A short, fat guy came in swearing under his breath, dropping his keys and phone on the table by the door, muttering ceaselessly. He looked like shit. Like he’d been on a major binge, stains on his shirt and pants.
“About time you dragged your fat ass home,” Leon said, sitting back down in the recliner, smiling at the man, the compact HK with silencer resting on his knee.
So this poor excuse is the cause of the mess.
Corbin froze, his eyes locking on Leon’s weapon with appropriate shock and fear. Then he glanced at the things Leon had pulled out of his suitcase and his backpack that were now spread all over the tables, ottoman, chairs.
“Relax, boy,” Leon said. “I’m on your side.”
Corbin couldn’t find his tongue, seemed to be considering a run, but where? How fast could fat boy go before a bullet caught him? Two feet?
“Don’t even think about it,” Leon suggested. “I’m not your problem. I’m the solution to your problem.”
He paused to let it sink in, then said, “I’m not familiar with this area, so I’m gonna need your help. You being a hotshot PI and all.” Leon waved his gun, Corbin still fixated on it, not looking like he was feeling any relief from what Leon was telling him.
“After that, I’m going home and you can carry on,” Leon said. “I figure you’ll be groveling and apologizing for a year to two.”
Give the fool a sense of survival. Unlike the old man, this yokel didn’t seem to have much attitude besides fear and stink. Guy was coming off an epic bender.
“I’d have you fix breakfast, but I don’t trust anything in this place. You’re a real pig, my friend,” Leon said, then added, “Go ahead and breathe. While you’re at it, remove your piece, slow, fingertips. You know the drill. Put it on the table there. You got a backup, do the same. You move too sudden, I’ll kill you sudden.”
Leon smiled his much practiced De Niro
Taxi
smile, eyes wide, evil grin.
Corbin did what he was told, hands trembling, confirming Leon’s thought that he was coming off a serious binge.
“Sit here,” Leon pointed to the wicker chair with the filthy cushion.
Corbin lowered himself awkwardly into the chair across from Leon, eyes glancing at the coffee table full of tapes, pictures, and notebooks.
“I’m curious,” Leon said. “How is it that the DA’s investigator is still walking around? How’d that happen?”
Corbin finally got his vocals working. He said, albeit meekly, “I shot her…point blank.”
Leon nodded. Played with the HK. “Somewhere between point and blank, you didn’t get the job done. What I hear, you weren’t the one who was supposed to do the job in the first place. You botch a hit, it just makes it all the more difficult for a pro to come in and clean up your mess, don’t you think?”
Corbin seemed uncertain how to answer. What he finally said was, “It was a target-of-opportunity kind of deal. So—”
“Target-of-opportunity kind of deal? Interesting way to put it. What made it such a deal?”
The guy hesitated, thinking, unsteady. He had tiny hands with stubby fingers. He said, “She was alone in the hatchery. Perfect situation.”
His goddamn hands are freaky.
Leon studied this fool for a moment. “Perfect, was it? Government property. You kill somebody there, it brings in the feds. What kind of deal is that?”
Corbin said nothing.
Leon, his De Niro smile splitting his face, said, “You got your stuff packed like you’re headed on a long vacation.”
Corbin stared at him, and he noticed the guy had a nasty mole in the center of his forehead. Leon said, “How come you never got that mole taken off?”
“What?”
“The mole. That ugly mole in the center of your forehead. Why didn’t you get it removed? You don’t look in the mirror, see how ugly that damn thing is?”
I’m gonna take that fucking mole!
“I…I guess I just got used to it. Didn’t notice it.”
“Relax, molehead. Nothing’s going to happen. We’re just going to talk, straighten this out. You’re family. That’s makes you safe. Nobody wants to kill family. Thorp doesn’t kill family.”
Corbin didn’t appear to buy that. Whatever was going on in that addled brain of his suddenly landed on an idea. His face lit up. He said, “I’ll tell you what. You want to make some real money? I’m talking millions.”
“A deal?” Leon asked.
“Yeah. I mean something really big. Listen, man, I got all the skinny on what goes on over at Incline. The big gambling tournaments. Whatever you’re getting paid is peanuts compared to what’s available to somebody wants to get rich and get rich fast.” While he talked, he made all these little twitches, like a teen girl on her first date.
“Big?”
“You wouldn’t believe,” Corbin said.
Beads of sweat popped out on the guy’s nose, forehead and upper lip. Fear ran riot through his veins.
“I’m talking maybe fifteen, twenty mil. I can work something with you. I know where that cash will be, and I know how to get to it.”
“That’s big money, alright,” Leon said. “Where is all that money? Under the house? Buried in the desert? A gold mine you know about?”
“No. Listen, the man you’re working for…Thorp…his lawyer is like the secret Swiss bank of Tahoe. This big Gatsby weekend coming up, there’ll be so goddamn much money rolling in here, you won’t believe it. Look, we can work something out.”
“You got the skinny, right?” Leon asked.
“Yes.”
“Isn’t that like the whole
naked
truth. No clothes covering the truth. By the way, that thing on your forehead is distracting as hell. Like you got three eyes. I mean, Jesus, man, the only people could stand that, wouldn’t be distracted, is some dot-headed Hindu.”
Corbin said nothing.
“Write down the password to get into your laptop,” Leon said. “I think we can work out a deal.”
“Why is that necessary?” Corbin asked in a pleading, little girl’s voice.
Leon smiled cold. “I want access to your laptop. Don’t ask
why
ever again.”
Leon tossed a small notebook on top of a pile of sex photos on the coffee table. Then a pen. Corbin, hand trembling, wrote the password down.
Then Leon took the notebook and pen back, and he tapped the top nude picture. “What’s with this girl?”
“Kora North. She’s on my string. Party girl. Top of the line. She owes me some money. Wants some of her…pictures and stuff back.”
“That who you were yelling at on the phone?”
“Yes. She’s on her way over. And she can confirm what I’m telling you about the big payday.”
Leon picked up the picture. “Nice. Very nice.”
“Top of the line. Prime. Kora North is hot as they come,” Corbin said, sounding a little hopeful now. “She’s Thorp’s favorite party girl. Gonna play Daisy at the big party next weekend. The Great Gatsby Gala. Half the rich assholes on the West Coast will be there. Look, I’m tellin’ you there’s gonna be a ton of money to be had, things are done right.”
Leon put the picture down, switched hands with his gun, and picked up Corbin’s Glock. “Perfectly fine weapon. You aren’t too good with this. You don’t practice, or were you drunk?”
Corbin started fumbling around for a good answer but Leon cut him off, saying, “Tell me about the big party.”
Corbin started to tell him about the party, how everybody dressed in Roaring Twenties outfits, about the outdoor band and the big poker game down in the game room, but Leon was sick of him now.
“Sounds too good to be true,” Leon said. He brought Corbin’s Glock up, leaned forward, and shot the man in the head, aiming for that mole.
No decent reflexes in the guy. He just stared in disbelief that he was about to be killed. He never moved.
Got it!
Blew the damn third eye back into the man’s brain. It vanished quick as an eel pulling back into its hole when a shark swims by. Not the usual place a suicide would shoot himself, so, if the girl came, it would be that she killed him before she committed suicide. It would be a murder/suicide, and it would work nicely.
Corbin’s head had hardly moved at all when the bullet hit. Man didn’t have enough brain matter even to slow it down. He just kind of slowly tilted back, his head resting on the corner of the chair like he was taking a nap, yet his eyes stayed wide open. The chair had a bullet-hole exit.
Leon said, “You thought you were cut out for the trade, did you? You’re not even in the same world. You insult me.”
Then he texted the client’s lawyer as he was instructed to do after each event. After sending the message, Leon then settled back to await the arrival of this hottest of all hot chicks, Kora North.
31
That Tuesday morning, when the message reached them, Rouse and Thorp were in the foothills, ninety miles down the mountain on the west slope of the Sierras. They were about to head back to Tahoe after having attended funeral services for a friend of the Thorp family.
The service was at the old, white church that stood stiff as a constipated Puritan on a hill north of the ancient gold mining town of Jackson. The graveyard, with headstones in jagged rows like rotting teeth, held many bodies from battles a long time ago.
It was dry and hot under the relentless sun, the hills burnished with the color of overcooked tortillas. After the funeral, they’d paid a quick visit to the ancestral Thorp estate, where his mother still lived, just off historic Gold Route 49—down from Thorp Lumber and Mining, a massive complex of corrugated-roofed buildings, mountains of logs receiving a mist spray to keep them moist in the summer heat.
“It’s our boy,” Rouse said, looking at the screen as he drove his Mercedes SL500 into the foothills. “Damnit, I don’t like this. Jesus, it’s like the wild west.”
“He’s cleaning up the mess,” Thorp said. “About time I got rid of the family idiot.”
“I don’t like it,” Rouse said again.
That made Thorp smile. They were passing the origin of his power and name, Thorp Lumber and Mining. In the big yards, the mist drew rainbows in the sky. Giant hoses, like anacondas, lay across the piles delivering the spray. The air trembled with the constant buzz of saws and thundered from the endless procession of logging trucks coming and going past the fifty-foot water tower that had a giant black T painted on it.
That’s me,
Thorp thought.
I own it. It’s mine, all mine.
He liked that he was the big dog. And in his mind, he hadn’t even gotten started yet.
As they headed up through the back roads, Thorp said to Rouse, “It’ll all be history. A new day. The future begins. The future Tahoe deserves.”
“What
I
don’t like,” Thorp said, “is that crazy bitch is still out there with this nephew of Cillo’s. I don’t like it. He finds out his uncle is dead, he’s going to be angry. Our boy has to get to them quick, so he has to do whatever it takes.”
“You can’t just have a rash of suicides. Who the hell is going to believe that?” Rouse whined. He was in his grumpy, nervous mood.
A hawk sailed high in the desolate sky in front of them.
“Don’t worry about it. That’s my business. I don’t care how many suicides there are. Nothing will track back to the killer or us because nobody is interested. This guy’s the best in the business, so you said. When he’s finished, it all works out, I’ll see if I can keep him on retainer. Or, make him head of our security operations.”
Rouse scoffed. “You don’t hire guys like that on a permanent basis. This could turn into a real disaster, bodies turn up all over the place.”
“You need to get some balls,” Thorp said. He thought of the days they were kids, he and Rouse playing among the ruins of places with colorful names like
Musicdale
,
Slabtown,
and
Blood Gulch
. Most were nothing more than historic landmarks, remnants of a few stone buildings where miners and “digger” Indians once resided before Thorp’s ancestors kicked them out and turned the land over to people who knew how to use it.
“Progress,” Thorp said, “does not come cheap, and it doesn’t come without a little blood. It’s the way of the world. Always has been, always will be.”
Having a killer on the payroll gave Ogden Thorp a sense of power and strength that was different than anything he’d known before. He had an instrument of death at his disposal. He could take care of anybody who got in his way. That was a big ego trip. He loved it. Put a big smile on his face. Now he understood the big boys in the big game. Didn’t matter if you were sending out a lone killer or a whole army, it was the same. And it was beautiful.
This is a great day, Thorp thought. This is the beginning of the greatest week of my life.
“We need to get back to the Cal-Neva,” he told Rouse. “I have guests arriving soon for the tour. Step on it.”
But in the back of his mind, there was one serious nag. Rouse was right about one thing—Cillo’s nephew. Once he found out his uncle was dead, he’d be on the warpath, and Thorp didn’t know exactly what that might mean.
So he chose not to think about him. That was his hired gun’s problem.
32
After leaving the restaurant and going back through Markleeville, Sydney and Marco passed the bikers’ motorcycles parked in front of the Cutthroat Bar.
Appropriate,
she decided.
Twenty minutes later, when Marco turned off 89 onto the Pioneer Trail, Sydney said, “I’d like to shoot the bastard a couple times, let him know how it feels.”
Marco smiled. He followed her directions, heading through a sparsely populated, heavily wooded area into a narrow ravine. Tight place. Hard in the winter back here.
“That’s it,” Sydney said, pointing to a nondescript wood-frame, brick-bottom house tucked into the hillside.
A familiar pickup was in the driveway. Marco said, “Looks like we’re in luck. Our boy just might be home.”
He followed the narrow road around the bend and looked for a place he could park in the trees, well out of sight of the house. She took a pair of binoculars from the glove box, and they hiked around the neck of the hill through the pines and a patch of aspens, the ground still soft from the spring runoff.
Sydney said, “Of all the places to build a house, he picks the spot the sun pretty much misses all day long.”