Trust Me Page 5

  “Fine.” Rey guzzled his beer. “Thanks for the fortifications. Let’s get a drink soon.”

  Gabe nodded without opening his eyes. A few minutes later, he heard Rey’s truck start up. He must have left it at the end of Gabe’s dirt road. Gabe hoped he stepped in dog shit. It never occurred to him to tell Rey about the cancer. How do you start telling people? Cancer. The whole idea of cancer was . . . asinine.

  The phone was ringing. Gabe looked around. How long had it been ringing? He rolled off the couch and found the phone under a pizza box in front of the television.

  Helen.

  Any other day he would let his ex-wife’s call go to voicemail. Gabe took a breath, remembering that wall of black fire he’d seen in the sweat lodge.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hi. Hello, sorry. I wasn’t expecting you to answer.”

  “It’s a phone. That’s what you do.”

  “No, that’s what other people do.”

  Gabe lay back on the floor and sighed.

  “Are you at work today?” she asked.

  “Not today,” he said. “Day off.”

  “Good,” Helen said. “Two things. First, can you pick up Micah from school today? He’s staying late for a club meeting. He’ll be ready at 4:30. It’s fine if you don’t want to. You weren’t my first choice.”

  It was already two. Gabe would have trouble getting both checks and making it to Micah’s school on time.

  “Fine, yeah, no problem,” he said.

  “Really?”

  “Of course. Damn, I haven’t seen him for, what, a month?”

  “Two. And bring that old truck. I don’t want him on the Harley.”

  “Can he stay with me this weekend?”

  “I mean it about the bike,” she said. “And why does he have to stay up there? There’s more to do in the city.”

  “Not the same. I want him up here. He should remember what his grandfather made.”

  “And what you’ve trashed by now.”

  “No, no, they’re paying me pretty good on the building site, and I hired some mojao to scrub the house out. Looks real good.”

  Gabe sat up, pushed himself to his feet and grabbed a handful of beer cans. He tossed them in the trash.

  She sighed loud enough to fuzz his phone’s speaker. “Look, he’s going to ask for your help. Some money. His friends are going camping at the end of the school year. Maybe if you come through, then he can go up next week during Spring Break.”

  “How much money?”

  “He needs boots, outdoors stuff, the whole deal. I told him he could go if you paid for the gear.”

  Gabe knew Helen. This was her way of keeping Micah home and setting Gabe up for failure. She would be furious if he somehow came through with the cash.

  “How much does he need?”

  “Well, there’s also a fee to get onto the campground and gas money.”

  “Numbers.”

  “Six hundred.”

  “Six? He wants a gold-lined sleeping bag, I bet. Lou and I used to sleep on old horse blankets.”

  “I knew it,” she said. “Never mind, I told Micah you couldn’t.”

  “Hang on, I’ve got it. I’m picking up two paychecks today. Two.”

  Helen went quiet again, searching for another excuse to say no. Gabe had heard them all: “Your house is dirty,” “You’re too far away,” “He hates the country.” They all meant, “Please, God, don’t make my son start liking his father. Don’t turn my son into his father.”

  She used to love Gabe’s craziness. When Helen graduated from high school and met Gabe with his bike and his country attitude, she threw herself into his life head-first. Of course, she assumed marriage and kids would mellow him. Fun, crazy Gabe turned into just crazy Gabe after he hit thirty.

  “It’s been months,” Gabe said.

  “Months since you paid child support.”

  “He’s sixteen.”

  “That makes him free?”

  “No, that’s not . . .” Gabe took a breath. “Okay, I’ll give you the cash today. Six hundred.”

  “You owe us thousands.”

  “I’ll give you a grand. One thousand dollars, today. That’s all my construction money plus most of my disability.”

  It felt like a cattle auction. Before hanging up, they settled on a thousand today and a thousand next week when Gabe came to pick him up. Unless Micah said no, in which case Gabe would be out two grand and one son.

  Micah would want to see him. He had to. If the kid was getting into camping and hiking, then no one could teach him better than Gabe. There were dozens of old trails up in the mountains that no one used anymore. Gabe knew them all.

  He grabbed his keys and tested his ankle again. All good. It was 2:30. That meant two hours to get his construction money, cash his disability check and pick up Micah.

  Paying Helen a grand today was easy but, with construction stalled the next thousand would be tricky. A handful of odd jobs might get him two or three hundred. Rey might float him a tiny bit. Gabe ticked through some options and did his best to not think about Frederick, Jefe out in the desert and the bag of weed that he was now squeezing so tight the seal at the top had opened.

  It was a gift from Frederick for bringing Jefe’s mushrooms onboard. Selling the weed would raise quick cash, but it would also quickly get his arms broken. If Gabe became Frederick’s competitor, then the bone cancer would have to get in line.

  Gabe shook the thoughts away.

  Outside, the sun clung to his skin, hot and sticky. Despite Helen’s request, the bike was the only option. The old truck, a boxy, steel beast that would have run forever if Gabe had done even a little bit of maintenance, was under a stack of tarps and busted tools on the other side of the barn—the engine locked. His small-frame Harley Davidson Sportster SuperLow was the nicest thing he had ever purchased, but now it was limping along like him.

  Gabe looked up his long, dirt driveway, closing one eye and then the other. By the time he hit city traffic, he should be sharp again, sober.

  “This will work,” Gabe said.

  He backed out of the barn. The sun warmed his skin. He kicked over the engine, lifted his bandana up over his mouth, and drove down the driveway. His spine buzzed and he felt alive with possibilities. Gabe wasn’t dead yet.

  SIX

  AFTER TWO DAYS IN THE OFFICE, Charles wanted to sneak out and get a job selling turquoise to tourists in the plaza. Or he could spin a roulette wheel on a reservation. Anything could be better than this.

  From the start, he knew this gig would lack the high-wire energy of a campaign. Even his title reeked of corporate drudgery: Public Relations Supervisor. Diana Salazar, his boss, made it clear that his job was to write press releases about how much the developers respected native traditions. If he were lucky, Charles would run a meeting where the biggest challenge was kissing all asses equally.

  The office made him look more important than he felt. Headquarters occupied a mirrored, two-story building adjacent to the state capitol, The Roundhouse. With the flick of a switch, the glass doors of the conference room became frosted for privacy. Even the cubicles occupied by sharply dressed young people in the center bullpen were made from thick oak. Charles himself had a commanding view of the mountains, which he had spent far too much time admiring.

  Jordan knocked on his doorframe. “You busy? Can we go over the press release?”

  Her office was ten feet away, yet she held her phone in one hand as if the president of the United States might give her a ring.

  “Sure, but I’m leaving for lunch in a sec.” Charles motioned to the chair in front of his desk. “My buddy runs Thompson Financial Services. Heard of it?”

  “Heard of it, I think,” Jordan said.

  He had been sleeping in Lou’s extra bedroom for two nights, and Jordan had fallen into the habit of coming over late at night and leaving at dawn. She seemed determined to avoid seeing Charles in the trailer at all costs.

&nb
sp; “First, I have a question,” Charles said. She raised her eyebrows.

  He pointed over her shoulder. “Who are all those people buzzing around in the bullpen? They’re dressed so nicely.”

  “Most work for Mr. Branch’s other businesses. I don’t pay any attention to them.”

  “They distract the hell out of me. They’re like fish in an aquarium. Well-dressed, lawyerly fish.”

  Jordan formed an obligatory smile. “The dispute over the skeleton is coming to an end. I think the press release should make that more clear.”

  “How much more clear can I be?” Charles asked. “The first sentence is: ‘Archaeologists have not found additional remains or artifacts at the construction site for Santa Fe County’s future international airport.’ The end. Some poor bastard got his ankle stuck in a rock a thousand years ago. Crisis over. Can I take credit?”

  “Well, we’ve still got to be careful,” she said. “Let’s make it clear that the relationship between the developers and the Pueblo is solid. Strong. I have a few suggestions.”

  Charles knew the “let me tweak this” game. Hell, he might have invented that game. The kid had the self-consciously furrowed brows of someone dying to be a bitter old-timer.

  “How many campaigns have you worked on?” Charles asked. “Political ones, not stuff like this or, you know, student government.”

  “Three. You wrote ‘ancient burial ground.’”

  He shrugged.

  “That’s too, I don’t know, too Indiana Jones.” She picked up a pencil from his desk. “I’m changing this to ‘burial sites.’ It’s more neutral. Don’t make these people exotic.”

  He stood up and grabbed his jacket from behind his chair. “Don’t lecture me about being sensitive. I choose my words carefully.”

  “Diana wants us to be even more careful than usual. What if the whole airport goes down the drain?”

  “An archeological survey cleared these parcels, and the tribe is saying we can restart once they relocate the bones. The drains shall remain free of airports. I’m heading to lunch,” he said. “I can walk to the plaza, right?”

  “How long will you be gone?”

  “Not long enough for anything to happen.”

  Outside, Charles told himself to stop needling Jordan so much. Young people with limitless energy made the world go around. He knew he was probably jealous. Jordan still had a whole life to ruin.

  Headquarters was on the edge of downtown and the historic plaza. Most of the adobe buildings had twentieth-century small-town facades, but the area dated back to the 1500s. The Spanish Governor’s Mansion, an ancient, empty brick structure that was now a museum, didn’t look too different from any other windowless administrative building. Charles imagined bearded, frustrated Spaniards in full armor wrestling with jammed copiers.

  Wandering tourists looked lost in their pink gift shop sweatshirts. Addie might have called the city quaint. The clock had started ticking on her impending visit. Less than two weeks.

  He was meeting Thompson in a restaurant called Zuni. The plan was for Charles to be labeled a freelance advisor—somehow this would help Thompson write off some income. An hour catching up with an old friend and telling him about the most boring job in the world was worth a couple hundred dollars. Hopefully Thompson would buy lunch.

  From the outside, Charles could tell the restaurant was nicer than he had assumed. A small army manned the valet, and everyone stepping out of the cars looked crisp and cool. Charles started to feel sweaty and overheated.

  Despite the southwestern flair—paintings of Indian braves slumped in defeat, curved oval fireplaces in the corners and blankets nailed to the walls—the restaurant was familiar. Dim, wood-paneled restaurants where the powerful, or those who aspire to power, gather to revel in comfort and scotch were all pretty much the same, and he loved every single one of them.

  Thompson had a goblet of white wine and squinted down at his phone through thin reading glasses. Charles was struck by his friend’s age. The angle of Thompson’s head caused his chin to bulge into a shiver-inducing pouch. Charles stroked his own neck, afraid of what he would find.

  “Oh, you’re so important,” Charles said. “Can’t put down your phone to say hello to a stranger.”

  “Don’t ever think you’ll escape idiots when you escape politics,” Thompson replied without looking up. “They cling to all surfaces like oysters.”

  “You mean like barnacles.”

  Thompson pointed at his phone. “I mean like Republicans on financial advisors.”

  Charles leaned in for an awkward handshake and a crouching pat on the back.

  Thompson left politics five years earlier. For a time, Charles dismissed his old friend as greedy, even traitorous. Another man cashing in his ideals for a few private-sector bucks.

  “I can’t believe you’re out here.” He slid the drink menu to Charles. “The land of retirees and breakfast burritos.”

  Charles hesitated over the drinks. The waitress appeared at his shoulder with water and flatware. A glass of red wine on a slow day was acceptable.

  “It doesn’t feel real,” Charles said. “I’ve never had a gig out here: The Wild West. I did a House race in northern California, but that’s not quite the same thing.”

  Thompson grinned. “It is not.”

  They had met when Charles was still in college. That race was his first campaign and Thompson’s second. Over the years, they had worked together a couple more times, and always tipped each other off to good jobs. One time, late at night in a campaign office in Iowa, they locked arms and made drunken promises to keep fighting until they elected a good man president. They lost that race, and neither one mentioned the sloppy moment again.

  The wine arrived. Charles ordered a dish that involved chicken and cheese.

  “You got married out here, right?” Charles asked.

  “Indeed. You were invited.”

  “I think I was in Delaware fighting for my life.”

  “No, it was before your misadventure in Delaware, but you sent some nice shot glasses. You’re still married?”

  Charles nodded. “Of course. Going great.”

  “Whatever you say.” Thompson raised his hands as if to make peace. “So what’s your gig out here? Congressman Solís?”

  “No, not Solís, although maybe afterwards if all this goes well. . . . I’m working on the airport. PR stuff.”

  Thompson raised his eyebrows. “Oh, you didn’t tell me that. I thought you were doing campaign work. Why would you be working for the airport no one wants?”

  “Why don’t people want it?”

  “Because we don’t need it,” Thompson bellowed. “Northern New Mexico is growing, I guess, but it’s not growing that fast. Nothing in this state has ever grown fast. You should have tried for . . . something else.”

  Thompson tapped his fingers on the base of his wine glass and avoided Charles’ eyes.

  “I took the best offer,” Charles said. “Hell, I took the only offer.”

  Thompson looked around and smiled. “Yeah, yeah, you’ll be fine. You know the game.”

  “Were you expecting me to tell you about Solís?” Charles was worried. “Is this airport info not something you need?”

  Thompson shook his head. “Oh, no, no. In fact, the airport’s all my clients can talk about. Half of them love it because they see an opportunity. The other half hate it because they see an opportunity that will make our little jewel of the mountains even more crowded.”

  Over the years, Thompson had developed a habit of punching certain words with exaggerated emphasis. It was almost hypnotic. Maybe the old sell-out was making too much money and had taken on the persona of all those rich donors that cling to politics like, well, barnacles. A second wine glass appeared next to Charles.

  “Well, everyone’s going to have to get over it. The skeleton is being moved. Both sides are ready to restart.”

  “Are they?”

  “Sure are.” Charles nodde
d. “Okay, tell me the truth. Do you miss the game?”

  Thompson opened his eyes wide and threw his head back in mock, silent laughter. “Miss it? I do not miss it and I do not come close to politics. I’m in witness protection. If these people knew how much experience I had, they’d draft me onto every finance committee and every PAC for every asshole between here and Portland. I’m helping people make money and pulling in a good amount myself.”

  “Sounds nice.”

  “You have no idea. I vote, I recycle my wine bottles, I go to bed before midnight and I cut a check once a year to assuage my guilt. That’s it.” Thompson lowered his voice and leaned in close. “Besides, word to the wise, the game out here is a little too unsanitary for me. I feel much cleaner in finance, if you can imagine.”

  Charles sipped his wine. Thompson’s point hit a little too close to home.

  “Dirty politics?”

  Thompson bobbed his head like he was trying to make up his mind. “Dirty? Not really, not like back east. Most of our politicians aren’t powerful enough to be dirty. The people with money, on the other hand, they could be cleaner.”

  Charles looked around the restaurant. There was a hum of power and wealth in the air, but Thompson’s words were hard to believe.

  “Is there enough money out here for it to be dirty? What’s out here? Gift shop moguls?”

  Thompson looked surprised. “Oil. Gaming. Federal contracts. That enough for you? Plus, a desert big enough for plenty of bodies.”

  The food arrived, and Thompson cut off his words. Both plates struggled to contain a wash of color and soft textures. Everything was covered in a green sauce flecked with black pepper, and Charles had no idea where the rice and beans began and where the chicken ended. Thompson ordered gin martinis for both of them.

  “A guy named Cody Branch is calling the shots,” Charles said, “Haven’t met him but he’s got all the gold, from what I hear.”

  “Yeah, and he’s tough. Came from nothing to richer-than-God in about ten years. He made a boatload on fracking, then he made another boatload selling fracking clean-up supplies to the EPA and the state.” Thompson took a bite of his food and kept talking. “If someone builds an outhouse north of White Sands, Branch makes a dollar.”