Tags:
Fiction,
Literary,
General,
Suspense,
Fiction - General,
Thrillers,
Noir fiction,
Mystery & Detective,
American Mystery & Suspense Fiction,
Women Sleuths,
Suspense fiction,
Crime,
Espionage
shit.”
“Will you just call them back?”
“I’m at the end of the blacktop, in some trees.”
“Tell me again—Route 70.”
“The rest stop by the Tastee-Freez north of Oroville.”
“I’m writing it down.”
“I’m in a culvert under the road. You got that?”
“Keep that phone by you.”
“It’s right here. Send somebody.”
“I’ll try. But what if I can’t?”
“Then eat that fucker’s liver while he watches.”
“It’s a promise.”
Gambol closed the phone.
He managed to sit upright against the side of the culvert. The breeze coming through it felt icy. Vehicles rumbled overhead. He laid his cell phone in his lap and tore at his bloody pants leg and got a look at the purple lipless exploded mouth in his flesh. He cinched the belt as tightly as it would go, but his hands were asleep and the wound seemed to well up and spill over, suck back, well up, spill over in a small but relentless way.
The phone rang. He got his fingers around it and raised it to his cheek. Juarez said, “I told you I knew somebody. I’m sending a vet.”
Gambol opened his lips. Nothing came out.
“You there?”
“Yeah.”
“I found you a vet. Thirty minutes. Stay put, now, hear? Don’t run off.”
Gambol failed to laugh. He tried saying, “Yeah,” one more time, but his lips didn’t move.
He dozed, woke, had no idea how much time had passed, saw that a rivulet of his blood traveled away from him, moving over the dirt collected in the groove of the culvert, disappearing again under massed brown pine needles. He raised his hand to look at his watch but couldn’t get it up to his face.
“Hey—” he said, but very faintly. He himself could hardly hear it.
He put his fingers around the phone in his lap. The phone slipped away with a clatter that echoed in the concrete cylinder, and he let himself collapse toward it. He had his mouth by the phone. He had a finger on the button. He needed the finger to press it. He couldn’t make it happen.
No problem. If he could keep his eyes open, he wasn’t dead. Lying on his belly he stared at the red spectacle of his life as it traveled past his face and headed away from him through the dust. That’s all he needed to do now. He needed to keep seeing his blood.
In the café Luntz sat quite still with his elbows on the counter and a menu in his face.
“Are you going to order?” the waitress asked.
“Is there a Feather River Tavern around here?”
“I don’t know.”
“Feather River Café, something like that?”
“I don’t think so. Are you going to order?”
“Ice tea,” he said, and took a second trip to the men’s room.
He washed his hands and splashed his face with cold water and dried himself with hot air from a nozzle. He smoked half a cigarette in several rapid puffs and threw the rest in the toilet, went out the door, and lifted the receiver of the pay phone beside the restrooms.
Shelly answered and accepted the charges.
“Hey. It’s me,” he said.
“What’s this collect?” Shelly said. “Are you someplace weird?”
“I’m near Oroville.”
He heard her sigh.
“Listen. Shelly, listen. I got on a very messed-up ride with this guy I sort of know. A guy who intended to hurt me. And I think some people are probably coming to see you, Shelly. In fact, I’d count on it. Yeah.”
“You mean cops?”
“Just people.”
“People?”
“It’s bad.”
“Jimmy, Jesus Christ, Oroville? What’s Oroville? What happened?”
“I wish I knew.”
“You don’t know ?”
“I wish I could tell you. But if anybody wants me—just tell them you heard from me, I’m long gone, I’m never coming back.”
He heard her breath in his ear, nothing else.
“Shelly, it’s a mess. I’m sorry.”
“Well, sorry fixes everything, don’t it?”
“You gotta be mad as all get-out.”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“I’m sorry, buddy,” he said, and hung up.
“How much for the tea?” he asked the waitress as he sat down again.
“One fifty. Aren’t you going to drink