How to Disappear(47)

“Ice, Jack? This isn’t a joke! There was something with the steering column, too. Are you listening to me?”

Who messes with a prosecutor’s car, not even bothering to make it look accidental?

“Do you have security? Good security, not the old guys in the golf carts.”

“The police are treating me like the crown jewels. Sweetheart, there’s nothing to worry about. But you have to get back here.”

There’s plenty to worry about. But she’s got police watching out for her. This buys me some time.

She’s saying, “Jack, be careful!” as I hang up on her.





Part 4





48


Jack


I don’t drive straight back to El Molino.

There are things I have to take care of, steps to take. This requires planning and precision, a time and a place. I drive along the crest of the mountains and onto a service road that barely exists, carved into the precipice. Courtesy of Google satellite images, I’m here.

The pavement of what used to be a parking lot is rutted, the trash cans upended. The NO OVERNIGHT PARKING signs are aerated where they were used for target practice a long time ago. There are no signs of human life, no telltale beer bottles, not a wrapper or a plastic ring that holds six-packs together anywhere.

This is the place.

Ravines and rocks, cliffs, and enough vegetation for cover: it’s harsh, rugged terrain. If you tried to run here, the likeliest thing is you’d go down without any help from me—it’s that rocky and uneven, unstable underfoot.

I map where I’ve been with merit-badge accuracy until I find my spot. Then I stop charting and start memorizing.

I have equipment to take down anything that comes at me. If it has a blade, I’ve got one: ax; bowie knife; camping gadget with corkscrew, box cutter, nail file, and useless little scissors; and a big, dull thing that looks like a machete that hacks through underbrush.

Also, I’ve got what’s in the holster.

The gadget is from my mom, from when I was a Scout. The bowie knife is from my dad. Compare: a gift that would be good for opening a bottle of white wine at a campsite ringed with Winnebagos versus a gift that could decapitate a bear.

I get them both two weeks after my dad hears I’m not coming to his house on his weekend because my Scout troop is hitting the wilderness. He says, “Shit, Bella. My kid’s going into the desert with grown men in shorts?” I can hear him from ten feet away through the receiver my mom holds away from her ear.

My mom says, “It’s Boy Scouts. It’s harmless.”

My dad makes the sound that says he’s glowering.

But my mom knows how to play him when he’s not too far gone. “It’s for survival skills. What’s the harm?”

Two weekends later, when I’m at his house, my dad starts quizzing me on what plant roots to eat if you run out of food, and how to purify water. All I know is what kind of plant not to eat and a couple of birdcalls. He tosses me a survivalist handbook with sidebars about keeping your gunpowder dry and rebuilding a constitutional democracy from the ruins of the US after Armageddon.

He says, “I bought you this. You get stuck out there with those *s, I don’t want you to die.”

I read the book.

Don reads the book because I got it first.

At night, Don and I trek onto the ten acres of manicured backyard. We pretend we’re Special Forces soldiers stranded between rows of ornamental shrubs, camped out by an Olympic-size swimming pool outside Kabul.

I follow the diagrammed instructions to make Molotov cocktails, which we hurl across the diving board. A chair catches fire. Three guys who work for my dad come running outside, ready to take down an invading army.

In the morning, my dad is there, eating bacon and eggs.

He says, “What was wrong with that?”

For once, Don doesn’t point at me. He’s figured out that I could blow him up. But my dad isn’t asking Don.

I say, “It was in the book.”

He keeps eating.

I say, “I didn’t know it would start a fire.”

Then I say, “It was stupid?”

“It was loud. Do we want the police at this house? Do we want to attract attention to this house?”

I’m not just afraid he’s going to hit me—that’s a given. I’m afraid I’ve caused something terrible to happen.

The guy standing guard by the back door says, “Come on, Art, at least he didn’t put shrapnel in it.”

My dad laughs so hard, the guy comes over and pounds him between the shoulders so he won’t choke on the bacon.

He doesn’t say anything when he slaps down the knife between us on the console in the front seat of his car. The blade says, Life is gruesome, be prepared, go camping with *s in shorts if your mother insists. But get ready, be armed to draw and quarter anything that comes at you because the insurance agent troop leader dads sure as hell won’t.

? ? ?

I wrap myself in the space blanket, but I can’t get warm. I fall asleep thinking about Scouts and toasted marshmallows, playing with Don, hiding in the bushes and throwing incendiary bottles at deck chairs.

I imagine Don in an open coffin, eyelids folded down over dead eyes. Even for my father, in his closed, black coffin, my mother’s face collapsed and never plumped back up, not ever. And this happened after he’d divorced her and she hated him. Don’s a shit, but he’s not dying the kind of prison death it makes my mother sick to think about.