Steven Gore - Act of Deceit

Blaine’s head snapped up and he aimed a forefinger at Donnally’s chest.

“You’re still going to be my first witness,” Blaine said. “But this time to show that he’s crazy. You’re gonna testify about Brown’s delusion that he was in the nut ward for thirty-theven yearths. ” Blaine laughed as he imitated Brown’s lisp.

Donnally glared down at the prosecutor. “Not… a… chance.”

D onnally walked down the courthouse steps and turned toward the eight-story county parking garage a half block away. It loomed over the surrounding buildings like a nuclear cooling tower. He stopped at the corner crosswalk.

I did my part, Donnally said to himself as he stared at the red “Wait” sign. Maybe I delivered a different message to a different recipient, but it got delivered.

Moments later, Donnally found himself crossing the intersection, away from his car and toward the lake. He felt suffocated by the rumbling of traffic that reverberated off the government offices behind him and the faces of the apartment buildings along the encircling boulevard.

Donnally traversed the grass between the sidewalk and shoreline trail, sickened by the trash littering the bank: the squashed malt liquor cans and scattered pork rinds, the yellow-brown butt ends of joints, the Taco Bell wrappers.

He stopped along the shore and watched the foamy water lap up against the moss-covered rocks. He took in a breath infused with the decay bubbling to the oily surface.

The air was thick with an odor of rot and deceit that seemed to seep through his clothes and into his skin.

He exhaled.

It was time to head home.

I’m done playing postman.

“H ey, Harlan, you in there?”

Donnally’s body jerked forward, as if the voice had jabbed him in the back of the neck. The sound broke his mind free from the accounting scrawl lying before him on top of Mauricio’s desk.

In the previous two hours he had discovered that the little guy had done well by living cheap. He had about thirty thousand dollars in cash in the bank and at least ten times that amount in equity in his property.

The question that had been troubling Donnally as he stared at the figures was what to do with the money now that Anna wasn’t alive to collect it.

He looked over and saw Will with his hands cupped around his eyes and pressed against the dirty office window, his cook’s apron splattered with beaten eggs and pancake batter.

“Harlan?”

“Yeah, what do you need?”

Donnally walked over and worked the bottom of the weathered double-hung window back and forth until he could raise it a few inches.

“Nothing,” Will said, tilting his narrow head to speak through the gap. “Deputy Sheriff Asshole came by the cafe a few minutes ago. Said he had to speak with you, personal. I told him I didn’t know where you was, and I didn’t, till now.”

“He say why?”

“Nope.”

“You ask?”

All the skin not concealed by Will’s black eyebrows and the wide soul patch springing from beneath his lower lip flushed red.

“I didn’t think to do it until he drove away.”

“That’s okay. Thanks for the heads-up.”

Donnally glanced over at the few cars left in the cafe’s gravel parking lot. Two had snowboards clamped onto rooftop racks.

“How many came in for breakfast?”

“I think forty. I wish it had been thirty-nine. Deputy Asshole was saying that if his father was still sheriff there’d already have been some kinda investigation of Mauricio to find out what he was hiding. Asshole kept calling him Pancho just like his father used to. Can’t we just ban him from the cafe?”

“You mean put up a sign? No brains. No sense. No service.”

Will laughed. “But you’d have to add, This Means You, Deputy Pipkins, otherwise he wouldn’t be able to figure out that it was aimed at him.”

D onnally stood by the window after Will returned to the cafe. He wondered whether Wade Pipkins Jr. was just doing what his father would’ve done, but for which he no longer had the authority beyond what he commanded as the patriarch of his Sunday dinner table.

Whatever the answer, Donnally knew he had to destroy what remained of Mauricio’s real identity.

Three hours later, Mauricio’s fireplace had consumed all the documentary remnants of his hidden life, and five hours after that, not one of Mauricio’s fingerprints remained on a countertop, refrigerator, doorknob, bed table, or dresser. Even his truck interior, which had never seen a dust rag or vacuum cleaner, had been wiped clean and now bore a coating of Armor All.

If latents still existed from the forty-five-year-old murder, now they’d never be matched to Mauricio.

Deputy Pipkins appeared again at the cafe during the dinner rush.

“I need to talk to you, Harlan,” Pipkins said, standing in the kitchen doorway, blocking the waitress’s path.

“Coming through,” she said, jabbing him with her elbow and squeezing by with a tub of dirty dishes.

Donnally glanced over from where he was grilling a steak.

“We’re kind of busy around here.”

Pipkins straightened his five-foot-nine body that matched his father’s pound for pound, mustache for mustache, pudgy jowl for pudgy jowl, and said, “That’s not my problem.”

Donnally pressed down on the beef with a fork. The meat’s slight resistance told him it was medium rare and ready to come off the fire. He slid it from the pan to a plate, then passed it down the stainless steel counter to Will, who was waiting with a ladle of mashed potatoes.

Only then did Donnally turn to face the deputy.

“If you’re going to use one of your father’s lines, you better learn to use it at the right time.” Donnally gestured toward the chaos of the dinner rush. “Otherwise you’re just going to keep sounding stupid.”

“Fuck you, Harlan, one way or another we’ll be having a little talk about your pal Mauricio.”

Donnally lowered the fork.

“You find out who stole Pete Johnson’s mare?”

The deputy shook his head.

“What about the backhoe from Tractor City?”

Another shake.

“The graffiti at the elementary school?”

Clenched teeth.

“Unless you’ve got a victim claiming that Mauricio did them wrong, you better get back to doing your job.”

Donnally turned again toward the stove.

“And I’ll get back to doing mine.”

M oments after Donnally passed him on the forest road, Deputy Pipkins flicked on his overheads and siren, and then spun a U-turn that took him off the blacktop and into the gravel. Even in the twilight, Donnally could see in his rearview mirror a cascade of rock and dirt enveloping Pipkins’s cruiser. The stunt reminded him of Will’s golden retriever who once knocked itself dizzy running into a tree stump while chasing a cat.

Looking over at Mauricio’s mutt, Ruby, sitting in the passenger seat, Donnally saw an expression as close to a smile as he’d ever seen on a dog and wondered whether Ruby had made the same connection.

Donnally had already parked his truck in a turnout and was leaning against it by the time Pipkins pulled up. Frozen air sliding up the canyon from the Trinity River where Donnally had spent the day fishing bit at his face and hands, but he wasn’t about to give Pipkins the satisfaction of watching him reach for the jacket behind the bench seat.

“You should’ve just called and asked me to stop by if you wanted to talk about something,” Donnally said as Pipkins approached, bundled in a department-issued green parka and wearing a cowboy hat.

Pipkins reddened. “How come you’re always telling me what to say and when to say it? You’re not my-”