Dead Simple

by Jon Land

  “Yes.”

  “Lots of changes. Different times than the ones you remember. The land’s still the land, but what it’s good for has changed.”

  Liz took a step back from him. “What exactly does a Cattleman’s Association do, Mr. Redding?”

  “Looks out for the best interests of its members, Miss Halprin.”

  “And what would those interests be?”

  He tried to smile. “Why don’t you tell us?”

  “My only interest is in keeping my farm,” Liz said, and moved to pour herself a cup of coffee.

  “That’s the problem,” Redding said, approaching her once again.

  Liz stopped before she got to the pot. “Whose problem? Since I have no intention of leaving, it’s not mine. And since you’re here to help me, it couldn’t be yours. Who does that leave?”

  “We wanted you to hear the town’s perspective on things,” Redding told her. “This county’s running out of chances, Ms. Halprin. In fact, I’d say Maxwell Rentz’s resort might be our last one. Now, we understand you got your reasons for holding out. If it’s more money you want—”

  “It’s not.”

  “—the association will go to Mr. Rentz on your behalf. He needs the direct access your land allows to the main highway, and if he doesn’t break ground on this soon, between you and me, he might throw in the towel and take his business elsewhere.”

  “You’re worried about all those lost jobs, then.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I am.”

  “And you’ve got good reason to be … whether I sell or not. I’ve been reading up on the various holdings of Rentz Enterprises. This isn’t the first time they’ve taken on a massive project; the only first would be if they hired locals to work on it.”

  Redding tugged at his collar.

  “You see,” Liz continued, “Rentz Enterprises is known for bringing in cheap, nonunion labor from wherever they can get it, usually after the local authorities grant them all kinds of tax breaks. You think it’ll be any different here? You think the day Maxwell Rentz breaks ground on Disney World North, there will be a single local resident holding a shovel?”

  Redding tried to look calm. “Well, Ms. Halprin, there’s a lot of people in these parts who’d like the chance to find out. We’ve been holding them off as best we can, but I’m not sure we’ll be able to much longer.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  “Just relaying information. Now, we’re aware there have been a few incidents already, and we’re worried even we won’t be able to prevent more.” Redding paused, letting his eyes fall on a recent Polaroid of Liz and Justin held by a magnet to the refrigerator. The last one taken since he’d gone back to live with his father. “You planning on having your son join you here?”

  The look in Redding’s eyes got Liz’s heart hammering. She felt pressure building in her head, and her mouth went dry. Before she could respond, the screen door rattled and Buck Torrey strode in. He had eased the door open with his foot, both his hands occupied behind his broad back.

  “Morning, fellas,” he greeted innocently. “Hey, that must be your truck parked outside. She’s a beauty, lemme tell you.”

  Redding was trying very hard to see what Buck was holding. “I don’t think we’ve met.”

  “Aw, I’m just the young lady’s father. Retired now. Dividing my time amongst my children. You’ll know what it’s like soon enough.”

  Buck smiled broadly and Redding responded with a smile of his own.

  “Hey, that truck parked outside—I was thinking about getting me one just like it. With all the traveling I do, I need a lot of space in the bed. So—I hope you don’t mind—I checked yours out.”

  Something in Buck Torrey’s expression changed at that point. Everyone in the kitchen noticed it, but only Liz sensed what was coming next.

  He brought one of his hands from behind his back to reveal the pair of wire cutters he was holding. “Found this amongst the tools back there. I got to figure that one just like it was what cut my daughter’s phone line last week.” Buck laid the wire cutters on the counter and brought a shotgun with an elegant wooden stock from behind his back next. “Now, this is a beautiful piece of work. Twelve-gauge pump. Takes eight shells instead of your customary six. Accurate up to thirty yards, maybe.” His eyes narrowed intently. “Funny thing. That’s the distance from which I figure somebody shot up the bay window in my daughter’s living room.”

  Buck Torrey was feeding on the air now, seeming to get larger as he stood there. He retraced his steps to the screen door and grabbed a 30.06 rifle he had leaned up against the frame just outside.

  “And this piece of shit carries the same shell and load that killed one of the cows my daughter bought when she came back home.” Buck’s eyes bored into Redding’s, daring him, daring all three of them, to make a move. “It takes a helluva man to shoot a dumb animal, let me tell you. Stand out in the open and take your time fixing your aim on something that’s not about to shoot back.”

  In a blur of motion, Buck snapped the 30.06 up into his arms in a relaxed shooting position. Neither Redding nor his men moved an inch. Buck looked almost disappointed.

  “An amateur might call this a marksman’s rifle. A pro uses something with a lot more velocity and a lot less kick. Something he can control enough to paint a target up to a mile or more away. Think about that. You’re driving in that nice blue truck of yours, minding your own business, and all of a sudden there’s lead flying through the windshield, coming from so far away you never even hear the gunshots. You know any man like that?”

  Redding didn’t say a word. His two subordinates exchanged glances, warning each other off.

  “Well,” Buck Torrey said, “I do. I know plenty. Some pretty good friends of mine. Flushed the M-21 sniper system down the toilet in Nam for a modified M-16 with an infrared scope. Yup, they’re good friends, all right.”

  Buck’s face squared up, reddened a little. His chest blew outward to its true expanse. He looked taller, a breath away from springing, each of the men fearing it was going to be toward him.

  “Now, I can almost let the shot-up window go by. Almost. And as far as shooting a dumb animal goes, well, that pretty well clinched things even before you mentioned my grandson. I figured then it was time I come in and introduce myself.” Liz realized Buck was holding the 30.06 dead on Redding’s gut. “I want you to go back to the rest of the members of your association and tell them this farm is not for sale. Tell them the issue is not negotiable. Mr. Rentz is just gonna have to use the old road across the way to access his condos, golf courses, and theme parks. Might make you a hero when you think about all those extra men he’ll have to hire to level that land, lay that extra asphalt.” The 30.06 rifle was still grasped in his hand like it weighed nothing. “I’d think about things from that perspective if I was you.”

  Buck Torrey backed away, showing them the door. They filed past him slowly, not bothering to ask for their guns and tool back.

  “That the competition?” he asked Liz.

  “So far.”

  Buck smirked. “I hope this Max Rentz can do better. I think maybe I’ll pay him a visit and find out.”

  TWELVE

  The Yost twins sat across from Jack Tyrell in the booth.

  “It wasn’t easy tracking you boys down,” he told them.

  “Well, we been moving around a lot,” said Earl.

  “Keeping to the roads,” added his brother Weeb. “Real traveling men.”

  “Like the Allman Brothers song.”

  “That was ‘Rambling Man,’” Jack corrected.

  The whole time he’d been sitting there talking to them, Jack knew he might have had their attention, but not their eyes. Those two pairs of matching pinkish eyes seemed to move as one, studying everyone who entered the roadside diner. Following their steps from the parking lot after they parked their vehicles.

  The twins had been with Jack for a good part of his run through the early seventies. They were
n’t very much committed to the times or the cause, though they claimed to be. They just enjoyed the violence. Tyrell saw right through them but didn’t care much what motivated them, because they were very good at what they did. Hold guns on the hostages during a bank job or shoot a kidnap victim in the head when the ransom money didn’t come through as promised. That kind of work didn’t suit everybody.

  Earl and Weeb were both rail-thin guys with skin wrapped tight over their bones, but they were the most terrifying men Jack had ever met up with. The measure of true fear was based on the extent to which a man was willing to go, and there was no extent too far for Earl and Weeb Yost. Absolutely nothing they wouldn’t do. They placed no value whatsoever on human life, killing to them as natural as breathing.

  “You like our car?” Earl asked suddenly.

  “Green Caddy parked out there in the shade,” added Weeb.

  “Got killer air-conditioning.”

  “A must for the upcoming summer.”

  “You want us to get you one?” Earl posed, wanting to please like a puppy on its first day home, seeing Jack as probably the only man who appreciated their talents.

  Jack looked at them across the booth. They’d been waiting when he arrived, having chosen the back booth because it was out of the sun. The sun hurt their eyes and burned their skin. The twins were albinos: faces that looked like they were smeared with talcum powder every morning and hair a tangle of sugar-coated thin spaghetti.

  “How did you find us?” Earl asked, curious again.

  “Why’d you bother is what I’m wondering,” Weeb raised suspiciously.

  As Jack peered at the brothers, deciding which to answer first, he noticed their eyes stray in eerie synchronicity to a Winnebago that had just pulled into the parking lot. The twins watched as a family of four piled out, looking road-weary and eager for any food that hadn’t been cooked over a propane stove. The brothers turned toward each other, smiling.

  “You were about to say how you found us,” Earl picked up.

  “No,” Weeb disagreed. “He was going to tell us why he bothered.”

  “The how is easy,” Jack told them. “The work you boys do leaves a distinctive signature. Couple newspapers, the TV news—you’re not hard to keep track of for somebody who knows what to look for.”

  “It’s a living,” Earl offered, as the family from the Winnebago entered the diner.

  “Doesn’t amount to much from where I’m sitting.”

  “You got something better in mind?”

  Jack aimed his words at Weeb this time. “That’s why I’m here. Got some work for you, if you’re interested.”

  The twins looked at each other again, not very excited. Weeb spoke. “And we’re supposed to believe you can just pick up where you left off?”

  “No. You’re supposed to believe I’m gonna pick up a long way beyond where I left off.”

  “Fucking A,” said Earl, tensing a little as the Winnebago family took a booth just two away from theirs.

  Weeb slid a little closer to his brother. “I’ve seen people tow cars behind those Winnebagos.”

  “What’s your point?” Earl asked him.

  “I’m wondering if we can keep the Caddy, just for kicks. String it along behind us.” Then, as quick as that, Weeb looked back at Jack. “What kind of job we talking about?”

  “We’re gonna take some hostages.”

  “Sounds easy enough,” said Weeb.

  “How many hostages?” asked Earl.

  Jack Tyrell lifted his cup and sipped coffee through the steam. “Oh, five million, give or take a few.”

  THIRTEEN

  Maxwell Rentz drove through his model community in a cart designed to haul a caravan of cars behind it, purchased back in the days when he envisioned hordes of potential buyers seeking tours of the property.

  And why not?

  It was a work of art, of perfection. From the time he announced his plans to build such a high-security, self-contained community eighteen months before, Rentz expected to be deluged with requests to reserve living accommodations. Enclosed by a high white stone wall, built upon the ruins of an inner-city Baltimore housing project off North Avenue, Paradise Village was perceived as not only a prototype for future neighborhoods but also a savior of urban America. People just couldn’t escape crime anymore, no matter where they went or what they did. The alternative harked back to an old moats-and-gates philosophy: all that was bad kept out so that buyers would come in. Eventually, Rentz dreamed, the government would turn to his model for its vast projects, which would make Rentz a billionaire many times over.

  To underscore the citadel idea, he had placed a guard tower in each corner to provide strategic viewpoints of the community’s two dozen symmetrical, crisscrossing, immaculate streets. Nonobtrusive video surveillance via hidden cameras installed at numerous locations would give ample warning if anyone did manage to get through. A private security force would then swing into action, charged with protecting the community’s thousand residents.

  A mixture of villas, town houses, and eight-story buildings featuring four units per floor would serve as home to those residents. Each residence was wired to a central monitoring station. There was an elementary school, a pharmacy, a grocery store, an entertainment center featuring a first-run movie theater. Rentz boasted that a resident need never leave the confines of Paradise Village. It was a fortress built amidst a den of squalor and decadence, which rose as a monolith of hope for those the system had lost the ability to help.

  Rentz imagined franchising Paradise Villages all over the world, gradually swallowing up the slums across the globe to provide good people with a safe place to live. Toward that end, he pumped the vast bulk of his dead father’s resources into its construction, committed to having his working model up and running at the earliest possible time. He had even scheduled dozens of tours with foreign dignitaries, government officials, investors, and venture capitalists in advance of the completion date. When construction wrapped weeks ahead of schedule, he took this as a good omen and couldn’t wait for the pitch meetings to begin, already counting the millions he would recoup for his efforts.

  His father had always scoffed at his schemes. Rentz had blessed this opportunity to prove him wrong, at the same time he found it ironic that his father’s death had given him the chance, and the capital, to do it. The accident had left him in charge of the business, millions of dollars to do with as he pleased.

  And he had done so.

  But the dozens of meetings, tours, and pitches that followed the completion of construction had not led to a single franchise request; not even a nibble. Paradise Village had become a great white elephant, with the monkey of a prohibitive operational budget riding its back. But Rentz couldn’t cut that budget for fear of losing whatever hope he had of gaining some return on his investment. And if he shut down, Paradise Village would become nothing more than a hundred-million-dollar loss.

  Rentz drove the streets in the carless train, marveling at how perfectly everything had turned out. Nothing had been skimped, no corners cut. He had started with a vision and refused to accept any suggestions that might have compromised that vision.

  “Mr. Rentz.” A call came over the car’s dashboard speaker.

  “Yes, Donovan.”

  “You’re needed at your office, sir.”

  “Concerning what?”

  “The Halprin farm.”

  “Did the crew find something?”

  “You’d better see for yourself, sir.”

  Rentz returned at once. Donovan, his assistant, had just turned on the television and popped a tape into the VCR.

  “This was just relayed from the site. Apparently there’s been another incident.”

  The television screen filled with a grainy, poorly lit shot of the lake’s dark depths. The picture came from a remote underwater vehicle Rentz had leased, outfitted with the most sophisticated underwater camera equipment known to man. It was piloted from the surface by a traine
d operator, who was receiving a thousand dollars per hour for his trouble. Rentz didn’t believe for one moment that the lake he so desperately needed was haunted by a monster or ghosts lurking in its depths. But something had killed his two divers last week, and he’d be damned if he’d risk sending another man down there until he knew what.

  Rentz watched the black lake come alive on-screen. He waited apprehensively for whatever had killed his divers to appear.

  “Nothing yet,” Donovan narrated.

  “I can see that. How long has the ROV been down?”

  “At this point, about ten minutes, sir.”

  Rentz moved closer to the screen. A black shape suddenly appeared before the ROV’s cameras.

  “What the hell …”

  And immediately the screen turned to a blank, the signal gone.

  “Rewind!” Rentz instructed. “Play it again in slow motion!”

  Donovan did as he was told. But running the scene in slow motion made it no easier to discern anything.

  “Again!” Rentz ordered.

  He watched the last part of the tape five more times, reaching the same conclusion each run: something had snared the ROV in its grasp, something big enough to cover all the cameras at once.

  “You can’t go in there!”

  Rentz was about to tell Donovan to rewind the tape again when he heard the protesting voice of his receptionist, followed by a light thud. Before he could even think of going for the security button, the door burst open and a tree trunk of a man with sun-weathered skin stormed through. Donovan moved to intercept him and was airborne in the next instant, smashing into the wall face-first and then slumping down along it.

  The tree trunk of a man started across the room, glaring at Rentz.

  “Time we had a talk,” he said quite calmly.

  Rentz slid back toward his desk. “Did we have an appointment I forgot?” he said, trying to cover his move for the security button. “Do I know you?”

  “No, but you know my daughter—Liz Halprin,” the tree trunk said. “My name’s Buck Torrey … .”

  FOURTEEN