No Man's Land (18 page)

“Why’s that?” Rosen asked.

“Lack of probable cause,” said Brownsuit.

Rosen shook his head. “That whole Pacific Northwest is a pain in
the ass that way. And Driver?”

“That’s our best bet. Gets a constant stream of letters from
his mother in Prineville, Oregon. When he first went down he got
letters from shipmates and other navy personnel, but those quit after
a couple of years. Nowadays it’s only his mother.”

“How we doing on that front?”

“The Portland office is working with both the Oregon State
Police and the locals. We’ve got a local wiretap warrant and will
have people on the scene within the next couple of hours.”

Rosen nodded his approval. “Good,” he said. He turned to the
state policeman. “What are we doing to protect the highways and
byways? These skells have already killed a couple of merchants. We
need to bring them under lock and key as soon as possible.”

“We’ve got state and locals in a seven-state area on the
lookout for a nineteen seventy-nine Ford pickup truck with a Caveman
cab-over-camper. Oregon plate number AET874. We believe the vehicle
was stolen from the service yard of Desert Distributing, down the
street here in Pauling, Arizona. The yard security man was reported
missing by his wife. The truck is missing from the yard. Luminal
shows traces of blood on the guard shack floor.”

Rosen began to rifle through the morass of paperwork spread about
the table. “Where’ve I heard that before? Desert Distributing.”
He dropped one pile and picked up another. “Here,” he said.

“The cons let six locals and their delivery trucks go unharmed.”

He began to read. “Mesa Laundry and Uniforms, United Grocers,
Arizona Linen Supply.” He tapped the page with his fingernail.
“Desert Distributing.”

The room was silent. “Gotta be how they rode out,” Rosen
declared. “Find that truck. Comb every inch of it.”

The state cop was already halfway to the door when Rosen’s voice
brought him to a halt. “Inside and out,” Rosen added.

“Check inside those damn tankers.”

Brownsuit got to his feet and straightened his jacket. “The
press?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Rosen said. “Investigation in progress. Pursuing
a number of leads. Nationwide manhunt. That’s it.”

Corso held his breath and inched his head around. He’d always
been a guy who looked the other way when the doctor gave him a shot,
so he sure as hell didn’t want to catch the glint of the blade as
it started toward its journey for his heart. As a guy who didn’t
figure to die in bed, he’d often imagined his final moment. The
second in which he knew it had gone to shit and the jig was all the
way up. Penetration seemed to be the constant motif, be it a bullet
plunging its way to his heart or an ice pick through the eye; the
imagined final nanosecond of his consciousness always began with the
tearing of his flesh and always ended with a sudden shudder and a
final fade to black.

Black as the hand on his shoulder. Seemed like everybody in this
town had a pinky ring. Corso moved his eyes up the arm until he was
looking into as hostile a pair of brown orbs as he had ever seen.
“You been bothering Mrs. Gravley?” the voice asked.

“What?”

“You been bothering Mrs. Gravley?”

The hand on his shoulder turned Corso to the left. That’s when
he saw her. The old woman. The one who’d been sitting at the slot
machine. Still holding a blue Maxwell House coffee can G.M. Ford
half-full of quarters. “That’s him,” she said, pointing at
Corso.

“Guy was all over me like a cheap suit.”

“I stumbled,” Corso said. “I fell into her.”

“He groped me,” the old woman said. “Grabbed my knockers.”

“I fell into her. That was it.”

When the death grip on his shoulder eased. Corso stepped out from
under the hand. The guy wore a greasy red sport coat with a badge
attached to the front pocket. Casino security. He brought his face
close to Corso’s and sniffed a couple of times, then leaned away.
“I’ll take it from here Mrs. Gravley,” he said. “You go on
back to your machine. I’ll come round and check on you later.”

“Somebody probably got my machine by now.”

“They’s lots of machines, Mrs. Gravley.”

He listened patiently as she launched into a tirade about how the
machine was just about to pay off. How she was going to have to start
all over again on some accursed new machine, which would surely suck
her dry.

They stood amid the clang and clamor of the casino and watched her
waddle away.

“Used to be a showgirl in one of the big casinos. Years ago. Way
back when,” the guard said. “These days she gets a little bit too
much caffeine and all of a sudden every man who passes by is trying
to get into her pants.” He shook his big head in amusement.
“Probably was a time when it was true.”

“Time flies,” Corso said.

“Ain’t it the truth,” the guy said with a chuckle.

“I was hoping maybe you could do me a favor.”

“What’s that?”

“Call the FBI.”

Gone were the shoulder-length brown hair, the Fu Manchu mustache
and the perpetual Harley-Davidson scowl. Kehoe now stood clean-shaven
in front of the beauty shop mirror, using the palm of his hand to
test the collection of short black spikes rising from the top of his
head. “Cut yourself on this shit,” he offered with a grin.

“You’re a new man,” Driver said. “Even your own mother
wouldn’t recognize you.”

“She’d kick my ass she saw me like this.”

The beautician slid out from behind the counter and handed Kehoe
his change and an electric blue jar of hair gel. “You look great,
honey. Gals gonna be all over you like ugly on an ape.”

Driver was unable to satisfy himself as to the specifics of the
beautician’s gender. A creature with outsized breasts and a five
o’clock shadow was heretofore beyond his experience and was causing
him a great deal of confusion. Although he had never considered the
matter prior to that afternoon, he had come to realize that gender
was one of the first things with which his nervous system came to
grips when confronted by an unknown fellow creature and that an
inability to classify a fellow
Homo
sapiens
according
to gender seriously unhinged his basic manner of dealing with people,
leaving him addled and unable to proceed.

Driver’s head was shaved bald and polished to a shine. A week’s
worth of scruffy beard was trimmed to look intentional. The effect
was dramatic. Like Kehoe, he bore scant resemblance to the photo on
TV.

“Where you boys headed?” she/he wanted to know.

“Around,” Driver said. “Gonna bring it all around.”

She/he gave her gum a quick crack. “Well drop me a line when you
get there.” The idea set her/him off laughing. She/he bent at the
waist and cackled. “. . . Lemme know when you get there,”

she/he howled.

Kehoe’s hand was on the way to his pocket when Driver took him
by the arm and started him toward the door.

“Thanks for everything,” Driver said over his shoulder as they
slipped out the door.

“That motherfucker a boy or a girl?” Kehoe asked, jerking his
arm free of Driver’s grasp.

“What’s it matter?” Driver asked.

“I don’t kill women,” Kehoe said.

Driver laughed. “Nice to meet a man with standards.”

“Gotta draw the line somewhere.”

Driver stifled a strong desire to laugh. “Has it ever occurred
to you that murder may not be an acceptable problem-solving
technique?”

“It’s always worked for me, man.”

Driver kept moving toward the car; Kehoe reluctantly followed
along. A fierce desert sun had taken over the sky, painting the
winter air with a faint coat of warmth and scattering the clouds like
frightened sheep.

Driver popped the locks and they both got in. Kehoe belted himself
into the passenger seat, threw one last scowl at the House of Hair
and looked over at Driver.

“Where in hell are we headed anyway?” he demanded. Before
Driver could respond, he went on. “And don’t be givin’ me any
more of that circle shit neither. I’m talkin’ about a direction
or a place or somethin’ real like that.”

Driver started the silent engine and dropped the car into drive.

“North.”

“What for?”

Driver wheeled the car out into traffic. “I gotta see my mother
one last time.”

“And she’s like where?”

“North.”

Kehoe nodded his understanding to discretion. “She write you?”

“Yeah.”

“Cause they gonna sit on anybody you been in touch with.”

“I know.”

“They’re probably there already.”

Driver managed the thinnest of smiles. “Not a chance.”

Kehoe studied him. “You sure . . . ain’t you?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m sure.”

“How’s that?”

“Probably best I keep that to myself.”

“Probably is.”

“What about you?”

Kehoe thought it over. “We get that far, I’m thinking about
trying to get my ass into Canada.”

“Why’s that?”

Kehoe’s laugh was short and brittle. “ ’Cause they’re for
sure gonna find some way to burn us for those guards, Captainman.
They’ll make it a federal rap or something. They’ll make shit up
if they gotta. They gonna want to off our asses for good.”

“And Canada won’t send you back unless the feds agree not to
give you the death penalty.”

“That’s it, baby.”

Driver began to sing in a rich baritone. “
North to Alaska. Go
north, the rush is on . . .”

“We through?” Corso asked.

Special Agent Rosen abandoned his chair and walked over to the
window. He stood with his hands on his hips gazing down at the city
below. They’d spent the first two hours in a windowless
interrogation room on the sixth floor of the Federal Building in
downtown Phoenix. About the time Corso’s story began to check out .
. . after they found the stolen truck in the casino parking lot where
he’d said it would be . . . after they found the haz-mat suits
floating around inside the tanker truck, found the hotel room and the
casino security guard, they’d moved the show up two floors to the
corner conference room where they were now. Rosen leaned back against
the window and made heavy eye contact with Corso.

“How’s your hand?” he asked Corso.

“Better,” Corso said. “Thanks for the professional repair
work.”

“And you’ve got no idea where they may be headed.”

“None,” Corso said. “Kehoe claims to be alone on the planet
and Driver just rambles on and on about fish and grizzly bears and
blowflies and whatever else crosses his mind.”

“But he’s lucid some of the time.”

“Whenever he needs to be.”

“You think he’s faking it?”

“He’s real hard to read. Maybe that’s what happens when you
lock men up in white-tiled cells and leave the lights on
twentyfour/seven.”

“He ever mention his mother?”

“Not when I was around.”

Rosen ran it all through his circuits again. The younger agent
picked at his cuticles. The stenographer kept her hands still and her
face blank.

After an anxious moment Rosen said, “You’re free to go, Mr.
Corso.”

Corso got to his feet. Rosen looked back over his shoulder at the
ground below.

“I hear you shun the press, Mr. Corso.”

“Same way I shun hyenas and rattlesnakes,” Corso answered.

“Well you best put on your sneakers then, because every reporter
in the known world is downstairs waiting for you to come out.”

Corso crossed the room to Rosen’s side. He looked down and
heaved a sigh.

“We could take you out through the garage.”

Corso shook his head. “I’ve had my fill of government
hospitality for the day.”

They watched as Corso moved to the door in four long strides. He
pulled open the door, stepped into the breach and fixed each of them
with his gaze before disappearing from sight. Rosen picked up the
phone receiver and poked out a code.

“Mr. Corso’s been released,” he said. He listened for a
moment, his gaze sweeping the carpet. “Send her in,” he said
finally.

“I figured you’d keep Corso for a couple of days,” said the
younger agent.

“Feels to me like he’s leveling with us.” He shrugged.
“Anyway . . . we need him again, we’ll find him again.”

The door opened. A young woman in a gray business suit entered the
room, closing the door behind her. Despite the faint pinstripe and
the fine tailoring, the suit was unable to hide the nimble vitality
of her figure. She’d been a member of the U.S. bronze medal
volleyball team during the last Olympics and the muscles in her long
legs rippled beneath the fabric as she took a seat at the far end of
the conference table.

Rosen raised his eyebrows.

“The Portland office has a bit of problem,” she said in an
even voice.

“Such as?”

“Such as . . .” She sorted her words. “So far . . . it
doesn’t seem, at this point in the investigation . . . it doesn’t
seem as if Driver’s mother lives anywhere in or near Prineville,
Oregon.”

Rosen folded his arms and frowned. “Really?”

“Yes sir.”

“Her letters are all postmarked from there.”

“Yes sir.”

“How big a place is it?”

“Not very sir. It’s out in the high desert behind Bend. Folks
out there either work in wood products or they mold rubber at the Les
Schwab tire plant.”

Rosen rolled a hand over his wrist. “And they’ve . . .”

“They’ve got the locals and the staties involved.”

“They check the private mailboxes?”

“Forensics is examining every postmark meter within fifty miles,
trying to find out which one stamped the envelopes.”

“Are all the marks the same?”

“Quantico says they are.”

His thick eyebrows met in the center of his face. This was
supposed to have been the slam dunk section of the manhunt.