And then the tar bubbled and seethed.
Geronimo’s eyes went wide as he felt himself starting to sink.
Carter lifted his wounded forearm to impede the blood flow.
Geronimo’s legs were out of sight, the black asphalt seeping inexorably over them.
“I’m sinking!” Geronimo screamed in terror. He started to flail his arms, but the fringe on his buckskin jacket was stuck in the tar.
He wouldn’t really sink, Carter thought; the tar wasn’t quicksand. It would just do what it always did — entrap the unwary until they simply gave up the struggle.
“Stop moving,” Carter said.
“Fuck you!” Geronimo cried.
“If you stop moving, we’ll get you out.” Or, Carter thought, the fire department will.
“I’m sinking!” he shouted again, and now Carter could see that the asphalt was indeed more liquid, more agitated, than he had ever seen it. Geronimo’s waist was now submerged — and methane bubbles were rising all around him.
“Just hang on,” Carter said, looking around for something to throw him.
The hose. Carter started to drag it over. But it wouldn’t go that far.
He looked desperately for something else.
“Get me out!” Geronimo shrieked. The tar was edging up onto his chest. “Get me out of this shit!”
Carter quickly undid his belt. “Throw your knife away.”
“I can’t!” Geronimo said. His hand, the knife still clutched in his fist, was coated with tar.
Carter would have to take the chance. He pulled his belt from the loops, lay down on the catwalk, and flipped the buckle end toward Geronimo’s free hand.
Geronimo missed it.
Carter pulled it back, then tossed it again.
This time, Geronimo was able to snag it, but the tar was up to his shoulders now and showed no sign of stopping.
“The police are coming!” Miranda called from the top of the stairs.
“Get me a rope!” Carter shouted.
“Help me!” Geronimo cried. “Help me!” All the anger had gone out of his eyes now, replaced by mounting fear.
Carter looped the belt around his hand, and tried to drag Geronimo toward him.
“Help me,” he said, in nothing but a plea now.
“I’m trying,” Carter gasped, pulling again. But it was like pulling against a powerful current.
The tar was up to his neck now, the methane popping in tiny acrid bursts.
“Hold on,” Carter said.
But he could tell Geronimo was running out of strength; the tar was too strong, it was sucking him down, down toward the bottom of the pit.
Like a black tide, it rose up to his chin, then over his lips. Geronimo tilted his face upward, struggling to keep clear. His single black braid hung down in back, most of its length already lost in the mire. His turquoise necklace disappeared. He tried again to raise his arms, but the tar dragged them down.
“No,” Geronimo sputtered, “no,” as the tar climbed up his face.
Carter tugged on the belt, but there was no resistance; Geronimo had let go of his end.
His head began to sink, the tar touching his nose, then his eyes — he stared at Carter with mute incomprehension as the bubbling black asphalt covered his eyes. It was the look of a rabbit caught by a stoat.
And then it covered his forehead, until all that was left visible was the crest of his head, the black hair shiny and neatly parted in the middle.
“The cops are here!” Miranda cried, and Carter could hear the crackling of their walkie-talkies and the commotion as they clattered down the wooden steps.
“Where’s the guy with the knife?” one of them shouted at Carter, just as the tar made one last, irresistible grab. The belt slipped off Carter’s hand, and the top of Geronimo’s head sank swiftly beneath the surface of the pit.
The tar seethed for a moment, as if digesting its prize, then instantly grew as still, as silent, and as satisfied, as the grave it had just become.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Jakob,” al-Kalll said, from behind the easel.
“Yes, sir?”
“You see where I’ve placed that wheelbarrow?”
Jakob looked down the line of jacaranda trees, their branches in full purple blossom, to the rustic wheelbarrow artfully positioned at the far end.
“Could you move that forward, more into the frame of the picture?”
As Jakob went to do as he was bid, Mohammed sat back in his canvas lawn chair, under the shade of the towering beach umbrella. In the afternoons, he often liked to set up his easel somewhere on his estate — it afforded him so many different views and scenes — and paint, quickly and with as free a hand as he could muster, a watercolor impression. He had a good eye — his art instructor at Harrow had thought he should pursue a career in art — but he did it chiefly to relax, to take his mind off more troubling things, things that might be preying on his mind.
He was given, as had been all the members of his family, to dark fancies.
Jakob moved the wheelbarrow a few inches forward, and al-Kalli cried out, “More! More!”
It was an old wooden barrow that al-Kalli had seen in a plant nursery and purchased, though it hadn’t been for sale. He had immediately spotted its potential.
“Right there — stop.” Al-Kalli sat back, studied the composition of the scene one more time — the row of jacaranda trees, the winding flagstone path, the worn-out wheelbarrow placed as if about to be put to use — and nodded his head. He idly rinsed his brush in the Baccarat crystal vase he used for that purpose, dried it, then dabbed it against his palette; it was so hard to get a color that matched the gorgeous purple and lavender, with an undertone of blue, that the blossoms took on at this time of year. Their flowering lasted only a matter of weeks, and al-Kalli wanted to capture it, as well as he could, on his canvas.
But even as he made a few tentative strokes, a cloud passed overhead, subduing the colors of the scene, and al-Kalli checked his pocket watch. It was four-thirty in the afternoon, and the light was becoming too sharp, too slanting. He’d really have to start again tomorrow.
“We’ll leave everything just as it is,” he said to Jakob, placing his brush and palette back on the supply table and standing up. But it was a promising arrangement that he would return to tomorrow.
He wiped his hands on the linen cloths, drained the last of the Boodles gin in the chilled glass, and turned toward the house. Jakob, as usual, was three steps behind him.
“Why don’t we pay a visit to our guest?” al-Kalli said without turning around.
Jakob didn’t answer; he knew it wasn’t a question.
“Perhaps he has some new stories he wishes to share.”
Al-Kalli skirted the black-bottomed swimming pool, crossed the wide portico behind the main house, and was just about to go inside when he bumped into his son, Mehdi, who was sauntering outside with a towel, emblazoned with the al-Kalli peacock on it, thrown over his arm.
“Have you done your homework?” Mohammed asked him.
“If I said yes, would you believe me?”
“No.”
“Then what difference does it make?”
Al-Kalli had to concede the point, but not the actual battle. “Have you done it?”
“It’s not due till next week; it’s a long report. I have time.”
