The Triggerman Dance

During the first week, Weinstein watches particularly closely for indicators of John Menden's mental state. Weinstein plays the devil's advocate, looking hard for a reason to call the whole thing off. That is an option he—or Washington—can exercise any time until John gets close to Wayfarer, if he gets close to Wayfarer.

They run. They shoot. They run. They fight.

Weinstein observes. He looks for fatigue, doubt, carelessness, and most importantly, any sign that John Menden finds what is happening amusing. The second his student hints that his education or his mission is anything but a matter of the deepest gravity, the whole thing is dead in the water. And although Weinstein does his best to discover something insincere in his student, he does not.

On the dark cool nights he chooses to sleep over in the desert, Joshua lies on his back and looks out the uncurtained window to the big clear stars in the desert sky. He hates the emptiness of it all, the huge spaces between things. He worries, tosses, grunts, curses, dozes. Everything worries him.

What worries Joshua most is that his own feelings toward Rebecca might blind him to Menden's weaknesses—we all have them, he knows. But Weinstein rationalizes that if he could sell this operation to his superiors in Washington—surely the most difficult thing he had ever done—then his vision must have been very clear. It is a matter now of seeing well, of remaining objective and effective.

But staring up from the narrow trailer bed at night, he often wonders: how can I be objective about you, Rebecca, you love, you betrayer. How can I possibly do that? Because you died in the rain and I loved you. I owe you everything, but all I can give you is vengeance.

John keeps his own counsel and allows his easy politeness and placid gray eyes to mask the emotional storm brewing inside him. He is still almost amazed that this—whatever it might turn out to be—is actually happening. He has wanted it for so long. He has tried to imagine it so many times. He has prayed for it so often. And he has believed that someday it would come. It is happening.

So he runs. He shoots. He runs. He fights.

But none of this is really new. In fact, John began his training nearly three months ago, when he moved out to the club property. At the time he had not known what it might be for, only that he must do it, he must be ready, he must prepare himself for . .. something. It was an article of faith that he be fit for the task, whatever the task might entail.

So, by the time Weinstein and Dumars begin to drill him with a pistol he has already shot so many rounds through his own .357 Smith and Wesson that he is fast, accurate and comfortable. He has developed callouses where his hands—he shoots using both—touch the grip and stainless steel frame. By the time they start him on roadwork, he is already running six miles each morning. The three miles a day they start him with is, for John, a gesture. He had even been practicing on a heavy bag and a speed bag up near the clubhouse. For hours on the weekends he had exhausted himself against the canvas and leather, his hands protected by gloves, literally pounding the anger and sadness out of his body. Tim, the silent groundskeeper of the High Desert Rod and Gun Club, had shuffled by occasionally, trying to act uninterested.

With Rebecca's death, John has lost almost all that is valuable inside. He is like a home gutted by fire. Ashes have covered his interior, while his outside remains, to most observers, unharmed.

There was no one he can talk to about her, because he had only been her secret lover. He could not explain to his friends or family why his spirit for living drained away, why he felt a tremendous weight upon him, why the former joys of earning a living, having a drink with friends, making little improvements on his old Laguna Canyon house became unbearable. He was not invited to the private funeral or memorial service. No one offered him condolence.

A man who feels invisible will in fact become invisible. So John simply vanished, one heartbeat at a time, to reappear here, in this vast unforgiving desert, faced with the job of putting himself right. Here, he was free to sort amidst the rubble. Here, he had begun preparing himself for the task of rebuilding. An occasional flicker of hope was the only mortar he had to use.

But the hope became larger when Joshua Weinstein and Sharon Dumars not-so-casually sidled into his life one afternoon in Olie's Saloon. Since that day, John has felt all his evasive, mystifying dreams beginning to come true.

He runs. He shoots. He runs. He fights.

CHAPTER 8