The Triggerman Dance

by T. Jefferson Parker

  He walked outside and stood on the deck. Boomer, Bonnie and Belle looked up from sleep but showed him little interest, their tails knocking slowly on the wood. He looked out at the profile of Fargo's darkened packing plant of a home.

  That's all I can leave you with, he thought: the name of the serpent in your paradise.

  To this end he wrote her a short letter on his notepad, folded the sheet neatly and wrote her name on it. He set it on the bar that separated the kitchen from the living room, under the salt and pepper shakers, so it wouldn't blow off. There was little in it about himself or what he had done or why he had done it. Just what he had learned about Fargo since coming to Liberty Ridge.

  In case Holt prevailed tomorrow—rather than Joshua—she might find it sometime when she was in the cabin, looking for some clue to where he had gone, wondering why he'd left so quickly. In that case, of course, she wouldn't believe his words anyway. Her father would be around to smooth comforting lies over the truth. And Lane would take the long trip, also, sometime in the near future, courtesy of the man he had loved, feared and betrayed. Just as well, John thought.

  He went upstairs and lay down beside her. He wondered if there was any way she could forgive him for what was about to happen, and he knew there was not. He wondered where he would go tomorrow when it was over—back out to the desert, z motel, back to the Laguna Canyon house and the uneasy ghost of Rebecca. Maybe the ghost will be gone. Isn't that what this was all about?

  He felt again that he was about to leave a place where he could do some good and go somewhere else, to a place he had never seen or no longer remembered, to a place not his, a place where time might or might not grant him the privilege of casting his own shadow.

  CHAPTER 39

  All Sundays should be so restful, all mornings so clear.

  Vann Holt, in khaki pants and safari shirt, stood before one of the Africa dioramas in the trophy room. It was the scene where the bull elephant is caught mid-stride, his trunk raised and mouth open for a sonorous bellow that Holt remembered clearly from that hot April day on which he stood in the grass and let the big animal charge close—fifty yards, it was—before he squeezed the Weatherby .400 magnum load into the bull's forehead, and the elephant didn't even flinch. Holt remembered it all with precision: his methodical retracting of the bolt while the elephant came, the thunderous tremor of the earth under his boots, the way the bull lowered his blood-spattered head as he closed the distance, his big ears folded back and the knotty dome of his skull enlarging over the iron sights of the rifle, the second shot cracking through bone and brain, the stumble and graceful correction, the way one ear fanned out and the mouth dropped askew pouring blood and the tusks stayed aimed straight at him and the third shot that seemed to yank the animal's head forward and down into the grass through which it dozed toward him, rear end still high for just a moment before the whole magnificent creation grunted to a ground-shaking stop ten feet from the barrel of his upraised gun. Holt had urinated.

  That was before Carolyn and Patrick, he thought, back when life left time for sport, excitement and challenge. A trophy from days of strength and happiness.

  "I thought you'd be in here, Dad."

  "Hi, honey."

  Valerie slipped her arm around his back and laid her head on his shoulder. "I'm sorry I got so drunk last night."

  "It was a night for high emotions."

  "I've never felt so foolish, and so sad, and so proud of you. Ah, Dad, why didn't you tell me?"

  He snugged his arm around hers. "I told you in plenty of time, hon. There was no profit in doing it sooner."

  "Isn't there anything we can do?"

  "We can do whatever we want."

  "I mean about—"

  "—I know. No. It just runs its course like anything else in nature."

  "I knew that day would come. I just had it pegged for thirty years from now."

  "What's important is to live with grace and dignity, and die that way too. What I don't want, dear girl, is a thousand long good-byes."

  She shook her head against his chest and Holt could feel the warmth of her breath through his shirt. "I don't want that, either."

  "Atta girl."

  "I'll run the Ops when you . . . need me to."

  "You've got lots to learn. And lots of time to learn it. I'm feeling good. We will have our hours and our days."

  "I love you."

  "I love you, Valerie."

  She hugged him close then pulled herself away to stand before him, running her fingers down his clean-shaven cheek. Holt looked at the wet trails the tears had left on her face, the tangle of golden hair pinned atop her head with chopsticks, and the deep chocolate richness of her eyes—her mother's eyes. Her lips were tightly pursed but her chin quivered.

  "We'll get there, Dad."

  "I know we will, dear child. Hey, I'm entertaining some not-very-interesting people for lunch today, around noon. Laura and Thur said they'd like to have you over to their place. I told them you'd be there."

  Valerie breathed in deeply, then let it out. Holt hadn't seen such sadness in her eyes since Pat and Mom.

  "I was planning to take my lunch over to the island. Just me. I've got some thoughts I'd like to be alone with."

  "Then I'll tell them you had a previous engagement."

  "Thanks, Dad."

  She stepped forward and kissed him. "I want to say just one thing. I want you to know that I never did anything to you, or for you, that wasn't done out of love."

  Holt smiled. "I'm trying to remember a time when I doubted that."

  "There will be doubt in the days ahead, Dad."

  Holt felt that great choke of emotion taking hold of his throat, that big lump that seemed to catch just under his voice box and made his eyes grow tears. He reached out and they hugged again, but Valerie broke it off and backed away with an attempted smile.

  "I hear John's running an errand for you later."

  "Just bringing the client up for lunch. Rich lady from Newport, thinks her husband is fooling around. Not with his secretary, with her money. Of course."

  "Glad to miss that one."

  "I thought you would be. When you're alone with your thoughts on the island today, send a pleasant one my way. I'll snag it, and send one back."

  "You got it," she said, turning to leave.

  "Honey? Send Lane down here, will you?"

  Fargo appeared five minutes later, just like Fargo would, Holt thought, not there and no entrance, then suddenly sitting one seat away from you in the theater. Over the years he had become used to Fargo's invisible arrivals and departures. He could see that the dark man's hair was mussed from the steady wind outside and that Lane had hung his sunglasses over the neck of his black t-shirt.

  "Sunday morning cartoons, boss?"

  "How's everybody seem to be taking it?"

  "Pretty good, Mr. Holt. Val was disappointed you didn't tell her first."

  "Scott?"

  "Can't read a guy like him. He's probably still talking to his God about it. Got them to the airport an hour ago. How are you feeling?"

  "Strong."

  "How come you're looking at a blank screen?"

  But Holt plowed through Fargo's questions, as he did John's and everyone else's. "Val's going to start taking over the Ops. She'll need all the help and support you can give her."

  Fargo said nothing for a moment, then: "She'll get it."

  "And when I go, she'll be the one in charge."

  "I figured it like that."

  "Disappointed?"

  "Yeah. You and me built the Ops, not her."

  "I don't blame you. I've drawn up an agreement with the bank that will put two million in your pocket after I go. It's separate from the estate plan and company by-laws, which I still haven't gotten around to changing. Haven't executed that bank arrangement yet. Obviously, I wanted to hear you out."

  Holt could see in Fargo's eyes the ill-concealed disappointment and the flicker of menace. "You always did
right by me. Mr. Holt. When it comes down to it, I'd rather run the Ops than cash out, even for that much. I'm firm, there. I think you know that's what I'm about. But if it's Val's show it's Val's show. Maybe I'll take the money and split. I gotta little time to think, don't I?"

  Holt studied his factotum and felt stymied—not for the first time—by Lane Fargo's odd amalgam of subservience and ambition.

  "I'll need you more than ever these next months, Lane."

  "You got me, boss. I don't have to say it, but I will anyway—I didn't just stay here for the money. I stayed here for honest work with a guy who didn't take any shit from the world. I stayed here to build something good with my life—Liberty Ops. Something that lets the little guy stand up to creeps and the government. I've always been proud to stand by you."

  Holt reached across the empty theater seat and laid his hand on Fargo's shoulder. He could feel the cool leather of the shoulder strap over the cotton.

  "Follow Menden this morning."

  "I figured you'd want that."

  "Let him know you're there. Don't want him to start thinking for himself."

  "He's not capable of it."

  "Anyway, when you come back past the Big House, let him bring her up to Top of the World. You park here. Stay around. Keep your eyes open. Stay mobile. I need to know you're out there, watching my back."

  "That's what I do best, boss."

  Fargo stood to go, then sat back down.

  "I gotta favor to ask you, Mr. Holt. If you can arrange it. I'd like to take care of Menden when it's time. I hate that cute face of his and I know what he's doing with Valerie. It'd be good for me, if it's all the same to you."

  Holt nodded and Fargo rose again.

  "If it works out that way."

  "I'd be grateful, sir."

  "Let me ask you something, Fargo. You get the feeling something's about to go down? Besides this thing with Baum?"

  Fargo actually raised his face to the air, like a bird-dog might, then crossed his arms over his chest. Holt had seen Fargo do this dozens of times: Lane's way of assessing the moment, of judging the invisible physics of threat.

  "No. I'm not getting that."

  "Good. Something just seems a little off to me."

  "Damned wind gets on my nerves. But you should always listen to your instincts, Mr. Holt."

  Holt did in fact sit in the theater after Fargo had gone, staring at the blank big-screen, listening to many things. He heard the wind moaning outside. He heard the cells replicating inside him. He heard Baum's voice—the self-righteous tone of outrage she used on TV—but now she was pleading for her life instead of a full-scale investigation into Patrick Holt's treatment of women. He heard Valerie's and Fargo's words. And he heard the quiet voice that always counseled him in times of engagement, now telling him that when he was gone, Fargo would do anything he had to get the Ops for himself.

  John awoke at five a.m. after a dream in which Joshua, a six-gun in each hand, simultaneously blew away Vann Holt and John Menden. He was drenched in sweat. He listened to the sound of the wind rattling the windowpanes of his cottage. Valerie was huddled to the far end of the bed so he reached out and set his hand on her shoulder—so warm, so smooth. And now, he thought, it's time to betray you. In his state of half-consciousness he tried to let his mind find a way to take down Holt without breaking Valerie's heart. But the more he tried to find one, the more he awakened and the more impossible it became to even imagine such a way. It was the deal I made for you, dear woman, he thought, right from the beginning. Now comes the follow through.

  So again his thoughts returned to Joshua, and the perilous course the agent had chosen. He had long understood that Joshua would risk everything he had to avenge Rebecca—this was the motor behind all that had happened in the last months. But not until last night had he realized that Joshua was willing to risk Baum, John himself, and even Sharon, in his unilateral charge of revenge. Everyone else would come second. John realized that on a primal level, Joshua needed to see him dead. John's death would be the purest retribution for what John had done with Rebecca, the purest defeat of a rival. Why not? Love and hate are always beyond control, and Joshua was clearly consumed. It was a gut-tightening idea, and John tried to purge it. But it was there just the same, along with the image of Joshua's face on the deck of his Laguna Canyon house last summer, when the agent pulled his gun and told him that he'd been looking for a way to contest John for Rebecca's long-cold heart.

  With everything on the line at noon, John thought, Joshua's loyalties will finally lie with himself.

  I'll be there.

  But when? How? And to accomplish what?

  John thought of Holt, and the possibility that Holt would dispose of him along with Baum, if he should fail in this assignment. What would Holt really like to give him, the keys to his kingdom or a bullet in the head?

  With these realities in mind, John rose quietly from the bed, dressed and slipped out the door with his dogs. From the oak tree by the electric fence he retrieved the .45, and stashed it in the center console of his truck. When he got back into bed forty minutes later, Valerie hadn't moved.

  CHAPTER 40

  John guides his truck up the last steep incline at Top of the World. He's glad to be rid of Fargo, who frisked him twice before letting him through the main gate, then blatantly followed him all the way to Newport Beach and back. Baum sits beside him, dressed in a flowing bright green silk ensemble with a loose vest and oversized cuffs, huge sunglasses, heavy faux-emerald earrings and white high-top athletic shoes. At first, she took John's change of plan—we're going to Liberty Ridge—with a giddy acceptance. She'd silently evaluated the long, palm-lined drive up from the frontage road, the magnificent house and grounds, the windswept hills and Valencia groves. But now, as they climb the last few yards toward the vaults, John can feel her fingers digging into the flesh of his arm.

  "He's actually going to be here?"

  "Actually."

  "And what about Josh? And Sharon?"

  John slows the truck, then stops completely. He turns to Baum and lowers her sunglasses so he can look into her pale green eyes. "They'll be there. And Susan, if you much as imagine their names, it will get both of us killed instantly. That's the deal we have. Do you understand?"

  "What I don't understand is why—"

  He reaches out and takes her arm, hard. "—Then shut up and play along. It'll be over with soon."

  "Oh, Gosh, as if that's supposed to console me. Who are you really working for, anyway? You're hurting my—"

  "—I said shut up and play along. Act pissed off that I tricked you into this. That's all you need to do."

  "I really am pissed off."

  "Run with it."

  He leaves the brakes, punches the gas and mounts the crest. His truck levels off and he pulls it over next to one of Holt's Rovers.

  "I'll get the door," he says.

  Baum gathers up her big leather bag from the floorboard and, of course, starts trying to find the door handle that Fargo removed. John uses this time to retrieve his .45 from the console and slip it into the pocket of his duster. Then he hops out and goes around to the passenger side to let Baum out. She slides out of the big truck, cursing under her breath.

  Together they walk across the gravel toward the stone table and benches. John feels loose and alert, but his heart takes a little downward twirl when he sees the wedge-shaped figure of Partch, standing, with his arms crossed, behind the table area. He wears the same golf shirt and slacks that he wore the last time John saw him, the same sunglasses, and a short leather jacket to cover his sidearm.

  Holt comes from the table, nodding to John, then smiling at Baum. He offers her his hand.

  "I'm Vann Holt."

  "You know who I am. Just what in hell is going on here?"

  "Lunch. Bring an appetite?"

  "Not really."

  "I made some special dishes."

  "I'm dieting."

  "Come over here to the ed
ge with me, will you? I wanted you to see Liberty Ridge from above."

  He takes her arm and guides her past the silent Partch, over to the edge of the summit.

  "I can stand up on my own," she says.

  "It's a simple courtesy. John? Why don't you join us?"

  They stand three abreast—Baum in the middle—and look down at the Ridge. The wind is dying down, the bulk of its fury spent during the night, but it gathers now to a steady howl that lasts a few seconds, then dies.

  "When did you come to Orange County from New Jersey, Susan?"

  "Eight years ago."

  "Ever seen anything quite like this?"

  "Sure I have. Orange County's all the same unless it's the beach or got streets and houses on it—just hills and vultures and plants that don't get flowers on them. I always thought the houses looked better than oak trees and cactus. I don't see why people like you get in such a snit about other people wanting to live where you do. Or maybe I just answered my own question— you just want it for yourself."