Jonathan Nasaw - When She Was Bad

Irene figured the return hike would be a piece of cake. Didn’t she jog the rec trail from Lovers Point to Fisherman’s Wharf and back, a round-trip of four miles, three times a week? Well, okay, once or twice a week-still, she wasn’t expecting any problems.

Then her flashlight gave out. But the moon was well up by now, the earlier, impenetrable blackness under the trees replaced by a shimmering latticework shadow. After the creek had curved southward to rejoin the road, she could see the rushing water shining silver through the slender riparian willows. She tried her cell phone again-no bars, no signal-then jogged on, the soles of her Chuck Taylors pat, pat, pat ting the ground, the endorphins kicking in, the dirt road stretching on before her, pale tan in the moonlight. But endorphins sometimes make treacherous allies-she didn’t feel the blisters on the pad of her right foot (at the base of the piggy that had none and the piggy that went wee-wee-wee all the way home) until it was too late.

And now she was paying the price. Wincing at every step, hobbling, then limping as the blisters broke and the steady pat pat pat turned into pat squish pat squish. She tried varying her gait-walking on her heel, half-skipping, half-hopping to minimize the pain. She ran through a series of visualizations-what color is the pain? What shape? If it were a container, how much water would it hold?

But nothing seemed to be working, so to distract her mind, Irene fell back on her old standby: composing haiku. Three lines of five, then seven, then five syllables. And against all odds, she even managed to come up with a keeper: Pain is sharp and red / And my shoe is full of blood / Stupid old blister!

But to her credit, she never seriously thought about stopping, not even to bathe her blisters in the creek…which seemed to be running closer to the road than she had remembered…and come to think of it, the road, which should have been curving and climbing, was instead running flat…and straight…and narrowing…until it was only a rocky footpath running by the side of the creek.

And looming dead ahead, Irene saw when she raised her eyes, was the graceful, towering, monumentally enormous concrete arch of the bridge the Barracuda had rattled over only a few hours earlier. Under its shadow, where the creek widened before merging into the Pacific, the damp, dauntless fog known as the marine layer had begun to drift in from the ocean, swallowing up the rocky beach where Lyman DeVries used to fly-cast.

Irene trained her flashlight straight ahead, under the bridge, then shined it back the way she had come, and realized that the road she’d meant to follow had curved off to the left and begun the long climb to the highway several hundred yards back. She sighed and began retracing her steps.

The mule jounced downhill, picking up speed. With the wheel clenched tightly in both hands, Lily carefully chose the line for the upcoming curve, then stood hard on the brake pedal; the mule skidded down the harrowing switchback, sending dirt and pebbles tumbling down the slope.

“You okay back there?” she called, when they’d rounded the curve.

“No problem.”

“Good-’cause here comes another one!”

And another, and another, until the mule had shot the last of the downhill rapids, and they’d rejoined the comparatively unexciting, if rough and rutted, road out to the highway. With only one forward gear, Lily kept the gas pedal to the sheet-metal flooring, maintaining a steady eight to ten miles per hour. “Hey, Lyss?”

“Still here.”

“I think you’re doing the right thing. And I promise, wherever they send you, I’ll come visit as often as they’ll let me.”

“Don’t forget the cake with the file in it.” He twisted around to face front, leaning his arm over the railing. “You sure this thing doesn’t go any faster?”

Lily chanced a curious backward glance. “Don’t sweat it-really. Even on foot, Dr. Irene is bound to have made it out by now-the cops’ll probably get here before we even reach the highway.”

“Oh, right,” he said. “For a second there, I forgot I was giving myself up.”

Using a springy willow branch as a makeshift walking stick, Irene had just finished retracing her steps, and had begun the long trudge up the hill to the gate when she heard the distant chugging of the mule. She turned and saw the headlight emerging from the trees. At first she couldn’t tell which of the three was behind the wheel. Didn’t matter-even if she could have run, there was no place to hide on the grassy hillside.

“Dr. Irene, Dr. Irene!” Lily had spotted her and was half-standing behind the wheel, waving. Irene limped back down the hill, leaning on her stick, and met the mule at the bottom of the slope. Lily shifted into neutral, drew the creaking hand brake. “Uncle Pen had a heart attack,” she called. “And Lyssy’s back-he’s been helping me.”

Irene threw down the willow branch and hurried around to the back of the mule. Oh, Pen, she thought. He lay supine, his windbreaker unzipped to the waist, his head pillowed on a wadded-up sweatshirt, and his face a shiny, unhealthy blue in the moonlight.

“Hi, Dr. Cogan,” Maxwell said brightly, clambering down from the flatbed, which was scarcely wide enough for two. “I took real good care of him on the way down, honest.”

It was Lyssy’s voice-but then, Lyssy’s voice had come out of Max’s mouth before, Irene reminded herself as she swapped places with him, climbing up onto the railed-in platform and kneeling beside Pender. Best not to make assumptions, she thought, pressing two fingers against the side of Pender’s throat-cross that bridge when you come to it.

The constant, uneven vibration of the engine rumbling under the boards prevented Irene from getting a pulse, but she could see Pender’s chest rising and falling in shuddering increments. She took out her flashlight, trained the beam up and down his body, then around it, looking for blood or bullet holes, finding only a scraped elbow and a skinned knee. “Can you hear me, Pen?”

His eyelids fluttered, but did not open. She pulled them up one at a time, shined her flashlight into them, watched the pupils contract. Equal and reactive, she thought, the phrase coming back to her through the mists of time-except for a little first aid, Irene hadn’t treated anybody for a physical illness since her residency, almost twenty years ago. She slipped her hand into Pender’s big meathook, told him to squeeze. His fingers tightened around hers-it was an excellent sign, if Irene remembered correctly, an indication that oxygen was still getting to his brain.

“How is he? Is he going to be all right?” asked Lily, turning around in the driver’s seat; Lyssy had climbed in beside her.

“He will be if we get him to a hospital soon,” said Irene. She took her cell phone out of her pocket, snapped it open-still no dial tone. “Drive us up to the top of the hill-it’ll probably work there.”

“Okay-hang on, everybody!” Lily turned back, patted the dashboard. “Just a little farther, amigo,” she said, talking to the mule, thinking about Fano. At least it was almost over, she told herself, depressing the clutch and reaching for the gearshift. Almost over, and thanks to her, no one else had gotten killed.

Then a claw-like hand clamped over hers; once again she felt the cold steel of a gun barrel pressing against the side of her head. “Change of plans,” announced a dry-as-dust, unbearably intimate voice, and for Lily the words almost over took on a terrible new meaning.

“I’ll take that.” Max’s left hand shot out, snatched Pender’s gun from Lily’s waist, and slipped it into his own waistband. It was a glorious moment for him-until a few minutes ago, when Lily had spotted Dr. Cogan trudging up the hillside, he’d been convinced the cops were already on their way, and that even if he managed to avoid being shot down, he’d have to settle for a hasty closing of accounts and a quick getaway.