Kemp swallowed. “You were just about to kill me, man. Now you want me to be your partner again. What, then you kill me? You’re c-cra—”
“Don’t ever think that thought,” Red said. “I’m not crazy. I’m the smartest man you will ever know. Now. You bring the husband to a place I’ll tell you about. I make the call to the girl. She passes on the money. Then we deal with the husband. We move fast. Two, three days max, it’s over. No more loose ends.”
“Except me. No offense.”
“Look. You bragged about some of the jobs you did while you were working the oil rigs. You claimed you killed a guy one time and nobody knew. Was that real? Do you want another chance at half a million dollars? That’s still your share.” He shifted gears. “Yeah. Go on. Leave. I don’t need you for this. I wasn’t going to kill you. You are an irritating person and what you did was worth killing you over, but I wouldn’t do that. Bad odds. I stay in control. So, you want to go, go. I’ll take care of it myself, and fuck you.” He sat down and set the gun in his lap. “You look like shit,” he told Kemp.
Kemp went into the bathroom and washed his face and slicked back his hair in the mirror. Red watched him, keeping the Glock in his lap. He thought, Make a move, try me. He didn’t know what he would do if Kemp tried to quit. You had to cut losses and liabilities to get what you need. The only question was, how do you make the clouds move?
He felt better. He had seized the situation and would not let go again.
When he came back, Kemp had recovered his swagger. He said, “Let’s talk this through, my friend. We are going to win this one. I can feel it.”
“You gonna go get him?”
“Yeah, why not?”
“Then take this, but don’t kill anybody.” Red tossed him the gun.
Kemp gasped but caught it before it hit the floor. He pointed it at Red. “Gave me the gun, eh? Maybe I’ll make you open your mouth to me,” he said. “Eh?”
“Try,” Red said.
Kemp let the hand with the gun fall to his side. “Let’s have a drink,” he said.
12
KENNY HAD SPENT the rest of Sunday night in a hotel room at Caesars dead to the world. The good news was, he was not really dead, and in a way, that was also the bad news because going on was problematic.
He had basically no money. Within limits, he could charge things to the room, so he wasn’t going hungry at least, but the sating of his body did little to fill the aching in his soul.
On Monday, eating salads and rice dishes from room service, he spent the whole day in the hotel room, staring gloomily out the window at the mountains, fending off despair. Nina’s investigator, Paul, called him and told him his gun had disappeared, which gave him an eerie feeling. He couldn’t even bring himself to rev up the laptop and play with the City of Gold.
The City of Gold was dead, and he was grieving.
He was grieving at being married, too. He really was a virgin, and he and his mother had imagined his wedding day many times. He couldn’t quite convince himself that what he had done was only a desperate business ploy to save himself from bankruptcy. He had stood, blinking, in front of a man in a robe, in a chapel, even if it was a chapel in the basement of a casino, even if the woman beside him was a stranger. It was another slap in the face of his parents. He felt ashamed.
And what, really, were the chances that the promised money would materialize?
As for Joya, she obviously didn’t like him.
He didn’t even have his gun anymore.
By Tuesday afternoon, discovering that his theory was correct, that he couldn’t open the window wide enough to jump, he was so bored with himself that he went downstairs and explored the casino.
He discovered theme restaurants, a plaster bust of the real Caesar, colors, and the incessant clamor of bells everywhere, reminding him of the jackpot, how it was not his, and how he had entered into yet another dream, this time one belonging to someone else, but just as nebulous.
After browsing the shops and looking at the paperbacks at the bookstore, he took the elevator down to the pool level. He showed his room key to the attendant and walked to the edge of the large, asymmetrical pool. Sun gleamed in from a skylight and the water shimmered. Three people were in the pool. A pixie of a woman, probably a dancer in one of the shows, stretched her legs against the sides. An elderly couple swam back and forth together, splitting at the cement island and rejoining as they got beyond it.
The scene had a Zen-like tranquillity. He felt better.
He would have liked to go back to the Greed Machines and play some more, but that was not an option. Gambling had been forbidden by Paul, who had ferreted certain facts out of Kenny while Kenny was the worse for wear. Paul had threatened to tear his eyeballs out if he gambled, particularly if he abused the privilege of credit at the hotel. Kenny’s months of intimate relationship with a computer keyboard in a dark room had done his physical confidence very little good. He thought he would lie low for a while. He might be suicidal, but he was no longer drunk.
He decided to go for a swim. He knew he needed exercise. Unfortunately, he had no trunks. A quick check of the shops upstairs did not net him anything useful, so he decided to take a chance on the street. He knew there was a store that carried athletic clothing right on the state line, a short walk away. Maybe they would have something he could wear. Maybe they would be old-fashioned enough not to notice his credit card was only a reminder of better days.
Out on the street, high-altitude golden midsummer. Even here, on casino row, where the tall buildings formed a ridge of artifice in the midst of forest, the air filled with the sweet oxygen of the tall trees, sweeping away the exhaust fumes from the automobiles on the street.
He moseyed up the street, hands in the pockets of his khakis, in spite of himself enjoying the sunshine and pleasant communion with happy human beings. Then, crossing a short street directly in front of the store, he froze.
A dark-haired man who looked like his father passed briskly by without a glance.
He ran across the street and ducked into the store, puffing.
He shouldn’t be out here.
What if Colleen should show up, or Tan-Mo? What if his father should suddenly appear, searching for the financial newspapers he used to buy at Cecil’s, before they tore it down?
He should never have left the casino. His family did not gamble. They were too busy working hard, tucking money away for their worthless, useless, hopeless scum of a son. . . .
Now that he was here, he turned himself so that he could watch the door and flipped through the hangers of swimsuits, selecting a baggy pair of trunks. While the clerk rang up his purchase, he hovered near the door.
“Card’s been canceled, dude,” said the clerk suddenly. He picked up scissors and cut through the gold, watching the two halves fall on the glass counter with satisfaction.
Kenny riffled in his pockets. Rather than risk losing his other credit card, the one that still offered minimal possibilities, he used the money he had planned to leave for the maid, which turned out to be just enough.
He paid. The clerk took his money without further unpleasantness, then began to fold T-shirts and stack them on shelves behind the counter.
Kenny looked carefully around before leaving the store. What an idiot he was, buying swim trunks with the last of his cash! He was cleaning his pockets out down to the lint to serve some obscure need of his psyche. But knowing what he was doing didn’t mean he didn’t have to do it.
Outside once again, he felt nervous. The street was so open. He decided to duck down the alley between the Embassy Suites and Harrah’s. He would meander toward Caesars through the parking lots where there were cars for cover.
The narrow, one-way alley didn’t really offer a good place to walk, so he stuck close to the wall of the casino.
Of course, a car pulled in right behind him. Realizing his error, that he had chosen the side of the alley that allowed no exit, he pushed closer to the wall.
The car refused to pass.
Thinking that whoever was in that car must be afraid that they would hit him, Kenny waved the car on. He couldn’t see inside. The sun visor was down in front, and the back windows were tinted. The car remained behind him, halted.
Kenny shrugged and decided that, in keeping with the work philosophy that had been at the heart of the City of Gold, the best policy was always a bold stroke. He stepped into the alley directly in front of the car, thinking he would cross over to the other side, into the valet parking area for the Embassy Suites.
The car lurched forward.
“Hey!” Kenny shouted. About eighty feet away, accelerating at an unknown speed. Not calculable. He jumped clear in less than a second.
He fell and his glasses flew but he did manage to avoid being knocked down. While the valet came running up and helped him get back to his feet and unbent his glasses for him, the car whizzed past, turning left before he thought to check out the license plate.
“He almost killed you!” the girl said, putting the glasses on Kenny’s nose, adjusting them. “Want some water or something? There’s a restaurant inside. I bet you’re shook up.”
“No, thanks,” Kenny said. If anything, he was shaken at his own instincts. That survival thing kicked in, and you could do nothing except bow to its superior power. Dusting his clothes off, he thought, Maybe I should face it. Maybe I could move on. The City of Gold dead, hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt.
“I’ll treat,” the girl added, smiling at him.
“Sadly,” Kenny said, “I’m a married man.” He flashed the dime-store ring Joya had bought for the ceremony.
She tipped her head to the side. “Watch out for cars, then, honey.”
Waving good-bye, feeling a smile on his face that was not stupid for a change but the earned result of a moment in the sun of this girl’s interest, not to mention the fact that he had not been killed, he walked over to the parking lot behind Harrah’s. Apparently, he was supposed to live a while and see if this latest gamble would pay off. As he made his way he suddenly felt the altitude and found himself puffing again, so he slowed down.
So much money here on the border of California and Nevada, so many beautiful cars. Gleaming metal, stacked in rows as primly as the Hot Wheels he had played with as a boy, stretched for what looked like miles. He spotted a new Jaguar and a Land-Rover and even a Hummer in one row. Sell them and support a small third world community for a year. . . .
He heard a sound behind him. When he turned around to look, he saw nothing, no sign of the silver car. In the distance, two men argued by the trash cans behind the hotel. Two young men in hotel uniform helped an elderly couple take their luggage out of their car. The only person nearby wore a dark hooded sweatshirt and appeared stooped and old through Kenny’s now scratched glasses.
He started to walk again, faster, his pulse quickening. He saw the hooded person dashing rapidly between vehicles nearby, as noiseless and fast as an earwig.
Like a man who feels himself to be in the crosshairs of a weapon, Kenny shifted direction and shifted it again after making rapid progress past a couple of rows. No need to panic, he told himself, dodging into a small passage between two cars. Don’t be thinking there’s a reason on earth for anyone to be after you.
He ran through the list of people and companies on his bankruptcy petition. His creditors had no idea where he was. And even if they did, he couldn’t think of any who would decide to kill him.
Just to convince himself that what he was experiencing was the paranoia of a person who played too many violent video games in his off hours, he glanced behind. No one . . .
And then, suddenly, very close, no more than a hundred feet away, someone moved.
The hood.
His astonishment at the realization that he was, in fact, being stalked rooted him momentarily to the spot, just long enough for his stalker to start running right at him. He had a gun . . . a nine-millimeter Glock!
Kenny ran.
He ran until the blood from his heart pushed through his veins like wildfire, and ran some more. He was terrified, utterly and abjectly frightened beyond belief.
Someone was trying to hurt him. Take him out!
Gasping for air, hands balled into fists, he tore along a line of cars, zigging to and fro like the heroes in Dark Avengers, aware that he was not in a Play Station II now.
Other people in the lot melted away, and he knew himself to be a lone target in a low field, with nothing but the blank back wall of the enormous casinos and a distant guard as witnesses.
Then, like a miracle, the fast steps behind him stopped. A tour bus full of Japanese tourists had just pulled up in front of Kenny.
But he didn’t stop running. He ran all the way through the side door to Caesars, up one flight of stairs, and then, panting, into the sports betting area, where he found a corner of the room where he could collapse.
The bettors were far too absorbed with following the slightly out-of-focus progress of the horses on the wall above to give a moment’s thought to a man dripping sweat on the table in front of him, shaking and moaning. Besides, they had seen it all before.
Back in his room, Kenny shot the bolt and had a few handfuls of Fritos to calm himself down, sitting on the edge of the bed. Then he called Paul van Wagoner on the hotel phone, but he had to leave a message. Should he call the police?
He had no description except that the person in the hood seemed to have his Glock. How could that be? Leaving town about now would be more prudent than offering useless information to the cops and sticking around for more target practice. After he felt better he hooked his laptop up to the hotel jack, got onto Netscape, and began to roam until he found what he was looking for. He didn’t know the numbered plate on the silver car, but he had found Joya’s California plate number using a special software program.
Numbers stayed with him. According to his mother, when he was three, he would count light posts as they drove past them, then calculate how many there were per mile. His mother found this nonsensical, even humorous, while his father narrowed his eyes, seemingly full of the same sorts of calculations when he looked at Kenny.
Secure Web sites were bubble gum to Kenny. He chewed them up, spit them out, and found all the sugar he needed in ten different places. Joya’s car was registered to an address in Markleeville. A hit! Unfortunately, he could locate no phone number at the address.
He wanted to warn Joya before blowing town. Had she lifted his gun? She said she was trained in weaponry. She was already on the watch for that guy who was after her, so what good would Kenny’s warning do? Maybe no good, but he wanted to see her. He would have wanted to see her even if nothing had been wrong.
Shoving his computer into the plastic sack his trunks had come in, he made for the door.
Downstairs, he stopped at the concierge desk for directions to Markleeville and to drop off a note for Paul.
“Why do you want to go to that address?” the concierge asked with unusual indiscretion, giving him the once-over.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Well, it’s an Indian neighborhood,” she said. “My sister lives not far from there. You don’t look Indian.”
“So what?” he said. He got awfully tired of assumptions made about him, that because he was Asian and worked in Silicon Valley at a dotcom startup, he was some kind of business wizard, born to succeed. He was living proof that the stereotypes were hilariously faulty.
“Sorry I asked.”
“No problem. Actually, I’m going out there to talk to my wife.” He enjoyed saying that.
She grunted in disbelief and turned to the waiting couple on his left.
He walked across the street to the Prize’s lot and found the Lexus. The concierge’s map didn’t help much, other than with major roads. He took Luther Pass just past the Agricultural Station over the mountains. Things got tricky at Hope Valley. He had worried he might not be able to find the house, since his map
was an overview that didn’t identify individual streets in the rural neighborhood, but he shouldn’t have. There were only about a dozen streets, most of them very short.
Cruising the compact neighborhood, he noticed that the houses were neat, some of them; small, most of them; and messy, some of them. The same array of houses could be found in the homes and yards in his neighborhood in Mountain View, in fact. Unlike his neighborhood, however, people were not piled on top of each other into condos, blocking the desert sunset. Low frame houses, mostly one story with porches, and a few garages dotted the sparse landscape.
Kids riding around on bikes and trikes pulled over to the side of the street to watch him pass. He felt out of place, although not necessarily unwelcome. A few smiles greeted him, and a few glares. Just like home, he thought.
He found the right number, pulled his car in front of a small cabin that looked more like someplace in Tahoe than the other houses, and got out. He walked up a dusty path to the door and knocked.
No answer.
He knocked again. Again, no one came.
He circled the house, peering into the windows, but they were shaded. Still, through one he saw the yellow of a lamp burning. “Joya?” he called. “It’s me, Kenny!”
He heard footsteps. The back door opened.
“What do you want?”
Joya stood in the doorway, facing the sunset. She wore a red tank top that Kenny couldn’t take his eyes off, and a pair of jeans-shorts that began somewhere below her exposed navel. She stood very still. Only her hair moved, shivering in a hot gust of wind off the mountains.
Kenny searched for his voice. She wasn’t wearing a bra. She made a face, but he didn’t think she minded him looking at her.
“Well?”
“I need to talk to you.” He came around to the back to face her. “Can I come in?”
“No.”
Writ of Execution Page 14