“To what- something that happened years ago at the ass end of Mexico? That’s not my fight, Wax. Her kind can’t blame me or my politics. I don’t vote, remember? I’m a felon.” He returned his glance to Frank. “It’s not that I’m unsympathetic. It’s just my focus here is a little narrower.”
Waxman removed his glasses and wiped the lenses with his shirttail. “Excuse my saying so, but given the circumstances of your friend’s abduction- the methods, to use your term- I find this little fit of cynicism less than compelling.”
Abatangelo turned and in one short movement grabbed Waxman’s shoulders, lifted him onto the balls of his feet and pinned him to the wall. He pushed his face close, hissing through his teeth. “Don’t lecture me about her. What happened to her. What to do about her or how to feel about it.”
Waxman stared back blinking. He licked his lips. Abatangelo released his hold and turned away. Waxman gathered his breath, fumbled with his glasses and put them back on. “Forgive me,” he said. “I shouldn’t sermonize. What I said about your friend was improper. I know she means a great deal to you.”
Abatangelo winced at the change of tone. Turning around again, he found himself regarded with immense, pitying eyes. He felt indulged. He felt as though an appeal were being made to his conscience.
Chapter 20
Saturday traffic offered little resistance as they headed up the Eastshore Freeway. Waxman sat alone in front, driving the Dart. Abatangelo sat in back with Frank. It seemed best not to make him sit back there alone, like a prize, or a prisoner. Abatangelo urged him to talk, thinking that training Frank’s mind on actual events might keep his more extreme imaginings at bay. Frank obliged, telling again the story of the past few weeks, confirming details. The effort came off like a sort of dreary chant. Abatangelo couldn’t resist the impression that this was the last time Frank expected to say these things.
In time they turned onto the Delta Highway, heading toward the flood plain beyond Martinez. They reached the Pacheco turnoff and Frank told Waxman to leave the highway and head north through the low hills toward the river.
“There’s a turn up here,” Waxman shortly announced from the front. “Which way do I go?”
Frank told him to bear right. They rounded a corner above which a refinery complex crowned a grassless bluff and then the marina came into view. Nearly three dozen boats buffeted a hatchwork of low sagging docks: weathered houseboats fouled with rubbish, listing barks, fishing smacks. Mainsails rattled in the late-day wind. The stench of brackish water mingled with that of rotting food and turpentine.
“This must be where the iconoclasts dock,” Abatangelo offered. A stenciled sign nailed to a fence post read, WELCOME TO THE IRISH PENNANT- THOSE FOUND IN SKIFFS NEAR THE DOCKS AT NIGHT ARE LIKELY TO BE FOUND IN THEM COME MORNING.
Garbage seethed out of brimming Dumpsters. A dog wearing a bandana collar barked from a paintless foredeck as the car eased past, joined by other dogs as yet unseen. A toddler in knee-soiled pajamas, holding a metal cup, stared, reaching behind one-handed to scratch. An inverted kayak rested on sawhorses amid a clutter of paint cans and tangled sail; two shirtless longhairs were stripping the hull with putty knives, sharing a bottle of peach schnapps as they worked. One of them spat into his paint shavings as the car went by.
When the marina lane came back around, a long brick wall standing chest-high ran parallel to the gravel for a hundred yards or more. Only the water stood opposite. A lone oak tree rose from the grass to the west. Abatangelo told Waxman to pull to the side.
“You can walk?” Waxman queried, turning back to Frank.
Frank didn’t respond. He was staring out at the low wall which bore two fresh scrawlings in white paint.
The Son of Man is following out His appointed course.
Woe to that man by whom He is betrayed.
– Luke 22:22
Bring your pants
If you wanna dance.
– Felix the Cat
Waxman followed Frank’s glance, adjusted his glasses, and read along. With forced humor, he quipped, “Proof at last. The Devil does quote scripture. And pop culture.”
“It wasn’t here before,” Frank said. He scoured the distance in every direction, the marina, the waving tall grass, the gravel road arcing back toward the refinery.
Abatangelo said, “Looks like your friends intend to proceed.”
“That’s not all they intend,” Frank answered, flinching as he read the white words over and over. Woe to the betrayer.
“Let’s leave,” Frank said. “Please.”
“Not yet,” Abatangelo told him. “I want a closer look.”
He gripped Frank’s sleeve and pulled him across the seat. Frank stepped out of the car, looking everywhere at once. Sniffing the air, he labored across the weed-choked gravel, Waxman doting alongside.
“Show me what you were talking about.” Abatangelo said.
Frank swallowed, scanning again the various distances. No idling cars. No waiting men. He flexed his hands, wiped them on his sleeves, then pointed. “One group lines up along the wall,” he said, “the other along the water. The drivers trade places, simple and quick. Headlights signal when things are okay. That’s that.” He looked at Abatangelo, who was frowning. “I’m not making this up.”
“I didn’t say you were.” Abatangelo checked the roads in and out, mentally trying to gauge the time it would take to arrive and leave. “Not yet, anyway.”
He stared out at the dull water, the abandoned derricks in the distance, the refinery behind. Winter twilight mottled the sky, a low red sun descending into scattered clouds.
He tried to picture what would happen. It would take a matter of seconds for Shel to be passed from one set of cars to the other. No one would dally. They loathed each other too much for that. He checked back toward the marina, the nearest boat rested 150 yards away at least. He could set up a tripod in the water, shield himself with the hull in the darkness, use the infrared with a telephoto. But the resolution would be poor, he wouldn’t get faces.
He moved closer to the wall, pulling Frank along by the sleeve. A dirt mound abutted the bricks on the leeward side, leaving a trench that a smaller man might fit into, and yet it seemed too obvious. He looked beyond the wall then, across the mound, and spotted an incinerator shelter further into the grass, thirty yards back from the gravel road. The fact he hadn’t seen it at first encouraged him.
“Wax,” he said over his shoulder, “keep Frank company here.”
Waxman sidled forward to Frank’s side as Abatangelo jumped the wall. The ground was marshy underfoot. Mice fled through the tall grass, retreating from each step. The shelter was a cinder-block windbreak, three-sided, waist-high. A wire incinerator black from old fires stood amid a debris of charred paper, blackened soup cans, moldy singed cardboard. Abatangelo kicked the larger cinders into the grass. The interior walls wore a film of soot. Abatangelo crouched down and decided that, kneeling, he could hide here.
He looked back across the mound to a tall hurricane fence, the road back toward the highway in the distance. He could use the refinery lights for bearings, park beyond the railway tracks. It was a plan. He could hide here till the vans arrived, then move up crouching through the grass, burrow down against the wall. It was the least chancy option he had.
He wiped the soot from his hands onto his trousers, sidled back toward the wall and eased back down onto the gravel. If these people were who Frank claimed they were, they’d be here, no matter how rough it promised to be. They wouldn’t miss it. He glanced over his shoulder one last time, studying the long low wall, craning to see the incinerator and feeling vaguely good about it now.