The Orchid Eater (13 page)

The waiter
returned at that moment with their drinks and the tab for Lupe’s salad. “I’ll
pay for this too, Tyler,” Raymond told the waiter, handing him a bill. Lupe
watched him return to the bar that was now no darker than the night. Something
caught his eye, moving through the shifting crowd of faces, lit by an angular
flash of strobe light.

Lupe jumped
up, grabbing his pack. Raymond lurched to his feet. “What is it? Did I say
something—?”

“Can we go
right now?” he said. He put his hand on Raymond’s arm and rushed him toward
the patio gate.

“What’s your
hurry?”

“This place
is too noisy, too many people. I can’t handle it right now.”

“Oh, of
course, I’m sorry. You poor thing, you must be exhausted. When was the last
time you slept in a bed?”

From the
street, Lupe glanced back through a hedge that encircled the patio. Through a
break in the branches, he saw his brother standing in the doorway of the bar,
staring at the table Lupe had just fled.

He saw me,
Lupe realized. For only an instant, but it was enough.

“My car’s
right here,” Raymond said. He stopped by a white Porsche and unlocked the door
for Lupe. “There you go.”

“I didn’t
mean to rush you,” Lupe said as he slipped in. “You didn’t even get your change
back.”

“Oh, that’s
all right. Tyler knows me. I’m in there almost every night, waiting for my luck
to change.”

He looked
down daringly at Lupe, and slammed the door.

***

Lupe didn’t
expect to know where they were headed, in a town that was still so new to him;
but when the Porsche began to climb up a steep hill street, he thought he knew
where he was. Seeing the bare scrub at the edges of the headlights, lining the
curvy road, he thought they were returning to Sal’s neighborhood. He
envisioned the map of Bohemia Bay; he tried to remember the name of the place.

“Is this
Shangri-La?” he asked.

“No, that’s
a little south of here, over the hills. I’m in what they call Rim of the World.
How do you know about Shangri-La?”

 “I heard
somebody talking about good neighborhoods.”

“Not exactly
beachfront property, I’m afraid, but I love it up here.”

Lupe
relaxed. In such a small town, he’d be close to Sal wherever he settled, but he
wanted to keep some distance between them for now.

They came
out on winding streets among trimmed lawns, rock gardens, juniper hedges.
Housing tracts from the Sixties. It was a warm summer night in the suburbs.
Kids were everywhere, riding bikes off the curbs, skateboarding down driveways
under floodlights, building up speed for leaps off plywood ramps.

“You like it
up here?” Lupe asked, his first genuine question of the evening.

“Sure, it’s
. . . regular. I like the noise, the feeling of people all around. I don’t
believe in isolating myself, hiding out in some colony away from the rest of
the world. Bohemia Bay is isolated enough as it is.”

They turned
into a court, a short cul-de-sac. A sunken garage door yawned ahead of them,
opening as they approached. Raymond drove down into a tidy garage with a
spotless concrete floor. The Porsche’s drippings were caught in a shallow aluminum
sheet. Through a door at the back of the garage, they went into a fair-sized
kitchen. Wooden counters, wood paneling, cupboards, racks of wine and knives.
Beyond that were a dining room and living room.

“You live
alone?” Lupe asked.

“Sadly, yes.
For now.”

“I only
meant—it looks like you could fit a big family in here.”

Or several
families, Lupe thought, remembering how he and Sal and Aunt Theresa (not to
mention her men) had crammed themselves into a small two-room apartment, in a
crowded, noisy building where they counted themselves fortunate because others
lived with six or eight people in the same amount of space.

“I suppose
you could. Four bedrooms, two baths. But this, for me, is the main attraction.”

Raymond
walked through the dining room to a sliding glass door, and slid it open. Lupe
followed him out onto a balcony that ran the length of the house.

Darkness
below, and the scent of the hills, sagebrush and horehound and anise. A breeze
full of rich earthy smells came up from the earth, where Lupe could see only
shadows. Bamboo clattered in the wind. There were no lights visible anywhere
except for the neighboring houses in line with Raymond’s on the verge of the hills.
Starlight imparted the sense of a canyon below them, a deep valley with ridges
running down into it. Lupe began to guess at the secrets among those folds of
earth, in hidden places marked by animal tracks, with no people anywhere.

He closed
his eyes, leaning on the balcony rail, and breathed in the smell of earth,
imagining that it had blown out of caves, dreaming that the ground here fell
away forever into an endless pit, with tiny trails that only he could discern
spiraling down into it. He was down in the darkness with his boys, moving by
touch and smell, sure-footed in a sightless world.

Raymond’s
hand startled him. “Wait till you see the sunrise from this deck.” The hand
stayed on his shoulder, massaging slightly.

Lupe turned
to face him. “I’d like to sleep in, if that’s okay. Lately it’s been, you know,
park benches, always getting rousted by cops.”

Raymond
pulled back, his disappointment quickly veiled. “Well, and so you shall. You’ve
had a rough time of it, I’m sure. I should let you get to sleep now. There’s
plenty of time to watch a sunrise or two.”

“Where do I
bed down?”

“There’s a
spare bed made up, don’t worry about that. Can I get you anything? More to eat?
Do you want to take a shower?”

“I’d just
like to sleep.”

“Whatever
you want, Rico, is fine with me. Any way you want it. Just—just think of my
house as your house, for as long as you care to stay.”

Lupe must
have given Raymond an odd look. He wished he could have seen his own face, to
be sure what thoughts he might have betrayed.

“I really mean
that,” Raymond said emphatically.

“I know you
do.”

And because
some sacrifices were necessary at times to keep things running smoothly, he
leaned forward and put his hands behind Raymond’s neck and pulled the older man
slowly forward—not that Raymond was resisting.

“You’re a
very special man, Ray,” he said, and kissed him on the mouth.

11

“You guys are
formally deputized,” Hawk told the gang gathered behind his trailer that night.
Their lone lantern exaggerated everything from the whiteness of their skin to
the pitchy black of the night. It was easy to imagine they were facing an enemy
of utter evil, waging a campaign of goodness and light. But the faces of his
boys held plenty of fear and less noble emotions.

“Fuckin’ A,”
said Kurtis Tyre. “Now we’re a real posse. Let’s beat that fag-ass queer into
the ground.”

Hawk loped
down to face Kurtis, whose eyes all evening had been hot with anger and
sneering rage, as if this were the occasion he’d been waiting for to vent the
considerable poisons gathering inside him. Kurtis was his wickedest, his most
challenging project. Abused, probably; sadistic, certainly. For that reason,
Hawk wanted him in the forefront of his deputies. He thought Kurtis had more
than a little of the black streak in him, and might even think like Craig’s
murderer. Given the benefit of Kurtis’s sick insights, Hawk hoped he might
anticipate the killer’s next moves. But it was not important that Kurtis know
this. It was more important that he fear Hawk and stay in line, and be wary of transgressing
their spontaneous, unspoken code.

“We are on
the side of Law,” Hawk said to him, knowing that the others would take the
words as if addressed to them personally. “Not
the
law, which wears the face of
our old friends in blue—”

“Fuckin’
pigs,” Kurtis said.

“—but Law
itself. The cosmic principle of right action. That which is right because it is
righteous, and not because a bunch of paid-off judges got together and agreed
on the best way to protect the interests of the politicos who put them on the
bench. Now sometimes, Kurtis—though it seems incredible—this Law, this
righteousness, overlaps with the law of the police and the courts. And one of
those ways is in not judging things too soon, not jumping to conclusions. If
Sal’s responsible for this, we’ll find that out in time. But if you take it for
granted that he’s guilty, and then you turn out to be wrong, you’ll be staring
at him so hard you’ll miss the real clues in the corner of your eye. You are
not judge, jury and executioner, Kurtis. Neither is any one of us. What you are
right now is
my
eyes,
my
ears,
my
hands.”

“So what
does that make you?”

Hawk cuffed
him lightly on the side of the head and sat down next to him on a log stump,
hands clasped between his knees, looking from face to face. Howard’s eyes were
red, his face pale and streaked with grime. Some of the others looked equally
bad. He saw in them the realization that Craig’s death could have come to any
one of them—might in fact still be on its way. It didn’t matter that they were
only fourteen, sixteen, eighteen years old. They could have been dead since
this morning, slashed to ribbons in a storm drain, fixed forever at their
present age.

“I can’t
move around freely right now, not the way I’d like to. The cops are gonna be
watching me. They’ll be watching some of you, too. I figure they think you guys
are just as likely as not to off one another.”

Kurtis
kicked a bootheel at the dust. “Why is it whenever there’s trouble, we always
get the blame?”

Hawk’s grin
felt to him like a nervous tic, pulling his whole face sideways. “That’s just
the kind of people we are. If we weren’t, would we be sitting here right now?”

“What are we
supposed to be looking for?” Edgar asked.

“I can’t
tell you that. You won’t know till you see it.”

“You mean
there’s no clues at all?”

“Alec didn’t
see anybody around. Craig went off for a smoke by the water. It was early. That
was the last he saw, and that’s all he saw. If Craig was killed in the pipe,
which seems likely, then somebody had to get him in there first. And it must
have been somebody he knew. I can’t see anybody dragging Craig in if he didn’t
want to go.”

“He might’ve
ducked in to smoke a doob.”

“No,” Howard
said. “He was dry last night. We haven’t had weed in a week. Uh . . . sorry,
Hawk.”

“So maybe
somebody had something he wanted,” Edgar said. “Like a lid.”

“Coulda been
a girl,” someone else said. “I mean, Craig, he’d let a rattlesnake suck his
dick.”

A loud
thumping from down the hillside carried to them. A huge figure approached from
the trailer, carrying a massive box. As Stoner walked into the circle of light,
Hawk jumped up and gave a disgusted cry. The stupid oaf! His boys froze when
they saw the word
Pendleton
stenciled across the side of the crate.

Hawk would
have struck him, but he was too afraid of upsetting Stoner. Instead, with all
the diplomacy he could muster, he said very quietly, almost whispering, “What’s
wrong with you, Stoner?”

“I was just
gonna ask where you want me to put ’em, since you said we should hide any shit
that could get us in trouble.” Hawk was expecting visits from the police. The
matter of Stoner’s grenade stash had somehow slipped his mind until now. He had
to wonder where the box had been hiding.

“Just—just
set that thing down,” he said calmly, with a soft, patting gesture, to
demonstrate how it should be done.

“Really,”
said one of the boys. “Stoner, man, you are massively fucked!”

Stoner
chuckled, stooped over, and set the box on the dirt, none too gently. Hawk
relaxed slightly.

“I know a
good place for that,” Edgar said.

Hawk gave
him a nod. “Can we do it tonight? I don’t want this hanging around.”

“Whenever
you’re ready.”

Hawk nodded
to Stoner. “Put that thing in the jeep. Wrap it in foam or something first.
Shit.”

Edgar
started down the hill, and the others got up to follow him. Hawk stopped them
with a word.

“I don’t
want anybody in on this except Stoner and Edgar. The less of you know where
this stuff is stashed, the safer we’ll all be. Not that I don’t trust you like
my own little lambs.”

A few of
them made bleating sounds.

Thirty
minutes later—Hawk driving at unaccustomed speed, slowing to a crawl for every
turn, braking whenever the headlights suggested a bump or crack in the street
ahead—they drove past Edgar’s house to the end of Shoreview Road. He gave
fervent thanks that he’d installed new shocks in the Jeep three months ago;
even so, the ride had never seemed so jolting. They parked by a padlocked
fence. Beyond was a private dirt road so deeply rutted that in places it looked
like a stream bed. Even if he’d had a key to the gate, Hawk would not have
driven a box of hand grenades over that road for any price.

He stood
back while Stoner unloaded the crate, wrapped in a piece of foam mattress. He
winced when Stoner tossed the box onto his shoulder and held it there
one-handed.

“Would you
mind keeping both hands on that?” he said. “Edgar, you lead the way. I want you
to give Stoner plenty of light to see where he’s stepping. And Stoner, please,
don’t trip.”

“Shit, Hawk,
I’m light on my feet.”

“Uh-huh.”

For a while,
the flashlight glittered on broken bottle-glass and corroded cans, burst tires,
pulped and desiccated newspaper; the ruts in the road looked like canyons.
Stoner avoided most of this without having to be warned. But then Edgar set off
through weeds and brush. They passed a TV with its guts blown out, a
bullet-riddled tin can stuck on a stick, spent cartridges. All Hawk could see
was the moving spot of light leading them on; the rest of the world was a
blank. They moved through a dense patch of thistles that had blanketed the
ground with white down. Stoner cursed as the spines of the fierce bushy plants
stabbed him. If there had ever been a trail here, it hadn’t been used in years.

“Couldn’t
you find an easier way, Edgar?” Hawk said.

“Yeah, watch
out here, it’s kind of slippery. There’s like a cliff.”

Stoner
grunted and stepped onto bare dirt. Dust smoked from his heels. Hawk followed
in dimmer light, and felt the ground crumble. His feet nearly went out from
under him. He crouched down for balance, cursing, and heard Stoner laugh. “You
okay back there, Hawk? Better give him more light, Edgar—whoa!”

“This is the
worst part,” Edgar said.

At that
moment, the flashlight went dead. “Shit!”

“Don’t
move!” Hawk yelled.

“Jesus,”
said Stoner, somewhere ahead of him, “I can’t see a thing.”

The light
came on again, weaker but still alive. Edgar was shaking the flashlight, which
made everything jump. He was below them, shining the light up at Stoner’s feet.
“You make it down okay?”

“Coming,”
Stoner grunted, and crouched to skid and slide down the steep hillside, without
any hands for balance. Hawk swallowed the ball in his throat. At the bottom,
next to Edgar, Stoner rose up chuckling. “Used to do that all the time when I
was a kid.”

“You may not
live to be an adult if you keep it up,” Hawk said. “Look out.” Then he slid,
too, and joined them at the bottom, coughing at the dust he’d raised.

Edgar went
on across flat, unmarked, weedy ground, shaking the flashlight repeatedly to
keep it alive. Hawk saw a dark ridge above them, it could have been five feet
away or five hundred.

“Around here
somewhere,” Edgar said, and started scuffing at the dirt with a toe.

“Can I put
this down?” Stoner asked.

“Gently.”

“Here it
is,” Edgar said. He knelt near a juniper bush, one hand tugging at what looked
like a bit of gnarled root. He pulled it and dirt sifted free of a big piece of
board. He leaned the trapdoor against the bush and leaned over, looking down
into the large square pit he’d uncovered.

“It goes in
a few feet,” he said. “Leo and I dug it, you know, as a hideout. Took us a
week.”

“I’ll get
down there first,” Hawk said. “Then you hand it to me.

He edged
past Edgar and lowered himself in. Touching bottom, he could just rest his
elbows on the edge of the pit. Stoner appeared above him, already hefting the
crate. Hawk tensed to receive it. The fucker was even heavier than he’d
remembered. He crouched down awkwardly, cramped in the hole, straining to keep
the box steady. When he had it down on the earth, he asked for the flashlight
and aimed it deeper into the hole.

A tunnel
went back about six feet, into a chamber with another sheet of plywood for a
ceiling. Hawk pushed the crate into the far end of the burrow till it butted up
against the earthen wall. He crouched there with it for a moment, smelling the
close, confining dirt, studying the den’s features, imagining how a couple of
boys might hide out here in a world of secrets, thinking of how little kids
pulled blankets over chairs and tables to fabricate caves and tunnels, how
darkness held such power over humankind because it had reigned over the
imagination since the beginning oflife. Were children ever taught to fear the
dark, or was such fear instinctive? Darkness, he thought, is so much a part of
us that we never know where to begin doing battle with it . . . if
indeed that’s the proper response.

Stuff for a
sermon, here.

There were
little shelves gouged into the walls, holding candle stubs, books of matches.
A roll of magazines was stuffed in another niche. Hawk picked up one of them,
expecting motorcycles or hot rods. He was disappointed to see the raunchiest
sort of porn, Danish stuff, closeups of gaping cavities, lots of slime and wet
pink mattress-meat. He supposed he should be grateful for an absence of donkey
dicks and shit-eaters, but it was hard to keep his perspective in the clammy
little burrow. The walls exuded a moldy stink he hadn’t noticed at first.

“What’s
that?” Stoner said suddenly, startling him. He’d dropped down into the hole.
Hawk shoved the magazine back onto the crude shelf and backed out, pushing
Stoner ahead of him, glad for fresh air. “Nothing, go on, let’s cover this up.”

When they
had camouflaged the trap again, and were hiking back uphill, Hawk said, “So
Edgar, you come here often?”

“Naw,” Edgar
said. “Not since Leo moved away. Used to play here a lot, but that was, you
know . . . I sort of grew out of it. It’s more of a little
kid’s thing.”