The Low Desert Read online

  “Whatever,” Shane says. He takes one more drag from his cigarette, then puts it out on the bottom of his shoe, like it’s a thing he does all the time, which it isn’t.

  “Whatever?” Gold Mike says. “I insult you and you say, ‘Whatever.’ Passivity, man, that’s an illness.”

  “You want me to hit you or something?”

  Gold Mike laughs hard. He’s one of those Armenian dudes who shaves his head just to look tough, Shane making out the outline of a full head of stubble. Shane isn’t much of a fighter. He’s the kind of person who will stab a guy, though. Put a screwdriver in someone’s eye. You’re either a pussy or you’re not. Shane probably is one, but he’s not squeamish around blood and that helps.

  “I like you,” Gold Mike says. “You a child molester or anything?”

  “What kind of fucking question is that?”

  “I been watching you,” Gold Mike says. “You put your dick in anything. Just need to be clear what I don’t get down with.”

  “How long have you been watching me?”

  “A couple weeks,” Gold Mike says, like it’s perfectly normal. “You ever do any time?”

  “You ever do any time?”

  “A couple days here and there,” Gold Mike says.

  “That must impress some people.”

  Gold Mike laughs again but doesn’t respond.

  “What’s the V stand for?” Shane points at Gold Mike’s neck.

  “My last name is Voski,” Gold Mike says.

  “Okay.”

  “It means ‘gold’ in Armenian.”

  That’s lucky, Shane thinks, then says, “You speak Armenian?” because there’s no way Gold Mike wasn’t born in Reseda.

  “Fuck no,” Gold Mike says. “It’s a dead language.” He points over his shoulder. “I went to CSUN and everyone always wanted me to join the Armenian Student Union, bunch of assholes named Gabarian talking about getting the genocide recognized. Not my game. I’m multinational. Speak Spanish, French, got a little Russian, enough I could probably get by at Odessa. You ever been there? The OG Russian restaurant in Las Vegas?”

  “No,” Shane said. “I don’t get down with the Russians. Not since Fiddler on the Roof.”

  Gold Mike raised his eyebrows in mild amusement. Shane didn’t make him for a fan of musical theater, but then he said, “What’s your last name?”

  “Solomon,” Shane says.

  “Does that mean something?”

  “Peace,” Shane says.

  “Yeah?”

  “That’s what my mother told me,” he says. “It’s from the Hebrew word shalom.”

  “You speak Hebrew?”

  “Enough to DJ a bar mitzvah.”

  Gold Mike leans forward, motions Shane to lean in, too.

  “You want to make some real money, Shalom?”

  SHANE FINALLY FELL asleep after 1 a.m. but woke up again at 5:47 a.m., sunrise filling his room on the second floor of the Royal Californian with orange light, his foot like an anvil at the bottom of his leg. He unwrapped the gauze and examined the wound. His foot had swollen to twice its normal size, at least, even though the wound wasn’t that big. An inch around. The nurse told him yesterday that the bullet shattered two of his cuneiform bones, that he’d need surgery to stabilize his foot, a couple pins would be inserted, and then he’d be in a hard cast for six to eight weeks. But he was going to need to speak to the police before any of that happened.

  That wasn’t going to work.

  Not with 66 percent of Gold Mike rotting in his storage unit, the other 33 percent in the Honda’s trunk, Shane thinking 1 percent was probably drying on the floor, blood and viscera and whatnot. He’d chopped Gold Mike’s head off using the fire-hose hatchet, then cut the head up into smaller pieces to make it easier to shuttle around, then took off Gold Mike’s hands and feet, too, because he thought that would make it harder to identify him, but with DNA, fuck, it probably didn’t matter, but Shane hadn’t been thinking too straight.

  He’d taken the battery out of Gold Mike’s van and poured acid over the rest of the body, but that was just cosmetic. For sure Shane’s DNA was in the unit and the van and on Gold Mike’s body, but then his DNA was all over everything regardless. They were business partners. That was easy enough to explain. Plus, he had no legitimate reason to kill Gold Mike. Anyone who saw them together knew they were a team. The only proof that it was Shane who’d plugged him an excessive number of times was probably the hole in Shane’s fucking foot and the gun itself, which Shane had tucked under his mattress.

  Well, and Gold Mike’s head and all that, which was now in his hotel room’s safe, zipped up inside a Whole Foods freezer bag filled with ice.

  Shane stepped out onto his second-story balcony—which was just wide enough to hurl yourself over—and lit up his second-to-last cigarette. He’d given up smoking when Manny got cancer, truth be told he sort of blamed himself for that whole thing, but it was the only drug he had on his person and he needed about ten minutes of mental clarity to figure out how he was going to get himself out of this situation.

  He needed to get rid of Gold Mike’s parts.

  He needed to get rid of the gun.

  He needed to get himself an alibi . . . or he needed to change his identity, which didn’t seem like a plausible turn of events, but he was open to whatever presented itself to him.

  He needed to go across the street to the Circle K and get some disposable phones.

  He also was in a fuck ton of pain and under normal circumstances might go find a dispensary and get some edibles, but he wasn’t showing anyone his ID. He’d get some ice and soak his foot in the tub; that should bring down the swelling. He’d get some bleach from housecleaning, put a couple drops in the water, maybe that would disinfect the wound? Then he needed to get a new car.

  The Royal Californian sat on a stretch of Highway 111 in Indio that could have been Carson City or Bakersfield or Van Nuys or anywhere else where someone had the wise idea to plant a palm tree and then surround it with cement. This wasn’t the part of greater Palm Springs where people came to visit—it was nowhere near the leafy garden hotel he’d stayed in with his dad, the Ingleside Inn—unless they were going to court or bailing someone out, since the hotel was a block west of the Larson Justice Center, the county courthouse and jail. He hadn’t realized it at first, not until he was checking in and the clerk gave him a brochure of local amenities. Page one had dining options. Page two was local entertainment and information about how to get to the polo fields a mile south, where Coachella was held every year. As close as Shane was ever going to get to that. And then page three was all bail bonds, attorneys, and AA meetings.

  Made sense, then, when the clerk didn’t seem bothered by his bloody foot and that he didn’t have ID when he gave him Gold Mike’s Visa to check in.

  He’d given the AAA driver an extra fifteen dollars to park his car just down the block, in a neighborhood of taupe houses called the Sandpiper Estates, the word estate apparently one of those words whose meaning had been lost to insincerity, since all Shane saw were a lot of children standing by themselves on front lawns made of rock, staring into their phones. Shane left the keys in the ignition and the doors unlocked. Best-case scenario, the car would be stripped clean in a few days. Worst case, it would get towed to some county yard and there it would stay, forever.

  Shane counted seven cars in the Royal Californian’s parking lot. A van with a “Save Mono Lake” sticker faded on the bumper. A white pickup truck missing the tailgate. Two Hondas that looked just like his dead Accord. A red Buick Regal, probably a rental, no one bought fucking Buicks. An SUV. Another SUV. He tried to imagine who owned each car, and what their favorite song might be, Shane always interested if people picked a sad song or a happy one. You could tell a lot about a person based on their pick, could imagine what they thought was going to happen to them in their life, or could better understand their situation.

  Rachel’s favorite song was “American Girl” b
y Tom Petty. His mom’s favorite song was “Suspicious Minds” by Elvis. Shane? He didn’t have a favorite. Not anymore. Songs stopped having meaning for him.

  A man of about seventy walked out of his ground-floor room and into the parking lot, wearing blue boxer shorts, a white V-neck undershirt, and a pair of black sandals, keys in his hand. A Sinatra guy, Shane thought. Probably “My Way” or “Come Fly with Me.” Shane made him for the red Buick Regal. It was backed into a space, always the sign of an asshole. Instead, the old man looked up and down the block, which was deserted, then crossed the street to a one-story office building with storefront-style signs advertising a law office—“Terry Kales; Criminal Defense/DUI/Divorce/Immigration”—accounting offices, a Mexican bakery, a notary, and a place where you could get your cell phone fixed.

  Not Sinatra.

  Neil Diamond.

  He went inside the law office, came out a few minutes later holding a manila envelope, unlocked a silver Mercedes using his key fob, the lights blinking twice, disappeared inside, started it up, rolled back across the street to the parking lot. A woman came walking out of the old man’s hotel room—she looked young, maybe sixteen—met the old guy in the parking lot, got in the passenger side of the car, and it pulled away. Five minutes later, the Benz was parked in Royal Californian’s lot and the old man was headed back into the hotel, which is when he spotted Shane up on his perch.

  “You always stand around at dawn, watching people?”

  “Just having a smoke,” Shane said, “while I contemplate which car to steal.”

  “Why not just get an Uber?”

  Shane pointed at the man’s Benz. “German engineering has always appealed to me,” he said, “but as a Jew, it feels shameful. So you’re safe.” Shane telling him he was a Jew to put him at ease, no one ever felt scared of Jews, but also just to see how he reacted, Kales seeming like a Jewish last name. Shane flicked his cigarette butt over the balcony. It landed, still smoking, a few feet away from the man. “You mind stepping on that for me?” Shane pointed at his own foot. “I’m down a limb.”

  The old man scratched his stomach absently but didn’t make a move to the cigarette. “You here for a court date?”

  “No,” Shane said. “Not today.”

  “You need a lawyer,” he said, “I’m right across the street.”

  “How much for a murder defense?” Shane asked, but he laughed, a big joke, two guys at dawn, bullshitting.

  “Less than you’d think.” Terry walked over to the butt, stepped on it, cocked his head sideways to get a better look at Shane’s foot up above him. “Looks like self-defense to me.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Shane said.

  “My AC is broken, so I keep office hours at Cactus Pete’s.” He pointed at the bar attached to the Royal Californian. “Be there until at least 6:30. I’ll buy you a drink, we can talk about your case.”

  “I’m innocent.”

  “Yeah,” Terry said. “That’s what we’ll tell ’em.”

  SHANE COULDN’T TELL if Cactus Pete’s had a kitschy design aesthetic or if it was just a leftover from the seventies. He’d never been in a bar with shag carpeting. The VIP area, set off from the tiny dance floor and DJ booth by a red-velvet rope, had high-backed booths that reminded Shane fondly of the Angus, Terry Kales sitting in the biggest one, sipping on a glass of something brown, papers spread out in front of him, a cell phone to his ear, another cell phone and his car keys keeping his papers from blowing away, the overhead fans working overtime to keep the room cool. He didn’t look up when Shane walked in, at least as far as Shane could tell, which was hard because Terry had on sunglasses, the bar’s windows flooding the room with bright light.

  It was just before three; tomorrow at this time, he’d be in the clear. That was the hoped-for result. He’d found a 99 Cent Store two blocks away, limped his ass over there, his foot on fire, picked up a change of clothes, some sunglasses, a Padres baseball cap. Went next door to the Circle K, got a disposable phone. He was about out of cash now, but he’d figure that out.

  On the dance floor, a woman was setting up for karaoke, and for reasons Shane could not fathom, there was guy dressed as a clown sitting at the bar. Green hair. Red nose. Striped pants. Big red shoes. Stars-and-stripes shirt and vest. Back of the vest, embroidered in rhinestones, it said HERMIETHECLOWN.COM. He had a cup of coffee and the Desert Sun, reading the sports page. Shane sat down at the bar but kept a stool between himself and Hermie.

  “Get you something?” the woman setting up the karaoke asked. She was younger than Terry, older than the clown, somewhere on the plus side of fifty. She had on a tank top that showed off her shoulders—muscular, but lean—and a full sleeve of tattoos down her right arm. Shane saw two names—Charlotte and Randy—amid flowers, sunsets, and spiderwebs. She had a nametag pinned above her left breast that said “Glory.”

  “Was wondering what time the show was,” Shane said.

  “Six,” Glory said. “You sing?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We have a lot of regulars, so sign up early.”

  “Truth is,” Shane said, “I was wondering if I could warm up first.”

  When Glory didn’t respond, he said, “I’m staying here.”

  “Room?”

  “Number 204,” he said. “On account of my foot. Gotta have surgery in the morning. Just trying to have a good night before I get the knife.” He looked over at the clown. “Unless you’ve got first dibs.”

  “He don’t speak,” Glory said, “or sing.” The clown nodded in the affirmative. Glory leaned over the bar and examined Shane’s foot. So did the silent clown, who blew lightly on a whistle he kept around his neck. Shane slid off his flip-flop, wiggled his toes. “You can’t be in here without shoes,” Glory said.

  “Just letting it breathe,” Shane said.

  Glory nodded solemnly, like they’d come to some agreement about life. “What’s your song?”

  “I mix it up,” Shane said, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw Terry slide his sunglasses down his nose, “but mostly Neil Diamond.”

  SHANE WAS MIDWAY through “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon” when Terry came over and stood next to the clown, closed his eyes, mouthed the lyrics. Terry and the clown swayed back and forth together, Shane digging down deep for the end, giving it some soul, some real pathos.

  “Again,” Terry said, and tossed Shane a fifty, so he did it again, Terry had tears in his eyes this time, clearly going through some shit. When he finished, Terry said, “One more, your pick,” and then went and sat back in his booth, the clown following him. Shane went with “Song Sung Blue.” When he was finished, Terry motioned him over to his table.

  “You really having surgery?” Terry asked once they were all comfortable in the sweaty, half-moon banquette, Terry’s shit spread out everywhere, Shane eyeing his car keys, his plan coming into full focus, Hermie busy on his phone, answering texts. Popular fucking clown. “I heard you talking to Glory.”

  “Yeah,” Shane said. “At the hospital up the street.” He’d seen it in the brochure. It was named for John F. Kennedy, which Shane thought was yet another example of bad presidential juju. Whole town was lousy with it.

  “Good hospital,” Terry said. “All of my best clients have died there.”

  “Like the girl this morning?”

  “That was my daughter.”

  “Really?” Really.

  “Yeah,” Terry said. “I’ve got limited visitation at the moment, so I take what I can get.”

  “Okay,” Shane said, not sure if he believed him. “What about you, Hermie? Any kids?”

  Hermie looked up from his phone, shook his head no.

  Thank God.

  “Can I give you some legal advice?” Terry said. “Jew to Jew.”

  “Mazel,” Shane said.

  “You’ve clearly been shot in the foot,” Terry said. “In about two hours, when the courthouse closes? This bar is gonna fill up with off-duty cops, DAs, public def
enders, judges. You should be gone by then.”

  “That is good advice,” Shane said. “Why are you giving it to me?”

  “When it all comes down,” Terry said, and he pointed at a television above the bar, the sound off, running Fox News, “they’ll take us both.”

  “Apart from that.”

  “You have the natural ability to make a person feel something, you know? That’s special.” Terry adjusted his sunglasses, Shane thinking maybe he was getting a little teary-eyed again, or maybe he just liked the Jim Jones vibe he was giving off. “Sometimes a song, sung by the right person, it’ll touch you. You touched me up there just now. I don’t know. Maybe I’m drunk.”

  Hermie nodded vigorously.

  “You saw my daughter? Her mother,” Terry said, “won’t have me in the house, which is why I’m in this situation over here. ‘Girl’ was our wedding song. Seems dumb, no?”

  “People pick terrible songs for their weddings,” Shane said, and then he told Terry about his job working weddings, all the times he sang “Wild Horses” for newlyweds.

  “No one listens anymore,” Terry said. “Words used to mean something.” He looked over at Hermie. “No offense.”

  Hermie shrugged.

  “Anyway,” Terry said. “You seem like a nice guy in a bad situation. So. Maybe I can help you. Do you want help?”

  “I could use a friend,” Shane said.

  “I could be a friend.” Terry reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet, slid a business card over to Shane. One side was in English, the other in Spanish, but both were for a dentist named Marco Degolado in Los Algodones, Baja California, right over the Mexican border, according to the thumbnail map printed on the card.

  “You got any warrants?” Terry asked.

  “No,” Shane said.

  “That’s two hours from here,” Terry said. “Two exits before Yuma. Easy in and out of Mexico, all the snowbirds go there for dental care. They’re liberal with their opiates and antibiotics in Mexico.” Shane nodded. “Dr. Degolado knows his way around minor surgery as well. He’s a friend, too.” Shane nodded again. His foot was killing him. “Let me make a call.”