It was just that he had not expected the form. Lenny had surprised him, and for a moment he had given way to fear.
He was experienced at concealing his disability. He even used libraries. That was how he had found out about seismic vibrators. He had gone to the central library on I Street in downtown Sacramento — a big, busy place where his face probably would not be remembered. At the reception desk he had learned that science was up on the second floor. There, he had suffered a stab of anxiety when he looked at the long aisles of bookshelves and the rows of people sitting at computer screens. Then he had caught the eye of a friendly-looking woman librarian about his own age. “I’m looking for information on seismic exploration,” he had said with a warm smile. “Could you help me?”
She had taken him to the right shelf, picked out a book, and with a little encouragement found the relevant chapter. “I’m interested in how they generate the shock waves,” he had explained. “I wonder if this book has that information.”
She had leafed through the pages with him. “There seem to be three ways,” she had said. “An underground explosion, a weight drop, or a seismic vibrator.”
“Seismic vibrator?” he had said with just the hint of a twinkle in his eye. “What’s that?”
She had pointed to a photograph. Priest had stared, fascinated. The librarian had said: “It looks pretty much like a truck.”
To Priest it had looked like a miracle.
“Can I photocopy some of these pages?” he had asked.
“Sure.”
If you were smart enough, there was always a way to get someone else to do the reading and writing.
Diana finished the form, drew a big X next to a dotted line, handed the paper to him, and said: “You sign here.”
He took her pen and wrote laboriously. The “R” for Richard was like a showgirl with a big bust kicking out one leg. Then the “G” for Granger was like a billhook with a big round blade and a short handle. After “RG” he just did a wavy line like a snake. It was not pretty, but people accepted it. A lot of folk signed their names with a scrawl, he had learned: signatures did not have to be written clearly, thank God.
This was why his forged license had to be in his own name: it was the only one he could write.
He looked up. Diana was watching him curiously, surprised at how slowly he wrote. When she caught his eye, she reddened and looked away.
He gave her back the form. “Thanks for your help, Diana, I sure appreciate it.”
“You’re welcome. I’ll get you the keys to the truck as soon as Lenny gets off the phone.” The keys were kept in the boss’s office.
Priest remembered that he had promised to move the boxes for her. He picked one up and took it outside. The green van stood in the yard with its rear door open. He loaded the box and went back for another.
Each time he came back in, he checked her desk. The form was still there, and no keys were visible.
After he had loaded all the boxes, he sat in front of her again. She was on the phone, talking to someone about motel reservations in Clovis.
Priest ground his teeth. He was almost there, he nearly had the keys in his hand, and he was listening to crap about motel rooms! He forced himself to sit still.
At last she hung up. “I’ll ask Lenny for those keys,” she said. She took the form into the inner office.
A fat bulldozer driver called Chew came in. The trailer shook with the impact of his work boots on the floor. “Hey, Ricky,” he said, “I didn’t know you were married.” He laughed. The other men in the office looked up, interested.
“Saw you get out of a car outside Susan’s a while back. Then I had breakfast with the salesman that gave you a ride.”
Diana emerged from Lenny’s office with a key ring in her hand. Priest wanted to snatch it from her, but he pretended to be more interested in talking to Chew.
Chew went on: “You know, Susan’s western omelet is really something.” He lifted his leg and farted, then looked up and saw the secretary standing in the doorway, listening. “ ’Scuse me, Diana. Anyhow, this youngster was saying how he picked you up out near the dump.”
“You were walking in the desert alone at six-thirty, on account of how you quarreled with your wife and stopped the car and got out.” Chew looked around at the other men, making sure he had their attention. “Then she up and drove off and left you there!” He grinned broadly, and the others laughed.
Priest stood up. He did not want people remembering that he was out near the dump on the day Mario disappeared. He needed to kill this talk dead. He put on a hurt look. “Well, Chew, I’m going to tell you something. If I ever happen to learn anything about your private affairs, specially something a little embarrassing, I promise I won’t shout about it all over the office. Now, what do you think of that?”
Chew said: “Ain’t no call to get sensitive.”
The other men looked shamefaced. No one wanted to talk about this anymore.
There was an awkward silence. Priest did not want to exit in a bad atmosphere, so he said: “Hell, Chew, no hard feelings.”
Chew shrugged. “No offense intended, Ricky.”
The tension eased.
Diana handed Priest the keys to the seismic vibrator.
He closed his fist over the bunch. “Thank you,” he said, trying to keep the elation out of his voice. He could hardly wait to get out of there and sit behind the wheel. “Bye, everyone. See you in New Mexico.”
“You drive safely, now, you hear?” Diana said as he reached the door.
“Oh, I’ll do that,” Priest replied. “You can count on it.”
He stepped outside. The sun was up, and the day was getting warmer. He resisted the temptation to do a victory dance around the truck. He climbed in and turned over the engine. He checked the gauges. Mario must have filled the tank last night. The truck was ready for the road.
He could not keep the grin off his face as he pulled out of the yard.
He drove out of town, moving up through the gears, and headed north, following the route Star had taken in the Honda.
As he approached the turnoff for the dump, he began to feel strange. He imagined Mario at the side of the road, with gray brains seeping out of the hole in his head. It was a stupid, superstitious thought, but he could not shake it. His stomach churned. For a moment he felt weak, too weak to drive. Then he pulled himself together.
Mario was not the first man he had killed.
Jack Kassner had been a cop, and he had robbed Priest’s mother.
Priest’s mother had been a whore. She had been only thirteen years old when she gave birth to him. By the time Ricky was fifteen, she was working with three other women out of an apartment over a dirty bookstore on Seventh Street in the skid row neighborhood of downtown Los Angeles. Jack Kassner was a vice squad detective who came once a month for his shakedown money. He usually took a free blow job at the same time. One day he saw Priest’s mother getting the bribe money out of the box in the back room. That night the vice squad raided the apartment, and Kassner stole fifteen hundred dollars, which was a lot of money in the sixties. Priest’s mother did not mind doing a few days in the slammer, but she was heartbroken to lose all the money she had saved. Kassner told the women that if they complained, he would slap them with drug-trafficking charges and they would all go down for a couple of years.
Kassner thought he was in no danger from three B-girls and a kid. But the next evening, as he stood in the men’s room of the Blue Light bar on Broadway, pissing away a few beers, little Ricky Granger stuck a razor-sharp six-inch knife in his back, easily slicing through the black mohair suit jacket and the white nylon shirt and penetrating the kidney. Kassner was in so much pain, he never got his hand on his gun. Ricky stabbed him several more times, quickly, as the cop lay on the wet concrete floor of the men’s room, vomiting blood; then he rinsed his blade under the tap and walked out.
Looking back, Priest marveled at the cool assurance of his fifteen-year-old self. It had taken only fifteen or
