Cool Heat

by Richter Watkins

  “I take it Dutch Grimes cooperated?”

  “He didn’t have a choice, and he didn’t look like a guy who could do much resisting.”

  She smiled. “I bet you aren’t easy to deal with.”

  “I try,” Marco said. “Go on back home.”

  “See you later, cowboy,” she said with a sexy little Southern twang.

  He watched her walk away. He wondered what she’d do if she got out of here with a ton of money. Probably hook up with some lunatic and end up broke and in a mess soon enough. That type usually did.

  When she was out of sight, Marco slipped away, down the side of the dock. He wanted to cross the lake and do a little nighttime recon of the estates. Choose the best place to come in.

  47

  Kora, knowing Jesup’s guy was watching her, tried to walk causally toward the Ketch, letting him enjoy her, yet she half-expected to hear gunshots. Leon in action.

  For a brief, intense moment on her way back, she played with some serious doubts. Then reversed herself.

  This is what I have to do, she thought. I’ve got my hunting dog, and I need to use him.

  With the killer waiting up in her condo, and this Marco guy lurking somewhere nearby, Kora North felt like the walls of her life were closing fast. She took a deep breath to relieve the pressure.

  Two outlaws, one goal. I’ve chosen, she thought. No backing out now.

  In the end, she figured she really needed a Leon. She had other plans besides money. She needed them both for now to get her to the Promised Land, and nothing was going to stand in her way once she made up her mind. But later, later was a different story. She had a lot of bastards to pay back for what they’d done to her.

  She wondered if Marco was doing Jesup. In a way, it made her a little jealous. He had some qualities she liked a lot.

  Little love birds on the big caper. Straight-ass cop turned thief planning the biggest heist in the Sierras since the whites stole it from the Indians. She gave Jesup credit. The girl was no shrinking violet, for sure. Kora had developed a respect for the ex-investigator. Lady had some big balls taking on Thorp and his fucking empire.

  She also got herself this hardcore dude.

  Kora passed the restaurant, people laughing, enjoying their existence, totally oblivious of the sharks circling dangerously beneath the surface. When she reached her condo and went inside, Leon wasn’t there. She called his name, but no answer.

  “What the hell?” Kora said. But then the door opened behind her and he came in. He’d been outside. Probably watching her the whole time.

  “It’s like I said—they’re serious. They’re really going to do it.”

  Leon’s harsh ventriloquist whisper: “Saturday night?”

  “Late. Around two Sunday morning.”

  “Jesup with him?”

  “I don’t know. He didn’t say. He was just there. I don’t know if he drove, came by boat, or dropped from the sky. Came up on me like a fucking ghost.”

  Leon said, “You give him the map?”

  “Yes. He wants me to get hold of Tricky Dick’s smartphone if I can get it. They got this all figured out. They got the whole security layout from the guy who installed it. I don’t know what this Marco’s background is, but he seems to know exactly what he’s doing.”

  She told him what Marco had said, and how this was all going to work out. She wasn’t sure if she was now going to be killed, now that he had everything he needed and could go back to Thorp and tell him.

  But what Leon said in that barely audible voice of his was, “Do what the man wants. We’re gonna play their game, take all the marbles. Right now, I’m going to go have them fix my face.”

  Kora wanted to toast the new relationship. Pour some of the Beringer’s 2005 Merlot that a rich prick said was from the Bancroft Ranch vineyard and real quality for the price. She decided to save it until she was by herself.

  After Leon slipped out into the night, Kora went out on the small balcony and peered out across the Lake. She realized that she and Sydney Jesup had the same goal of tearing that bastard Thorp down. They were sisters in that. And they both had their Dobermans to assist with the job.

  Kora held up her glass and toasted Sydney. She felt sad that she had to betray the woman and her boyfriend. But it was all about survival.

  48

  After leaving the Keys, Sydney steered the Glastron GX 235 up the middle of the vast lake while Marco used the night glasses to track for Coast Guard boats. They drew closer to Incline, where they could see the activity at Thorp’s. They drifted out about a quarter mile.

  Sydney’s big worry with Kora was her not getting drunk and blowing the whole operation. But Marco seemed pretty convinced she was going to work out.

  “Things are happening over there? A couple big tents. Getting ready for the party of the year,” Marco said as they drifted a little closer.

  They passed the night glasses back and forth, checking out the possible approach, the deck and boathouse, across the corner of the lake past the Cal-Neva to the North Shore, where Thorp and Rouse had their waterfront estates.

  At night, the lake had only the light of the moon glazing the water, the surrounding mountains black. Almost no lights were visible on the North Shore. Laws against trimming trees and the lack of streetlights at Incline gave the illusion there was almost no civilization there until you were close enough to see houses.

  Marco said, “I used to come out in the middle of the lake with friends and we’d swim. It was really weird because you knew how deep the lake was and it seemed like you were alone in the universe. Really cool at the same time. You think there are all those dead bodies preserved at the bottom, like everyone thinks?”

  Sydney said, “Maybe. It’s over sixteen hundred feet deep right about where we are now. Tahoe is the second deepest mountain lake in the country. The deepest is Oregon’s Crater Lake. It comes in at over nineteen hundred feet. I’ve been there once. It has no streams feeding it and none coming out. It’s fed by snow melt.”

  “Not as big as Tahoe, though, is it?”

  “No. It’s about six miles wide, six long or close. Nowhere near as big. Tahoe’s twenty-two by twelve miles and has something like forty trillion gallons of water. Enough to flood the entire state of California with over a foot of water.”

  Closer to the shoreline now, the lights of the Incline estates became barely visible. Marco glassed the Incline estates, tracking from the tents and outdoor party preparations at Thorp’s to Rouse’s next door.

  Marco handed the glasses to her. He drew a sketch on the back of the drawings Kora had given him. The location of the docks, the boathouse, and the tree line, to compare them to Google Earth, get the distances right.

  “I like where the dock is from the property east of Rouse’s. It has a boathouse, and between them would be a nice place to slip in.”

  Sydney had them on a slow cruise now. “That looks good.”

  “Thorp’s got four huge tents on the lawns. All of them look like candy-cane color, red and white striped. A band platform is set up. Strings of Christmas lights.”

  “Looks like it’s going to be one hell of a party.”

  They sat for a time, drifting offshore a few hundred yards. For a time they were silent, drifting in their thoughts. It was one of the few peaceful moments since he picked her up on Sunday.

  As they started back, Sydney felt a sense of finality, one way or another, with her long obsession with getting Thorp. Her guilt about getting Marco involved, then his uncle getting killed, was muted somewhat by her feeling that she’d saved Marco from becoming part of the Thorp play against Tahoe.

  They talked about the movies that had been filmed in Tahoe. Sydney said that the first movie ever filmed on the lake was Indian Love Call.

  “I never heard of that,” Marco said.

  “It’d be a great game-show trivia question. It was some kind of musical back in the ‘30s.”

  Marco said the only movie he knew was filmed
in Tahoe was The Godfather. “And wasn’t Bodyguard, with Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston?”

  She said she thought that was filmed at Fallen Leaf Lake.

  Marco said, “Where your girl and her boyfriend were murdered?”

  “Yes.” Then she said, pointing, “There’s a boat coming this way pretty fast. Maybe trouble.”

  Sydney moved in a half circle and opened the throttle but held off making a fast run until they could make out what they were dealing with. Marco had his weapon out in one hand, the night glasses in the other.

  “Looks like kids.”

  The speedboat turned and headed west toward Tahoe City, rocking them in its wash.

  Sydney turned southwest, past the Cal-Neva highlands and then Tahoe City.

  ***

  Back at the Shaws’ they stayed up late and intended to do that for the next two nights to get adjusted to pulling an all-nighter Saturday to Sunday morning. They ate from the foods Marco had liberated from the Doc. Linguini, spinach, chicken. A real meal.

  They went over and over the maps and drawings, studying the entry point and approach, fighting sleep to acclimate themselves to the night operation. She knew that eventually they would be in bed. That his hands would be all over her and that she’d surrender to him. When it happened, she marveled at the man’s ability to turn her aches and pains into something completely opposite.

  Afterward, as he was making a predawn check of the perimeter, she lay on the bed feeling utterly fucked, looking forward to a good, long sleep. On the way into that sleep, she went over everything that had happened since Sunday.

  She thought about the man whose face she broke with the dumbbell and then shot, his body lying somewhere up in the woods, becoming a feast for whatever creatures got to it first.

  49

  Ogden Thorp had a difficult time dealing with early guests and party preparations until he finally got word from Rouse that their boy was back. Rouse had him taken to the clinic owned by one of their golf and business associates, Doc Winters.

  One in the morning, Thorp finally heard from Rouse that their boy was in the cabin and there was good news. “I’ll meet you in the gazebo in ten minutes.”

  In the gazebo on the water’s edge of Thorp’s estate, with the work of setting up still going on behind him, Oggie drank scotch and paced as he waited for Rouse to get out of his golf cart and join him. Just getting Rouse to handle the situation when the guy returned had been a major deal. But Oggie had been bogged down with the early arrivals and Rouse had to handle it.

  “How’s he doing?”

  Rouse went for a drink. “The doc said he had a zygomatic fracture. They fixed him up with a mask like a goalie hockey mask. Makes him look like a cross between Hannibal Lector and an alien.”

  “Well, Kora’s okay, right?”

  “Yeah. Sit. You’ll need to sit.”

  “None of your drama routines. Just tell me what he found out. Why was she with them? What happened?

  Thorp saw in Rouse’s face that it was something. “Well, damnit?”

  Rouse smiled. He was waiting for this moment. “They’re dead. They had Kora, threatening her. Wanted her to lure you out, and she wasn’t cooperating. He showed up, killed them both. Kora’s right on the water. They took the bodies down to her boat in the middle of the night, wrapped up in blankets. He anchored them with wire and the Kettle balls that Kora works out with. They’re at the bottom of the lake swimming, as the Italians like to say, with the fishes.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Dead serious.”

  Thorp was dumbstruck for a moment as he looked out at the lake. “Pour me another. Hallelujah. That calls for a toast. Nobody saw them?”

  “Not that we’ve heard.”

  Finally, Thorp thought. Finally that bitch is gone.

  “Our boy is something else,” Thorp said. “He goes over there with his goddamn face broken and does the job. Jesus, that’s a real soldier.”

  They toasted to their boy.

  “I worry,” Rouse said. “He’s killed four people. That’s a lot of dead. They haven’t even found Corbin. Maybe we should send somebody over to get rid of the body.”

  “Cillo’s was an accident. Corbin committed suicide or something. Who cares? Don’t go anywhere near that. And Cruz ran off to places unknown with his new girlfriend. Don’t worry so damn much. We own the right people and means, we get to decide what the truth is. And that, my friend, being a lawyer, you should know is the greatest power of all.”

  They clinked glasses. Behind them, the party crews below were putting up the finishing touches for the big striped tents, outdoor dance floor, stage, and the movie screen behind the stage that would play, silently, over and over all night, the movie version of The Great Gatsby.

  Thorp was buoyant, thrilled, in love with his hired gun. Getting rid of Jesup was a big relief, a huge weight off of him. He couldn’t wait to see Kora and find out the details of what those bastards had wanted her to do.

  ***

  Friday night, when the festivities got underway, Thorp was in for another surprise.

  “She’s at the Cal-Neva,” Rouse said, coming out on the veranda. “She’s coming over in a limo with, she says, the mystery guest.”

  “What?”

  ***

  From the moment they exited the limo, Kora and her masked mystery guest were something of a sensation. Kora, decked out in her white Daisy outfit, Leon in a black suit, black mask, perfect beside her. Thorp and Rouse met and escorted them up to his office, its deck overlooking the party and the lake.

  They listened, enraptured, as Kora told them told them this wild story about how Corbin was blackmailing her and how she was kidnapped by Jesup and Marco Cruz and how they were going to use her to get to them and kill him.

  “If Leon hadn’t shown up when he did, killed them both, you might be the ones dead.”

  Kora seemed very different in some way. Beautiful and bold as he’d never seen her. And brilliant.

  Touching Leon’s arm, she said, “You need to offer a big prize for anyone who can guess who he is. Not that they will, but it’ll be a lot of fun. Offer half a million or something. It’ll be really cool.”

  It took a bit for Thorp to buy into it, but Kora proved right. Friday night was a winner all around. And it was just the opening act. The warm-up as people continued to stream in from Hollywood, Vegas, Silicon Valley, Texas.

  The whole mystery-guest thing got bigger and bigger. Word went around of the half million to the winner. People came up to Thorp with their guesses. Saturday, it grew until the mystery guest was almost the centerpiece of the event.

  And the pro played it to the hilt. He seemed to love the whole thing.

  Rouse, as usual, wasn’t happy, especially when he learned from Kora that the pro decided he might take Thorp up on the idea of becoming a permanent part of the new world Thorp and his investors were planning. Rouse looked petrified at the idea. They watched as Leon walked among the guests.

  “He’s great,” Kora said. “He’ll be a great addition. He can run all the security operations. And deal with problems.”

  “Why don’t we just make him a Tonka overseer to senior management,” Rouse said with disgust.

  Thorp and Kora both laughed.

  The band was in full throat. Servers in their elegant outfits were carrying trays of drinks. The lakefront, gazebo, and dance floor festooned with lights.

  Thorp said, “Daisy, this mystery guest is genius. It’ll be talked about and guessed at for years because we’ll never reveal who he is. Hell, I even had one drunk woman suggest it was Obama with his skin deliberately whitened for the occasion.”

  Rouse, not amused, left, heading for the poker room. Kora watched him go. “Well, that’ll probably be the last we see him until Sunday afternoon.”

  Thorp put his arm around Kora and escorted her into the crowd, calling people old sport and acting like he was king of the universe.

  Enjoy it, Kora though
t, it won’t last all that long. Thorp, thinking he had the world in the palm of his hand, King of the Sierras on his throne, had no idea what was going on. He was in for a big shock.

  He loved to brag how his ancestors had cleared the Indians from this land, housed and fed gold seekers, hung a few, brought Chinese coolies to help build the railroads. This was his land, his heritage.

  Not for much longer, asshole, Kora thought, as she smiled at admiring guests. Somebody was insisting it was Brad Pitt.

  “He’s better looking and more available than Brad,” Kora said, drawing laughter.

  Kora needed to break free and go text Marco Cruz, so she whispered to Thorp she needed to take a pee, and then kissed him on the ear, thinking that would be a nice place to put a bullet.

  She needed to know if they had anyone else on the inside. If they did, explaining the mystery guest might be a problem. She hadn’t thought about that.

  But when she contacted Jesup and Cruz, it seemed she was their only inside girl. “So far, so good,” Kora told Leon when she met him out by the gazebo.

  50

  The communication with Kora had gone well. Her head, as Marco had predicted, was very much in the game. They learned from Kora that the party was a huge success. So far, Kora knew nothing about what happened to the guy who’d killed Corbin.

  Sydney kept tabs through her police-reporter friend on what was going on, and Corbin’s body hadn’t yet been found. He apparently had no friends coming over to see what he was up to.

  Saturday night, Sydney, feeling the butterflies of excited tension, helped Marco get everything into the boat they would need. Marco had two escape plans in case everything went to hell. Sydney didn’t want to get into negative thinking, so she left that up to him. In her mind, if something went wrong, escape might be all but impossible given the security Thorp had roaming around his estate. Fortunately, they weren’t going anywhere near his party or his grounds.

  It had been a week since the incident at the hatchery and for the first time, Sydney felt good physically. The wounds had enjoyed a few days without further trauma and were beginning to heal nicely.