The Given (31 page)

“Do you remember this?” Kit asked, holding up the unsealed envelope stamped with Albert Zicaro's return address.

“I must have just tossed it in there.” Marin shook her head. “I told you. I just wanted to forget.”

But Kit needed her to remember. Opening it, she began to read aloud:

Dear Ms. Wilson,

My name is Al Zicaro. You may recognize it because I was one of the most prolific and illustrious reporters to ever grace the pages of your family newspaper. I remember you from the newsroom (though you likely can't say the same) working like a grunt in the pen and chasing down stories like you were really hungry, even though everyone knew you were heir to the throne.

“Bitter much?” Marin retorted now. Kit kept reading.

If you're anything like your old man, you're running that ship like the
Titanic—
thinking it's both grand and unsinkable. If you treat your present employees anything like Dean Wilson II treated me, then you're also a jerk.

As for me, I did good work for the
Trib
from the years of 1957–1988, and I'm doing it still. The enclosed map was sent to me by your brother-in-law, who was instructed to mail this to me by a woman named Gina Alessi. His note, which I'll show to you if you deign to respond, gives further instruction that both Gina and this map need to be kept safe. He was supposed to take care of Gina, I got the map. Apparently, you received something as well.

So why'd he send this to me? Because I'm the finest damned reporter this side of the Mississippi, that's why. But why not send it all directly to you, or wait and hand it to you over Sunday dinner? That is a mystery. All I know is his name popped up today in the obits, and something smells fishy.

Of course, I have my own theories, which is why I'll be coming in next week to discuss the matter further with you. But I'm gonna want something in return, namely to return to the
Trib
with full benefits, and exonerated of all charges levied against me when I left. (The protest out at the Test Site wasn't my fault, I don't care what the military says.) I do hope that at that time you will remember this great favor.

Most sincerely,

Albert Edward Zicaro

Kit looked back up at Marin, who was nodding slowly. “Yeah, it's vague, but I remember now. I figured he just wanted his old job back.”

Kit pulled out the map that Zicaro's letter had referenced. There was no way to date the map, it only held a cartographer's code in the lower left corner, but it was obviously old. Kit could tell from the way the streets she knew either ended in abrupt corners or lacked representation altogether. She was willing to bet the streets listed were a good match for those in existence in 1960.

Frowning, Kit worked back and forth between that timeline and the day this map had been sent, fourteen years ago. Her dad had obviously seen Gina Alessi someplace safe, then mailed this to Zicaro right before he was killed.

“So what's Zicaro talking about?” Kit said, looking up. “What did Dad send you?”

And, heaving a great sigh, Marin finally pointed to the far wall. “That.”

Kit glanced at her aunt's bulletin board, a giant swath of cork that was so crowded with papers and note cards and sticky notes that many had dropped to the floor beneath it. But Marin was pointing to the top right corner, where one sole slip of tracing paper was pinned . . . and had been for as long as Kit could remember. So long that I stopped seeing it, she thought, drawing nearer. She guessed that after fourteen years, Marin had stopped seeing it as well.

“I didn't know what it was,” Marin said, reaching up to carefully unpin it. “But it was the last thing your father ever did . . . that was clear. It arrived in my mailbox the day after he died. A total mystery, and one that died with him. I thought that if I pinned it up here, I would never forget. But time goes on, and well . . . sometimes it's better to just forget the past.”

She handed the paper to Kit. Age had added to its fragility, and lightened the lines scribbled randomly along the middle. Some had end points that were joined in sharp circles, but most were scattered and lacking any sort of pattern.

Kit lifted the tracing paper to peer through it at eye-level, and caught sight of Marin on the other side. Then she let her aunt's concerned face fade into the background, and keyed in on the darkest, largest circle. “Give me the map,” she whispered to her aunt.

Marin grabbed the map that Zicaro had sent her fourteen years earlier, and Kit lined the tracing paper atop it, just as she'd seen Sal DiMartino do in Gina Alessi's smoky memory.

“What is it?” Marin said, closing in.

“A treasure map,” Kit said, as the Las Vegas Valley took on new meaning and form.

One leading to a buried doll with diamond eyes.

CHAPTER TWENTY

T
he center mark on the newly recovered treasure map was the DiMartino family home, the exact place where Gina Alessi sent a little girl with a doll out to be abducted in 1960. Located in the Las Vegas Country Club at the height of kingpin Sal DiMartino's power, it'd also been the safest neighborhood in town. And it made sense that the boys would keep some sort of record of where they'd buried the bodies . . . DiMartino could use the knowledge as leverage with his victims' loved ones and enemies alike.

Of course, the city had grown exponentially since the drawing was made, and was now dense with tract homes in places that were once no more than a giant litter box. But some things couldn't be moved or changed, and by tracing ever-widening circles from the axis of Sal DiMartino's home, they tried to guesstimate where exactly the farthest end point now lay.

“The city is a bowl, hemmed in on all sides by mountain ranges. There's no direction key on this thing, but my guess is that this is the Red Rock mountain range,” Marin said, pointing at the uppermost corner. “Blue Diamond veers east of that.”

“Which would make this the Sheep Mountains,” Grif said, pointing west. He'd returned minutes before, carting burned coffee and stale doughnuts for them all.

Gnawing thoughtfully, Kit stared without blinking. Sunrise Mountain wasn't on the map at all, and neither was the valley's sister city, Henderson. Back then it'd been a scattering of trailers on a two-lane road leading out to Boulder City and the ever-impressive Hoover Dam. Her father used to call it Hicksville. However, that wasn't represented on the map, either.

“The scope is tight,” Marin said, seeing it, too.

“These are the Black Mountains,” Kit said, pointing southeast of the DiMartino home, and pulled out her smart phone to take a picture of it. If the map was lost again, she thought, at least she'd have a permanent record of it. “There's a luxury community there now, but it had to be damned near inaccessible back in 'sixty.”

And that's where the most prominently marked end point was.

Marin shrugged. “Well, there's only one way to find—”

Kit's phone trilled in her hand, causing them all to jump. It was not a jaunty rockabilly tune that had them all staring at the phone. No Elvis or Wanda Jackson or Johnny Cash to lighten the mood. Instead, this was the canned music of a tinny calypso that she'd assigned to the man who'd last threatened her in the middle of the night.

She answered it by not answering . . . just holding the phone to her ear.

“Let's try this again, shall we?” Justin Allen's voice rang with triumph.

“We already gave the files to the cops,” Kit said immediately, because he had to know this. She just hoped poor Zicaro hadn't had to pay for it.

“We want the map,” Justin said, and Kit's gaze shot to the yellowing paper that had been missing, and not, all these years. The one that only Zicaro knew about. She didn't even want to think of what they'd put him through to extract that information.

“I suppose we should thank you in a way,” Justin went on. “After all, you've made us very desperate men. That's why if there's even the hint of bacon on you when we meet, we'll put a bullet through old man Zicaro's eyes. Right in front of you.”

Kit glanced over at Grif, knowing he could hear everything and expecting to see his jaw clenched, fury riding his brow like a storm cloud. But that was the old Grif, the one who'd been granted a second lifetime. This one had only a prophecy and—Kit looked at her watch—sixteen hours left to fulfill it. Their eyes met, and he nodded.

“When and where?” Kit finally asked, and had to wait to take down the directions until after Justin had a good, long chuckle.

T
he diner that Justin named had anchored the corner of Charleston and Valley View for as long as Kit could remember. It was a simple line drawing of a building, an amalgamation of every diner ever built, every diner ever filmed, every diner that ever served runny eggs and soggy bacon. A long Formica counter stretched along the right-hand side, complete with red pleather stools bolted in place and the kitchen, bright and somewhat smoky, bustling behind it. The booths lay on the left side, closest to the large picture windows, and that's where Zicaro waited as Kit and Grif walked in.

Grif eyed Zicaro as they approached, taking the lead just slightly as Kit lagged behind, then glanced furtively over each shoulder and back again when he still didn't see Justin or his cronies. He
did
see that they'd somehow managed to find Zicaro another wheelchair, and that there were no visible marks on the old man. Overall it looked as though they'd treated him well, though if the grumpy expression on his face was any indication, they'd neglected to order him breakfast after depositing him there.

“Where are your captors?” Grif asked him, nodding that Kit should go ahead and sit across from him. Grif would remain standing guard.

“I don't know,” Zicaro admitted, and jerked his chin at the front door where they'd just entered. “They just dropped me off there, then told me to go inside and wait in the last booth.”

“Wait for what?”

One bony shoulder lifted up and down. “For you, I guess.”

That couldn't be all, so Grif just shoved his hands into his pockets and squinted around the place, waiting for something to happen. Kit's phone buzzed in her bag, and Grif recognized the ringtone she'd assigned to Marin, but they both ignored it in deference to the situation, and Kit pulled out the map instead.

“Is that it?” Zicaro croaked, throat obviously dry. Grif caught the attention of the waitress and motioned for her to bring water. It wouldn't do for the old guy to get dehydrated. He could use the moisture, too. He felt dry in the pores as well as the throat. Like his body was already readying to turn back to dust. “Is that what everyone has been fighting over?”

“Do you remember my father sending you this map fourteen years ago?” Kit asked, removing the tracing paper and pushing the old cartographer's drawing of Vegas in front of Zicaro. His eyes lit like kerosene.

“So I was right? My old story about the DiMartino and Salerno feud? My hunch about the map?”

Kit slipped the tracing paper atop the map, displayed the whole of the valley—and Sal DiMartino's drop zones—before him. “It seems so.”

Almost reverently, Zicaro used one thick-knuckled finger to trace each drawn line, his mouth moving silently as he recited the old locations in his mind. Finally, he looked up. “Holy God. Every body buried, every dupe and stooge, is on this map.”

“And,” Kit said, pointing out the mark nearest the Black Mountains, “a little doll with two very expensive eyes.”

“Jee-zus.” Zicaro seemed to be having trouble catching his breath. “No wonder everyone wants this.”

“Yeah?” Grif said, looking around. “So then where the hell are they?”

The waitress arrived just then, carrying three waters. “You mean your friends?” she asked, having overheard the question.

She set the clear plastic glasses down on the table, then straightened and wiped her hands on her apron. “What? You've been standing here looking around for almost five minutes. I'd have told you sooner but they gave me a twenty and said to wait until you called me over to let you know that they left.” She raised one dark eyebrow. “Y'all need menus?”

“No,” Grif said. The waitress rolled her eyes and left.

“So, that's it?” Kit asked, gazing up at Grif. “We're all free to go?”

“Don't have to ask me twice,” Zicaro said, and reached for the map. Kit shooed him away, and tucked it into her purse instead. Zicaro scowled, but it didn't matter to Grif who had it. He'd memorized the lines leading to the Black Mountains the second he saw it. It was as if the Cissy doll spoke to him from within the confines of her desert grave, and why not? He'd died because of that doll. Because of diamonds he didn't even value.

Zicaro led the way back out of the diner. It was immediately clear to Grif, even though he still looked around cautiously, that no one waited for them in the battered parking lot, either.

“Why do you think they just left the map?” Kit said, shivering against a gusting wind. Though it was early afternoon, the winter sun was thin in the sky and offered no warmth.

“I don't even care,” Grif admitted, surprising them both, but he felt lighter somehow for saying it. “If someone wants to go digging around in the desert for treasure that doesn't belong to them, then they can have at it.”

Because what good were jewels to a man laboring under the weight of celestial prophecy? Would they buy him more time with Kit? Would they grant him another life? He certainly couldn't take them with him to the Everlast.

And if he did have them, he thought, staring at Kit, he'd trade them for just a few more hours with the woman he loved.

“Hey,” Kit said, leaning close to peer up into his face. “We're still going to solve this thing, okay? You have to believe. Please, don't give up before—”