“I got better things to do, mister.”
Guttersen didn’t argue-a surprise. Just sort of shrugged as he spun the chair, then settled in by the radio, his indifference saying Leave if you want, I’m not begging.
Will had stood on the stairs, thinking about it. He didn’t like the man-who would? But there was something comfortable about being with an adult you could tell to go screw himself and he’d say it right back, no hard feelings.
But the craziness with the gun was scary. And the wife sounded like most foster grandmothers, tight-cheeked do-gooders who worked so hard pretending to be sweet, they were a pain in the ass.
No thanks.
As Will reached the top of the stairs, though, he heard the old man call, “If you steal the jewelry, at least close the damn freezer door tight. Hear? But if you’re staying, there’s a can of beef jerky on the cupboard, and grab me a beer. Two beers, if you’re thirteen or older.”
It was a couple of months before Guttersen’s wife, Ruth, gave them permission to open the gun safe-Guttersen, of course, pretending he didn’t have an extra key-and drive to the shooting range. That’s where Will heard the pearl-handled revolver fired for the first time.
Loud, yeah, but as expected.
Back in Oklahoma, even shrinks and preachers packed guns. On the Rez, Christ, the Skins still had machine pistols hidden away from the days of the American Indian Movement. Will had grown up carrying a sidearm, provided by whatever ranch was paying him to ride fence. He could shoot.
Even so, he had to listen to Guttersen run his mouth, offering advice about the finer points of marksmanship, which Will had assumed was bullshit because competent shooters didn’t buy cheap weapons like a pearl-handled knockoff.
A misjudgment, he discovered.
“This shiny piece of junk’s got sentimental value,” Guttersen explained, shucking brass from the cylinder, then laying the gun aside. “It’s a fake peace-maker I used in my wrestling shows. Sheriff Bull Gutter and Outlaw Bull both. Good for close range, if you catch my meaning. But I woulda never used it in the field.”
When Will asked, “What field?,” the man didn’t answer, too busy locking the wheels on his chair, then producing a gun case from beneath his seat.
“This,” he said, “is what I used in the field. Not the sort of weapon I’d want some cop to snatch because they took it as evidence. Savvy?”
It was like that all the time, now, Geezus. Cowboy Bull and his Indian sidekick, Pony Chaser.
Inside the case was a pistol Will had read about but never seen, a custom. 45 caliber semiautomatic Kahr, polished stainless steel, with custom sights. A beautiful weapon, even though the gun had had some use.
“Where’d you carry it?” Will asked again, but Guttersen was loading rounds into a magazine, then turned his attention to a combat range. There were targets at twenty-five yards, fifty yards, and one target seventy-five yards away.
“If I had a rifle,” Will said, making conversation, “I’d take the far target and show you something.”
Guttersen shucked a round into the Kahr, and replied, “I’ll show you something right now,” then did.
Bull Guttersen could shoot.
It was another ten months before the man answered the question, “What field?,” confiding in Will something that even Guttersen’s wife was forbidden to mention: Bull’s wrestling career didn’t end in the ring, as he commonly told people.
Truth was, he had been crippled six years before in Afghanistan, at age fifty-one, after being recalled as a sergeant with his mortar unit in the Minneapolis National Guard.
Hearing that confirmed something else Will had begun to suspect. Guttersen wasn’t as old as he looked. He was old but not old. Something had happened to the man that aged him.
“I saw some action around Kabul, slept in a tent and put on a couple of wrestling shows for the USO. Didn’t even mind the scorpions too much, but then the Hummer I was in hit an IED outside Mazar-Sharif and it all went to hell.”
Guttersen didn’t tell Will that until days later, the two of them staying up late one night watching The Angel and the Badman, sitting in La-Z-Boy recliners, the fancy ones with beer holders built right into the armrests.
Guttersen had offered the information in a mild, damn-near intelligent voice Will had never heard the man use before… and might never hear again.
“Don’t ask for details, Pony Boy,” Bull had said, ending the conversation. “If you bring it up, or tell a soul, I’ll say it never happened, because, once folks find out the truth, they never stop asking me about it- What was it like? Musta been hell -as if they knew something about hell. People don’t know jackshit about hell, not the Real McCoy hell. Trust me on that one.”
In the same mild voice, Bull had explained, “Even if I don’t answer their damn questions, I still end up thinking about the answers. And I don’t want to recall how truly shitty it was. Just don’t got the energy for that no more.” Bull had added, being very serious, “Pony, you’d have to be a POW yourself to understand.”
Buried alive, Will wondered now, his eyes open in darkness of his coffin. Does that count?
24
I gave up on asking Barbara for help. Made a phone call from the cab, got lucky and hitched a ride on an Army training flight to MacDill Air Force Base, Tampa. The plane was a C-130, similar to the aircraft that was being loaded with the Castro Files. No movie but a cargo hold the size of a gymnasium where I could stretch out and sleep.
“The military’s standards begin where your standards end,” I enjoyed telling Tomlinson over the phone, breaking the news that he would have to find his own way home.
By eight p.m. I was standing on the patio of Nelson Myles’s winter estate, near Venice Beach, watching the man through his kitchen window. He was pouring himself a scotch and soda, mostly scotch. The sober horseman was back in the saddle.
Good. He would be loose, possibly even talkative. What I had to decide was my approach. Knock on the door and introduce myself? Or lure the man outside, then drive him to a secluded spot?
If the police weren’t already looking for me, I might have played it straight. But their low-key inquiries were becoming more frequent, and they’d hinted about a subpoena. Mack, owner of Dinkin’s Bay Marina, had updated me on the phone, as I drove a rental car south on I-75, looking for an exit near the Sarasota County line and a development called Falcon Landing.
There are hundreds of gated communities in Florida and many hundreds more to come. Gate or no gate, few are communities. Developers bulldoze an oversized patch of scrub, truck in sod and palms to damper the stink of bruised earth, then mask their domino trap with a woodsy name-Cedar Lakes, Cypress Vista, Oak Hills-and presto!, instant habitat for people in search of instant lives.
Falcon Landing was different. It was a thousand-acre enclave, a private retreat isolated by fencing, security and almost two miles of bay frontage and beachfront. Prices started in the eight figures, execs who owned planes were the targeted demographic and there was a strict low-density covenant that catalyzed demand and guaranteed a waiting list of buyers. Even I had heard of some of the celebrities who owned homes at the place.
There were only two entrances to Falcon Landing. The southernmost was just north of Port Charlotte, the other near the pretty seaside town of Venice.
I approached from the north. The entrance was a limestone arch with a waterfall and a Learjet logo. At the guard station was a Wells Fargo security car and two uniformed men. The place took security more seriously than most, so I parked at public-beach access a half mile away. After changing into shorts and a long-sleeved T-shirt, I belted a fanny pack around my waist and jogged back to the entrance. The guards replied to my wave with slow, uncertain salutes, but they didn’t stop me.