Joe Gores: Menaced Assassin

Off to the left was a corral with three horses inside, blowing white plumes into the air as they trotted around in a circle. The snow under their hooves was churned and muddy. A cowboy who looked Mexican was sitting on the top railing watching them while he rolled a cigarette with one hand.

Dante heard the dog barking before he heard it thudding against the bunkhouse door. He was glad it was latched; his taste in dogs ran to mutts who waggled all over and licked your face, not ones who wanted to bite it off.

The door of the ranchhouse opened and a tall lean man with silver hair stood there in his stocking feet. Even at a distance and with the white hair, Dante could see Will Dalton in the older man’s features.

“Mind your manners!” the man yelled at the unseen animal.

The barking reduced to snarls, a grumble or two, ceased. Dante went up to the house.

It was cherry pie a la mode, wonderful after a venison stew loaded with big cubes of meat, carrots and potatoes and onions, all in a thick rich gravy. Served with home-made baking-powder biscuits. As he forked rich cherry filling and flaky crust into his mouth, Dante felt that at any minute he and the old man might go outside and start chopping at that tree stump with the huge roots in front of the house like Alan Ladd and Van Heflin in Shane.

“Another piece of pie, Lieutenant?”

Dante patted his belly sadly. “I couldn’t, Mrs. Dalton.”

“Please. Marjorie.”

She had insisted, over his objections, that Dante stay for lunch. Western hospitality. She was a woman in her fifties with frankly gray hair and glasses and a kind strong face. She looked as if she still rode, with strong wrists and a sturdy body under jeans and a sweater.

“I saw a cowboy out in the horse corral,” said Dante. “Do you have much work for them in the winter?”

“Must have been Alfonso. Been with us forever. Taught Will how to ride and how to break horses.” John Dalton shrugged. “About half our men are Latinos these days. Hard to find Anglos will work for the wages we can pay. So we find work for our vaqueros all year ’round. Works for them, works for us.”

He leaned forward, big hands clasped in front of him. His hard-bitten face was tranquil. His son’s resemblance to him was remarkable. He had refused all discussion until after they had eaten, but pie and coffee seemed to fall outside the ban.

“Now, then, you said on the phone you had some questions.”

Easy and direct, so Dante could be the same.

“How long since you’ve heard from Will?”

“We got a Christmas card,” said Marjorie.

“I did too,” said Dante. “He told me he was coming back in maybe mid-January-anyway, sooner than expected.”

John nodded. “Something about a report of his findings, the funding of his grant…” He paused with a shrug in his voice. “He wasn’t too explicit…”

“I think he might be in danger when he comes back, because of something Moll left him. I can’t get hold of him where he is. He wouldn’t tell me anything before he left. So I thought…”

John chuckled again. “You figgered we might tell you things he wouldn’t?”

“Will always pretty much keeps his thoughts and feelings to himself,” said the mother thoughtfully. She stood up, went to fetch the big enamel coffeepot. “He wouldn’t have told us anything he didn’t want to get out.”

“But you told him you didn’t like his wife,” said Dante. “He didn’t ask you to her funeral.”

“Wasn’t that we didn’t like Molly-we did, a lot. We just felt she wasn’t the right woman for our son,” said the rancher easily. “We don’t have secrets among us, but there’s plenty Will just don’t talk about.”

“We always felt she’d bring him a lot of grief,” said Marjorie. Her eyes looked damp behind her glasses. “She did.”

“Got a little herself,” said Dante sharply, “getting-”

“Before,” she said. “Being unfaithful and all.”

“You knew about that?”

“Always suspected it,” said John. “We could see it in the way she looked at men. There was a… hunger in her eyes. Would have felt sorry for her if she hadn’t been married to Will.”

Dante probed about the package he was sure Moll had mailed to Will shortly before her death. They had never heard of it. He had a hunch they wouldn’t have told him about it if they had. He didn’t really blame them. These were tranquil people, aware of their own worth and dignity. Self-sufficient, lived on the land, with the land, molded the curve of their lives to the curve of the seasons across the land.

There were worse things than danger, even death, in such a life. Such as betrayal of those rhythms of the earth. Such as dishonesty and dishonor. They wouldn’t lie to him. They just wouldn’t tell him anything they didn’t want him to know. Or that their son wouldn’t have wanted him to know.

He finally left, unsatisfied. A little wary. There was something he was missing, some signpost in the right direction; he just wasn’t sharp enough to see it.

It was five days later. Tosca held her position off, while Red ran Mr. Prince in to the short plank dock at the Hotel Pez Grande in the rubber dinghy. Miguel was waiting, his ancient seamed brown face split into a huge grin of pure delight.

“We get the big one, senor!” he called to Mr. Prince. “We got four, five hours to dark.”

“If not today, then tomorrow, Miguel,” said Mr. Prince in great good humor. He loved it here. And he had a whole week, as he did every year, where nobody knew where he was except Red and the crew on the Tosca. And none of them stayed here with him. Here was no danger from the outside.

The only dangers were from the sea, when they were far out on it in a small fishing boat. He welcomed the sea’s dangers. They challenged his sense of himself as a man.

When they came in, the walks would be outlined with little paper bags full of sand holding lit candles the Mexicans called farola. There would be hymns, the candlelight procession from the hotel to the nearby iglesia for midnight mass. Afterward, there would be carols in the upstairs bar, and dancing, and playing darts, and margaritas with salty rims.

Tomorrow, blindfolded children with sticks would flail away to break pinatas and shower everyone with candy. And the padre would bless the hotel. This was Mr. Prince’s yearly vacation, he was dying to get to it.

It was Christmas Eve in San Francisco, too. For the third night in a row the man bent on murder stole the car he would use in the killing; the owner was back east for the holidays. He had taken the key off the hook in the parking garage where he also parked; when the boy was off shagging someone else’s car, he simply drove out in it. Would return it when he was finished.

Third time lucky. His target was a good Catholic, the man was bound to go to midnight mass at Saints Peter and Paul.

He was obsessed with the killing urge. He had to do it. He knew he would have no rest until he did.

On a dark side street, he stopped, opened the trunk, got out the Domino’s Pizza delivery sign he had stolen a week ago, with gloved hands fastened it to the top of the stolen car.

Nobody ever looked twice at a parked pizza-delivery car.

In Cabo San Lucas, the man bent on murder settled himself deeper in the short-legged deck chair dug into the sand in front of the little Mexican fast-order cafe, ate tortilla chips. The sun was almost set and the swimmers and sunbathers had departed, but the sand was still warm around his bare ankles.

Out in the harbor the Christmas lights strung on the masts and bodywork of the dozens of yachts and cruisers were coming on. The yachts rocked slightly at anchor, the colored lights laying wavering shafts of color from the boats to him, the rocky hillside that was the very tip of Baja forming a black velvet backdrop behind them. It was a true fairyland.