Cool Heat

by Richter Watkins

  That’s what they were. Highly paid service workers for rich and powerful assholes. They got no respect. They were dark secrets nobody would ever admit to.

  I’m not going to kill him, she thought, enlightened, as if it was a powerful epiphany. So what am I going to do? And that’s when a new idea began to emerge in her agitated brain. A crazy, beautiful, new idea. Maybe the craziest and potentially greatest idea she’d ever had in her life.

  ***

  Leon had flirted with consciousness a couple times. Now, he was awake for a moment and unsure of where he was, what was going on. He lay on a couch, staring at the ceiling, not at all sure even who he was for a moment. He struggled to put the pieces of his mind back together, remember where he was, what had happened. He opened his eyes.

  A female vision materialized through the swirling brain fog. His vision struggled for focus. Breasts, mounds of white sweetness, thighs swelling in front of him, rich and full. And a gun.

  Memories started coalescing slowly, bits and pieces, streams of memory looking to solve the puzzle of consciousness. Reality reforming into understanding.

  His gun! The instrument of his power and authority, the pen with which he wrote the epithets of his conquests. For the second time, he lost it.

  His memory bubbled up out of the mental swamp, inchoate, confused, fighting to free itself of the tangles, the predators of his mind. He found himself staring at his Glock, the weapon’s nasty eye staring back at him, ready to take his life.

  Kora North, this hot chick behind the gun, said, “You’re finally awake. Christ, I thought you were in a coma getting ready to die on me. Then what? Getting rid of your body would be a big problem and what was I gonna do? I couldn’t call the police, given my problems,” she said. “Then I thought, just shoot him and call Jesup and her boyfriend and let them take care of the body.”

  Jesup and her boyfriend! That’s right, he thought. They took her. Was she with them? But…but?

  Kora, hopped up, all wild-eyed, then said, “So, how’s the face?”

  He didn’t understand.

  Then she said, “I was going kill you, but then I decided you’re more valuable to me alive than dead, in case you’re wondering. And right in the middle of thinking about it, I got a call from Marco Cruz. He wanted me to draw some maps for him. Here I am thinking whether or not to kill you, I got this other badass on the phone. Been one of those days. Then I got an idea.”

  She was dressed now in shorts and a midriff-revealing T-shirt as she sat at the bar sipping from a large ceramic cup, the Glock lying next to her hand. Her knee moved back and forth, revealing the smooth silk of her inner thigh. The highway to heaven or hell, depending, he thought.

  Leon forced himself to sit up, which influenced her to bring up a second gun. A small caliber. Looked like a .32.

  “You look like a vampire that’s been run over by an eighteen-wheeler,” she said. “You’re wondering why you’re alive. Why I’m going to give you your gun back. Well, it’s because you and I are going to make a deal that’s gonna make us rich.”

  Jesus, another deal! Everybody up here is crazy. Got to be the air.

  “The biggest deal of our lives. It’s time we form an alliance, you and me. An alliance that can make us rich and protect us at the same time.”

  Then she starting talking—that sexy smirk on her face—about what he was getting paid and how that was nothing compared to the possible payday she had in mind. Then she started telling him he didn’t know what it was like being on top of things.

  “You’re always working from dead-man paycheck to dead-man paycheck. Doing other people’s dirty laundry. Like some Mexican hitman with no life beyond what he’s told to do. A working dog for the man.”

  She was insulting him. Trashing him. He couldn’t believe this woman.

  Then she said, “Maybe you don’t want to be one of the big boys…Maybe”—she flipped her hair back from her forehead with her gun hand—”you like being the hired help, cleaning up their shit and getting paid like a janitor compared to what’s out there. That what you like, cleaning up some asshole’s crap? ‘Cause I got a feeling you’re a better man than that.”

  This would have been the point where, he wondered, had he his weapon, he’d have just flat out killed the lady to shut her up.

  “How long was I out?” he mumbled.

  “A long damn time. Which is a good thing. It gave me a chance to think things through.”

  Then, to his utter disbelief, she got up, walked over, dropped the Glock next to him, put the .32 in her back pocket, and walked over to look out the window. He realized it was dark outside. How the hell long have I been asleep? he wondered. Then he realized he needed a pill. And there was his gun, right there.

  He picked it up and aimed at her.

  She turned and looked at him. No fear blossomed in her smoky eyes. The chick had liquid nitro in her veins. The second badass female he’d run into. These fucking women up here…

  Kora said, “No, I’m not scared. You wanna know why? You want me to help you and I haven’t given you the information you really need. And because I turn you on. And because I have a proposition for you. And because you strike me as a smart man who’s sick and tired of being nothing more than a gun gardener mowing other people’s lawns. That’s why you won’t pull the trigger.”

  She walked over and he saw that her gun, which she now pointed at him, was a Colt NP Cobra, aluminum frame, two-inch barrel. She handled it like she knew how to handle it.

  “Killing me,” she said, “would only prove one thing—that you’re stupid. Too stupid to live.”

  He couldn’t believe this.

  Then she said. “Let’s put the guns down and get you fixed up. I’ll get some ice to take down the swelling. You need an anti-inflammatory. And maybe a little food. A protein shake. And stay off the booze. We can talk. I got everything you want, including Jesup and her boy toy.”

  That’s when he realized the gun was empty.

  She said, “Here’s the thing. We need to learn to trust each other…hard as that is for two people who don’t trust anybody.”

  She got the clip from the bar and put in on the table next to the couch. All he had to do was grab it. But he figured she’d pull that little popgun and shoot him before he could get locked and loaded.

  She chuckled, came over, and planted a light, delicate, warm kiss right on his bruised mouth, like he was a child, or maybe a dying patient.

  She said, “I got a feeling we’re gonna make one hell of a team.”

  Her smile widened, like a new dawn flooding into the dark world of Leon, the Professional. It was like his fantasy world, the one he needed so desperately in his isolated existence, had suddenly become his real world. Emotions, feelings, foreign and strange, moved through him like an alien invasion. She seemed highly amused by his situation.

  “You want to hear me out?” she asked.

  He nodded that he did.

  This woman had a plan. And she started telling him what her plan was, how all this money was involved, how Jesup and Cruz were going to rob the lawyers. How they had the plans and were working with some security installer guy named Dutch. And how she was the inside girl. Then she went off on his clients like they were the two worst people on planet earth.

  “I know it violates your sense of self,” she said.

  Kora North spelled it all out like this was her thing. He’d watched movies that featured female killers and badasses and that was fine, but he never really believed they could actually exist. Just something for the imagination. Comic-book chicks. But he was looking at something very different here. If ever the real thing existed, he was looking at it.

  “Jesup and Cruz are coming over to pick up the interior drawings of Rouse’s place I drew for them.”

  She showed him the drawings she’d done on printer paper.

  “You can kill them, but you’ll be killing the greatest payday of your life.”

  She’s got it all figured
out.

  She took a sip of whatever she was drinking and then told him the rest of her plan. At first he resisted the implications of it, but the more she talked—the more she added what the future was going to look like for them—he found himself actually paying attention. And it all came from the mouth of the most beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes on.

  Then, in the midst of this, her phone rang. It was them. “Now he wants me to meet him at the dock near the restaurant,” she said after ending the call. “So you need to decide. You can kill him now, or you can kill him twenty million dollars richer down the road. It’s not just money. It’s all that dirt they have on people. Imagine the power behind that. Think for a second. Instead of a hired gun, a grass cutter, what it would be like to be the big dog for once in your life. That’s what I want. I’m sick of working for other people.”

  Henry Craven Lee, presently Leon the Professional, had become mesmerized. Dazzled. A little disoriented.

  He felt an overwhelming desire to surrender to this crazy woman and what she was up to. He’d never felt anything like this before. He was in love. It was a very strange, very exciting feeling.

  46

  Waiting for dark, Marco suggested maybe, with the big party coming up and the hired gun out of the picture, Thorp might have a temporary change of heart.

  “Sending out a bunch of goons right now, with the guests coming in, might not be something he wants to do. I’m sure he’ll have major security at Incline, but he might wait until the party is over.”

  “That makes some sense,” Sydney agreed. “But where Thorp is concerned, sense doesn’t always rule. I’m not relaxing.”

  They waited until the lake began to settle down, after some speedboat races, before heading down the coast. Sydney drove the speedboat fairly close to the western shore past Tahoma and Rubicon Bay before crossing Emerald Bay and turning southeast toward the Keys.

  They passed the lake’s two behemoth paddle-sternwheelers, the Tahoe Queen and a little later the M.S. Dixie II, plodding along on the way back to dock with their dinner guests.

  “If she’s not going to work out, what’s plan B?” Marco asked as they slowed.

  Sydney said, “I hear Rio is booming.”

  She said it with a sense of dark humor, but Marco figured it wasn’t far off the mark if Kora flaked out on them.

  Sydney eased the speedboat down the Keys’ east channel into the Keys Village and main boat slips. She found an empty slip near the channel entrance where, if need be, they could make a fast run out into open water.

  “I hope you’re right about Kora,” Sydney said as they checked their Bluetooth communications, compliments of Dutch Grimes.

  “She’s gonna play,” he said. “We have too much on her and she’s looking at the money.”

  There were a lot of people out and about. Most of the crowd gathered near the Ketch Restaurant. Marco glassed the area, the parked cars, people coming and going from the Ketch. There were a lot of boats to hide in, and the parking facility stretched all along the harbor and the cove. But it was the best time to make an appearance. The last of the boats out on the lake were coming in, so there was nothing unusual about them docking.

  Marco gave Sydney the night glasses. “Keep me posted if anybody looks like they don’t belong.”

  He took his cell and made the call. Kora answered immediately. He told her to come over to the Ketch area and toward the entrance channel. He closed the phone and started to climb out.

  Sydney said, “Tell you the truth, I thought she’d be gone.”

  “Kora’s looking for that big payday. But I was a little worried.”

  ***

  Kora North left Leon and her condo. She walked across the street to the Ketch and headed down along the line of boats moored along the inlets. She didn’t know if she’d convinced Leon or not. Maybe he was just playing her.

  She was nervous and struggled to make the walk your basic evening stroll at the end of another great Lake Tahoe day. Let the men check her out, their women get irritated. People over on the tennis courts, talking at the docks, waiting to be seated at the restaurant.

  This could end in a bloody shootout, or this Marco could see that she was playing games, and then what? So many things going on. All those big shots coming into Incline Village. All the money.

  And here she was between two badass killers, one in her condo, the other waiting for her, and the most powerful man in the Sierras wanting her to be his Daisy for the weekend Great Gatsby Gala.

  It doesn’t get any better than that, Kora thought sardonically.

  ***

  Marco, now up on the dock, spotted Kora rolling toward him through the lights on the dock, those long legs making her real hard to miss even in a crowd. Hips snug in black shorts, blouse tied across the open midriff, a big-money body, but his focus shifted to the people she passed, people moving around the docks and the boats. He studied the crowd in front of the restaurant looking for a particular type but not seeing anyone who looked suspicious.

  Marco tested the Bluetooth on his ear, “Clear?”

  “Clear,” Sydney’s voice came back. “I see her.”

  “Yeah, I got her,” Marco said.

  “Nobody to worry about I can see.”

  Marco climbed over a rail and positioned himself between one of the dock buildings and a storage shed.

  He called Kara on her cell when she was a good fifty yards away. “How are you, Kora?”

  She looked around. “Okay, I guess. Where are you?”

  “Any problems?”

  “If you mean other than this whole situation, no. I’m good.” She’d stopped walking to answer.

  “Keep moving,” Marco said. “See those large boats ahead?”

  “Yes.”

  “Go there. Wait for me.”

  The lake had a near full moon, with some lights from the restaurant, but where he now stood in a small enclave, it was pitch-dark.

  Sydney, with Dutch’s night glasses, fed him a constant stream of updates on men moving around, coming from boats, a real estate office across the waterway, and the Ketch.

  “Nice to see you, Kora.”

  “Jesus, you scared me,” Kora said, stopping and turning toward him.

  He studied her expression, searching for some tell he didn’t like. Anxiety but not panic. He saw nothing that aroused serious concerns about her attitude in that over-perfect, Nordic face.

  “When you didn’t answer my calls, that wasn’t nice,” Marco said. “Got me a little worried.”

  “I was wiped out. Crashed hard. I’m normally an all-night kind of person to start with. Sorry ‘bout that.”

  She handed the drawings to him. “I did the best I could.”

  Sydney interrupted him on his earpiece. “Two men coming your way.”

  “Got it.”

  Marco reached under his shirt, came out with the Beretta, and laid it against the back of his leg. He pulled Kora back in with him deeper into the narrow space between the building and the storage shed.

  “What’s wrong?” Kora said in a low, stressed voice.

  “Maybe nothing,” Marco said quietly. “Don’t talk.”

  The two men in question walked past, talking loud, a little drunk, showing no interest in anything but their conversation.

  “You got a trailer,” Sydney warned.

  The man appeared behind them, out of nowhere. Marco had his weapon halfway up, then realized the man was totally into talking on an earpiece and seemed really upset, hands gesturing, shaking his head. He turned and walked the other way, still talking and gesturing.

  Marco tracked him. He was older and not looking like a threat, but he watched the guy for a time.

  “He looks okay,” he told Sydney. “We clear?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re jumpy,” Kora said.

  “I live jumpy,” Marco said. “It’s what keeps me alive.” He concealed the Beretta under his shirt. “When are you expected at Thorp’s?”
>
  “About this time Friday night,” she said. “That’s when the party gets going. I’ll come back here, then I go Saturday night for the big dinner, and then the party really gets rolling. It’ll go all night. Guests will start leaving, but some won’t get out until late Sunday.”

  “Everything okay with you?”

  “It could be better.”

  Marco studied her for a moment. “How’s that?”

  “I could be getting half the money we find.”

  “I think we can do that.”

  “Money buys freedom and the power to do what you want and not what other people want you to do,” Kora said. “Besides, these bastards owe me big time for the shit I’ve had to deal with.”

  He smiled. “I’m sure.” He liked that she was thinking about the payoff. Girls like Kora North spent their whole lives in lies and deception, but he thought he had a pretty good read on her.

  “Here’s the thing,” Kora said. “If any alarms go off, Rouse will get notified instantly on his smartphone. He can pull up cameras and see pretty much every room in his house.”

  “We’ll handle the alarms. If you could find a way to get ahold of that phone, it’d be that much better.”

  “I don’t know. He plays poker all weekend, hardly moves. Gets naps in the rooms off the poker tables. Massages and whatever. There are six little rooms for the poker crowd. I might be able to work something out with one of the girls.”

  “That would be good,” Marco said. “Long as she has no clue what you want it for. We’ll be in touch the whole time. I’ll text you when I want to know something. So don’t sleep without your phone next to you for the next couple days. Okay?”

  She nodded.

  They waited for a couple to pass. Young love on a balmy summer night in Tahoe. Nice, Marco thought.

  “Okay,” Marco said. “We’re set. Everything goes as planned, you’re going to get rich.”

  “I like the sound of that,” Kora said.

  Marco took out a piece of paper. “This has some call and text codes we’ll use. Memorize them.”