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                                            CHAPTER NINETEEN

                                                      The Rock

10:10 a.m.

King, one of the Angels, sat smoking a joint on the seat of his stripped-down hog, wearing a bluish-white Levi's vest and tight black jeans. Lucilva had warned Reggie to stay away from King. He liked to fight. Carried a rubber mouthpiece around with him. He wasn't more than five-ten, but his shoulders were sinewy, thick and tanned. His torso tapered like a funnel to a small waist, hard as a weight-lifters. Long, curly dirty-blond hair fell to his shoulders. His moustache was as big as Yosemite Sam's and the same shade of rusty red. Thick swaths burst like fountains from beneath his thin nose, looped around his thick, chiseled lips and curled back up. What blemished this healthy face was his dolphin-nose chin. Immediately, Reggie dubbed him Flipper.

I.Q. was explaining to Josh and three other Angels what needed to be done to the inside of the Pace Arrow. The other four Angels had left last night after unloading the chemicals from the empty horse trailers. They drove two trucks away, leaving the third truck behind.

King's slivered blue eyes darted at Reggie, as he sat against the side of the hangar in the shade drinking ice water. If he thought he was going to rip the insides out of the Pace Arrow, he was mistaken. A shadow came over Reggie. He looked up. Lucilva stood over him. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She wore a white, sleeveless top and tan shorts.

"Here it is," she said, handing him the cellular phone. "Ever use one?" He gulped the water and nodded. "Who're you calling?" He didn't answer. "Aren't you going to help," she called after him. He was already heading out into the desert, away from everyone. Lucilva went back inside the hangar. Like a dog in heat, King followed her. Reggie walked south several yards. He dug out the check stub from Doone's Café from his front pocket and dialed the number off the back of it. It rang five times.

The girl who answered the phone was out of breath. "Hello?"

"Uh, hi," Reggie said, fighting a nervous lump in his throat. "Jackie, please."

"Who is this?"

"Friend of hers."

"She doesn't have any friends."

Reggie hesitated. "Is this her sister?"

"Who is this?" she insisted.

"Doesn't matter."

"I know who you are. You're one of them."

He wasn't in the mood for explanations. "Did she get home okay?"

"She was supposed to."

"I know. Did she?"

"No."

Reggie's brain skipped a groove. What did she mean Jackie didn't make it home?

"She left here yesterday at two," he said, forcing his voice not to waver. "I saw her off myself."

"Where are you?"

He sighed. "Maybe she didn't get the connection or something. She could be stuck in Barstow."

"She would call, asshole."

"I'll find her," he said. "Tell your mother not to worry."

"Oh, like, right. What a sick joke."

"It's not. I...I love Jackie. You tell her that. Tell her I'm sorry." Hearing himself say he loved Jackie brought on a shock of realization. Did he mean it? When he heard himself say it, he suspected it came from that heart pounding in his chest. A shadow of grief fell over him, awakening a dark side of himself. The Monster in his brain grumbled, You don’t care about anybody–you care about how uncomfortable you feel at acknowledging guilt. He fought off the gruesome possibilities behind her disappearance.

"If you love her," a new voice said, "you'll tell her mother your name and where you are." It was Teddi Weldon. She sniffed.

After a moment of quick decision, Reggie said:

"Mrs. Weldon, my name isn't important. One of these days you'll know my name."

"Listen, you son-of-a-bitch," Teddi hissed, "I know your name, and if anything has happened to my girl, I hold you responsible, and I'll go anywhere, anytime to find you, and when I find you, you coward, I'm going to eat you alive." She hung up.

Didn't she hear me say I’d find Jackie? Didn't that matter? Why was my name so damn important? How'd she get from crying to menacing in one sniff? Only one reason I can think of. She has someone looking for him. Didn't she have a friend or partner who was a private eye? No, he used to be a private eye. Worked for Otto. Yeah. It was possible. Unlikely, but possible.

While on the phone to the Weldons, Reggie had wandered through the desert, carrying the body of the phone by its handle in his right hand, a curly cord connecting it to the phone in his left hand. He set the phone in its magnetic trough. For miles in every direction was flat nothing, speckled with purple and brown scrub brush.

He gazed back north to the hut and hangar. He was at least five hundred yards away. Looking south again, widening his eyes for depth of field, he made out a rise in the desert, and the emptiness around him seemed to unleash a herald of vulnerability.

The sun beat down on his bare head, a breeze blew dust across his face. The desert gently climbed. I have to find a hiding place. He pushed his vision into the blurry distance. And saw...a hump. At first any interest in the hump was lost to his thoughts of Jackie. But his own self-preservation gave rise to these concerns for her.

Straining to see, it looked like there was at the top of the hump a mammoth rock. Fifteen feet high and nearly twice that across. He pushed on, moving slowly up the incline.

When he reached the base of the rock, he looked up the side of it. This could be my hiding place. But where? It appeared to be flat on top. If I can actually climb this thing, it might work. He decided to climb the glob of granite, setting the phone safely under a bush, and started up the north face, carefully slipping his fingers into crevices and indentations made by the weather. His ribs hurt from the beating Josh gave him. Each overhead reach was painful. But he reached the top. Like he imagined, it was a flat slab. A two-foot notch the size of a manhole at the end where he had climbed held a puddle of dark rain water.

He surveyed the desert around him. There were ruggedly inhospitable mountains to the north and east. But on the rock, he was at the highest point for many miles. He gazed down the hill to the hut and hangar. The buildings blended well with the drab desert scape. The bright orange air sock was the only dab of color.

This was a good place to hide. And escape. If he needed to. If something went wrong down there, he had a place to go. He didn't trust the Angels. He was already tired of their tough-guy jabbering about bikes and broads. Last night, after unloading and stacking barrels of chemicals, they drank around a big fire, drawing up a rhythm of banter and cursing laughter that lasted right up to the moment Reggie gave up trying to sleep.

Fifteen or twenty feet away, in the center of the slab, was a deeper and longer depression. It was in the shape of a coffin, with a roundness to the corners.

He climbed into it, laid back in the grave-like groove. To fit, he bent his knees slightly. The granite walls of the rock cocooning around him rose at least three feet. It was cool and shady. Dead still. He smelled moisture in the rock. He touched the smooth surface. It was cold.

The smaller groove at the other end of the slab had water in the bottom. This one was dry. He turned on his side, inspected the rock. Nothing unusual. No sign that water had pooled in this deeper rut. It didn't make sense. He turned on his other side, ran his fingers along the seam of the floor and wall, finding ribs and bumps, but still nothing unusual. He sat up. In the left corner under his foot was a white powdery circle the size of a quarter. He felt a crusty lip around it. Bending his finger at the first knuckle, he discovered a dime-sized hole under it. The water had run out and down the side of the rock. Nature had a way.

He laid back, hands clasped under his head. He saw only blue sky over him. But the blanket of serenity that came over him was thrown off by the thought that somewhere, under this same comfortable blue sky, Jackie was in trouble. Or worse.

And here he lay, on a rock in the desert, doing nothing about it.

* * *

Something woke him. His eyes were struck by blinding sunshine. He sat up in the rut in the rock. The sun was directly overhead. How long had he been asleep? He couldn't believe he'd actually slept in the rock.

The silence had changed. There was still a breeze, but nothing to blow. Sitting up in the rock depression, his eyes came to the top of the slab. He could see all around himself from this position, only the top of his head above the edge. The wind blew across his face. If there was nothing to blow, how come he heard rustling? Perhaps the sound came from behind him. He cranked his head around and leaned over the edge of the overhang. Nothing. He turned to his left.

And then he spotted the two figures, hunched over, maneuvering through the scrub brush along the west side of the rock. The man wearing frayed jeans and a cowboy hat was November Wallace. As they approached the spot directly below Reggie, the other man said: "Hand me the binoculars." It was John Quinn. He should have remembered him by the white Panama hat. Quinn knelt beside the rock, aiming the binoculars down on the Paley hangar.

He tipped back his hat and put down the binoculars. "There's a bunch of them." He handed the binoculars to Wallace. "They're doing something in the hangar, ripping things out of the RV. Do you see Fred Flintstone anywhere?"

Reggie bristled but kept quiet. He'd get this arrogant twerp in due time.

"Damn fool," Wallace muttered. "Cram that shotgun down his throat next time."

"What do you suppose is going on?" Quinn asked, taking back the binoculars and watching down the slope. "Maybe this won't lead to anything we can use. What else can we do? She won't tell me what she's up to. The land leases are up in five weeks. And now she's got these characters hanging around."

Wallace shrugged. "The graverobbin' sumbitch who took his body's got to know something. Nobody in their right mind holds a dead body for ransom."

"Unless the graverobber thought Lucilva would pay something out of loyalty." Wallace responded with a Hmm. "Fred Flintstone knows. He knows who took the body. Maybe himself."

"He don't care about the damn land leases, John, and the ransom note said–"

"I know what it said. He's trying to throw the cops off."

"He ain't that smart," Wallace chuckled.

"It must be drugs. Josh Paley's been running dope through this desert for a couple years. Tom Lee said the San Berdoo Sheriffs haven't figured out how he gets anything across the desert."

"He's got a rattlesnake farm down there," Wallace said, taking off his hat and wiping sweat off his face with his arm. "Hate the little devils."

"I have a terrible time picturing Lucilva dealing drugs, November. But I won't put it past her–especially now that Chris is dead. She's desperate."

"Desperate for what?"

"Maintaining the lifestyle she's accustomed to, for one thing."

Wallace wiped his brow with his arm again. "Don't she got everything?"

"She got control. But I don't know what she got. The Feds were investigating his bank."

"Ain't you and her–you know–friendly?"

"Not like you think. Don't listen to all these hicks. I assure you, I see nothing in her romantically."

"You don't got to own up to anything to me, Mr. Quinn. I'm just a drunk, thank you very much." He corrected the position of his hat on his head. "I'm with you. Can't stand to see this place go down the toilet."

"Me, too, November." Quinn appeared suddenly to notice the rock. He slapped the side of it. He tilted back his head to look up the east face of it. Reggie quickly leaned back away from the edge.

"We think alike, November," Quinn said. "We see Paley as a community. Chris kept it as his private enterprize, with the rest of us just employees. Eighteen hundred people working for him, held here by a thirty year lease and nothing else."

"Makes me madder than hell," November agreed.

Quinn chuckled. "I appreciate you coming with me. Come on. I'll buy you a drink at Winkle's."

"Won't let me in there no more on account of his wife said I stuck my hand up her dress last week." He chuckled to himself, throwing his voice into a coughing fit, and said: "'Course she was tellin' the truth, but that ain't no reason to let a feller buy a damn drink, is it?"

Quinn laughed. He reminded Wallace it was a long walk back to the road. They set off down the backside of the hump, heading south.

Reggie finally took a breath. Sweat rolled down his face. He wiped it off with his shirt and tucked his damp shirt in his back pocket. He'd been at the right place at the right time. Because he listened to himself.

He took his time getting down the rock, then broke into a jog, hurdling the scrub brush, the phone grasped in his hand, gathering up speed down the slope. Approaching camp, the unmistakable hum of Lucilva's ultralight rose up with his sighting the slow-moving craft as it lofted into the air and turned north, rising higher and getting smaller.

He entered the hangar. The Angels were dismantling the inside of the motorhome to make room for the lab.

"You didn't answer me." He turned. Lucilva stood there, her top wet, nipples visible, wiping herself with a wet cloth.

"When?"

"Hours ago." Tilting her head back, she squeezed the cloth over and dripped water on her face. "Where'd you go in this fucking heat?"

"A walk."

"Who'd you call?"

She'll see the number on her phone bill anyway. "Jackie."

"Must be true love."

He didn't respond. Then he asked: "Who took the plane?"

"Bear." She glanced at the work being done around the motorhome. "Wouldn't hurt if you helped out."

"Not in my job description."

"Let's say I make it your job description?"

He hesitated. Too hot to argue. Too hot to work. Lucilva smiled.

"When you're done, I'll take you back to town for a swim in the lake." Her tongue momentarily bulged her cheek out. "Naked."

The swim was enticing. Seeing her naked should have been, but...there was something about it that clamped his desire.

Over Lucilva's shoulder, Reggie spotted King watching them from the back of the motorhome. Reggie said: "A swim sounds great. Deal."