James Penney's New Identity/Guy Walks Into a Bar Read online

  He caught up with the red Firebird after three miles. The turn down to Baker was gone. Nothing on the road ahead except fifty-seven more miles of California, and then the state of Nevada. He eased the wailing Dodge up to twenty yards behind the Firebird’s rear end and hit the blue strobes. Changed the siren to the deafening electronic pock-pock-pock he loved so much. Grinned at his windshield. But the Firebird didn’t slow up. It eased ahead. Gunston’s speedo needle was shivering around the hundred-and-ten marker. His knuckles tightened round the grimy vinyl wheel.

  “Son of a bitch,” he said.

  He jammed his foot down harder and hung on. The red Firebird topped out at maybe a hundred and twelve. It was still there ahead of him, but the acceleration was gone. It was flat out. Gunston smiled. He knew the road ahead. Probably better than a guy from Laney did. The climb up the western slope of Clark Mountain was going to tilt things the good guys’ way. The upgrades would slow the Firebird. But the Dodge had plenty of good Detroit V8 torque. New police radials. A trained driver. Fifty miles of opportunity ahead. Maybe U.S. 101 and a big bike were not so far away.

  He chased the red Firebird for thirty miles. The grade was slowing both cars. They were averaging about ninety. The Dodge’s siren was blaring the whole way, pock-pock-pock for twenty minutes, red and blue lights flashing continuously. Gunston’s conclusion was this Penney guy had to be a psycho. Burning things up, then trying to outrun the CHP through the dark. Then he started to worry. They were getting reasonably close to the state line. No way was he going to call in and ask for co-operation from the Nevada boys. Penney was his. So he gripped the wheel and moved up to within feet of the speeding red car. Closer and closer. Trying to force the issue.

  Ten miles short of the state line, a spur runs off U.S. 91 down to the small town of Nipton. The road leaves the highway at an oblique angle and falls away down the mountain into the valley. The red Firebird took that turn. With Gunston’s police Dodge a foot off its rear fender, it slewed right and just disappeared straight out from in front of him. Gunston overshot and jammed to a stop, all four wheels locked and making smoke. He smashed the selector into reverse and howled backward up the shoulder. Just in time to see the Firebird cartwheeling off the road and straight down the mountainside. The spur had a bad camber. Gunston knew that. Penney hadn’t. He’d taken that desperate slew and lost it. The Firebird’s rear end had come unglued and swung out over the void. The red car had windmilled like a golf club and hurled itself out into space. Gunston watched it smash and bounce on the rocks. An outcrop tore the underside out and the spilling gasoline hit the hot muffler and the next thing Gunston saw was a belch of flame and a huge explosion rolling slowly a hundred feet down the mountainside.

  The California Highway Patrol dispatcher told Joey Gunston to supervise the recovery of the crashed red Firebird himself. Nobody was very upset about the accident. Nobody cared much about Penney. The radio conversations back and forward between the dispatcher’s office and Gunston’s Dodge about an arsonist dying in his burning car on the slope of Clark Mountain carried a certain amount of suppressed ironic laughter. The only problem was the invoice that would come in next month from the tow-truck company. The protocols about who should pay such an invoice were never very clear. Usually the CHP ended up writing them down to miscellaneous operating costs.

  Gunston knew a tow-truck operator out in the wastelands near Soda Lake who usually monitored the police bands, so he put out a call and got a quick reply. Then he parked up on the shoulder near the turn down to Nipton, sitting right on top of the skid marks he’d made overshooting it, and sat waiting for the guy. He was there in an hour, and by midnight Gunston and the trucker were clambering down the mountainside in the dark, pulling the truck’s giant metal hook behind them against its ratchet.

  The red Firebird was about two hundred yards down the slope, right at the end of the cable’s reach. It wasn’t red any more. It was streaked a fantastic variety of scorched browns and purples. All the glass had melted and the plastic had burned away. The tires were gone. Penney himself was a shriveled carbonized shape fused to the zigzag metal springs which were all that was left of the seat. Gunston and the wrecker didn’t spend too long looking at him. They just ducked near and snapped the giant hook around the offside front suspension member. Then they turned back for the long climb up the slope.

  They were panting hard and sweating in the night air when they got back to the tow truck. It was parked sideways on the road, circled by Gunston’s red danger flares. The steel cable snaked off the drum at the rear of the cab and disappeared down into the dark. The driver started up the big diesel to power the hydraulics and the drum started grinding around, reeling in the cable, hauling the wreck upward. Time to time, the remains of the Firebird would snag in the brush or against a rock and the truck’s rear suspension would squat and the big diesel would roar until it dragged free.

  It took the best part of an hour to haul the wreck the two hundred yards up to the roadway. It scraped over the concrete shoulder and the driver moved the truck to a better angle and sped the drum to haul the wreck up onto the flatbed. Gunston helped him tie it down with chains. Then he nodded to the driver and the tow-truck took off and lumbered back west. Gunston stepped over to his Dodge and killed the flashing lights and fired up the radio.

  “On its way,” he said to the dispatcher. “Better send an ambulance over to meet it.”

  “Why?” the dispatcher asked. “He’s dead, right?”

  “Dead as can be,” Gunston said. “But somebody needs to chisel him out of the seat, and I ain’t going to do it.”

  The dispatcher laughed over the radio. “Is he real crispy?”

  Gunston laughed back. “Crispiest guy you ever saw.”

  Middle of the night, and the sheriff was still in the station house in Laney. He figured a lot of overtime was called for. It had been a busy day. And tomorrow was going to be a busier day. There was a fair amount of fallout to deal with. The lay-offs at the factory had produced unpredictable results. Evening time had seen a lot of drunkenness. A couple of pickups had been rolled. Minor injuries. A few windows had been broken at the plant. Mr. Odell’s windows had been the target. A few rocks had fallen short and hit the mailroom. One had smashed the windshield of a car in the lot.

  And Penney had burned three houses down. That was the problem. But then it wasn’t a problem any more. The silence in the station house was broken by the sound of the telex machine starting up. The sheriff wandered through to the booth and tore off a foot and a half of paper. Read it and folded it and slipped it into the file he’d just started. Then he picked up the phone and called the California Highway Patrol.

  “I’ll take it from here,” he told them. “This is Laney County business. Our coroner will see to the guy. I’ll go out to Soda Lake with him right away.”

  The Laney County coroner was a young medic out of Stanford called Kolek. Polish name, but the guy was from a family which had been in California longer than most. Forty years, maybe. The sheriff rode east with him in his official station wagon. Kolek wasn’t upset by the late call. He didn’t object to working at night. He was young and he was new and he needed the money. But he was pretty quiet the whole way. Medical guys in general are not keen on dealing with burned bodies. The sheriff didn’t know why. He’d seen a few. A burned body was like something you left on the barbecue too long. Better than the damp maggoty things you find in the woods. A whole lot better.

  “We got to bring it back?” Kolek asked.

  “The car?” the sheriff said. “Or the guy?”

  “The corpse,” Kolek said.

  The sheriff grinned at him and nodded. “There’s an ex-wife somewhere. She might want to bury the guy. Maybe there’s a family plot.”

  Kolek shrugged and turned the heater up a click. Drove through the night all the way from Mojave to Soda Lake in silence. A hundred and thirty miles without saying a word.

  The junkyard was a stadium-sized space hidden beh
ind a high wooden fence in the angle made by the road down to Baker where it left the highway. There were gleaming tow trucks lined up outside the gate. Kolek slowed and passed them and nosed into the compound. Inside the gate, a wooden hut served as the office. The light was on inside. Kolek hit his horn once and waited. A woman came out. She saw who they were and ducked back inside to hit the lights. The compound lit up like day with blue lights on poles. The woman directed them to the burned Firebird. It was draped with a sun-bleached tarp.

  Kolek and the sheriff pulled the tarp off the wreck. It wasn’t bent very far out of shape. The sheriff could see that the brush growing on the mountainside had slowed its descent, all the way. It hadn’t smashed head-on into a boulder or anything. If it hadn’t caught on fire, James Penney might have survived.

  Kolek pulled flashlights and his tool kit out of the station wagon. He needed the crowbar to get the driver’s door open. The hinges were seized and distorted from the heat. The sheriff put his weight on it and screeched it all the way open. Then the two men played their flashlight beams all round the charred interior.

  “Seat belt is burned away,” Kolek said. “But he was wearing it. Buckle’s still done up.”

  The sheriff nodded and pointed.

  “Airbag deployed,” he said.

  The plastic parts of the steering wheel had all burned away, but they could see the little metal hinges in the up position, where the bag had exploded outwards.

  “OK,” Kolek said. “Now for the fun part.”

  The sheriff held both flashlights and Kolek put on some heavy rubber gloves. He poked around for a while.

  “He’s fused on pretty tight,” he said. “Best way would be to cut through the seat springs and take part of the seat with us.”

  “Is the body bag big enough?”

  “Probably. This isn’t a very big corpse.”

  The sheriff glanced in again. Slid the flashlight beam over the body.

  “Penney was a big enough guy,” he said. “Maybe better than five-ten.”

  Kolek grimaced. “Fire shrinks them. The body fluids boil off.”

  He walked back to the station wagon and pulled out a pair of wire cutters. Leaned back into the Firebird and started snipping through the zigzag metal springs close to where they were fused to the corpse. It took him a while. He had to lean right in, chest-to-chest with the body, to reach the far side.

  “OK, give me a hand here,” he said.

  The sheriff shoved his hands in under the charred legs and grabbed the springs where Kolek had cut them away from the frame. He pulled and twisted and hauled the body out, feet-first. Kolek grabbed the shoulders and they carried the rigid assembly a few feet away and laid it carefully on the ground. They stood up together and the body rolled backwards, stiff, with the bent legs pointing grotesquely upwards.

  “Shit,” Kolek said. “I hate this.”

  The sheriff was crouched down, playing his flashlight beam over the contorted gap that had been Penney’s mouth.

  “Teeth are still there,” he said. “You should be able to make the ID.”

  Kolek joined him. There was a distinctive overbite visible.

  “No problem,” he agreed. “You in a hurry for it?”

  The sheriff shrugged. “Can’t close the case without it.”

  They struggled together to zip the body into the bag and then loaded it into the back of the wagon. They put it on its side, wedged against the bulge of the wheel arch. Then they drove back west, with the morning sun rising behind them.

  That same morning sun woke James Penney by coming in through a hole in his motel room blind and playing a bright beam across his face. He stirred and lay in the warmth of the rented bed, watching the dust motes dancing.

  He was still in California, up near Yosemite, cabin twelve in a place just far enough from the Park to be cheap. He had six weeks’ pay in his billfold, which was hidden under the center of his mattress. Six weeks’ pay, less a tank and a half of gas, a cheeseburger and twenty-seven-fifty for the room. Hidden under the mattress, because twenty-seven-fifty doesn’t get you a space in a top-notch place. His door was locked, but the desk guy would have a pass key, and he wouldn’t be the first desk guy in the world to rent out his pass key by the hour to somebody looking to make a little extra money during the night.

  But nothing bad had happened. The mattress was so thin he could feel the billfold right there, under his kidney. Still there, still bulging. A good feeling. He lay watching the sunbeam, struggling with mental arithmetic, spreading six weeks’ pay out over the foreseeable future. With nothing to worry about except cheap food, cheap motels and the Firebird’s gas, he figured he had no problems at all. The Firebird had a modern motor, twenty-four valves, tuned for a blend of power and economy. He could get far away and have enough money left to take his time looking around.

  After that, he wasn’t so sure. There wasn’t going to be much call anywhere for a metalworker, even with seventeen years’ experience. But there would be a call for something. He was sure of that. Even if it was menial. He was a worker. He didn’t mind what he did. Maybe he’d find something outdoors, might be a refreshing thing. Might have some kind of dignity to it. Some kind of simple work, for simple honest folks, a lot different than slaving for that grinning weasel Odell.

  He watched the sunbeam travel across the counterpane for a while. Then he flung the cover aside and swung himself out of bed. Used the john, rinsed his face and mouth at the sink and untangled his clothes from the pile he’d dropped them in. He’d need more clothes. He only had the things he stood up in. Everything else, he’d burned along with his house. He shrugged and re-ran his calculations to allow for some new pants and work shirts. Maybe some heavy boots, if he was going to be laboring outside. The six weeks’ pay was going to have to stretch a little thinner. He decided to drive slow, to save gas, and maybe eat less. Or maybe not less, just cheaper. He’d use truck stops, not tourist diners. More calories, less money.

  He figured today he’d put in some serious miles before stopping for breakfast. He jingled the car keys in his pocket and opened his cabin door. Then he stopped. His heart thumped. The tarmac rectangle outside his cabin was empty. Just old oil stains staring up at him. He glanced desperately left and right along the row. No red Firebird. He staggered back into the room and sat down heavily on the bed. Just sat there in a daze, thinking about what to do.

  He decided he wouldn’t bother with the desk guy. He was pretty certain the desk guy was responsible. He could just about see it. The guy had waited an hour and then called some buddies who had come over and hot-wired his car. Eased it out of the motel lot and away down the road. A conspiracy, feeding off unsuspecting motel traffic. Feeding off suckers dumb enough to pay twenty-seven-fifty for the privilege of getting their prize possession stolen. He was numb. Suspended somewhere between sick and raging. His red Firebird. The only damn thing in his whole life he’d ever really wanted. Gone. Stolen. He remembered the exquisite joy of buying it. After his divorce. Waking up and realizing he could just go to the dealer, sign the papers, and have it. No discussions. No arguing. No snidey contempt about boys’ toys and how they needed this damn thing and that damn thing first. None of that. He’d gone down to the dealer and chopped in his old clunker and signed up for that Firebird and driven it home in a state of total joy. He’d washed and cleaned it every week. He’d watched the infomercials and tried every miracle polish on the market. The car had sat every day outside the Laney factory like a bright red badge of achievement. Like a shiny consolation for the shit and the drudgery. Whatever else he didn’t have, he had a Firebird. Until today. Now, along with everything else he used to have, he used to have a Firebird.

  The nearest police were ten miles south. He had seen the place the previous night, heading north past it. He set off walking, stamping out in rage and frustration. The sun climbed up and slowed him. After a couple of miles, he stuck out his thumb. A computer service engineer in a company Buick stopped for him.
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br />   “Car was stolen,” Penney told him. “Last night, outside the damn motel.”

  The engineer made a kind of all-purpose growling sound, like an expression of vague sympathy when the person doesn’t really give a shit.

  “Too bad,” he said. “You insured?”

  “Sure, Triple A and everything. But I’m kind of hoping they’ll get it back for me.”

  The guy shook his head. “Forget about it. It’ll be in Mexico tomorrow. Some senor down there will have himself a brand new American motor. You’ll never see it again unless you take a vacation down there and he runs you over with it.”

  Then the guy laughed about it and James Penney felt like getting out right away, but the sun was hot and James Penney was a practical guy. So he rode on in silence and got out in the dust next to the police parking lot. The Buick took off and left him there.

  The police station was small, but it was crowded. He stood in line behind five other people. There was an officer behind the front counter, taking details, taking complaints, writing slow, confirming everything twice. Penney felt like every minute was vital. He felt like his Firebird was racing down to the border. Maybe this guy could radio ahead and get it stopped. He hopped from foot to foot in frustration. Gazed wildly around him. There were notices stuck on a board behind the officer’s head. Blurred Xeroxes of telexes and faxes. US Marshal notices. A mass of stuff. His eyes flicked absently across it all.

  Then they snapped back. His photograph was staring out at him. The photograph from his own driver’s license, Xeroxed in black-and-white, enlarged, grainy. His name underneath, in big printed letters. James Penney. From Laney, California. A description of his car. Red Firebird. The plate number. James Penney. Wanted for arson and criminal damage. He stared at the bulletin. It grew larger and larger. It grew life-size. His face stared back at him like he was looking in a mirror. James Penney. Arson. Criminal damage. All-Points-Bulletin. The woman in front of him finished her business and he stepped forward to the head of the line. The desk sergeant looked up at him.