Stealing Fire (28 page)

I went back to our little band. Still all there, until Wayne excused himself. Said it was time for him to get over to the makeup man. Wright got a kick out of that.

“What?” Wayne said.

“Sir, I'm a master of disguises and I love costumes. But even I have never worn makeup.”

“Well, you got a right to laugh about that, pal.” He sauntered off to be covered in pancake and a little eyeliner.

“What do we do now, Yazzie?” Iris said.

“I'm thinking.”

“Are you done yet?”

“Yes. Stay with me,” I said. “The Wrights and Grandfather and us—we're going to find Helen. Big group, but if we hang together we'll be in good shape.”

My grandfather whispered to me. “Big bunch for you and me to take care of, Yazzie, if something happens.”

“Nothing's going to happen.” My thoughts were sure of that—I didn't know how things could go wrong—but I had the jitters. I got up and started toward the camera. “I'm going to ask Ford if I can borrow one of his security guards.”

Ford said, “Hell, take two of 'em.” I grabbed the tall guard, Kelly his name was, and Finnerty. Neither wanted to leave the set, but Ford chased them off. Our crowd headed toward Goulding's trading post like a band of misfits. Mr. Wright looked smaller by the day, and I was worried about his health. Grandfather must have felt the same way about him—he was focused on boosting Wright's spirits. Pretty soon Wright laughed. “Mose, you are a real case!” Grandpa would be tired tonight, no doubt about it.

Iris chatted with Mrs. Wright. She asked about the book Olgivanna was writing and how it was coming along. Mrs. Wright said it would be a lot easier to write if she ever had one moment to herself.

The guards followed on our trail, talking about a poker game they'd played last night with Ward Bond and Wayne. Bond had cleaned them all out, and then he gave them their money back. On their salaries, that was a piece of good luck.

And there was Helen, looking like a little girl, lost, standing in front of the driveway up to the Gouldings' house. She was wearing a thin sweater, tugging on one of the threads that had come loose.

*   *   *

One look at her, and I knew what she had done. She only looked that way around the person who loved her most, even though his love made her small. Our father made her less than. Insignificant. She had phoned him to deliver her and destroy her. Both.

Father would be in for a surprise.

 

Fifty

I kept my voice soft and low, gentle as if I was coming up on a stray kitten. “Helen? What are you doing here by yourself?”

“My dad. I'm waiting for my father.” Helen looked at her left wrist, habit, but she wasn't wearing a watch. She seemed satisfied. “He called from Cameron. He should be here any minute.” A thin smile tried going up at the corners but couldn't make the climb.

She looked at all of us as if we were strangers. She looked at the tall guard. She looked at the ginger-haired guard. “It's not necessary. You can all go about … whatever you were doing. He's bringing an urn with Payton's ashes.”

Finnerty backed up as if to protect the Wrights, but too late. Mrs. Wright was standing by Helen's side in a moment, mothering her, putting her arm around her.

“It's all right, dear. We're here.”

“I don't know what to do with them. The ashes.”

“We'll talk about that later.”

“I didn't ask my dad to bring them here,” she volunteered. “Dad didn't even like him.”

“Fathers rarely like our beaus, dear.” More patting from Mrs. Wright. “He's trying to make up for that.”

And then—grand entrance!—Jake Fine drove up in a fancy car, bigger than a boat, cream powdered with rust-colored sand.

He stepped out of the car and strode straight toward Helen. It was clear Mr. Fine was not in a good mood.

“Jesus, I have a business to run,” he said. “I don't need to drive clear to the ass end of nowhere to pick up and deliver the ashes of some GD boyfriend of yours who was totally useless.”

“I didn't ask you—”

“You didn't need to. You're my kid. What was I gonna do? Leave him there?”

He handed her the urn.

“I could have—”

“You could have stayed in Los Angeles, married a nice guy, lived in a house with a decent kitchen, had one kid and another on the way, plus a pool in the backyard. That's what you could have done. No, you had to have aspirations. Dreams. Ridiculous.”

Iris seemed about two feet taller than usual—her back was that ramrod stiff.

“And look at this pathetic bunch. Wright, you owe me money. You tried to con me into trading work on the design for the twenty grand, but I wasn't taken in. You're a sorry has-been is what you are, living on other people's ideas of your past glory.”

We had bunched up, no one knowing what this maniac would do or say next. I edged to the front, itching to take him down.

“And you, my blessed son,” Fine blustered on, “what have you got to say for yourself?”

*   *   *

He was looking straight at the guard we knew as Finnerty.

Fine stood straight and strong, seemed to grow about two inches taller, barged across the drive, and yanked the ginger hair off Finnerty in one tug.

We all moved away from the pair, just wanting to get out of range. I was furious at myself for not realizing the son of a mobster had been around us for several days.

“You getting in the movies now?” Fine barked in his son's face. “Play-acting? It figures. You haven't done one adult thing in your supposed adult life. And let's get that damned beard off your face.” He ripped it off. “You make me sick.” Finnerty's real hair was black.

I felt like I was on a roller coaster and my stomach was lurching. I'd bet the others felt worse.

Helen had the guts to take a few steps toward her father, followed by Mrs. Wright.

Helen threw words at Fine. “What kind of father says that to his son?”

Mrs. Wright said, “Mr. Fine, you're a small, horrible person.”

I took her by the arms and pulled her back. Helen and her father were rolling into a showdown of wills that had started sometime around her birth, or her brother's birth.

Her voice was low when she spoke, and full of snarl.

“Father,” she said, “your son, my brother, has sickened you since the day he was born.”

Fine was very quiet. He was deep in his reptilian mode. “I think you're probably right about Rick. But you, Helen,” he said, “you I have loved completely. Doesn't that make up for it?”

The air around the father, son, and daughter felt like an electric fence. I checked to see if Mr. Fine was carrying a firearm. Then I reminded myself that he would not do that, no way. But Jake Fine was dangerous, armed or not.

Just then Rick Fine, aka Rick Finnerty, broke away and threw his arms around his sister.

I put my hand on my .45.

Iris whispered to me, “Stay out of a gangster's family business. Shoot any of the three, and they'll have you taken out.”

Rick uncoiled nasty words. “You think I'm useless? Sure bet, Dad. In my duffle I have the plans for the Guggenheim—your old architect wasn't very careful with them. Under his mattress?! I took them, you could say, right out from under him.”

“And what am I supposed to do with those?”

“You can sell them for a load of dough. Build the damned museum yourself.” Rick shook his fist in the air. “They're yours!”

Mr. Fine almost looked worried for a moment. “God, if my friends knew what you were like…” There went Mr. Fine's moment of worry. “My son, sorry to say, you're totally useless. You think someone can just walk up, steal a famous man's plans, and put up a building?”

Rick tightened his grip on Helen. “Sell them to some guy in Europe who'd buy them because they're originals. Use your imagination.”

Mr. Fine was quiet. I was afraid he was using his imagination.

“See?” Fine Junior tapped the urn in Helen's arms. “You don't have to worry about the Payton Wood problem anymore, either. Let me just say, ‘You're welcome.'”

Helen was crying. Wracking sobs. And then she stopped. “Rick, you've turned into a horror.”

“You went into the motel shower dirty and came out an angel?”

She turned her head. She saw her brother. Maybe she wondered when Rick had run off the track. Maybe wondered if she'd waved a wand and fouled his soul some time along the way.

Her eyes held Rick's in a steady grip. “Payton and I were going to be married. You took my life.”

“What? You want your boyfriend?” He jerked the urn away from her, opened the lid, and dumped the gray ashes all over her shoes.

“Dad,” Rick Fine said, “I did all this for you. I want redemption for having the nerve to be born, for not pleasing you, for you finding me lacking, even repellent. I chased the Wrights from the time they got on the train to get these damned plans—they're worth a bundle. I killed your princess's useless boyfriend. Is that ruthless enough to be worthy of you? Dad?”

Rick pulled Helen closer to him.

Jake Fine was pale with helplessness.

“The boyfriend alone should make up for a lot. I knifed him, tossed gas on him in the desert. Burned him to a crisp.” And then he started to laugh. It was the most terrifying sound imaginable.

“Rick, you idiot.”

“What?”

“Shut up! I'll call my lawyer,” Fine said. “You have just shit all over yourself. Witnesses, Rickie, you have confessed to murder in front of a herd of witnesses. We'll have to say you're certifiable, or there goes my business, there goes our whole family.”

“Dad.”

Rick pulled his .45, and with a big grin put it to Helen's head. Then to his own head. Then back to Helen's. A maniac.

I put my hand on my own .45.

“Now's your chance, Dad,” he said. “Pick one of us.”

“What? You're crazy.” Fine held out empty hands. He probably wished he had a weapon.

Back and forth, to Helen's head, his own head.

“Pick one of us to live, one to die, and I'll make it happen. Only hard part will be explaining it to Mom. Although,” he said, “you're good at pulling BS out of thin air.”

“Listen, Rick,” Fine said in a firm tone, “don't do this.”

“Easy choice. Come on.”

Jake Fine stood there, the wheels in his brain spinning. God knows what those wheels could spin out.

Rick let go of Helen and sank to his knees, mired in his failure, his ultimate inability to satisfy his father.

I lunged for Rick. Helen stumbled sideways, her hand over her mouth.

He fell back but gave me a tussle, tougher than I expected. He was short but strong. Rick slammed the gun out of my hand—it skittered away through the sand.

He raised his gun toward my throat.

I dropped a shoulder onto his arm and pinned his gun to the ground.

I heard screams. Whose screams? My own.

I pulled away, and tried to get my knee on the forearm where he held the gun.

He flipped me hard to the ground on my back, him on top. He brought up the gun, I whacked it down, and the trigger went off. A shattering sound of life gone broken.

I flipped back on top. Blood ran onto the sand, mixed with the sand, and became a mosaic of oil and water, a mosaic of Rick Fine's insides meeting the light.

Jake Fine ran to us. He leaned over his son. For an instant, he looked like someone else. He cradled Rick's head. “Son, son. Hang in there.”

There was a burbling sound. I plugged the hole in Rick's stomach with my handkerchief.

“I saw it,” Fine said. “The gun was in his own hand.” His voice was a whisper to me, to no one, to everyone, to himself. “You're half a second slower and the hole would be in your gut.”

My grandfather handed me his bandanna, too. More cloth plugging the hole—it seemed like the bleeding had stopped, but no doubt about it, the wound was bad. Very bad.

Jake Fine kissed his son's forehead. One tear ran down his face. “Forgive me, Rickie, you don't remember, but it wasn't always this way.”

Rick turned his head to his father.

“I love you,” Jake Fine said to his son. “I just got caught up in business.” Then he wept. “I love you, Rickie.”

Rick Fine turned his face up into his father's. With two hands he pulled his father's head down to his mouth. “Dad? Screw you.”

 

Fifty-one

Harry Goulding took Rick Fine to Navajo Health in Fine's cushy car—fewer bumps. Helen rode with them. Jake stayed behind. He kept pacing, muttering, “I'm not up for this. I'm no good at this stuff. That's why I have people.”

Then the Feds pulled up. They were an hour later than I'd asked when I called, but I'd had no idea, exactly, what was coming down the pike. Just a rat-assed conviction that something was …

They wore their standard-issue black suits and their J. Edgar striped ties. They got out of their car. They strutted their stuff. Wright took one look at them and said, “Do you believe it? Here they come when there are real criminals right in our midst!”

Same two guys as on the road several days ago. When I called, they acted hot to come but didn't say why.

They brushed Wright away with a few hand gestures. “We've been asked to stay clear of you, Wright. For now.”

“Grand.”

They walked up to Mr. Jake Fine. “Are you Mr. Jacob Fine?”

“Who wants to know?”

They flipped their badges.

“Someone get me a lawyer!” But there was no one to get him a lawyer.

“Repeat. Are you Mr. Jacob Fine?”

He sneered. “Obviously.”

“You are under arrest.”

“Under arrest? For what? I haven't done one damned thing. It was my kid who fried that guy.”