Lena Jones 02 - Desert Wives

already talked on the phone.”
    His eyes gave me the usual lustful once-over, then stopped when they reached my face. I was used to it. I had been told that the one-inch-long scar from the bullet that had almost killed me was the only flaw in an otherwise perfect set of features. The scar could have been removed in one short visit to any plastic surgeon, but I’d chosen to keep it, hoping that someone might eventually recognize it and tell me my real name. You see, the name I use is not really mine. It had been given to me thirty years earlier by a particularly unimaginative social worker.
    “Are you Mr. Alder?” I tried again.
    “Yeah, yeah, that’s me,” he said, finally shifting his eyes away from my forehead. “Call me Dwayne. C’mon, let’s get inside the office before we fry. Ringo, you stay.”
    Ringo whined, but sat obediently in the shade of the tires.
    It was much cooler inside and the purple faux leather chairs surprisingly comfortable, but the reek of burnt rubber that blended with the smell of stale tobacco kept my breaths shallow.
    “I’m here about your son,” I said. “Your neighbors aren’t too happy with him.”
    “I don’t care about the neighbors. Miles is a good boy.”
    He shifted around on his chair as if fleas bit his butt, and plucked nervously at his scrawny red beard. “Sure, Miles got hisself into some trouble years back, but he was runnin’ with a rough crowd then.”
    If I had a dollar for every time I heard the parent of some felonious teen blame it on his friends, I would be skiing in Switzerland right now, not melting in the Arizona heat.
    “Two stints at Adobe Mountain Correctional Facility aren’t exactly a little trouble, Mr. Alder. And as for that rough crowd you say corrupted your son, my sources maintain that Miles was the ringleader. Whatever mischief they perpetrated, he initiated. It’s time to face facts and get that kid some help, because he’s not going to recover from his attraction to fire without it. Now, I know the ATF hasn’t been able to come up with enough evidence for an arrest, but don’t you think you have a moral obligation to your community? Every time that dump goes up, hundreds of little babies suck in lungs full of toxic fumes.”
    Alder hitched his pants. “Yeah, that’s too bad, but there ain’t nothing I can do about it.”
    “Couldn’t you get Miles another job? Some place where he wouldn’t be exposed to, ah, flammables?”
    More beard-plucking. “Like flipping burgers at MacDonald’s or something? The kid’s gotta learn how to run the business. My health ain’t so good. Emphysema. I’m going to have to retire pretty quick now.”
    “You don’t have any other children?”
    “Two girls. Why?”
    “How about training one of them to take over?”
    Alder looked at me like I’d just grown two heads. “Let a girl run a tire dump?”
    I tried not to sigh. “Better a girl than a firebug. Look, Mr. Alder, in a day and age where women fly the Space Shuttle, I think with the proper training one of your daughters might be able to run this place.”
    Yep, I’d grown two heads, all right. “I don’t need you to be telling me how to raise my family, sister. Miles stays.”
    My sigh finally escaped. “So you refuse to do anything about your son?”
    “I don’t need to do nothing about that boy. He’d be fine if people would just stop leanin’ on him. Now you go on back to them Citizens for Clean Air fools and tell them to mind their own business. Maybe they ought to be looking at their own kids, cause it sure ain’t my Miles been settin’ these fires. Now, it’s been awful nice talking to a pretty lady but I got me a ton of work to do here.”
    Just then a young man entered the office, Ringo slobbering happily at his heels. Miles. I recognized him from the news reports, where, in typical firebug behavior, he always bellied up to the camera to hold forth about the fires. It was easy to see how he’d become the apple of his dad’s eye. Where Alder looked and sounded like the product of a hard-scrabble upbringing, Miles, with his designer hair, broad shoulders, and even features, could have posed for a Ralph Lauren ad. But I thought his blue eyes were just a trifle too steady. Con man eyes.
    Since reason hadn’t worked with the father, I doubted its effectiveness with the son. I decided on a more direct approach. “Listen, you little shithead. The neighbors are tired of the fires. They want you to stop.”
    Miles