Cool Heat (22 page)

***

Kora North left Leon and her condo. She walked across the street to the Ketch and headed down along the line of boats moored along the inlets. She didn’t know if she’d convinced Leon or not. Maybe he was just playing her.

She was nervous and struggled to make the walk your basic evening stroll at the end of another great Lake Tahoe day. Let the men check her out, their women get irritated. People over on the tennis courts, talking at the docks, waiting to be seated at the restaurant.

This could end in a bloody shootout, or this Marco could see that she was playing games, and then what? So many things going on. All those big shots coming into Incline Village. All the money.

And here she was between two badass killers, one in her condo, the other waiting for her, and the most powerful man in the Sierras wanting her to be his Daisy for the weekend Great Gatsby Gala.

It doesn’t get any better than that, Kora thought sardonically.

***

Marco, now up on the dock, spotted Kora rolling toward him through the lights on the dock, those long legs making her real hard to miss even in a crowd. Hips snug in black shorts, blouse tied across the open midriff, a big-money body, but his focus shifted to the people she passed, people moving around the docks and the boats. He studied the crowd in front of the restaurant looking for a particular type but not seeing anyone who looked suspicious.

Marco tested the Bluetooth on his ear, “Clear?”

“Clear,” Sydney’s voice came back. “I see her.”

“Yeah, I got her,” Marco said.

“Nobody to worry about I can see.”

Marco climbed over a rail and positioned himself between one of the dock buildings and a storage shed.

He called Kara on her cell when she was a good fifty yards away. “How are you, Kora?”

She looked around. “Okay, I guess. Where are you?”

“Any problems?”

“If you mean other than this whole situation, no. I’m good.” She’d stopped walking to answer.

“Keep moving,” Marco said. “See those large boats ahead?”

“Yes.”

“Go there. Wait for me.”

The lake had a near full moon, with some lights from the restaurant, but where he now stood in a small enclave, it was pitch-dark.

Sydney, with Dutch’s night glasses, fed him a constant stream of updates on men moving around, coming from boats, a real estate office across the waterway, and the Ketch.

“Nice to see you, Kora.”

“Jesus, you scared me,” Kora said, stopping and turning toward him.

He studied her expression, searching for some tell he didn’t like. Anxiety but not panic. He saw nothing that aroused serious concerns about her attitude in that over-perfect, Nordic face.

“When you didn’t answer my calls, that wasn’t nice,” Marco said. “Got me a little worried.”

“I was wiped out. Crashed hard. I’m normally an all-night kind of person to start with. Sorry ‘bout that.”

She handed the drawings to him. “I did the best I could.”

Sydney interrupted him on his earpiece. “Two men coming your way.”

“Got it.”

Marco reached under his shirt, came out with the Beretta, and laid it against the back of his leg. He pulled Kora back in with him deeper into the narrow space between the building and the storage shed.

“What’s wrong?” Kora said in a low, stressed voice.

“Maybe nothing,” Marco said quietly. “Don’t talk.”

The two men in question walked past, talking loud, a little drunk, showing no interest in anything but their conversation.

“You got a trailer,” Sydney warned.

The man appeared behind them, out of nowhere. Marco had his weapon halfway up, then realized the man was totally into talking on an earpiece and seemed really upset, hands gesturing, shaking his head. He turned and walked the other way, still talking and gesturing.

Marco tracked him. He was older and not looking like a threat, but he watched the guy for a time.

“He looks okay,” he told Sydney. “We clear?”

“Yes.”

“You’re jumpy,” Kora said.

“I live jumpy,” Marco said. “It’s what keeps me alive.” He concealed the Beretta under his shirt. “When are you expected at Thorp’s?”

“About this time Friday night,” she said. “That’s when the party gets going. I’ll come back here, then I go Saturday night for the big dinner, and then the party really gets rolling. It’ll go all night. Guests will start leaving, but some won’t get out until late Sunday.”

“Everything okay with you?”

“It could be better.”

Marco studied her for a moment. “How’s that?”

“I could be getting half the money we find.”

“I think we can do that.”

“Money buys freedom and the power to do what you want and not what other people want you to do,” Kora said. “Besides, these bastards owe me big time for the shit I’ve had to deal with.”

He smiled. “I’m sure.” He liked that she was thinking about the payoff. Girls like Kora North spent their whole lives in lies and deception, but he thought he had a pretty good read on her.

“Here’s the thing,” Kora said. “If any alarms go off, Rouse will get notified instantly on his smartphone. He can pull up cameras and see pretty much every room in his house.”

“We’ll handle the alarms. If you could find a way to get ahold of that phone, it’d be that much better.”

“I don’t know. He plays poker all weekend, hardly moves. Gets naps in the rooms off the poker tables. Massages and whatever. There are six little rooms for the poker crowd. I might be able to work something out with one of the girls.”

“That would be good,” Marco said. “Long as she has no clue what you want it for. We’ll be in touch the whole time. I’ll text you when I want to know something. So don’t sleep without your phone next to you for the next couple days. Okay?”

She nodded.

They waited for a couple to pass. Young love on a balmy summer night in Tahoe.
Nice,
Marco thought.

“Okay,” Marco said. “We’re set. Everything goes as planned, you’re going to get rich.”

“I like the sound of that,” Kora said.

Marco took out a piece of paper. “This has some call and text codes we’ll use. Memorize them.”

“I take it Dutch Grimes cooperated?”

“He didn’t have a choice, and he didn’t look like a guy who could do much resisting.”

She smiled. “I bet you aren’t easy to deal with.”

“I try,” Marco said. “Go on back home.”

“See you later, cowboy,” she said with a sexy little Southern twang.

He watched her walk away. He wondered what she’d do if she got out of here with a ton of money. Probably hook up with some lunatic and end up broke and in a mess soon enough. That type usually did.

When she was out of sight, Marco slipped away, down the side of the dock. He wanted to cross the lake and do a little nighttime recon of the estates. Choose the best place to come in.

47

Kora, knowing Jesup’s guy was watching her, tried to walk causally toward the Ketch, letting him enjoy her, yet she half-expected to hear gunshots. Leon in action.

For a brief, intense moment on her way back, she played with some serious doubts. Then reversed herself.

This is what I have to do, she thought. I’ve got my hunting dog, and I need to use him.

With the killer waiting up in her condo, and this Marco guy lurking somewhere nearby, Kora North felt like the walls of her life were closing fast. She took a deep breath to relieve the pressure.

Two outlaws, one goal. I’ve chosen, she thought. No backing out now.

In the end, she figured she really needed a Leon. She had other plans besides money. She needed them both for now to get her to the Promised Land, and nothing was going to stand in her way once she made up her mind. But later, later was a different story. She had a lot of bastards to pay back for what they’d done to her.

She wondered if Marco was doing Jesup. In a way, it made her a little jealous. He had some qualities she liked a lot.

Little love birds on the big caper. Straight-ass cop turned thief planning the biggest heist in the Sierras since the whites stole it from the Indians. She gave Jesup credit. The girl was no shrinking violet, for sure. Kora had developed a respect for the ex-investigator. Lady had some big balls taking on Thorp and his fucking empire.

She also got herself this hardcore dude.

Kora passed the restaurant, people laughing, enjoying their existence, totally oblivious of the sharks circling dangerously beneath the surface. When she reached her condo and went inside, Leon wasn’t there. She called his name, but no answer.

“What the hell?” Kora said. But then the door opened behind her and he came in. He’d been outside. Probably watching her the whole time.

“It’s like I said—they’re serious. They’re really going to do it.”

Leon’s harsh ventriloquist whisper: “Saturday night?”

“Late. Around two Sunday morning.”

“Jesup with him?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t say. He was just there. I don’t know if he drove, came by boat, or dropped from the sky. Came up on me like a fucking ghost.”

Leon said, “You give him the map?”

“Yes. He wants me to get hold of Tricky Dick’s smartphone if I can get it. They got this all figured out. They got the whole security layout from the guy who installed it. I don’t know what this Marco’s background is, but he seems to know exactly what he’s doing.”

She told him what Marco had said, and how this was all going to work out. She wasn’t sure if she was now going to be killed, now that he had everything he needed and could go back to Thorp and tell him.

But what Leon said in that barely audible voice of his was, “Do what the man wants. We’re gonna play their game, take all the marbles. Right now, I’m going to go have them fix my face.”

Kora wanted to toast the new relationship. Pour some of the Beringer’s 2005 Merlot that a rich prick said was from the Bancroft Ranch vineyard and real quality for the price. She decided to save it until she was by herself.

After Leon slipped out into the night, Kora went out on the small balcony and peered out across the Lake. She realized that she and Sydney Jesup had the same goal of tearing that bastard Thorp down. They were sisters in that. And they both had their Dobermans to assist with the job.

Kora held up her glass and toasted Sydney. She felt sad that she had to betray the woman and her boyfriend. But it was all about survival.

48

After leaving the Keys, Sydney steered the Glastron GX 235 up the middle of the vast lake while Marco used the night glasses to track for Coast Guard boats. They drew closer to Incline, where they could see the activity at Thorp’s. They drifted out about a quarter mile.

Sydney’s big worry with Kora was her not getting drunk and blowing the whole operation. But Marco seemed pretty convinced she was going to work out.

“Things are happening over there? A couple big tents. Getting ready for the party of the year,” Marco said as they drifted a little closer.

They passed the night glasses back and forth, checking out the possible approach, the deck and boathouse, across the corner of the lake past the Cal-Neva to the North Shore, where Thorp and Rouse had their waterfront estates.

At night, the lake had only the light of the moon glazing the water, the surrounding mountains black. Almost no lights were visible on the North Shore. Laws against trimming trees and the lack of streetlights at Incline gave the illusion there was almost no civilization there until you were close enough to see houses.

Marco said, “I used to come out in the middle of the lake with friends and we’d swim. It was really weird because you knew how deep the lake was and it seemed like you were alone in the universe. Really cool at the same time. You think there are all those dead bodies preserved at the bottom, like everyone thinks?”

Sydney said, “Maybe. It’s over sixteen hundred feet deep right about where we are now. Tahoe is the second deepest mountain lake in the country. The deepest is Oregon’s Crater Lake. It comes in at over nineteen hundred feet. I’ve been there once. It has no streams feeding it and none coming out. It’s fed by snow melt.”

“Not as big as Tahoe, though, is it?”

“No. It’s about six miles wide, six long or close. Nowhere near as big. Tahoe’s twenty-two by twelve miles and has something like forty trillion gallons of water. Enough to flood the entire state of California with over a foot of water.”

Closer to the shoreline now, the lights of the Incline estates became barely visible. Marco glassed the Incline estates, tracking from the tents and outdoor party preparations at Thorp’s to Rouse’s next door.

Marco handed the glasses to her. He drew a sketch on the back of the drawings Kora had given him. The location of the docks, the boathouse, and the tree line, to compare them to Google Earth, get the distances right.

“I like where the dock is from the property east of Rouse’s. It has a boathouse, and between them would be a nice place to slip in.”

Sydney had them on a slow cruise now. “That looks good.”

“Thorp’s got four huge tents on the lawns. All of them look like candy-cane color, red and white striped. A band platform is set up. Strings of Christmas lights.”

“Looks like it’s going to be one hell of a party.”

They sat for a time, drifting offshore a few hundred yards. For a time they were silent, drifting in their thoughts. It was one of the few peaceful moments since he picked her up on Sunday.

As they started back, Sydney felt a sense of finality, one way or another, with her long obsession with getting Thorp. Her guilt about getting Marco involved, then his uncle getting killed, was muted somewhat by her feeling that she’d saved Marco from becoming part of the Thorp play against Tahoe.

They talked about the movies that had been filmed in Tahoe. Sydney said that the first movie ever filmed on the lake was
Indian Love Call.

“I never heard of that,” Marco said.

“It’d be a great game-show trivia question. It was some kind of musical back in the ‘30s.”

Marco said the only movie he knew was filmed in Tahoe was
The Godfather
. “And wasn’t
Bodyguard
, with Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston?”