The Triggerman's Dance

by T. Jefferson Parker

  He smoked and listened to the birds hidden around him. When he was finished he ground the butt into the dirt, rose and commanded his dogs with a firm “stay.” He walked across the clearing to a smallish oak tree—no more than twenty feet high—whose branches had been pruned away from the fence. He estimated two yards from the trunk to the fence, then knelt down and began scraping away handfuls of the loose, leaf-covered soil. The box was six inches under. He removed it and opened the lid, then brought out the small flat cellular telephone and slid it into his shirt pocket. He piled the sharp oak leaves around the box before turning to look behind him—just three inquisitive dog faces staring back—then pushing one of the two dial buttons on the face of the little phone. The buttons are dedicated. You can only call one person on earth and that person is me. Black for business and red for busted. If you’re flushed, John, press red. Press red and use the hole. We’ll do what we can to help you out but it may take a lot more time than you have.

  John faced the clearing. He felt his heart pounding against his shirt and the pulse in his forehead. Joshua answered before the second ring.

  “I’m here.”

  “How’s the scenery?”

  “Superb.”

  “All your luggage arrive?”

  “I think so. No trouble finding it.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I’ve been invited to stay a few days. Whether that’s five days, seven or nine hasn’t been specified. Wayfarer’s insistence. The pit bull has a pant leg already, but no skin inside it. He arranged a week of paid leave with Bruno. These guys move fast if they like you. I met two clients and some of the Liberty Ops people at dinner the second night. Notes to be delivered shortly.”

  “Can you get some quality time?”

  “He’s leaving tomorrow. Back on Saturday.”

  “Beautiful. Is his study still in the main house?”

  “Yes. Just like your drawings.”

  “Then that’s your first stop.”

  “I remember. But I still can’t believe he’s so lax about his own home.”

  “Guarded gate, a five-man security team and almost complete isolation do not constitute lax.”

  “There have to be cameras inside.”

  “He fashioned Liberty Ridge for the specific purpose of not needing cameras inside. Wayfarer had the sloppiest security habits you could imagine on the job. Took it as a personal affront that anyone would open his mail, so to speak. It was a form of challenge. Miscellaneous?”

  John thought of Valerie. “He asked if I was in touch with Susan Baum.”

  Joshua’s laughter was low, clear and wicked. “Well, well. He’s nibbling already. And?”

  “That was all.”

  “You can be in touch, Owl. At Wayfarer’s pleasure.”

  “I assumed that.”

  “The world is lovely when things fall into place. Now, the study—papers, notes, files, records. Think Baum. Think what you might commit to paper if you were going to cap someone. Anything that has a buzz about it, you shoot. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “After that, we’ll branch you out into the firearms and ammunition. How are your nerves?”

  “Steady.”

  “Ten-four, clever Owl.”

  “Later.”

  John hung up, his fingers sweating on the slender antenna as he folded it back against the body of the unit. He returned to the box, brushed away the leaves, and set the phone back inside. He looked at the dogs again, then down the trail, listening. Next he took out one of the two micro-cameras mocked up to look like penlights—the beams actually worked—and clipped it to the edge of his pocket. He closed the box, set it back in its shallow hole, and replaced the dirt and brittle oak leaves, turning the dark sides down and the light sides to the sun. A grasshopper landed on his shirt and sent his heart into the sky.

  He went back to the stump where the dogs waited, sat down and lit another smoke. He jammed a rock inside the empty pack, crumpled it, then walked to the fence and tossed it over. Joshua’s people would retrieve it—notes slipped between the cellophane and the paper—in the darkness of night, just as they would retrieve a used camera and replace it with a loaded one, using the hole to cross the fence. John looked at the ground beneath the fence post nearest the tree and the next post north, and could see nothing that indicated the three-foot by three-foot tunnel Joshua had dug beneath the links. It was only six feet long, running under the fence like a curve of bathroom pipe, with openings on each side of the chain. For a human, it was little more than a tube to wriggle into and out of. But it was a safe way to cross the line. The openings were covered with thin plywood onto which were glued a representative camouflage of dirt, leaves, rocks and sticks. With a few handfuls of the real stuff thrown on, they’ll be invisible. But if someone steps on one, we’re in trouble.

  John returned to the stump, ground his cigarette out beside the first one, then put both butts in his pants pocket. The dogs lay in a row, all three with their heads on the ground, but all three eyeing him. He told them “stay” again, then walked around to the oak tree and approached the gnarled brown trunk.

  He could hardly believe how loud the leaves under his feet were. Spiderwebs tickled his cheeks. He reached his hand up into the second V of the trunk and, with a sharp click, pulled down from its securing clasp the Colt .45 Joshua had promised. If you ever need it, you will probably die with it in your hand. It’s the last resort, John. Your goal is to never touch it. Your goal is to leave it there to rust in the shade while Wayfarer rusts in a cell. If you say a prayer every night, and I recommend that you do—it should be that you never have to use the Colt.

  He checked the empty chamber and the clip, then rose up on his toes again and wedged the automatic back into its seat. A fence lizard gazed down at him from the upper fork of the V, his eyes curious and alert. The idea crossed John’s mind that the lizard was one of Joshua’s operatives, keeping tabs on him. Wiping the sweat from his face, he ducked back out from the drooping branches and wiped the dirty webs from his arms and shirt.

  A blast of hot wind greeted him as he stepped from the canopy, swirling the leaves up around his legs and roaring against his ears. Then the gust moved on and John stood and listened to it swooshing against the treetops and in the brush.

  As always, the sound of the Santa Anas shot him back to his childhood. Now he felt the same way that he felt at age five with the big winds hitting: awestruck, surrounded by a power much larger than his own, immersed in the pure velocity of change. They had always made him think of time, and made him realize how the present passes so quickly into the past, how the present is just a series of future moments marching backward to meet you. He had always loved the way the wind made you feel each of those moments going by. He had always loved the way he could just stand there in that wind and let it blow right past him, flattening the grasses, bending the trees, lifting silver-green spray off the faces of advancing waves. It was like seeing time itself. Seeing himself within time, John had always felt small. But he had felt integral, too. With the wind blowing around him he understood that he was a part of larger things, like the grass, the trees and the waves. He remembered, age ten, jumping off the roof of his uncle’s house in a high Santa Ana with bedsheets spread behind his outstretched arms, wanting not so much to fly as to dissolve into the wind and let it take him with it. He was hoping it might carry him to his mother and father.

  John stood in the clearing, looking out at the buffeted landscape and feeling his slow reentry into the present. He thought about Rebecca. Here was another day, another moment he wished she could have shared. He listened for her voice in the wind but heard only the wind. He pictured her again on the asphalt in the March rain. Then the Santa Ana turned furious, bellowing up the trail toward him, howling against the oak tree, punishing its branches and hissing into the fence. There it is, he thought: The Fury. The reason I am here. He let it rage into him and he locked it inside, adding the wind’s anger to his own. The dog
s sat with their backs to the gusts, heads lowered, looking ashamed.

  A little after six a.m., he started back down the trail with his walking stick, empty coffee cup and camera.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY

  Vann Holt was down by the shore in front of his cabin when John got back. A white Range Rover sat next to John’s pickup truck. He could see Holt watching him as he came around the edge of the lake, but he had no idea when Holt had first spotted him. The dogs frolicked along, lending an air of innocence to the day. The penlight felt heavy in his pocket and he wondered, who needs a penlight on a morning this bright? He slipped it into his right pant pocket when Holt wasn’t looking. Boomer spotted Holt and charged ahead to greet him, barking histrionically and wagging his tail. John waved.

  “Hello Mr. Holt!”

  Holt lifted his head in acknowledgement but said nothing until John was closer.

  “Morning John. Fairly spectacular, isn’t it?”

  “I love these winds.”

  “Just like breeze off the ankles of God.”

  “Who said that?”

  “I did.”

  They shook hands.

  “Out for a morning walk?”

  “We headed up that trail on the other side there.”

  “Watch for snakes this time of year. The hatchlings are out and about.”

  “Saw a few cottontail is all.”

  Holt studied him for a long moment. “Be a good idea for you to stay kind of out in the open. Lane’s blood pressure rises when he sees something in the bushes. Shoot quick and ask questions never. That’s Lane.”

  “Wouldn’t want to give him a stroke.” John flicked the last drop of coffee from his mug.

  “You don’t want to get shot, either. Come on, let’s take a drive around the Ridge. I want you to see it.”

  They took the Land Rover down the road, toward the big house, then veered off north and into a shallow valley. At the top of a rise, John could see the groves stretching before them, perfectly groomed acres of orange trees heavy with fruit. He could smell them, too, not the sweet flowers of late winter and spring, but the oranges themselves, issuing a clean acidic fragrance into the air.

  They passed a row of cottages, all neatly kept. Holt waved to a stout red-headed woman who stood in a cottage driveway, having chosen this dusty, blustery hour to wash her car. The stream of water shot from the hose, splashed against a door, then turned to mist. A boy of perhaps three purposefully scrubbed at a hubcab with a large sponge.

  “How big are your groves?”

  “Two hundred acres. Certified organic, all Valencias. Best for juice. I’ve got five workers on payroll right now, plus the supervisor. Harvest time, all the cabins are full.”

  “Do you sell the fruit?”

  “Bulk of it. The best I give away. Carolyn—my wife—used to juice them and make preserves, I mean tons of preserves, but she can’t do that anymore. No more marmalade from Carolyn. I’ve got friends all over the world, and getting fresh oranges from Southern California is a real treat for some of them. Floors ’em over in Europe.”

  “There aren’t even any weeds.”

  “Smooth as a pool table was my goal. No flaws.”

  “I’d say you accomplished that.”

  “My supervisor is a duplicitous old prick, but he really gets work out of the workers.”

  The road was smooth too, though dirt, and the Land Rover slid along the south perimeter of the grove. John looked down the rows as they passed. The sky above them was pale blue, with just a trace of cirrus clouds up high. John watched a silver speck and contrail move slowly from west to east.

  “Have you lived here a long time?”

  “Five years. It’s been in the family for almost eighty. When Mumsey died, the Big House went empty. Five years ago, my wife had some problems and we moved in here. I rebuilt the Big House. Added some of the outbuildings. Pools and tennis. Aviary. Heliport. Fenced the whole shebang.”

  “It’s like a paradise.”

  “It is paradise.” Holt chuckled then. “To me, anyway.”

  At the far corner of the grove the road forked—one turning to follow the trees and one leading straight. Holt went straight, guiding the truck up a hill, then down the other side. They were in the chaparral now, though it was not as dense as on the other side of the lake. Holt swerved down a narrow dirt road, scraping the truck panels on stiff red fingers of manzanita.

  Then the Rover seemed to stand up, and John found himself leaning forward, facing the dashboard, hearing the groan of the differential and the skidding of tires beneath him. The road rose steeply, leveled off, then rose again. Then came a long series of switchbacks, still rising. Finally the road leveled. A few minutes later, they rolled into a wide turn-out, and Holt parked.

  “Top of the World,” he said.

  They climbed another fifty yards to the top. The peak was leveled and graveled. Three large white marble vaults stood in a semi-circle at the far end of the level ground, facing a large stone table and benches. Atop each of the vaults was a statue. But John’s eyes were drawn to the doors of the vaults, their rich gold shining in the sun.

  “We’re at 1,300 feet,” said Holt. “Highest part of the Ridge. Best view.”

  John looked back to the south, in the direction from which they had come, then down to the windswept spectacle of Liberty Ridge. The lake, from this angle, was a deep cobalt blue, the island in its middle a circle of bright green. The hillsides rose above the lake and rolled for miles. The big house was a white box with a reddish roof and windows that threw the sun back at him in blinding silver rectangles. The outbuildings stretched out from it in a diminishing semi-circle. From here, John could see just how large the park-like grounds around the compound were, and how small the tennis courts, helipad and aviary looked. And all of this was bordered by the two hundred acres of Valencia oranges, which from here looked like a green ocean speckled with orange fish.

  “Not the same at night. Even from the observation deck.”

  “No,” said John.

  “Assessor taxes me on twenty-four mil. If I subdivided and went commercial/residential, you’d be talking a lot more.”

  “Are you going to do that?”

  “Hell no. I’ll protect this place ‘til the day I die here. Let me show you exactly where I’ll be buried. Got it all set up.”

  They approached the vaults. Patrick’s was on the left. His bronze likeness stood casually, with a couple of books in his hand, like a student pausing between classes.

  “I’ll always remember Pat as a reader,” said Holt. “That’s Carolyn and I—the sculptor based it on an old wedding picture.”

  The bronze Holts stood arm-in-arm like wedding-cake-figures, but the sculptor had cast details into their faces that made them seem almost human. “Carolyn’s insistence. She is a romantic. Was, anyway.”

  Valerie’s was to the right, flanking her mother and father. She was portrayed mid-step, with a springer spaniel trotting along beside her.

  “Nice,” said John.

  “Just had it done last year,” Holt said. “Wanted her to look adult. Val liked it. Said the whole thing up here is ostentatious, and I can’t argue that. So a man’s proud of his family. Of himself. No harm there. Doors to the crypts are finished in gold. Something, isn’t it, the way they catch the sun up here?”

  “It’s very beautiful.”

  “Come in. I’ll show you Pat’s urn.”

  Holt swung open the heavy door and John stepped inside the cool marble vault.

  “You don’t lock them?”

  “Don’t lock much of anything on Liberty Ridge. Don’t need to, which is just the way I designed it. There, that urn’s got Pat’s ashes inside.”

  It was a stout, low rectangle that looked to John like black marble. Holt stared at it and sighed. “I don’t expect it to mean much to you.”

  “Well, that’s not the point of it.”

  “Sure isn’t. God, I do miss that boy. Anyway, th
at’s the inside of Pat’s place.”

  Holt let John pass back out, then pushed the door closed. The gold, stamped with images of birds rising in flight, flashed in the sun.

  “Really something,” John said.

  They walked to the edge of the gravel and looked out. “It’s Val’s now. I’ve made enough pesos to see her great-great-grandchildren through their lives. It’s all paid for. Won’t break it up. Ever.”

  John breathed in the hot dry air. With the Santa Anas blowing from the northeast, the brush on the hillsides shivered stiffly and the lake rippled with uniform wedges. The ocean, far off to the west, looked bright and flat as a sheet of new foil.

  John could see the little chain of buildings that housed the Liberty Ops execs. He watched as a platoon of Holt Men—miniature soldiers in their black uniforms—loaded into four orange-and-black patrol vans.

  “It’ll be gone soon,” said Holt.

  “I thought it would be here for Valerie’s great—”

  “—Oh, Liberty Ridge will. But the rest of the county will fester up around it like acne. This is what it was. This is what our berserk and murderous ancestors lived and died for. The West. Manifest Destiny. The California Dream. All those nonspecific words. Well, here’s the specificity. Here it is, the soul of what people wanted. Look at it.”

  John gazed to the north, where the hillsides gave way to the endless housing tracts of Orange County.

  “Not that direction,” said Holt. “That’s the future. Ugly baby, isn’t it? Look south or west and look real hard, because what you see won’t be there long.”

  John watched a raven shoot down toward the Big House, then bank up high again on a gust of wind, wings almost vertical, tail angled to catch the air.

  “Too bad,” said John.