“He was still living in our shithole apartment on Roosevelt Street. Driving a cab all night long, nearly getting killed half the time.”
“Did he ever go to Camelback Falls?”
“No.” She half-smiled. “This was the elite. Not in his class.”
“So he went away.”
“I saw him sometimes. Stayed with him sometimes. I felt sorry for poor Leo.”
“Sorry enough to go riding that day in Guadalupe?”
There was a long silence, and then she said, “It didn’t happen that way. You see, Jonathan was always attracted to the dark side. He was a very spiritual man, but the itch he couldn’t scratch was very dark. There’s a connection between violence and sex, but thousands of years of civilization tries to tamp that down, keep it locked in its dungeon. It’s the opposite of romantic love, but it’s just as real. Maybe more so. Jonathan was very attracted to that, so some of the people at Camelback Falls were rough, dangerous types.”
“Like Billy McGovern and Troyce Meadows?”
“Yeah. They were the dangerous, sunburned cowboys, really gorgeous men. But you also had the sense they would kill, take what they want. Not some movie but the real deal. You could almost smell it. That was very attractive to Jonathan.”
“So how did these guys get there?” I asked. “I read somewhere that one of them was Leo’s cousin.”
She laughed. “The media. God, what morons. And you call yourself a historian? That was the story Daddy’s lawyers gave to the publishers and TV station owners. See, Billy was my cousin, not Leo’s. The black sheep of the family, you might say. Jonathan was fascinated by those two, real prison escapees. It was all very arousing, especially for the female guests. The allure of the outlaw, don’t you know.”
I let that all sink in before asking her the next question.
“Dean Nixon?” she said. “Oh, he was there. He was another one of the people Jonathan collected. He had certain attributes…well, you’ve seen photos, so you know. And then he turned out to be pretty good at supplying drugs for Jonathan’s parties out of the cops’ evidence. Jonathan could have paid for all the coke in Bolivia. But getting it that way was more fun to him.”
“So in Guadalupe,” I said, “that twenty pounds of cocaine was destined for parties at Camelback Falls.”
“I don’t think so,” Beth said. “I think Dean and Billy and Troyce had reached some understanding, and they were working together. They were going to sell the drugs on the street.”
“Until that big Hispanic deputy took them,” I said. “Did he ever show up at Camelback Falls?”
“No, never saw him before,” she said. “But most cops are dirty.” She added, “No offense.”
“What about the detective who threatened you? Did he come there?”
“No, Mapstone. You’ve got to understand the makeup of Jonathan’s circle. Dean was there only because Jonathan collected him.”
“Do you know Dean has been murdered?”
Beth was silent.
“And so all this went away after the shooting? Daddy rescued you and you went back to Tulsa?”
“I did for awhile,” she said. “I went to college at Vassar, like Mother wanted. The parole was very generous. So it was easy to drop out and come back to Phoenix.”
“Why?” Lindsey asked.
“Jonathan,” she said. “Don’t you see, Jonathan
loved me. I was with him to the end. The parties trailed off after 1980, and I never saw Dean Nixon after I came back to Phoenix. Jonathan left his estate to me, including the books. Really pissed off his ex-wives. But they didn’t sit with him as his life ended, either, did they?”
She stared out at the darkness. “He had beautiful eyes,” she said. “Paige got his eyes.”
Chapter Thirty
Lindsey took over the driving, and we crossed the Continental Divide in silence. There seemed to be nothing left to ask or say. Beth fell into an exhausted sleep. She dream-drummed her long fingers on the thigh of her leather pants. I stretched out in the back seat and tried to rest. Every position was painful, and every notch my body relaxed caused a new ache to emerge. The Suburban was dark and warm, filled with memories.
My old job is nearly obsolete. The idea that historical facts can be found and historical truths can be taught is hopelessly out of style in universities. Now they talk of poststructuralism, many voices, many truths. All that old stuff is part of the oppression of the white male patriarchy. Even the name of my great academic love is disgraced: history, as in the sexist term “his-story.”