Minus Tide (13 page)

A dense mountain of fog had begun to devour the bridge a piece at a time. Just great, James thought, we’re heading right into it. Pretty soon we’ll be in the soup too, and I won’t be able to see a damn thing. When he glanced up to watch the last fragment of bridge disappear, he thought he saw three figures peering down at them from the steel railing, their outlines limned by headlights of a vehicle left idling.

“Ann, look,” James said. But when Ann raised her eyes, the men on the bridge were already hidden by a sweeping arm of fog.

“What is it?”

“I think it was them. I’m sure it was them. Who else could it be?”

“What are we going to do?”

“We’ve got no choice but to drift into the fog. They’ll only be able to guess where we’re going after that.”

“But it’ll only be a matter of time before they find us again.”

“Unless we’re able blow town without them catching us first. If we have a decent head start we could get to a bigger city where they’d never find us.”

“I can’t leave. My aunt depends on me. I can’t go anywhere now.”

“It’s up to you what you do. All I’m saying is that since Duane is a pile of stinking ashes...”

“So that’s the real reason you’ve come back?”

“Of course it is. Do you really think I came back to make peace?”

“I don’t know James. A few minutes ago I was feeling sorry for you. But I guess I’ve forgotten how much you hate it here.”

“But you do remember what we agreed on?

“I remember.”

“Then would you please tell me why the money’s not where we left it?”

“You went to get it?”

“How else would I know it got moved?” James said.

Fresh tears burned against Ann’s cheeks, making her conscious of how chilled she was. She wiped her face, fought back the sudden urge to bum a smoke. Her hand drifted down into her pocket. The .38 was cold against her palm.

“I got scared, James. When I didn’t hear from you I thought something might have happened...”

“So you thought you’d move the money just in case someone else came looking for it?”

“Yes.”

“And you expect me to believe you?”

“That’s up to you. All I know is that you’re here to get what’s yours. And even if Duane is sitting in an urn at his crazy mother’s house, he kind of isn’t dead if we’ve still got problems.”

James leaned forward and studied Ann’s face as it was being swallowed by fog. “Well look at you. You haven’t even left town and you’ve grown so smart. I have to believe you, Ann, I’ve got no choice. Now will you to tell me where it is?”

Chapter 25

After her mother was gone he’d started making more trips to Portland. He often brought Ann. She was a good lookout, could tap the horn to let him know when anyone was coming, when anyone looked like they had trouble in mind. And her aunt would go to bed early and had no clue they where leaving town late at night and getting back before sunrise. Duane had told Ann not to say a word to anyone, that it could put a lot of people in danger, including her.

“You did good Ann,” he’d said. “Real good.”

Ann had watched him reach down and nudge the pistol further under the car seat. She didn’t think the cop had bought her act at all. Yet for some reason he hadn’t turned it into a big deal. Maybe he wasn’t expecting to see her when he’d pulled Duane over for speeding so late on a school night, in a town where they didn’t even live. Perhaps he’d just felt sorry for her.

“You said you’d take me to Dairy Queen. And that was two hours ago.”

A smile had ruptured below Duane’s straggly moustache. He’d still had most of his perfect teeth then, was fanatical about flossing. When Duane smiled like that she knew he was thinking about other things. He could talk to her while seeming unaware of her, as if she were as invisible as all the others he’d begun talking to when he thought she wasn’t listening.

They’d watched as the cop came by for a final pass. Ann had reached for the door. She’d made up her mind that she was going to flag him down and confess everything—that she wasn’t sick, that Duane sometimes made her wait in the car all by herself late a night.

“Please darling,” Duane had told her. He’d caught her wrist roughly. His fingers had burned like rope. “You don’t really want that man coming back to talk to me.”

He’d watched the cop cruise by and laughed. Ann’s wrist was reddened after he let it go. She’d slid away from him as far as she could while he started the Camaro, salt worn and more the straw color of piss than the canary yellow it had once been. The ocean air ate away at everything she’d thought, including some people’s minds. She hated the hoarse sound of the engine when he revved it, how he always loved to leave behind a patch of burning rubber as if he was some kind of badass and not a bottom-feeding drug dealer. She could see that he was worried. His face was a sheen of sweat and he stank like fertilizer and it made Ann gag. She’d had to lower her window for some air. I won’t have to fake being sick, I’ll be sick.

“You’ve got to hold it just a little longer, Ann. We need to get on the freeway before that cop comes around again.”

“He’s not coming back. You say that every time.”

“I swear I could almost read what he was thinking when he went past. Couldn’t you?”

“No, Duane.”

“I guess we’ll find out little girl. But I still think there’s something in his gut that isn’t sitting right and I bet you he’s trying to come up with a reason to pop my trunk.”

“He’s gone,” Ann said. “He doesn’t care ...”

Duane drove fast when he thought he was being followed, which was usually most of the time. Closer to Traitor Bay he knew the cops and they mostly left him alone. But Portland was always too big for Duane. He felt exposed, couldn’t maintain his 360- degree vision without a couple bumps up the nose to keep him alert. Lately the stuff had started to show its side effects. It made him think he was clairvoyant.

Chapter 26

Sometimes they’d meet people in an all night restaurant or a bowling alley and Duane wouldn’t make her stay in the car. If he was trying to impress, he’d make a show of spoiling her—of buying her all the chocolate shakes or fries she wanted or handing over money for arcade games without complaining. To Duane Ann’s face blindness made her the perfect partner in crime. He took comfort in the fact that if the police ever made Ann stare at a book of mug shots they wouldn’t have much luck.

Before James and Ann moved back from Portland, Duane had sold the house and was living out of a cheap motel along 101 with an addict girlfriend who would one day sell him out. Ann was living with her aunt and helping with the store, trying to bring some stability back to her life. She didn’t have much to do with Duane but it still hadn’t stopped him from coming by the store to try and talk to her. The town was growing weary of him too. He owed a lot of people money and the interest was costing him in teeth.

Despite Ann’s warnings, James began hanging around with Duane and his girlfriend Traci, mostly because he didn’t have many friends left in Traitor Bay and Duane always had plenty of pot to share. Traci was well known by the Traitor police for disorderly conduct but was never charged. They usually drove her back to the motel or called Duane to pick her up. Sheriff Dawkins warned Duane that he didn’t want to see her doing it anymore so on the nights that he went to Portland he made sure he left her heavily sedated.

One afternoon James talked Ann into going trout fishing with him and Duane far up Traitor River. Ann agreed so long as she could drive her own car. She didn’t trust Duane on the hairpin mountain roads, never knew if he’d be too buzzed to drive safely. She could tell she’d hurt Duane’s feelings but he’d said nothing. James rode with her and for several miles they followed the yellow Camaro on roads leading away from the river and cut past empty cow pastures and old barns being torn apart by blackberry vine. Where the sagging barbed wire fences ended the county land began—crisscrossed with forest roads knifed down to the clay substratum that recorded a tapestry of deer and tire tracks. Duane smoked his tires at this point and roared on ahead, passed a camper trailer with two dogs gnashing their teeth and disappeared around a sharp bend in the road where the rocky shoulder was marked by wooden crosses and kitschy shrines of plastic flowers and deflated balloons.

The river reappeared again at the bottom of a steep embankment, narrow now and shimmering like silver coins flowing from an upended sack. Light penetrating through rifts in the thick canopy showed pale green water braided with pearl foam. After the road climbed higher and leveled out, the river spread open again and moved slower. On a treeless acre they saw a cedar shingled building sitting near the edge of the bank, a cloud of wood smoke curling between the vehicles parked in the graveled lot. Two pickup trucks sat with drying crusts of mud, a tan Cadillac with mildew-blackened roof rot they knew belonged to an ex-minister who’d fallen on hard times. Duane’s Camaro was parked there too, fishing rods poking out the backseat window.

Ann had immediately pulled onto the next shoulder and stopped.

“Shit. I didn’t agree to this ...”

“It’s going to be okay,” James said. “A couple drinks first isn’t going to hurt nobody.”

“I didn’t want to go fishing with that fool in the first place. I was only trying to be nice. Thought I’d surprise Kate with some rainbows for dinner.”

“You shouldn’t be so hard on him. We’ve all got our problems to deal with.”

“Well I’m glad to see the two of you have grown so close. Maybe he’ll give you a job as his lookout and you’ll actually get paid.”

“I know it was wrong what he did back then. But I think he’s really sorry about it. I know he wants to patch things up with you.”

“Give me a break. Duane is a classic narcissist. In his world we’re nothing but paper cutouts and you know it.”

When they’d walked in he was already holding court. A double shot of Cuervo glittered in front of him while he sucked at a Marlboro. His captive audience pretended to be attentive, on the off chance that Duane was flush and would soon be buying drinks for the privilege. What they didn’t know was that Duane was expecting them to spot him a few. The bartender, a big sullen man whom Ann had seen walking his dog on the beach while she was running, took little effort to hide his wariness. Well informed of his customer’s sketchy behavior, he’d seemed readied at first to punish Duane for the slightest infraction. But it was Sunday night and the bar was dead, would be until ladies night on Tuesday—not that there were a lot of women willing to make the trip out here. So long as he pays his tab, let the guy bullshit as much as he wants.

When it didn’t look like Duane was going to stop drinking, Ann and James left for a well known fishing hole less than a mile away. They’d still managed to catch some plump hatchery trout before it got too dark. Not a lot of flavor, but if you dusted them with enough salt and fried them in butter you could eat them with their crunchy skins on.

Duane had showed up close to sunset, chain smoking and shaky, his right eye swollen shut and a bleeding incisor hanging askew. He’d apologized for not coming with them to fish, but business was business and you couldn’t pass it up when it dared to fall into your lap. As he’d leaned against the Camaro for support he told them he was going to be late for some appointments in Portland if he didn’t leave soon. There’d be no time to go back to the motel to check on Traci and he’d asked Ann if she and James would mind checking on her, it would really help him out. He’d tried to give her some money to go out somewhere nice for dinner and she’d pushed his hand away.