“Don’t panic, and don’t try and head-butt me or I’ll really get pissed and mess you up,” Marco said in a calm but stern voice.
Kora’s eyes widened. She stiffened when she saw Sydney, then Shaun Corbin’s body. She tried again to break away, but Marco swung her around and slammed her back against the wall.
“Calm down. We’re not the killers, and we’re not going to hurt you.”
The wildcat Barbie hunched her shoulders and arched back, rigid and defensive, ready to go off on him again.
Sydney said, “He’s telling you the truth, Kora. Relax. The guy who killed Shaun, I put some bullets in him. He’s lying somewhere up in the woods.”
Kora, realizing the situation was out of her control, smartly ceased her futile struggle.
“You,” she said, now recognizing Sydney.
“Right,” Sydney said. “Me.”
She put the shoulder bag Kora had been carrying on an end table and opened it. “Well, looks like we have money. Lots of it. And we have a gun.”
“Girl came prepared,” Marco said.
Sydney held up the gun. “Nice.” It had hardwood grip plates with a ruby embedded on either side. “What is it you came prepared for, Kora?”
“I don’t want anything to do with this,” Kora said. “Give me my bag, my money, and my gun and let me get out of here. I didn’t see anything. I couldn’t be happier that bastard is dead. I have some things here I want back, then I’m out of here.”
“If only things were that easy,” Sydney said. “Like he already said, we didn’t kill Corbin. When we got here, the man who did kill him was apparently waiting for somebody, and that somebody looks to be you. He had your nude shots out on the table. We got in a fight with him. He got the worst of it. Took off.”
“Why would he be waiting for me?”
“Maybe to have some fun,” Sydney said. “Maybe to kill you. We don’t have time to argue. What’s the money for?”
Kora said, “I was being threatened by Corbin. He had stuff on me. Bad stuff that would put me in trouble with Oggie Thorp and the law. I was buying it back. He did something bad, wanted to run, and needed running money. If you just give me what I came for, I won’t say anything to anyone.”
Sydney packed the big tennis bag with everything on the coffee table, then put Kora’s gun back in her shoulder bag. “Just be thankful we’re here and not the guy who killed Corbin. And the stuff that Corbin had on you, we own that now. So maybe we need to have a little talk. Just not here.”
Kora glanced at the body. No shock in her face seeing the guy dead. More like she was looking at some road kill.
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” Kora shot back.
Marco said, “You want that back—your money, car keys, and the tapes you came for—you’ll talk to us. You’ll cooperate with Sydney. Otherwise, you’ll be walking”—he held up her keys—”and your car will be parked in front of a dead man’s house. You’d be lucky if the cops got to you before somebody else did. So let’s go have a nice little chat.”
Kora stared at Marco.
Sydney said, “Let’s get out of here.”
Outside, heading for Kora’s BMW, “Sydney said, “Why was Corbin killed? What did he do, he was so scared he wanted to run?”
“I don’t know.”
Sydney stopped at the back passenger door as Marco got in behind the wheel. She grabbed Kora, turned her, and then showed her the bandages under her shirt. “Shaun Corbin tried to kill me. You know nothing about that?”
“No. All I know is he did something he was running from.”
Sydney studied her for a moment, then said, “Get in the front.”
Sydney got in back with the tennis bag and Kora’s shoulder bag. Marco keyed the engine and they left.
Sydney, leaning forward on the seat, said, “Kora, the guy who killed Corbin robbed my place and was apparently waiting for you for whatever reason, which means you’d be dead if we hadn’t shown up. Then he’d have come after me. So, the way I see it, we have something in common.”
“Where are you taking me?” Kora demanded, looking at Marco.
Marco said, “Just a ways up the road, where we can talk and see what’s going on down here in the valley.”
***
Standing in the trees two hundred yards up the hill from the house, Leon, still in brain-freeze, pain, and shock, watched as the threesome left in Kora North’s BMW, Cruz driving, Kora North beside him in the passenger bucket, Jesup in the back. They had the tennis bag. He couldn’t believe it. He’d lost his Glock and the bag with all the files, laptops, and videos. And his face was broken.
Everything in the neat, ordered world of Leon, in the way he usually planned, prepped, did careful surveillance, following a precise methodology in order to get a clean kill—all of it out the window. Trashed from the minute he’d set foot in Tahoe. And now this. He stared in shock as the BMW headed around the bend in the hill and disappeared.
What the hell’s going on? He ignored his misery for a moment. Is she with them or did they just take her?
He walked across the nape of the hill and down to his car, each step sending spikes of pain through his skull. He waded through dry pine needles and pine cones, then stopped, leaned against a tree, and felt sick.
I can’t die here. I won’t die here, goddamnit!
To ease and calm his mind, he entertained violent visions of revenge, getting the Jesup woman and giving her live to Thorp on the condition he got to watch the fucking lion rip her to pieces. Only violent fantasies tended to relax him. It had always been that way for Henry Craven Lee, aka Leon.
The pain exploded across the tangled wire of synapses in his brain like an electrical storm. He suppressed a scream. He couldn’t move his jaw. With tears fogging his vision, Leon cried inside, cradled his face, and tried to will the pain away.
He hadn’t taken a beating like this since he was a kid and one of his mother’s many boyfriends beat him on a pretty regular basis. The worst was the one who made him do things. The bastard who made him try and fuck the neighbor girl, the bastard jacking off as he watched two nine-year-olds. Then later, he beat the crap out of Leon to convince him never to say anything about it. He threatened the girl with death to her whole family.
At least Leon had gotten even afterward, when he’d thrown him out a sixth-story window. He still relished his first suicide kill, still the one he remembered with the most pleasure.
Breathing hard through his nose, Leon finally made his way to his car, every step pure agony.
They came for the PI to do what? Kill him?
Thorp was right about Jesup. She was a nut case. And what was this with Kora North? She come to pick them up? Had she dropped them off? Was she working with them?
He considered calling in some of Thorp’s goons, but that wouldn’t solve the problem if it was big and included other people. He had to understand it first. No, this was his problem now. His alone.
He had to get back to the cabin. Get the lawyer to bring some pain pills. Right now, he couldn’t move his jaw without sending white-hot lightning bolts that fired splintering pain up through his face and head.
36
“What do you want from me?” Kora asked when they parked up in the trees above the ravine near their car, just far enough away so Kora couldn’t see what they were driving.
“Like he said, we’re going to talk to you about something,” Sydney said to this beautiful stick of dynamite.
“Talk about what?”
Sydney said, “The big party next weekend. You’re part of that, I assume. Miss Daisy?”
“Yes,” Kora said. “Look, I just want my stuff, and I want to get out of here. I don’t care if you killed Corbin or some mystery guy you’re talking about. Just give me what I came for and let me go. This is kidnapping. You can’t do this shit.”
Sydney let a moment’s silence hang over the conversation. Then she said, “We have you by your short hairs, Kora. Don’t tell me what we can or can’t do. People are trying to kill me. I’m in no fucking mood to put up with any shit from you. I hand this stuff over to the right authorities, you’ll do serious time. Except you won’t get the chance to do time. You’ll be dead. You know too much. You’ll be as dead as Shaun…and Karen Orland. And she’s very fucking dead, girl. You remember Karen, don’t you?”
Kora gave Sydney a gelid stare.
“Help us out,” Marco said. “And by helping us out, you’d be helping yourself. We’re what stands between you and a very bad ending.”
“Help you out how?”
Sydney said, “The Great Gatsby Gala.”
“What about it?”
“I hear Rouse closes down his place and spends the weekend at Thorp’s. Plays poker around the clock. That true?”
“So?” Kora’s belligerence was somewhat tempered by curiosity.
“Rumor has it, Tricky Dick has a lot of blackmail tapes on a lot of people. Plus a huge bankroll in that office of his…”
Kora emitted a cynical little snort. “You’re crazy if you’re thinking of breaking into Rouse’s. Forget it. He’s got a top-of-the line security system. His place is like Fort Knox. He pulls out his cell phone, he can see every room anytime he wants. He’s paranoid because of that office he calls his sanctum sanctorum.”
“During the party, where does he stay? He have a room at Thorp’s, or does he come back to his place?”
“His place is closed down for the whole weekend. He never leaves Thorp’s. He never actually leaves the poker tournament. He plays poker with all those stars and big shots. Thorp has a replica of the poker room in Tombstone where guys like Doc Holiday played. Same kind of tables. Little rooms there for the hookers so they can take a break, get laid, nap. They play big games all weekend. Believe me, cash like that—and it’s all a cash deal—they have security and they’re armed. Most of them are ex or current cops or sheriff’s deputies. It’s like a million-dollar buy-in. Crazy amount of money.”
“Where’s the money kept?”
“Right in that room. You won’t get anywhere near it, believe me.”
“We’re actually not interested in it. What about this office of Rouse’s? There any money in there?”
“Sure. If somebody got into Tricky Dick’s safe, what’s rumored, they’d find a fortune. Being one of the world’s biggest asshole thieves, he doesn’t trust the banking system. But you must be joking. Nobody gets in there without tripping off all those sensors and alarms.”
“Maybe the guy who put the security system in would know the weak points,” Marco suggested.
Kora looked from one to the other. “Jesus, you’re serious.”
“As serious as Corbin is dead,” Sydney said.
“With that great security setup, does the lawyer have armed guards around his place?” Marco asked.
“No. Doesn’t need them. It’s all electronic. Even if you could get into Rouse’s place, you couldn’t get in his office. It’s a fucking bomb shelter. Steel door is, like, ten inches thick or something. And then the safe—”
“Kora,” Sydney said, “Let us worry about our problems. You need to worry about yours.”
“What, exactly, are my problems?”
“You’re going to be our inside girl,” Sydney said.
“You’re kidding me, right?”
“No, I’m not,” Sydney said. “Once you leave here, you stay close to home for the next couple days.”
“This is—you can’t make me do this.”
“We can,” Marco said. “It’s the alternative to destroying you.”
Sydney said, “You don’t get involved with anyone unless it’s Thorp and he wants you for something. You were never here. You don’t know anything about what happened to Corbin. You know nothing about us. We’ll be in contact with you. Later tonight or tomorrow, we’ll let you know what we want. If there’s a lot of money involved, you’ll get your share, plus the dirt Corbin had on you. If what I want is there, it’ll protect all of us. It’s time to turn the tables on those boys.”
Kora said, “You’re going to get me killed.”
Marco said, “Consider yourself a dead girl already unless we find a way to save you. It’s much easier that way.”
“Even if you get in the office,” Kora said, “what if you can’t get in the safe he’s got in there. Maybe there’s some kind of time lock or something?”
“We’ll deal with that when and if it becomes a problem. We might have to find a way to get the man to come over and help us out,” Sydney said.
“Without bringing a whole security force with him?”
“Would depend on what he thinks is going on. You let us worry about that,” Marco said.
Sydney added, “Life isn’t fair. Right now, we own you, and you don’t really have a choice. But you’re lucky. We’ll be very generous and fair with you in the end if you do your part. And we’ll let you know what that is in the next couple of days.”
“If there’s millions in that safe, I want half,” Kora said.
“We get in, and that safe is, like you say, a well-stocked bank, you get a million-dollar buy-out,” Sydney said.
Kora said, “A million dollars isn’t what it once was.”
“We’ll work it out. Maybe two mil,” Sydney said. “By the way, were you going to kill Corbin yourself? Or do you always carry a piece?” She pulled Kora’s gun out of her bag.
Kora took a moment, then smiled faintly and shrugged. “The thing is,” she said, “maybe I was going to shoot that miserable bastard right in the mole in the center of his forehead. I can’t believe that’s what the guy who killed him did. How weird is that? It’s like he stole my play. Why Corbin never had that cut off is beyond me.”
“He was waiting for the right surgeon,” Marco said. “We’ll be in contact.”
Kora said, “I want my gun back. It was a present, and it’s kinda like a piece of jewelry.”
Sydney emptied the gun before putting it back in Kora’s bag with the money and handed it to her.
Marco said, “Don’t shoot anybody. Have a quiet week. We’ll be in contact. Do something stupid, you won’t live to regret it. That’s your new reality.”
“It’s my normal reality,” she said with bitter sarcasm.
Sydney and Marco got out of the BMW, taking the tennis bag with them.
“Go the long way home,” Sydney said. “You were never here. You know nothing.”
“Maybe they already know I was coming here. Maybe Corbin told somebody.”
“Don’t overthink it,” Marco said. “Go home. Stay home. Play the role they want you to play. You’re Miss Daisy; nobody’s going to kill Miss Daisy.”