They found him at a turn in the creek maybe fifty yards from the steps. Gatts squatted at the edge of the creek, feet in the water. He wore tan shorts from which dropped skinny legs, no shirt under his black leather vest. Skin and bones, the overall look of somebody who lives more on chemicals than food. A bulge in the pocket could be a handgun.
Gatts was next to a sluice box popular with gold rockers, oblivious to their approach. But it wasn’t the sluice box he was messing with. As they got closer, Marco could see a thick metal tube. He was pushing something inside before screwing on a cap, then pushed the metal tube into a pipe imbedded in the bank. A rock soon covered the hiding place.
A perfect hidey-hole, Marco thought, especially when the water rose to normal levels and covered the whole deal.
“Neat,” Marco said quietly. “Guy’s got himself a little safe right here in the creek. No dogs would sniff that out. No DEA would think to look under rocks in the stream.”
They moved closer.
“That’s pretty damn nifty, Gary Gatts,” Marco said. “How you doin’, boy?”
Gatts jumped up, startled, nearly falling over, his eyes wide, as if he expected to die right then and there. He tried to collect himself.
“Jesus, you scared the hell out of me sneaking up like that. The fishing poles are up on the porch. Ask the lady in the kitchen.” His mouth uttered the words, but his eyes showed concerns of a different sort. He knew they weren’t looking for fishing poles, knew they’d seen what he was doing, and this was not a good situation. He didn’t appear to recognize Marco.
“We wanted some fish,” Marco said, noticing the dragon tattoo on Gatts’ right arm, the tiny gold studs in his ears that caught a spike of sunlight dappling down through the trees. “We’d have you catch, clean, and cook them for us.”
The expression on the man’s face said run, said get the hell out of there, eyes big as an owl’s.
“Settle,” Marco said. “Things better that way. You don’t remember me?”
“Holy hell…Marco Cruz. Damn, I heard you got killed in Mexico. Hey, dude, good to see you.” He said it but didn’t look like he meant it, eyes all jumpy and dilated.
Then Sydney removed her sunglasses—did it in a cool way—and the little guy recognized her. She did this little rise with her eyebrows coupled with a gotcha smile.
Gatts mumbled through his shock, “Sydney Jesup,” like she was the second to last person on this earth to have come back from the dead.
“How are you, Gary?” Sydney said. “Nice little place you got here.”
Marco said, “I hear you’ve come a long way since your pot-dealin’ days. Nice setup. People make deliveries; you put them here in your secret little safe. Pretty neat, Gary—your own full-service restaurant.”
Gatts rubbed his temple with his left hand, his right drifting back of his thigh.
“What do you want?” Gatts asked, and then, rodent quick, he spun around and started to run, his hand going to his pants pocket under his shirt.
Marco fired a warning shot in the water ahead of him. Gatts stumbled and struggled with whatever he was trying to get and Marco fired a second shot in the water. Gatts abandoned his struggle with his weapon, rolling half in and half out of the water as he screamed and grabbed his wounded foot.
“Get under control,” Marco said.
Gatts rocked back and forth as both hands clutched his right foot, his eyes wide and staring at Marco, who was on him fast, grabbing the little guy’s face and pushing it under. Marco removed the weapon from Gatts’ front right pocket, where it had gotten hung up. He lifted the gasping drug dealer’s head up out of the water.
Sydney reached for Gatts’ gun. “Finally, one of my own. Thanks, Gary.”
Marco dragged him up on the side of the rocky bank, the little guy squirming and pleading.
“Settle, Gatts!” Marco said.
Gatts, on his back now, his leg pulled up to his chest, his hands on the wounded foot, moaned like a baby.
“Nobody told you to run,” Marco said. “You try and pull a gun on me and you’re still alive, makes me wonder what I’m coming to. Maybe it’s because I need some information bad enough to forgive you. Once.”
Sydney took a nearby seat on a rock just above and out of sight of Gatts’ eyes, saying, “Listen to your old buddy, Gary. He’s not the nice guy you once knew. He’s the nastiest bastard I’ve ever run into, and I’ve been around the block. He’ll hurt you slow and mean before he kills you if you don’t listen to him and answer his questions.” She prepared her cell phone to capture whatever transpired.
29
Gatts struggled with a nod of submission. Water bounced off his head, dripping onto his face. He muttered plaintively, crying out in pain and fear, “What do you want? I got some cash. Take it. C’mon, man, take my stash. Anything. Whatever you want, just don’t kill me. Don’t kill me, man. We go back, you and me. We had fun. Memories, you know. Good memories.”
Marco dragged him back to the bank, next to his drug cache. “You’re hardly worth a bullet. I might just drown you, though. Let’s see what you got. And get calm. I hate talking to excited people. Brings out the worst in me. Before you know it, the vultures will be circling.”
“Take it, man. It’s yours. I just make the connections is all. It’s pretty big money there. Take it. Just let me get out of here. I’m begging you, man, don’t kill me.”
“You don’t shut up, I’ll have no choice.”
Gatts shut up. Marco pulled the rock aside, pulled the tube out, unscrewed the cap on the end, then reached in and pulled out some plastic bags. He laid them on the nearest flat rock.
“What we have here,” Marco said, dumping the remaining contents of the cylinder out on the flat rock, “is a CVS pharmacy of hardcore drugs.”
“How do you think,” Sydney said as she wiped down the small revolver, “a guy like Gatts would do in prison?”
“He’d become popular fast food. Be buying and selling him the way he buys and sells these joy bags.”
“Where are these headed?” Sydney asked. “You provide for the big parties?”
Gatts didn’t respond. He was in obvious pain and afraid he was going to be killed. Marco gave him a little tap with the gun. Gatts yelped, one hand leaving his foot to grab his head.
“Yes. Yes.”
The bullet had cut through the outside of his left sneaker from top to bottom, just behind the toes. He was sitting half in the shallow water, tears rolling down his cheeks, blood trailing downstream, curling with the flow of the water.
“These for the big bash next weekend?” Sydney asked. “Thorp’s Great Gatsby Gala?”
Gatts nodded. “I’m just the delivery guy. I don’t even own this place.” He nodded to the restaurant. “I’m just managing it for some people.”
“Some people?”
“I really don’t know who they are. Just some real estate company. I think the lawyer, Rouse, has some connection to it.”
“That’s Thorp’s buddy, partner, and next door neighbor,” Sydney said. “He’s the real power behind the throne.”
“Jesus, my foot hurts bad. Damn!”
“You once worked for Shaun Corbin when they came in by seaplane to Fallen Leaf Lake, didn’t you?” Sydney asked.
Gatts looked like he didn’t want to answer that, but a little move by Marco altered his attitude.
“Yes.”
Sydney moved a little closer and, now behind Gatts, said, “You want to stay alive, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. I have a few simple questions for you.” She massaged the back of his neck with the gun. “You answer them correctly and you’ll have a good chance of getting out of here alive. You don’t, I’m going to leave you two alone. I’m a little squeamish.”
Gatts had a look on his face, the skin drawn back, nostrils wide, fear crawling out his pores.
Marco leaned down and smiled as evilly as he could. “She’s not kidding. I’d answer her questions. And the thing to remember is, we already know a lot. We talked to people. She catches you in a lie, she’ll walk away. She walks, you’re completely and royally screwed.”
“Who ordered Karen Orland and her unlucky boyfriend killed?” Sydney asked.
Without hesitation, a very scared Gatts said, “You know it was Thorp.”
“Who did the killing?”
“I don’t…I’m just tellin’ you what I heard, what went around. I don’t know who the doer was. That’s the God’s honest truth.”
“Tell me what you know about me getting shot at the hatchery Sunday afternoon,” Sydney said. “Be careful how you answer. You make a mistake, lie, there’s no coming back from that. Don’t contradict things we already know. We just want corroboration.”
The expression on Gatts’ face made it seem he’d decided it was best to get on their side and find a way out. “You probably want to talk to Shaun Corbin about that.”
“And why is that?” Sydney asked.
“That moron came up here—”
“Corbin?”
“Yeah. A week ago…gets drunk and starts shootin’ off his mouth how he’s gonna be a big deal. Settle issues. You being the issue he’s gonna to settle. He’s got a small brain, big mouth. I didn’t buy it. I didn’t think he would actually go after you.”
“Thorp wasn’t behind it?” Marco asked.
Gatts hesitated. “Well, yes and no. This is gonna get me killed for sure.”
Sydney said, “Better later than now.” She turned to Marco. “You think now he’s going to start lying? Maybe a bullet in the other foot will get him to tell us what we want to know.”
Sydney cocked the revolver.
“Wait, wait! Okay. Don’t shoot,” Gatts cried.
Marco said, “She sees that little telltale hesitation that precedes a lie, she’ll put another bullet in you.”
“Corbin was mouthing off about some heavy hitter coming in to take care of her,” he said, nodding back toward Sydney. “It was set up for after the big Gatsby party next weekend. I didn’t know if he was talking out his ass or what. He’s a major bullshitter, but sometimes he knows things. He’s got a string of hookers who work the party circuit. He finds out all kinds of dirt on people. So he’s talking how he’s gonna save his cousin some money. Starts blabbering how he can do the job and make himself a hero. Like I said, he’s a moron.”
Marco glanced up at Sydney. “You know Shaun Corbin?”
“Yes. And he fits the description perfectly. Short, fat, not the brightest star in the galaxy. I didn’t think of him, but he’s perfect. I think we got our guy.”
“See?” Marco said. “That may have just got you some more time on this earth. You might want to make good use of it and get the hell out of Dodge.”
Sydney said, “By the way, who set up the security system for Rouse? Was that Dutch Grimes, by any chance?”
“Dutch Grimes sets up the systems for all the bigwigs. High-tech stuff.”
“He still live in South Lake?” Sydney asked.
“He’s got a place up Keller Road where you make the turn to go to the ski resort. He’s not that far from where Corbin lives.”
Marco looked at Sydney. “We got what we need?”
“I think we do. Gary, I don’t want you leaving town right away,” Sydney said. “I want you to get that foot fixed up. Go to a hospital in Reno, tell them you shot yourself accidentally. Then, for the big Gatsby party, you go ahead and make your deliveries as usual. That way, nobody’s gonna get all worked up and start hunting you down. After you finish, you can take a nice, long vacation. Let me show you something.”
Sydney came down where Gatts could see her. She showed him some of what was on her smartphone video. “You do like you’re told. Otherwise, this will be everywhere you don’t want it to be. You cooperate, in time, I’ll get rid of it. We have nothing personal against you.”
Gary Gatts, utterly beaten, nodded. They left him sitting there in the water next to his drug cache, holding his wounded foot.
As they climbed the stone steps, Sydney said, “We do good work. Bad cop, worse cop.”
“How’s the leg?”
“Not bad. Sore. How are you?”
“I’m adjusting to my new reality,” Marco said. “In some ways, it’s a lot like my old reality.”
“Sorry about that.”
“Yeah, well, it’s what you get picking up strange girls on the road. They all come with some kind of baggage. What are you thinking of doing with Corbin?”
“I want some information and, like Gatts, I want him on video. That video, I’ll use to pay him back. I’m not up for killing him myself. But I know who wouldn’t hesitate. Once we have that, you’re free and clear.”
“You?”
Sydney threw a look at him. “If Corbin has all this inside information, I want it. If it’s good enough, I’ll find some way to use it. I’m going to get to Thorp one way or another—or he’s going to get to me.”
“Maybe it’ll be enough, you’ll just have to give it to the right people.”
“Maybe,” she said. “We had some very good information once before and it just sort of vanished. This time, I’ll be more careful.”
“I might not be there to pick you up after the next hit attempt.”
“I thought you were starting to like me?” Sydney said in a seductively mocking way.
“Oh, I like you just fine. Maybe even a touch more than just fine. But I promised myself no more crusades. Shaun Corbin shot a Shelby, and for that he has to pay. It’s my last stop on the road to freedom.”
He sensed that she didn’t believe him, and he didn’t know how convinced he was either, but it sounded good. As they headed back to where the car was parked, he said, “You asked him about some guy, Dutch, who installed a security system. What are you thinking?”
“We’ll talk about that after we talk to Corbin. Once I understand some things, then talking about Dutch might make some sense.”
30
Nine-thirty in the morning, the sound of stones crunching, a vehicle coming into the driveway startled Leon awake. He moved slow, carefully lowering the recliner to avoid noise.
He couldn’t believe he’d slept that hard. He was upset with himself. It had to be the jet lag and the mountain air, and maybe the extra exertion of the fight with the crazy old man on the mountain. Assuming it was Corbin coming home, he said in a barely audible voice, “About damn time you showed.”
He checked the chamber in his gun and seated the clip. The silencer was in firm as he moved to the side of the window and observed the target coming up to the door talking loud on his cell. Man had any sense, he would have been long gone. Listening, Leon heard him say as he started to unlock the door, “Just get the fuck over here with my money, Kora, right now, or I’m gonna make your life more miserable than you can imagine. I’ll destroy you with a couple clicks of the mouse.”