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  He drew a hand across his face. ‘Let me explain something to you. When you say Willie was killed because this Dansk wanted him dead, I’d be remiss if I didn’t look into your story, right? So that’s what I’m doing: looking into your story. And meantime giving you protection. Doing my job.’

  ‘I sit in the bleachers and you play the game,’ she said. ‘And Gannon is my guardian angel. Which is also pretty convenient for you, because he can report on me if I decide to step out of line.’

  ‘That’s what it comes down to. Pick a safe place.’

  There was an echo here she didn’t like: Dansk on their first meeting. You agree to stay out of this business entirely, and in return I’ll let you know the outcome. Things had changed since then. Her world was haywire and she didn’t have the resources to straighten it out on her own. A woman with a fractured lover: What could she do? Her boundaries had narrowed, her options diminished.

  ‘Well?’ Kelloway asked. ‘Do I hear a thank you?’

  She was thinking of the forest and the estuaries of darkness, the howl of coyotes and the sorry little pipsqueaks of their victims. She wasn’t in the mood for expressing gratitude because she didn’t feel any. It was another feeling she had, a kinship with those creatures of the pines that lived in fear of nocturnal predators with a craving for easy blood.

  65

  Dansk parked on the side of the mountain where a paved road had been laid close to the edge. Up here, people who’d accumulated great wealth built houses with amazing views of the city spread below. This was a place where you could stand on your balcony and sip your freshly squeezed orange juice on sunny mornings and say, Thank you, God, I’ve arrived. And maybe you’d spare a thought for the peasants toiling in the city far below, street-cleaners and janitors and maids, all the peons and wetbacks who laboured down there so you could live up here just a little nearer to heaven.

  He got out of the car and walked through dusky light to a set of iron gates. He could see a house at the end of a driveway of rose-coloured gravel chips. The gates weren’t locked. Up here, maybe people felt immune to the brigands in the city. Up here where private security cars patrolled back and forth, maybe they felt superbly secure.

  Dansk pushed the gates open and heard his feet crunch on the gravel.

  He heard an electronic beeping sound emerge from the house, faint but audible. He figured he’d set off an invisible alarm when he’d come through the gates. The sound stopped and a man appeared outside the house. He was dressed in neat brown slacks and a white cotton polo-neck. He had grey hair, well-trimmed. Dansk smiled and kept walking towards the man.

  About six feet away, Dansk stopped. The guy had a stern look, slightly canine. Dansk tried to see some resemblance in the face to Amanda, but he couldn’t find one. He remembered from his background research that Morgan Scholes was a widower and wondered how long ago his wife had died.

  Dansk said, ‘Sorry for the intrusion.’

  Morgan Scholes had white hair on the backs of his hands. ‘There’s a sign at the gate,’ he said. ‘It says no trespassing, and that’s precisely what it means.’

  ‘I must have missed it,’ Dansk said. Morgan Scholes’s voice was authoritative. He gave an impression of crabbed impatience, belligerence held in check. A ruthless business type, Dansk thought, steamrolling the competition, amassing enormous amounts of cash and breaking bones along his merry acquisitive way.

  Dansk kept smiling. ‘My ID,’ he said.

  Morgan Scholes looked at the Justice Department credentials. This appeared to make him less aggressive. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘It’s about your daughter,’ Dansk said. ‘I just want a quick word.’

  Morgan Scholes said, ‘Let’s get out of this damn heat first.’

  The house was all arches, Mexican tiles, ceramic pots and Western art. Dansk followed Scholes into a room filled with oil-paintings of cowboys.

  ‘Sit,’ Scholes said. ‘Drink?’

  ‘Maybe a soda,’ Dansk said. He didn’t sit. He never sat on command, that’s what dogs did.

  Scholes went into the kitchen. Dansk examined some framed photographs on a sideboard: Amanda on graduation day, gowned and mortarboarded and ready to shake plump fruits off the tree of the world. She looked fresh and innocent, hatched only minutes before. Her mouth had a slight enigmatic smile, but there was latent determination in the expression. He ran a fingertip across the glass, thinking he could almost feel the warmth of her flesh, the soft mouth. The next picture was that of a woman in a swimsuit. The resemblance to Amanda was obvious, so this had to be the dead mother. She had provocative lips and was staring evenly into the camera, like she was daring the photographer to disrobe.

  Morgan Scholes came back carrying two ice-cold cans of root beer. He gave one to Dansk.

  ‘So, what’s this daughter of mine up to now? She’s drawn into situations like a fly to horse-shit. Quits her job one minute, the next she’s running around doing God knows what because of some stiff in a river. Too busy to speak to me on the phone, that’s for sure.’

  ‘The independent type,’ Dansk said. He sipped the soda. Chemicals and carbonation.

  ‘Independent wouldn’t be my first choice, more like mulish. Gets her feet planted and won’t budge. So what’s happening?’

  ‘I need to ask her a few questions,’ Dansk said. ‘Some clarification concerning the dead body, that’s all.’ This amazing calm he felt. It was like his heartbeat was down to five a minute and his nerves narcotized. ‘But I’m having a problem trying to locate her. I tried her home in Scottsdale.’

  ‘Welcome to the club.’

  ‘You any idea where she is?’

  Morgan Scholes shook his head. ‘Not a clue.’

  Dansk said, ‘I understand there’s a cabin someplace up near Flag.’

  ‘I’ve been trying that number too. No luck.’

  ‘Where is the cabin exactly?’

  ‘Why? You think she’s up there not answering the phone?’

  ‘Maybe she’s en route,’ Dansk said. ‘I don’t know. I have to cover the possibilities.’

  ‘I built that cabin, you know. With these,’ and Morgan Scholes raised his hands in the air. ‘The idea was a retreat away from everything.’

  The self-made man, Dansk thought.

  ‘Except I never spent much time at the goddam place. Too busy. Story of my life.’

  Dansk wondered how long he could maintain the smile. He was beginning to feel lockjaw. ‘I was thinking I’d take a run up there. If she shows up, fine.’

  ‘If she’s not there, you’ve driven a long way for nothing.’

  ‘I’ll take the chance,’ Dansk said. ‘What I’d like is the location of the cabin.’

  Scholes looked hesitant. ‘It’s damned hard to get to.’

  ‘I understand that, but it’s important I contact her, otherwise I wouldn’t be here bothering you.’

  Scholes rose from the arm of the leather chair. He stared at Dansk, a look of assessment. Just for a moment it seemed that the old guy was about to resist giving out information.

  ‘You’ll need a map,’ he said finally. He went to a desk, took a sheet of paper and a pen from a drawer.

  Dansk watched him draw neat lines on the paper.

  ‘Leave Flagstaff on Route Forty heading west. Go about thirteen miles. You’ll come to a track on the right that’s poorly marked except for an ancient sign that says “No Hunting”. The letters are faded. I’ll mark that with an X. Go down this track about five miles. Two miles down the track you’ll come to a bridge over a creek. I’ll mark that B. Go slow there because that bridge is shaky. On the other side there’s a path which isn’t easy to find because it’s overgrown. I wouldn’t be taking any car of mine beyond that bridge unless it was four-wheel drive. It’s rough.’

  Dansk gazed at the map. X for turning. B for bridge.

  ‘You follow the path for a mile, and you come to a fork. You keep going right. See this line I’m making? Follow that. It’s
the only access track to the cabin, and it’s damn narrow, so stick to it. Go left and you’re lost.’

  ‘So I keep going right at the fork.’

  ‘Exactly. You won’t see much in the way of landmarks except a million trees that all look the same. I’m marking this C for the cabin. And if you run into my daughter, tell her I’m not too pleased with her right now.’ Scholes handed the sheet of paper to Dansk.

  ‘I’m obliged,’ Dansk said.

  ‘If Amanda happens to call in the meantime, I’ll tell her you’re looking for her. You got a number where she can reach you?’

  This tricky moment. Dansk had been waiting for it, expecting it. Say Amanda phones her father. Her father tells her somebody called Dansk has been asking for her. It couldn’t be allowed to happen that way. His heart accelerated and the edge of his vision dimmed and he stared at Morgan Scholes who seemed surrounded by a sudden mist.

  ‘Something wrong?’ Scholes asked.

  Dansk thought, Do this thing, do it now.

  He whipped the Ruger out of his waistband and from a range of 6 or 7 feet he shot Scholes in the head. He felt the kick of the pistol in his fist, and it reminded him of the sting of the baseball bat when he’d hit Skipper Klintz. He flashed back all those years, down through the fogged passages of time, and even as Scholes staggered back it was Skipper Klintz Dansk saw, a thick-skulled kid with a crew cut and snow falling lightly in the dark and blood in the snow and a scared cat screeching out of a trash can. Dansk lowered the gun to his side and stepped closer to Scholes, who’d fallen against his desk and knocked over a limestone paperweight decorated with some Navaho conceit. It had broken clean in two.

  When you take your seat in the Blood Bijou you break some things, Dansk thought.

  The map Scholes had sketched for him had half a dozen spots of blood on it. He picked it up, walked to the door, hesitated, then took Amanda’s graduation photograph. He left the house and walked down the pathway, and this time he didn’t hear the crunch of gravel under his feet. Goddam, goddam, he was thinking.

  He reached his car. He sat without moving and stuck the gun back inside the paper bag. The picture of the young Amanda lay in his lap. He looked into her face. Amanda in my lap. Amanda lying near my groin. He nibbled on his pinky. I killed a guy. He stared down in the direction of the city, the layered pall of pollution. Suddenly street lamps came on. Scholes’s light went out and the street lamps were switched on, like illuminations to mark the old guy’s demise.

  His phone rang. He picked it up in a hand that felt numb.

  McTell said, ‘She left the building. With Rhees.’

  Dansk felt removed from himself. The building – the word seemed to have cast off meaning. He had to remind himself. The building. Police HQ.

  McTell said, ‘Minor problem, Anthony. She’s in one of those four-wheel-drive Broncos with a cop driving. Looks like she got herself a little protection.’

  Protection. Dansk closed his eyes. ‘Any backup? Any other vehicles following?’

  ‘None I can see.’

  ‘Is Rhees with her?’ I killed a guy and I don’t feel a goddam thing.

  ‘Yeah, he’s with her. So how come she’s got protection, Anthony? Cops believe her story after all? Something you didn’t anticipate?’

  Dansk heard a note in McTell’s voice, an undercurrent of what – gloating? ‘If they bought her story, they’d give her more than one cop inside the Bronco, McTell. Believe me. You’d also see a backup car you could spot a mile off. She’s being patronized. The cop’s like a condom she can wrap round her fears.’

  ‘If you say so,’ McTell remarked, that funny note still in his voice.

  Dansk was jazzed a little, thinking about this unexpected cop. The lady had low-level protection, a fact of life you had to deal with. Things came up and you coped with them. Dansk’s Law.

  One cop wasn’t a disaster. McTell and Pasquale could deal with the cop at the right time. The rest was his own business. Shapes formed and fell into place. Everything had its own little slot. The future was no mystery.

  ‘Where are they exactly?’

  McTell said, ‘They’re driving on I-Seventeen. Passing the Thunderbird exit.’

  ‘Stay with them.’

  He punched in Pasquale’s number and asked, ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’m on, lemme see, Indian School Road approaching the interstate.’

  Dansk took a map from the glove compartment. He moved a fingertip directly north. It was just as he’d figured: she was see-through. I know you, babe. In another reality we might have been close and this affinity would have had a different outcome, but now I sit with a Ruger in a brown-paper sack and your face in my groin and think of unhappy endings.

  ‘McTell says they’re in a cop vehicle. I don’t like that,’ Pasquale said.

  ‘Just keep going, Pasquale.’

  Dansk drove for a while. The matter was settled in his mind, only the mechanics remained.

  He called McTell back. ‘Still no sign of backup?’

  ‘Nothing I’d point a finger at.’

  ‘Where are you now?’

  ‘The sign I just passed said Flagstaff one hundred and eighteen miles.’

  She was still on course. She’d feel safe now. She had a cop with a gun to comfort her. She’d be letting down her defences a little, saying soothing words to Rhees, holding his hand. Tra-la-la, everything in her garden was beginning to bloom again. She thinks.

  He drove about 10 miles. Much of the traffic was out of state, sun-seekers from the Dakotas and Nebraska who lumbered south in bulky motor homes, exchanging monotonous wheatfields for the furnace. The landscape reverted to desert. Cacti blazed gold out on the brown-red flats and the sun was dying in an extravagant palette of pinks and purples and yellows.

  His phone buzzed and he picked it up, expecting Pasquale or McTell, but it was Loeb, sounding like a man trapped in a barrel of molasses.

  ‘We need to talk,’ Loeb said.

  ‘What’s on your mind?’ He didn’t like the idea of Loeb contacting him. Especially now, when he was preoccupied.

  ‘Face to face, Anthony. I don’t like talking into these gadgets. I know they’re supposed to be secure, but I have a suspicious nature. Where are you?’

  ‘The middle of nowhere,’ Dansk said.

  ‘Specifically,’ Loeb said.

  ‘There’s some kind of road-house coming up,’ Dansk said, spotting a ratty wooden tavern overlooking the interstate. An orange neon sign was lit. JACK’S DINER. STEAKS. RIBS.

  ‘Is this important, Ralph?’

  ‘Just tell me a place we can meet.’

  Dansk pulled off the freeway and into the parking-lot and explained where he was. ‘Give me thirty minutes,’ Loeb said.

  66

  Jack’s Tavern was crammed with good old boys hee-hawing and playing eight-ball with cigarette packs tucked in the sleeves of their T-shirts. Country music came wailing from the place. Dansk walked up and down the parking area. The music annoyed him.

  The sun had gone when a green Nissan entered the lot and parked. Loeb stepped out, his face dark and aggressive. ‘What the fuck game are you playing, Anthony?’

  ‘Meaning?’

  Loeb expelled air in a choked manner. ‘I just spent half an hour with the cops.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘The lady goes to the cops. The cops call Washington. I get an intercept. I meet the cops. The lady is present in the room for a time.’ Loeb shivered although the night air was hot.

  ‘They’re not going to believe her,’ Dansk said.

  Loeb placed a hand on Dansk’s sleeve. ‘First off, she recognized me. Soon as she looks at me, I hear the whine of her brain hydraulics. She starts in with sharp little questions disguised as innocent enquiries. How do you suppose she knew me?’

  Dansk said, ‘Maybe she saw you talking to me somewhere. Maybe she did some spying.’

  ‘What it comes down to is you were supposed to do the business with her, but there s
he is in the cop’s office. No holograph, Anthony. The woman in the flesh, and not very happy.’

  ‘I work my own way,’ Dansk said. He was walking the boundaries of sheer displeasure now, staking little fence-posts of irritation on the perimeters of his property.

  Loeb said, ‘Work? What you’re doing is building some Byzantine edifice. This isn’t a fucking mosque under construction, Anthony. I told you before, no tangents. And suddenly there I am face to face with the woman.’

  ‘The cops won’t buy her story,’ Dansk said.

  ‘They shouldn’t have been given the goddam opportunity to hear her story! You let her get to the cops. You allowed that. Fuck only knows what’s going through your head. I can’t keep track of you any more, Anthony.’

  You’ll never know what goes through my head, Loeb. ‘So she talked to the cops, and you talked to the cops. What do they think of her story?’

  ‘They think it’s fluff. At least that’s what they say.’

  ‘I rest my case,’ Dansk said. He looked at Loeb and out of nowhere he had the feeling the old guy wasn’t being absolutely honest about something. He wasn’t sure what.

  ‘Premature, Anthony. Maybe in normal circumstances they’d cross the street to avoid her because she reeks of paranoia, except for a couple of important things. One of them is this dead cop. Cops don’t like their colleagues dead. They become very tetchy. Small things get blown out of proportion. Fluff goes under the microscope, Anthony, and suddenly everything’s complicated.’

  Dansk looked at the night sky. You want to talk complicated, Loeb, lift up your eyes. Check out the firmament.

  ‘A dead cop,’ Loeb said, ‘and a letter from Isabel Sanchez. A letter you didn’t bother to mention to me.’

  ‘There’s no letter,’ Dansk said, which was true, if you looked at it a certain way.

  ‘Not according to what the prosecutor told the cops.’

  ‘The prosecutor’s full of shit,’ Dansk said.

  ‘Shit to one side, the cops think about their dead colleague and wonder about the contents of the alleged letter and suddenly they’ve got questions, and I’m the one who has to sit there and come up with answers, not you. You’re too fucking busy playing your games. Life isn’t a theme park somebody put you in charge of. I asked for simplicity. I asked for no funny sleight of hand.’