The Triggerman Dance (8 page)

you to help me take him down. For me. For Rebecca. And for yourself."

"How?"

"You would have to learn how, John. You would have to learn to act and to think. You would have to learn to take steps. One step, then another. I can open the book for you. I can help. And finally, what you learn will be tested, and tested very hard. When it's over, no matter how it ends, you will never be the same again. That's the only promise that I can make.

John Menden's secret education begins two days after his visit to the Bureau office in Orange County. They use his trailer and the open desert around it for basic instruction in self-defense, small arms skills, micro-camera photography, mnemonic memory assistance and lockpicking.

The long evenings of autumn give them over two hours of sunlight after John's work day at the
Anza Valley Lamp.
It is hard to picture a better place for this kind of training. It is out of the way, accessible only by one road that is rarely traveled, and the kind of area where gunshots, hand-to-hand drills and endless roadwork wouldn't turn a head. Any air surveillance would be immediately apparent. Most importantly, it allows John to continue his work at the paper, which he knows is an important factor in the operation, though he doesn't know why. Weinstein has installed a small trailer—purchased under billing code, "Wayfarer"—alongside John's for the nights when he or Sharon Dumars are simply too tired to drive back to Orange County.

Under the soothing evening sunlight, John shoots pistols and revolvers, puncturing human silhouette targets with tight groups at ten feet, good groups at twenty, fair ones—still all in the black—at fifty.

He spars with Weinstein and Dumars, learning close-in self-defense.

He listens carefully to their guidance regarding the array of micro-cameras they supply for training. He concentrates on the lockpicking, but is not particularly adept.

He retains the memory boosters and mnemonic devices.

He runs, and he runs, and he runs.

Seven miles a night now, on the punishing, hilly dirt road leading into the High Desert Rod and Gun Club, he runs along a barbed wire fence, watching the deadwood fence posts reel past, huffing to himself with the thudding of his shoes,
Re-bec-ca pause, Re-bec-ca pause,

Re-bec-ca pause.

Re-bec-ca.

Her name is the punctuation of his thoughts, the increments of his clock. It is his blueprint, his refrain, his true north. Her memory is his atmosphere and his sustenance. Her justice is his reason.

Weinstein is pleased to see that John is a natural. He is already better with a sidearm than either he or Dumars, which proves a little embarrassing. Weinstein vows to improve his skills at the indoor range when he can get the time. John's short-term memory, even considering the effect of the alcohol he continues to consume, is excellent. The micro-camera photography goes easily, because all the student has to learn is to shoot documents at a consistent range—the camera is best inside three feet—and to grid off the subject in such a way that nothing will be lost along the borders. A child could do it, Joshua reminds him. Lockpicking is a little tougher, but it is something that Weinstein believes will be of lesser importance. Besides, the real problem with locks these days are the alarm systems keyed into them. So far as the hand-to-hand self defense goes, Joshua believes it stupid to teach in the first place, but he does so anyway due to Bureau protocol. Weinstein notes that John is fast and strong enough to land effective blows to the well-padded Dumars, but even his good reflexes can't keep him from receiving them in turn. John is tough up to a point, Weinstein is happy to see, but he is also happy to see that John knows when to give up and when to play possum. After one particularly fierce battle, his nose bloodied and his eyes glazed, he simply went to his knees in the dust and, groaning, told Dumars, "finish me off." Then he caught her padded foot just in front of his face, and twisted her down to the dirt. Joshua sees to it that John develops a working knowledge of the choke-hold used to render an enemy unconscious. Joshua teaches both the throat blow and throat pull, which puncture the trachea by splintering the delicate bones beneath the jaw, killing fairly quickly. Weinstein has John practice on a dummy they name Amon.

They run. They shoot. They run. They fight.

For Weinstein, the road work is hellish, all three of them jogging down and sprinting up the hard, dusty trail. They start at three miles a day and work up from there. Even for a nonsmoker, Menden's endurance is very good, though the first thing he does after finishing is light up a cigarette and open a beer. Weinstein hears John's rhythmic grunts begin after mile two, and on the third day he realizes that they are the syllables of Rebecca's name.

Most of the training is, in Joshua Weinstein's mind, silly. Silly because, should John need to employ any of this side arm or combat training, he will most likely get killed for his efforts. Bureau experience has proven that. And certainly, whether John Menden runs a six-or a seven-minute mile wasn't going to matter a bit if things went wrong. You can't outrun a bullet. In truth, the training is intended more for John's mental fitness than his physical prowess; it is always to the good if an informant goes in feeling strong. Invincible, no, but strong.

During the first week, Weinstein watches particularly closely for indicators of John Menden's mental state. Weinstein plays the devil's advocate, looking hard for a reason to call the whole thing off. That is an option he—or Washington—can exercise any time until John gets close to Wayfarer, if he gets close to Wayfarer.

They run. They shoot. They run. They fight.

Weinstein observes. He looks for fatigue, doubt, carelessness, and most importantly, any sign that John Menden finds what is happening amusing. The second his student hints that his education or his mission is anything but a matter of the deepest gravity, the whole thing is dead in the water. And although Weinstein does his best to discover something insincere in his student, he does not.

On the dark cool nights he chooses to sleep over in the desert, Joshua lies on his back and looks out the uncurtained window to the big clear stars in the desert sky. He hates the emptiness of it all, the huge spaces between things. He worries, tosses, grunts, curses, dozes. Everything worries him.

What worries Joshua most is that his own feelings toward Rebecca might blind him to Menden's weaknesses—we all have them, he knows. But Weinstein rationalizes that if he could sell this operation to his superiors in Washington—surely the most difficult thing he had ever done—then his vision must have been very clear. It is a matter now of seeing well, of remaining objective and effective.

But staring up from the narrow trailer bed at night, he often wonders: how can I be objective about you, Rebecca, you love, you betrayer. How can I possibly do that? Because you died in the rain and I loved you. I owe you everything, but all I can give you is vengeance.

John keeps his own counsel and allows his easy politeness and placid gray eyes to mask the emotional storm brewing inside him. He is still almost amazed that this—whatever it might turn out to be—is actually happening. He has wanted it for so long. He has tried to imagine it so many times. He has prayed for it so often. And he has believed that someday it would come. It is happening.

So he runs. He shoots. He runs. He fights.

But none of this is really new. In fact, John began his training nearly three months ago, when he moved out to the club property. At the time he had not known what it might be for, only that he must do it, he must be ready, he must prepare himself for . .. something. It was an article of faith that he be fit for the task, whatever the task might entail.

So, by the time Weinstein and Dumars begin to drill him with a pistol he has already shot so many rounds through his own .357 Smith and Wesson that he is fast, accurate and comfortable. He has developed callouses where his hands—he shoots using both—touch the grip and stainless steel frame. By the time they start him on roadwork, he is already running six miles each morning. The three miles a day they start him with is, for John, a gesture. He had even been practicing on a heavy bag and a speed bag up near the clubhouse. For hours on the weekends he had exhausted himself against the canvas and leather, his hands protected by gloves, literally pounding the anger and sadness out of his body. Tim, the silent groundskeeper of the High Desert Rod and Gun Club, had shuffled by occasionally, trying to act uninterested.

With Rebecca's death, John has lost almost all that is valuable inside. He is like a home gutted by fire. Ashes have covered his interior, while his outside remains, to most observers, unharmed.

There was no one he can talk to about her, because he had only been her secret lover. He could not explain to his friends or family why his spirit for living drained away, why he felt a tremendous weight upon him, why the former joys of earning a living, having a drink with friends, making little improvements on his old Laguna Canyon house became unbearable. He was not invited to the private funeral or memorial service. No one offered him condolence.

A man who feels invisible will in fact become invisible. So John simply vanished, one heartbeat at a time, to reappear here, in this vast unforgiving desert, faced with the job of putting himself right. Here, he was free to sort amidst the rubble. Here, he had begun preparing himself for the task of rebuilding. An occasional flicker of hope was the only mortar he had to use.

But the hope became larger when Joshua Weinstein and Sharon Dumars not-so-casually sidled into his life one afternoon in Olie's Saloon. Since that day, John has felt all his evasive, mystifying dreams beginning to come true.

He runs. He shoots. He runs. He fights.

On the third Saturday of his training, John was to meet Evan. Evan was critical to their purpose, Weinstein said, and Evan had to be reassured by what he saw. This was all that Weinstein said, but John easily gathered that Evan was a superior, perhaps one of those difficult Washington bureaucrats that Joshua had had to convince in order to get a green light for what they were doing. For three days before the meeting with Evan, Joshua was even more humorless than usual, rigidly focused, withdrawn. Dumars was, too.

They drove up to Orange County early that Saturday morning in Dumars' Bureau Ford. It was the first time in three months that John had been in the place where he was born and raised. To enter the county from neighboring Riverside was no great transition—just an older freeway guardrail and the gradual disappearance of the car pool lane. But even this undramatic border was loaded with meaning for John. The second they passed the Orange County sign he saw Rebecca again and heard, quite clearly, her voice and his own:

"I want to tell him. I need to tell him. It's a sin not to tell him. John, I'm having trouble telling him."

"It will happen in time."

"There's been time. I feel like I'm torturing the poor man. He's so
...
so ...
he understands. I know he knows. But he won't make the first move. He's leaving it to me."

"He's hoping you'll change your mind."

"Any fool can change her mind. But I can't change my heart. This hurts me, too, John. Oh, hold me for a minute, just hold me."

And he holds her, there in the kitchen of his Laguna Canyon home, with the blinds drawn and the stew heating on the stove. He strokes her golden, wavy hair. He runs his open hand down the length of her back, then up again to the bunched and shuddering shoulders. Her tears smell like rain and John feels the dampness on his shirt.