“It means gold in Armenian. What’s your last name mean?”
“Solomon? It means peace. From the Hebrew word shalom. That’s what my mother said, anyway.”
Gold Mike leans forward, motions Shane to lean in too. “You want to make some real money, Shalom?”
Shane finally fell asleep after one a.m., woke up again at 5:47 a.m., sunrise filling his room on the second floor of the Royal Californian with orange light, his foot like an anvil at the bottom of his leg. He unwrapped the gauze and examined the wound. His foot had swollen to twice its normal size, at least, even though the wound wasn’t that big. An inch around. The nurse told him yesterday that the bullet shattered two of his cuneiform bones, that he’d need surgery to stabilize his foot, a couple pins would be inserted, and then he’d be in a hard cast for six to eight weeks. But he was going to need to speak to the police before any of that happened.
That wasn’t going to work.
Not with 66 percent of Gold Mike rotting in his storage unit, the other 33 percent in the Honda’s trunk, Shane thinking 1 percent was probably drying on the floor, blood and viscera and whatnot. He’d chopped Gold Mike’s head off using the fire hose hatchet inside the storage unit, then cut the head up into smaller pieces to make it easier to shuttle around, then took off Gold Mike’s hands and feet too, because he thought that would make it harder to identify him, but with DNA, fuck, it probably didn’t matter, but Shane hadn’t been thinking too terribly straight.
He’d taken the battery out of Gold Mike’s van and poured acid over the rest of the body, but that was really just cosmetic. For sure Shane’s DNA was in the unit and the van and on Gold Mike’s body, but then his DNA was all over everything regardless. They were business partners. That was easy enough to explain. Plus, he had no legitimate reason to kill Gold Mike. Anyone who saw them together knew they were a team. Really, the only proof that it was Shane who’d plugged him an excessive number of times was probably the hole in Shane’s fucking foot and the gun itself, which Shane had tucked under his mattress.
Well, and Gold Mike’s head and all that, which was now in his hotel room’s safe, zipped up inside a Whole Foods freezer bag filled with ice.
Shane stepped out onto his second-story balcony — which was just wide enough to hurl yourself over — and lit up his second-to-last cigarette. He’d given up smoking when Manny got cancer, truth be known he sort of blamed himself for that whole thing, but it was the only drug he had on his person and he needed about ten minutes of mental clarity to figure out how he was going to get himself out of this situation.
He needed to get rid of Gold Mike’s body parts.
He needed to get rid of the gun.
He needed to get himself an alibi... or he needed to change his entire identity, which didn’t seem like a plausible turn of events, though he was open to whatever reality presented itself to him.
He needed to go across the street to the Circle K and get some disposable phones.
He also was in a fuck-ton of pain and under normal circumstances might go find a dispensary and get some edibles, but he wasn’t showing anyone his ID. He’d get some ice and soak his foot in the tub; that would bring down the swelling. He’d get some bleach from housecleaning, put a couple drops in the water, maybe that would disinfect the wound? Then he needed to get a new car.
The Royal Californian sat on a stretch of Highway 111 in Indio that could have been Carson City or Bakersfield or Van Nuys or anywhere else where someone had the wise idea to plant a palm tree and then surround it with cement. This wasn’t the part of greater Palm Springs where people came to actually visit — it was nowhere near the leafy garden hotel he’d stayed in with his dad, the Ingleside Inn — unless they were going to court or bailing someone out, since the hotel was a block west of the county courthouse and jail. He hadn’t realized it at first, not until he was checking in and the clerk gave him a brochure of local amenities. Page one had all the dining options. Page two was local entertainment and information about how to get to the polo fields a mile south. And then page three was all bail bonds, attorneys, and AA meetings.
Made sense, then, when the clerk didn’t seem bothered by his bloody foot and that he didn’t have ID when he gave him Gold Mike’s Visa to check in.
He’d given the AAA driver an extra fifteen dollars to park his car just down the block, in a neighborhood of taupe houses called the Sandpiper Estates, the word estate apparently one of those words whose meaning had been lost to insincerity, since all Shane saw were a lot of children standing by themselves on front lawns made of rock, staring into their phones. Shane left the keys in the ignition and the doors unlocked. If he was lucky, the car would be stripped clean in a few days, best-case scenario. Worst case, it would get towed to some county yard and there it would stay, forever.
Now, Shane counted seven cars in the Royal Californian’s parking lot. A van with a Save Mono Lake sticker faded on the bumper. A white pickup truck missing the tailgate. Two Hondas that looked just like his dead Accord. A red Buick Regal, probably a rental, no one bought fucking Buicks. An SUV. Another SUV. He tried to imagine who owned each car, and what their favorite song might be, Shane always interested if people picked a sad song or a happy one. Gave you a sense of how people viewed their own lives. Real or imagined.
Rachel’s favorite song was “American Girl” by Tom Petty. His mom’s favorite song was “Suspicious Minds” by Elvis. Shane? He didn’t have a favorite. Not anymore. Songs had stopped having meaning for him. He’d prefer absolute silence, forever.
A man of about seventy walked out of his ground-floor room and into the parking lot, wearing blue boxer shorts, a white V-neck undershirt, and a pair of black sandals, keys in his hand. A Sinatra guy, Shane thought. Probably “My Way” or “Come Fly with Me.” Shane made him for the red Buick Regal. It was backed into a space, always the sign of an asshole. Instead, the old man looked up and down the block, which was stone empty, then crossed the street to a one-story office building with storefront-style signs advertising a law office — Terry Kales, Criminal Defense/DUI/Divorce/Immigration — accounting offices, a Mexican bakery, a notary, and a place where you could get your cell phone fixed.
Not Sinatra.
Neil Diamond.
He went inside the law office, came back out a few minutes later holding a manila envelope, unlocked a silver Mercedes using his key fob, the lights blinking twice, disappeared inside, started it up, rolled back across the street to the parking lot. A woman came walking out of the old man’s hotel room then — she looked young, maybe sixteen — met the old guy in the parking lot, got in the passenger side of the car, pulled away. Five minutes later, the Benz was parked in the Royal Californian’s lot and the old man was headed back into the hotel, which is when he spotted Shane up on his perch.
“You always stand around at dawn watching people?”
“Just having a smoke,” Shane said, “while I contemplate which car to steal.”
“Why not just get an Uber?”
Shane pointed at the man’s Benz. “German engineering has always appealed to me, but as a Jew, it feels shameful. So you’re safe.” Shane telling him he was a Jew to put him at ease, no one ever felt scared of Jews, but also just to see how he reacted, Kales seeming like a Jewish last name. Shane flicked his cigarette butt over the balcony. It landed, still smoking, a few feet away from the man. “You mind stepping on that for me?” Shane pointed at his own foot. “I’m down a limb.”