No Man's Land (19 page)

That’s why he’d assigned the task to Special Agent Westerman,
hoping to create a bit of early career success for her and thus spur
her on her way up the Bureau’s somewhat old-school promotion
ladder. She was a capable and well-trained young woman who had
endured the low-key sexism of the Phoenix Bureau Office with grace
and good cheer and thus, as far as Rosen was concerned, was deserving
of a career kick start.

“So,” Rosen said, “what do you think?”

“I’m thinking that maybe she’s very rural. Way out in the
sticks somewhere, where she doesn’t have much contact with other
people. I’m thinking that they’ll find her as they widen the
circle.”

“And if they don’t?”

“Then we’ll have ourselves a mystery sir.”

The crush of bodies brought out the worst in him. He made it
halfway down the tunnel of cameras and microphones and tape recorders
before somebody hit him in the face with a camera. From that point on
things got ugly. He shoved the offending camera hard enough to bounce
it off the face of the operator, breaking his glasses, sending him
staggering backward into the melee, where he tripped and fell among
the morass of feet and legs. His cries for help rose above the
shouted questions and the crush of bodies.

Corso cursed under his breath and continued to swim his way
through the crowd. The plan had been to outwalk the media. He had
long legs and liked to stretch them. News teams were set up to do
their business within a confined area. They needed plugs and cords to
operate. Out past the reach of technology, they were worse than
useless.

This, however, was going to be a problem. He’d exited the
building at the back of a cul-de-sac, leaving him adrift in a sea of
question-shouting, microphone-waving humanity, without hope of a cab
or even the vagaries of evening traffic to use as a buffer. He pulled
his chin up to avoid a handheld tape recorder. The evening sky was a
deep blue. The lights of the city had swallowed the stars. The noise
of men and their machines filled the air like a swarm of hornets.
Corso bit down hard and pushed forward.

He used his hands to move people out of the way. On the far side
of the enclosure, parked between a pair of FBI forensics wagons, a
huge brown-and-white motor home squatted along the curb with its
front door hanging open.

Corso recognized her right away. Melanie Somethingorother from the
American Manhunt
TV show. He’d done a segment five or six
years back when he still needed to tour books. She crooked her arm
and beckoned him her way. And then did it again, more urgently this
time.

Corso picked up his pace and dropped his shoulder. Like a bowling
ball he ricocheted his way across the expanse of pavement. As he
approached the motor home, she backed inside, holding the door open
as she slipped from view. Corso felt his weight rock the motor home
on its springs. A clank of the door and the click of the lock and
silence settled like a breeze. He looked around but failed to take
anything in. Running both hands through his thick black hair, he took
a deep breath.

“That’s worse than a prison riot,” he said.

She laughed. Rich and deep, the sound brought a smile to his face.

“You’d be the guy to know,” she said.

Corso moved to the center of the coach. Looked around.

“Spiffy,” he said.

Melanie shrugged. “It’s been sitting around the ABC lot for
years,” she said. “My agent negotiated for it, but I’ve never
really used it much before.”

Corso bent at the waist and peered out from between the curtains.

“Does this thing go? I mean, like is there a driver or
something?”

She wrinkled her creamy brow. “What do you mean driver? I’m
the driver. What kind of thing is that to say? You’re gonna be like
that, you can get back out, Mr.”

Corso showed his palms. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to offend. I can
be really dumb sometimes.”

Her expression said she agreed. “Where do you want to go?”

“Anyplace but here.”

She moved the beige curtains, exposing the windshield and side
windows, then slipped into the driver’s seat. “Airport?”

Corso thought about it. She started the engine.

“Howsabout Scottsdale?” he asked.

“Where in Scottsdale?”

She backed up until she felt a small thump of resistance, crimped
the wheel hard to the right and eased away from the curb.

“The Phoenician,” Corso said. “Take me to the Phoenician.
It’s a resort on Scottsdale Road.”

“I know where it is.”

A dozen photographers backpedaled in front of the moving motor
home, trying to take shots through the windshield. She tooted the
horn and raced the engine. She accelerated. The paparazzi peeled off
like ocean from the prow of a ship.

“At least you’ve got good taste in hotels,” she said as they
slid into southbound traffic. “You gonna hide out, that’s the
place to be doing it.”

“I’ll buy you dinner. There’s a restaurant in the hotel
named . . .”

“Mary Elaine’s,” she finished. “Great joint.”

Corso slid into the passenger seat and buckled up. She threw a
sideways glance in his direction. “Good taste in restaurants too,”
she said with a smile. “It’s a wonder some clever woman hasn’t
snapped you up by now.”

He turned her way. “Who says somebody hasn’t?”

“Your reputation precedes you, Mr. Corso.”

“Nice your mom’s still writing you letters,” Kehoe said. As
promised, they were heading north. Sliding along under a slate gray
sky, radio playing one of those gloom-and-doom preachers you only
find in the middle of nowhere. Out on the eastern horizon, a line of
storm clouds dropped forks of silver lightning, probing the ground
here and there, as if searching for sinners.

“Lotta guys go down . . . you know the family hangs in there for
a while . . . does the best they can . . . writes and visits and
sends shit . . . but you know man, life goes on. People die. Others
gotta get on with their lives. Can’t spend the rest of their days
draggin’ some con along behind them like some old anchor. Somebody
else comes along. Get a fresh start maybe. New names in a new place
where people don’t look at ’em funny. Can’t hardly blame ’em
for movin’ on.”

He wasn’t expecting a response. Driver had been in nevernever
land ever since they stopped for food and gas a couple of hours back.
Kehoe pulled down the vanity mirror and looked at his new hairdo for
something like the fiftieth time. For the first time, he heard
thunder in the distance and turned G.M. Ford toward the sound. The
storm was running them down from the east, coming hard along the
prairie with a wavering curtain of rain leading the way. Another hour
of daylight, tops. He was watching the approach of the storm out of
the side window when, out of nowhere, Driver spoke. “My mother
never gave up. Never will. As long as both of us live, I’ll always
be her son, and she’ll always be on my side. Doesn’t matter what
I may have done. She’ll find a way it wasn’t my fault. Find a way
to blame somebody else. That’s part of being a mother as far as
she’s concerned.”

“Be nice to have somebody like that,” Kehoe said. “Hell, my
family come apart before I ever even showed up. Long as I can
remember I was getting sent from my mother to my father to my grandma
Jean to my aunt Sophie. Whoever was out of jail at the time and had a
roof.” Kehoe settled down in the seat and began to work his teeth
with a toothpick. “My old man was one of those types believed a
good beating was a cure for just about everything. Beat a little
religion in ya. Beat the devil out.” He chuckled. “Tell you what
though . . . you sure as hell didn’t want to come home from school
and tell my old man anybody else beat your ass . . . no sirree . . .
you either come home the winner or you best not drag your ass home at
all.”

“Where’s he now?”

“Don’t nobody know,” Kehoe said. “Walked out of his
favorite bar in Greenville, Mississippi, one night and ain’t never
been seen since. I was twelve. I waited a few days until the peanut
butter run out and called my aunt Sophie. She come down from
Tennessee and picked me up.”

“What about your mother?”

Kehoe thought it over. “She had a bad heart. Just never had the
strength it took to be raisin’ children.” he said. “Wore out
way before her time. Sophie used to say Gladys was too good for this
world. Always seemed to me like it was the other way around, like the
world was just too much for her or something. No sooner would I get
there and she’d be sending me back where I come from.” Kehoe
shrugged and went back to his toothpick. Raindrops . . . those big
silver tears that run along the edges of a storm began to hurl
themselves against the sheet metal. Looked like liquid mercury
bouncing off the hood, then a clap of thunder right overhead, a
trident of lightning right in front of the car and the storm, pouring
down out of the sky like a waterfall, swamping the wipers, reducing
visibility to just about nothing.

“Like a cow pissin’ on a flat rock,” Kehoe shouted above the
din. Driver slowed the car to a crawl, inching along in the right
lane, wipers slapping like crazy until, five minutes later, the
deluge was gone, moved on off across the high desert, heading west at
a hundred miles an hour.

Kehoe worked his gum line with a toothpick. Dislodging a morsel,
he gathered it with his lips and spit it down onto the carpet. “Had
me a whole nother meal there,” he commented. When Driver failed to
respond, he shot a quick glance in that direction. Driver had gone
back to perusing whatever inner landscape his mind had invented to
keep from going all the way crazy. “Hey,”

Kehoe called. No response. “Hey,” again.

Driver turned his face Kehoe’s way. Watching Driver’s eyes
return from never-never land was like watching a slot machine click
to a stop. Three lemons.

“Whatcha need?”

“What I need is to take a leak. Sign back there says there’s a
rest area a coupla miles ahead.”

The last drops of rain, the rear guard of the storm, fell from the
sky, then it was silent again. And then the sign . . . REST AREA 3⁄4
MILE . . . State of Utah, Route 191, little picture of a beehive.
Busy busy, these Mormons.

Driver lifted the turn signal lever and eased off the highway. A
thicket of shrubbery separated the rest area from the highway. Wiry
desert plants they didn’t have to water.

Place wasn’t much and what there was was damn near deserted. A
pair of concrete block bathrooms and four picnic tables. On the left,
an elderly couple was repacking the back of a blue Volvo station
wagon. On the right, an enormous Worldwide Moving van was angled
across a bunch of parking spots. Driver backed the car into a slot
and turned off the engine. “One at a time,” he said. “You go
first.”

Kehoe opened the glove box and pulled out the shiny Colt revolver.

“Just in case,” he said with a wink, as he stuffed it into his
belt and pulled his shirt down over it. “You never know who you’re
gonna meet in these public shitters.”

Driver got out with him. He stood next to the Mercedes stretching
his arms and back, watching Kehoe cross the tarmac in that leg iron
shuffle of his. The sound of an engine starting pulled Driver’s
head around. The couple in the Volvo were loaded up and leaving. He
watched the old man back up, wheel hard to the right, and creep off
toward the highway entrance ramp. When he turned back, a guy in a
white T-shirt and a gray Stetson hat was headed his way. One of those
highway jockeys with a big gut and no ass, pushing a pair of
spit-shined cowboy boots over to the side of the moving van, where he
grabbed the long silver handle and pulled himself up into the
driver’s seat. The howl of the starter split the gloom, then the
engine burst into life, sending a dark pair of plumes rolling from
the silver diesel pipes. Driver heard the hiss of the hydraulic
clutch and the slip and shudder of the tires as the big rig began to
roll. He watched as the yellow-and-white globe painted on the side of
the truck passed before his eyes. Heard the driver make his first
shift, then, in an instant, lost all interest in the truck, as the
final set of wheels rolled by and he could now see what had been
hidden by the moving van. His breathing became rapid and shallow. His
body began to tingle.

A Nevada State Police cruiser was nosed into the handicapped slot
closest to the bathrooms, no more than twenty feet from where Driver
stood. The last flattop hairdo in America sat behind the wheel. A
young woman sat leaning forward in the backseat. The windows were
down. He could hear her plain as day.

“When it’s my turn, you gonna stand there and watch me pee?
What kinda pervert are you anyway? They teach you how to be a pervert
at cop school? Huh do they?”

The cop threw an exasperated look at Driver and went back to
staring straight ahead. Driver reached in through the open window of
the Mercedes and unlocked all the doors, then pulled opened the rear
door and pretended to busy himself with something inside. The girl
was still running her mouth, but Driver had tuned her out. Suddenly,
a loud bang forced Driver to look up. The door to the men’s room
had been thrown back against the building. Another Nevada State
policeman was engaged in a spirited wrestling match with a guy in
blue jeans and a black T-shirt. Connected at the wrist by a pair of
handcuffs, they whirled and twirled and flailed about as both men
sought to gain an advantage on the other.

Flattop was out of the car in a flash. As he loped toward the
melee, scratching at his holster, the wrestlers went down on the
concrete sidewalk with a thud. The cop came out on top, but the other
guy was quicker; he hooked a leg around the cop and jerked him down
to the ground, where the grunting and cursing reached a crescendo as
each man used his free hand in an attempt to deliver a crippling
blow.