Robert hit the gas and the car fishtailed gravel and a plume of dust. “I know,” he said. “That’s why I didn’t want to stop.”
“We had to. She was gonna bleed out.”
A long pause. She pretended to sleep.
“What are we going to do with her, Dad?”
“We’re gonna get her some help.”
“How? For Christ’s sake, look around you. There’s nothing but trees and rocks for miles. And don’t you think they’ll be looking for us at all the local hospitals, or clinics, or whatever?”
“April needs a real doctor,” Stenko said. “There might be infection in that leg—or hemorrhaging.”
“We can’t run the risk—”
“The hell we can’t.”
“Dad—”
“Shut up, Robert. I’d do the same for you.”
“Look,” Robert said, lowering his voice, “we could drop her off at a ranch or something. With some nice old couple. They’d call an ambulance and get her into the emergency ward.”
“I’m not leaving her like that,” Stenko said. “She’d been left places all her life. I told her I’d take care of her.”
“This is insane!” Robert yelled. “You’re insane! What is she to you? This is your son talking. Your real son!”
“I’m not leaving her.”
SHE STARED at her bandaged leg as they screamed down the old highway. He was right: the bleeding seemed to have stopped. Maybe, she thought, because she didn’t have any more blood to lose. She was cold.
Robert yelling, “Why did he threaten me at the window like that? It was like he was begging me to shoot him. And Jesus, I was pulling the trigger before I knew what was happening. I mean, it wasn’t my plan. I didn’t have a plan . . .”
Stenko saying, “He’s crazy, that Natty. Like you, he doesn’t think things through. He just reacts. When he saw you outside the window, he probably thought we were trying to ambush them.”
“Like we’d do
“Hard to tell you aren’t when you just start shooting everything up.”
“You were protecting yourself. You didn’t even know where I was. The problem with you, Robert, is you don’t hold yourself accountable for anything you do. It’s always someone else’s fault.”
Robert screamed, “You made me what I am.
“Calm down.”
ROBERT HAD BOTH of his hands on the steering wheel, squeezing it so tightly that his knuckles were white. She noticed that every time he shouted, he jerked the car one way or other.
“I wish I had more time with Leo,” Stenko said, uncrumpling the napkin and looking at the series of numbers. The black ink had soaked into the paper and obscured the accounts. “I don’t know where all these accounts are located or what Leo might have done to make sure only he could get to them. We still need Leo’s help if we’re going to get all the money for your cause.”
“I think he might have been hit, too,” Robert said.
Stenko groaned.
Said Robert, “How much cash did you get?”
“I don’t know. A few hundred thousand, maybe more. I didn’t take time to count it, Robert.” Stenko sounded weary, beaten.
“Count it now.”
“Robert . . .”
“Count it now!”
“Don’t grab at it, for Christ’s sake. Just concentrate on your driving.
And she felt the car careen off the pavement and into a ditch, heard the furious scratches of brush from the undercarriage, saw the rolls of yellow dust blossom in clouds from both sides of the car. She closed her eyes as the car turned and hit something big and solid, felt the vehicle leave the ground, hit on its side in an explosion of dirt and shattered glass, begin to roll . . .
23
JOE SAW THE HELICOPTER WINK IN THE SUNLIGHT ON THE right side of Devils Tower as it bore down on the ranch in the foothills of the Bear Lodge Mountains. The mountains themselves had an entirely different look than Joe’s Bighorns or the Sierra Madres he’d been in recently. Rather than vertical and severe with dirty glaciers sleeping the summer away in fissures, the Bear Lodges looked sedentary and relaxed, sleeping old dogs covered with a carpet of blue/black pine. The aircraft was miles away, a flyspeck on a massive blue screen, still far enough that the sound of rotors couldn’t be heard. He knew Coon and Portenson were inside because he’d heard the chatter on the radio. Apparently, the preliminary investigation into the shooting had gone well enough to release them to the ranch call.
