by Thomas Zigal
Kurt reached into his jacket pocket for the flyer he had retrieved from the convention floor. It showed the same picture he’d first seen in Nighthawk’s darkroom, Metcalf and the gentleman in the natty hat. The caption read, Ask Arnold Metcalf why he plays golf with the South African mining industry. Foreigners like this man (right) control 15 of the 25 largest gold mines in the U.S., most of them on our public lands, royalty free. Add a platinum mine to that stat, he thought, wondering how the conventioneers, solid America-first patriots to a person, would view all this foreign involvement. Had any of them seen the photo of Metcalf shaking hands with the fanatical Father Ke?
Near the podium there was a large oil painting propped on an easel, the kind of popular western scene Kurt had observed in Metcalf’s law suites, a wagon train circled for battle, pioneers firing rifles at marauding Indians on horseback. Something to auction off during the banquet, or perhaps a door prize. Most environmentalists bagged this season. When the red dot appeared, he thought his eyes were playing tricks on him. Then the dot moved, dancing across the canvas, fluttering like a firefly, settling lightly before flittering away. Kurt stood up and approached the stage. The red dot was not an hallucination. He watched it resurface on the podium and quiver around the dull metal mouthpiece of the microphone, finding its resting place at last. A small steady point of red light fixed where a man would stand and speak. Where the back of his head was exposed to the arched window.
Kurt edged along the carpeted stage and hid himself beside the curtain pulled back from the vaulting panel of glass. Below in the parking lot, another busload of people was emptying into the Sahara’s rear lobby. VIProtex guards patrolled the area, directing foot traffic. There was a new construction under way less than a hundred yards from the hotel, an imposing gray concrete structure that looked like a multilevel parking garage. A cement mixer and other heavy machines were parked in a fenced-off site next to a trailer, but dusk had fallen and the work crews were gone. He looked again at the podium and watched the red dot jitter for one final moment and then disappear. Gazing out through the glass, he tried to calculate her angle of sight. She was stationed on the second or third floor of that dark building. Hunkered down, scanning the stage, waiting for Arnold Metcalf with her laser scope.
Chapter forty-six
The parking garage smelled of fresh paint and wet cement. He found the stairwell and slowly made his way up the steps of a vertical shaft as dark and claustrophobic as the Lone Ute Mine. The doors hadn’t been hinged in place and a faint gray light seeped through the opening to the second floor. He stepped into the vast parking area and waited, his eyes struggling to focus beyond ten yards in the silent gloom. Paper cups and construction debris brushed underfoot as he walked to the retaining wall and peered over at the hotel, locating the arched window now blazing with light. Guests were arriving for the banquet. In a short while the master of ceremonies would mount the podium, welcome everyone, tell his lame jokes, introduce the guest of honor. If I had a rifle, where would I position myself? From here it was a flat shot; a miss would bullet horizontally into a hundred innocent onlookers. Get up higher, he thought, make sure the lead angles downward through his body to the carpet.
At the doorway to the third level he stopped and drew a deep breath. The foundation wasn’t entirely dry and the footing felt like packed wet beach sand. He could see where the pouring had ended, the open molds squared off, braced with steel rods, waiting for tomorrow’s fill. Skirting along the retaining wall, he watched car lights swing in and out of the Sahara’s loading zone below. When he came to the first support pillar he crouched down and steadied himself against the cool concrete column, considering whether to retrieve his .45 before proceeding ahead. Would she shoot him? Perhaps if he surprised her. Did he really know this woman? Not if she was capable of blowing somebody away with a sniper rifle. Cautiously, the breath burning in his lungs, he inclined his head out from the dusty pillar. A wire-thin stream of light was waiting for him, imprinting a red dot on his forehead like an Indian’s Bindu point.
“I saw you at the window,” she said, her voice a haunting echo in the vacant garage. “I wondered how long it would take you to find me.”
As he rose slowly to full height, the laser beam tracked his eyes. “You don’t need the weapon,” he said.
They were immersed in darkness. He could decipher only the barest outline of the nest she’d made for herself at the wall, an overturned wheelbarrow, sacks of cement, cardboard packing stacked precariously like a child’s fort.
“Shooting him won’t end it, Kat,” he said. “Their movement is too big for a couple of bullets. Somebody else will step up and wave the saber.”
“These people killed Randy,” she said. “Someone down there paid for the pipe bomb that murdered my husband and daughter.”
She was standing near the shell of an elevator shaft, a ghostly framework of exposed iron beams. “How do you know it was Metcalf?” he asked her. The only sure bet was that VIProtex had done the dirty work.
“Metcalf is a good place to start,” she said.
He moved toward her, searching for her eyes in the dark. “So this is how you’re going to spend the rest of your life, Kat? Sitting on a rooftop with a rifle in your hands? Revenge is hard work, my dear. The list is a mighty long one.”
Her body was backlit by the hotel’s phosphorescent glow. She switched off the laser and lowered the rifle to her waist. “What about you, Kurt? What if Lennon had burned to death in the fire?” she asked, her voice so calm it was beginning to spook him. “Here, take a look for yourself,” she said, shoving the rifle against his chest. “It’s an easy shot. You just set the dot on the back of his skull and squeeze the trigger, and there’s one less dirty son of a bitch on the planet. Maybe it won’t solve every problem, but like I said, it’s a start. Maybe you’ll get caught and maybe you won’t. It doesn’t make a fucking bit of difference,” she said, her words cracking now in the eerie stillness. “Because your life hasn’t meant a thing since the day you lost him.”
Kurt tossed the rifle into the cardboard packing and reached for her hand in the dark. She seemed reluctant to accept his embrace, her body stiffening, the bulky parka like a barricade between them. “Easy,” she said, pulling away, her gloved hands pressed against his chest.
“No one can take away your pain, Kat,” he said, holding those hands with a firm grip. “They may never bring in the bomber who killed your husband. But if you come back to Aspen with me, help me make a case against VIProtex for Randy’s death, the bastards will at least know they’ve been danced with.”
He heard a shoe scrape somewhere in the darkness. The fever had dulled his reflexes and he was slow to reach for the pistol in his shoulder holster.
“I wouldn’t do that if I was you,” said a low grumbling voice.
A light flashed in his eyes, the harsh beam trained on him from the corner of the elevator shaft.
“We’ll shoot your girlfriend first.”
Other flashlights torched on, a strategic spread of positions. White rays danced over Kurt and Kat as the holders closed ranks around them.
“Drop your hand to your side or the bitch takes one in the tit.”
Kurt slid his hand away from his jacket. He recognized the voice. He knew who these men were. Night Clubbers.
“You’re a pretty decent tracker, Mr. Use-to-be. We never would’ve found her without you.”
Cement dust swirled like trapped smoke in the long flashlight beams. Kurt could see the bandaged hand behind the speaker’s glowing light.
“Let him leave,” Kat said, separating from Kurt’s side. “You’re not after him.”
“That’s very sweet of you, kitty cat,” the voice said. “But I’m afraid it’s too late to cut your boyfriend loose.”
Slow, calculating footsteps scuffed across the hardening concrete. The lights drew nearer, brighter.
“The cops are down there busting protesters,” Kurt said, glancing over his shoulder. “Anot
her busful of people just pulled into the parking lot. How you going to take us out of here, Chilcutt?”
The man laughed, a deep wheezing sound. “That’s the beauty of it, Muller. We don’t have to. There’s a special grave reserved for you two lovebirds right over there,” he said, shining the beam on the rebars crisscrossing an open floor mold. “It’s an old Vegas tradition. Where do you think all the knocked-up showgirls are buried?”
Low, menacing laughter from the men behind the flashlights. They were close enough now for Kurt to make out their gun belts and the stripe down their uniform pants.
“So y’all are the brave boys who’re doing all the killing?” Kat said with an uneasy smile. “Why don’t you come a little closer so I can get a look at your faces?”
The semicircle of lights had tightened around them but her challenge produced an unexpected halt in their movement.
“Seeing our faces won’t do you any good, little pussy. Your nine lives are up.”
A daring smile brushed across Kat’s lips. “You’re not afraid to show me your face, are you, hero? I want to see what kind of man goes around firebombing children.”
Her audacity ignited Chilcutt’s temper and he swung around the corner beam of the elevator shaft, bulling forward through the darkness until he was only a few short steps away from her. Raising the light to his bearded face, he gave her a savage sneer. “Here I am, bitch,” he said, pointing a pistol at her head. “This is the last face you’re ever gonna remember.”
“Put down the gun,” Kurt said.
Chilcutt whipped his arm sideways, aiming the pistol at Kurt’s face. “You’re a dead man, Muller,” he said. Hammers cocked all around them, one behind every flashlight. “Wait your turn.”
Before Kurt went down, he was going to put a round through Chilcutt’s heart.
“Shooting somebody up close is a messy business, isn’t it, hero?” Kat said, her face composed in a strange, fearless smile. “It’s a whole lot easier leaving a package under the bed and reading about it in tomorrow’s newspaper.”
She unzipped her parka and spread the folds. Chilcutt recoiled a step, cocking his own trigger. Two sticks of dynamite were taped to her chest in a spiral of coils. “So what’s your professional opinion of my package?” she said, fingering a pair of small wires on the detonator. “How much of this floor do you think I can take out if I touch these wires together?”
Flashlights fluttered wildly as the men scurried off in every direction.
“Come back here!” Chilcutt shouted, enraged by the insubordination. Quick footsteps were echoing in the distance.
“Don’t do it, Kat,” Kurt said.
“You better leave too,” she said. “This is between me and the hero.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
Chilcutt was alone now, his solitary beam exposing the device on Kat’s chest. “You know what they always say. If you want something done,” he said, raising the pistol to her head with an exasperated sigh.
“Go on, Kurt. Get out of here. You’ve got two boys to look after.”
“No!” he said. “Both of you back off! It doesn’t have to happen this way!”
In the instant Chilcutt shifted his eyes to Kurt, she grabbed the man’s wrist and rammed her head against his sternum, forcing him backward in an off-balance stumble. They grappled each other like clumsy dancers, the flashlight strobing around them. The gun went off in a flash of fire.
“Noooo!” Kurt screamed, racing toward them. He tried to reach them but tripped over a sawhorse and fell to his knees.
For one final moment their tangled bodies struggled at the edge of the dark shaft. Then they spun and crashed through a lattice of thin brace-rods, plunging out of sight.
The explosion lit the garage, a fireball of intense heat whooshing upward, following the air shaft like a burning bubble. He could smell his own singed hair. Something collapsed, splattering concrete like mud, and he gazed up from the floor to see the shaft frame listing badly, the structure slowly caving in. Black smoke billowed through the hole, wafting over him in a space as dark as hell itself. He crawled forward on his belly, calling her name, but he knew it was too late. Two boys to look after, he told himself, remembering her words, burying his face in his hands. Go on. Move! Get out of here before the whole building comes down on you.
Chapter forty-seven
People swarmed the parking area, hotel doormen and security guards and chartered bus riders from Kingman, all of them jabbering about the explosion and pointing upward at the smoke belching from the dark structure. Kurt could hear a siren in the distance. Someone rushed up to him and said, “Are you all right, mister? You look hurt.” His jacket was still smoldering and his eyebrows were gone. When he touched his forehead, a lock of hair crumbled into crisp ash.
In the Sahara’s lobby the crowds parted for him, onlookers grimacing in disbelief. His face felt sunburned and his throat was parched. He didn’t want to see himself in a mirror. A hotel valet said, “You’d better sit down, sir. You’re in shock. EMS is on the way.”
When he stepped off the escalator on the second floor, someone grabbed his arm and he pivoted, raising a fist.
“Hold on, hoss,” said Jesse Nighthawk, his stunned expression revealing just how bad Kurt must have looked. “What happened? You’re messed up.”
Meredith was with him. “My god, Kurt, take off that jacket!” she said, pulling at a ragged sleeve. “We heard the boom. What’s going on?”
“Kat’s dead,” he told her. “Here.” He slung off his jacket and unstrapped the shoulder holster, handing it to Nighthawk. “Get rid of this for me. If I’m wearing it, I’ll use it.”
Conventioneers loitering in the mezzanine hurried out of his way.
“What do you mean she’s dead?” Meredith said behind him, her voice trilling nervously. “Where are you going, Kurt? You need a doctor.”
The banquet had been disrupted by the explosion and dozens of name-tagged guests were roaming the corridor like dazed inmates in an asylum. Inside the dining hall a hundred people had gathered onstage, huddling near the arched window for a view of the fire. A pair of VIProtex guards saw Kurt enter the room and marched toward him. Three others were waiting beside the stage. He studied their gun belts, the stripes down their pants, wanting some small detail to give away the ones behind the flashlights.
Arnold Metcalf and the Arizona congressman remained seated at their table. Sipping cocktails, conferring quietly, their demeanor seemed peevish and impatient, annoyed by the delay. Neal Staggs stood behind them, pressing an earplug with his index finger, auditing a message.
“Excuse me, sir,” said one of the guards trying to intercept Kurt. “Your invitation, please.”
Wending between tables, knocking chairs out of his way, Kurt outmaneuvered them, reaching the host’s table first. His appearance shook the congressman. A look of terror overcame Metcalf’s stolid bearing.
“Good lord, man!” said the congressman. “What’s going on out there?”
Staggs rushed around the table, signaling to the other guards for more help.
“I’m here to update Mr. Metcalf’s résumé for you,” Kurt said, blinking, his thoughts growing fuzzier, more disjointed. “When you give him the lifetime achievement award tonight, Congressman, add the name Katrina Pfeil to his list of problems solved.”
Two guards seized Kurt but he offered no resistance.
“Congratulations, Staggs,” he said. “You can collect your bonus now. She’s dead. But she took Chilcutt out with her. Go find yourself another bomber.”
The congressman stood up. “Who is this guy?” he asked. “What on earth is he talking about?”
“These men are killers,” Kurt said, pointing at Metcalf and Staggs. “You sure you want to break bread with killers, Congressman?”
Staggs snapped his fingers. “Take him out of here,” he instructed the guards.
The disturbance had captured the attention of the few banquet guests still seated a
t their tables. They rose and drifted toward the confrontation. Workingpeople without style or pretense. Stubborn cusses like Ned Carr, tough, no nonsense, fiercely independent, holding on desperately to the only dream they knew. They deserved better than Arnold Metcalf.
“Folks, don’t ever trust a slick lawyer like Metcalf with your money or your property,” Kurt told them. “He’ll trade everything you believe in to the highest bidder.”
“Get him out of here!” Staggs commanded.
Kurt broke loose from the guards and threw a punch at the ex-agent, missing badly, losing balance, falling to his knees. Hands were all over him at once, gripping his shirt, his legs, dragging him across the carpet. Bystanders were raising their voices but he couldn’t understand a word. His body had gone limp, his head was spinning, his throat dry and burning.
“Let him go,” he heard someone say. Jesse Nighthawk was standing in the doorway of the banquet hall, the .45 visible in his waistband. Two EMS medics were waiting behind him.
“Get away from him!” Meredith was on her knees beside Kurt, cradling his burning head in her lap. “We’re taking this man to the hospital.”
Chapter forty-eight
After two days in a Las Vegas hospital he was transported back to Aspen Valley for another week of intensive treatment. The burns were minor but the knife infection had spread rapidly and Dr. Perry placed him on round-the-clock IVS of antibiotics, glucose, and painkillers. He was unable to attend Tyler’s funeral or to help in any way with the disposition of Kat’s cremated remains, which were returned to her friends in Oregon to be spread over an old-growth forest in the Siskiyou Mountains. The outpouring of cards and flowers from Aspen well-wishers was overwhelming, both for Kat and for Kurt, but he had no appetite for visitors and didn’t return phone calls. His only consolation came from seeing Lennon and Hunter every afternoon, listening to the comforting timbre of their voices while he floated off to neverland. Once, in the middle of a deep dream, he heard someone speak his name and thought it was his dead brother standing at the bedside.
