by Bart Paul
She gave me a so-what sort of shrug.
“Albert’s drug of choice was a pint of Jim Beam and a six-pack. But the billionaire’s boy knew who this stove-up drunk was. Gerald e-mailed the county sheriff that Albert claimed to have seen a dead man alive last winter.”
“Did he?” she asked. She didn’t sound happy about that notion.
“Nope.”
Now the girl looked as confused as hell. “You have two suspicious deaths a day apart? What do the authorities say?”
“Nothing. Just two real sad accidents. Twenty miles apart, but two different county jurisdictions in two different states. Be dog years before anybody makes a connection except for Sarah Cathcart. She’s a deputy here and already smells something rank.”
“I’ve spoken to her on the phone,” she said, “and she told me she knows absolutely nothing of a wrecked plane.” The woman opened a bag and pulled out a notebook and pawed through it. “You must be either Thomas Smith or Lester Wendover.”
“I’m Smith.”
“Alright,” she said, looking me over again like she was trying to square me with whatever she had in the notebook, “you’re saying Callie Dean told the truth about the plane?”
“Oh yeah.”
“She saw it?”
“Nope. Lester and me found it way in the back country three days ago.”
“But you didn’t notify the authorities.”
I opened the fridge. “Beer?”
“Oh, that would be great,” she said. She got a sour look when she saw it was only Corona, but I opened it and she took it.
“Old Callie wanted to contact the family first. Every last one of them.”
“So she contacted Gerald as well as my firm?”
“Lester did. Kinda by mistake, but he talked to him alright.”
“And now,” she said, “you think Gerald was responsible for Callie Dean’s death.”
“I think he flat had her killed. Then Albert Coffey too.”
She diddled with her pen on the table. “How?” she asked.
“Don’t know exactly. It looks like he’s got some Cubans working for him up here. At least two guys and maybe a girl. And they’re just the ones I’ve seen.”
“And you know for sure he’s in this area?” she said.
“He’s here. Saw him not more than an hour and a half ago up at State Line. Recognized him from the Internet.”
That got her.
“And he knew me, too. Sonofabitch waved at me.”
“Then you know something about him,” she said. “About his arrest when he was in college for flying in marijuana from the Caribbean. About his connection to Cuban exile traffickers?”
“Some. I know he and the step-mom are duking it out over the estate.”
“Respectable people commit murder for piddley little life insurance policies,” she said. “We’re talking hundreds of times that on the line.”
I drank my beer.
“Gerald is a huge disappointment to his father,” she said. “For years since his arrest he’s refused to use his family name, just the middle initial, the GQ gangsta nonsense. His rebuke to his dad. And he lapses into this phony Latin thing. Very Scarface. Very un-PC.”
“Imagine your disappointment.”
She gave me a funny look like she was seeing me for the first time.
“Years ago,” she said, “his mother, the first wife, had his father set up a trust for him. A really hefty allowance, but he couldn’t get his hands on the principal until he’s forty—in about a year and a half.”
“A lot?”
“A percentage of the estate,” she said. “High eight figures. Low nine.”
“Pretty soon you’ll be talking real money.”
She sort of smirked. “Now Gerald’s stepmother has possession of a revised trust which revokes the bequest should the father die for any reason.” She started rooting through her bag again. I thought she just happened to have that very same trust in there and was about to whip it out. Instead, she pulled out a big old wrapped Subway.
“When Gerald was really coked-up about a year ago,” she said, “he told his dad the old man was worth more to him dead than alive. With GQ’s drug connections, his father took it as a tangible threat. For now, any bequest is totally at the father’s discretion.” She held up the sandwich. “Would you like some of this? I’m absolutely famished.”
She didn’t look famished. When I nodded yeah she got up, and I watched her from the back getting plates and napkins from the kitchen like the cabin was hers. Her legs were firm and smooth-muscled like she did sports or ran.
“Silver’s in the left drawer.”
“Thanks,” she said. She turned around and caught me looking. “Our client is considerably younger than her husband. She’s closer to Gerald’s age, and quite attractive.”
It was a monster sandwich with lots of turkey and cheese and tomatoes and peppers. She cut it in half with the paper still on, then put out the plates with stale Doritos from the cabinet. She parked herself at the table, and we started to eat.
“Anyway,” she said, “when our client gets her husband declared legally dead, which is only a matter of time, Gerald loses hugely.”
“So the clock’s wound for old GQ too.”
“Most definitely,” she said. “His father gave him a time frame to clean up his act.”
“Giving the spoiled bastard one last chance to man-up?”
“Well put,” she said. “But if he’s dead, Gerald’s toast.”
She went back to her half of the sandwich. Girl had herself an appetite. After a bit she stopped for breath, daubed her mouth, and sipped her beer.
“Our investigators feel that he’s into the Cubans for staggering amounts. So it’s not just that he places his helicopters at their disposal or launders their money. With his allowance he’s became another cash cow. They’ll push his interests to protect their own. But without the promise of a huge payday,” she wobbled her hand back-and-forth, “I wouldn’t want to be Gerald if Dad is legally deceased. So now he maintains that his father is alive, hiding out in some place like Cabo. Sipping ’ritas with senoritas to escape his ball-busting second wife.” She stopped and wiped her mouth again. “I should shut up. I’m being indiscreet.”
“You know he’s going to report the wreck himself and make chumps out of you folks.”
She didn’t like that. “I know he’s planted the seed of doubt in the probate judge’s mind that there is a possibility his father’s alive,” she said. “You can see how our client finds this all very frustrating.”
“Just imagine how Callie and Albert feel.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. Then she straightened up all of a sudden and smiled. “But Gerald won’t report the wreck. If he does, his father’s body gets ID-ed. Game over.”
“He took the body.”
“Shit.”
I told her about the tampered wreck, the cleaned-up cockpit, the fake note with the bogus story that the dead guy had walked out safe, and how that tied in with the bullshit that Albert had given the guy a lift eight months ago. I told her about the meth planted in Callie’s car and how I figured there’d probably be some little trace of the dead guy planted in Albert’s Firebird too.
“Terrific,” she said. “All Gerald has to do now is show somebody the wreck.”
“Trap’s been set.”
“But Gerald’s father is dead,” she said. “You saw the body?”
“He’s dead, alright. Lester and me were as close to the body as I am to you.”
“That, Sergeant Smith,” she said, “makes you both very inconvenient people to leave walking around.”
I must have tensed up when she called me that.
“GQ’s not the only one who does his homework,” she said. “How long were you over there?”
“Two tours.”
“I can’t imagine that,” she said.
There wasn’t much to say to that.
“Can I ask you something?�
��
I shrugged okay.
“You’re obviously a smart and competent guy. Despite the artful lack of grammar. Callie Dean has been stirring the pot on this with our client in a way that borders on extortion. Why didn’t you just report the wreck three days ago before your friends started complicating things?”
I told her about Lester stealing the watch and the money. About not wanting folks to brand Lester as some thief.
“I was just trying to keep Lester’s dick out of the ringer. Mine too, I guess. I should’ve known you can’t lie your way to the truth.”
“You’re obviously not a lawyer,” she said.
Chapter Nine
I got us another couple of Coronas, and she talked and talked like we were old gossip pals. About Gerald concocting what she called a false narrative out of little bits of fact. Stuff that you could add up and say there’s reasonable doubt the guy’s not dead. She was still talking when I saw headlights arcing through the trees, then die just as quick.
She watched me dump our plates and bottles in the trash, snag my hat, and open the side door to the deck. When she started to say something, I grabbed her bag and handed it to her. Then I grabbed her arm hard and put my finger against my lips and shook my head. I led her out to the deck and stopped. We could hear a car motor humming on the other side of the house. When that stopped, there was just the sound of the breeze in the aspen until the click of car doors opening and that hollow clack the snappingin of a magazine on an AK-47 makes. The drive curved up behind the house almost as high as the eaves, so Nora’s car was parked just above us, blocking their way. She glanced at her car, then at me, and nodded like we should make a run for it. I shook my head no and led her as quiet as I could across the deck to four wooden steps that led down into the trees. We were in plain sight of anybody standing near her car.
The Cubans didn’t worry about noise. They thumped down the stairway on the other side of the house and pushed in the same door Nora had used. They flipped on the lights and deployed fast. Through the windows I could see there were three of them, the two from the Sierra Peaks and a third who seemed to be in charge. That guy was huge. All three carried weapons. We eased down the steps, and I turned back to look. Their car was one of those big Escalades, black naturally, and most likely a rental. When we got to the dirt, we made a racket in dead leaves and twigs, but nothing like the racket coming from the house. I heard stuff break and furniture skid and a splintering sound like a door got kicked off the frame. I still had hold of Nora’s arm. I nodded downhill. We slipped around to the front of the deck in a crouch and headed back toward the house. The part of the deck in the front of the house facing the lake made a narrow sort of balcony. I led Nora under it. Rolls of tarpaper and old five-gallon plastic paint cans were piled near the concrete foundation with a long section of half-rolled chicken wire. There were two paper sacks of cement that had got wet and set hard. I made a nest in the tarpaper, then a little barrier of the loose wire with the cement sacks anchoring it for weight, and we scrunched down in the dirt with the balcony planks about six feet over our heads, careful not to actually touch the wire and set it jiggling. Light poured down from the main room through the spaces between the boards, and they could have seen us if they’d thought to look. I took my knife from my belt and opened the blade and set it just next to my hand. I sifted some dirt on it so it wouldn’t catch the light. Somebody swung open the glass doors to the deck and stepped out. The boards creaked overhead, and we could see bits of moving shadow. Then I heard the quick double-click of somebody racking the slide of an automatic, maybe a Sig-Sauer like the Navy SEALS use, but I couldn’t be sure.
“Your car is here, lady,” the guy said, semi-loud. “We know you’re here too. Come on out—por favor. We’ll make friends. I’ll make you soup.”
We heard the other two idiots laughing from inside. There was a clattering of something dumped on the boards like plastic. A couple of little white pieces fell over the balcony onto the dirt just downhill. A couple of plastic soda bottles thumped down too. I could hear Nora starting to breathe real loud, panicking. I slipped an arm around her and pulled her in. A second pair of footsteps trotted across the boards, and I heard a different voice talking Spanish. The first voice, the huge guy, said something. His big creaky footsteps went back into the house. The lighter footsteps moved and creaked from directly overhead to the deck we’d just crossed, moving away from us, but closer to the four steps we’d just used. I listened to hear if the guy was coming down into the trees, and moved a bit so I could see if he was heading back around our way. For a second all I could hear was Nora breathing, softer now. There was a big old ringing clank of something metal hitting the propane tank above the drive, and a car door closing. Either there were more of them or someone was checking out Nora’s car, probably getting the VIN off the doorjamb.
Nora started to tremble and I pulled her close, her back to my front while I watched the corner of the foundation for anyone coming. She was sweating from fear, and it made her perfume strong. Probably strong enough to smell from half a dozen feet away. I tapped her on the jaw with my finger so she’d turn her head and look back at me. I put my finger to my mouth again and pointed to myself, the dirt, then back to her. Then I moved my flattened palm down in a stay-put, be-cool motion and she nodded.
I kept my eyes on the corner of the foundation while I scooped handful after handful of damp earth and rotting leaves that had blown under the balcony and sprinkled them over us both, starting with our feet, which I halfway buried, then our legs and the rest, all the way to our heads. Since her legs were bare, I wanted to take the sweat sheen off them that a flashlight could pick up. Pretty soon instead of that nice girly, citrusy smell, she had the old dead-leaf and damp earth smell you get under a house. I stretched behind me for what handfuls of leaves and twigs I could reach and sprinkled them over us till we were both covered like crumb donuts. When I saw the flashlight beam, I stopped. I wrapped that arm around Nora real slow and let my other hand rest on the knife. We could hear footsteps crunching in the leaves and dirt coming our way. Then I said the only thing to her I remember saying.
“Don’t open your eyes.”
She nodded the littlest bit, then was still. She got with the program real quick. I could barely feel her breathe. I kept my eyes closed enough so a flashlight wouldn’t pick up the whites, but I could see the light rake over us and the wire and the rolls of tarpaper. The light stopped and moved on. I could feel the unrolled chickenwire quiver when he bumped it with his foot, and I could hear the guy breathe and smell the nightclub stink of cologne and sweat. We were in plain sight for the guy to see, but I was hoping the wire would work like a camo net and make his eyes focus just enough on it so he wouldn’t notice us through the mesh. I didn’t think I could get upright and at him with the knife in time if he did.
After a minute he kept on walking, making a circle around the house. We could hear him huffing as he climbed the deck on the far side of the house where they’d come in. Then I could feel Nora take some deep breaths and squeeze my arms, her whole backside pushing against me. I squeezed back.
We lay there listening to doors slamming and window sashes banging shut. I jumped up and pulled her on her feet. They were making so much noise above, I figured I could whisper.
“We gotta get away from the house.”
I took her hand and we snuck back the way we came, walking slow at first, heading parallel to the paved road down below. When we crossed the dirt drive we broke into a trot into the trees. After a minute we stopped for breath, then with me still grabbing her hand we climbed the face of the hill until we were looking down on the roof of the cabin about fifty yards behind us. The aspens were thick, and I found us a good spot behind some deadfall. The Cubans had left all the lights on, so we could see them clear. The three came together on the drive between Nora’s Infiniti and the Escalade. There was talking and pointing. One of them checked the propane tank, and the big one started the SUV. The
third guy argued with the big guy, then tiptoed down the steps real careful until he disappeared behind the house. We hunkered when the headlights blazed on, but there was no way they could see us, as high up as we were. The Escalade backed down the drive all the way to the pavement. They were out of sight, but we could see by the headlights that they were turning around. There was a whoosh and a poof and the sound of all the windows breaking out at once as the gas exploded. We could see the fire all orange inside the cabin. It didn’t take long.
“My car,” Nora said.
We watched for a minute. I grabbed her hand again, and we headed out fast over uneven ground and fallen logs and saplings toward where I’d left the pickup, careful to keep far enough away from the road and out of sight if the Escalade drove by.
That didn’t take long either. The Cubans drove up along the lake toward the campgrounds, rolling slow, raking the trees on one side and the water on the other side with their big flashlights. All we had to do was stand still.
“Are we okay?” she asked.
“As long as they don’t spot my truck.”
It was only a minute or two before the Escalade cruised back faster now, heading toward Piute Meadows. We walked downslope through tangled aspen saplings till we spotted the Dodge. I felt her watching me getting madder and madder fighting the branches, but keeping her mouth shut until we got to the truck. She asked me for a rag or a towel and if it would be safe to cross the road to the lake and wash. We both looked like we’d taken a roll with the hogs. I rooted around behind the seat and grabbed a flannel shirt. I pulled out my .270, cussing to myself.
“Why didn’t we just come here first?” she asked.
“If they’d seen the truck we’d have been goners.
Besides, I needed to know what they were doing.”
“Then why are you so mad? My god, we’re alive.” “I left this.” I held up the .270. “I must be getting stupid.”
“Would it have made a difference?”
“It would’ve to them three.”
She made a face, but I wasn’t really watching. I took her hand and walked her across the road and down some rocks and boulders to the water. We were around a curve, so we couldn’t see what was left of the cabin but we could see flame reflecting all across the lake. If headlights came by we could duck down easy enough. I sort of hoped they’d come back.