The Power to Live Page 6

  Chapter 17

  Although the van itself would be found the next day by a Nevada state trooper two days later, and connected to the theft of the Datsun, the bones of the man lying on the desert floor 70 feet away would never be reported missing and would never be found except by insects and scavengers that stripped them clean.

  Chapter 18

  Von Broughton stopped his Range Rover in his driveway and killed the engine but left the key on. The green glowing letters of the clock on the dash read 2:35 am. The headlights bounced unnaturally off the field stone siding and cast reflected light onto the landscaped shrubs along the front of the house. He loved his landscaping and spared no expense. He closed down The Cage again tonight, paid off his tab, and drove himself home. Miraculously, despite doing this for years, he had no DWIs, probably because the bar was only four blocks away and was frequented by a state senator and county sheriff from his neighborhood.

  He rested his head against the head restraint and tilted the electric seat back until he was staring at the ceiling.

  "Call number." Silence. Slightly louder, concentrating to not slur, he said, "Call...Number."

  The Range Rover's speakers asked, in a clear loud female voice "What number?"

  He recited the number from memory and closed his eyes as he listened to the ringing.

  "Yeah."

  Without opening his eyes, von Broughton asked "Paddy?"

  "Who is this?"

  "Dr. von Broughton."

  "Who played shortstop for the '69 Mets?"

  "Alright then. Harrelson."

  "Harrelson who?"

  "Bud Harrelson," vou Broughton said to the ceiling. Paddy O'Groghan was either paranoid or wise, von Broughton could never decide, but he wouldn't talk to anyone on the phone unless the caller knew the answers to some prearranged questions. Von Broughton concluded, though, that if the success of his many business ventures was any indication, he was very wise indeed. He had his fingers in smuggling illegals, dog and cock fighting, hijacking trucks, gun sale, and trafficking human organs. But he steered clear of drugs. He laundered his receipts through a body guard and security equipment business, also very successful.

  "Wait one," the speakers said.

  "I'm not going anywhere," von Broughton told his Range Rover. He closed his eyes and nearly drifted off to sleep when his speakers woke him with a start.

  "Broughton?"

  "Yes, this is von Broughton," he said, emphasizing "von" as he always had, his entire life, for anyone who forget that part of his name. "Paddy?"

  "What do you want?"

  "I got a call. 'Le Produit' is delayed," von Broughton said.

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "It means delayed. The product is delayed. The usual meaning of the word, Paddy. Delayed," von Broughton said. He unconsciously spun one of the two oversized pinky rings on his left hand and lifted his head slightly from the head restraint, but immediately rested it back down.

  "Don't be a smart ass. If you don't get me my organs I'll come there and rip yours out myself. Do you know what that's supposed to mean?"

  "I got a call from the mules. They had an accident," von Broughton said. "They're driving it here but had to get a rental. I think one got hurt and isn't coming. I can't get started until it gets here, probably late morning. Still sounds good, though. Very healthy and young. Should be good and clean product. Pick it up tomorrow, just not by lunchtime. Best guess, depending on when it gets here, 5 p.m."

  "5 p.m.?"

  "Best guess," von Broughton replied.

  "When will you know exactly?"

  "When I get it on the table and start cutting, then I'll call with an exact time. Good enough?" von Broughton said.

  "Yeah. Let me know first thing you know. What about the other two?"

  "The other two what?" von Broughton asked.

  "I'm expecting two more, for work. Supposed to be coming together."

  "No clue. I deal in Le Produit, Monsieur O'Groghan, not workers. You'll have to take that up with Marcos."

  "You know nothing. I know. But one more thing," O'Groghan said. "If you're as full as a Catholic school, like you were last time I put someone on your table, and you ruin any of my product with your shaky hands I will have you killed. Slowly. And boy-o, if you call me Paddy one more time I will come over there and personally kill you with my bare hands. Capiche?"

  Von Broughton opened his mouth to reply but the line went dead. He turned the key, pulled it from the ignition, opened the door, and fell sideways out onto his driveway.

  Chapter 19

  The bus driver changed the radio to an all-news station and Elizabeth woke to three people talking simultaneously, each trying to be heard over the other. She pulled the ends of the black sweater's sleeves down, opened her eyes slightly, and looked out the window. The moonlit highway gently sloped downward and curved to the right, giving Elizabeth a panoramic view of the salt flats several miles away. The sky near the western horizon was layered in early sunrise yellows and oranges filtered through the bus window's tint. She lazily pulled the spiral bound notebook from her purse, taking care not to disturb the revolver, half-heartedly flipped it open and sighed. She turned the pages slowly, pausing only briefly on each page. The woman sitting next to Elizabeth shifted positions in her sleep and the thin blanket covering her shoulders fell to her lap. Elizabeth reached over and pulled it back up.

  Elizabeth returned the notebook to her purse about the same time the driver suddenly accelerated. The bus moved into the passing lane, passed two cars and then, as suddenly, decelerated. She raised herself up in the seat until she could see the massive windshield but couldn't see the driver, who sat in a low, recessed well. At that moment, the bus lurched forward again and Elizabeth was pressed back into her seat. She swiveled her head to see if anyone else had noticed the erratic driving. If they did, they didn't display any alarm.

  When the driver pressed the brake pedal again, more forcefully than before, Elizabeth was pushed forward and reflexively braced herself against the seat back in front of her. The man behind her said, "What the..." and the woman sitting next to her opened her eyes and asked, "Que pasa?"

  But again, the bus lurched forward and pulled into the passing lane. This time, though, it continued to accelerate for several seconds as it entered the other-wordly expanse of the Bonneville Salt Flats.

  ~ - ~ - ~

  Napolita, who was sound asleep in the passenger seat of the Datsun, woke up and rolled her head to the left.

  "What in the world are you doing?" she asked Lozen. The Datsun's speeding up and slowing down in rapid succession had pulled Napolita from her dream, in which a mushroom cloud rose into the atmosphere above Denver.

  "The bus is acting crazy," Lozen said.

  "Aren't you tired?" Napolita asked.

  "Very." Lozen squinted her eyes, leaned forward and gripped the steering wheel at 10 and 2 o'clock. The salt flats were stretched out in front of her. Beyond lay the thin line of the Wasatch Range. Lozen stared into the thin, slate blue line of it until it blurred into the white expanse below. She raised her gaze imperceptibly until she was staring directly into the yellow-orange line of the sunrise. As she stared, her peripheral vision closed in. Napolita was lost in the blackness. She gripped the steering wheel until her knuckles turned white. Her arms, her neck, her upper body were stationary as marble. Napolita repeated, "Lozen? Lozen?" but this was lost in the blackness beyond her vision. Her right foot pressed evenly on the gas pedal and the speedometer held steady at 75. The cars, the trucks, the Greyhound bus melted into shimmers of colored mirage rising off the ground. The car drove through the shimmers and they swirled into smoky tunnels.

  Lozen became La Pieta. Napolita gripped her right forearm but recoiled in shock at the hard coldness of it. She watched out the windshield in increasing fear that Lozen had lost control and they would crash.

  The shimmers rose and sw
irled above the salt flats until they merged into each other, then merged into the Wasatch Range, then spread horizontally in a thin line above the earth, like the top of a steam cloud merging with a sympathetic layer of the upper atmosphere. Something in the ether spoke to Lozen. Denver. Elizabeth is going to Denver. She is going to Denver to die.

  No cars remained on the highway and Lozen and Napolita rolled straight as an arrow toward Salt Lake City, unencumbered.

  Chapter 20

  As they entered the city, Lozen recovered slowly. As she maneuvered in the early morning traffic, her senses slowly returned until she said, “We should ask for directions to the bus station.”

  Napolita watched her carefully but said nothing about the trance from which she had just emerged. For the next two hours, they alternated between driving the city streets and asking for directions to the bus station and now the sun was well above the horizon.

  The Datsun B210 finally ran out of gas on Hunts Lane Boulevard in Salt Lake City, five blocks from the bus station. It sputtered warnings but Lozen and Napolita didn't understood them. Lozen stopped the car at a red light and when the light changed and she pressed the gas pedal, the engine died. Napolita leaned over from the passenger seat and looked at the gas gauge. "I think we just ran out of gas. Must have."

  "We should have gotten some when we asked for directions," Lozen offered.

  "You're kidding, right? Now you figure out we should have gotten gas?"

  "I'm gonna walk," Lozen said as she opened the car door. She left the door hanging open behind her, walked around the back of the car, waited for several cars to pass to the right of the Datsun, then walked to the sidewalk. Although slightly hobbled by the three shot gun pellets that had struck her in the left thigh, Napolita followed closely behind. Lozen squinted her eyes as she looked at the street sign.

  After being taken for a terrifying ride over the desert floor, and then a long boring ride along I-80, and then a terrifying ride by a driver who appeared to have lost her senses, all in a seemingly hopeless quest to find Elizabeth, Napolita was out of patience. "If she was in that bus, then we were right next to her. How could you lose it, anyway?" she finally asked, her voice tinged with anger. The question had been building inside her since they first stopped for directions.

  "I'm sorry, Napolita. I don't know what happened. It's almost like I can only bring in so much information but," she paused, trying to shape the feeling into words. "It's like if I bring in too much I pass out, like I'm being put under for an operation or something. I just couldn't feel her and then my mind just...went under. It's not like I can control it or anything."

  "Well, you lost it for a while, acting like a zombie or something."

  "I'm pretty sure the station is this way," Lozen said, ignoring the comparison. She pointed down the boulevard in the direction they were driving.

  “Not that it matters. Elizabeth is probably long gone,” Napolita said.

  And so Lozen silently walked on, Napolita doing her best to keep up. After two blocks the sidewalk ended onto a vacant lot enclosed with a chain link fence. The girls walked on the narrow space between the fence and the road, following the dirt path that was created by thousands of other pairs of feet and bicycle tires that preceded them. At the end of the lot they saw the bus station across a divided road heavy with traffic.

  “Finally,” Lozen said. Without hesitation she waded into the three lanes between the fenced lot and the middle island, followed closely by Napolita gripping the rear of her shirt. The stream of westbound cars nonchalantly parted around them, like river water mindlessly circumnavigating a fallen tree. The two girls crossed the island and stopped.

  "I'm going for it. Come on," Lozen said and stepped off the curb and into the eastbound traffic. The first car to approach them swerved violently into the center lane but straightened out. The car immediately behind that one swerved in the opposite direction. Its left tires scraped loudly against the island's curb before the entire car jerked upward. The rubber of the front left tire ripped from the metal rim and was dragged over the curb before the leading edge of the car was stopped cold by the wooden telephone pole.

  Lozen kept her legs churning forward, practically dragging Napolita with her. When they reached the other side, she crossed the paved area reserved for buses. About halfway across, Napolita let go of Lozen's shirt and looked back. No one had yet emerged from the car that collided with the pole but three other cars had stopped and their drivers ran to the scene. Napolita saw the driver of a fourth car making a cell phone call.

  "Lozen, what are you doing?" Napolita said through clenched teeth.

  "That bus had to stop here. I'm sure of it," Lozen said. Napolita, anxious to leave the accident behind, limped ahead of Lozen. She grabbed the entranceway's large brass door handle, which was shaped like rolling ocean waves, pulled the heavy glass door open, and stepped inside. Lozen followed closely behind and let the door shut. Napolita hesitated inside the door but then walked toward the rows of benches in the center of the room.

  As Napolita walked, she heard Lozen gasp behind her.

  "Oh my God! They're here," Lozen said under her breath.

  Napolita turned and looked into Lozen's eyes. They looked to the opposite wall of the bus station, where blue and red lights shimmered and danced on the tiles and bounced onto the floor and ceiling. Passengers waiting on the benches nearest the wall were shot with spots of light, as if victims of a shotgun loaded with multicolor shells.

  "Who's here? Who is?" Napolita asked. She turned back to the glass door they entered and saw, across the paved area, and across one lane of traffic, a police car with its lights on. It was parked at an angle and blocking traffic. A younger woman, apparently the driver of the car that had nosed into the telephone pole, was standing nearby. She was surrounded by several others who had stopped to help. One of them was talking to the policeman and pointing toward the bus stop.

  "It's just the police. A police car. What are you so afraid of?

  "Elizabeth was here but now she's gone. If those police take us, I'll never find her. They'll just send us someplace, lock us up."

  “At least we'll be safe,” Napolita said. “But if you don't want that, you better move.” She pulled on Lozen's right sleeve but Lozen resisted.

  Instead, Lozen clasped her hands in front of her, bowed her head, and closed her eyes. She then began turning her hands in small circles in front of her chest.

  "No! Not here!" Napolita said, louder than she meant to. A man in his early 20s, sitting nearby, looked up but just as quickly turned back to his phone.

  Again Napolita said, but more quietly, "Not here, Lozen. Come on." She had not relinquished her grip on the sleeve and she pulled even harder until Lozen stumbled forward. Lozen's eyes opened and watched the floor as Napolita dragged her across the lobby and into the bathroom.

  "Okay, if you have to do that thing, at least do it in here," Napolita told her as they stood in front of the sinks. Lozen looked up from the floor and nodded in agreement. Again, she made the circles with her hands, eyes closed and quietly humming.

  A woman emerged from a stall and washed her hands in the end sink, furthest from Lozen, glancing up twice for a sideways glimpse of Lozen. Napolita ignored her and instead tapped her foot quickly and kept her eyes on Lozen's face as the woman left.

  After several minutes, Lozen's humming increased and she started walking the circumference of the small space between the sinks and stalls. Someone else walked in to the bathroom and stopped. She stood and watched in the doorway for about 15 seconds before edging along the wall toward the stalls, all the while facing Lozen. She raised her eyebrows and held her hands in front of her, palms facing out, before disappearing into a stall.

  Napolita continued tapping her foot but otherwise waited patiently. Finally, after the second woman had emerged from the stall and retraced her path along the wall to the exit, not pausing to wash her
hands, Lozen stopped.

  "What is it?" Napolita asked.

  "Eighty," Lozen said in a weak voice.

  "Eighty?"

  "I think 80, like Route 80...Yes, Route 80 to Denver...all the way," Lozen said, struggling to get the words out.

  "That's where Chase was taking us. Denver. You think Elizabeth was taking a bus there? Looking for us?"

  "Yes. Her bus stopped here but now it's gone. Left hours ago. We've definitely got to get to Denver," Lozen said, refinding her voice.

  "How are we supposed to do that?"

  It was Lozen's turn to pull on Napolita's sleeve. She grabbed it and pulled Napolita into the central lobby. Just outside the bathroom, she stopped short. A policeman was in the station, just inside the door the girls entered, talking to an overweight man wearing a polyester security service uniform. Lozen pulled Napolita away. Much like the perplexed woman who entered the bathroom several minutes before, the two girls followed the wall like mice. They unconsciously hunched over slightly as they scurried, reaching the other side of the station in about 20 seconds. Lozen pushed open the large glass door, identical to the one they entered on the opposite side of the station, and emerged on a sidewalk crowded with people clustered around a bus loading passengers. The destination on the front announced "Laramie". She pulled Napolita through the cluster, past the open bus cargo doors, and around the back of the bus. They stopped at the end of the bus, hidden from view. As they stood, a silver Mercedes E350 pulled against the curb across the paved bus area. The trunk popped open slightly and a teenage girl wearing a Wyoming Cowboys shirt jumped out of the passenger door and ran to the trunk. An older man exited the driver's door, leaving the door open and the engine running, and they met at the rear of the car.

  “Hurry up, Dad! I told you we'd be late,” she told him loudly.

  “You're right, Sue. Sorry, Sue,” he said sheepishly.

  “You know I'm right. Remember that,” Sue said to her father, who remained silent.

  He pulled a suitcase from the trunk, yanked up on the retractable handle, and followed across the paved area to the cluster of people at the front of the bus. Lozen followed them with her eyes as they passed but they didn't notice. As soon as they melted into the cluster, Lozen ran across the pavement and jumped into the driver's seat.