The Triggerman's Dance

by T. Jefferson Parker

  “No.”

  “You should be.”

  “It scares me that I’m not. So I’ll do it alone.”

  “No, you won’t. I won’t let you. I never considered that, even for a second.”

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-SIX

  John had just ended his conversation with Joshua when he heard the cottage door open and close. He was upstairs in the cottage loft. His hands were jittery as he replaced the cellular unit under the sink cabinet, pressing it down into a box of cleaning products between two sponges of roughly the same size and laying the rubber gloves over them.

  “Val?”

  “No such luck, Bun-boy.”

  He heard footsteps across the hardwood floor. He quietly closed the cabinet and went downstairs.

  Lane Fargo sat in the living room, an open Sports Illustrated draped over a crossed knee and a paper grocery bag beside his leg. He looked at John with his standard expression—meanspirited and noncommittal.

  “Come to borrow some Pepto?” John asked. There was something in Lane Fargo so easy to detest.

  “Not exactly.”

  “You still look a little peaked from Uganda. Bed rest, plenty of fluids.”

  “Feel great, actually. I’ve made some solid formulations lately.”

  “A firm stool can’t be overpraised.”

  “Always talkin’ shit, aren’t you?”

  Fargo tossed the magazine to the coffee table, uncrossed his legs and stood, never taking his eyes off of John. He made a fast sighing sound as he turned. John studied Fargo’s dark, shadowy face. The vein throbbing in Fargo’s neck and the one throbbing in his forehead kept the same cadence. His black widow’s peak made him look simian. He had on his black t-shirt again, and the shoulder holster with the automatic jammed up along his rib cage.

  “Look, Lane. You couldn’t put me with Joshua Whatshisname or Rebecca Harris, so why don’t you just cave in and admit you were wrong? I’m clean. I won. Valerie kind of likes me, too. Go home and weep.”

  “That was the past,” he said. “You beat me at it, like you beat me out at Olie’s that day.” At this, Fargo’s dark visage crimped into a mock frown. “I’m more interested in the present, the right-now. Like in what happened to Snakey.”

  “Not him again.”

  “The plot’s thickened, Bun-boy. I found this little tape recorder in his room, remember? Listened to the tape that was in it last night, after you and Mr. Holt went up to see the sights in Little Saigon. Snake was just using it for an activity log—what you did each day while we were gone. He was watching you. You know, Snakey wasn’t a literary giant like you. But he was a good watcher and he loved to talk, though, so he just used the tape. Some awfully revealing notes on that tape, about you and Valerie. Quite a picnic on the island, wasn’t it? Meaningful, touching and all that. How’d you keep the sand from sticking to your pecker tracks? Anyway, he’s still up the second morning, watching you leave the main house just before sunrise. What a night. Then at 6:20—he says on the tape—you set out around the lake with your dogs, heading up into the hills. Says—this is right on the tape again—he couldn’t figure out how anybody could have so much energy after being up all night drinking and necking, so he’s going to follow, have a look. Do his job. That was the last thing he had to say to anybody, as far as I can tell. So, where’d you go that morning?”

  “I thought you just told me.”

  “How far up the hills did you walk that morning?”

  John went to the refrigerator. “Beer, Lane?”

  “No thanks. So, how far up?”

  John returned to the living room with a cold beer. He sat in a leather chair with his back to the picture window overlooking Liberty Lake. He popped the can and drank.

  “Lane, beat it. I’m done.”

  “Come on, John, humor me. Play along. You play along, I won’t tell Mr. Holt about touching his daughter.”

  “I told him anyway.”

  “Made a quick father figure out of him, didn’t you? I loved the Patrick-act for the Missus, by the way. I can see Holt and Carolyn falling for it, but not Valerie. Mister and Missus, they’re so fucked up after Patrick they’d believe anything. She’s got a bullet in the brain, but I swear some of it chipped off and got into Mr. Holt, too. Anyway, you told him you touched his kid. Good for you. Humor me anyway. Just cooperate for a minute or two. Show me how futile it would be to go to Mr. Holt and tell him we should bounce your ass off Liberty Ridge. He listens to me, you know. I keep him alive.”

  John felt tired and surprised. He was not expecting to be playing this game on this field now. But he recognized that he needed to play. Anything on earth was worth forstalling now, until noon Sunday.

  “I went a ways up the hill, Fargo.”

  “To the fence?”

  “What fence.”

  “Perimeter, chain-link, electrically charged.”

  “No, then.”

  “Why?”

  “Exercise. I couldn’t have slept. I knew that, so I took a walk with the dogs. It’s an old habit.”

  “When did you first see Snakey?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “You’re not observant, are you?”

  “Gee, Lane. I guess not.”

  “Then what happened to him, Bun-boy? He just fell in a hole up on the hillside and we haven’t found him yet?”

  John shrugged. “I guess. I don’t care what happened to him.”

  “Well he didn’t, and you should. I followed his trail and there was no Snakey, no hole. Wasn’t very hard, either, because the brush is dense and he was paralleling the path you used. You do take paths on these morning walks, rather than blazing fresh trails as the sun comes up, right?”

  “Right.” The tree, he thought. The gun. The hole. The box of toys.

  “The tracks up on the trail are from your Redwings in the closet up there. Plus, Snakey wore these ugly athletic shoes with the wavy pattern on the bottom. I remember because I told him to get some decent hiking boots if he was going to pay good money anyway. So, there was the Snake’s shoe pattern, going the same direction as your path.”

  John looked at Fargo with all the weary patience he could feign. “Next time you drag out my Redwings, put a little mink oil on them, will you?”

  “Two sets of tracks, heading up the same way. One was yours, the other Snakey’s. Nobody’s seen him since.”

  “Wow, this drama’s so thick you could cut it with a knife. I surrender. Where’d he go, Lane?”

  Fargo paced the living room once, his black combat boots thumping soft against the wood floor. “I don’t know yet.”

  “Yet.”

  “I made it to the property line, mostly by following Snakey’s trail. Tracks led me almost to the fence—twenty, thirty yards shy, maybe. And there, they mixed with yours. Yours were everywhere. His were, too. A young oak tree. The fence. Two sets of prints. I sat down on a log and tried to figure it. Snakey could have gone over the fence if the electricity wasn’t on, though that’s a helluva lot harder than just driving his Toyota away. He could have tunneled under the fence, then back-filled the hole. Not likely. He could have been lifted headfirst by God’s thumb and index finger, straight up out of there and into heaven. Naw, not Snakey, he was too much of a sinner for that.”

  John felt a low voltage buzz through his bones. Fargo missed it, he thought. He must have missed the hole. If he had found the hole I’d be a dead informant right now.

  “Maybe he did something really wild, like walked back down,” he said.

  “No prints leading back down.”

  “None you found. Maybe he prowled around a bit, looking for me, then headed down another way.”

  “Then you did make it to the fence.”

  “I didn’t see any fence.”

  “It’s only eight feet high and six fuckin’ miles long.”

  John did not stifle his yawn. “I had better things to think about. Besides, I’m unobservant, like you said.”

  “
You sized up those bikers in Anza pretty quick, for being unobservant. So you don’t notice the fence, but how’d you ever miss Snakey? Boot marks everywhere out there, Menden. Yours.”

  “Pit your hefty IQ against this one, Lane. Marks don’t put us there at the same time, do they? I probably got there first, and Snakey probably watched me from a bush or something. That seems about like Snakey’s speed—I can see him watching from a bush, hunkered right down in the middle of it like a big tick. When I left—which was after about twenty minutes—he came up and crabbed around and wandered back down the house some other way. There’s enough brush and rocks and sandstone up there, he could pick a way down an Apache couldn’t track.”

  John stood up and looked at his watch. “I hate to be rude and imply that you’re wasting my time, but you are.”

  Fargo stared at John, all his reigned menace concentrated in his gleaming, recessive eyes. “I just saw Val on my way over. Looked kind of shook up. Hardly even looked at me. I don’t like to see her that way. She’ll see through you before very long. She’s bright.”

  “What’s she going to see, Lane?”

  “I don’t know, yet. And it frosts my balls not to know.”

  “Sorry to keep disappointing you. Keep trying and you’ll be able to bust me for something, but it won’t be for disappearing Snakey. By the way, I want my wallet, guns and truck keys back.”

  “Right here,” he said, looking at the grocery bag. “Not the gun, though. Won’t need it. Mr. Holt’s orders.”

  “He tell you when to pee, too?”

  “He’ll tell me when I can bust your head.”

  “Bring help.”

  Fargo studied John again, his ugly little smile breaking mustache. “I don’t think you appreciated that slap on the ear he gave you last week. I think you’re just cool enough to pop a man for that if you could get away with it. You’re ulterior.”

  John held out his hand toward the door, palm up. “Must get tiring, being wrong all the time.”

  “I hardly ever am, about people’s characters. You and Adam getting kind of cozy? Touchy-feely through the e-mail?”

  “Print them out and read them.”

  “Have.”

  “Happy trails, then.”

  “That’s not a bad idea.”

  The door shut and John cursed himself for the stupid invitation. What if Fargo did go back up the trail and take another look around for Snakey?

  He downed the beer and cracked another. He fed the dogs on the deck, then stood there for a while and watched them eat. He watched Fargo disappear into the rough packing plant that was his home. He felt the wind beginning to move in off the desert now, warm, dry and with a hint of the great power behind it.

  In the shower his knees felt rickety, his hands shook and he felt again that something terrible was gaining on him.

  His dreams were filled Rebecca and Valerie. Both women opened their mouths to talk but he couldn’t hear their words. So he just took off, flying over them with a bedsheet stretched between his hands, riding the wind up off the earth and into dark heavens.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  By Saturday night the wind was strong. It folded the blades of meadow grass and exposed their paler sides, washing Liberty Ridge with the astringent smell of the desert. John walked toward the Big House. Holt had invited him to dinner, “big doings.” He looked out at the ocean where a yellow sun sank toward bronze water. There were too many things to think about so he picked the most important: Don’t rock the boat now. By noon tomorrow, you will be finished.

  He was surprised to see the dining table set up on the expanse of lawn that fronted the Big House. A green-and-white striped canopy rocked in the wind, its rounded edges flapping against the poles. Two servers—Liberty Ops trainees, John guessed—moved across the lawn with large chafing dishes on wheeled carts. Behind them came Carolyn in her wheelchair, pushed strenuously across the grass by her evening nurse. He could see Laura and Thurmond Messinger standing at the wet bar with Lane Fargo and an older couple John had never seen before. Adam Sexton waved at him.

  He crossed the lawn, stepped under the snapping canvas canopy and onto the parquet flooring, then headed toward the bar. Laura greeted him with a handshake and a peck on the cheek, surrounding John in a brief front of perfume. She had on a pair of jeans, a low-necked white blouse and a black jacket that showed off her ample front and ample suntan. Thurmond nodded to him over the rim of a cocktail glass, and extended his hand when his wife was finished. He was a balding man who wore the oversized black-framed eyeglasses John associated with eccentrics, clothing designers and old-time talent agents.

  The wind yanked the cocktail napkin from Thurmond’s hand. “Heck of a night for outdoor dining, I’d say.”

  His wife untangled a strand of long dark hair that had blown into her lipstick. “Damn Vann doesn’t have the brains he was born with.”

  “What makes you think he was born with any?” asked Fargo, his smile putrid as always and his short black hair peaking down over his forehead. He wore a black silk jacket, adorned with images of shrunken heads, over his invariable black t-shirt.

  “He is keeping you around,” said Laura, solicitously.

  “Why wouldn’t he?” asked Fargo. He acted affronted at first, then John saw it was not an act at all. Fargo caught him noticing this, then covered up by sipping his beer.

  “John,” said Laura, taking his arm, “I’d like you to meet Scott and Mary Holt of Salt Lake City. Scott is Vann’s older brother.”

  Scott offered John a grave smile and a gentle handshake. He was a shorter, leaner version of his brother, with the same prying gray eyes, stubborn jaw and abundant gray hair. He looked to be ten years Holt’s senior. His wife was broad-faced and handsome and smiled at John as if he had done great things in life. They both held glasses of what looked like sparkling water, with lime wedges afloat on the ice.

  “Just in for a visit?” John asked.

  “Well, quite frankly, we don’t quite know why we’re here,” said Scott.

  “Vann practically had to beg him,” said Mary.

  “That’s not true, Mary.”

  “I mean . . . L.A.’s not our favorite place.”

  “Pat! Pat!”

  John caught the aghast expressions on Scott’s and Mary’s faces as he listened to Carolyn’s voice, hesitated, then turned to greet her.

  “Hello, Mrs. Holt.”

  “Oh, don’t you Mrs. Holt me, my clever little prince. Kiss, my son?”

  John bent over and kissed her, then stood and awkwardly shook her hand.

  She looked up from her wheelchair at Scott and Mary, an expression of confusion on her face. “I’m so sorry, but we haven’t met, have we?”

  “Scott,” said Scott. “We just—”

  “—and I’m Mary, Carolyn. Nice to meet you, again.”

  “Oh, of course. The Ides of March. How could I be so forgetful? You remember my son Patrick, of course? Back from the White House?”

  “Well, sure we do,” said Scott, casting John a look of profound doubt. “Um-hm. The White House?”

  “Well, you know,” said John.

  “Top secret,” said Carolyn. “Where on earth has my president gone?”

  “He’ll be right out, Mrs. Holt,” said Joni, putting her hands on Carolyn’s shoulders. “Here he comes, right now!”

  Grateful for the diversion, John turned to watch. Holt walked across the lawn buttoning his blue blazer, looking out toward the ocean, lifting his nose like a dog to smell the air coming in from miles away. He moved deliberately, like a man willing to learn something with every step. He looked positive and alert, but preoccupied. John could see the worry lines in his forehead and the inward cast of his eyes as he stepped under the canopy, nodded to Fargo and Laura, then came toward the bar.

  John moved to the edge of the canopy away from the house and watched the flat-bottomed crescent of a sun evaporate into the ocean. As always he waited for the flash of
green; as always it failed to show. He walked out onto the lawn. To the north he could see the Valencia groves shimmering in the wind and the fading light. The western hillsides were autumn yellow with patches of green in the tight, shaded folds. The lake was buffed to a dull silver patina by the wind and the big Norfolk Island pine on the beach swayed with each gust. John imagined the wind whistling through Rebecca’s bones, and then he unimagined it.

  Adam Sexton walked up with a lovely blond woman he introduced as his wife, Odessa. She offered her hand and John shook it.

  “Did you get my message?” Sexton asked.

  John nodded. “Not sure what you were after.”

  Sexton looked at Odessa, then took John’s arm and guided him outside the shade of the awning and into the sun. His voice was confidential now with none of his usual swagger.

  “All I’m hearing is good things about you from Vann. He’s taken. I think his daughter might be, too. I just want you to know that you’ve got a friend in court. I want you to know I believe you’d be good here. Whatever you’re doing, you have my endorsement.”

  “What do you mean, doing?”

  “Everybody’s doing something. It’s all a game. Everything. That’s just a fact of life.”

  Sexton looked at him with an odd expression, a mixture of acknowledgment and acceptance. “So, whatever your game is, keep it up and play it well. There’s room on Liberty Ridge for good people. People like you.”

  “Thanks, Adam.”

  “Keep your eye on Fargo, if you aren’t already.” With that, he clasped John’s arm and returned to Odessa.

  Valerie was coming across the emerald lawn. He watched her walk on the grass, her red high heels in her right hand. Her red dress with the white polka dots looked fifty years out of date, and unmeasurably beautiful on her. Her hair was up. When she saw him, she raised the hand with her shoes in it in greeting. Then she smiled and ran across the lawn to him, threw her arms around his neck and swung him around, kissing him on the mouth. Everyone under the canopy was watching.

  “Hello, Mr. Menden.”

  “Miss Holt.”

  “Happy Saturday night.”

  “Back at you, young lady. Disengage. We’re creating a scandal.”