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by J. Carson Black

  A white truck was parked half a block up—a shiny new Chevy. The truck executed a U-turn and turned onto the street the limo had taken a few moments before.

  Max hung back in the shade, his heart pounding.

  He had the definite impression the white truck had been waiting for the limo. Were the people in the truck following the limo because they were looking for him?

  Max wondered if he was getting just a little bit paranoid.

  Better safe than sorry. And so he waited.

  And waited some more.

  Finally, Luther drove up to the motel and Max walked across the street to meet him.

  They drove out of town past a clutter of houses and businesses and up a dirt road between scruffy five-acre spreads to a place partially hidden by a fence of live bamboo. The white brick ranch could have belonged to the Rat Pack—if they’d been on a budget.

  Luther opened the door to the house. “What do you think?”

  He took in the sixties-era furniture arranged on a beaten-down white carpet.

  “Nice,” Max murmured, to be polite. Frigid air-conditioning blasted the sunken living room. Luther showed him the house. It didn’t take long. Lots of white, lots of threadbare, lots of old.

  “We can go out by the pool,” Luther said, motioning to the yard beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows. “I have extra swim trunks, if you want to take a dip.”

  Max declined.

  He was glad, though, to be outside that frigid house, even in July. They sat in the shade of the terrace. Luther asked him the usual questions. What was it like to be a rich, famous movie star?

  Did he really have a Vincent Black Shadow motorcycle? (Yes.) And was it true it once belonged to James Dean? (No.) What was it like to sleep with a babe like Talia L’Apel? Were they really going to adopt a baby from Africa like it said in the tabloids? Wasn’t he just in rehab? As the questions got more personal and prurient, Luther pulled a bottle of Coca-Cola from the antique vending machine and held it up. “Coke?” Max nodded. It looked like the original bottle, the heavy greenish glass shaped like a woman.

  “Sure.”

  Luther turned away to open the bottle on the door and asked if Max ever had three-ways with Paris Hilton. With Lindsay Lohan? Were there ever guys? The questions were insulting, but he was used to that. Everybody thought his life belonged to them, and they could tell him how badly he was fucking up and give him all kinds of advice and ask rude questions. He hated that shit, but it was nothing unusual.

  At least the Coke tasted good.

  Luther disappeared inside the house and returned with a baking sheet of heated-over taquitos, the frozen kind, like Max’s mother used to make. He realized he was ravenously hungry. He ate four or five in a row and tried to keep up with the conversation. Luther handed him another Coke. Max watched the ice lumps clinging to the bottle, watched them slide down and drip between his fingers. He thought about telling Luther he could mind his own fucking business, but forgot about it when he heard a loud voice say, “Freeze!”

  It was as if someone had spoken forcefully in his ear. A man’s voice, authoritative. But Max turned his head and no one was there. It was just the two of them here. He really was losing it.

  “Max? You all right, buddy?”

  Max focused on Luther, who was still proffering the cookie sheet. Luther’s voice was bright and uncommonly loud.

  “Why did you say that?” Max asked Luther.

  “Say what?”

  “‘Freeze.’ Why’d you say it?”

  Luther stared at Max, clearly puzzled. “I didn’t say ‘freeze.’ Why would I say that?”

  “I don’t know,” Max said, suddenly weary. It was probably another hallucination—this time an audible one.

  “I didn’t say ‘freeze.’ ” Luther said again.

  “OK.”

  Luther held out the cookie sheet. “Taquito?”

  Max wanted to rip the smirk right off Luther’s face, but he couldn’t. He just sat there, the ice water tricking through his fingers. Feeling he was untethered from the earth—not an unusual sensation at all.

  A little different this time, though.

  And that was his last coherent thought.

  “THAT CLERK WAS lying,” Hogart said to Riis as he gunned the limo out of the motel parking lot. “He was stonewalling us.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just do, that’s all.”

  The radio crackled. It was Gordon White Eagle, telling them to quit Paradox and drive to the Sunset Point Rest Area.

  “This is bullshit,” Hogart said, taking the interstate going north. “He’s still in Paradox. I can feel it.” The actor had gone to ground like a scared rabbit, about what you’d expect from a guy who made his living pretending to be fictional characters.

  The rest area at Sunset Point was closed, orange cones blocking the roads in and out; place looked like an abandoned prison camp.

  “Arizona’s so lame,” Riis said. “You can’t even find someplace to take a leak anymore.”

  “Gotta do it the old-fashioned way,” observed Hogart. “Find a bush.”

  “Yeah, well, the wife don’t like it. She’s got to pee like every five minutes when we’re on the road. Money’s tight, and now we gotta go to a McDonald’s or something, and it’s getting so those kids at the counter are looking for people just coming in for the facilities. I’m sick of the dirty looks.”

  “Times we live in. Gordon said to keep your eye peeled for a new white Chevy truck.”

  “Every other car on the road is a new white Chevy truck.”

  “Well, there’s no truck over there—the rest area’s blocked off. I’m turning around. We’ve spent enough time on this—”

  He didn’t finish his thought, because a massive truck suddenly loomed up in his rearview.

  “What the…?”

  The white Chevy’s giant grille hugged his bumper, even though they were going eighty-five.

  What was the guy doing?

  Hogart punched in Gordon’s number. It went to voice mail. They were on their own. About a half mile before the next overpass, the Chevy’s right flasher came on. Telling him to turn off.

  Hogart’s phone chimed—Gordon. “Is there a white Chevy truck behind you?”

  “Yeah, and let me tell you—”

  “Follow their instructions. This is the rendezvous I was telling you about.”

  The call terminated.

  Hogart saw the exit up ahead. He looked over at Riis and saw his own fear reflected there. But he signaled and slowed for the exit, the Chevy’s grille practically crawling up his ass.

  Riis shot him a glance. “I don’t think this is such a good idea.”

  “Orders.”

  “Yeah,” Riis said at last. “What can you do?”

  TESS MCCRAE ATE her lunch at home. Other than arresting an honest-to-God movie star after an attempted kidnapping by two tough guys in a stretch limo (not the usual thing that happened in a town like Paradox) the place had reverted to business as usual. It was hot, and people kept to themselves. There were meth labs out in the desert she didn’t know about. There were petty thefts and bad-tempered people with hair triggers who would ward off anyone trespassing on their land with a rifle. But no calls came in. Bajada County was quiet.

  After lunch, Tess powered up her MacBook and did a little research on Max Conroy. She looked at celebrity sites like TMZ and Entertainment Tonight.

  The articles on these sites were long on sensationalism and short on information. They regurgitated the same themes: Max’s bad boy ways; an unnamed source at Maxima Entertainment speculating that Conroy might not make the first day of shooting V.A.M.Pyre: The Target; a quote from Max’s publicist, Diane Scarafone, that he was busy from dawn until dusk preparing for the part, and was in “the best shape of his life.” There were some candid shots. One purportedly at the Desert Oasis Healing Center, taken with a telephoto lens. It was blurry and showed a man from the back, diving into a pool. There was
another photo of a man who could be Max Conroy at a dry-out clinic in Sonoma, California. The irony that a dry-out clinic was smack in the middle of wine country was not lost on her.

  Max’s publicist was quoted in several places, putting a great spin on her client’s prospects. This was a very exciting time. Max and his wife, actress Talia L’Apel, would soon be welcoming a baby girl from Nigeria.

  But the driver of the limo, Hogart, worked for the Desert Oasis Healing Center. This led her to believe that the Desert Oasis wanted Max back in the fold.

  She wondered why Conroy couldn’t just walk out the door, get into a limo of his own choosing, and fly back to LA if he wanted to. Instead, the man was wandering around like a derelict, waylaid by Hogart and Riis in broad daylight on a public street.

  Which, in Tess’s opinion, was unlawful imprisonment. Now she wished she’d detained the men in the limo.

  She looked up the Desert Oasis Healing Center’s website. It looked like a resort. She read some of the literature. There was plenty of language about treating addiction, and Sedona buzzwords like “guided vortex tours,” “spiritual awakening,” and something called “aura Polaroids.”

  Max did not seem crazy. He was articulate enough, even if he looked shabby. He seemed OK to her.

  He must be staying here in town. There were three motels in Paradox. One of them was a rent-by-the-month affair, an old motor court called the Sunland. Tess called the Sunland and described Max to the proprietor. All his units were full and had been for a long time. She called the Riata and the Regal 8 up the freeway. The Regal 8, not surprisingly, wouldn’t say either way—she expected that from a chain. Jan, who was working the desk at the Riata, said there was no record of anyone going by the name “Max Conroy” staying there.

  He might have used an alias, but Tess supposed he’d just moved on. No doubt, he would crop up soon, probably on a late show being interviewed for the new movie, which was coming out two weeks after he started shooting the fourth V.A.M.Pyre in the series.

  Still, she made two more calls. One to Max’s publicist, Diane Scarafone in LA, and one to the Desert Oasis Healing Center. She got a voice message at the publicist’s office, and an administrative assistant gave her a canned response at the Healing Center. They did not disclose the names of their clients. She asked to talk to the director, but was told he was “indisposed.”

  In the afternoon, as she patrolled the roads of Bajada County, Tess kept an eye out for Max, but didn’t see him.

  She’d done all she could.

  Chapter Eight

  GORDON WHITE EAGLE tightened his grip on his phone, staring at the Verde Valley below. A massive jolt of adrenaline hurtled through every synapse and nerve. “You did what?”

  “Don’t worry, no one will find them.”

  Gordon had to hyperventilate before he was able to squeak out one word: “Why?”

  “Because they were inept? Because they were greedy? You really get an idea what people are like when they’re staring death in the face, Gordo. You know what that bald guy, Bogart, said?”

  “Hogart,” Gordon said automatically. He pressed the phone harder to his ear as he paced around and around the pool, oblivious to the searing sun. The headache lowering over his eyes like a thick black curtain.

  “Hogart,” said Shaun. “Good to know. Anyway, after he was done pleading, he tried to bribe us. He said we could take Conroy ourselves and hold him for ransom. He wanted to double-cross you.”

  “He wouldn’t have said that if you hadn’t threatened to kill him!”

  “I don’t threaten, Gordo.”

  Gordon gripped the phone tighter. His fingers were sweating and the cell was slippery in his hand. “This is not what I wanted. I told you to relieve them. I told you to send them back here and I’d pay them. What part of that didn’t you get? The last thing I need is to draw attention to this…this, ah, situation. I’ve got a dead woman on ice and a rock star saying he can’t write songs anymore because I cured his heroin habit and now he’s going to sue me. That’s the kind of crap I deal with on a daily basis, and now you just wantonly shoot two men in the head? For no sane reason I can see?”

  “Calm down, Gordo, they’re not gonna be found. This road is miles from anywhere, and the car’s at the bottom of a slag heap. No one’s going to see it.”

  Gordon knew, of course, that someone would find them. He only hoped it would be later rather than sooner—and would never be tracked back to him. “Why’d you kill them, Shaun? I don’t understand. Why?”

  “Why? Because they didn’t deserve to live.”

  SHAUN LOOKED AT her phone and hit End. Gordon was a hypocrite. She liked him—liked him as much as she liked anybody—but she knew he thought he was better than she was. He kept his hands clean. He didn’t kill anyone. He once told her he was a moral person in an immoral world, and while he appreciated the struggle for the survival of the fittest, he chose not to participate.

  He let others do that for him.

  In the last three years of their “association”—that’s what Gordo called it—she’d been contracted for two hits. Gordo liked to talk about morality, but he was just as corrupt as his father had been. Her granddad had been Gordon’s father’s closest friend, and it was common knowledge that the high and mighty Eli Gould wasn’t just a successful businessman—he did business with the mob. In fact, he couldn’t get enough of mobsters, inviting them to his house for parties with the movie stars. Her dad said Eli was starstruck by Carmen Fratiano. He even tried to interest Gordon in Fratiano’s niece.

  And Gordo sure called her quickly enough when he got himself in trouble. He’d say he “had a situation” that needed taking care of, in that prissy little way he had. Gordo could intimidate movie stars and rock stars, but there were some situations he couldn’t deal with on his own. And that’s where she came in.

  Gordo’s favorite expression—in fact, he’d had it engraved on the wall in the Palm Garden at the Desert Oasis—was “denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.” You’d think once in a while he’d read what he put on his own wall. He seemed to think that sticking his fingers in his ears and chanting “Lalalalala” would absolve him from responsibility for the people she intimidated, beat up, or killed.

  Gordo’s younger brother, Jerry Gold (Jerry had officially changed his name from “Gould” to “Gold” because “Gold sounded richer”), was even more of a wuss. The two of them had zero qualms about killing someone if it helped their bottom line, but they treated the whole transaction like genteel ladies sipping tea.

  They lived in a dreamworld.

  Shaun looked at the doorway to the abandoned mining building. Jimmy was just inside, the sunlight spotting him against the deeper shadow. His clothing was streaked and clotted with blood. He was working on something, cutting away at the sun-pinked corpse.

  Then he held his hand up and gave a rebel yell.

  Riis’s scalp.

  Shaun understood the rush, the feeling of triumph with your first kill. To know that you could cross that line—and easily—made you special. She had sensed that in Jimmy when she first met him. That knowledge had ripened in the weeks after Jimmy agreed to become her son. He was impatient, but he had to be schooled first.

  Today she’d finally let him experience his first kill: she let him have Riis.

  She smiled at the way her boy had listened to Riis’s pleas and appeared to consider them. He knew what was required, and deflected pity. Actually, Shaun suspected Jimmy didn’t have pity.

  To his credit, he did not toy with Riis. He did not tease him. He listened, he considered, giving great weight to Riis’s pleas…and then he shot him twice, a clean shot through the eye and a follow-up shot to the chest.

  Bang bang.

  Look at him now, holding up the scalp!

  This would be the first and last time Jimmy would be allowed to celebrate in the end zone. The whole point was to divorce yourself from emotion, good or bad. Do your job. Take pride in it, but carry out your
assignment in a workmanlike, efficient manner. Don’t get too involved, because that is how even the good ones get tripped up. She’d learned all this, and she would teach Jimmy.

  It made her proud to know she was not only a mom, but a teacher.

  “OK,” she called out. “Time to get rid of them.”

  Jimmy stared at her. He had the scalp on his head. Blood was dripping over his eyes and onto his nose.

  “Don’t be such a clown,” she shouted.

  He removed the scalp and bowed deeply, with a flourish of hair and blood. “Ta-daaaa!”

  Like the magician they saw in San Francisco.

  Cocky.

  She could have debriefed Hogart and Riis and sent them on their way to screw up another day. But there had been pressure. Recently, Jimmy had begun to withhold his affection.

  All he could think of was his first hit. Shaun had told him to wait, to be patient, hoping he would learn discipline, but now she wondered if her decision to let him kill Riis might have been too much, too soon. It worried her. Their bond could not be broken. Which might have been the reason she let him have his way today.

  Was she an overindulgent mother?

  She hoped her decision to let Jimmy kill Riis wouldn’t turn out to be a big lapse in judgment.

  Chapter Nine

  TESS WAS DRIVING back to the sheriff’s office when she saw the woman and the boy.

  She’d answered a burglary call out in Two Points, a wildcat development of manufactured homes in the desert flats south of Paradox, and had come back by way of County Route 9, which turned into Third Street. When Tess rolled to a halt at the stop sign at Third and Yucca, she noticed the “For Sale” sign up at Joe’s Auto-Wash.

  She constantly scanned her surroundings. That was part of her job: to look for trouble. Tess was always on the alert for any kind of anomaly, anything out of place.

  She spotted a woman, a boy, and a new white truck in one of the bays at Joe’s.

  The boy was using the spray gun to reach the top of the truck and the woman was scrubbing the wheel wells.