“It won’t matter.”
“Satisfy my curiosity.”
“I had a partner who got ambushed and killed. I went after the guys who did it. End of story.”
“I hardly think that’s the end of the story. I didn’t ask about that. I asked about how you managed to get out of prison and then home free with a new lease on life.”
“It’s the end as far as I’m willing to talk about it. Look, I have a very good idea where you’re headed, and there’s no way in hell I’m getting into your crusade against these guys, justified as it may be. You’re way over your head. Not happening. Here’s where I am with all of this: I picked you up; the guy who shot you came after not just you, but me.”
“Shot your Shelby,” she added, with a touch of sarcasm.
“That’s right. So I’m real unhappy about that. I’m not going to be happy until I settle it with him. I’m in this for that and that alone. And it doesn’t sound like it’s connected to your vendetta against Thorp. It sounds like some lone guy you pissed off. You accept where I’m at, we can work together. If not, we need to part ways.”
“What if he didn’t act on his own? What if he’s part of a bigger thing, whether it’s Thorp or someone else?”
She steered toward the Shaw house from deep out in the lake. They were cruising at a slow speed, lights still out. The moon was partially covered by some thin clouds.
Marco studied her a moment. “That isn’t my problem. He wasn’t coming after me, per se. He was after you, and I got in the way. I’ll settle with him for that.”
“How did you handle it in Mexico?”
“You don’t give up.” He shook his head, then said, “I had plenty of contacts. I took a leave. Slipped into Mexico. Part of my family is down there. I got some help, tracked the killers, settled the issue. The troubles I got into later weren’t directly connected to that. I can tell you that I spent some very bad months in a prison near Mexico City. I wouldn’t have survived if a relative hadn’t made contact with friends in the prison. I got protection from a powerful clique. Then, well, I got out.”
“That the part you can’t talk about.”
“Yes.”
“Okay,” she said. “I’m good with getting the shooter. I’ll deal with the other part once I find out who he’s connected to, or if he’s on his own.”
They pulled into the boathouse and were just starting to talk about going up to Markleeville, getting a room, and then seeing Gatts in the morning, when she fell—her leg buckled getting out, and she missed her step. She went down against the side of the boat and the ladder. Had he not grabbed her, she would have gone into the water. He helped her to her feet.
“Muscles cramped up,” Sydney said. She massaged her leg and headed up to the house slowly, with Marco’s hand on her arm for support.
“Hey,” he said, “you need to rest everything for a while.”
When she realized she wasn’t really doing as well as she had thought, that the pain meds had fooled her a little, she acceded to the necessity of settling down, maybe getting a little sleep.
“I want to go with you to see Gatts,” she said. “Let me get some rest for a couple hours.”
He did a perimeter check, then, in the dark, they ate peanut butter sandwiches with blueberry spread and drank some milk with it, thanks to what he’d taken from the doc.
She grew very tired around midnight and took the guest room on the main floor. He chose a recliner in the living room. It gave him the best surveillance of the grounds and the house.
***
Marco was up every hour checking the grounds, worried that more people knew about her relationship with the Shaws than her doctor friend. For a time, he sat out on the deck and stared at the darkness of the lake, trying to get a clear understanding of the mess he was in and where it might go.
He could go up and try and find Gatts without her, but he didn’t much like the idea of leaving her in the condition she was in. Plus, if she found him gone, what would she do? Then there was the issue of whether he would take the Shaws’ vehicle. He didn’t want to drive his around. Adding to it all was the problem of his uncle—if Marco couldn’t respond positively, and soon, what would he do? Questions and no immediate answers.
We’ve got to talk to Gatts, he thought, getting up. He went into the bedroom to see how Sydney was doing, and she was in a deep sleep. Marco frowned. It was almost midnight. He went back outside to check the perimeter again. He started wondering if her fall had been faked.
But then he thought that was a stretch. She could have really hurt herself, hit her head, and that would have pretty much put her out of business. He knew she wouldn’t have risked it.
15
That Sunday night, four hundred sixty miles southeast of Tahoe in a penthouse suite at the Desert Towers high above the Vegas Strip, Ogden Thorp ignored his lawyer, who was at the back of the room trying to get his attention.
Thorp was busy displaying his investment dream to a small gathering of wealthy investors, some of the richest and most powerful men in gaming and hotels. Two of them were CEOs of Silicon Valley tech behemoths. Also in the mix was a Chinese billionaire who claimed he had relatives who helped build the transcontinental railroad’s western section, and that many who died had been dumped into Lake Tahoe.
Thorp stood before an eighty-two-inch screen that displayed the mockup of his vision. He was selling them on the grand Regal Tahoe and its venues. He led them with a toast to great dreams and grand designs. “Bad recessions provide great opportunities for those positioned to take advantage.”
Never before had Vegas been hit this hard and the opportunities here, like Tahoe, were big.
“Lake Tahoe’s North is the next big thing,” Ogden Thorp said. “This is Tahoe now…” They stared at the big screen. The picture zoomed in on the Cal-Neva and the other old, ready-to-be-torn-down casinos. Then the picture moved around to the mountains on the east side of the lake, the undeveloped forty-two thousand acres that once belong to George Whittell.
For Thorp, this was his moment. He’d arrived. These men, the big movers and shakers whose money had helped build Macau into the gambling capital of the world, were looking to get into something new, and he had what he thought would entice them. It had been five long years in the planning. These were the men who were going to make him king of the Sierras.
“The new design…including the outlying ski resort and the main casino hotel that will replace everything on the Cal-Neva highlands…”
With a click, there it was in close-up detail. And it was beyond spectacular. He watched the expressions on the men as their eyes widened.
“This will be the eighth wonder of the world,” Thorp said. “And it’s just the beginning.”
He moved the scene to the famous landmark, Thunderbird Lodge, on the Nevada side of the North Shore. “Here’s the big prize. We’re making some serious progress. We’ll have the ban lifted on enough land for this. This was once the dream of George Whittell. He owned the forty-two thousand acres—you heard me right—forty-two thousand acres that are now wasted parkland. The entire eastern side of Tahoe is waiting for us.”
He loved talking about George Whittell, his idol in many ways. “All that’s there is his home, which is now the Thunderbird Lodge. Before he died in nineteen sixty-seven, George changed his mind about building his great resort. I’m not sure who or what got to him. But we’re going to rectify that. Tahoe needs it and needs it now.
“George Whittell was the king of playboys in his day, and I admit to copying as much of him as my system can handle. He made Charlie Win Win look like a choirboy.”
They laughed, knowing well that he meant the famous parties—right down to the tunnels, the lion’s cage, the speedboat, and the girls. Thorp even had the stonework at his place fashioned by Paiute and Washo Indian masons and ironworkers just as Whittell had done at the Thunderbird Lodge. He didn’t import any Venetian ironworkers as Whittell had but came close. Nor could he bring in
honest-to-God Cornish miners to build the tunnels. But Mexicans, well supervised, did a very nice job.
“It true,” one of the men asked, “that you have a lion in some underground cage under your house like Whittell had?”
“That will only be revealed to those who end up there. Back in Whittell’s day—as it happened to Errol Flynn—they’d wake up after a drunk and find the fucking lion licking their faces. People heard that macho swashbuckler Flynn’s scream clear across the lake.”
The men roared. He went on regaling his audience with Whittell’s life back in the day when he had those big parties, the gambling, Hollywood stars including Howard Hughes.
Thorp’s smile filled his smug face. “Next weekend, I’ll be hosting the party of the year, the Great Gatsby Gala, and I want all of you to be there. All expenses for all the pleasures will be free, of course. And if you aren’t interested in talking to me, you’ll have on hand movie stars, politicians, and, in the poker room—modeled after the famous one in Tombstone—the world’s greatest poker players will be in the world’s biggest cash game.”
With all of the Vegas Strip glowing below them, the brightest lights in all the world, he toasted once again to the fruition of his grand dream.
He turned to the Chinese gentleman and his small entourage. “It must be very satisfying that a relative of those who labored to build the great railroads that opened the Sierras and linked the country are soon going to own them.”
More laughter. Thorp was on.
“Show us this famous gun you have,” one of the Silicon Valley investors said. “I heard it was the brother to the pistol that killed Lincoln.”
He pulled out the Derringer, laid it in the palm of his hand, and then passed it around for the investors to see.
“A piece of history. This baby is the brother pistol to the one that killed Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre. Man that made them, Henry Deringer, made them in pairs because they only shot one bullet. Each pair had a specific bullet mold.” He retrieved the gun and held it up. “Black walnut stock, checkered grip.”
“It authentic?”
“This is the real thing. Cost me a fortune to get hold of it. It’s been going around. The original is kept by the U.S. Park Police in Ford’s Theatre. They authenticated it about ten years ago as the second of the pair. I heard that it was out there three years ago, and I had some people run it down for me. Paid big.”
“How can you be sure that’s the one?”
“Forensics and science. You check the rifling pattern, tool marks, shading, the grain. The metal of these single-shot percussions is chemically browned iron, and you can check the age, which I did. Look at the barrel—see how it’s flattened and slotted on top for the blade front sight. You have engraved German silver. Lock plate and barrel stamped with Derringer Philadelphia. His named was Deringer, with one R, but the gun was called a Derringer, using two Rs. Made in pairs, the double-R makes sense.”
“You ever shoot it?”
He put the gun in his pocket. “Not yet. But I’m sure that day will come.”
That brought a big round of laughter. It was at that moment, as he was raising yet another toast, that he got a shoulder tap by his lawyer.
Thorp finished the toast, then followed Richard Rouse, his attorney, business partner, and life-long friend out onto the balcony.
16
“What’s the problem?” Thorp demanded. He was quickly sorry he asked. And it got a lot worse when Rouse told him about the shooting at the hatchery, about Cillo’s nephew saving Jesup, and how he was out there somewhere as well. Then the most distressing news of all.
“Looks like the fool who jumped the gun was Shaun.”
“How do you know this?”
“I’ve been talking to everybody who knows anything. It really looks that way.”
Thorp’s incredulity turned instantly to anger. “That’s…that’s insane. That bastard. Jesus Christ.”
Thorp stared down at the flow of lights on the Vegas Strip as he tried to process the idea that his moronic cousin, a lowlife piece of crap, would take it upon himself to do something like this. It was almost unfathomable.
“Media have this?”
“No. So far she hasn’t reported anything. Probably to protect her cousin at the hatchery. This is potential disaster.”
“What are we doing about it?”
“The guy I told you about, a plane will bring him in tomorrow.”
“This guy from New York?”
Rouse nodded. “They say he’s top of the line. I’ve been told his specialty is that he’s a suicide expert. He doesn’t whack people in the old Italian way. He’s a new breed. Quiet, quick, and very effective in what he does. You won’t even know he’s in town.”
“I want to know he’s in town. I’d like to talk to him, make sure he understands that we can’t afford any kind of negative publicity. How can I meet this guy?”
“I don’t know that’s a good idea.”
“I didn’t ask you that.”
“Well, he did have a demand. He insists we get the Marilyn Monroe Celebrity Cabin at the Cal Neva freed up for him. I’m taking care of it.”
Thorp stared at Rouse. “He wants the Marilyn Monroe Celebrity cabin.”
“That’s what our contact said. He’s some kind of movie buff.”
Thorp was beside himself. “This can’t be happening. If it was my idiot cousin, why? Is he deliberately trying to destroy me or what?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he’s trying to impress you.”
“He’s succeeded. If it was him, he’s dead. I want him gone. I want this cleaned up fast. That guy comes in, I want to meet him. Have the Cal-Neva open the tunnel from the kitchen to the Celebrity cabin that JFK and Sinatra used when they went secretly to visit Marilyn.”
17
The rather anonymous, inconspicuous young man smiled to himself, remembering what he had told the man he’d killed as he walked the night streets of New York City near Times Square late Sunday night:
“You’re going to do the world a favor and commit suicide. I’m going to help you in that. It’s what I do. I’m a suicide specialist. Your profession is bilking folks out of millions. Mine is getting them some justice. I love my profession.”
It was the best of times…and Sunday night, when people were least aware, it was the killer’s night. His profession was booming and he considered himself at the top, with his pick-and-choose of gigs. One of the reasons Leon had considered taking the job in Tahoe so soon after the Brooklyn job was Marilyn Monroe’s cabin. He’d heard they were thinking of tearing it down, and he’d always wanted to spend some time there. Watch her movies on his Kindle Fire while lying back, reposing as it were, on her bed.
Henry Craven Lee, aka Leon, the man referred to by the code name Urbanwolf, had come to New York for a job in Brooklyn and was now enjoying a night off after another success. He thought about his recent target. How the man had stared at death more with acceptance than fear. How like Leon was maybe doing him a favor, doing what he’d wanted to do but didn’t have the guts.
“It’s not business and it’s not personal, it’s Mother Nature…the Italians notwithstanding.”
He’d said those words as he’d looked into the widened eyes of the man, eyes more resigned than any Leon had ever seen. That thousand-yard stare, as they say. Something you see in war zones…and wasn’t Wall Street the final war zone?
Post-kill was Leon’s second favorite time. The long, slow comedown from the ultimate high the hunt gave him. Leon had taken his current name from the French version of one of his favorite old movies, The Professional. All the names he’d worked under over the years were lifted from favorite movies. The Professional was Leon in the French version, staring Natalie Portman and the hitman Jean Reno. It was one of Henry Craven Lee’s all-time top flicks.
Leon strolled now down Fifth Avenue. He loved the night crowds. The anonymity, the knowing. He talked silently to people. He was never alone. The world was his play
ground, and he talked incessantly to people, imagining what he would do to some of them. Leon’s mind never stopped except on the hunt. Then it calmed. Then it focused. Otherwise? It ran and ran and ran.
You don’t care, do you? Life beat you. Nature has no sympathy.
Leon took great pride in the professionalism of his work. And though he’d learned much of it from watching movies and critiquing the killers, even mocking them, movies were his outlet. After the military denied him, which he was forever grateful for—fuck them—he’d studied his profession with zeal. Awarded himself a Ph.D. He didn’t like taking orders anyway. He was a genius with an IQ near 160, but what he possessed above anyone he encountered was that he knew the fundamental truth of life. He was absolutely convinced he knew the nature of things and the “others” were just kidding themselves.
A limo was now waiting for him in front of his hotel to take him to a private airfield from which he’d be flown to Tahoe. But tonight, he’d especially enjoyed his time prowling aimlessly through Times Square, working off his restless energy, the man whose real name was Henry Craven Lee, so pleased with himself. Sure, he got physically lonely at times, sometimes wanted a hooker for release. But for the most part, he liked being a lone wolf.
Leon loved nature’s laws. The true existence of life was the hunter. And he loved movies. He liked to think he looked a bit like De Niro in Taxi—his best role, in Leon’s mind, though he was great in Goodfellas and Casino. He couldn’t decide, when he thought about it, which of De Niro’s movies was the best. But what about The Deer Hunter and—hold on—Raging Bull? You can’t leave that out. And then what about Cape Fear? And—Christ, yes—don’t forgot The Godfather!
But it was De Niro and Jean Reno in The Professional who were his greatest screen heroes. No contest.
Leon, carrying his travel bag, laughed out loud at the great movies De Niro had been in, all of which he’d seen almost as often as the Monroe movies. Laughing out caused people to glance at him.
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