“Sit back down, Mr. Rankin.” The judge tapped her spoon on the carton’s edge. “Or leave.”
Shortly the phone’s display flickered to life. Littmann audibly sucked in a breath as the image of his wife appeared. She wore a simple plaid shirt. Her hair was combed.
“Hello?”
“Mrs. Littmann? This is Judge Numkena. I doubt you can see me.”
“All I can see is bookshelves.”
“Yes, well, I’m here with Ms. Lisa Balamaro, attorney for a woman named Rayella Vargas. Also, Mr. Rankin, whom I understand you know. And, of course, your husband.”
Silence.
“I understand you have something you’d like to say.”
“Yes,” Meredith began. “Apparently, my husband testified this morning that I destroyed the letters he took from Ms. Vargas, the ones supposedly written by Doc Holliday and—”
“He didn’t take them,” Rankin said.
“Oh,” Meredith said. “That sounds like Donald.”
“It wasn’t testimony,” Littmann murmured. “I wasn’t placed under oath.”
“Hello, Gideon. I heard that.”
“Go on, Mrs. Littmann.”
“Yes, well, the letters were not destroyed. I have them right here.”
She lifted the dusty velvet bag, so it was visible onscreen, then undid the fragile ribbon, removed one of the old brittle envelopes from inside.
Littmann seemed to give off heat, gripping the arms of his chair.
“Here. This one is from May 1873. The postmark’s a bit faded, hard to see. It’s one of the earliest ones, though.” She held it up. “Look closely, you’ll see it’s addressed to John Henry Holliday in Dallas, Texas. Would you like me to read it out loud?”
“As delightful as that might be,” Judge Numkena said, “it won’t be necessary, thank you.”
“Who else is there with you?” Littmann spoke through his teeth. “You’re not alone. Come clean. Who’s there?”
Lisa reached for her phone. “Unless you’d like to hear more, Your Honor?”
“This is a miserable, deceitful trick.” Littmann rose from his chair, pointing at the phone. “Someone else is in that house. Tuck Mercer probably. He’s holding her against her will. The security guards aren’t responding to my calls. Something is very, very wrong and—”
“No one has forced me to do anything,” Meredith said.
Lisa had yet to hit the off button.
“As for the security guards, they’re skulking around here somewhere. Aren’t they always?”
“Mrs. Littmann,” Judge Numkena interjected. “I wonder if you could do me a favor. I have the names of some escrow companies in your area. I’d like you to deliver those letters to one of them. Keep a receipt. Let us know when you’ve done that. If not, I can send out marshals to take control of them.”
“Why don’t I just give them to Ms. Vargas?”
“Mrs. Littmann—”
“She’s right here.”
The view from the other end of the call pivoted. Rayella stood against a bare wall studded with picture mountings, ghosted with the outlines of absent paintings.
“And over here is Tuck Mercer.”
The picture pivoted again, finally coming to rest in a selfie of Meredith and Tuck—heads touching, her arm wrapped fondly around his shoulder. He stared into the camera as though pinned in place. “We’re very, very old friends. Dear friends.” She pulled the phone closer. In a stage whisper: “In fact, when I was just a wisp of a thing, he was my lover.”
Littmann dropped back into his chair with a muffled thud, murder in his eyes. Lisa, for once, could sympathize. Old friends, she thought, lovers, her mind returning to two nights before, his lips on her neck as he entered her…
“Mrs. Littmann, I’d still like you to place those letters with an escrow holder for safekeeping.”
“I think I should let you know, Your Honor, that the fact my husband lied in your courtroom this morning comes as no surprise. He’s always had a somewhat self-serving relationship with the truth. It’s been a hallmark of our marriage—which, I am happy to announce, is at last, as of this day, this moment…over.”
“Mrs. Littmann—”
The screen flickered, then darkened, then went black.
Littmann launched from his chair. “I want the marshals called. This woman—” He pointed to Lisa. “—used this court as a subterfuge while her gutter-tramp client and that liar, that criminal, Tuck Mercer, and God knows who else pulled a home invasion at my ranch. I can’t reach my guards, they’ve most likely been taken hostage. You want battery, assault, false imprisonment?”
His face had turned scarlet. He looked ready to reach out and take Lisa’s neck in his hands.
She looked up at him helplessly. “Think what you want,” she told him. “But up until about ten minutes ago, I was told they were off on a hike in the hills. And I’m as stunned as you are by what I just—”
“You miserable, pathetic little—”
“Remember where you are.” From behind her desk, Judge Numkena fixed Littmann with her stare. “Conduct yourself accordingly.”
His eyes flashed with contempt as he wrestled with the button of his suit coat. “I’m the innocent party here! And by God, I’ll get justice.”
He stormed out. Rankin wordlessly trailed behind.
The judge watched them go, stirring her yogurt. Once the door slammed shut and she and Lisa were safely alone, she said, “Well, isn’t this a perfectly awkward mess.” She placed the carton down, wiped her lips with a napkin. “Don’t presume, Ms. Balamaro, that you’re off the hook. That man may be an utter pain, but he has a point. You still have plenty to answer for.”
CHAPTER 41
No sooner did Meredith sign off on Tuck’s cell phone than Wander appeared in the doorway at the far end of the hall. A soft bucktooth whistle to get everyone’s attention.
“Sarge, heads up. You need to scope this out.”
He led them out onto the front porch, calling up to Chalky in position on the roof. “Tell him what you see.”
“We’ve got company,” Chalky called out. “Four vehicles so far, all showed up at once. Gathered at the front gate now.”
Down below, Wander added, “BBK says he sees the same at the back, except they’re up on the ridge.”
Rags said, “How many?”
“Can’t tell. I mean it’s damn near a click away but—”
“It’s the high ground,” Rags said. Nothing but open terrain below.
Wander said, “No way we make it back across on foot.”
“Roger that.”
“Time for Plan B?”
Sure, Rags thought. Got one in mind?
As though on cue, the faraway crack of a single rifle shot echoed from the ridgeline down across the vast bajada behind the house. Then a splintering crumble of shattered plaster up top.
From above in back, the normally silent BBK: “Incoming!” He and Chalky lay exposed on the roof.
Rags shouted upward from the porch, “Find cover!”
“Roof’s flat as a goddamn driveway.” Chalky, shouting. “Just a couple chimneys.”
“Get there!”
Through the ceiling, they heard the two men scramble for safety.
Then another sound, a rattling whirring rumble from the dining room. Wander went in to check—all four of the security guards’ cell phones were vibrating atop the dining room table, two flashing, two spinning in circles like tiny dodgem cars. After a moment, one by one, they fell silent again. That’s when the landline in the vestibule rang.
Everyone stared—like a miniature time machine had materialized on the narrow table. The small plastic mechanism jangled—twice, three times. Rags nodded his assent. Meredith picked up.
“Mrs. Littmann?”
“Who is this?”
“Ray Billingham, ma’am. I work security most weekends.”
“Of course. Ray. How are you?”
A gust of wind from the wes
t scraped the front porch. “You okay in there, ma’am?”
“Everything’s utterly ducky. Why do you ask?” She could practically hear the man thinking.
“I’d like to come up to the house, Mrs. Littmann.”
“Oh, Ray, I couldn’t really advise that. There’s really no need to do anything. So many problems in the world these days are caused by everybody feeling this obnoxious need to do something.”
“Mrs. Littmann?”
“Just sit tight, Ray, this will all work out. I understand your sister-in-law is getting married. How nice for her. I bet she’s feeling a bit overwhelmed.” Rags gave her the cut-off sign, finger wagging at his throat.
“Oh, dear, they’re telling me I’m being needlessly long-winded.”
“Who, exactly, is ‘they,’ ma’am?”
“I’ll let you know if anything changes but for now just sit tight, okay? This will all turn out peachy, I promise. Bye-bye.”
She set the receiver back in its cradle, then turned toward Rags and Rayella and Tuck, hands on hips, still wearing her pajama bottoms despite the plaid shirt.
“I wonder how much those letters are truly worth. Whatever it is, I should get a cut, don’t you think?”
From the dining room—sounds of a struggle, a strangled howl.
***
One of the guards, the who’d met them at the door with a shotgun, had somehow worked himself free. Duct tape still clung to his shirt cuffs, his trousers, as he stood at the far end of the dining room table, gripping a bloodied carving knife taken from a drawer in a nearby cabinet.
Wander, blood bubbling from a wound in his neck, lay on the floor, kicking, whimpering.
You do anything stupid and get a marine killed today, I will personally cave in your skull…
Rags pulled his sidearm from its holster, raised it to shoulder height, left hand bracing the right as he aimed, and emptied three rounds into the young guard’s chest.
Behind him, only a matter of feet, Meredith screamed, but she may as well have been miles away, or underwater.
Rags hurried to Wander’s side, saw blood gushing through trembling fingers pressed hard against the wound—teeth clenched against the pain, eyes flaring with rage, one leg still kicking, as though to get something off.
“Keep that pressure on, press hard,” Rags said, rising to his feet. He turned to Tuck and in a voice of calm authority said, “Holler up to Chalky, get him down here. Tell him Wander’s down. Do it. Now!”
After another brief glance at Wander struggling to stay alive, Rags turned back to the dining room, advanced toward the three guards still lying there, bound hand and foot, and emptied a single round into each man’s heart, ignoring the muffled screams, the pleading eyes.
Because that is who I am, he thought. The Devil Dog turned gunslinger. The Lurp on the roof. Turning back around, he saw the Littmann woman kneeling next to the guard who’d broken free. She seemed to be trying to figure out where to place her hands, but the would-be hero was already dead. Seth, he thought. That was what she’d called him.
Glancing up, hate in her eyes: “You had no right. He was hardly more than a boy.”
“Boys can kill. Trust me on that.”
Chalky burst in, found Wander on the floor, and rushed over to kneel down beside him.
“Take your hand away,” Chalky said, “let me see. Okay. Good. I’m not gonna lie, that’s nasty, but it looks like he missed the artery. I want you to press your finger here, right here where I’ve got mine. That’s the pressure point, it’ll slow down the blood flow. Now stay put while I get some pillows. I wanna prop you up, get the wound above the heart.”
Rags walked over to Rayella, who stood in the doorway leading back into the living room, clutching the velvet parcel of letters. Tuck stood nearby, staring past the long white table at the Littmann woman, who was on her feet now, standing there, no expression, hands held out to either side like a plaster saint.
Rags told Rayella, “Once Chalky gets Wander stabilized, we’re going to pile into that rental car and make a break south for the Middle Pass, head back over the mountain.”
“You’ll never make it,” Tuck said. “Those men on the ridge, don’t kid yourself, they know their business. You won’t get five hundred yards before—”
“I wasn’t talking to you.” Rags kept his eyes on Rayella, hoping to melt the terror in her gaze. “Besides, cowboy, you’re staying behind. With that bat-shit old flame of yours.”
***
Arms crossed, head down, Lisa let her shoulder-slung briefcase bang against her hip as she trudged through the courthouse parking garage. Her footsteps echoed like hammer strikes against the concrete as she made way down the dim, narrow, low-ceilinged aisle for her car.
God only knows, she thought, where this nightmare’s headed now. Assuming Meredith Littmann really does hand off the letters to Rayella, where does that get her? Where will she go, who will pay for the damn things now? If they weren’t worthless before, they sure are now.
And talk about waving red at a bull—did they really think a man like Littmann would just let this go?
But that wasn’t the worst of it. Not for her. She kept flashing back and forth, two distinct images: first, Tuck and his long-lost sweetheart with their heads pressed together in the cell phone’s tiny screen; second, lying with him naked on the hotel bed, Tuck running his rough hands gently across her skin, whispering, “You are so damn lovely…”
Such a needy little pigeon—you moron, you fool—how could anyone be so blind?
A sudden desire to see Nico—talk to him, sit with him, hear him tell her she was better than that, smarter, tougher, prettier, sexier—swept through her with piercing neediness as, seemingly from nowhere, Littmann’s two bodyguards appeared. They materialized from either side of a black SUV. Sensing the danger too late, she only completed half a turn, the first step of trying to run, before the little fanged weapon jammed into her neck.
Like her guardian angel had cut the lifeline—she not only dropped, she convulsed, limbs an agonizing blur of tremors, a seizure.
The awareness of being dragged, then lifted, thrown into the back of the vehicle, head striking metal. The airtight thud of a cargo door slammed shut.
PART IV
Therefore, those who believe that they speak or keep silent or act in any way from the free decision of their mind, do but dream with their eyes open.
~ Baruch Spinoza
CHAPTER 42
August 22, 1881
My Dearest Mattie,
I apologize in advance for what I expect will prove a troubling letter. Knowing that word may reach Georgia concerning matters I discuss here, I want to tell you the truth, so you will not be misled by the endless flow of falsehood generated by a certain faction here.
By here, I mean Tombstone, in the Arizona Territory. I will not bother with details of how I got here or what calamities prompted the journey, only to say that it did not provide the escape from misfortune I hoped it would.
I can only imagine that you find tiresome my claims of innocence. You may even believe that, far from keeping my distance from trouble, I in fact pursue it at every turn, or it pursues me. The truth, however, is both subtler and more insidious. Trouble is the atmosphere we inhabit out here. It is as inescapable as the air we breathe—and, as you can imagine, a man with lungs as ravaged as mine comes to be a kind of savant on the metaphysics of air.
From almost the moment I arrived in town, I sensed an insidious tension, and shortly learned the rancor had been brewing for quite some time.
The chief problem lies with a group of freebooting rustlers the people here refer to simply as the Cowboys. They include characters with names like Pony Deal, Rattlesnake Bill Johnson, and John Ringo, a feckless brooder who fashions himself both a killer and a learned man.
The ringleader goes by the moniker Curly Bill, a man I happen to know from my time in Texas, that state I so despise. I considered him a scurrilous ape even then. Earlier th
is year, among other antics, he blustered into a church service and, at gunpoint, forced the preacher to dance.
I trust I’m providing a bit of the local color.
The Cowboys chiefly concern themselves with cattle theft. They strike against ranchers down in Sonora and have killed no small number of vaqueros in their raids.
Of late, however, their thievery has extended to cattlemen and teamsters on this side of the border as well, and not even the mules of the U.S. cavalry are safe from plunder.
When hate or greed turn their depredations in a particularly violent direction, they spread the rumor that Apaches have broken out of the San Carlos Reservation, and blame their own carnage on the renegades. At that point vigilantes assemble, pack up and head out, crying “Vengeance!” Nothing comes of such charades, of course, nor is meant to.
Most, like their leader, hail from Texas, others from elsewhere in the South, and remain sympathetic to the Confederacy and the Democrat party. I have to admit that with their vagabond swagger, they remind me at times of the free grazers we encountered when Major moved the family to Cat Creek to escape Sherman’s savagery.
I can admire the hunger for freedom in such men. It’s when liberty curdles into lawlessness, and then nuzzles up to politics, that the thing turns rancid.
Against them stand the local bankers, mining operators, merchants, and real estate men who form the Republican contingent, and when matters of law and order have become paramount, those men have looked to Wyatt and his brothers to field their cause.
Now I know what you must think, and I am not insensitive to your feelings.
I understand you may well consider it a form of betrayal that I might side with Yankee speculators against loyal southerners, however unseemly their disposition.
And I can attest that the Cowboys and their allies accuse the Republican faction of being nothing more than money-grubbing outsiders, opportunists—carpetbaggers.
All I can offer in my defense is a newfound understanding of how the march of history obscures the past, rewarding bold confidence, not sentiment, and how quickly even a noble ideal becomes outdated in the face of harsh but vigorous realities.
The Long-Lost Love Letters of Doc Holliday Page 22