dress is down on her knees, digging in the dirt with a trowel. A wicker basket half-filled with cut flowers is nearby. Her yellow gloves might have been purchased in the same place Billy bought his. She’s wearing a straw sombrero so big it’s comical. Her back is to him at first, but when she hears the truck – how can she miss it? – she turns to look and Billy sees she’s not Mexican at all. Her skin is tanned and leathery, but she’s Anglo. An old lady Anglo, at that.
She gets to her feet and stands in front of the truck with her feet spread, blocking the way forward. She only moves to the driver’s side when Billy slows to a stop and powers down the window.
‘Who the fuck are you and what do you want?’ And then, another good thing to go with the broken security camera: ‘Qué deseas?’
Billy holds up a finger – wait one – and takes the pad from the front pocket of his biballs. For a moment he blanks, but then it comes to him and he writes Estos son para el jardín. These are for the garden.
‘Got it, but what are you doing here on Sunday? Talk to me, Pedro.’
He flips a page and writes mi es sordo y mudo. I am a deafmute.
‘You are, huh? Do you understand English?’ Moving her lips with exaggerated care.
Her eyes, dark blue in her narrow face, are studying him. Two things come to Billy. The first is that Nick may have let his guard down … but not all the way. The security camera is broken and his guys may be in the house watching the football game with him, but this woman is here with her trowel and her basket of blooms. Maybe that’s what his old friend Robin used to call a coinkydink, but maybe it’s not, because there’s a bottle of water and a sandwich wrapped in waxed paper in the shade of a nearby tree. Which suggests she might be meaning to stay for awhile. Maybe until the game is over and she’s relieved.
That’s one thing. The other is she looks familiar. Goddamned if she doesn’t.
She reaches into the cab and snaps her fingers in front of his nose. They stink of cigarettes. ‘Lo entiendes?’
Billy holds his thumb and forefinger a smidgen apart to indicate that yes, he understands, but only a little.
‘Bet if I asked to see your green card, you’d be shit out of luck.’ She gives a laugh as raspy as her speaking voice. ‘So why you here on Sunday, mi amigo?’
Billy shrugs and then points at the barn looming over the wall.
‘Yeah, I didn’t think you came for tea and cookies. What have you got to put in the barn? Show me.’
Billy likes this less and less. Partly because she could look in the truckbed herself and see the bags of gardening stuff, mostly because of that troubling sense that he’s seen her before. Which can’t be true. She’s too old to be one of Nick’s guard dogs, and he’d never hire a woman for that kind of job anyway. He’s old-school and she’s just old, a domestic they shoved out here to keep an eye on the service gate while they watch the game, and she decided to pass the time by cutting some flowers for the house. But he still doesn’t like it.
‘Ándale, ándale!’ More finger-snapping in front of his face. Billy doesn’t like that, either, although her assumption of superiority – her very Trumpian prejudice, if you like – is another sign that his disguise is working.
Billy gets out, leaving the door open, and walks her to the back of the truck. She ignores that and goes on to the little trailer. She looks in the barrels, gives a disdainful sniff, then comes back to look in the truckbed. ‘How come you’ve only got one bag of Black Kow? What good is that gonna do?’
Billy shrugs that he doesn’t understand.
The woman stands on tiptoes and slaps the bag. Her sombrero flops. ‘Only one! One! Solo uno!’
Billy shrugs that he’s only the delivery guy.
She sighs and flicks a hand at him. ‘Well, what the fuck. Go on. I’m not going to call Hector on Sunday afternoon and ask him why he sends a deafmute out to deliver a piddling load of shit, he’s probably watching the fucking game, too. Or a different one.’
Billy shrugs that he still doesn’t entender.
‘Take that crap in. Tómalo! Then fuck off to the nearest cantina, maybe you’ll be in time for the second half.’
That is when he should have known. Something in her eyes. But he doesn’t. He only gets lucky. He sees her coming in the driver’s side mirror as he climbs into the cab and slides behind the wheel. He pulls back just in time, dipping his shoulder, and the trowel only scrapes his upper arm below the T-shirt he’s wearing under the overalls. He slams the door, catching her arm in it, and the trowel drops to the floorboards beside his left foot.
‘Ow, fuck!’
She pulls her arm free so fast and hard that it flies up and knocks off the sombrero, revealing gray hair piled high and pinned that way. That’s when Billy understands where he’s seen her before.
She’s reaching into one of the big side pockets of her gardening dress. Billy gets out of the truck in a hurry and roundhouses her on the left side of her face. She goes sprawling on her back in the flower-bed. The thing she was reaching for falls out of her pocket. It’s a cell phone. It’s the first time in his life he’s hit a woman and when he sees the bruise rising on her cheek he thinks of Alice but doesn’t regret the blow. It could have been a gun.
And she recognized him. Not at first but yeah, she did. Covered it up well, too, until the end. So much for the biballs, tanning spray, wig, and cowboy hat. So much for Shan’s picture taped to the dashboard, the one he could write (with a fatherly smile of pride) was his daughter’s work. Was it because the woman has seen and studied his picture as well as meeting him once in Red Bluff? Or because she’s a woman and they tend to see past disguises quicker? That could be sexist bullshit, but Billy kind of doubts it.