The Triggerman's Dance

by T. Jefferson Parker

  “He loathes consumer society. I think he’d bomb this place if he had a chance.”

  “No offense meant.”

  “None taken. I’m going to buy you something for what you did yesterday.”

  “I can’t live off my reputation forever,” he said. “How about I buy my own clothes?”

  “Fine. Then I’ll accessorize you.”

  “No, really—”

  “—Put a lid on it, Mr. Menden. You saved me from a rape and maybe more, and it cost you a dog and a home. So I can buy you some stuff if I want to. End of argument, White Knight.”

  She bought him three pairs of pants, three shirts and three pairs of shoes at a store billing itself as an “outfitter.” He gravitated to the sale items but Valerie seemed unfazed by price. At a department store he stocked up on socks and underwear while Valerie wandered off, only to return bearing a light jacket, a sweater and three neckties. She insisted on a cream linen summer-weight suit, with a shirt that matched and a shirt that complemented it, countering his protests with threats to buy more. At a drug emporium he got toiletries and some personal things. At a pet store so overpriced he could hardly believe it, John got a forty-pound bag of food for his battalion.

  They stopped for lunch in Laguna Beach. The cafe was little more than a few plastic tables and chairs strung along a clifftop overlooking the ocean. They sat at the far end. The breeze was stiff from the water, crumbling the little waves onto the beach and trying to blow away their menus. Valerie’s lifted off but she caught it mid-air.

  “Nice grab.”

  “The softball years.”

  While Valerie ordered, John took the opportunity to study her. He knew from Josh that she was twenty-two. He guessed her height at five feet eight, but was never any good at women’s weights because they always seemed to weigh less than he thought they would. Average, he decided, maybe average plus a few, because Valerie Holt had a full but shapely body that seemed somehow to have retained just a hint of girlish fat. This gave her limbs a taut smoothness, as opposed to the weight-room definition of movie stars and models. Her wrists were slender, her fingers long and beautifully shaped, though the nails were cut short for her hunting and field work with the dogs. Her face was full, with a smattering of freckles on each cheek. Other than the freckles her complexion was flawless and had that kind of moist glow that speaks of health, youth, a body working well. Her mouth was wide and her lips quite pink without lipstick, and when she smiled her teeth were large and even, the kind of teeth no orthodontist could improve. Her nose was small. Her eyes were a dark chocolate brown in the strident October light. To John, her most delicate features were her brows, which arched finely to an inquisitive peak then angled down to frame her calm, steady eyes.

  This arch made her look almost uncertain at times, skeptical, perhaps, giving her face an expression of intelligence and doubt. Her forehead was high and round, suggesting a youth belied by her twenty-two years. It was the kind of head, John mused, that would still look good when Valerie Holt was eighty years old. Her hair at this point was still pulled away from her face in a wind-blown tail of gold and light copper. Valerie was by any standards a beautiful young woman, a woman still growing and still unfinished.

  She can be a useful tool, an unwitting voice, a conduit. You can know her only to use her.

  “Well,” she asked, glancing up from the breeze-bent menu, “Did I pass my physical?”

  “Sorry. Yes.”

  “You’re forgiven. You are a writer, after all.”

  “Always studying.”

  “Like what you see?”

  He looked down at his own menu, shrugging. “The chicken sandwich sounds good.”

  She laughed. “You big oaf. That’s what you are—a big sweet oaf. An accidental hero. A mystery man with a quick gun and a long coat and a shy streak. What am I?”

  He looked at her, summoning distance. “A beautiful young woman with a whole life in front of her.”

  “Not just a girl with a brain the size of a table grape and way more money than she needs?”

  “Naw.”

  “Good, because you’ll be sitting next to me tonight at the grad dinner. It’s going to be quite the affair, and you have to be there because you are a guest of honor.”

  “Grad dinner?”

  “Dad gives a bash for his new Holt Men every six months when they finish training.”

  “He calls them Holt Men?”

  “That’s what they are,” she said cheerfully. “They’re just glorified security guards, even though Dad educates the hell out of them. But you’re the guest everyone’s dying to meet.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “Hmmm nothing. It’s a perfect time to wear your new suit.”

  “Okay, mom.”

  Valerie smiled then, a wide-mouthed, honest, forthright smile. It was just a little more open on one side, which revealed some back teeth and gave it a shade of mischief. She looked down at her menu again, with an odd expression of satisfaction on her face. The wind blew a strand of golden brown hair over her round girlish forehead and she caught it without looking up then fingered it back behind her ear.

  John felt an odd shifting inside, and a very slight, very clear ringing in his ears.

  He spent the rest of the afternoon writing his account of the incident at Olie’s Saloon for the Anza Valley News. He used the computer on the dining room table. It ran a brief fifty-five lines. John concentrated on dispelling rumors: the woman was not raped or even hurt; his trailer was the only one burned out; he had in fact shot only once, giving the woman’s assailant a minor flesh wound that made her escape possible. He refused to give any names because they had asked him not to. He hoped the whole incident would be forgotten soon and that the citizens of Anza Valley would not worry about a vengeful motorcycle gang overrunning their town. He asked anyone with information about the bikers to call the Sheriff’s substation in Indio. He also admitted that the single worst thing about the whole affair was the loss of Rusty—the day’s true hero.

  That evening he walked along the lake with his dogs. He stopped to look at the marina and boathouse, the lovely Hatteras, Carolyn, docked there, the little covey of Boston Whalers tarped against the sun. He could see the beach on the island in the center of the lake and the dark oaks and conifers beyond. On the far shore he made out a row of small cabanas and scaffolding of what looked like a sporting clays tower. He thought back twenty-odd years to the summer days he and his friends would sneak past the “No Trespassing” signs, hike to the lake and spend the day swimming, fishing, hiking and looking for animals. They had outlegged the sheriffs more than once. He had even spent the night in the cave on the island, for which he was thoroughly thrashed by his father upon returning home late the next afternoon. John was struck that the place was more beautiful now than then—the foliage thicker and the trees more mature and the water level of the lake higher—no doubt due to Vann Holt’s attentions. A flock of mallards veed out across the blue water in no hurry whatsoever, a chevron of ripples widening behind them. He wished Rebecca could have seen this. He thought about the dream he’d had early that morning, the way she had seemed so present and actual. And tonight, he thought, I’ll be having dinner with the man who blew her heart out of her chest.

  The foyer of the big house is as brightly lit as a movie set when John walks in, led by a ravishingly beautiful brunette who has introduced herself as Laura Messinger. John has already recognized her. She takes him by the arm, saying she always wanted to touch a hero. She leads him into the expansive kitchen, at the far end of which is a bar. A waiter approaches and she dismisses him. She asks John his pleasure and gives the bow-tied barman the order. He can smell venison and elk on the stove-top grill, and a wild, cilantro-based aroma coming from four huge saucepans.

  “Are you a friend of Mr. Holt?” he asks.

  “His attorney and techno-weenie, actually. A friend, too. Cheers.”

  She hands him the scotch-and-soda and raises her own cocktail
glass very slightly, not touching his, then brings it to her thick bright red lips. Her eyes are an astonishing blue that John decides can only be realized by colored lenses. Her breasts are large and tastefully displayed. She could be thirty, but John knows from Weinstein that she is forty-two.

  Laura and husband Thurmond are the high-end foreign team for Liberty Operations. You need a hundred capable men to settle unrest on the diamond coast in Namibia? Talk to Laura. Need some small arms know-how in Sierra Leone? Thurmond can help. He’s a lapsed Northrup veep who never got his peace dividend and she was third in her law class at Harvard. They aren’t salaried—nobody at the Ops is salaried except for Lane Fargo. Last year their take was a little over four-hundred thousand, counting bonuses.

  With her arm again on John’s, Laura Messinger leads him into the living room. “Oyez, oyez,” she calls in a mellifluous voice, “John Menden.”

  Heads turn: two dozen of them, men in dinner jackets and women in dresses, tanned healthy faces, mostly middle-aged but some old and some young, expressions of polite assessment, mild approval, curiosity. The newly minted Holt Men stand out conspicuously, clustered together a little nervously near the fireplace. They are late twenties to late thirties, fit, alert and dressed alike in black slacks and white dinner jackets. They have the bearing of West Point cadets. John regards the guests with his native taciturnity, feeling embarrassed and underdressed. He scans the room quickly for Valerie, resting his glance occasionally on a still-beholding guest. They are clapping.

  “Don’t embarrass the poor boy too much,” says Laura, smiling at John. “We don’t want to spoil his appetite.”

  Then she takes John to the first little group of people, releases his arm and is gone. He can feel the warm spot where her hand was, cooling through the fabric of his linen coat.

  “Hey, I’ve missed your articles in the Journal,” says the first man to shake his hand.

  John recognizes him from one of Joshua’s endless briefings—Adam Sexton—young, ambitious, married into one of the county’s largest landholding families and currently Vice President of Domestic Development for Liberty Operations.

  “Thanks. Nice to be back in the county.”

  Sexton brings in the genuine dollars for Liberty Ops. Domestic takes in triple what foreign does, prosaic as the work might sound. Home security. Plant Security. Store security. Personal security. Private Investigations. Sexton married straight into the Orange County movers and shakers, waved a vague Manhattan pedigree in front of them, convinced them he was one up on them. Easy to do to Californians, of course. His timing was perfect. When crime started grabbing the headlines a few years back, everybody was worried. Everybody was scared. Nobody could remember it being this bad. Afraid to leave the mansion. Who do we trust? Who do we hire? The cops can’t help us. Who can really blast away on our behalf when the gook home invaders from Little Saigon show up, or the gangbangers from Santa Ana come scaling our gated-community walls? Sexton was ready with his sophistication-and-a-touch-of-streetsmarts routine, New York style. Thanks to him they all prefer to use Holt Men—excuse me, Liberty Men now. It’s as much a status symbol to have Liberty Ops patrolling your bayfront house in Newport as it is to drive the right car or wear the right clothes. Even more so. You own more than just a home or a private plane—you own a man. A Liberty Man. There was a joke going around last year. Question: Why is a Holt Man better than a dildo? Answer: A dildo can’t show itself to the door. You know you’ve entered a profitable vernacular when rich women joke about the penis size of your employees. Well, thank Sexton for the entrée.

  “Are you back to stay, John?” Sexton asked.

  “No. I’ve got work down in Anza Valley.”

  “People down there can actually read?”

  “They light their caves with candles.”

  “Candles. That’s rich. Hey, plenty of work here in the county, if you’re interested. All kinds of it.”

  “Thanks. I like my job.”

  The dining room basks in the burnished candlelight of an immense, circular candelabra. The table seems to stretch into infinity. Waiters come and go, glancing occasionally at Laura Messinger, who directs them with the silent nodding of her head. Vann Holt has stolen in—exactly when, John has no idea—and now presides at the head of the table. He has not acknowledged his guest of honor. John sees that his host looks alert, fit and leonine, with his thick gray hair, stout neck and shoulders and an easy physical grace. Holt is also conspicuously underdressed in a black suit with a black polo shirt buttoned to the top. But John senses that Holt is the kind of man who can make everyone else in a room feel pretentiously overstated. Finally, Holt looks his way and stares at him for a moment without expression. Then he lifts his wine glass, nods rather formally, and offers a robust smile. From behind Holt, Lane Fargo stares his way with a look of focused aggression. His widow’s peak and mustache are somehow absurd above his tight white dinner jacket. He is drinking a glass of beer.

  Holt seats himself and the others follow. John has a seat of honor on Holt’s left. They are just settling in when Holt pushes back his chair and stands, brushing up his coatsleeve to look at his watch. Then he bellows in a voice that threatens to rattle the crystal, “Valerie Anne Holt—you are holding up my dinner party—again!”

  By the unanimous chuckles John understands that this is something of a ritual. Heads turn, and John looks to see Valerie Anne Holt coming up the broad hallway toward the dining room.

  Her hair is up and she is wearing a black knit dress with a high neck and that holds her snugly under the chin. There are no sleeves on it and her brown arms sway easily as she walks. The dress ends well above her knees. Her shoes are heeled and black and she makes walking in them appear easy and natural. She claps across the tiled floor and enters the room to a chorus of Hello Valerie; Evening, dear; Worth the wait, young lady; Nice of you to join us; etc. Lane Fargo sustains a piercing whistle that continues for a beat after the general welcome has died down.

  “Oh, Lane, put a lid on it,” she says, which brings another round of laughter from the guests.

  Beaming, Valerie walks the length of the table and kisses her father on both cheeks. Then, helped by a new Holt Man who has popped up to assist her, she settles into the chair on her father’s right, across from John. She looks around the table, holding each face for a brief moment. Then, smiling and apparently finished, she sits back and turns her full attention to John.

  His ears ring again and he feels uncomfortable, as if the entire world is staring at him.

  “Nice suit, Mr. Menden,” she says. “It goes perfectly with your blush.”

  For John, dinner goes by in a pleasant haze. He drinks two cocktails and three glasses of wine. The conversation around him is animated and light. Holt regales him with stories of his Boone & Crockett trophies, most notably a “Grand Slam” sheep hunt during which he nearly froze to death somewhere in Tibet. In fact, one of his guides had been buried in an avalanche. But John hears nothing of the braggart in Holt, none of the macho posturing associated with the rich eccentrics who aspire to the Boone & Crockett “Book” and spend scores of thousands of dollars to acquire that status. John had written about these men in the Journal, finding them fascinating, driven almost beyond comprehension, and eerily dispassionate about taking life for sport. Even for a bird hunter such as himself, it was hard to understand their ardor for such gruelling, far-flung expeditions. The articles had brought a cascade of protesting letters from his readers, who chose to believe that merely reporting on these people was endorsing them. But Holt’s narratives are self-effacing, almost scientifically objective. He does not use the euphemisms of the contemporary “hunter/conservationist” such as “harvest” or “collect.” When Vann Holt tells of killing an animals he uses the verb kill, pronouncing it with slightly less volume than the rest of the sentence, in a kind of reverential hush.

  Valerie listens to her father, talks with Thurmond Messinger to her right and looks at John from across the table
. He can feel her attention on him even when she’s looking away, and it worries him that Vann Holt must sense the same thing. But it feels reassuring to know that he is not totally alone here. His eyes are drawn directly to her. They are not willing to look past, through or around her. In the light of the candles above, she radiates a restless, almost ungovernable energy.

  You can know her only to use her.

  Between his undeniable attention to Valerie, John still notes the face of every guest. Beside him is Mary Randell, a talkative woman in her early fifties with a wizened complexion, the high cheekbones of an Iroquois and a long mane of gray-black hair. Mary is happy to tell John about the interesting characters sitting around the table, spicing her resumé of each with at least one tidbit of the personal. “And next to Laura is Mike O’Keefe, a brilliant motivator but a terrible doubles partner. He can’t handle pace to his backhand. And Adam Sexton? He brings in piles of money to the company. Cocky kid—the only one around who doesn’t worship Vann like a god.” She is the wife of Rich, whom John knows is part of the Liberty Ops team trying to draw the business of Juma Titisi.

  The Ugandan himself sits at the far end of the table, opposite Holt, expansive in his tux and Oxford English. John collects every nugget of information with some effort, because although his mind is keen and capacious, he’s not sure what might be important to Joshua and what might be redundant. He doesn’t want to miss a thing. He was told to gather so that Joshua could edit; horde so Josh could winnow. John has always been good at collecting facts—a reporter’s first task—so before the evening is over he knows the name, face, occupation and at least one personal item about everyone in the room. Laura Messinger, for instance, has two children from a previous marriage, while Thurmond, twenty years her senior, has none.

  The food is incomparably good. Elk and venison, pheasant and chukar, garden greens, basmati rice with slivered almonds, frijoles covered with the cilantro sauce, dill-sprinkled rolls, cold asparagus spears with vinaigrette. Holt is unabashedly proud of the dinner, most of which he either grew or shot. He says he killed the elk early last fall while the forage around Jackson Hole was still sweet, and you could taste the berries in the meat. An elk shot deeper into the season would taste of the sparse feed and the stress of winter.