Fin was doing some shaky driving when they crossed the Coronado Bridge at 2:00 A.M. He had the radio tuned to a San Diego oldie station, and while Natalie Cole’s old man sang “Too Young,” he said to her, “My sisters made me sing that when I took guitar lessons. They thought I was adorable.”
“You still are,” she muttered drowsily, her eyes closed.
He glanced over, thinking that now she looked like a teenager. At the top of the bridge he saw the Suicide Prevention Hotline number, and thought: What is happening to me? Where am I going with my life? Do I have a life left? Where’s the Menopause Hotline number? Does it get worse than this?
When they drove through the toll gate he said to her, “Time to wake up, kid, I mean, Bobbie. Open up your peepers.”
“Huh?” she said, bolting upright.
“It’s not a Scud attack,” he said, “but we’re in Coronado. Where do you live?”
She directed him to a house just off Fourth Avenue, and after he parked in front, he retrieved her.45 automatic. Then he opened the car door for her, and this time he had to pull her up by the hand. She staggered when she took the first step so he put his arm around her waist and walked her to her upstairs apartment in the rear.
She fumbled in her purse, and didn’t object when Fin took the purse and rummaged for the keys. She didn’t object when he unlocked the door and led her inside. Nor did she object when he put her purse on the kitchen counter, along with the holstered automatic, gun belt, and keys.
She did object when he pecked her on the cheek and turned toward the door.
In fact, still wobbly, Bobbie intercepted him and threw her arms around his neck, exploring his gold crowns with her tongue.
When he pulled away he knew he was in trouble. Gallantly, he said, “No way, kid.”
“Don’t call me kid.”
Hoarsely: “No way. Not in your condition. Not in my condition.”
Bobbie ran her hands under Fin’s jacket and over his buns saying, “What condition are you in?”
“No way, Bobbie!” he said, even more raspy. “Your boyfriend went back to his wife, right? You’re just lonely.”
“Sure, but I don’t have to hit on toll-booth attendants. I can find somebody any time I want.”
“You’d be sorry tomorrow,” he said.
“I never had an older guy,” she said. “Besides, it’s already tomorrow.”
A croak: “I can’t go the distance.”
She stepped back then and said, “I can’t believe it! You’re the first guy ever turned me down!”
“I’m not turning you down,” he said. “Just asking for a rain check.”
“But why?”
That stopped him. His mouth was dry. His heart was hammering. His hands were shaking. He wanted to peel off that rum-stained pink shell right this second and fondle those Emersons for a week at least!
Instead, he said, “I can’t take advantage of a kid … of a young woman that’s drunker than a beer-hall mouse.”
“You are a gentleman!” she said in amazement. “For real! The first one I ever met in California!”
Trudging out the door, he said, “I wish I had Jimmy Carter’s home number ‘cause I sure got a lotta lust in my heart!”
She popped her head out and said, “You really are! A gentleman!”
He was boozy and woozy and full of self-pity when he said, “I’m a combat veteran of the battle of the sexes, but somehow I can’t bring myself to really use-and-abuse personnel of your gender. Because of my sisters! Those three babes have wrecked my entire life!”
When he got to the bottom of the steps she said, “Wait, Fin!”
He paused: “Is it about the rain check?”
“It’s about the shoe!” Bobbie said. “I been forgetting to ask you all evening about the shoe on the dead guy’s foot. Whazzisname, Pepe Palmera? What kinda shoe was it?”
CHAPTER 21
Nell Salter had trouble going to sleep that night because of confusion, and mixed feelings concerning the neurotic cop, Fin Finnegan.
Bobbie Ann Doggett had difficulty sleeping because of her raging blood-alcohol level, and her astonishment at having met a gentleman in the state of California.
Jules Temple couldn’t sleep because he was furious at the notion that he was losing control of his own life, and at his dismal sexual performance with Lou Ross. But finally, he blamed his failure on Lou’s deteriorating body, and took a sleeping pill.
Fin Finnegan slept badly because of a plethora of emotions that involved Bobbie Ann Doggett, Nell Salter, his three ex-wives, and all three sisters. He had a momentary rum-soaked fantasy about living the remainder of his days in a monastery out near Borrego Springs, until he remembered that he’d still be a forty-five-year-old monk.
Abel Durazo was awake longer than the few minutes it usually took, because of the extreme violence he’d seen in the bikers’ bar. And also because tomorrow he was going to collect six thousand dollars from Soltero. Abel had never had so much money at one time in his entire life.
Shelby Pate couldn’t sleep at all. It was mostly because he’d snorted so much meth he was totally amped, and when he was like this he did all sorts of strange things, such as going out to his girlfriend’s one-car garage and trying to take his truck engine apart and put it back together. Sometimes when he was wired he’d work on his Harley in the front yard under a droplight, or he might initiate a frenzy of hedge clipping until it looked like a herd of starving goats had raided the yard.
When he got like this, his neighbors would scream at him and threaten to call the cops, but they were tweakers too. They knew that Shelby was vibrating from having done a teener of go-fast, and that he’d chill pretty soon. Or else he’d flat-line, and they wouldn’t mind that either.
There was another reason though, that Shelby Pate couldn’t sleep, and it had nothing to do with the twitching and jumping and oscillating caused by the cringe. It had to do with the visit by Nell Salter and Fin Finnegan. It had to do with Shelby learning for the first time that they were hauling a very dangerous pesticide called Guthion, and that such a load should’ve been manifested for disposal outside California.
When Shelby had got home from the bikers’ bar-long after the paramedics had hauled away the bearded biker with his guts kicked out-Shelby had crept into his girlfriend’s closet and retrieved his leather jacket, the one he’d worn last Friday night. He removed both manifests from the pocket of the jacket and read them. The material from North Island was properly manifested for disposal at a Los Angeles refinery. Then he sat down at the kitchen table and carefully read the manifest from Southbay Agricultural Supply.
On line 11-a of the State of California Health and Welfare Agency form, the proper shipping name, hazard class, and I.D. number did not list a waste poison mixture of Guthion. It was listed as “waste flammable liquid,” and specifically described as “weed oil and kerosene.”
And on line 9, which required the name and address of the disposal site, the facility listed was a refinery in Los Angeles where Shelby and Abel had often hauled ordinary waste. There was no mention of a disposal site in Texas.
Shelby folded the manifest and put it inside a plastic sandwich bag. Then he hid the plastic bag inside one of his spare boots and took that pair of boots out to the garage. After that, Shelby fired up the power mower and started running it over the little yard until a next-door neighbor and fellow tweaker walked out of his house in his underwear at 4:30 A.M., and said, “Dude, if you don’t stop workin like a deranged fuckin beaver my old lady said she’s gonna burn your house down and that’s a promise!”