Ed Billings nodded. "Fast food, gasoline and toilets. That kind of describes our country, doesn't it?"
Pellam was distracted, since the man's gun--a very efficient Glock--moved toward his abdomen, now his groin. There's no traditional safety on a Glock. You simply pointed and shot. And the trigger pull was pretty light. Pellam felt certain parts south contracting.
"But his estate could exercise the option."
"No, we know the wife. She wasn't interested in real estate."
Pellam said to Hannah, "You killed Barnes but you needed a fall guy, so picked up the hitchhiker, who would've taken the blame. It was going to be easy. Kill the real estate guy, plant some of his things on Taylor, a little DNA... It probably would've worked. But then--ah, got it now-- then came the monkey wrench. Me."
Hannah said, "After Barnes was dead I saw you with that fancy video camera of yours. I was afraid you'd got me on tape."
"And you undid my brake line." He gave a brittle laugh. "Sure, you know cars--the way you talked Rudy down with the brake lights incident. You were going go through the wreckage and find the camera and tapes."
"Except you got to the switchback faster than I thought you would and rammed into me."
Pellam understood. "Change of plans, sure. You decided to go for cocktails in my camper. You get the tapes when I went to the convenience store?"
"I got 'em." She nodded, presumably at the truck, parked nearby.
"But you still needed the fall guy." Pellam looked toward Ed Billings. "And you showed up to kidnap Taylor, dress up in his clothes and kill the trooper."
"Right."
"And now I kill Taylor and he kills me. End of story."
Hannah had lost interest in the narrative. "Yeah," she said. "Shoot him. I'm bored with all this crap. I want to get home."
Hamlin has a mall...
Just like the end of a Quentin Tarantino film. The filmmaker tended to fall back on the good old Mexican Standoff, everybody pointing a gun at each other.
"Only one thing," Pellam said, buying time.
"What's that?" Ed asked.
"When does she shoot you?"
"Me?"
"That's the scenario, situations like this. The girl sets it all up and then shifts the blame to her husband. He takes the fall and she rides off into the sunset with the money."
A brief pause. Ed said, "You know the flaw in that? You can only do it once. And so far we're worth more to each other alive."
He lifted the Glock.
Which was when a series of lights came on and voices started shouting, "Police, police! On the ground, drop the weapons!" and similar assorted cop phrases, all enthusiastically punctuated.
Pellam supposed that Sheriff Werther and the others were charging forward with their assault rifles and executing some nifty arrest procedures.
He couldn't say. At the first flash of spotlight he'd dropped to his belly and ducked. Another aspect of noir stories is that everybody has a gun and is always real eager to use it.
# # #
Fifteen minutes later Pellam was leaning against the side of Sheriff Werther's car. He handed back the tracking device--it looked like a garage door opener--that the man had slipped into his pocket at the sham arrest two hours ago, in front of the Winnebago.
"Worked pretty good," Pellam observed.
Werther, though, winced, looking at it. "Truth be told, seems there was only five minutes or so of battery left."
Meaning, Pellam assumed, that if they hadn't tracked him to the quarry in that time he'd now be dead.
"Ah."
But considering that the sheriff's plan had been thrown together quickly, it was understandable that there'd been a glitch or two.
When Pellam had been patched through to Werther after finding the trooper dead and Rudy injured, the sheriff had explained that the medical examiner had given the opinion that the man had been stabbed by someone who was short--five five or less, given the angle of the knife wounds. "And remember, somebody'd tried to drag the body to a cave? The trooper thought it was that they'd been spotted. Fact is, I decided they just weren't strong enough."
Those facts suggested the killer might be a woman, he explained.
Well, there were two women having something to do with the case, Werther had said: Hannah and Lis. And each of them had a male partner who could be an accomplice. So the sheriff decided to set up a trap to find out if either of them was the killer. But he needed Pellam's help. The location scout was supposed to let both Hannah and Lis know that he was searching for Taylor.
Turning himself into a fall guy.
Whoever showed up at the quarry to kill him would be the guilty party.
Taylor was at the hospital in Redding for observation. Ed Billings had whaled on him pretty bad. When he'd said good-bye to Pellam a half hour before, he'd smiled ruefully and said, "Hey, quite an experience, hm?"
"Good luck with the poems," the location scout had told him as he walked to the ambulance.
"Say," Werther now asked Pellam, "did you get anybody on tape at Devil's Playground?"
Pellam gave a sour laugh. "Not a soul."
"Hm, too bad. Though I don't suspect we need the evidence."
"You've got property around there, too, don't you, Sheriff?" Pellam asked wryly.
"Oh, what Rita was saying? Yeah, I do. Vacation house that I rent out. Helps for some of the expenses my son has."
For his autistic grandchild, Pellam recalled.
"You suspect me?" Werther asked.
"No, sir, never occurred to me."
It had.
"Okay... Now, about that little matter you and I horse traded on? It's all taken care of," the sheriff said.
"Thanks."
"You earned it."
Pellam then asked for his brother-in-law's phone number.
"Rudy? He can't get your camper in shape until tomorrow."
"This is about something else."
Motion in the corner of his eye. Hannah Billings was being led across the parking area in front of the quarry to a squad car. She glanced his way.
A phrase came to Pellam's mind:
If looks could kill...
# # #
Here's Rita at the diner, her name proudly stitched on her impressive bosom.
She's doing what she does best with diligence and polite mien, and with no tolerance for nonsense from former movie directors turned location scouts, from flirtatious poets, from killers noir at heart, from saints. Anybody. She takes waitressing seriously.
Pellam wasn't in the mood for frozen so he'd arranged a private vehicle rental from Rudy (yes, the bile-green Gremlin, which was, he knew, a very underrated vehicle--it could beat the Pinto and VW Beetle hands down, at least with the optional four-speed Borg-Warner).
He's finished a meatloaf dinner and orders pie with cheese. He didn't used to like this combo but, really, who shouldn't? It doesn't get any better than sweet apples and savory Kraft. He'd go for a whiskey, but that's not an option at the Overlook, so it's coffee, which is exemplary.
He gets a call on his Motorola cell phone. The director of Paradice is ecstatic that Pellam has secured a permit to shoot in Devil's Playground after all.
"How'd you do it?"
Put my life on the line to catch a femme fatale, he thinks, earning Sheriff Werther's friendship and assistance in all things governmental here.
"Just pulled some strings."
"Ah, I love string-pullers," the director says breathily.
Pellam thinks about suggesting a new name for the film: Devil's Playground. But he knows in his heart that the director will never buy it--he just loves his misspelled title.
Fine. It's his movie, not mine.
As he ends the call Pellam feels eyes aimed his way. He looks up and believes that Rita is casting him a flirt, which is not by any means a bad thing.
Then he glances at her with a smile and sees she is, in fact, looking a few degrees past him. It's toward a young man standing beside a revolving
dessert display, featuring cakes that seem three feet high. He's looking back at her. The nervous boy is handsome if pimply. He sits down at the end of the counter, isolated so he can gab a bit with her in private. He also will, Pellam knows, leave a five-dollar tip, though he can't really afford it, on a ten-dollar tab, which will both embarrass and enthrall her.
Ain't love grand?
The pie comes in for a landing and Pellam indulges. It's good, no question.
His thoughts wander. He's considering his time in Paradice, wait, no in Gurney, and he decides that, just like State Route 14, life sometimes is a switchback. You never know what's going to happen around the next hairpin, or who's who and what's what.
But other times the road doesn't curve at all. It's straight as a ruler for miles and miles. What you see ahead is exactly what you're going to get, no twists, no surprises. And the people you meet are just what they seem to be. The environmentalist is simply passionate about saving the earth. The hitchhiking poet is nothing more or less than a self-styled soulmate of Jack Kerouac, rambling around the country in search of who knows what. The sheriff is a hard-working pro with a conscience and a grandkid who needs particular looking after.
And the sexy cowgirl with red nails and a feather in her Stetson is exactly the bitch you pretty much knew in your heart she'd turn out to be.
Please read on for a preview of
THE KILL ROOM
the new Lincoln Rhyme novel
On sale June 4, 2013.
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
--Evelyn Beatrice Hall, The Friends of Voltaire, 1906
Tuesday, May 9
I
The Poisonwood Tree
Chapter 1
The flash of light troubled him.
A glint, white or pale yellow, in the distance.
From the water? From the strip of land across the peaceful turquoise bay?
But here, there could be no danger. Here, he was in a beautiful and isolated resort. Here, he was out of the glare of media and the gaze of enemies.
Roberto Moreno squinted out the window. He was merely in his late thirties but his eyes were not good and he pushed the frames higher on his nose and scanned the vista--the garden outside the suite's window, the narrow white beach, the pulsing blue-green sea. Beautiful, isolated... and protected. No vessels bobbed within sight. And even if an enemy with a rifle could have learned he was here and made his way unseen through the industrial plants on that spit of land a mile away across the water, the distance and the pollution clouding the view would have made a shot impossible.
No more flashes, no more glints.
You're safe. Of course you are.
But still Moreno remained wary. Like Martin Luther King, like Gandhi, he was always at risk. This was the way of his life. He wasn't afraid of death. But he was afraid of dying before his work was done. And at this young age he still had much to do. For instance, the event he'd just finished organizing an hour or so ago--a significant one, sure to get a lot of people's attention--was merely one of a dozen planned for the next year.
And beyond, an abundant future loomed.
Dressed in a modest tan suit, a white shirt and royal blue tie--oh, so Caribbean--the stocky man now filled two cups from the coffeepot that room service had just delivered and returned to the couch. He handed one to the reporter, who was setting up a tape recorder.
"Senor de la Rua. Some milk? Sugar?"
"No, thank you."
They were speaking in Spanish, in which Moreno was fluent. He hated English and only spoke it when he needed to. He'd never quite shucked the New Jersey accent when he was speaking in his native tongue, "hehr" for "her," "mirrah" for "mirror," "gun" for "gone." The tones of his own voice took him right back to his early days in the States--his father working long hours and living life sober, his mother spending long hours not. Bleak landscapes, bullies from a nearby high school. Until salvation: the family's move to a place far kinder than South Hills, a place where even the language was softer and more elegant.
The reporter said, "But call me Eduardo. Please."
"And I'm Roberto."
The name was really "Robert" but that smacked of lawyers on Wall Street and politicians in Washington and generals on the battlefields sowing foreign ground with the bodies of the locals like cheap seeds.
Hence, Roberto.
"You live in Argentina," Moreno said to the journalist, who was a slight man, balding and dressed in a tie-less blue shirt and threadbare black suit. "Buenos Aires?"
"That's right."
"Do you know about the name of the city?"
De la Rua said no; he wasn't a native.
"The meaning is 'good air,' of course," Moreno said. He read extensively--several books a week, much of it Latin American literature and history. "But the air referred to was in Sardinia, Italy, not Argentina. So called after a settlement on top of a hill in Cagliari. The settlement was above the, let us say, pungent smells of the old city and was accordingly named Buen Ayre. The Spanish explorer who discovered what became Buenos Aires named it after that settlement. Of course that was the first settlement of the city. They were wiped out by the natives, who didn't enjoy the exploitation by Europe."
De la Rua said, "Even your anecdotes have a decidedly anti-colonial flavor."
Moreno laughed. But the humor vanished and he looked quickly out the window again.
That damn glint of light. Still, though, he could see nothing but trees and plants in the garden and that hazy line of land a mile away. The inn was on the largely deserted southwest coast of New Providence, the island in the Bahamas where Nassau was located. The grounds were fenced and guarded. And the garden was reserved for this suite alone and protected by a high fence to the north and south, with the beach to the west.
No one was there. No one could be there.
A bird, perhaps. A flutter of leaf.
Simon had checked the grounds not long ago. Moreno glanced at him now, a large, quiet Brazilian, dark-complected, wearing a nice suit--Moreno's guard dressed better than he did, though not flashy. Simon, in his thirties, looked appropriately dangerous, as one would expect, and want, in this profession but he wasn't a thug. He'd been an officer in the army, before going civilian as a security expert.
He was also very good at his job. Simon's head swiveled; he'd become aware of his boss's gaze and immediately stepped to the window, looking out.
"Just a flash of light," Moreno explained.
The bodyguard suggested drawing the shades.
"I think not."
Moreno had decided that Eduardo de la Rua, who'd flown here coach class at his own expense from the city of good air, deserved to enjoy the beautiful view. He wouldn't get to experience much luxury, as a hardworking journalist known for reporting the truth, rather than producing puff pieces for corporate officials and politicians. Moreno also decided to take the man to a very nice meal at the South Cove Inn's fine restaurant for lunch.
Simon gazed outside once more, returned to his chair and picked up a magazine.
De la Rua clicked on the tape recorder. "Now, may I?"
"Please." Moreno turned his full attention to the journalist.
"Mr. Moreno, your Local Empowerment Movement has just opened an office in Argentina, the first in the country. Could you tell me how you conceived the idea? And what your group does?"
Moreno had given this lecture dozens of times. It varied, based on the particular journalist or audience, but the core was simple: to encourage indigenous people to reject U.S. government and corporate influence by becoming self-sufficient, notably through microlending, microagriculture and microbusiness.
He now told the reporter, "We resist American corporate development. And the government's aid and social programs, whose purpose, after all, is simply to addict us to their values. We are not viewed as human beings; we are viewed as a source of cheap labor and a market for American goods. Do you see the vicious cycle? Ou
r people are exploited in American-owned factories and then seduced into buying products from those same companies."
The journalist said, "I've written much about business investment in Argentina and other South American countries. And I know about your movement, which also makes such investments. One could argue you rail against capitalism yet you embrace it."
Moreno brushed his longish hair, black and prematurely gray. "No, I rail against the misuse of capitalism--the American misuse of capitalism in particular. I am using business as a weapon. Only fools rely on ideology exclusively for change. Ideas are the rudder. Money is the propeller."
The reporter smiled. "I will use that as my lead. Now, some people say, I've read some people say you are a revolutionary."
"Ha, I'm a loudmouth, that's all I am!" The smile faded. "But mark my words, while the world is focusing on the Middle East, everyone has missed the birth of a far more powerful force: Latin America. That's what I represent. The new order. We can't be ignored any longer."
Roberto Moreno rose and stepped to the window.
Crowning the garden was a poisonwood tree, about forty feet tall. He stayed in this suite often and he liked the tree very much. Indeed, he felt a camaraderie with it. Poisonwoods are formidable, resourceful and starkly beautiful. They are also, as the name suggests, toxic. The pollen or smoke from burning the wood and leaves could slip into the lungs, searing with agony. And yet the tree nourishes the beautiful Bahamian swallowtail butterfly, and white-crowned pigeons live off the fruit.
I am like this tree, Moreno thought. A good image for the article perhaps. I'll mention this too--
The glint again.
In a tiny splinter of a second: A flicker of movement disturbed the tree's sparse leaves, and the tall window in front of him exploded. Glass turned to a million crystals of blowing snow, fire blossomed in his chest.
Moreno found himself lying on the couch, which had been five feet behind him.
But... but what happened here? What is this? I'm fainting, I'm fainting.
I can't breathe.
He stared at the tree, now clearer, so much clearer, without the window glass filtering the view. The branches waved in the sweet wind off the water. Leaves swelling, receding. It was breathing for him. Because he couldn't, not with his chest on fire. Not with the pain.
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