“You and some bearded buddy are the bike thieves. Belle does the cleanup here, gets the product ready for market. Somehow you guys got yourselves a house key for this place. You keep the beater car somewhere out of sight when you’re not using it. You shaved because you’d been spotted. Probably your partner shaved, too. So now you think you’re one step ahead of Johnny Law. But you’ve got a flaw in your alibi. Namely, that a doughnut shop employee/ski bum gigolo is in the market for a house listed at a million six. Unless April Holly wants somewhere to play house with her boy toy.”
Words failed Wylie. He gauged the pleasures of strangulation against the consequences, kind of liked the way it penciled out.
Jacobie eyed him with a small smirk, as if he’d spotted a stain on Wylie’s trousers, or a weakness in him. “Maybe I’ll just tell the sergeant what I saw and let him figure out the details.”
Wylie’s old friend Dawn Loe pulled up a moment later in a silver Suburban. Wylie parted the blinds and watched as one of the vehicle’s side windows went down and the heads of two curious golden retrievers filled the frame, snouts lifted to the air. Next came a Mammoth PD slickback from which plainclothes Sgt. Grant Bulla stepped. He stopped to pet the dogs. Howard came from the house to greet him.
“I’m not going to say anything about my theories, Wylie,” said Jacobie. “At least not yet. I’m still putting the pieces together.”
“Let me know what you come up with.”
“You can bet I will.”
Wylie sat in the living room of April Holly’s furnished rental in the Snowcreek development. It was a spacious town house, richly appointed, with views of the mountain. April had a fire going by the time he got there. It was mid-evening. Wylie looked out to the fading profile of Mammoth Mountain, the stilled lifts rising like toy structures, their cables bellied between them.
On late evenings like this, anywhere in the world that Wylie happened to be — in Mammoth or Solitary or in Kandahar or the Tegernsee monastery or the Great St. Bernard Hospice — he always tried to leave the lights off and the lanterns and candles unlit to enjoy the simultaneous fall of outside and inside darkness. Such a slow and subtle transition from day to night. A reminder to slow down. To reflect and maybe give thanks. But that was impossible right now, because April was buzzing from room to room, doing what someone always did — cranking up house lights in advance of sunset. Let there not be light, he thought.
But this was her home. Wylie shook his head at his own pissiness, told himself to put one foot in front of the other. Be cool anyway, he thought, house lights or not. He’d been nearly silent for an hour. He felt stymied and useless and wanted to be alone and was only here now to please April, who delivered to him another light bourbon on ice. He took it without looking at or thanking her.
He thought of Robert and his eternal stillness. Would he ever move again? Was he aware at all? Did he want to be alive?
He thought of Belle and Beatrice running off into the snow. He thought of the diminishing returns from Let It Bean and the snow soon to be melting through the ceiling into plastic buckets at home, and the fourteen thousand dollars it would take to replace that decaying roof, and the rent going up another $2,200 a month in January if they signed the new lease. He finally decided to list his MPP on eBay — the proceeds could pay for something, even if it was only the balance for the MPP itself. He’d thought long and hard about selling it just the other night, and now he saw no real alternative. He felt small and horrible.
And he saw himself here, holed up in this tidy luxury chalet with America’s darling — a beautiful girl who was momentarily stuck on him for whatever reasons, who just also happened to be the most gifted aerial snowboarder the world had yet seen. A millionaire several times over. Which made him feel even worse. It might simplify things just to walk out on her right here and now. Let her get on with her career, and him with his. Pop the fantasy and get real again. Back to Earth. He turned and looked at the door. Where will I go when my plans betray me?
Suddenly, he felt his inner boxes shifting around and heard the thumping within them. Once they started sliding, he was never sure when one might topple over, hit the floor, and spill its contents. Some of them housed relatively minor things, such as the small square one that now crashed and spilled out the beating he’d given Sky Carson when they were eight. Wylie saw his little fists flailing away, landing often on Sky, who squirmed flat on his back on the playground grass, trying to cover up. What shamed Wylie now wasn’t the beating, but the satisfaction he had taken in it, how good it had felt to silence a tormentor. He could have stopped sooner but didn’t.
Down fell another, this one rectangular and long, as if for roses, rocking end to end before it settled. This contained Ellen Pelleri in their sophomore year at Mammoth High School, whom he had spurned bluntly, and who not long after had veered into an express lane of heavy recreational drugs and promiscuity. Two years later, she had committed suicide. He’d always known it was his fault, or at least partially his fault, so, what percentage exactly, and to whom did he owe restitution? No word on that from anyone. So there she was.
Before Wylie could get Ellen back where she belonged, Sergeant Madigan landed hard on April’s hardwood floor, neck-shot and blood-drenched and knowing he was dying, and really, what more could Wylie have done? A team of surgeons couldn’t have saved him. QuickClot and tourniquets versus a blown carotid, severed vertebrae, and a ruined spinal cord? Wylie was helpless. Then why was Sergeant Madigan still up here? War was war. How was Wylie supposed to make it up to him?
Next tumbled free the Taliban sniper who had shot Sergeant Madigan from a murder hole in a shot-to-shit abandoned hillside compound. Wylie’s B squad had patrolled past that compound nearly a hundred days running, checking it coming and going every time. But suddenly it was not abandoned at all and the sergeant was down in a blast of blood. Then came a barrage of enemy mortar fire. Wylie had done his best for Sergeant Madigan as the rounds rained down upon them. Hopeless, and they both knew it. Jesse thought he hit the sniper with a very good shot through the sniper’s own hole in the mud-brick wall. Later, Wylie and Jesse had clambered against the rocky hillside for cover, then worked their way up to the compound to see if Jesse had hit his target.
Now Wylie saw the dead fighter splayed out in his man dress on the dirt floor of the compound, Jesse kneeling over him with the big knife in one hand, working away at the top of his head. At first, Wylie thought Jesse was taking a lock of his hair. Then he heard the grind of the steel against skull, and the rasp of parting scalp. And saw the in-and-out motion of Jesse’s elbow. Then, suddenly, Jesse went still. He looked down at his blood-sheathed hands. When he finally lifted his gaze to Wylie, it was in helplessness and wild shame. Wylie took the knife and pushed Jesse away and finished the awful act. It was the hardest thing he’d ever done. But the reason for it was good and true, was it not? To help his friend and take some of the shame and guilt for himself, to prove to Jesse that he was not alone, that they were in this together. Always faithful. Always. He would do it again.
Wylie sat in the brightly lit room for a long while, waited for another box to fall, but none did. His mind wandered now, fatigued.
“It’s Bea and Belle,” he finally said.
“Can you tell me?”
“That could put you in a position. They may be in some genuine trouble. I might not be able to fix it.”
“Then I’ll stay out of it, Wylie. My plate’s plenty full, too.”
“With Helene?”
“Only by phone. But I spotted Logan today, cruising by here in one of my Escalades. Imagine a six-nine gargoyle in a beanie hunched over the steering wheel. I was standing out front and he looked straight ahead when he went by, like I wouldn’t notice it was him.”