High Country Nocturne - [40]

I thanked him. And although I already knew his answer, I told him we could help, get him into witness protection in exchange for his cooperation.

He waved me away with his three-fingered hand, the Marlboro held firmly.

“Go. Go.”

Halfway down the corridor, I turned back to him.

“Where would a person go in this town to hire a hit on somebody?”

He rolled his eyes. “Anywhere. Depends on whether you want it done right, and don’t want to get caught in a sting by law enforcement.”

“Can you be specific?”

“No.” He lowered his voice beneath the sounds of Chuck Berry. “If I had that answer, I might take out my baby sitter. Hey…”

As “Johnny B. Goode” ran on, he gripped my shoulder. “Be careful with that name I gave you. Word is he’s close to the cartels.”

As I walked back through the store, the fat man was where I had left him. Only his tombstone eyes moved, tracking me.

Jerry, for show, followed me to the door, shouting. “Beat the shit out of me. Go ahead and watch the claim I file against the county! This is an honest business. I don’t know anything about any goddamned computers…”

“Okay, Jerry…”

“Tell me I’m clean, you bastard! I want to hear it.”

“You’re clean. It was a misunderstanding. Thank you for your cooperation.”

He was still yelling from the door when I got in the Prelude.

It was better not to linger. I drove to the corner, pulled into another asphalt lagoon. Say what you will about Phoenix but you can always find another parking lot.

There, in the lonely dark, my heart started hammering and I could hear the blood pulsing through vulnerable arteries and veins in my neck and temples. I could hear my breathing, hot and dry. Taking my hands off the steering wheel, I watched them tremble.

All this foolishness over what for me was a garden-variety panic attack.

I hesitated to even use the expression, for they were truly debilitating for most people. I was very high functioning. Panic skirmish? Anxiety Cold War? They never kept me home under the covers.

Still, it put a name on the periods of high melancholy and anxiety that had struck me periodically since I was nineteen, the day after my grandfather died. I didn’t know what they were for years. They were one of my eccentricities I kept to myself.

Then, one day I read an article about panic attacks and the symptoms seemed to fit. I felt better when I learned that Lord Nelson and Sigmund Freud probably suffered from them, too. The knowledge didn’t make them go away. Lindsey did.

Now, alone in the car, I scanned the lot for trouble. Finding none, “Rockin’ Robin” replayed in my mind. It would be there for days.

Robin loved me, or so Lindsey had said. Robin was not the falling-in-love type.

I tried to unspool the snarl that had drawn Robin and me together. Danger, need, passion, electricity. It was all that and more. Beware the cunning and treachery of memory, especially concerning lovers.

Would I have left Lindsey for Robin? Never. But how could I know all the contingencies, all the counterfactual history? Lindsey might have left me for one of her lovers in D.C.

All that was in the past. In the present, I might lose Lindsey after all. The thought paralyzed me.

My head was hammered by pain. It was from the very real damage the hitwoman had done to my face, but also from the fear that I would lose both of them, Lindsey and Robin. Especially that Lindsey would never wake up again. Cliché but true, she was the great love of my life. And, yes, fear that I would lose Mike Peralta, too.

“Quit feeling sorry for yourself.”

There, I was talking to myself.

This would be an opportune time for Strawberry Bitch to take me out.

I distracted myself by imagining the criticism I would face for such a statement in the faculty lounge.

When a hitman does his job, he’s praised for being independent, assertive, and effective, but when a woman does the exact same thing you call her a “bitch.”

“I suppose you’re right,” I said out loud.

We hope you will be more gender-sensitive in the future, Professor Mapstone. You enjoy a position of white male gender-privilege that’s not even apparent to you, you bastard.

“Thank you for pointing out my failing. I’m sorry, although I suppose tenure-track is kaput for me. I will not use the term Strawberry Bitch.”

Until her gender-power is being used on me from the business end of another H &K Mark 23.

Then I thought about the situation more seriously. A.45-caliber Special Forces pistol was not an assassination weapon. Hitmen favored.22 caliber pistols firing sub-sonic rounds. These were easy to silence.

So why was she carrying the big gun? For intimidation purposes, perhaps.

Kate Vare had described the bag she had dropped outside our house containing burglar tools, handcuffs, and tranquilizers. Maybe she had intended to stage a murder-suicide-as if I had shot Lindsey and then myself. With the handcuffs, perhaps she intended to torture one or both of us.

For her stones.

As the cars sped past like comets in search of a star, I thought again about her other words, to the effect that she would kill me to fulfill a promise to Peralta.