My first thought, when I saw them, was that Cousins had abandoned me just like my real son. I felt the heat build. “Fuck you,” I said. “You lied. You set me up. Where were you when they busted me?”
“I believe you’ve been tagged,” Banning said with a prissy British accent. He didn’t come any closer.
“Did you bring dinner?” I asked. “Or was that all a setup, so you could plant some coke?”
Cousins spoke to me as if I were a child. “Did they find any coke?” he asked.
“Would I be here?” I played with the pistol, sighted along the barrel, and pointed it in their general direction, to show them how useful I could be. “No,” I said. “But not for lack of trying.”
“What a mess,” Cousins said. “You must be really angry.”
“I roll with the punches,” I said.
“We should get you out of here,” Banning said.
“Why would I want to go anywhere with a couple of fuckheads?”
“Who called you?” Cousins asked, dripping reason and calm.
I aimed the pistol straight at him. Janie had explained a lot, how I had been set up, how I was too old to get respect. She wanted to come back and help me put my life together, but Cousins wouldn’t let her. Banning was probably in on it, too.
Cousins stood close enough I could blow a hole in his chest the size of my fist. He was sweating like a stuck pig. “I’m going to do something a little odd now,” he said. “I’m going to read you some numbers and see if you remember them.” He took out a small strip of paper like a grocery receipt.
“Why?” I asked. I didn’t know the pull on the Smith & Wesson. It might go off with a tap. I jerked the pistol right and squeezed for practice. The gunshot sent Banning running like a rabbit.
Short, light pull, but not hair-trigger.
Cousins flinched but held his ground. “Seven five two four,” he read from the paper.
“Yeah,” I said. “Now spin the dial on the old combo lock right two turns and go to—” I stopped babbling. His number made sense. It was perfectly reasonable. “Okay.” I listened.
“Repeat it back to me.”
“Seven five two four.”
“Three seven eight one. Again, repeat it back to me.”
“Three seven eight one.”
“And the last one, I promise, two six nine eight.”
“Two six nine eight.”
“Dear old Ben, I have some news,” Rob said. “Shall we visit Doctor Seuss?”
I cringed at a flash of green that seemed to pass right over my head.
“How do you feel now?”
“All right,” I said, and lowered the pistol.
“What color did you see?”
“Green.” I sniffed the air. “Jesus,” I said. “Who cut the cheese?” I tried to place the stink. Bodies and rotting vegetation, like a day-old battleground upcountry.
Banning retraced his steps up the driveway on short, mincing legs. He wrinkled his nose. “They really got you,” he said.
“Who?”
I felt calm but very sad. The phone call from Janie had been a dream. I started to cry and Cousins put his arm around my shoulder. He took the gun and passed it to Banning, who dangled it from two fingers like a dead rat.
“That’s better,” Cousins said. “Let’s pack up and get you the hell out of here. It isn’t safe.”
“What’s going on?” I asked. My nose was running and sweat beaded off my chin and soaked my shirt. My stomach and bowels were in a riot. “Christ, I need a shower.”
“There really isn’t time,” Banning said.
We picked through the mess and stuffed a travel bag with clothes. I scooped some pictures into a grocery sack and filled a box with my favorite books. Banning took a sledge from the garage and smashed the Smith & Wesson. We didn’t want to be caught with a cop’s drop piece, probably stolen and unregistered.
Then we left the house, the ghost, twenty years of memories, my whole goddamned life, and I haven’t been back since.
29
SAN DIEGO/LOS ANGELES
“I wanted to thank you for confirming I’m an honest man,” Banning said. Cousins rode shotgun and I sat in the backseat of Banning’s beat-up Plymouth with my boxes. The trunk was latched with baling wire and he thought it might spring open.
“I didn’t state anything of the kind,” I said.