Don Winslow - Way Down on the High Lonely

And I need to talk about it, Karen thought. She had buried it deep, the hurt, the anger, the disappointment. They had talked about everything else, about racists, white supremacists, the Hansens, the True Identity Church, Cal Strekker. But they hadn’t talked about Neal Carey. Nobody had mentioned Neal.

“I didn’t even know,” Karen said after another sip of coffee, “that you were Jewish.”

“I barely knew it myself,” answered Steve. “My father was an atheist. We didn’t talk about it.”

“His old man was thrilled when we got married by a justice of the peace,” Peggy said, and she and Steve chuckled at the memory when she added, “My parents weren’t so delighted.”

Steve said, “I mean, we didn’t go to synagogue, we sure as hell don’t keep kosher… I don’t wear one of those beanies-”

“Yarmulke,” Shelly corrected, not looking up from the puzzle.

“Shelly brought some books home from the school library,” Peggy explained to Karen.

Well, that’s a good sign, Karen thought. “Do you see Jory in school?” she asked.

“I think he dropped out.”

“Such a waste,” said Karen. She decided to jump in with both feet. “And how are you doing, kid?”

Shelly craned her neck up from the puzzle. “I’m doing okay. I’m not very happy… and I don’t feel like a teenager anymore and I’m mad about that… but I’m doing okay. How are you doing, Karen?”

Well, I guess you’re not a teenager anymore, Karen thought. And I guess I owe you an adult answer. “I’m doing lousy. I feel awful about what happened, I feel awful Neal was… is… part of it. To tell you the truth, Shelly, he broke my heart.”

“Mine too.”

There was a long silence before Peggy said, “The valley doesn’t seem the same anymore.”

“It isn’t,” answered Steve. “It’s infected. It’s sick.”

“God damn Bob Hansen,” Peggy said.

Karen had never heard that kind of anger from her before. Sure, she’d heard Peggy bitch about Steve smoking, or seen her blow up at Shelly for some teenage sin, but she’d never heard the cold bitterness she now heard in her friend’s voice.

Steve said, “I think Bob just couldn’t handle it after Barb died. He was angry and confused and looking for something to hold onto, and unfortunately, the first thing he came to was this church and this race thing. You know Bob, when he does something, he does it all the way.”

Peggy rolled her eyes and looked affectionately at her husband. “Steve would make excuses for the devil.”

“Well, he’d need some help if you got on his tail.”

“I don’t know,” said Karen, “it just feels like we should do something.”

Steve answered. “We’re doing it. We’re going on with our lives, just like always. Only better-because this year I’m buying Christmas and Hanukkah presents. Double holidays from now on. Hell, maybe I’ll find out great-grandma was a Buddhist or a Hindu or something, and then we can have those holidays too.”

Shelly looked up from her puzzle and gave him an “Oh, Daddy” look.

“Well, I said I was a Jew,” Steve answered. “I didn’t say I was a good Jew.”

“Speaking of which,” said Peggy. “Tomorrow night we’re having a little celebration.”

A celebration? Karen thought. She didn’t feel much like celebrating, but she knew that’s exactly when you should. And maybe there was something to celebrate. After all, she’d found out about Neal Carey before it was too late.

She lifted her cup and said, “So, long, Neal. Good riddance.”

Neal’s hands were cuffed to a ring bolted into the wall of the small bunker. They’d taken his watch, but he figured it was somewhere near morning. He sat shivering on the concrete floor, listening to joe Graham nag at him.

“You should have pulled the trigger, son,” Graham was saying. He also was chained to the wall.

“I know.”

“You should have gone through with it.”

“You’re right.”

“I’ve told you a million times, the job comes first.”

“Let me ask them,” Neal said through clenched teeth. “Maybe they’ll give me the gun back-loaded.”

They sat quietly for a few minutes. Then Neal asked, “Are you scared, Graham?”

“Out of my mind.”

Me too, thought Neal. But so far it just doesn’t seem real. They’ve thrown us into the old prison bunker, chained us to the wall, and just left us in here to freeze. And there’s nothing we can do about it.

“What are we going to do?” he asked Graham.

“Well, when they come in, and they will, they’re going to start working on us. They’ll probably start with one of us first and let the other watch. The guy watching sees what’s happening to his partner and starts thinking, Do I really want them doing that to me? Maybe I can make a deal. So that’s what we do.”

“Make a deal?” Neal asked.

“Sure. You give them the whole story, a little bit at a time, so they’re convinced they’re beating it out of you. You give it to them too early, they think it’s a lie. So take a few lumps and then start to tell them everything. A little bit at a time.”

Neal couldn’t believe he was hearing this. “If we tell them everything they’ll probably kill the boy.

“The boy is dead.”

“I don’t believe that.”

If Graham could have reached Neal he would have grabbed him and shook him. Instead he looked at him long and hard and said, “Son, the boy is dead. You have to face that. We didn’t get to him in time. Maybe there were things we did that we shouldn’t have, or things we didn’t do that we should have. I don’t know. But the boy is dead, Neal.”

“It’s nothing we did. It was me.”

“Who gives a shit?” Graham yelled. “Jesus, will you grow up? Cody McCall is dead, and we’re probably going to join him real soon. The only chance we have is to try to drag this out long enough for Levine to look up from his account books and realize he hasn’t heard from us in awhile and he’d better come looking. And when Ed comes, he’ll arrive with a bad attitude and an army. And I want to live long enough to see that. So drop the it’s-all-my-fault crybaby shit and start thinking about how you can make them torture you for as long as possible.”

You’re right, Dad. The only chance is to talk and drag it out. But you’re wrong about the boy, Graham. I just goddamn know that Cody is alive. And that should be reason enough to hang on.

The door opened and Randy came in carrying two sawhorses. Cal Strekker came in behind him. He had a sledgehammer.

“See, what we did with Harley,” Cal said, “was we laid him on his back on the floor, set one horse under his knees and the other under his ankles. Then we tied his ankles to the second sawhorse. That way Harley’s legs was stretched out nice and tight. Then I swung this hammer down and… whoo.”

Neal felt every nerve in his body jump out from his skin. It was Graham who had the balls to ask, “What did you have against Harley?”

“He wouldn’t give up his boy,” Cal answered. “That got the reverend questioning Harley’s commitment to the cause, which got the reverend praying, and old Yahweh must have told him that Harley was a race traitor. Carter came in here himself to ask Harley the questions. Harley confessed.”

“Before or after you broke his legs?” Graham asked.

Cal grinned. “Long time before that.”

Neal was trying to work up enough voice to ask about Cody, but Graham shut him off with a look and said, “But you kept at him anyway, didn’t you?”

“Yahweh said,” answered Cal. “Or Carter said Yahweh said, which amounted to the same thing. See, Harley had been bonded in blood, so Carter said he was the worse kind of traitor. Said the devil was in him and that we had to make the devil howl. And we did.”