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                                            CHAPTER THIRTEEN

                                          In the Heat

1:20 p.m.

Reggie watched Jackie eat her veggie burger and wondered where the deaf waitress was. From their booth in Doone's Café, which was out of view of the window, Reggie held a panoramic view of the whole place this time–including the front door and kitchen. Pitts and Tooley wouldn't surprise him again.

"Jail smelled like gorilla pee," I. Q. was saying, his mouth full of syrup-soaked waffle. "All they had to read were nooky bookies and muscle mags. It was horrible. Despicable. Whole time I was in there I kept saying to myself, 'This is horrible, despicable.’"

Reggie ignored I.Q.'s drone. His attention was on Jackie. Her crisp white cotton blouse, clean brown hair curling around her face, her bangs meeting her eyebrows in a...fresh, sweet way. Her eyes peeked at him sadly through her bangs.

She's only seventeen, he reminded himself. He consciously turned off the emotional noise...and turned up the volume on the reality in the booth: I.Q.'s nasally voice.

"...and now the mayor's dead," he whispered, "and you say we have to deal with a woman who has her brains on deposit in a bank and that anal cavity she calls a brother." He swept a three-layered wedge of waffle through a maple syrup slick on his plate.

"How can you eat hot breakfast this time of day?" Reggie asked. "It's ninety degrees outside."

I.Q. ignored the remark. "Look what the grease-monkey did to your face. Jaw's swollen, eyes puffy, bridge of your nose cut. Just because you took his Jeep, he kicks your butt? You look like crap."

"Thanks."

"Well, it makes me angry–you know I'm not a violent person–but I want to kick his butt. I'm serious." He lowered his voice and added: "I feel...unpredictable."

Reggie put a cap on his amusement and nodded. I.Q.'s face contorted weirdly; first he squinted, then his mouth twitched and his eyes bugged out. A great Barney Fife impression, had he been making the faces on purpose. Ivan Sonneborn as Mr. Chicken, read the credits in Reggie's mind.

Jackie had not been listening. A blank expression, one that usually came over someone who was deep in thought, settled her face, accentuating the scrape she'd suffered over her eye when that pig of a man tackled her in the groves.

"You okay?" Reggie asked.

She managed a smile, took a sip of water. "Scared a little."

"Scared?" I.Q. repeated. "Of what?"

"Going home."

"You don't have to go."

"I want to. Once I'm home, I'll be okay." She patted I.Q.'s child-sized hand. I.Q. placed his hand on hers and squeezed it.

"I love you to death, you know that?" he said.

She smiled. "I love you to death, too."

Reggie reached across the table and grasped her other hand.

"You guys don't have to wait," she said. "Shuttle doesn't get here for a few minutes. You have better things to do than wait around here. The less you're seen, the better, right?"

Reggie knew she meant they had to excavate the riverine spot where he'd buried the equipment–the retorts and beakers and hoses for cooking speed; getting the details worked out with the Paleys–especially now with the unworkable, confrontational relationship with Josh that was created by his raping Jackie.

She raised her eyebrows, as if signaling an underlying message. He wasn't sure what it was. The timing of the expression made him wonder. Did she mean that a little retribution down the line would be a worthy task?

A loop of film, pictures over and over, took him back to the mud last night, the ooze that covered Jackie's naked body, and to the sound of Josh's grunts as he tromped through the groves, gasping for breath, his bearded face monstrously huffing his cheeks....

And Jackie seemed to have resigned herself to letting him get away with it.

Jackie interrupted his thoughts. "I need a hit before I go." She looked at I.Q., then Reggie, back to I.Q. "I need a hit."

I.Q. said: "They took my hydro and I dumped the rest of the speed in the toilet when the cops showed up."

A streak of panic rushed across her face...then disappeared. Reggie watched her. A decision-look. He could almost see the little men: the guy with wings and the guy with horns, each whispering to her from opposite sides of her head.

"When I get home," she said, "I'm going to kick that shit." Reggie nodded. I.Q. patted her hand. "Right now, I need something–there's got to be something–somewhere."

Reggie's throat constricted guiltily, kicked over his emotionally-driven memories of Jackie just three months ago: a healthy high school senior with no experience with drugs or sex–a pretty Valley Girl who somehow got tangled up with thieves and smugglers and druggies and the rest of the creeps and cruds in his life.

"There's nothing left," Reggie said firmly.

"Oh, God." She sucked in air. "Maybe that's good," she sighed. "I have to admit, though: it's scary...the thought of never...never getting high again...."

"Who needs to get high?" I.Q. said quietly, leaning in closer. Reggie suspected that I.Q.'s guilt boiled under that cool exterior.

"You turned me on to it, Ivan. So don't sit there and say 'Who needs to get high?' You both get high. I overdo it, but everybody gets high–on something."

When he gazed into her eyes, Reggie realized that, although he never forced her to do it, never coerced her to take anything, he was as guilty of getting her hooked on crank as he was innocent of discouraging its use.

Amused, she shook her head. "Don't. Don't feel guilty. I'm not blaming you. I mean, you guys, I could've listened to Nancy Reagan, could've just said 'no,' but I didn't." She grinned. And the innocent glimmer in her eye pushed a lump into Reggie's throat.

I should've said 'no' for you, he chided himself. It hadn't mattered before.

Jackie checked the big clock on the wall behind Reggie. I.Q.'s eyes welled up and tears raced down his cheeks. Beside him, Jackie was overcome by I.Q.'s emotion. She took his hand, her own eyes watering, her chin quivering.

She cried. And I.Q. cried. Reggie was surprised by the depth of their feelings for each other. He hadn't noticed any special something between them before. I.Q. met her first, but he was the one who...who what? What had Reggie Thomas done? I talked a pretty, intelligent high school girl into moving in with me. After I made plenty of meth and pot available to her. Except when I had sex with her, I didn't notice her much. She was second to business. Even when she'd accompanied him on a few excursions into the plumbing of his procurement services–she'd been no more useful, no less a bother. Then the apartment next to the airport. She wanted I.Q. there, too. That's right. Jackie had specifically asked for I.Q. to live with them. Until now, that fact hadn't struck him as unusual. They'd been friends. She had sex with him, not I.Q. Or did she? If they had a romance on the sly...that meant he'd been duped all along. So why had she clung to him these several weeks? And why do I care about her? Reggie wondered.

I.Q. and Jackie hugged awkwardly, mumbling things about missing each other and seeing each other soon and something that sounded like a private joke.

They slid out from their side of the booth and hugged again.

Reggie found himself saying, "Hey, what about me?" He stood in the aisle. She came to him. Her head came just to his nose and she wrapped her arms around his waist, put her head to his chest and hugged him hard.

"Now that you know I'm alive," she whispered, "when you get done here, maybe you can love me as much as I love you."

An eight-ball dropped into his throat, the affection was so overwhelming. He squeezed her tighter to keep from drawing tears right there in the aisle before a room full of strangers.

The waitress Brenda stood at the kitchen door, pinning on a little white hat. She glanced over and smiled. A Mexican busboy stopped clearing the table next to theirs to stare.

"What're you looking at?" Reggie said.

The busboy looked away.

When Reggie and Jackie separated, he couldn't look her in the eye. He looked over his shoulder out the window. There it was again. That damn Ford pick-up. It was parked across the street in front of a Laundromat. No one in it. Again, Reggie remembered the conversation he overheard last night between Lucilva and John Quinn. Quinn had sent Wallace after Reggie. What interest in Reggie did Quinn have? And why had he not told Lucilva the real reason Reggie had branded Wallace's ribs with the shotgun? Why hadn't he told her he'd tried to coerce Wallace into providing the name of the person who had used the pick-up that night?

"Got your ticket?" Reggie said. She nodded. He hugged her again.

Reggie felt the stares. Then the bus rolled up out front and the air-brakes snorted.

* * *

Reggie turned off Paley Lake Boulevard onto Gratzke Street. The cactus-shaped clock atop the roof of Joshua Savings & Loan blinked the time and temperature: 104...2:12...104....It was closed. Paley owned the savings and loan. Again, Reggie recalled Lucilva's conversation with John Quinn last night. Something about the Bank Board on Paley's back.

"Think she's okay by herself?" I.Q. asked, fidgeting.

They'd left Jackie waiting to board the boxy, blue and white shuttle bus that would take her to Barstow.

"It was leaving in ten, fifteen minutes anyway."

"I know, but–"

"Ivan, don't worry about it, she's a big girl. She insisted we go."

"I'm sorry," he said, a flicker of a grin warming his face.

Reggie parked the Pace Arrow at Gratzke and Paley Parkway, which ran along the Paley Municipal Golf Course. A Rainbird chattered, spraying water over the parched fairways. Children ran through the spray.

"Look at that," I.Q. laughed, pointing. "Go for that myself. It's so damn hot."

Before getting out of the motorhome, Reggie canvassed the street with his eyes. A couple of old men in short-sleeve golf shirts sat on a green-painted iron bench at the entrance to the golf course, their clubs lounging in hand carts beside them. Another couple, a man and woman in their mid-thirties, dressed in white tennis clothes, rackets clamped under their arms, drinking Gatorade, sauntered across the street to the park and three empty tennis courts. Paley was coming alive. These were the early birds. The city folk who didn't want to come out here to a crowd. By the end of October, the weather would become milder, and the town became the resort it was meant to be.

Reggie and I.Q. bought food and bottled water for a week at the Mojave Mini-Market, a two-register mom and pop shop.

As they exited the store, I.Q. nudged Reggie. Reggie looked down where I.Q. was staring. On the floor by the door was a stack of newspapers. It was a photograph of himself in profile as he came out of the jail yesterday. Grabbing the paper up, he read the story. It was short and to the point:

There was no mention of Jackie or his association with the mayor. Reggie dropped the paper back on the stack and left the store, wondering what kind of nut would steal the mayor's body and hold it for ransom. What the papers didn't know was that the ransom asked for money. Money apparently Lucilva didn't have.

The newspaper had not gotten the word yet that he'd been kicked and the charges dropped. Even the one thing he liked–calling him a film maker–wasn't accurate. Yet.

* * *

Reggie drove to a spot beside Breadcrumb Creek, where late Wednesday night he'd buried their equipment and apparatus in boxes. The temperature gauge on the motorhome parked close to the red for most of the drive. The heat was so unbearable that they had to stop twice and pour water over their heads to cool off. Within minutes, they were totally dry–except for the sweat pouring down their faces again.

Once loaded, they drove the northern road to avoid town, heading east across the desert over the dry lake bed. The motorhome’s engine ran hotter, touching the red line. But they didn’t stop. They had to get there.

Forty minutes later, close to five o'clock, they rolled up to the fifteen-foot high hangar door, steam billowing from the radiator. Bear Adams waved to them like they were old friends and directed them to park the Pace Arrow inside the empty hangar. The wide sliding door at the other end was open between the hangar and the Quonset hut. As he nosed the Pace Arrow close to the door, Reggie noticed that where Josh's hog had been parked yesterday was now a grease spot the size of a pancake.

"Oh, Reg," I.Q. moaned, "look at this place."

The hangar walls were decorated with posters of nude women, most of them stretched atop Harley-Davidson motorcycles. Motorcycle parts, coffee mugs, belt buckles and every imaginable thing with the winged logo of Harley-Davidson hung around the hangar.

The ultra-light airplane was gone. Surely, Reggie thought, Josh didn't fly that thing. Never get off the ground.

Bear met them at the motorhome's side door. He grinned ear to ear.

"Come on in!" he said. "Bet you boys could go for a cold one."

"Sounds good," I.Q. said, throwing a side glance at Reggie. "I'm Ivan," he added, extending his hand to Adams. "Yesterday, you picked up Reggie at the lake."

"Don't hold it against me," he chuckled.

They stood inside the Quonset hut around the dining table. It was still cluttered with left-over food and paper plates from lunch. Beer cans lay around the table on the floor, as if after the last drop was swilled the can was dropped.

I.Q. pulled the tab on his beer and drank long, the golden liquid running down his chin. He wiped it with the back of his hand and leaned back in the chair, refreshed.

Reggie strolled back into the hangar. On the connecting wall, something stood out among the Harley-Davidson junk. A map. It was tacked to a half-dozen cork squares glued to the wall. He stepped up to it. There were no names or directions, nothing to identify where it was. Lots of numbers and different shades of brown and green. Must be topographical. Black-ink lines squiggled and arched around the map. All began from one point on the map. Each line was numbered, 1 to 13. Reggie deduced that the point of beginning was the hut. He didn't know what the thirteen lines meant, but they looked like routes, since they all ended at roads and highways. There was no telling which roads and highways.

"What's the plan?" Adams said from the door, an unopened beer in his hand and no suspicion in his voice.

"We set up in here?"

"That's what he said. You all can sleep in the motorhome, I s'pose."

Bear handed Reggie the beer. He didn't drink but opened it anyway to be polite.

"Didn't see any telephone lines. How do you communicate from here?"

"Cellular phones."

Reggie roamed the hangar as if studying the layout. "You live here?"

"For now."

"How long you know the Paleys?"

"Two, three months."

"And how do you fit in around here?"

"Just fine."

He wasn't going to budge. Adams wasn't a mouth.

Adams glanced up at a round, big-face Harley-Davidson clock that hung over the sliding door. "Lucilva called just before you got here. She's on her way." Reggie stood beside him pretending to sip the beer. He felt Adams' eyes on him. "Ain't she somethin'?"

Reggie shrugged, nodded. "Lucilva? Yeah."

A faint buzz came from outside like a swarm of locusts passing overhead.

Reggie went out and combed the horizon for the dust trail of a vehicle. As far as he could see, there was only the flat, wavering hardpan erasing all detail from the horizon.

The high-pitched drone was almost toy-like. He looked up to the left and right for the source of the sound. A burst of wind and a shadow flashed over him. He stared up to see the bottom of an ultra-light twenty feet overhead. It drifted down, settled with a jolt on the road. The engine suddenly shut down. The pilot taxied the aircraft into a turnout under a shady tree and coasted to a stop off the road.

The seat belt straps flew off, clanked against the frame. The blue-jeaned legs swiveled over the stick and the pilot got out. When the helmet came off, long brown hair tumbled over the shoulders of Lucilva Paley.

"Good afternoon, boys," she called and slipped off her goggles.