“You know any other way to explain it?”
It fitted together well enough but it was all predicated on the assumption that Joe hadn’t killed Calisher and there was only Angelina’s word for that.
The cigarette tip dimmed when she took it away from her mouth; she waved it around with abandon. “It couldn’t have been any part of the deal for him to escape the way he did. They’d have to know it was going to make the police come up here and start asking a lot of questions. They wouldn’t want that.”
“All right,” he said. “That gets us to the grit. Who’s they?”
“If I knew that,” Angelina answered, “I think I’d have killed them myself.”
8.
Three Apaches emerged from the roadhouse and two of them glanced toward the Volvo. Angelina averted her face and held the glowing cigarette down below the dash. The three men crowded into the cab of a Dodge three-quarter-ton and drove out toward the road. When they made the turn their headlights swept across the Volvo and made Watchman squint.
She said, “I’m a little bit scared if you want to know the truth.”
“Then why do you stay around here?”
She had to think about it. “Well I got married once.”
“To a white man. I heard it didn’t take.”
“It wasn’t quite like that. I took to it fine. He didn’t.”
“I was going with a white girl for quite a while.” He looked at his dark knuckles on the wheel and wondered why he’d said that.
“And who broke it up? You or her?”
“She did,” he said.
“Anglos.”
“Dirty rotten savages,” he said, and they both smiled.
“I guess I had that coming,” she answered. “Well you get stung and then you go home for comforting. I guess that’s what happened to me. I never went back to secretarial school. I never wanted to do much after that. I had a big thing for him, you know.”
“I know how it is.”
“Anyway I never had any real reason to stay here except inertia. But then I never had any reason to feel scared. Not until the other day.”
“You could leave now.”
“No. For the first time I’ve got a reason to stay.”
“Stubborn,” he said.
“That’s got nothing to do with it. If I’m pushed I run, that’s the way I am. But suppose Joe’s around here now and he needs help?”
“So you hang around in case he comes to you.”
“Yes.”
He said, “In your subtle way you’re trying to convince me you don’t know where he is.”
“I don’t give a damn what you believe. In fact as soon as I heard Joe had escaped, I assumed you’d put a tail on me right away.”
“I wish we had the manpower for that.”
“It’s the first thing that occurred to me. It’s probably the first thing that occurred to my brother.”
“But he could have got a message to you.”
“He could have but he didn’t. I give you my word.”
As a rule Indians weren’t liars but Angelina had assimilated a lot; she talked white and behaved white. He had no way of telling if she was playing poker against him.
He said, “Maria had a frequent visitor. We think it was Tom Victorio. Do you think he’s involved in the escape?”
“I have no idea. He hates Joe, I can’t think why he’d want to help him.”
“Hating Joe, is that entirely on accout of Joe marrying Maria?”
“I think so. They liked each other well enough before that.”
“If you were Joe where would you be right now?”
She shook her head. The cigarette was out. She dropped it in the ashtray and slid it shut, and he heard the click when she lifted the door handle. “I wish I could help. I really do. If I hear from him I’ll let you know, I’ll call the Highway Patrol. I think he’d be safer with you than he is now, wherever he is. They want to kill him.”
“What makes you so sure of that?”
“They’ve got to make sure he keeps quiet, don’t they? They had Maria before. They had Joe Junior. God he was a hell of a nice little kid, my nephew. But they haven’t got any hostages to keep him quiet any more.”
Watchman said quickly, “Just one more question. If you’re telling me the truth I don’t understand why Joe wouldn’t have come to us with the story.”
“Would anybody have believed him?”
She got out of the car and chunked the door shut. He watched her walk away toward the roadhouse. He saw now what was peculiar about her stride: she was afraid. Uncertain whether she’d get to complete each step.
Halfway to the roadhouse she turned around and came back to the car. Watchman had the engine running; he shifted the stick to neutral.
She said, “Have you got a place to stay?”
“I thought I’d hole up in Showlow.”
“Why don’t you use my house. It’s not much of a place but—look the truth is I’d appreciate the company tonight.”
It wasn’t a bedroom invitation, it was fear. She saw him thinking it over; she said, “I’ve got a phone there. If you didn’t already know that.”
“Why would I know that?”
“I thought maybe you’d tapped it by now. In case Joe tried to call me.”
“We’re not the FBI,” he said. “Where do I find the place?”
“Take a left and head toward the mission.”
“Then what?”
“There’s a dirt road.…” She stopped and threw a glance at the roadhouse. “Never mind, hell. That’s my car over there, the Rambler. I’ll lead the way. I don’t feel like going back in there.”
“Won’t they miss you?”
“I come and go,” she said vaguely. “I don’t think I could stand the place any more tonight.”
It wasn’t far. He followed the red lights of the old Rambler up the road half a mile until she turned off the highway. He steered behind her into a pair of ruts that carried the Volvo uncomfortably up a brushy slope and through a notch between two low hills.
Behind one of the hills stood a cubicle of stucco and wood. A naked light burned above the front door. When the girl stopped the Rambler he saw it had a crumpled front fender.
He was still fifty yards behind her, making a final turn toward the house, when he heard the crack of the rifle.
9.
His hands hit the ignition and headlight switches and extinguished them both and then he let himself fall out of the seat. When he hit belly-flat he kicked the car door shut to cut off the interior dome light. He edged under the side of the car fumbling inside the back of his shirt to get at the automatic.
A long time passed before he got it into his hands and worked the slide to jack a cartridge into the breech. Ahead of him the Rambler squatted motionless; the headlights still burned, lighting up the front of the house and one side of it where the porch light didn’t reach. He couldn’t see Angelina’s head in the car but he saw the slight lurch of the car when the girl inside it moved, probably getting herself down as low as she could.
“Stay put,” he called to her, and searched the starlit hillside. The ripping echo of the gunshot hung in his ears and adrenaline pumped a tremor into all his fibers.
He’d been shot at before in his life and knew the sound. It was not a whiz or a zip or a whisper or a fanning sound; it was a sharp loud crack like a small thunderclap and it was caused by the sonic boom of the passing bullet.
This time he was looking in the right quadrant and the side of his vision picked up the wink of the muzzle-flash. Smokeless powder and it wasn’t a big lance of flame, just a flicker; but he saw it and two-handed the automatic up with both elbows on the ground and he let go five quick ones in the direction of the visual echo his eyes retained. It left him two in the magazine; he was a cop, he always knew how many he had left in the gun, and he wasn’t about to shoot it empty unless it was unavoidable.
His palm stung a little from the recoil and his ears were no good now because they’d been deafened by the noise of his own shooting. But his eyes were all right, adjusting to the darkness. He saw the quick movement maybe two hundred yards up the hill and he aimed at a point well above it and squeezed his hand until the pistol discharged with a petulant bark.