So she kept Jonathan on a string, and played with Sam, and was the center of the parties at Camelback Falls. “It was a beautiful time, whether you believe it or not,” she said. “The people were beautiful. It was very free. Very…noble. I guess it couldn’t last.”
“Where was Leo at this point?” I asked.
“He was still living in our shithole apartment on Roosevelt Street. Driving a cab all night long, nearly getting killed half the time.”
“Did he ever go to Camelback Falls?”
“No.” She half-smiled. “This was the elite. Not in his class.”
“So he went away.”
“I saw him sometimes. Stayed with him sometimes. I felt sorry for poor Leo.”
“Sorry enough to go riding that day in Guadalupe?”
There was a long silence, and then she said, “It didn’t happen that way. You see, Jonathan was always attracted to the dark side. He was a very spiritual man, but the itch he couldn’t scratch was very dark. There’s a connection between violence and sex, but thousands of years of civilization tries to tamp that down, keep it locked in its dungeon. It’s the opposite of romantic love, but it’s just as real. Maybe more so. Jonathan was very attracted to that, so some of the people at Camelback Falls were rough, dangerous types.”
“Like Billy McGovern and Troyce Meadows?”
“Yeah. They were the dangerous, sunburned cowboys, really gorgeous men. But you also had the sense they would kill, take what they want. Not some movie but the real deal. You could almost smell it. That was very attractive to Jonathan.”
“So how did these guys get there?” I asked. “I read somewhere that one of them was Leo’s cousin.”
She laughed. “The media. God, what morons. And you call yourself a historian? That was the story Daddy’s lawyers gave to the publishers and TV station owners. See, Billy was my cousin, not Leo’s. The black sheep of the family, you might say. Jonathan was fascinated by those two, real prison escapees. It was all very arousing, especially for the female guests. The allure of the outlaw, don’t you know.”
I let that all sink in before asking her the next question.
“Dean Nixon?” she said. “Oh, he was there. He was another one of the people Jonathan collected. He had certain attributes…well, you’ve seen photos, so you know. And then he turned out to be pretty good at supplying drugs for Jonathan’s parties out of the cops’ evidence. Jonathan could have paid for all the coke in Bolivia. But getting it that way was more fun to him.”
“So in Guadalupe,” I said, “that twenty pounds of cocaine was destined for parties at Camelback Falls.”
“I don’t think so,” Beth said. “I think Dean and Billy and Troyce had reached some understanding, and they were working together. They were going to sell the drugs on the street.”
“Until that big Hispanic deputy took them,” I said. “Did he ever show up at Camelback Falls?”
“No, never saw him before,” she said. “But most cops are dirty.” She added, “No offense.”
“What about the detective who threatened you? Did he come there?”
“No, Mapstone. You’ve got to understand the makeup of Jonathan’s circle. Dean was there only because Jonathan collected him.”
“Do you know Dean has been murdered?”
Beth was silent.
“And so all this went away after the shooting? Daddy rescued you and you went back to Tulsa?”
“I did for awhile,” she said. “I went to college at Vassar, like Mother wanted. The parole was very generous. So it was easy to drop out and come back to Phoenix.”
“Why?” Lindsey asked.
“Jonathan,” she said. “Don’t you see, Jonathan loved me. I was with him to the end. The parties trailed off after 1980, and I never saw Dean Nixon after I came back to Phoenix. Jonathan left his estate to me, including the books. Really pissed off his ex-wives. But they didn’t sit with him as his life ended, either, did they?”
She stared out at the darkness. “He had beautiful eyes,” she said. “Paige got his eyes.”
Chapter Thirty
Lindsey took over the driving, and we crossed the Continental Divide in silence. There seemed to be nothing left to ask or say. Beth fell into an exhausted sleep. She dream-drummed her long fingers on the thigh of her leather pants. I stretched out in the back seat and tried to rest. Every position was painful, and every notch my body relaxed caused a new ache to emerge. The Suburban was dark and warm, filled with memories.
My old job is nearly obsolete. The idea that historical facts can be found and historical truths can be taught is hopelessly out of style in universities. Now they talk of poststructuralism, many voices, many truths. All that old stuff is part of the oppression of the white male patriarchy. Even the name of my great academic love is disgraced: history, as in the sexist term “his-story.”
As I pondered my story, I realized again why it’s nearly impossible to write a credible history of events you have lived. Unless you’re Churchill, and I am definitely not. Assessing and interpreting the past is not like a martini, best drunk just after it’s made, with the little ice crystals still floating amid the gin, just like they make them at Durant’s. No, real history needs time and distance. And I had neither.
Beth said she sat in a patrol car and watched Peralta remove a sack of cocaine from Matson and Bullock’s trunk. I had been there, too, and I saw no such thing. But, as any street cop can tell you, a dozen people can witness the same event and come away with a dozen different recollections. Bobby had asked what happened after the shooting as if the answer held important keys to everything that had happened over the past week.
As the black mountain road unfolded, I pushed into my memories. The dust in my mouth that night. Dust mingled with gunsmoke. It was a strange taste. I had barely avoided death, but that was a thought for later. We were cops. There was the job to do. Four dead men on the ground. Peralta took the weapons from the suspects and handcuffed them, even though they were a long way from life. They lay bleeding into the desert soil. I checked for pulses on Matson and Bullock. They were cool to the touch. It was the first time I had seen dead cops. Their uniforms were the same as mine, only theirs were covered in blood and shredded by bullets. I closed Matson’s eyes, and spread plastic disposable blankets over each body. The plastic blankets were yellow and clung together like Glad wrap.
We found Beth and Leo. I did throw them into the dirt and handcuff them, that was true. They were lucky to be alive. Cops are jumpy when people have been shooting at them, and I wanted these suspects down and quiet for their own safety. Then Nixon got there. As always, a pack of cigarettes formed a distinctive lump in the pocket of his uniform shirt. He wore racy sunglasses, and carried a long-barreled.38 revolver. We stuck Beth and Leo in the back of his cruiser and read them their rights.
Where was Peralta? I couldn’t remember. I stared out the window of the Suburban. Old logging roads came out to meet the asphalt of the highway, then disappeared back in the primeval forest. The yellow line of the road was bright and unbroken, striped on the slick blackness of the asphalt. The road behind us was empty. A brief flurry shot big, phosphorescent flakes against the windshield. I reached out and stroked Lindsey’s hair as she drove. Her hair was glossy and soft, and it brushed luxuriously against her collar.
She said, “It’s going to be OK, History Shamus,” and reached back to hold my hand.
Counterfactual history. What if I hadn’t let Peralta keep talking to me that afternoon at Immaculate Heart Gym-what if he had moved out of the range of the sniper? What if Sharon hadn’t sent me to his office for the insulin-“Mapstone-Camelback Falls”? What if twenty years before, Peralta had not been there with his shotgun when I came face-to-face with Billy McGovern?
The enormous Chevy Suburban hurtled us forward to an unknown historical destiny. But what about May 1979? Where was Peralta while Nixon and I were arresting those kids? I couldn’t remember. I made myself run through the events again. I had all night.