“Not the real McKinley! Not the genuine article, in the flesh?”
“Janeway!”
“Was that sound I heard you falling off your chair with pleasure at hearing my voice?”
“Where the hell have you been?”
“So far today, everybody I’ve called has asked me that. I was hoping to get some variation on the main theme from you.”
“I’ve been trying to call you all day. What happened?”
“It’s all in the newspaper, Miss Sunshine. I know how you like the crime news, so I assume you’ve read all about it.”
“I want to see you.”
“Now this is a definite step in the right direction. After you banished me to the National Leprosarium in Carville, Louisiana, I thought the only way I’d get back up there was to practice pole-vaulting.”
“Can you come up? It’s snowing pretty hard.”
“Be just as hard for you to come down. You got anything to eat up there?”
“Two steaks in the fridge.”
“What happened to the diet?”
“Don’t ask.”
“I’ll be up in a while. Better give me at least an hour and a half.”
“I’ll leave the gate open.”
It came again, that chill. “Don’t do that,” I said. “Look, it’s nine-thirty now, I’ll meet you at the gate at eleven. Drive your car down. If I’m not there, come back at half past.”
“Why don’t you want me to leave it open? What’s the problem?”
“Tell you when I get there.”
I headed west, into the stormy mountains.
45
It was truly a miserable drive. I sloshed along the deserted freeway and slipped into the canyon. By eleven o’clock I still hadn’t reached Evergreen. I stopped at another gas station and called her, but she had the recording on. I left a cheery message and pressed on. The canyon too was deserted, leading to the inescapable conclusion that I was the only damnfool in the state on the highways tonight. The headlights threw up a glare that was blinding, and I couldn’t use my brights. Back and forth went the car, left and right in the twisted contour of the canyon road: it reminded me of a pendulum, or a hypnotist’s watch. Visions floated on the periphery of my sight. I saw Peter walking beside the car: nervous, furtive. He turned slightly and opened a door and there, yawning back into the dark, was my bookstore. It was empty, except for Miss Pride. Peter was upset. He was so upset that Miss Pride was trying to call me at Rita’s house. Then I lost the picture. I knew it was still playing out there but I couldn’t see anything. It was like a TV show with the picture turned off. I could hear voices but I couldn’t see them.
Miss Pride: Let me talk to him, Peter. Give me the phone.
Extrapolate, Janeway, figure it out. Figure it out and maybe the lights will come on again.
Someone had come to the front street window. Peter Bon-nema locked eyes with death through a quarter inch of clear plate glass.
Miss Pride: There’s nobody on the line.
Peter, his voice rising to a panic pitch: It’s a fucking tape recorder!
And death walked in.
Miss Pride: Someone’s come in, I’ll have to call you back.
That’s what I had heard. Hennessey had heard something else.
Peter knew. He knew exactly what was happening.
Get away! Get away! There’s nothing you can do to me! People already know!
What people?
There was the source of that cold fear I had felt.
If Peter had bartered names for a few final seconds, those people were in trouble. Whether they knew anything or not, he had signed their death warrants.
My lights picked out her road. It looked like a tunnel, slick and steep and dangerous.
I shoved the car into four-wheel drive and started up.
I wasn’t sure how far it was: a couple of miles, I thought, to the gate, maybe another hundred yards after that. I passed a car that had slipped off the road: clattered past it, kept going. You don’t stop on a drive like that: you keep the wheels turning, keep the traction, try to slug your way up the hill. I had reached the steepest part of the incline, a place that shot up suddenly and gained hundreds of feet in no time—simple enough in dry weather with the sun shining, not so simple now. I bumped over ruts and kept going. The canyon yawned mistily to my right. The wind was just vicious.
I passed the last of the side roads. There were no lights anywhere, or perhaps it was just that I couldn’t see them in the storm. The snow got deeper as I went higher. Not gonna make it, 1 thought: I could feel the car losing ground with every foot. The road had taken a hairpin curve and now the canyon lay off to my left. I couldn’t see anything but snow. I began to look for a place to park and found it a few minutes later: a simple widening of the road at a place where it curved again and began climbing. I pushed my front wheels into a snowbank and stopped.
This was dangerous stuff. I had no coat—only the jacket I had worn to Levin’s office. It was adequate for a late-autumn Denver afternoon but wouldn’t do for a trek to the Pole. The only hat I had was a silly knitted thing in the trunk. This is how people die in Denver: they start out thinking they’re going for a walk; one thing leads to another and it turns into something else. I shimmied the gun around on my belt and zipped the jacket. I got the hat from the trunk and got some bullets for the gun; put the hat on my head and the bullets in my pockets and away I went. The snow was deep, but I was fit and I made good time. I slipped and fell a couple of times but did no harm. I wasn’t yet cold—that’s another deceptive thing about Rocky Mountain weather, how it sneaks up on you. On the coast, when it gets down to freezing, you freeze: here, I’ve gone out in short sleeves when the temperature was in the thirties and never felt the need for even a sweater. Then, half an hour later, you notice your fingers are turning blue. Oh, well, it couldn’t be much farther. The road was leveling off now: I remembered that from the other day. I’d be there in no time at all, a piece of cake. McKinley and I would spend Christmas together and live happily ever after. Trees were on both sides now: it was very dark. I kept my little light in my teeth and kept my head down, tried to keep my spirits up, and most of all I kept going.
At last I saw the gate, a silvery vision wavering like a mirage. I didn’t see her, though, and that bothered me. I looked at my watch: it was quarter to midnight. Could she be sitting up there in the trees with her lights off? My own light was so puny it barely reached to the gate, yet it must seem like a beacon from the 1939 New York World’s Fair in this dark. Suddenly the whole world lit up. Flash! She turned on her headlights and it was like a nuclear bomb going off: it froze me stiff and actually drove me back a step. She had her brights on. She flicked them down and I heard the car start. I could see it now, a gaunt outline behind the fence. I saw her pass in front of the headlights and heard the jingle of keys. A moment later the gate swung open.
‘Are you crazy?“ Her voice was disembodied, floating on the storm.
“Good evening to you, too. How’ve you been?”
“Don’t you know you can die in this weather dressed like that?”
“I was just thinking the same thing. Don’t scold me, now, it’s been a hard day.”
I walked through the gate and got in her car. The heater felt great.
She was certainly dressed for it: she wore heavy pants and a coat that buttoned under her chin. Her hat was pulled down over the coat and only a small square of her face could be seen: eyes, nose, and mouth. Enough.
God, I loved her then.
We went up the hill. The house looked mellow and warm. It was. I stood in the hall watching her take off her gloves, and I thought it again. Jeez, I love her. Never thought that before, about anybody.