"I always have 'mired ya 'thusiasms, Lorenzo." Pierot chuckled, but he was sincere. These guys who could think up these things and make them pay – hell, yes, he admired them. Nothing he had personally contrived had ever paid a cent.
"This guy Jobbs is going weird on me," Pico said. "He's the mole on this thing.
He's done it before and been fine in the past, but something's gone wrong with this. He's causing trouble, attracting attention."
"Why's that?"
"He's involved with some local women," Pico said. He went on to detail for Pierot how Jake had gotten himself fired from Walker Ranch, and how he suspected Jake had shot an animal owned by his new employer, probably to raise community awareness of him to a level where Pico's own security could be jeopardized by their continued association. The key to the sting was, as always, anonymity, he told Pierot. Jake Jobbs was doing everything he could to go public.
"Why'd he try that, ya s'pose?" Pierot asked.
"He's trying to get out of a deal we made," Pico said. "He got in trouble with some syndicate guys in Chicago a few years back."
"Dem boys'll bite," Pierot noted.
"I bought out his obligation. He's done some jobs to work down his debt, but he ain't through – not yet. He's got this one left to finish."
"What's he owe?"
"Four thousand dollars," Pico said.
"Four gran ', is that all?" Pierot said. "Not a lotta money."
Pico shook his head. "He's a loser, Ray. He can't even pay off a stinking four thousand dollar nut. I tell you – I am not going to go down for a nickel and dimer."
Pierot nodded. "I understan'. So what ya want me t'do? How's it I can be've service?"
"I want rid of this guy," Pico said, leaning forward across the table. "I want him dead, and it seems to me that the best opportunity is to do it when he's on the job site.
Jobbs is doing the ranch house himself. I want him hit that night, like something went wrong while he was burglarizing the place. I want him dead the way cheap hoods get dead – being stupid," Pico said. "I want it to look like he got killed in a disagreement with another guy."
"Who's t'other guy?" Pierot asked.
"A guy I got in Colorado watching Jobbs." Pico noticed question marks in Ray Pierot's eyes. "It's no one you know," he assured.
Pierot leaned forward across the table, so that he and Pico' s noses were almost touching and they could talk in private tones, under the background noise of the jukebox. "Tell me more," Pierot said.
"You don't need to know his name," Pico said. "It's an outside guy – no one from the organization. I hired him cheap, out of Kansas. He's been in Longmont for weeks, staying in contact with Jobbs, keeping an eye on him. He's a mean fuck, but I don't think he's dangerous. There's no way to trace him to either one of us."
"Does he 'spect he's a sacrifice?" Pierot asked.
"No," Pico said. "He's expecting me to pay him off and ride into the sunset. It's an open-ended deal, though. The guy's looking for regular work."
Pierot straightened back up in the booth. He was getting more and more choosy about the jobs he took, and now required assurances that he wasn’t walking into a set-up himself. In this case, the danger seemed all too real, since "set-ups" were what Lorenz Pico was all about. "Lemme aks somethin'," Pierot said, leaning back in. "What keeps this Jobbs fella from goin' to the law and turnin' ya all in?"
"He's been warned that people he cares about die if he does that" Pico said. "There's a little blonde girl, and there's this woman he's shacked up with, an old man, a boy. Jake knows I'll kill'em all, if he don't do his part. We've done a lot of work together, and he knows what'll happen. Besides, he also knows he's only days away from freedom, so long as he does what he said he would. It's a pretty strong incentive."
"What you figure on gettin ' outta that house?" Pierot asked.
Pico's eyes narrowed like a wolf 's as he talked about his plan. "We stand to do better than ten thousand dollars out of the house alone – much more than we originally expected. That provides security for you. Jake won't figure me to jeopardize a take that big. He won't be expecting trouble. It's also enough of a prize for two men to fight over, if you know what I mean."
"You don' mind losin' out on that?" Pierot asked. "I mean, it seems to me that if two men are gonna end up dead over burgled items, they better have 'em in their possession when someone finds 'em."
"I don't give a damn about it," Pico said. "It's worth it to get rid of this guy. This bastard is going to talk, I just know it. If not now, later. I want him dead before he does, and this job provides us with a cover. It may even throw investigators off track."
"Sounds risky to me," Pierot said.
"Not for you, though – for me. It's risky for me if Jobbs stays alive," Pico said. Pierot shook his head slowly. "I think somebody's got you a little scared."
Pico shook his head. "Just nervous. We've been setting this job up for months.
You know Tom Larsen and Wynn Frye?" Pierot nodded that he did. "They’ve been working out of Denver to set up all the distribution stops. They got slaughter sites, chop shops, paint shops – everything! They got it down to a science, man. This is a big buck thing, and I am not going to let it get screwed up."
"When's all this scheduled t'happen?"
"October first," Pico said. "There's a diversion – some big event all the hicks go to."
"That'd be nex' week," Pierot said, raising his eyes for a moment, mulling over his schedule. "That's fine fo' me. I still ain't real easy with it, though. All these farmers bein' stung on the same night, an' these guys showin' up dead. People are gonna draw connections."
"People are going to draw connections anyway – it don't mean nothing," Pico said. "It's two less guys to talk to authorities."
"What're ya puttin' up to make all this happen?" Pierot asked.
Pico reached into his coat pocket and took out a stack of bills, tightly wrapped in plain brown paper. "There's seventy-five hundred dollars right there," he said, sliding the package across the table to Pierot. "Another seventy-five hundred when it’s done – and I'll throw in a whole beef."
Pierot grinned. "I shaw have enjoyed yo' beef in the past," he said. Then he reached across the table and the two men shook hands.
* * * * *
As the bus purred along down Highway 287, southbound for Denver, Jake sat thinking about what he had done. He could not get that last picture of Tory out of his mind – of her standing on Main Street in Longmont, looking after the Greyhound, rolling on out of town, taking him with it. And where was he going? There was no mental picture there at all, nothing to imagine that he could look forward to. Rather, there was the fact of what he was leaving behind, and the raft of images, all brutal and ugly. It was more than just the thought of never seeing Tory and Py and Pete again – and Lily, whom he could not seem to deny himself from missing. Pretty Lily, whom he had no right to miss, but yet could not avoid thinking about. He had tricked himself into believing that if he just left that somehow everything would be better for everyone. Now he realized it had been pure panic. He had deluded himself into thinking that if he left that Pico, too, would panic, and call off his hit on Walker Ranch, but in his heart he knew better than that. Pico wasn't the type to call off anything. Now Jake couldn't quell the terror in his heart that Pico and his pressure man would follow through with their threats against Lily and Tory, and maybe others. What could he have been thinking? Was it only of himself? Jake knew that his alternatives were few. He could carry out his plan, rob from Lily and her father, and all the other farmers around Longmont, some of whom he had gotten to know to be good people. Maybe then he would be clear of his debt with Pico, but he doubted it. He didn't trust Lorenz Pico for a second – a man whom he knew to be more than just a thief, but a murderer. Or, there was his other alternative. He could go to the police and spill his guts, maybe plea bargain a lighter sentence for himself. There would be no easy way out for him, so deeply involved had he been with Pic
o’s evil empire. Hell, Jake was guilty as sin, and he knew it. There'd be no way of excising himself from punishment and blame. And prison? Jake wasn't so sure that he could survive it. Pico's tentacles extended to every maximum security facility in the nation, and Jake didn't like his chances of surviving incarceration. He had been in prison before and he knew how it worked. In a sea of hostility, someone would befriend him and win his trust, perhaps provide him with supplies and favors. Then one night they'd be sitting in his cell talking, and out of nowhere his "friend" would pull a knife and open up his jugular. The cons he had known knew just where to cut, right into the carotid artery, that carries blood to the brain. A man doesn't scream when that happens, because he can't. Maybe they take the windpipe, too. Whatever, he bleeds to death fast, while the assassin quickly returns to his own cell to clean up, maybe getting rid of the weapon somehow along the way. Or maybe he just leaves the shiv there in his neck, to pulsate in rhythm with the pumping blood, like a monument to a hit well handled. No, Jake didn’t like his odds. He could do the right thing and take his chances of dying in that brutal way, or do the wrong thing and separate good, honest people from their hard-earned pay. Either way he was likely to get innocent people hurt. Even now he wondered, how Tory and Lily and the others were faring back in Longmont, where a man with a gun would no doubt soon discover that the coward Jake Jobbs had turned his back on everyone and lit out like a scared rabbit. He couldn't live with it. He couldn't live with the jeopardy he had placed them all in, and more than anything else he couldn’t live with knowing that he'd never again be with Tory and the people he loved. His heart ached like it was going to burst. It was wrong, wrong! He had to go back, and he knew it. He had to go back and face the humiliation he had brought upon himself by running, no matter how much it was going to hurt. He had to go back and look Tory in the eyes and beg her forgiveness.
And after that, he didn't know. He'd work it out when he got there. He'd spend a little time thinking about it and then . . . then – God damn it! – he'd do the right thing for once in his life! Maybe it would mean dying in Leavenworth with a knife dancing in his neck. He didn't care. He couldn't! He'd made this mess of his life and now he knew he had to fix it.
Jake got up from his chair, pulling his little suitcase from beneath his seat and gathering up his jacket. He accidentally brushed against the woman seated across the aisle, and she gave him another disdainful look, but he didn't care. He started walking up the aisle toward the driver, trying to find his sea legs as the bus wobbled on down the road.
"Hey, you! Sit down back there!" hollered the bus driver, seeing Jake approaching in his rearview mirror.
"I want to get off," Jake said. The other passengers in the bus craned their necks to look at the cowboy, walking on unsteady legs up the aisle.
"I said sit down!" the bus driver said sternly.
"I want you to pull over – I've got to get off this bus," Jake said, as he reached the driver's side.
"Look, buddy – this bus don't stop again until we reach the terminal in Denver," the driver said. "Now I ain't gonna tell you again, sit down!" Some of those in the rear of the bus stood up at their seats, sensing a confrontation. "If you want to go back where you came from you'll have to purchase a return ticket from Denver," the driver said, speaking with authority.
Jake looked at him hard. "I'm gonna ask you once more," he said. "I want you to pull this bus over and let me off. I want out of here."
The driver looked up at him menacingly. "If I pull this bus over it'll be to put your butt back in that seat."
Suddenly Jake dropped his valise to the floor, balled his fist, and fired a right hand as hard as he could, striking the driver on the side of the face and bouncing his head against the side window. The other passengers sounded their alarm at the sight, and a lady in the back screamed as the driver slumped unconscious behind the wheel and the bus lurched to the side of the road. "It's okay, everybody," Jake said, and he pushed the driver over and slipped in behind the wheel himself, depressing the clutch and shifting the bus into neutral. Then he applied the brakes and brought the bus to a stop on the shoulder of the highway.
Jake set the emergency brake, leaving the bus to idle, then got up from behind the wheel and pulled the lever that opened the door. He gathered up his things, then looked back at the other passengers and said, "I'm real sorry about this, everyone. Sorry to inconvenience you. I'm sure he'll be awake in a minute or two and then you can be back on your way. Good day, now," he said, doffing his hat, and then Jake stepped off the bus and started walking back up the highway toward Longmont.
CHAPTER 36 – Coming Home
"It's Jake!"
Py had been working around the ranch all day as if he had cement bags tied to his heart. Last night had been hard, as he and Pete and Tory dined in silence, each unable or unwilling to put into words what was on each of their minds, though they were of a single mind. They were all thinking it was going to be hard to carry on now, with Jake having apparently decided that none of what they were doing was worth the time. Aside from what his departure had meant to each of them personally, his leaving had been criminal in its impact on their joint optimism. It had set up a spiritual vacuum that none of the three had been able to rise above. Last night they had all found reasons to turn in early, each silently aware that Jake was not bunking in his little hut, out under the pines, but for reasons known only to himself had chosen to depart. It played to the fears in each of them: the fear of abandonment, the fear that what they were attempting to do was just no damned good. They each went to their beds wondering about it, and the cogitation had only made them feel a little sick. Py was especially shaken, for this was the second time Jake had ditched him, and he wasn't finding this any easier than the first. There was something about that damned Jake: wherever he stayed, events just seemed to take place, and when he was gone, things seemed to come to a stop. Py didn't understand it, but he could see it and feel it. Tory had used the word "vortex" to describe Jake and, after looking it up in the dictionary Tory kept in a cabinet in the living room, Py thought it was a pretty good word.
Each of the three had secretly and bravely dedicated themselves to the notion that they owed it to one another to keep a stiff upper lip, however troubling their situation. Py completely abandoned the pretense when he looked up from his work to see Jake walking along the county road, coat over his shoulder, valise in hand, making his way back to Parker Ranch, and to those who had missed him so completely.
Tory had been working in the kitchen, cleaning dinner plates she no longer cared about and trying to avoid thinking about the rest of her life. How she heard Py's exhortation was hard to imagine, but somehow his hollering out Jake's name cut through the dull thickness in her mind and brought her to the front porch to see what it was he saluted.
It was Jake, walking up the dirt road like a man using his last ounces of strength to drag himself back to that place he now knew he belonged. He had walked the entire distance back to the ranch, nearly forty miles from the place he had let himself off the bus. No one would stop to give him a ride, as he thumbed along the highway, and in his own mind he figured it was the world's way of telling him that he had made a dumb mistake, and now there was going to be some pain along the way to redemption. Life doesn't make it easy. He spent last night in a ditch at the side of the road, waiting for the morning's sunrise, when he could resume his determined journey back to the new world. And now there he was, out of strength, in need of a bath and a shave, limping ahead on blistered feet, but working his way on up the road.
Pete had been working in the barn, and he came out into the yard to see what it was Py was raising such a ruckus about. "Look, its Jake!" Py yelled, dropping what he was doing to hurry out to the road and intercept his wayward companion.
"Hey, Py," Jake said, as the two met on the road.
"I knew you'd be back," Py said, rushing to him. The two met in an awkward embrace, hugging each other warmly, and then pulling apart, self
-conscious over being too overt in their display of reunion enthusiasm.
"Well I'll be a son-of-a-bitch," Pete said to himself, joining Tory at the fence around the front yard. He looked at his daughter, who was saying nothing, watching the two men up on the road, her eyes slightly pooled, only partially revealing the feelings she stoically attempted to hide. It wasn't really like her, he thought, to hold her feelings in. Tory had never been mysterious in that regard, and that she was being this way now confirmed for Pete how unsettling Jake's unexpected departure had been. Now here he was back. Pete wondered if she would have him.
"Hello Jake," Pete said, as Jake and Py walked on into the yard.
"Pete," Jake said, returning the salutation. He looked at Tory, seemingly uncertain as to what to say, and she just looked back, offering no clue as to what she might find appropriate on his part. Py looked from one to the other, wishing one of them would do something to let the other know they wanted to be back together.
"You look a little worse for the wear," Pete said, noticing Jake's dishevelment. "I could use some cleanin' up," Jake said, still looking at Tory.
"The dowsing tank's all filled with water, if you'd care to use it," Pete said.
"I am a little dry . . ." Jake started to make a request, then cut himself short, as if uncertain that he had any right to ask anything of anyone.
Pete looked at Tory, as if urging her to offer something. "We've got some tea in the ice box," she said.
"That sounds real good," Jake said humbly.
Pete and Py glanced at one another, and then each looked back and forth, from Jake to Tory. "Why don't you come in and wet your whistle, then you can get yourself cleaned up and put on a fresh set of clothes," Pete said.
Cooksin Page 33