Steven Gore - Act of Deceit

They approached Katrisha. Brown pulled his arm free of Donnally. Katrisha half turned and raised her palms in defense, but Brown simply extended his hand and looked at her, his face wide and innocent with an expression of hesitant expectation.

Katrisha accepted his hand.

Brown looked at Donnally, then back at her and said, “Thank you, Katrisha. I’ll try my best.”

Her eyes welled up as if she had just glimpsed the twenty-year-old she’d married concealed inside the wreck he’d since become. She let go of his hand and wiped away her tears with the cuff of her jacket.

“I know you will, Charles.”

A n hour later, Katrisha was perched next to Donnally on the bar stool she had coveted. She took a sip of her beer, then flipped the bird at the “No Smoking” sign hanging by the tavern door.

“You know how many times I’ve heard him say he’d try?” Katrisha said, spinning her cigarette pack on the bar in front of her. “Dozens. You know how many psych wards I went trekking to, getting him committed? How many court appearances I made begging them to keep him locked up?”

Donnally nodded. “I know it was a struggle.”

She looked over at Donnally.

“It’s not going to work,” Katrisha said. “He’ll be off his meds and back on the street in no time. That’s just the way he is.”

S onny Goldstine grinned when he saw Donnally walking toward where he sat on his porch in West Berkeley. The yard was as overgrown as when Donnally last saw it.

“I saw you on television a while back,” Sonny said. “Man you looked pissed.”

“I still am.”

“I figured. I went the no-contest route myself a couple of times. Practically made me feel innocent. Kind of like a purification ceremony.” Sonny looked up at the noon sun, then rose to his feet. “You want a beer?”

Donnally nodded as he climbed the three steps. Sonny pointed at a second rocking chair, then walked inside the house. He returned a few minutes later with two cans of Coors and handed one to Donnally.

Donnally held his up and inspected it. “I didn’t think you sixties types drank Coors. Something about their right wing politics. Heritage Foundation and all that anti-farmworker stuff.”

“I draw the political line at beer.” Sonny took a long drink, smacked his lips, and said, “I got… to have… my beer.” He dropped into the chair next to Donnally. “What brings you back to Shady Acres?”

“I need to talk to Trudy.”

Sonny smirked. “You and everybody else. It ain’t gonna happen.”

“Yes it is.”

“How do you figure?”

“You’re going to take me.”

“Not a chance.”

“Either that or I’ll start tearing things up.”

“The cops have tried that already.”

“I can do things they can’t.”

“What? Kidnap me and make me take you to her?”

Donnally looked over. “It’ll be my second one this week.”

Sonny’s head snapped toward Donnally, who shrugged, as if to say, Don’t ask. I’m not telling.

Sonny gazed toward the street for a few moments, then took a sip of his beer.

“I’m too old to hide out,” Sonny said. “I’ll call somebody who’ll call somebody who’ll call somebody. I’ll let Trudy be the one who decides whether or not she wants to talk to you.”

T wo days later, Donnally sat in the passenger seat of Sonny’s 1955 Willys Wagon. The springs in the seats creaked as Sonny backed into the street, and the gears ground as he shifted into first and headed toward the freeway.

“You sure this thing is going to make it?” Donnally asked.

Sonny grinned as if to say that he knew Donnally didn’t have a clue where Trudy was living.

“Just how far do you think it has to go?” Sonny asked.

“Nineteen seventy-five.”

S onny skirted north around San Francisco Bay, dropped off the freeway at San Rafael, headed though the rolling hills of Marin County, then along the coast. The gusting ocean wind buffeting off the rattling Willys made it sound like an airplane taking off.

They pulled into a parking lot in Fort Bragg just after sunset and entered the Dead End Cafe. Sonny pointed at a table along the window facing the commercial fishing harbor, then walked through the swinging double doors into the kitchen.

Donnally wondered whether Trudy Keenan would follow Sonny back out.

He got his answer two minutes later.

Sonny returned alone.

“What was that about?” Donnally asked, after Sonny sat down across from him.

“Just checking to make sure nobody followed us up here.”

“How would they know?”

Sonny tilted his head toward the freeway they’d traveled. “The hills have eyes.”

“And what did they see?”

“Two guys in a Ford Expedition were on our tail as far as San Rafael, but they got trapped in city traffic.”

“Trapped?”

“Let just say that somebody who used to live with us at New Sky still hasn’t learned to parallel park.”

A waitress in a tie-dyed shift walked up and took their orders. She was old enough to have been at the commune in the seventies, but Donnally couldn’t detect any sign that she was Sonny’s contact at the cafe.

Sonny grinned at Donnally as she walked away. “Nice try, pal, but it’s not her. She’s a divorcee from Boston just arrived to pursue the new age dream.”

“I thought metaphysics was all in your head and you could do it anyplace, even while serving clam chowder at Fenway Park.”

“Some people need the scenery.”

“Is that why Trudy is up here?”

“No. She’s so trapped inside herself. It doesn’t make any difference where she is.”

“Then why Mendocino County?”

Sonny glanced toward the waitress, who was handing the order form to the cook.

“She blends in.”

A fter dinner, Sonny led Donnally across the dark parking lot to the back of the Willys and lowered the rear gate.

“Let me see your cell phone,” Sonny said. “I need to make sure your GPS isn’t activated.”

Donnally removed it from his jeans pocket, punched his way through three levels of the menu, then showed the screen to Sonny.

Sonny nodded, then pointed back and forth between Donnally and the interior and said, “You’ll be riding back here.” He glanced around to see if anyone was watching them, and then reached inside and withdrew a ski mask with the eyeholes sewn closed.

“If you trust me to get you to Trudy,” Sonny said. “I’ll trust you to keep your head down and this covering it.”

Donnally lay down on the sleeping bag-covered bed and slipped on the mask. Moments after Sonny closed him in, he pulled out his gun and checked the safety. He was able to keep track of Sonny’s first few turns, then he was lost. He could tell the kind of roads they were on by the vibrations and the jolting, but not the direction or the distance.

Gravel ticking up from below and rattling against the undercarriage an hour later told Donnally that Sonny had turned off the pavement. The wagon bucked, bumped him into the air, and then slammed him down.

“Sorry, man,” Sonny said. “I didn’t see that one coming.”

A half hour of bouncing and jostling later, Sonny stopped. The abrupt end to the chaos of squeaking springs and shuddering metal made the silence seem hollow.

“You can take off the mask,” Sonny said, opening his door.

Donnally lowered the tailgate and climbed out into the night, grateful to be breathing mountain air instead of the Willys’s exhaust. He flinched at the light emerging from the first floor of the two-story log cabin, then heard footsteps behind him. He turned toward the soft crunch of boots on pine needles. The bearded man ignored Donnally and walked up to Sonny.