The Triggerman's Dance

by T. Jefferson Parker

  “Your dream is telling you to stick around, too.”

  Her breathing was a little faster now. John could smell the thin sour vapors of liquor coming up from her face. She pressed harder against him.

  “And when you came here, John. I wondered, is this the dark one or the light one? Is this the guy who’s gonna make my dad disappear. Or the guy who’s gonna love me? Then I realized it’s one and the same guy—that’s what the dream’s about—it’s about one thing turning out to be the other. And here it is a few weeks since you arrived and you do what the light guy does and Dad’s sure enough gonna die. What the hell am I supposed to make of all this, John?”

  “Not sure.”

  “What’s your real name?”

  “John Menden.”

  “Just checkin’.”

  “Hold me.”

  “I am.”

  “I should barf.”

  “Come on, then.”

  He helped her off the bed and into the bathroom. Through the closed door he heard the toilet flush, then flush again, then flush once more. Water running, splashing, the sound of a soap bar thudding against the sink. Then the door opened and she came out with an air of minor replenishment.

  “Okay?”

  “Little better. I still got the spins.”

  “Lie down.”

  “Think I’d better sit up straight.”

  She sat in a big armchair that overlooked the railing and faced the window of the living room. She put her feet up on the wooden staves of the railing. John stayed where he was, on the foot of the bed, still holding the now-warm washcloth.

  He stared out the window on which their reflections blended with the darkness outside, with the sycamores by the lake shaking in the wind, with the lake surface rippling left to right in the broad path of light where the moon beamed down. Looking at the glass it was hard for him to tell where one thing ended and another began. He tried to see one image at a time, clearly, because he wanted to feel in his heart one thing at a time, clearly. He did not want confusion, complication or compromise. He did not want to believe that for some questions there are no good answers, for some problems no solutions. So he tried to isolate the outline of a tree against the water. But the thin autumn branches became the ripples and the tree was gone—not lost to the water, really, but joined into it. Same with the reflection of Valerie. She became the room behind them projected back from the window, then became the water itself, her shining eyes just another pair of silver flickerings on the lake.

  This woman can mean nothing to you because Rebecca meant everything.

  “Can I get you anything?” he asked her reflection.

  She wrapped her arms around herself. He could see her head swaying very slightly. Her hair fell down around the sides of her face and in the window the white polka dots on her dress became the stars.

  “A cure for Dad. A declaration of your undying true love for me. Something for my head.”

  “I’ll get some aspirin. You get in bed.”

  “One outta three. Not bad. I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “For what happened to your girl.”

  She was under the covers when he came back. Her voice was just a whisper now, fading:

  “Thank you for taking care of me.”

  “It’s an honor.”

  “You always say the right. Thing . . .”

  “I mean it.”

  “Scariest thing. Scariest thing tonight was the way Lane looked at me when I said I’d run the Ops.”

  “Lane wants it for himself.”

  “Mine, now.”

  “He’s going to fight you for it.”

  “Can take him. Easy. Easy . . .”

  Soon she was breathing deeply.

  Downstairs he checked his messages:

  THOUGHT YOU MIGHT LIKE SOME FRIENDLY MAIL. STILL SHAKING FROM ALL WE DID TOGETHER. MUCH TOO SOON TO SAY I LOVE YOU BUT I DO SO ALL COMPLICATIONS STEMMING THEREFROM ARE YOURS. FEEL A CELEBRATION COMING ON TONIGHT. YOUR EX-VIRGIN QUEEN–

  VAL

  AM UP AND RUNNING AND FEELING BETTER. STAY IN TOUCH.

  SNAKEY

  LIKE THE MOVIE? KNEW THEY WOULD. WHEN’S IT ALL GOING DOWN?

  He played me well, thought John. Kept me dancing under pressure when he knew all along. Had he found the toys? The hole? Had the waitress at Olie’s ID’d Joshua somehow, put them together? It really didn’t matter how. It was Fargo’s job to know, and he had done it.

  What did matter was that Fargo had landed outside the Bureau’s net for now—and if he’d destroyed the soundtrack, he might stay that way forever. Holt might talk, but it wasn’t likely.

  That left Valerie. What would be in store for her, alone on Liberty Ridge with a killer and a traitor? A thousand reasons to leave control of Liberty Ops to him? Certainly. And those failing, as they were likely to fail on as stubborn and devoted a daughter as Valerie, then what? A good, old-fashioned hunting accident?

  He walked outside and stood on the deck. Boomer, Bonnie and Belle looked up from sleep but showed him little interest, their tails knocking slowly on the wood. He looked out at the profile of Fargo’s darkened packing plant of a home.

  That’s all I can leave you with, he thought: the name of the serpent in your paradise.

  To this end he wrote her a short letter on his notepad, folded the sheet neatly and wrote her name on it. He set it on the bar that separated the kitchen from the living room, under the salt and pepper shakers, so it wouldn’t blow off. There was little in it about himself or what he had done or why he had done it. Just what he had learned about Fargo since coming to Liberty Ridge.

  In case Holt prevailed tomorrow—rather than Joshua—she might find it sometime when she was in the cabin, looking for some clue to where he had gone, wondering why he’d left so quickly. In that case, of course, she wouldn’t believe his words anyway. Her father would be around to smooth comforting lies over the truth. And Lane would take the long trip, also, sometime in the near future, courtesy of the man he had loved, feared and betrayed.

  Just as well, John thought.

  He went upstairs and lay down beside her. He wondered if there was any way she could forgive him for what was about to happen, and he knew there was not. He wondered where he would go tomorrow when it was over—back out to the desert, a motel, back to the Laguna Canyon house and the uneasy ghost of Rebecca. Maybe the ghost will be gone. Isn’t that what this was all about?

  He felt again that he was about to leave a place where he could do some good and go somewhere else, to a place he had never seen or no longer remembered, to a place not his, a place where time might or might not grant him the privilege of casting his own shadow.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-NINE

  All Sundays should be so restful, all mornings so clear.

  Vann Holt, in khaki pants and safari shirt, stood before one of the Africa dioramas in the trophy room. It was the scene where the bull elephant is caught mid-stride, his trunk raised and mouth open for a sonorous bellow that Holt remembered clearly from that hot April day on which he stood in the grass and let the big animal charge close—fifty yards, it was—before he squeezed the Weatherby 400 magnum load into the bull’s forehead, and the elephant didn’t even flinch. Holt remembered it all with precision: his methodical retracting of the bolt while the elephant came, the thunderous tremor of the earth under his boots, the way the bull lowered his blood-spattered head as he closed the distance, his big ears folded back and the knotty dome of his skull enlarging over the iron sights of the rifle, the second shot cracking through bone and brain, the stumble and graceful correction, the way one ear fanned out and the mouth dropped askew pouring blood and the tusks stayed aimed straight at him and the third shot that seemed to yank the animal’s head forward and down into the grass through which it dozed toward him, rear end still high for just a moment before the whole magnificent creation grunted to a ground-shaking stop ten feet from the barrel of his upraised gun. Holt had urinated.


  That was before Carolyn and Patrick, he thought, back when life left time for sport, excitement and challenge. A trophy from days of strength and happiness.

  “I thought you’d be in here, Dad.”

  “Hi, honey.”

  Valerie slipped her arm around his back and laid her head on his shoulder. “I’m sorry I got so drunk last night.”

  “It was a night for high emotions.”

  “I’ve never felt so foolish, and so sad, and so proud of you. Ah, Dad, why didn’t you tell me?”

  He snugged his arm around hers. “I told you in plenty of time, hon. There was no profit in doing it sooner.”

  “Isn’t there anything we can do?”

  “We can do whatever we want.”

  “I mean about—”

  “—I know. No. It just runs its course like anything else in nature.”

  “I knew that day would come. I just had it pegged for thirty years from now.”

  “What’s important is to live with grace and dignity, and die that way too. What I don’t want, dear girl, is a thousand long good-byes.”

  She shook her head against his chest and Holt could feel the warmth of her breath through his shirt. “I don’t want that, either.”

  “Atta girl.”

  “I’ll run the Ops when you . . . need me to.”

  “You’ve got lots to learn. And lots of time to learn it. I’m feeling good. We will have our hours and our days.”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you, Valerie.”

  She hugged him close then pulled herself away to stand before him, running her fingers down his clean-shaven cheek. Holt looked at the wet trails the tears had left on her face, the tangle of golden hair pinned atop her head with chopsticks, and the deep chocolate richness of her eyes—her mother’s eyes. Her lips were tightly pursed but her chin quivered.

  “We’ll get there, Dad.”

  “I know we will, dear child. Hey, I’m entertaining some not-very-interesting people for lunch today, around noon. Laura and Thur said they’d like to have you over to their place. I told them you’d be there.”

  Valerie breathed in deeply, then let it out. Holt hadn’t seen such sadness in her eyes since Pat and Mom.

  “I was planning to take my lunch over to the island. Just me. I’ve got some thoughts I’d like to be alone with.”

  “Then I’ll tell them you had a previous engagement.”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  She stepped forward and kissed him. “I want to say just one thing. I want you to know that I never did anything to you, or for you, that wasn’t done out of love.”

  Holt smiled. “I’m trying to remember a time when I doubted that.”

  “There will be doubt in the days ahead, Dad.”

  Holt felt that great choke of emotion taking hold of his throat, that big lump that seemed to catch just under his voice box and made his eyes grow tears. He reached out and they hugged again, but Valerie broke it off and backed away with an attempted smile.

  “I hear John’s running an errand for you later.”

  “Just bringing the client up for lunch. Rich lady from Newport, thinks her husband is fooling around. Not with his secretary, with her money. Of course.”

  “Glad to miss that one.”

  “I thought you would be. When you’re alone with your thoughts on the island today, send a pleasant one my way. I’ll snag it, and send one back.”

  “You got it,” she said, turning to leave.

  “Honey? Send Lane down here, will you?”

  Fargo appeared five minutes later, just like Fargo would, Holt thought, not there and no entrance, then suddenly sitting one seat away from you in the theater. Over the years he had become used to Fargo’s invisible arrivals and departures. He could see that the dark man’s hair was mussed from the steady wind outside and that Lane had hung his sunglasses over the neck of his black t-shirt.

  “Sunday morning cartoons, boss?”

  “How’s everybody seem to be taking it?”

  “Pretty good, Mr. Holt. Val was disappointed you didn’t tell her first.”

  “Scott?”

  “Can’t read a guy like him. He’s probably still talking to his God about it. Got them to the airport an hour ago. How are you feeling?”

  “Strong.”

  “How come you’re looking at a blank screen?”

  But Holt plowed through Fargo’s questions, as he did John’s and everyone else’s. “Val’s going to start taking over the Ops. She’ll need all the help and support you can give her.”

  Fargo said nothing for a moment, then: “She’ll get it.”

  “And when I go, she’ll be the one in charge.”

  “I figured it like that.”

  “Disappointed?”

  “Yeah. You and me built the Ops, not her.”

  “I don’t blame you. I’ve drawn up an agreement with the bank that will put two million in your pocket after I go. It’s separate from the estate plan and company by-laws, which I still haven’t gotten around to changing. Haven’t executed that bank arrangement yet. Obviously, I wanted to hear you out.”

  Holt could see in Fargo’s eyes the ill-concealed disappointment and the flicker of menace. “You always did right by me, Mr. Holt. When it comes down to it, I’d rather run the Ops than cash out, even for that much. I’m firm, there. I think you know that’s what I’m about. But if it’s Val’s show it’s Val’s show. Maybe I’ll take the money and split. I gotta little time to think, don’t I?”

  Holt studied his factotum and felt stymied—not for the first time—by Lane Fargo’s odd amalgam of subservience and ambition.

  “I’ll need you more than ever these next months, Lane.”

  “You got me, boss. I don’t have to say it, but I will anyway—I didn’t just stay here for the money. I stayed here for honest work with a guy who didn’t take any shit from the world. I stayed here to build something good with my life—Liberty Ops. Something that lets the little guy stand up to creeps and the government. I’ve always been proud to stand by you.”

  Holt reached across the empty theater seat and lay his hand on Fargo’s shoulder. He could feel the cool leather of the shoulder strap over the cotton.

  “Follow Menden this morning.”

  “I figured you’d want that.”

  “Let him know you’re there. Don’t want him to start thinking for himself.”

  “He’s not capable of it.”

  “Anyway, when you come back past the Big House, let him bring her up to Top of the World. You park here. Stay around.

  Keep your eyes open. Stay mobile. I need to know you’re out there, watching my back.”

  “That’s what I do best, boss.”

  Fargo stood to go, then sat back down.

  “I gotta favor to ask you, Mr. Holt. If you can arrange it. I’d like to take care of Menden when it’s time. I hate that cute face of his and I know what he’s doing with Valerie. It’d be good for me, if it’s all the same to you.”

  Holt nodded and Fargo rose again.

  “If it works out that way.”

  “I’d be grateful, sir.”

  “Let me ask you something, Fargo. You get the feeling something’s about to go down? Besides this thing with Baum?”

  Fargo actually raised his face to the air, like a bird-dog might, then crossed his arms over his chest. Holt had seen Fargo do this dozens of times: Lane’s way of assessing the moment, of judging the invisible physics of threat.

  “No. I’m not getting that.”

  “Good. Something just seems a little off to me.”

  “Damned wind gets on my nerves. But you should always listen to your instincts, Mr. Holt.”

  Holt did in fact sit in the theater after Fargo had gone, staring at the blank big-screen, listening to many things. He heard the wind moaning outside. He heard the cells replicating inside him. He heard Baum’s voice—the self-righteous tone of outrage she used on TV—but now she was pleading for h
er life instead of a full-scale investigation into Patrick Holt’s treatment of women. He heard Valerie’s and Fargo’s words. And he heard the quiet voice that always counseled him in times of engagement, now telling him that when he was gone, Fargo would do anything he had to to get the Ops for himself.

  John awoke at five a.m. after a dream in which Joshua, a six-gun in each hand, simultaneously blew away Vann Holt and John Menden. He was drenched in sweat. He listened to the sound of the wind rattling the windowpanes of his cottage. Valerie was huddled to the far end of the bed so he reached out and set his hand on her shoulder—so warm, so smooth. And now, he thought, it’s time to betray you. In his state of half-consciousness he tried to let his mind find a way to take down Holt without breaking Valerie’s heart. But the more he tried to find one, the more he awakened and the more impossible it became to even imagine such a way. It was the deal I made for you, dear woman, he thought, right from the beginning. Now comes the follow-through.

  So again his thoughts returned to Joshua, and the perilous course the agent had chosen. He had long understood that Joshua would risk everything he had to avenge Rebecca—this was the motor behind all that had happened in the last months. But not until last night had he realized that Joshua was willing to risk Baum, John himself, and even Sharon, in his unilateral charge of revenge. Everyone else would come second. John realized that on a primal level, Joshua needed to see him dead. John’s death would be the purest retribution for what John had done with Rebecca, the purest defeat of a rival. Why not? Love and hate are always beyond control, and Joshua was clearly consumed. It was a gut-tightening idea, and John tried to purge it. But it was there just the same, along with the image of Joshua’s face on the deck of his Laguna Canyon house last summer, when the agent pulled his gun and told him that he’d been looking for a way to contest John for Rebecca’s long-cold heart.

  With everything on the line at noon, John thought, Joshua’s loyalties will finally lie with himself.

  I’ll be there.

  But when? How? And to accomplish what?

  John thought of Holt, and the possibility that Holt would dispose of him along with Baum, if he should fail in this assignment. What would Holt really like to give him, the keys to his kingdom or a bullet in the head?