“Nick Moreno,” I said.
“I knew nothing about him. I’d never heard his name until the news.”
“Save all that for Darrel Walker.”
“I will not be done in by a runaway girl and the timely removal of one muddy sexual predator.”
“Don’t count on it. What do you think about all this, Marie?” I asked.
“All what?”
41
A quarter-moon rose over the In-Ko-Pah Mountains, boulders heaped in the dark. Imperial Valley ahead, heat rising and the brittlebush shivering in the wind. A red Cadillac Eldorado fell in behind me from S-2.
Battle drove the speed limit, eyes on the road and one bony hand relaxed way down at six o’clock on the wheel. He’d been telling me about his boyhood in Houston, his high school days in Yuma, his time in Korea as a rear gunner on a B-29, trying to shoot down MiG-15s the Russians had sold to North Korea. Marie had fallen asleep with her head against the window.
“I had eyes like a falcon back then,” he said. “Twenty-ten, and a good sense of leads and trajectories from shooting doves in Arizona. They got me into that Superfortress in a hurry. We shot down two. I got some lead into both of them. Now we got Kias and Hyundais invading us. Should have pounded them to nothing like Japan. We’d have one big clean subservient nation under us. Instead of some nutcase with nukes and a bad haircut.”
The heat rose when he hit the valley floor. Flat rows of crops fanning by, the smells of cut alfalfa and onions drawn into the cab by the AC.
Battle gave me a quick hard look, then turned back to the road. “You’ve got all the fixin’s to become a red-blooded American patriot,” he said. “A father in the Navy, mother a history teacher and a DAR. You served in Iraq, First Fallujah, if my IvarDuggans search is correct. Law enforcement. Now you’re a sneaky PI. Charging money to commit unsavory acts. Deceiving a kindly older woman with a long history of mental illness. What happened to you?”
“I know phony indignation when I see it.”
“So it’s all okay, what you do?” asked Battle.
“When I can’t sleep at night it’s not from something I did,” I said. “It’s always from something I didn’t.”
“Hmm,” he said. “Might your abrupt slide down the moral ladder have been caused by the fact that you should have killed that crazy nigger when you had the chance? Instead of letting your partner do it?”
I’d thought about that over the years, a lot. What I’d done and hadn’t done on that cool cloudy day in an alley behind an Imperial Beach strip mall.
“If I could,” I said, “I’d not kill him all over again. His name was Titus Miller and he wasn’t armed.”
“He had a gun in his belongings.”
“Some yards away from him, not within his reach. Down in a cart that held all his worldly riches.”
“Blah,” said Battle. “Coward’s talk. Hiding behind the least understood commandment of them all. You want to see true Christianity, get yourself a look at Judith Beheading Holofernes by Caravaggio.”
“I’ve seen it. It has what to do with me?”
“It’s got everything to do with bringing our race back to its natural leadership of the world,” said Battle. “The rest of the world is Holofernes, Mr. Ford. You can see it in his dark, bestial, beheaded face. On some level you understand that. That you are superior. That you are Judith. But you’re afraid of it. It offends you because you have been brainwashed into being offended.”
I waved him off, indicating boredom. “Hate never changes,” I said. “Just the packaging. Hitler. Spencer. Enoch. You. It’s the same old whining.”
“Hitler?” asked Marie, head bobbing off the window glass.
“How are you back there, hon?”
“Can you turn the AC down a little?”
I reached between the seats to the rear control, turned it down.
Then got another glance at me from the old man, the crags of his face deep in the dashboard glow.
“I need to pee,” he said.
“You can pull over. The shoulder looks firm.”
“There’s a rest stop up ahead,” he said.
“No. I don’t want you out of my sight.”
“He’s too old to run,” said Marie. “Look at all that dust.”
Battle signaled and eased the truck onto the shoulder.
“Make it quick,” I said.
“Settle down, now, Roland,” said Battle.
We got out and Battle ambled into the desert in his brown suit, the wind whipping his coat. I leaned against the bed with a peripheral view of Marie and watched him. Wingtips raising sand. Read Lark’s message: Paradise search warrant and SWAT in hand. I saw Battle stop, spread his legs, reach forward with both hands. Old men take a long time to pee. Maybe the wind was a factor. My high school buddy Dirk Ott went fifty-one seconds, no double-clutching, fueled by a twelve-pack. Battle finally turned, zipping up on his way back. The wind gusted and Battle teetered uncertainly.
Half an hour to turnoffs for Coyote Wells, Plaster City, Dixieland. I felt my nerves rising and the clarity brought by fear. Battle got off on Rattlesnake, went east toward Buena Vista, and turned right onto the familiar dirt road that would take us to Paradise Date Farm.
“Know where you are?” he asked.
“Pretty much.”
“I failed world geography,” said Marie.
“Scared, Roland?” asked Battle.
“Some,” I said.
“How many stitches?”
“A bunch.”
“You must want a rematch,” said Battle. “Revenge. One of the building blocks of civilization. I wish you were one of us.”
“And so do I, Mr. Hooper!”
“You’ve got enough young men to order around,” I said.
“You have a conscience, though.”
“Is that good or bad in SNR Security?” I asked.
“It’s good, Roland. My people are the deep and strong. The straight and true. Right belief. Right convictions. Right thought.”
“There is only one right,” said Marie.
“That’s the nonsense that trips you people up every time,” I said.
“There’s the entrance,” said Battle. “Oh, damn. What is this?”
I looked through the darkness to the faintly lit guard tower and the guardhouse and the twinkling chain-link fence.
Saw the white FBI Suburbans, the black-and-white Imperial County vehicles — six in all — and Mike Lark in a Bureau windbreaker and street clothes, waving us closer. In the side mirror, Burt’s red Eldorado swept in from the darkness behind.
“You’ve betrayed me,” said Battle.
“I told you I couldn’t help you.”
“For a fourteen-year-old runaway?” said Battle.
“And the crates you’ve been smuggling in from San Onofre.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Let’s go see about that, Alfred.”
I pointed to the gate. He pulled behind Lark’s Suburban, handed me the key fob, and shook his head. Lark started toward Alfred’s side of the truck.
“This has federal overreach written all over it,” said Battle.
“You’re about to meet FBI Special Agent Mike Lark.”
“Him? He looks like he’s still in high school.”
We climbed out of the truck and into the gusting wind. The Paradise Date Farm sign shuddered in place on the gate, and the desert dust swirled in the cones of the floodlights.
Introductions made and search warrant served, Battle agreed to lead us onto his property. He entered the code and the tall steel-pole gate opened on squeaky wheels. When he turned to face the rest of us, a dozen headlights blanched his face.