Thirsty as hell, Manny Chavez woke up under a mesquite tree. Fighting his way through an alcohol-induced fog, he sat up and tried to figure out where he was. He remembered stopping off at the trading post at Three Points sometime after dark. He had gone there with a terrible thirst and the remains of his paycheck. Now the sun was high overhead, but the thirst remained.
The rockbound walls of Baboquivari rose up out of the desert far to the south while Kitt Peak was directly at his back a few miles away across the desert. From the looks of the mountain looming over him, Manny figured he was probably somewhere off Coleman Road.
Frowning, he tried to remember how he had come to be there. He had ridden to Three Points with his son, Eddie, and some of Eddie's friends. They had bought some beer-several cases-and some Big Red fortified wine-and then they had gone off somewhere in the desert, off the reservation rather than on it, to drink it in peace. Now that Delia, Manny's daughter, had returned to the reservation, Manny could no longer afford to be picked up by Law and Order. Delia had come to the jail and bailed him out once, but Manny's pride still writhed in shame at the name she had called him.
'Nawmk!' she had spat at him. 'Drunkard!'
Delia had been away from the reservation for so long that he was surprised she still remembered any of the language. But that particular word was probably indelibly printed in Delia's brain, imprinted there by Ellie, Delia's mother.
Feeling a lump under him, Manny rolled over and was relieved to find that a pint bottle-still half-full-lingered in his hip pocket. He unscrewed the top and took a long swig, hoping that the wine would help clear his head. It didn't, but at least it did help slake his thirst. Struggling to his feet, he walked out to a small clearing where mounds of empty cans and bottles as well as the deep impressions of tire tracks told him where Eddie's truck had been parked.
Unfortunately, it wasn't there anymore. For some reason, Eddie and his friends had taken off, leaving Manny alone. In the early morning cool, the desert was very still. Far to the north, he could hear the occasional whine of rubber tires on pavement. From the sounds of distant vehicles speeding by, it probably meant the highway wasn't all that far, especially not as the crow flies. Striking out across the low-lying desert, Manny headed for Highway 86.
Once he hit that, someone was bound to pick him up and give him a ride back home to Sells. There he'd be able to find Eddie and ask him why he had taken off and left Manny there alone. It wasn't a nice thing for a son to do to his father, even if the father did happen to be drunk.
Quentin Walker woke up fairly early that Saturday morning, hung over as hell and in a state of blind panic. What if someone had broken into his rented room overnight and stolen the money? Or worse, what if the money didn't exist at all? What if it was a figment of his imagination-a drunken delusion of some kind? Thinking about it, though, Quentin didn't believe he had been that drunk when Mitch Johnson showed up in the bar looking for him.
And it turned out the money was there after all, still hidden in the toe of his mud-spattered work boots, exactly where Quentin had left it before going to bed. He took the bills out and examined them again. One by one he held them up to the light from the grimy bedroom window. There was nothing about the bills that smacked of counterfeit. The vertical, copy-proof strip was there-the one feds had announced they were putting in bills to counter the counterfeiters.
Quentin's inspection proved that the bills were real enough, but they also posed a real dilemma. Existing from paycheck to paycheck as he did, Quentin Walker had no bank account. Somebody who dressed and looked the way he did couldn't very well walk into the nearest Wells Fargo bank branch and make a five-thousand-dollar deposit with five bills. If somebody like him turned up in a bank with that kind of money, the teller was bound to notice and remember. While he was there or after he left, people would wonder and ask questions. Pretty soon, his parole officer would be asking questions, too.
On a week-to-week basis, Quenton cashed his paychecks in the bars he frequented-usually ones in his immediate neighborhood-places he could walk to. Quentin had lost both his pickup truck and his driver's license in the aftermath of that damned DWI accident that had landed him in the state prison.
Cashing a paycheck was one thing, but nobody in a bar was going to fork over change for a thousand-dollar bill. Besides, even if they had that kind of cash in a safe, changing the money in a bar in that marginal neighborhood was far too risky. Somebody might see what was going on and decide to relieve him of the cash the moment he stepped back outside. Quentin Walker knew too well that not all bartenders were honest.
Unable to decide how to proceed, Quentin stood for some time holding the bills in his hand. Finally he stuffed them into his pocket and then moved from the tiny bedroom of his furnished apartment to the equally tiny kitchen. He opened the refrigerator and took out the remainder of the loaf of bread that he kept there to protect it from marauding cockroaches. There were only two slices of bread left in the loaf. His first instinct was to throw them out. He had the two dried crusts in his hand and was ready to drop them in the garbage when he realized what a mistake that would be. The slices of bread themselves were the makings of the perfect hiding place.
Quentin took the bills out of his pocket and placed them between the two slices of bread, folding them small enough so no pieces of paper showed on the outside of the bread. Then he put his freshly assembled money sandwich back inside the plastic bread bag. Convinced that his hiding place was absolutely brilliant, he shoved the plastic bag into the small frost-filled freezer compartment of his refrigerator and shut the door.
Enormously pleased with himself, Quentin left the apartment, locked the door, and then walked as far as the McDonald's on the other side of the freeway. There, he splurged on breakfast. He treated himself to coffee, orange juice, and two Egg McMuffins.
Over breakfast, Quentin's worries about taking Mitch Johnson to the cave surfaced once again with a vengeance. If he had still owned his truck, it wouldn't have been a problem. He could simply have driven out to the cave well in advance and checked things out for himself. If there was a problem, he could take care of it…
The answer came to him like a bolt out of the blue. He could buy a car. One of the major roadblocks to buying a car had always been a chronic lack of money. In order to buy a car on time-in order to get a loan-it was necessary to show proof of insurance. Without it, no bank in the universe would even let him drive an uninsured car off the lot. With his driving record, car insurance was something else Quentin Walker didn't have and wasn't likely to get.
But now he had the money-as much or even more than he would need-to buy a car. And if he was paying cash for something like that, the people at the dealership probably wouldn't even blink at the thousand-dollar bills, as long as the total amount was less than the ten-thousand-dollar limit that would cause all kinds of scrutiny.
With growing excitement Quentin paged through the automotive section of an abandoned Arizona Sun he grabbed off a neighboring table. He wanted to find something that would be rugged enough to suit his needs and cheap enough to fit his budget. He circled three that seemed like possibilities-an '87 Suzuki Samurai soft-top, a rebuilt 1980 Ford Bronco, and a '77 GMC Suburban-all of them in the thirty-five-hundred range. That would just about do it-use up his little windfall, leave him some change, and get him some wheels all at the same time.
By the time he headed back to his apartment to shower, the day had taken on a whole new promise. He was finally going to have something to show for all his years of struggle. And if he ever ran into either of his so-called brothers again-Davy Ladd or Brian Fellows-he would tell them both to go piss up a rope.
Diana was lying awake in bed when she heard the side gate open and close as Lani mounted her bike and left for work. Glancing at the bedside clock, Diana was surprised by how early it was-just barely five-thirty. Why was Lani leaving for work so early when her volunteer shift didn't start until seven?
Next to her, Brandon seemed to be sleeping peacefully for a change, so Diana was careful not to wake him as she crept out of bed herself. Wrapping a robe around her, she padded silently down the tiled hallway, through the living room, and into the kitchen to start a pot of coffee. She found Lani's note on the kitchen table.
Diana read it and tossed it back on the table. She didn't remember any discussion about Lani's going to a concert. That meant Lani had asked her father for permission rather than her mother. But then why wouldn't she? Despite Brandon's tough-guy act and protestations to the contrary, the girl had had him buffaloed from the very beginning.
'Being foster parents is one thing,' he had told his wife the night before Clemencia Escalante was due to arrive at their house after being released from Tucson Medical Center. 'Obviously the poor little kid needs help, and I don't mind pitching in. But just because Rita managed to bend the rules enough to have Clemencia placed with us on a foster child basis doesn't mean it's going to lead to a permanent adoption. It won't, you know. It'll never fly.'
