Thorn went into the guest room. Pauly followed and elbowed the door shut, then used both hands to guide the python onto the floor.
He left again and was back shortly with his two aluminum suitcases. He set them beside his bed, then lay back on the quilted bedspread while the big snake oozed around the edges of the room.
Pauly’s black T-shirt and jeans were still wet from the boat ride, but he didn’t strip them off. Just folded his hands behind his head and stared up at the ceiling. As far as Thorn could tell, Pauly hadn’t slept in the last three days. The kind of stonyhearted man who didn’t require the healing effects of rest.
The pry bar Thorn had tucked down the waistband of his baggy shorts had been digging into his spine for the last few hours. Earlier, as they’d exited in the darkness and rain, he’d managed to scoop it out of the sand, and now as he slid beneath the sheets, he drew it out and tucked it between the mattress and box spring. Not a .357, but it would have to suffice.
“Tell me something, Pauly.” Outside the window a mourning dove was moaning in the sapodilla tree. “What’s Wally’s problem?”
Pauly turned his head slowly and eyed Thorn but didn’t speak.
“You protect him, watch out for him. He’s not quite right. His skinny legs, there’s hardly any muscle. What is that, polio?”
“What do you want?”
“I’d like to know who I have sleeping under my roof.”
Pauly shook his head. Not interested.
“You were in the military,” Thorn said.
Pauly resumed his inspection of the ceiling.
“I’d guess the marines.”
“Fuck the marines.”
“Reason I ask, you don’t fit with these people. You’re no flower child.”
A gust of wind rattled the palm fronds outside. A jet heading into Miami rumbled overhead. On the wall above the dresser the shadows of a passing flock of gulls flickered and disappeared.
“It’s the uranium,” Pauly said.
“What?”
“A mine on Navajo land, uranium tailings in the water, in the soil, it got into the mud bricks of the houses. My people got fucked up by it. They’re still fucked up by it.”
“That’s what’s wrong with Wally? His legs?”
“What counts is his brain. Wally’s smart, a different kind. Musicians, chess players.”
“Smart with computers,” Thorn said. “A math whiz.”
“How he’s wired. Never needed school. Born like that.”
“And you?”
“I’m Navajo. That’s all you need to know.” Pauly sank back into silence, but a grim energy was pulsing inside him. A hum in the room.
“It won’t work. I don’t care how good the plan is, the security’s too tight at that place. It’s going to fail.”
“Take a nap.”
“We’re all going to wind up dead or in jail.”
“Their security is shit. A circus clown could lead a string of elephants straight in the front gate.”
“What’s in the suitcases?”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“Don’t think I haven’t tried.”
Pauly drifted away into another tense silence, then after a minute, he turned his head on the pillow and stared at Thorn. “You’re a lousy father.”
“I know. The more I try, the worse I get.”
“Then quit trying.”
Thorn nodded. Sage advice. “No children yourself, or is Wally enough?”
When Pauly spoke again, weight was in his words as if he’d been harboring them for years, their energy compounding in his dark interior. “My old man,” he said, then stalled.
“Yeah? And what was he like?”
“Never met the asshole. Growing up, not a word about him. Just another Navajo drunk, dumped his wife and kids.”
A story on his lips. But wavering. Thorn could hear the python rustle across the hardwood floors. He kept his mouth shut, giving Pauly room.
“Five years back…” Pauly hesitated again. Lying there in silence until he’d collected himself. “Five years, I get an e-mail out of nowhere. Some old fuck in his nineties, a white man, he’s tracked me down, claims he’s my grandpa. My old man was his bastard son. Now this old white man says he has to see me before he dies. Never knew he existed till that e-mail.”
“So you went.”
“Fucker wanted to talk. Had something to confess.” Pauly looked at Thorn, back at the ceiling. “Los Alamos. You know about that?”
“The A-bomb.”
“Metallurgy, that’s what he did. Physics, chemistry. How Wally got his brains. Skipped a generation, all went to him.”
“What’d he want?”