Almanac of the Dead

  The terrace above the pool was where Bingo spent most of his time. He had arranged all the furniture an executive suite might have—a big L-shaped desk of chrome and glass, two plump champagne sofas, with matching armchair. Although the terrace had a high redwood canopy, it was open on all sides, and whenever thunderstorms threatened, Bingo’s entire house staff—three Mexican women and the Vietnamese gardener—had to drag Bingo’s executive suite indoors.

  Angelo did not get out of the car but sat looking at the high, massive walls of Bingo’s “hacienda.” A minute later he heard the voice of Bingo’s bodyguard, and Angelo followed him to the terrace. Bingo was in his swimming trunks; his hairy beer-belly sat like a stuffed toy in his lap. He had been looking at a Penthouse magazine. Bingo tossed the magazine down and reached for his short terry-cloth robe.

  “Hey, Angelo, what’s wrong, man?” Bingo said, gesturing for the maid to bring Angelo the same as she was bringing for him. The maid brought them both double or triple margaritas in long-stemmed glasses that looked as wide and deep as fish bowls.

  “Wow,” Angelo managed to say, “whatever’s wrong with you, this size will fix it!” And for a long time they sat in silence, both staring off at the southwest, where the sun was rapidly disappearing behind the dunes along the horizon. Halfway through the margarita Angelo thought he could feel a great pressure under his lungs and heart, pressure that seemed to press his ribs and the bones of his chest outward like limbs bending in the wind. The pressure was only there if he thought about it. If he remembered that Marilyn wasn’t back in Albuquerque in the little apartment she rented near the fairgrounds. If he remembered that she had arrived at a decision. If he remembered that she was gone. Angelo drained the glass, but before he could reach over to the glass-top coffee table in front of the armchair, the Mexican maid had taken the empty glass and disappeared inside. Bingo was used to the service so he just nodded and smiled, still gazing over the dunes edged in sage and last year’s tumbleweeds bleached white. Angelo could tell by the way Bingo puffed away at the marijuana cigarette and gazed out at the expanses of desert, Bingo liked to listen to the sounds around them, to the calls of nighthawks and crickets.

  “I could just sit here like this forever,” Bingo said, but a moment later the phone beside him rang and Bingo disappeared inside. “Sonny,” was all Bingo said.

  The maid set another margarita in front of him, but Angelo didn’t move. He sat facing the south with the bloodred sunset in the corner of his right eye. Bingo’s property was actually in New Mexico rather than Texas, where, as Bingo put it, state government is less flexible. New Mexico was one of those states with “a lot of flex,” Bingo liked to wisecrack. To the south in Mexico, Angelo could see the pale blue ranges of mountains, like layers of paint growing progressively paler. The distance and the space did not seem to end. Not ever. The colors changed rapidly after the sun set. The sky ran in streams of ruby and burgundy, and the puffy clouds clotted the colors darker, into the red of dry roses, into the red of dried blood. The dunes of the horizon were soaked in the colors of the sky too; then the light faded and the breeze slashed at the ricegrass and yuccas. The cooling brought with it deep blues and deep purple bruising the flanks of the low, sandy hills. By the time Bingo reappeared, the sudden dark blue of the night sky had descended. Angelo looked south and could see nothing but infinite night. He took a deep breath. He knew he was drunk, but the awful pressure inside his chest had rolled back momentarily. Women were always leaving but then came back. Everything would be all right. Things would work out. He would get Marilyn back.

  The wrecking yard—all the equipment, the car crusher—all of it Uncle Bill had paid for himself. That was the source of the trouble. Bill had been so careful not to give them any reason to collect. No favors to collect on, no loans, nothing fixed up by old men. Nothing. Still they had come, and Uncle Bill had moved like a man tied in steel wire; the tension grew tighter by the day. Angelo had only known that something was wrong, something was brewing up day by day, and he could tell the men in the yard knew; it would enter through the wide chain-link gates in back. The waiting went on and on, and Angelo wondered if they were like him, hoping that whatever it was would happen late at night when they were all far away, safe at home.

  Angelo watched the light become darkness. He had always thought before that the darkness was separate, that the darkness was a heavier liquid that displaced the shimmering, diaphanous glow—the darkness fell across it, overcame it. Tonight, with the peppery warmth of the tequila in both nostrils, Angelo realized that the light in the sky had receded, but not disappeared; instead it had undergone a change in the minutes that passed. The light had grown thick; it had grown heavy. The light had ripened into the darkness that now filled the sky from horizon to horizon. So the family had waited a long time for Uncle Bill. They had waited for years and years. And then when the time was ripe, they had come. They had come to Angelo now. First Sonny Blue in Tucson, and now Bingo outside El Paso. He was their man, they said. “Our man in Albuquerque.” Our liaison on all the Southwest tracks. You’ve done so well, man, you make us look great.” And now they were giving him a promotion. “It will be good for you, kiddo, believe me. Just what you need to forget that girl.”

  Bingo came out, and even in the dim light Angelo could see the cocaine ringing his nostrils. His hair was messed as if Bingo had just finished sticking his head between a woman’s legs. Bingo was too high to notice Angelo had been crying. Bingo was talking too fast now to make much sense, rambling on about Sonny and his father in Tucson. Bingo tried to show off when his brother and father were not around because the minute one or the other of them appeared, Bingo became the dumb one. The one they had to tell to shut up. So with Angelo, Bingo had to launch into what he kept calling the “technical aspect” of the “operation.” Bingo needs to feel important.

  At that instant Angelo thought how good it would feel to kill Bingo. To shut him up. To get the white-nostril clown face and cocaine breath away from his own face. To smash up Bingo’s face so he would never again have to be reminded of Bingo, flunky brownnose, and asshole-sucker. It was about killing all right. It was about Uncle Max, the “semi-invalid.” Uncle Max who made the front page of the Times when he “retired,” for “reasons due to health,” to the sunshine and year-round golf of the American Southwest. A little cow-town called Tucson. What had the movie been called Dial Max for Murder? No one had ever bothered to explain what Max did, but Angelo was convinced it had been Max Blue who had sent the men to crush new Lincolns and Cadillacs at Uncle Bill’s yard.

  After Max Blue had been shot and had come so close to dying, the family had sent him to palm trees, perpetual sunshine, and enough golf courses that Max would never have to play the same one in the same week. Angelo had learned here and there, from his cousins and from others, that Max Blue had the perfect layout: as far away from the action as possible. All day out on the golf course for sunshine and fresh air, always following the orders of his doctors, and getting checkups every year at the Mayo Clinic. Max Blue had come West to unknown territories of vast, untapped riches. This was the modern age. Max Blue could take care of everything by phone. By private couriers. As the dust cleared, the smoke blew over, and the corpse got stiff, thousands of miles away Max Blue would be teeing off, looking off in the distance at the arid, blue mountain commenting to a congressman or federal judge that the mountains were as blue as lapis lazuli.

  Marilyn used to laugh and say she did not mind helping Angelo play the part. She got to drive the Porsche. She liked living in hotel suites because she never liked being tied down to one place. She had started to keep a diary of the hotel suites they’d had as they moved between Sunland and Turf Paradise in the cold months, and Santa Anita and Ruidoso in the warm months. Marilyn rated the hotel suites according to the stale odors lingering and to mysterious stains on ceilings. Angelo thought she should not bother with cheap-wad polyester pillows and sour drains clogged with hair. But Marilyn even rated the fr
ee envelopes and postcards in bureau drawers, and soundproofing in the ceilings and walls. When dope was legalized, she liked to say, she’d include an index for each of the racetrack towns. “Where to Find Cocaine in Ruidoso, New Mexico,” and where to score decent smoke in L.A.

  There was not enough for her to do. Marilyn had mentioned that twice or maybe three times on that afternoon they drove south to Truth or Consequences. The Porsche was right on ninety as the El Paso Airport came closer and closer, and the moment Marilyn would leave him loomed like heavy black lines across the horizon. She wanted them to be doing something together. Something more than fillies? She had nodded and stared down at her hands, because she had not been able to say exactly what was wrong. Not him. Nothing he had done. Yes, she had everything. She could do what she wanted. She came and went without having to explain anything. All the money she wanted. All the drugs. Well? She didn’t know. It was all too set. You know? Suddenly Angelo had seen Marilyn’s face light up. She had found an explanation. It wasn’t the best one; he could tell by the way she kept hesitating, then repeating the same phrases. “I just need to think. I just need time.”

  Angelo would not let her go so easily. Why was she going back to Tim? She could have time. She could think without going back to Tim. Marilyn had grasped the armrest on the car door with both hands. She had clenched it until the knuckles of her hands went white. Angelo had kept one eye on the road and one on her feet. Angelo was afraid to press her. He loved her. He wanted to let her have anything she wanted. They had lain in bed after making love and talked about it. If either of them had ever asked, the other had sworn to give it freely. “My freedom,” Marilyn had said, looking into his eyes intently. “It is the most important thing I have. I will die before I give it up.”

  So Angelo had let Marilyn go that day. He had stopped the car on the departure level of the airport where Marilyn had pointed because she did not want him to come in. She said she’d already cried enough. She didn’t like to find herself crying when it was her decision.

  VENICE, ARIZONA

  MAX SAVORED THE TEE-OFF for every hole. Every time was the first time, a fresh start, the moment before the best possible shot off a driver ever possible and the soaring of the heart with your eye following the arc of the ball into the center of the fairway before the green. Max preferred to have the strange Sonoran desert enclose the fairways and greens. He and Leah had argued for hours about building lakes and fountains in the desert. Max wanted Leah to build a desert golf course in her city of the twenty-first century, Venice, Arizona. But Leah had only laughed. No deserts in Venice, Arizona, not for an instant, and certainly not for eighteen holes of golf. Tucson had enough desert. It was ridiculous for longtime residents to try to pretend Tucson wasn’t any different from Phoenix or Orange County. People wanted to have water around them in the desert. People felt more confident and carefree when they could see water spewing out around them. Max had frowned. “I didn’t say human beings were rational,” Leah said. “Tell me they are using up all the water and I say: Don’t worry. Because science will solve the water problem of the West. New technology. They’ll have to.”

  Max had lost all respect for science after he had been shot. Leah threw around the words science and technology like everyone else. Max had been hooked up to their science and technology—stitched up, then reopened for bleeding half a dozen times.

  Leah had made it despite obstacles she had faced because she was a woman. Show her an obstacle and she would work harder, that had been Leah’s standard line at Chamber of Commerce banquets. The scarcity of water in Arizona and other Western states was an obstacle to the land developer. But Leah was accustomed to seeing obstacles removed—rolled or blasted out of her way. The market for new homes in the Tucson area had always been extremely competitive. Leah had to use every ounce of her will just to keep up with giant home-building corporations also pushing luxury communities. The water gimmick had really worked in Scottsdale and Tempe. A scattering of pisspot fountains and cesspool lakes evoked memories of Missouri or New York or wherever the dumb shits had come from. Leah wanted Venice to live up to its name. She had planned each detail carefully. No synthetic marble in the fountains. Market research had repeatedly found new arrivals in the desert were reassured by the splash of water. They are in the real estate business to make profits, not to save wildlife or save the desert. It was too late for the desert around Tucson anyway. Look at it. Pollution was already killing foothill paloverde trees all across the valley. Max catches himself looking at Leah. She had not talked about the effects of pollution on the desert until she met the owl-shit expert.

  Leah had never cared whether Max knew about her lovers. In the beginning she had hoped he would find out and be moved, by hurt or anger or simple jealousy. What a joke. The spies Max used had been discreet. The spies were to prevent infiltration by an undercover agent in the guise of Leah’s lover. Max had always been especially careful about the household and grounds staff.

  Max is surprised Leah is flirting with the owl-shit ecologist, but remembers “opposites attract,” and Leah does have an angle. She needs to head off protests by environmentalists against her plans for Venice, Arizona. Real estate development makes strange bedfellows. But Max is not interested in what happens in the bedroom. Instead, Max instructs the spies to learn what Leah talks about when she is alone with the owl-shit expert. Leah talks about water rights, the spies report. Max has to smile. Leah never misses an opportunity to save time; she fucks an expert witness on owl shit and water conservation. Max complimented Leah on this one. Had he been chosen by design or had the ecologist merely been a happy coincidence?

  With the ecologist Leah has been doing two kinds of undercover work: her dream-city plans revolve around water, lake after lake, and each of the custom-built neighborhoods linked by quaint waterways—no motorized watercraft please! The amount of water needed for such a grand scheme was astonishing. Leah could not deny that. She was hoping her owl expert could help her and her lawyers make a case for Venice, Arizona, city of the twenty-first century. The water had to come from someplace, and Leah wasn’t about to settle for reclaimed sewage or Colorado River water. Leah’s “someplace” for obtaining all the cheap water she wanted would be from the deep wells she was going to drill. She had got a lease on a deep-well rig cheap because some Texans had been hiding oil-field equipment from creditors in Tucson. Leah had also bought three gigantic bulldozers from the Texans to scrape out the canals and lakes.

  Max does not bother to catch all the details, but Leah wants him to play golf with Judge Arne. The case in question had already been heard by Arne in Federal District Court in Phoenix. Arne had the case “under advisement.” Leah could not have hoped for a better opportunity. No link would ever be made between the outcome of an obscure water-rights suit brought by some Nevada Indians against a subdivider in Bullhead City, and Blue Water Land Development’s applications for deep-water wells in Tucson. All Judge Arne had to do for Leah was dismiss a cross-suit by the Indians in the Bullhead City case, and the State of Arizona would have to grant Leah Blue her deep-well drilling permits. Indian tribes or ecologists might try to sue to stop her deep wells later, but by then the deep wells would be flowing in Venice, Arizona.

  Judge Arne had made a good drive right down the center of the fairway. He was a better golfer than most who came to play Max. Of course, the others were usually coming to ask big favors—to have people shot or factories burned to the ground. Max was the one who needed the favor. Judge Arne, on the other hand, was simply “moonlighting.” Three “moonlight” jobs equaled Arne’s salary for a year.

  Max had a good feeling for his irons that day while the judge seemed to have problems, overshooting the green on a couple of holes so that Max had finished strong, four shots up. Arne was a shrewd one though. Max could not detect any temper in Arne over the loss, but after all Arne had been in a somewhat official capacity that day, and Max had been the host. Max did not usually leave the course until sundow
n, but he and his bodyguards had walked the judge to the locker rooms. The judge had been in a generous mood. He told Max he felt he could influence the holdings in this water case at every level, all the way up to the Supreme Court. Arne believed in states’ rights, absolutely. Indians could file lawsuits until hell and their reservation froze over, and Arne wasn’t going to issue any restraining orders against Leah’s deep wells either. Max could depend on that. The judge had lurched the big Volvo sedan out of the parking lot, swerved, and disappeared down Tortolita Road.

  Max had made no secret of his security measures for Leah’s “friends” or “associates.” He had called Leah to listen to an audiotape of the last “nature lovers” board meeting. As Leah listened with Max, she was relieved her owl-shit expert hadn’t been at the meeting. Leah was not sure if her “eco-defender” would have defended her or not. Still, the “nature lovers” had learned long ago to court the rich and their corporations with promises of tax breaks for large donations of money or land. But the tape Max played had not contained any talk about endangered waterfowl habitats or even how to get a million dollars out of Blue Water Land Development Unlimited. The “nature lovers” had discussed the owl expert Keemo, and Leah, and whether Keemo was fully aware of who that woman was. The Nature-Lovers Committee was composed of seven board members; six were women, and five had fucked Keemo in the desert at least once. Keemo himself had told Leah this. He was not bragging about himself, he said, but rather he was trying to communicate a mystical power he felt whenever he walked into the desert. Leah had made a mental note then never to walk in the desert alone with Keemo. She did not want to leave imprints in the sand with her bare ass the way the other women had.

  • • •

  Golf was pure geometry and physics; angle, trajectory, and wind speed; the wood and steel, the rubber and cork grasped in a human hand, and all in perfect alignment with the grass fairway clear of the sandy wash lined with green mesquite. Golf was ancient and ritualistic. A replacement for the Catholic Church. The little ball, Max imagined, had at one time been an enemy skull. Max did not complicate golf with any connection with business or personal life. He watched players better than he was with pleasure, though not many played better than Max when they came to the course for a “business game” to ask Max Blue a favor. Even the celebrity golfers the senator had brought around had been too tense and nervous to play well. The desert was too close for most of the Californians and New Yorkers. Texans could not swing their irons for fear of rattlers they imagined coiled on the fairway. Those not disturbed by the desert setting of the golf course got nervous because Max Blue made most people nervous. People had difficulty understanding why Max lived most of his life outside on the golf course. With the money Max had and with the favors owed to Max by those in the highest levels of government, Max could have enjoyed the life of a Persian prince.