The Big Nowhere

A drowsy head shake in answer. “Talk later. Lots of talk later.”

“Did he ever?”

“No, only men.” Another yawn. “No Mickey talk, remember our deal?”

“Yeah, I remember.”

Audrey gave him a squeeze and settled into sleep. Buzz picked up the brochure closest to him, a huckster job for Rio de Janeiro. He flipped pages, saw that Audrey had circled listings for guest cottages offering newlywed rates and tried to picture an on-the-lam cop-killer and a thirty-seven-year-old ex-stripper basking in the South American sun. He couldn’t. He tried to picture Audrey waiting for him while he attempted to lay off twenty-five pounds of heroin to some renegade mob guy who hadn’t already heard of the heist and the contract that went with it. He couldn’t. He tried to picture Audrey with him when the LAPD closed in, hard-on glory cops holding their fire because the killer was with a woman. He couldn’t. He thought of Icepick Fritzie finding them together, going icepick crazy on Audrey’s face—and that picture was easy. Mickey saying “Please” and going mushy with forgiveness was even easier.

Buzz listened to Audrey’s breath; he felt her sweaty skin cooling. He tried to picture her getting some kind of bookkeeper’s job, going home to Mobile, Alabama, and meeting a nice insurance man looking for a Southern belle. He couldn’t. He made a big last try at the two of them buying their way out of the country with a nationwide cop-killer APB on his head. He tried extra, extra hard on that one—and couldn’t find a way to make it stick.

Audrey stirred and rolled away from him. Buzz saw Mickey tired of her in a few years, cutting her loose for some younger stuff, a nice cash money separation gift. He saw Sheriff’s, City cops, Feds and Cohen goons chasing his okie ass to the moon. He saw Ellis Loew and Ed Satterlee on easy street and old Doc Lesnick hounding him with, “And how will you fix that?”

Lesnick was the kicker. Buzz got up, walked into the living room, grabbed the phone and had the operator get him Los Angeles CR-4619. A voice answered, “Yeah?”

It was Mickey. Buzz said, “She’s at 1006 Montebello Drive in Ventura. You hurt her and I’ll do you slower than you ever thought of doin’ me.”

Mickey said, “Mazel tov. My friend, you are still dead, but you are dead very fast.”

Buzz let the receiver down gently, went back to the bedroom and dressed. Audrey was in the same position, her head buried in the pillow, no way to see her face. Buzz said, “You were the one,” and turned off the light. He grabbed his garment bag on the way out and left the door unlocked.

Dawdling on back roads got him to the San Fernando Valley just after 7:30—full evening, black and starry. Ellis Loew’s house was dark and there were no cars parked out front.

Buzz walked around to the garage, broke a clasp on the door and pushed it open. Moonlight picked out a roof bulb at the end of a string. He pulled the cord and saw what he wanted on a low shelf: two double-gallon cans of gasoline. He picked them up, found them near full, carried them to the front door and let himself in with his special-investigator’s key.

A flick of the overhead light; the living room jarring white—walls, tables, cartons, shelves and odd mounds of paper—Loew and company’s once-in-a-lifetime shot at the political moon. Graphs and charts and thousands of pages of coerced testimony. Boxes of photographs with linked faces to prove treason. A big fuckload of lies glued together to prove a single theory that was easy to believe because believing was easier than wading through the glut of horseshit to say, “Wrong.”

Buzz doused the walls and shelves and tables and stacks of paper with gasoline. He soaked the Sleepy Lagoon Committee photos. He ripped down Ed Satterlee’s graphs, emptied the cans on the floor and made a gas trail out to the porch. He lit a match, dropped it and watched the white whoosh into red and explode.

The fire spread back and upward; the house became a giant sheet of flame. Buzz got in his car and drove away, red glow lighting up the windshield. He took back streets northbound until the glow disappeared and he heard sirens whirring in the opposite direction. When the noise died, he was climbing into the foothills, Los Angeles just a neon smear in his rear-view mirror. He touched his future there on the seat: sawed-off, heroin, a hundred and fifty grand. It didn’t feel right, so he turned on the radio and found a hillbilly station. The music was too soft and too sad, like a lament for a time when it all came cheap. He listened anyway. The songs made him think of himself and Mal and poor Da