No Man's Land (27 page)

“No,” she said, disengaging slightly. And kissed him, full on
the mouth, a kiss whose intent filled the air like a rising note. He
pushed her back to arm’s length. “You sure?” he asked. She
kissed him again and they were both sure.

“I thought you were spoken for.”

“It’s algae food,” she said, stepping closer, running her
hands inside his shirt, caressing his back as she pulled him closer.
“We’ve fallen by the wayside.”

Before he could respond, her fingers had the overcoat
halfunbuttoned. Corso saw it coming. The point of no return. He
opened his mouth to speak, but it turned out the overcoat was the
only thing she was wearing. The sight of her naked body froze the
words in his throat. He felt the hot rush of blood and knew some
things never changed.

Ray Lofton made this run every Saturday morning rain or shine.
Being low man on the seniority totem pole just naturally got him the
weekend work. On a good day he could be back at the office in three
hours flat. When it got snowy he’d have to chain up. Took all damn
day in the snow. This year, summer had lingered, sending the slanting
rays of Indian Summer down onto the alpine meadows well into October,
making Ray’s life way easier. Company he worked for had the
contract to pick up the trash on the west side of the divide. Once a
week they had him take the ancient International Harvester garbage
truck up to the summit and pick up everything on the way down.

Mary the dispatcher told him to do it that way . . . from the top
down, when he first started on the route, but Ray, never being one to
follow orders, figured as long as he was driving by he might as well
pick up whatever was there. What he discovered was that the old truck
wouldn’t pull the grade unless it was empty. He’d had to go down,
dump out, then go back up to the summit. Didn’t get back till dark
and don’t think he hadn’t taken a ration of shit from every damn
person in the company. The grade was always steeper than it looked.
Ray Lofton shifted down into third gear. The old truck roared its
disapproval; the windshield shook until it made a noise like a
tambourine. The guy in the passenger seat reached out and put one
hand on the dashboard like he was trying to prevent the rig from
shaking itself to pieces .

“Don’t worry,” Ray shouted over the rising din. “She’ll
make it. She always does.”

The guy shot him an uncertain smile and braced himself harder. Ray
Lofton liked to talk, which was why he picked up hitchhikers whenever
he got the chance. Just to have somebody to talk to. But this guy . .
. this guy spent words the way other people spent money. He’d known
that an hour ago, he wouldn’t have picked him up.

He’d felt bad for the guy, standing out there in the wind trying
to thumb a ride in the middle of the night on a road nobody drove
this time of year, so he’d picked him up. Guy hadn’t even told
him his name. Just threw his gym bags down on the floor at his feet
and thanked Ray for the ride. Hadn’t uttered a peep since. Just sat
there staring out the front window.

So . . . it was no great sorrow for Ray when, halfway to the
summit, the guy suddenly threw himself forward in the seat, scanned
the roadside like it was full of naked cheerleaders, and said,
“Stop.”

Ray, who likewise had been lost in his own thoughts, didn’t
react right away.

“What?”

“Stop,” the guy said again.

Ray eased the rig off the road and into the deserted parking lot
of the Sierra Motor Inn. Maybe two dozen detached cabins spread out
among a little grove of pine trees. Place was closed for the winter.

Ray kept his foot jammed on the brake and turned to the guy.

“You never did say exactly where you was going. I never figured
you was . . . you know . . . Jenner Peak.”

But by then it was too late. The guy was already out of the seat
and down onto the ground, bags and all. “Thanks,” he said again
and closed the door.

Ray watched him in the mirror as he crossed the highway with a
black Nike bag in each hand and made his way over to the Ski Chalet
motel across the street. When the guy disappeared behind a big old
motor home parked along the edge of their lot, Ray lost interest. He
took his foot off the brake, checked in both directions and gave the
old girl all the gas he dared. Sounded like maracas.

The knocking was tentative at first . . . one knuckle. Corso
groaned and rolled over. It went away. Corso kept his eyes closed,
trying to convince himself the noise was part of his dream. Then it
returned. Louder this time. The flat of a hand smacking against the
door. He opened an eye. The noise had also awakened Melanie Harris.
She was naked, wound around him like a vine, half-in, half-out of the
bedclothes, propped up now bleary-eyed on one elbow.

“Don’t answer it,” she whispered.

Corso rolled onto his back and closed his eyes. The knocking
started again, more insistent this time. “Yeah,” Corso yelled.

“It’s Marty,” the voice came through the door. Corso rolled
over and threw his arms around Melanie. He drew her close. She kissed
him on the ear. “We can’t just leave him out there,” she
whispered.

“Just a minute,” Corso yelled over his shoulder. He kissed her
between the eyes, then on the mouth. “You want me to let him in?”

“You got a better idea?”

“You want to hide in the bathroom or something?”

She considered the matter. “Seems a bit Gothic,” she said.

“Besides . . . Marty’s nobody to talk.”

Corso smiled. He got to his feet, rummaged through the pile of
covers at the foot of the bed, found his shirt and jeans and put them
on.

Corso opened the door a crack. Martin Wells looked like the wrath
of God. His smooth brown Hollywood face had recovered every year his
plastic surgeon had so carefully removed. He had lines in his face
deep enough to hide a quarter. He wore the same striped dress shirt
he’s worn the night before. The front of the shirt was stained with
dirt and spittle, and somewhere along the way he’d lost the second
button.

“What’s up?” Corso asked.

“I can’t find Melanie. I tried the . . .”

“She’s okay,” Corso assured him.

From behind Corso came Melanie’s voice. “Let him in.”

Corso stepped aside. Marty hesitated for a moment, then crossed
the threshold. He sent an amused glance bouncing from Melanie to
Corso and back again. “So . . . ,” he said with a smile, “. . .
what do we have here?”

Melanie looked embarrassed. “Don’t start, Marty. You’re
nobody to talk.” She turned her head toward Corso. “Marty here
even cheats on his mistress,” she said.

Marty looked hurt. “A man in my position needs his comforts.”

Corso looked the little guy over. “You’ve got
two
mistresses?”

“Stephanie . . . that’s my wife . . . she found out about
Janice.”

He shrugged. “Took all the fun out of it.” He looked them over
again. “So?”

Melanie changed the subject. “So what happened with last night’s
feed?”

Marty’s turn to wince. “A bit more than we had in mind eh?”

“Frank said it was all over.”

“Apparently so was Frank.”

“Stop it!” She tried to sound angry but didn’t manage.

“A hundred fifty-five channels domestically. We’re getting a
lot of calls and e-mails. They’re running about two to one
outraged.”

“What’s the network saying?”

“Publicly, they’re distancing themselves from us. Behind
closed doors they’re gloating over the ratings.”

“At least they’re predictable.”

“I’ve got a budget meeting with Larry at six tonight,” Marty
said. “You gonna be able to get the trailer home?”

“It’s an RV, Marty . . . an RV.”

“You gonna be able to get it home? I could send—”

“I got it this far,” she interrupted. “I’ll get it back to
the lot.”

“Okay then,” Marty said. “I’m going to jump in the shower
and head back home. You need anything, you give me a jingle.”

He pointed over at Melanie. “You know, dearie, you got a certain
blush this morning . . .”

“Shut up, Marty,” she said. “Go take your shower.”

Martin Wells laughed, said his good-byes and disappeared.

“Howsabout breakfast?” Corso asked. “The café across the
street must be open by now.”

Melanie sat up and surveyed herself in the mirror. She made a
disgusted face. “Long as you don’t mind waiting for an hour or
so.”

“Howsabout I go get it and bring it back.”

She gave him a wicked look. “Thus fortified . . . do you suppose
we might . . . ?”

“I do indeed,” he said. “What do you want?”

“For breakfast?”

“Let’s start there.”

She told him.

He found his shoes and jacket, stuffed a room key into his pocket
and headed out.

The Timberman’s Café was a quarter mile downhill on the other
side of the highway. The clock over the counter read eightten when he
settled onto the stool.

“Be right with ya,” a voice called from the back. Corso looked
around. Standard-issue rural café. Half a dozen tables replete with
brightly patterned table covers, ten stools along the counter,
restrooms on the uphill end, cute little sign Scotch-taped to the
back of the cash register: PRICES WERE BORN HERE AND RAISED
ELSEWHERE.

A guy in his early sixties slipped his shoulders out through the
double swinging doors. He was as pale and skinny as the toothpick
hanging out the side of his mouth. “What can I get for you?”

he wanted to know.

Corso told him. He wrote it down.

“Gonna take a little longer than usual,” the guy said. “My
weekend waitress called in with the flu.” He made a disgusted face.
“Something about Friday nights seems to do that to her.”

“Someplace I can get a newspaper around here?” Corso asked.

“Not this time of year,” the guy shouted.

Corso spent the next five minutes ruminating on the joys of women.
How his hand hadn’t bothered him a bit last night. About how he
liked to think of himself as a thoughtful, professional person who
generally approached things in an organized manner . . . and how all
of that went completely out the window whenever he found himself
confronted with a naked woman. How countless generations of social
and religious admonitions fell by the wayside in an instant, as, all
these centuries later, the primal need to spread one’s genes upon
the waters still ran rampant in the blood, leaving him little more
than a gussied-up and shaved version of his feral forbearers.

He’d worked up a smile when the little bell over the door
tinkled. Before he could turn and appraise his fellow diners, a
familiar voice pulled his attention back to the here and now.

“You’re a long way from the Phoenician, Mr. Corso. Might have
been better for all concerned if you’d stayed there.”

Corso knew the voice, but peeked back over his shoulder just to be
sure. Special Agent Rosen with Westerman in tow, the pair of them
just as neat and unwrinkled as could be. Corso turned away, focusing
instead on the promising smells of toasting bread and frying bacon.

They took the stools on either side of him. “Might have been
better if you’d been straight with us,” Rosen said.

“I
was
straight with you,” Corso said.

“You knew where to find his mother.”

“You didn’t ask me that.”

“You knew that’s where Driver would be headed.”

“So did you. You catch him yet?”

Their collective silence answered the question. “In retrospect,
it seems like that little piece of information wasn’t of much use,
now was it?” Corso said “No telling what might have happened if
you and that Harris woman had kept out of it and let us do our jobs.”

“She was just doing hers,” Corso said.

“The public’s right to know and all that,” Westerman threw
in.

“Don’t you forget it,” Corso snapped.

The cook backed into the room. His hands were filled with plastic
bags jam-packed with an assortment of Styrofoam food containers. He
set the bags on the counter in front of Corso and read through the
order. “Two large coffees. One cream and sugar. One black,” he
said finally. Corso nodded his agreement.

“Sixteen dollars and twelve cents,” the guy announced. Corso
dropped a twenty-dollar bill on the counter, picked up the bags and
started for the door. Rosen and Westerman followed along in his wake.

“Sounds a lot like breakfast for two,” Westerman commented.

Corso looked at Rosen. “Not much gets by her, does it?”

He went out the door backward, turning around in time to step over
the molded concrete curb, stretching his long legs, making it
difficult for anyone shorter than himself to keep pace. Turned out
the effort was wasted. Rosen and Westerman followed no farther than
the dark blue Lincoln Town Car in the parking lot.

Corso had covered half the distance back to his room when the
Lincoln came rolling by, headed west toward the top of the hill at a
stately ten miles an hour. Perhaps because his attention was diverted
by the car, he got all the way to the door to his room before
noticing something was amiss. A “what’s wrong with this picture?”
kind of feeling in the pit of his stomach. He looked around but
couldn’t quite place what was bothering him. Wasn’t until his
eyes swept over the downhill end of the parking lot for the second
time that things began to click into place and his stomach took the
elevator ride down to his shoe tops. He blinked twice, thinking he
must be wrong, then looked uphill toward Marty’s rental car and the
motel office. No doubt about it. The RV was gone.

Ray Lofton stood on the front bumper and fanned the steaming
radiator with his hat. On the ground behind him, a white plastic
bucket held five gallons of water, a stash he kept in the back of the
truck for just such an occasion, but, for the time being at least,
the radiator was way too hot to take a chance on removing the cap.
He’d made that mistake once before. Lost his patience and tried to
open her up with nothing but his shirttail between his hand and the
radiator cap. Damn thing went off like Mount St. Helens, burned the
living bejesus out of him. He’d spent the next month covered in
salve. Folks at work took to calling him “greazy Ray.” Assholes,
all of ’em.