“I couldn’t do that,” Ariel replied. “I couldn’t leave my family.”
“Your family?” It was said with incredulous sarcasm. “Oh, a few people travelling together in a busted-up van? That family?” He hesitated, but when she didn’t respond he went on, because his blood was up and he was ready to hurt her to make her let go. “Musicians are a fucking dime a dozen,” he said. “Bands fall apart every day, so what’s the big deal? When it happens, you just go latch onto some other group of nobodies. So we were together a while, we went through some good shit and some bad shit, but that doesn’t make us a family. Far from it.”
“What, then? What does it make us?”
“It makes us nothing. Because we’re over. Don’t you get that? Now, if you want to live in your land of rainbows and moonbeams, that’s up to you. But I’m not living there. I’m telling you, The Five is finished. Okay? And I’m not coming back, so you and Berke and Terry get yourselves to Austin and do whatever the fuck you need to do. I’m out of it.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“Listen, stop holding onto me!” he said, with maybe more vitriol than he’d intended. “Either put your own band together or go home to Massachusetts, but quit fucking around with losers like Neal Tapley. If you want to try to save sick animals, go be a vet.” He knew that was a hard punch, because Ariel had tried her best to get Neal off the crack, the speedballs and everything else he was loading himself up with to fight his depression, but she couldn’t hold him strongly enough to keep him from flying off that two-lane in his Volvo clunker. Nomad didn’t know if there was more to that story, if there’d been a “romance”—that’s how they would’ve put it in those godawful old English novels, “romance”—but he’d figured long ago that Ariel was searching for someone to believe in, to trust and to follow.
It ain’t me, babe.
“Go back to Austin,” he said, wearily now. “Just go.”
Still she didn’t leave him.
She spoke softly, but with grit in her voice: “Don’t you know that we’re all over the news? Front page of the morning Star, with pictures. We’re on NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox and CNN. The sniper story has gone nationwide. Haven’t you seen a TV?”
“No.”
“We need you back here with us. I’m speaking for Berke and Terry, too. Wherever you are, come back.”
“No,” he repeated, very firmly, and with that he had hung up the phone.
Hey, amigo! You that guy on the TV? Right there! You that guy?
Early Sunday afternoon, an officer had come to get him from his cell. Police Captain Garza was here, he was told. Wants to talk to you.
“No,” Nomad had said again, and had stretched out on his bunk. The officer had gone away, and there had been no further word from Captain Garza or, for that matter, anyone else.
So, it wasn’t bad. A clean bunk, good food, plenty of people to talk to when he decided he was ready to talk. Didn’t a lot of cool musicians pay their dues in jail? Not so bad. Except for the Day-Glo orange jumpsuit with the JAIL stenciled across the back. But he would bear that indignity, too.
He was out in the dayroom sweeping the floor when two of the badasses came up behind him. Not prisoners, but guards. Moates, the one with the bald skull and a mole on his forehead, the one Nomad had been warned by some of the other dudes not to look at because he really really really did not like to be looked at by pond scum such as themselves; and Kingston, the thin black guy with the goatee, the constant unsettling half-smile on his face and the snakes tattooed on his ropy forearms.
“Charles,” said Kingston, “somebody wants to see you.”
“Right now,” said Moates.
“Who is it?” Nomad asked.
“Move,” said baldie-with-a-mole, and he hooked a thumb toward a red-painted steel door across the dayroom.
“I don’t want to see anybody,” Nomad said.
“Ain’t askin’ you,” said Kingston. “Put the broom aside. Let’s go!”
Nomad weighed his options. The two men planted themselves before him, relaxed but ready. They were the real deal, citizens of the world of hurt. Nomad put his broom aside, and he followed Kingston with the bald dude right at his heels.
A plastic pass card was used on a slot in the door, followed by a key. Nomad was led into a stark hallway painted off-white, with several doors on either side. The door was closed and locked behind him. Moates gave him a shove just because he could.
Kingston opened another door without having to use a key. “Get in there,” he directed. “Sit down and wait.”
Overhead fluorescents spread even light on a table and three chairs, one across from two. The walls were the same stark blankness as the hallway. A cork bulletin board held no bulletins or pushpins. There was a smell in here as if it were a place the guards sneaked in to smoke cigarettes.
“Who am I—?” Waiting for, he was going to say, but Moates and Kingston were already going out and the door closed. Nomad didn’t hear a lock turn.
He sat down on the side of the table that faced the door. Damned if he knew what this was about. Whatever it was, he didn’t like it. He had the feeling that if he walked to that door and opened it, he might return to his cell in the shape of a pretzel.
In about thirty seconds, the door did open. A man entered. He was carrying a brown folder. He shut the door behind him and he did not look into Nomad’s eyes until he was sitting down on the other side of the table.
They stared at each other.
“You’re in some trouble, John,” the man said.
Nomad’s first urge was to shrug off the comment, to present a stone face like he’d seen the other inmates do when they were trying to act all-that in the presence of pressure or despair, but he didn’t because he knew the man was right, and the way the man had spoken was no-nonsense and required respect. But Nomad didn’t answer, and he spent a few seconds putting together impressions of his visitor.
The man was about fifty or so years old, in very good physical shape. He had a ruddy, outdoors coloring. His gray, close-cropped hair was retreating at the temples and sat on his head like a tight cap. He was so clean-shaven a razor might have been his religion. A military man? Nomad wondered. The man’s thick eyebrows were still black, his eyes a pale sky-blue. He had the square chin of a comic-book hero but the crooked nose of a boxer who has gone a few bad rounds in his life. He was wearing khaki trousers and a dark gray polo shirt. Nomad had seen that he was wearing a black belt and black wingtip shoes. The man stood maybe six-one, had wide shoulders and forearms that looked as if he could chop wood for a living. His hands were veiny, one of the few signs of the toll of years. He had a few deep lines in his face, bracketing his mouth and at the corners of his eyes, but he didn’t have the saggy look that old people get. He didn’t have their sad look, of lost chances and yesterdays receding into the rearview mirror. In fact, this dude didn’t look like he’d lost any chance that came his way. The pale blue eyes were keen and careful. He wore a thin gold wedding ring and a nice but not flashy wristwatch. He kept both hands pressed flat against the brown folder on the table in front of him.
“Who are you?” Nomad asked.
“My name is Truitt Allen. I’m an agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, based here in Tucson. Want to see my ID?” He made a move for his wallet.
FBI, Nomad thought. Almost military. This dude was a tough old hoss. But he said, “Yeah, I do,” and he waited as the wallet was opened to display a gold-colored shield and the official identification card that bore a picture of Allen’s unsmiling, all-business visage.
“Okay. Now…do you want to see who killed Mike Davis and shot George Emerson?”