Nat turned toward the door, nearly breaking into a run, but he had hardly moved a step when a hand grasped his arm.
Hey, hey, where you going in such a hurry? the voice said.
The hand turned him, spun him in place with an effort that seemed marginal to its effect. Standing before him was Mike, his hand still gripping Nat’s arm just above the elbow. Behind him stood Johnny Aguirre himself: short, black hair slicked back, white sports coat pulled over a turquoise T-shirt as if he stood not in the cold night of Reno but in the warm afternoon of Miami.
You got someplace to go? Johnny said.
No, I just … His voice trailed off. He glanced to where the El Camino had been but in its place was a long gold Lincoln Town Car.
You’re on my list to track down.
I was gonna come see you, Johnny.
Is that right?
Nat placed his unlit cigarette between his lips, an action of habit, and a moment later Mike’s free hand came up before him, clicking the wheel of a silver lighter, the flame like a hot orange teardrop. He leaned into its light and the cigarette burned before him.
So you have something for Johnny, right? Mike said, clicking the lighter shut and returning it to his pocket.
Nat looked at him. The cocaine was surging through him now, the cigarette burning down in his mouth as if he was breathing in the fire.
Johnny Aguirre’s mouth traced a faint smile. He wore a gold chain around his neck and the colors of the casino lights chased up and down its length. Nat, Nat, Nat, he said slowly, shaking his head from side to side. What am I gonna do with you?
Nat looked at the men who stood before him, their faces models of seriousness. The effect made him giggle despite his attempt not to, the cigarette bouncing upon his lips.
This funny to you? Johnny Aguirre said.
And now Nat could not stop. It all seemed too ridiculous to be real. Nothing could happen to him now. He was invincible.
Let’s take a walk, Johnny Aguirre said.
Mike’s thick hand came around Nat’s forearm and then they were moving, drifting out of the haze of light that fled from the interior of the casino and into the darkness of the parking lot beyond.
PART II. THE KILLERS
8
YOU ARRIVE IN IDAHO BEFORE THE FIRST SNOW BUT IT IS well below freezing and the ragged houses that peer out at you from the forest along the road each send a pillar of smoke into a crystalline blue sky. It is late November 1984, and you stand at a pay phone, your breath steaming, the cigarette you hold between your fingers trembling as the other clenches the receiver to your ear. The Datsun is parked just a few feet away, one of its headlights crushed and the bumper askew.
When your uncle answers, you expect to have to explain but he does not seem surprised to hear from you.
Just keep driving north until you see the sign for Naples, he tells you. There’s a pay phone at the bar there. Call me and I’ll come get you.
All right, you say.
What are you driving?
An old blue Datsun 510.
I’ll find you, your uncle says.
Uncle David arrives ten minutes later, rumbling out of the trees in a rusty pickup, swinging in beside you and then waving you forward to follow. And you do follow: up off the highway through a forest so choked with foliage that it seems impenetrable. Scraps of cloud drifting through pine and cedar and spruce. Like paradise. And like a place where you will never be found.
When you reach the trailer, your uncle smiles and embraces you, his expression one of mingled joy and concern. This is quite a surprise, he says.
Did my mom call you?
Nope. He taps a pack of Camels against the palm of his hand. Smoke?
You nod. At forty-seven, your uncle appears much older than you remember, a mustached man with dirty blond hair streaked with gray who looks not unlike Bill. You have thought all your life that Bill looked like your father but now you realize that you were probably wrong.
You are handed a cigarette and then a lighter. There is a wooden picnic table next to the trailer and your uncle sits on its edge and when you return the lighter he lights his own cigarette and the two of you are silent for a time, blowing smoke into the pine-scented air.
I’m guessing you’re not on some kind of vacation, your uncle says at last.
No.
You’re in trouble?
Yes, you say. You have told yourself that you will not cry but now your eyes fill with tears.
Hang on now, your uncle says. That’s not gonna help.
I’m sorry, you say.
How much trouble are you in?
A lot.
Police trouble?
You nod.
Your uncle stands and looks at you. The sun is behind him and his body cuts a black shape against it. Let me get a Pepsi, he says. And then you’d better tell me what’s going on.
The two of you sit outside at the picnic table, both drinking the Diet Pepsis your uncle has retrieved from inside the trailer, and you tell him the whole story, every part of it, Rick and Susan and the job at the car dealership and Johnny Aguirre and Mike, pausing momentarily when your eyes fill again. It feels like it is someone else’s story at times, as if you are narrating something out of a movie, but it is your own and it pours out of you like a torrent.
Christ you’ve had a run, your uncle says into the silence that follows.
I’ve done some pretty bad things.
Well shit, that’s why people come up here. To start over. That’s what the whole place is about.
I don’t know what to do.
Well, your uncle says, you’re gonna need a new name for one.
A new name?
Am I whispering or something?
No.
Good. There is no Nathaniel Reed. I don’t know anyone by that name and neither do you. So what do you want to go by? Jack or Tom or something?
You sit there saying nothing for a long time. It somehow feels as if the two of you are merely camping up in the mountains. The sounds of birds everywhere. And then you say it: Bill.
Bill? He nods. That’s actually a real good idea. We can get a birth certificate with that name.
I guess so.
I’m gonna need to talk to your mom some.
Are you gonna call the police?
Why would I do that?
I don’t know. Because you’re harboring a criminal.
Your uncle laughs then. Bill, you’re a regular comedian, he says. Yes, you are.
The feeling of being called by that name is like a fire inside your chest. Each time it burns. You realize that your brother is the best person you have ever known and that had he been alive, had he survived Battle Mountain, you would never be in this situation at all. And because of this fact, you know you have failed him. He gave you a red-tailed hawk to hold in your hands and in the memory of it you can sometimes feel the heat of that great bird arcing up through your fingers.
You do not see the animals that first day, the few animals that your uncle is keeping in small, cramped cages. Instead he takes you to Spokane, a round trip of four hours, where you sell the Datsun to a used car lot for two hundred dollars because your uncle reasons that the car is the only concrete way anyone might be able to track you down.
That first night you sleep on the tiny couch in the trailer and in the morning your uncle takes you down through the birches and shows you the animals. Coyote and bobcat and one lumbering and slow-witted porcupine. You watch them all but when you reach the bear’s cage something changes for you. It is a jolt. Like a wire of electricity that burns in the air between. You will remember, all your life, looking into those eyes, that conduit connecting you to the boy you were so many years ago when your father died and you came to visit your uncle for the first and only time.