The Nicotine Chronicles Page 15

  “Let me see that.” The adrenaline rushes to my brain and for a split second all that occurs to me is that I still owe the petty cash box a fiver. I flip over the front page and yes, there’s a five in the headline: “Manhunt for Cop Who Stole 5”—I have to flip below the fold—“Million.”

  I say aloud, “What kind of . . .” but when I look up from the paper, I see that Eighty-Eight has gotten away again. Community Policing never has those kinds of funds, except for—and then I remember. Except for the senior center, when the council shifted the budget over to my department, to Rafferty. The perfect crime.

  I don’t have to read the article to know the rest of the story. I couldn’t deal with all the paperwork until Rafferty and his arrows pointing to dotted lines, and rather than read them one by one, I just signed. Somewhere in there was a pay to the order of I should not have signed, an authorization to change a routing number, giving Rafferty power of attorney. Now it’s all gone, the entire senior center construction fund: years’ worth of monthly six-figure payments, right down to the really big one at the end, disbursed all at once. Five million missing overnight.

  I’ve got to reach somebody, the city manager or the chief, but I can’t go to the station, too many enemies there. It sounded like sarcasm at the time but it comes back to me now, what Bear said: You ever need protection, just come to Omar’s. It’s still hours before opening, but he just might be here. I go around back to the smokers patio and look through the window: a lucky break, he’s there at the bar, watering down the day’s booze. One look at me and he knows I’m in trouble. Or maybe he’s already heard the news. Whatever the case, it’s comforting when Bear unlocks the door and says, “Follow me, Robby.” He leads me across the bar and through the short room.

  I can’t believe my eyes. The dining room doesn’t serve breakfast, but here’s Dorris and Lehrers already seated in the corner booth. I look to Bear but there’s nothing he can do. “Sorry, Robby.”

  So quiet you could hear an olive drop on that plush carpet, the hum of the hot spring beneath the bones of that old building built in the tar pits. And it all makes perfect sense. Everything in Ashland—the leases, taxes, inspections, not to mention protection: it all goes through the city. Dorris and Lehrers are old-growths, dining room guys. What did I expect? I thought Omar’s was my refuge, but this building has been here for the better part of a century, and I’m just a barfly, a new guy. Was the new guy. I try to explain. “I made a mistake. I didn’t read the paperwork and Rafferty pulled a fast one.”

  Lehrers says, “I told you he’d end up here.”

  Dorris replies, “Saves us an actual manhunt.”

  “Listen,” I say, “I don’t have the money, but I know how to find it.”

  “Slow down, Relleno. Need a cigarette?” I have to admit I do, but I left mine in the car. Lehrers has my brand. He shakes one out and lets me pull it from the pack.

  I look back at Bear and he says, “Just this once, Robby.” Smoking inside Omar’s: is this something dining room guys do? Bear puts out one of the Bakelite ashtrays they keep on the smokers porch, Dorris gives me a light, paper burns and tobacco crackles. Inhale and the relief fills my lungs, exhale and I know it can’t last.

  I’ve barely had three puffs when Lehrers says, “Put it out.” Reluctantly I crush the cigarette into the ashtray. Lehrers reaches in and takes out the butt. When he places it inside a plastic evidence bag, I notice he’s wearing gloves.

  “Find Rafferty,” I tell them, “and you’ll find the money.”

  Dorris says, “The money’s not lost, sergeant.”

  Another voice comes from the short room: “And neither am I.” Emerging from the shadows like a sucker punch to the gut, Carl Rafferty.

  “What the hell is going on?”

  “Glad you asked,” Lehrers says, showing me a leather sap. “Carl, why don’t you start?”

  “Sure. First, unbeknownst to anyone, you transferred that five mil through three different banks in as many days until it’s virtually untraceable, and you were just about to leave the country . . .”

  Dorris takes over: “But last night your assistant here discovered the theft. He’s a hero, a whistle blower, and when you learned we put out an APB, you figured your best chance was to try getting out of the valley on forest roads.”

  “Which brings us to what happens next,” says Lehrers. They’re practicing, not for my benefit but their own, to have it all down to the letter, the story they’ll tell from now until the day Omar’s runs out of whiskey. “But first, give Carl your car keys.”

  “What for?”

  “In a minute, you won’t be fit to drive.” I hand Rafferty the keys to the Buick, and Lehrers says, “Bear, mind putting the bottle on our tab?”

  “Got it.”

  Rafferty exits, pursued by Bear. Lehrers resumes his turn: “On the back side of Grizzly Peak, you get lost in the dark and smoke. You stop and try to find your bearings.”

  Dorris continues, “You’re drunk and tired and figure you’ll wait until daylight to move on, so you decide to take a nap in the backseat. But first you smoke a cigarette, and like a dumbass you throw the butt out the window.”

  My arms and leg feel numb, like finally winding down to sleep after a long, sore march, when Bear comes back from the bar with a fifth of Wild Turkey and a glass. I look at the partners. “Aren’t you joining me?”

  “Nope. All for you.” Dorris cracks open the cap on the bottle. “There is, however, a choice of how.” He shows me a length of rubber tubing.

  “Right.” I grab the bottle by the neck. “No need to sully a glass.” A cynical survival skill kicks in. Keep them talking. At best, it could yield some useful information, and it might even postpone my own onset of panic. “You couldn’t spring for the good stuff?”

  “Bear says this is your brand, and the extra proof should keep you knocked out for a while.”

  “If that’s what you’re after, why not just use the sap?”

  Tired of my questions, Lehrers gives it to me cold: “Because a body will show evidence of blunt-force trauma. This, however. . .” He holds up the bag with the butt he plucked from the ashtray. “After the fire burns over, I’ll be sure the Forest Service won’t miss it.”

  We’d like to think that people have gotten smarter over the decades, but in fact we’ve gotten stupider. Not just government shutdowns, fiscal meltdowns, or other big ulterior-motive stuff, but regular, everyday stupidity: willful ignorance, sabotage for its own sake, secondhand smoke and mirrors, setting a wildfire just to see it set. A cigarette folded inside a burning matchbook, that’s all it takes. Place it on a little pile of pine needles at the bottom of a steep, brush-covered hill and plan your exit in any direction, so long as it’s upwind.

  Dorris says, “Bottom’s up, Relleno.”

  Lehrers says, “You never should have fucked with the clock.”

  They drag me out back through the smokers porch where the Buick is waiting with engine running. Dorris drives, my hands cuffed behind my back in the passenger seat, and Lehrers follows in an unmarked cruiser. We’re winding up Indian Memorial Road in the direction of Grizzly Peak, and I’m almost done with my drink. Carsick and full of whiskey, I think about what happened to that hotshot crew. Hair catches fire. Lungs literally melt.

  Dorris says, “I’ll leave your service weapon, in case you wake up and want to finish it off quick.”

  The last thing I remember before my head spirals into the kind of vortex you don’t recover from for a while, is standing in the smoky forest with Dorris uncuffing me and holding me by my wrists and belt, spinning me in a circle while Lehrers goes by, laughing contemptuously with every rotation. Who can blame them? It’s a job like any other. Nobody gets into it for the public good. Don’t be all high and mighty. Bide your time, take what’s yours, but wait your turn.

  * * *

  Struggling into consciousness, brain pounding to get out of my skull, Buick hotter than a sauna, thirstier than hell—for water,
for once. Not so much hungover as still drunk, head spinning and lungs feel like I finished off an entire carton of smokes. Bailing water that comes up through the subfloor six inches deep. I need to throw some switch or something is going to explode. I have to pull some latch or something is going to collapse. Eyes stinging, throat half-closed with the thirst of a dehydrated drunk, coughing becomes gagging. I attenuate all my remaining focus on reaching for the door, burning my fingers in the second it takes to pull the handle, crawling down into the dirt, vomiting on hands and knees. They’ve taken off my shoes but not my socks, my belt but not my holster or gun. Vaguely remember someone saying finish it quick.

  Ringed by a crown fire, flames leaping from treetop to treetop, branches ignite with a pop like dry kindling thrown into a scorching woodstove, because that’s what the forest around me has become. Look at all the dry grasses and low, black oaks destined in minutes to be engulfed by the blaze. Forest roads are a labyrinth even for anyone sober and alert, even with a map. My only chance choosing a direction to make a mad dash; odds that I will choose right: 359 to one.

  That’s when I see the deer: a black tail this time, but six points on each antler all the same. How he got stuck out here is anyone’s guess. Fell asleep, chased off, or ate too many fermented apples—drunk. Stagger after him in my socks, rocks and thorns cutting my feet. Surrounded by trees whose trunks burn down to the ground like birthday candles, all wick and no wax. Lose sight of him in the smoke, but follow the noise of crashing through brush, that not-the-same buck.

  Make it to a shallow creek, buck long gone downstream. Lie in the middle where it’s deepest, eyes shut tight underwater, mouth sticking out on the surface. Ground fire is still two hundred yards away, but its breath is already in my face. The crackling and popping becomes a crazy flag flapping in a tornado, getting torn to shreds. A moment later it’s louder than three F-16s, a wall of incredible heat hammering down on the creek. Short, quick breaths feel like sucking on the spout of a boiling tea kettle. Swallowing creek water, sputter and choke.

  Noise dies to a roar. Lie still long enough to regain control of breathing. Be sure I’m alive. Stand, soaked shirt and pants, pistol an iron brand, blistered lips and chest pulsing pain. Keep to the middle of the creek and stumble downstream. The grass and shrubs to either side have burned off, and earth is scorched and smoking, but the wall of fire has moved downwind, uphill. Bump into a culvert and know I’ve hit a road. Climb out of the creek bed and follow the hot pavement, socks in tatters, feet bloody and numb, out of a wasteland of charred trees.

  Below the fire line, a sign reads, Antelope Road, and another, Welcome to Climax. The General Store is open, a pickup truck parked out front. If it weren’t for the shock, I might not hesitate before going inside, but good thing, because a glance through lead-paned window shows a face I almost don’t recognize for want of a customary hate: Manny Dorris, fixing his coffee. I duck behind the pickup. It’s got one of those bumper stickers that says Proud OreGUNian. Hidden from view around the other side of the truck, there’s the unmarked car: Ed Lehrers with head tilted over the back of the driver’s seat, catching a nap before the all-clear.

  I walk right up to the window and unholster my service weapon: sure enough, they left me one in the chamber. The engine is running and Lehrers, big mouth wide open, drool on his chin, is blasting the AC because that’s what you do even in the cool hours of morning when the air is this thick with smoke. You ever fire that thing in the field?

  I am thinking about it, my hand on the still-hot metal, when a brick-red station wagon drives up. The driver rolls down her tinted window and I see those piled-on tresses. “Need a ride, officer?”

  It’s Eighty-Eight, and Bear is in the passenger seat. “Put that thing away, Robby, and get in.”

  I climb in back and gulp clean air. “How’d you find me?”

  She pulls out onto Antelope Road and says, “Firefighters’ channel.” That’s when I see the CB radio between the seats. “They’re calling it the Shale City Conflagration. Need a cigarette, officer?”

  “No thanks . . .”

  “Ursula.” She looks at me in the rearview, a nuked and half-naked zombie. “Papa knew you’d be all right.”

  “That so?”

  Bear says, “You’re smarter than those guys, Robby.” We’re winding down Valley View Road when he picks up the CB mic. “Now let’s call in some crooked cops.”

  Freshly Cut

  by Peter Kimani

  There were loud whispers when my cousin Wacera left the village for the city; there were even louder whispers when she returned. Cousin, I should clarify here and now, does not connote blood relations—it’s a generic term for distant relatives who defy easy codification. In that order of things, I readily admit Wacera—or Ceera, as everyone called her affectionately, before she fled school in a cloud of ignominy—was my first crush. There are many tales to tell, so let me start with the last one.

  The Wacera of my childhood was the hair goddess. She kept her hair long, lush, and shiny and spent her entire Saturday plaiting it, when she wasn’t straightening it with a hot comb, stroking every tuft until the hair touched her shoulders.

  Wacera grew famous during the rainy seasons; she washed her feet every time she came across a stream to ensure she remained spotlessly clean, prompting other village girls to derisively call her Miss Munyu. Munyu was our village. Wacera’s detractors had the last laugh as she routinely emerged the last in her class. This, too, was sneered by her peers as “leading from the other end.”

  My closest encounter with Wacera’s hair was when I turned twelve—and I figure she was already eighteen, judging from the size of her breasts. The latter observation was Kaara’s, not mine. Kaara was yet another cousin of ours. He said Wacera’s breasts could feed the nation, an assertion that, ironically, proved prophetic.

  Kaara was in my class, though he had tufts of beard and his voice had broken. He had an easy way with women, particularly Wacera, who often joked that he would be her husband when he grew up.

  It was in that year when I turned twelve that Kaara broke his leg. Wacera and I were sent to visit him in the hospital ward where his leg was cast in what looked like a concrete slab tied to the ceiling. Kaara had to use a bedpan as his toilet and was restricted to his hospital bed. Still, I envied his position as he had bottles of Ribena and Tree Top orange juice at his disposal. These were luxuries that village boys only experienced at Christmas, if at all.

  During the matatu ride to the hospital, seated next to Wacera in the driver’s cabin, I could hardly breathe, caressed as I was by the gentle touches from her clutches of hair, or feeling her receding softness every time the driver swerved this way or that to escape a pothole.

  It was a shame that I could not share this experience with Kaara, for such excitable news could not be delivered in a sterile, whitewashed hospital ward, where the walls probably had ears as well. It was the kind of story we reveled in as we—Kaara, the other village boys, and I—drove goats from the grazing fields at dusk, watching the naughty he-goats mount females one last time before being led to their pens.

  I admit, goats provided our earliest lessons in sex and one particular boy called Mutwe, whose name meant head, let those escapades go to his head and one day tried to make out with a she-goat. The panicky bleating from the she-goat alerted Maitu, Wacera’s mother, who quickly rushed to check on her flock. She took one look and understood everything. She wailed at the full volume of her lungs and within no time, the entire village descended on her homestead to witness the spectacle. Mutwe’s pants were still around his ankles. He was saved from the irate mob by the village chief, who took him away. We later established that Mutwe was brought to a Borstal school where other goat-fucking boys were reportedly taken.

  The next couple of days went by in a flicker, consumed as I was by my close encounter with Wacera. But before the week was over, Wacera’s hair dominated the village talk, in ways none of us would have anticipated. Wacera’s high
school, which was located in the same complex as our primary school, had a new master who decreed that all students, within one week, have short, neatly cut hairdos. Many complied before the deadline, rushing to have their hair cut before D-day. Wacera ignored the edict altogether and went on with her hair-cooking routines.

  A bubble of excitement was building as the deadline approached. All students in the entire school had had their hair cut—all but Wacera. Even the basic learning in the primary school was disrupted as all eyes were glued toward the high school wing, where the new master had vowed to teach a lesson to any student who did not comply. A duel was building between the village beauty and the stranger in town, so to speak.

  On D-day, Wacera arrived at school with her hair looking shinier and bouncier than ever. With her fairly tall height and springy walk, there was no doubt Wacera was enjoying the extra attention that her hairy misadventure had brought.

  The schoolmaster, on the other hand, short and diminutive, arrived at school almost incognito. All students had lined up for the regular assembly. The school’s flag had been hoisted. The schoolmaster walked from one queue to the next, where individual classes were awaiting inspection, one hand in his pocket, the other clutching a plastic cane that he tapped on his thigh absentmindedly.

  When the master reached Wacera, he paused and sized her up. In that moment, the two resembled a cat and dog: the latter wagging its tail in fear, the former arching its back to inflate its small frame. The master’s cane was the wagging tail; Wacera’s hair had turned into a lioness’s mane, her lips curled into a snarl, ready to pounce.

  But it was the master who pounced first, a swift movement that saw him airborne, allowing him to reach Wacera’s mane. He quickly fished a pair of scissors from his pocket and nipped a clutch of Wacera’s hair in one stroke.

  Wacera went wild. She grabbed the master’s hand and wrenched him away, the effect sending the man tumbling down, scissors still in hand. In the commotion, the scissors dug into the rich, red soil and cast some earth into the master’s eyes, momentarily immobilizing him. Wacera strutted to freedom, but not before enacting a gesture that would be discussed in every household for a long time. She hoisted her skirt to display her red underwear and mouthed: Tikio thuruare! It meant schooling wasn’t as vital as underwear, so she could do without it.