Deadly Waters (4 page)

V

02/23/06 20:02 PST

John Taylor opened his front door just after the bell rang a second time. Outside he found Erin Mondragon, dressed in a canary yellow suit that looked almost white under the porch light. Standing at the top of Taylor’s long driveway, and on the front step by the door, was a young man who bore an eerie resemblance to Al Harris, Erin’s old college roommate. At that point of the evening Taylor had drunk only two cocktails in his household bar, and he was in a very lucid, talkative state of mind.

“I didn’t expect to see you again,” he said to Mondragon.

“We were around and thought we would take the chance you’d be home,” said the dapper Erin. “This is Eddie Harris, Al’s boy,” he introduced the tall young man wearing heavy black spectacles. “I told you; he’s an engineer in Wisconsin.”

“I loved your father,” said Taylor, putting his drink on the stand inside the door so he could shake Eddie’s hand. “Come in. Come in. What’s that you’ve got? A video?” Taylor asked of the black rectangular object Eddie was carrying.

“An old movie,” said the engineer, who was wearing the same sort of big-stitched blue work shirts Taylor remembered the elder Harris had favored.

“You used to like old war movies,” said Mondragon. “I thought you might like watching this one while we visited. It’s an old British movie, a good old ‘clout the Kraut in the snout’ film.”

“As opposed to a ‘slap the Jap in the yap’ movie,” said Taylor. “Take off your coats, get comfortable. They say the only thing worse than winter in San Francisco is summer.” The last sentence he spoke did not make a great deal of sense, but young Harris and Mondragon did not object.

The two guests looked about Taylor’s Eisenhower-era ranch style home, filled as it was with family pictures and old furniture rather than the artwork and decorator-inspired touches one might expect in a rich man’s home. Taylor set out coasters for his guests on the living room coffee table and brought them each an icy-cold gin and tonic, an inappropriate drink for that time of year. They did not object to that either.

The engineer popped the tape into Taylor’s VCR, and to Taylor’s delight the film was a 1954 black and white tale of stalwart men serving in World War II, the sort of film his father loved to watch when Taylor was a boy.
The
Dam
Busters
it was called, and it involved some British pilots bombing German hydro-electric dams in the Ruhr Valley. Taylor gathered from the technical briefings the actor/pilots held that they were using some sort of special bomb that skipped across the surface of the water and exploded against the dams.

“Who’s that actor?” he asked Mondragon of someone he thought he recognized. “His face is familiar.”

“Sir Michael Redgrave,” said Erin. “In this country, we know more about his daughters.”

“The one who was a rebel of some sort,” thought Jack Taylor aloud.

“Everyone’s daughter was a rebel of some sort in the Sixties,” said Mondragon.

When the movie showed the British bombs speeding across the German reservoirs and into the dams, Taylor asked if they had not used a special high explosive to destroy such massive structures.

“Not really,” said Eddie Harris. “They only needed to make a crack in the dams. The pressure from millions of tons of water did the rest. Sometimes the process took minutes, hours even, and then the dam broke open. A shaped charge would do the job even quicker.”

“A shaped charge?” asked Taylor.

The engineer explained that a shaped charge was a type of explosive developed on a much smaller scale for anti-tank shells. In such a device there were two explosions; the first blast flattened over a small portion of the target’s surface and the second explosion-that of the shaped charge-was propelled into a very small pin-point on the weakened portion of the target surface; a pin prick within a fist was how Harris described it.

“The trick is to hit the dam at about two-thirds of the way up from the base,” said Eddie. “Right there is the pressure point. If the dam fails there, it will eventually fail elsewhere.”

“Then this movie is based on fact?” said Taylor.

“Oh yes,” Mondragon assured him. “The RAF destroyed the Ruhr dams left and right. Turns out they were the most vulnerable targets the Nazis had.”

“I never would have guessed,” said Taylor. “Dams are so big...”

They watched the movie to its victorious conclusion, and Mondragon asked Taylor if he ever considered acting again.

“College was the end of that,” admitted Taylor. “I never had time for anything outside the company.”

“I used to think like that,” said Mondragon, rising from the sofa and pacing Taylor’s carpeted floor. “What do think about Chekhov?”

“I think he’s Russian,” said Taylor.

“You need to try him out,” said Mondragon and gave John a card bearing the telephone number and address of an acting troupe. “There’s a little theater group, a bunch of amateurs, putting on
The
Cherry
Orchard
in North Beach. In the original language, of course. I’m going to be the station master. The part of Fiers the butler would be perfect for you. Not too big, not too small, a pathetic old man. As I say, the play will be in the original Russian.”

“I don’t speak a word of Russian,” said Taylor, taken aback that Mondragon had made this suggestion.

“That’s where this girl comes in,” said Mondragon, and gave him another card. “A native born speaker. She can teach you a little grammar, some vocabulary, how to say your lines phonetically. Almost none of the other actors know Russian either. I remember how you picked up Spanish at Stanford.”

“I figured I needed it for the import business,” said Taylor.

“The girl, your tutor,” said Mondragon, “she is very pretty. In a pouty Slavic way. If you like older women, there are plenty of artistic types in the troupe and in the audiences at these things. Divorcees and aging trust fund babies. Why not have a bit of fun with a couple of them, eh?” He patted Taylor on the head in a familiar manner John thought was inappropriate behavior for a man he had not seen for many years. “We old boys need that sort of small diversion now that we’re out among the singles again. What else do we have to do?”

John did not care to hear his lack of a real job treated so lightly, but he promised to call the dialect coach if it would please Erin.

“Very good,” said Mondragon. “Alexandra is very pretty. I said that. Very, very pretty, in fact. Now that I think of her, I may need some teaching myself.”

“Ask about the fishing trip,” the engineer reminded Mondragon.

“What fishing trip?” Taylor asked.

“Oh, I mentioned to Eddie you might be going on a trip to Colorado with us this spring,” said Mondragon. “You and I talked about this already.”

“First acting, then Russian, now fishing in Colorado,” said Taylor. “What will you have me doing next?”

His mind was beginning to float on gin at this point of the evening. While he kept up his end of the conversation, it was not until he awoke the next morning that John Taylor asked himself how Mondragon had found his house in the first place.

VI

03/01/06 07:28 Arizona Standard Time

“Wake up, buddy,” Bob Mathers told Wayland Zah. “Time you got ready for work.”

Wayland rolled over in the bed and looked through partially closed eyes at the deputy sheriff. “What time is it?” He propped himself up and saw the alarm clock on the bed stand. “Not quite seven thirty! You mean it comes twice a day?”

“I was up at five,” said Bob, already clean shaven, showered, and in a pressed brown uniform.

“I’m feeling really Injun this morning,” said Wayland, pulling away the bedding and sitting upright.

“Uncle Wayland, you snore,” said Bob’s three-year old daughter Katie, who had slept down the hall from him and was peeking her tow head through the doorway of the guest room.

“I got sleep
abnormia
, baby doll,” said Wayland. “The government is going to give me a disability.”

“The word is apnea,” said Bob. “Come on. Get dressed. Your new job starts at eight fifteen pronto.”

“Uncle Wayland said we could call in coyotes today,” pled Katie, still at the bedroom door.

“Yeah, I was going to show how we do it in Tuba City,” began Wayland. “It’d be very multi-cultural. Give the child exposure to other ways of life. You and Becky would be almost progressive parents for once.”

“Your job at the airport begins today,” said Bob, handing Wayland the clothes the younger man had left hanging on a doorknob the night before. “Katie and you can call coyotes some other day.”

“You know,” said Wayland, reluctant to get all the way up, “I’ve had this revelation: I was thinking, what’s more important than children? Seeing how you work about a billion hours a day, and Rebecca works part-time, maybe I could hang around here and be a sort of nanny, or whatever you call a male nanny.”

“A ninnie,” suggested Bob.

“Anyway, I think Katie needs to be around an adult more,” said Wayland. “She spends all that time in day-care with other kids. I’d be glad to take up the slack for you and Rebecca. You know you can trust me. She and me get along great. You get one of those real nannies, like from England, and the next thing you know your life’s a made for TV movie. You can’t trust anybody who looks like Julie Andrews.”

“You’re getting dressed, buddy,” Bob Mathers told him. “Harold Peters is expecting you. All you have to do is fuel private planes. How hard can that be?”

“I’m a funny one to ask,” said Wayland. “I’ve never done it before. Have you?”

He fumbled through his pants pocket, located some nail clippers and began trimming his toe nails, as if he had an entire morning of leisure ahead of him.

“Come on,” said Bob and knelt to put Wayland’s legs into the pants. “The deal was: you could stay with us a few days until you got back on your feet. Excuse us, honey,” he said, and shut the door so his daughter could not peek while Wayland dressed.

The young half-Navaho had a quick breakfast in the kitchen with little Katie, and Bob’s wife Becky had to scold the two of them when Wayland, the one person in the world Katie loved as much as her parents, made funny faces and the child got to giggling and swallowed a mouthful of milk down her breathing tube.

Becky liked Wayland, but she also liked her house in an orderly condition. Wayland Zah, although he was her husband’s pet project, and though she knew she should regard him as her brother in Christ as the elders had taught her to do-was clearly an agent of chaos and could be tolerated only to a point.

“Honestly,” she declared, and waved her spatula at Wayland and her daughter, “I’m not fixing you pancakes ever again if you two keep this up! I mean it!” she assured them when Wayland stuck out his tongue and Katie giggled again.

At 11:05 that Monday morning, Bob Mathers was on duty at the sheriff’s station when he received a telephone call from Harold Peters, the administrator at the municipal airport northeast of Page.

“That damned friend of yours got into a fight with Cliff Collingworth this morning,” Harold told Bob. “I had to let him go.”

“You couldn’t give him even one whole day?” asked Bob.

“Truth is, I fired him about forty-five minutes ago,” said Harold. “I didn’t get around to calling you till now.”

“Where is he?” He already had a call from a tourist broken down south of town and did not need to go chasing about Page after Wayland.

“Who knows?” said Harold. “Those people wander around like antelope.”

Mathers was too busy to lecture Harold about racial stereotypes and, as the day gave him one emergency after another, he was too busy to hunt for Wayland. The hour was nearly midnight before Bob found his friend in front of the local Pizza Hut. Wayland Zah was riding around in circles in the tiny parking lot on a moped he claimed belonged--sort of--to a girlfriend.

“Buddy, you threw the entire last month away,” said Bob, though Wayland was not prepared for a lecture.

“Cliff, that monkey boy with the big skull, he called me a…” he rode the moped in tight circles around Bob, and when the circles became a tad too tight he fell off the machine. “I had to hit him,” concluded Wayland, as he and the deputy watched the small cycle spin on its side and come to a stop.

“With a wrench?” asked Bob.

“I said he has a big skull,” said Wayland. “You do more damage with a wrench, boss. I’ve got fine bones in my hand. Couldn’t just punch him.”

He held up his fist in the sparse light the street lamps provided to show Bob the fine structure of his knuckles. Had Bob been as intoxicated as his friend, he might have thought the demonstration funny, too. The deputy turned from him and picked up the cycle so it could rest on its kickstand.

“I’m sorry, boss,” said Wayland. “I’m sorry I drink. I’m sorry I’m no good. I’m just an Injun, and nothing is any good. Look, tell Becky thank you for taking care of me here, and tell Katie I love her a bunch, but I think I better stay on my own.”

“Katie will want you to come see her,” said Bob, still looking away from Wayland and pretending to adjust something on the mo-ped.

“I said I was sorry,” said Wayland and squatted on his heels to keep himself steady. “Living with you these three weeks or so was like being in a real family. Nobody got hit or did anything shameful. Your Becky made me pray a lot more than I would choose to, but then she’s Mormon, isn’t she? I really didn’t mind that. Everything’s my fault. I don’t fit in among that much goodness.”

“You know you’re welcome anytime,” said Bob, unable to turn about and look directly at his friend. “I’ve got a little money here,” he put his hand in his pocket. “You’ll need to be a hotel, get something to eat.”

“Go away, boss,” said Wayland. “I like you. You and Becky.... your Katie. You’re about the best people I think I ever met. I’ll miss your girl. I won’t miss old Harold Peters.” Wayland modulated his voice and gave a perfect imitation of the airport administrator’s halting drawl. “Boy,” said Wayland, “get yer brown ass out there and fill me some airplanes!”

“What will you do?” asked Bob.

“I called my friend today,” said Wayland, and held up his wrist with the butterfly tattoo on it to show whom he meant. “He wired me some money.”

This got Bob’s complete attention. His spine stiffened. He turned to Wayland and spoke more as an officer of the law than as a friend. “I don’t know what this is you’re cooking up. I know it’s criminal. You do this, Wayland, and I’ll have to arrest you again.”

“Nothing like that, boss,” said Wayland. “He says he needs me to guide him around the area a little, then I’ll do some telephone work for him. No drugs. Nothing illegal.”

“You’ll be like a tele-marketer?”

“Something like that,” said Wayland, but he left the exact something unexplained.