Illegal (32 page)

"I'm hoping he'll listen to you, Javier."

A realization then. Though the chief had met Whitehurst dozens of times over the years, never had the deep-carpet attorney called him by his first name.

"Simeon respects you and trusts you," Whitehurst continued. "You're the son he never had."

"I'll do anything for Sim. You know that."

"The U.S. Attorney offered a deal. Simeon pleads to one count of racketeering and does a token amount of time at a country club prison. Six to nine months. He pays five million in fines, plus steps down as president of the company. The court will appoint a trustee to oversee the operation."

Cardenas laughed, but it was as bitter as hemlock. "The trustee better have a thick hide, because Uncle Sim will take a bullwhip to him."

"That's pretty much what Simeon said, except he mentioned a shotgun."

"What can I do if he's already rejected the deal?"

"Help me sell him on it."

Cardenas shook his head. "You know Sim. He'll fight to the end. He'll never surrender."

"Then he'll lose what it took three generations to build. The ranch. The farms. All the businesses. Everything forfeited to the government. He'll die in prison. His only wish interred with his bones."

"What wish?"

"For you to take over the business when he's gone."

"Jesus." Cardenas sucked in a breath. "I thought Sim wanted me to be governor or a senator. He never mentioned the business."

"You're the sole heir."

"You're sure?" Cardenas blurted out.

Whitehurst laughed. "I better be. I wrote the will."

For a moment, the only sound was the hum on the line.

"Just to be clear, Javie," Whitehurst continued, "if Simeon Rutledge dies tomorrow, you inherit everything."

Cardenas shook his head, resisting the notion. "And the crimi nal case, what happens to that?"

"A very astute question," the lawyer praised him. "In the untoward event of Simeon's death, the criminal case dies with him. The government will move on to other cases of notoriety, and you'll take over the company."

Cardenas was aware of a tingling sensation, an electrical impulse sparking up his spine. It was not an unpleasant feeling.

"While it hardly needs to be said," Whitehurst continued, obviously believing it did need to be said, "rest assured that I will always be your trusted advisor, Javie. Just as I have been to Simeon."

Cardenas stayed quiet. He sensed Whitehurst wasn't finished.

"But if Simeon's convicted," the lawyer started again, "there'll be nothing to pass on. The sad fact is, the only way for your uncle Sim to achieve his fondest wish is for him to die."

Javier Cardenas discovered he was holding his breath, his throat dry as sand. He exhaled, a hot wind rustling dried leaves. "Neither of us wants that to happen."

"Of course not," the lawyer assured him.

"What do you mean you're going out tonight?" Tino asked.

"Something I gotta do, that's all." Jimmy keeping it nonchalant. No way he would tell the boy he was setting out to kill a man.

"So you're leaving me alone in the hotel?"

"You want a babysitter?"

"Not unless she wants to watch the titty channel with me."

They had just finished dinner at a barbecue joint, attracted there by the hickory smoke wafting over downtown Rutledge. Ribs, chicken, tri-tip, baked beans, and sweet potato fries. For a skinny kid, Tino could pack it away. Now they were walking back to the hotel, their conversation interrupted by frequent burps and the occasional fart.

"How long till you're back?" Tino asked.

"It'll be late. You'll be asleep."

"You hooking up with that waitress?"

"What waitress?"

"Ay, Himmy. The one you were hitting on, the one whose hair smelled like carne asada."

"Nope."

"Why the big secret,
vato
? You afraid I won't understand?"

"Exactly."

But that was a lie. Tino would surely understand. He'd expressed the very same emotion a number of times when confronted with someone who would hurt his mother. Tino knew very well the driving force of bloodlust and the bone-deep need for revenge.

Still, Payne was on his way to kill a man. To snuff out a life with what the law calls "premeditation and malice aforethought."

A nice phrase. "Malice aforethought." He'd surely
aforethoughted
a truckload of malice in the last year.

An hour after sundown, Payne drove past fields of cotton and alfalfa, swarms of gnats committing suicide on his windshield. There had once been a large lake in these parts, fed by the Tule River, but it had long ago been drained by Ezekiel Rutledge's ambition to go from merely rich to incredibly wealthy. Nothing changes. The rich get richer, Payne thought, and the poor still live in Weedpatch Barracks.

He skirted the town of Corcoran with its massive state prison, home to Charles Manson, among several thousand other miscreants. Powerful lights curdled the night sky into a sickly shade of green. Payne couldn't fight off the notion that someone who committed a murder in these parts might himself spend the rest of his days inside those walls.

He fiddled with the radio dial. The strongest signal was an oldies rock station, and he picked up Link Wray's "Rumble" with its slow, tantalizing guitar licks. Another few miles and Payne found the side road Rutledge had described. A dusty, one-lane, unpaved path through tomato and onion fields. Darkened shacks, propped on cinder blocks, abandoned and forlorn. The road grew bumpier and narrower, the fields smaller and less tended. The Sierra Nevadas were silhouetted to the east, the Diablo Range to the west, the stars a countless sprinkling of sugar on a black velvet cake. He spotted the Big Dipper, traced a path upward from the two stars that formed the cup's far end. Found Polaris, the North Star, glowing more fiercely than it ever did in the city.

He looked back to the road just in time to avoid a waddling possum, then swerved again, barely missing a rough-barked sycamore encroaching on the narrow road. Then he saw it. A small aluminum trailer, one end protruding from a thicket of scrub oak trees.

Payne pulled off the road and killed the engine. From somewhere in the darkened fields, birds cried like frightened children, and insects played a hundred different symphonies. Sounds came from inside the trailer, too. Voices with a metallic edge. Judging from the cathode glow on the porthole window, a television set.

Payne got out of the Mustang, Adam's Louisville Slugger in hand. Metal alloy. Only eighteen ounces. It made a metallic
clonk
hitting a baseball. Payne wondered for the thousandth time just what sound would it make crushing a skull.

He took a few swings, as if in the on-deck circle. Two-handed, level and strong. A line drive swing. Then, one-handed. A fine
whoosh
through the warm night air.

Payne crept toward the half-hidden trailer. An Airstream about twenty feet long, a silver sausage. Propane tank leaning against the hitch. Metal poles cockeyed in the ground, propping up a torn, green-striped awning. A muddy Chevy half-ton pickup sat alongside. Someone had taken the trouble to back it into the trees. Faster exit, maybe?

Ten feet from the door, Payne could clearly hear the television. Music and the high-pitched voices of a cartoon. The smell of cooked pork drifted from the trailer's open windows.

Payne thought about Rutledge and his smug assumptions.

Payne figured that, under the right circumstances, everyone is capable of killing. No great revelation there. Just the searing awareness that homicide is grafted onto our genes.

Payne's murderous intent came with a promise attached. He had looked Rutledge squarely in his flinty eyes and given an oath along with a bloody handshake. In return for the whereabouts of Manuel Garcia, he would give up the search for Marisol. He would kill tonight and go home tomorrow.

Not for one moment, not for the infinitesimal blink of a faraway star, would he let Tino down. It was easy to choose which promise to break.

Approaching the trailer, Payne tripped. He caught his balance and realized he'd just trampled Our Lady of Guadalupe, or at least a knee-high statue of her, jammed into the dust just outside the front door. Her eyes were lowered in prayer. Pink blossoms grew at her feet, and her dainty shoulders were covered with a turquoise shroud.

Now, standing on the doorstep of the old trailer, Payne felt exhilarated, a weight lifting from his body like a Zeppelin untethered from its port. Gripping the baseball bat in one hand, he drew his foot back and smashed in the flimsy screen door.

"I'm here, Garcia! Goddammit, I'm here at last!"

I lost the bet, Javier Cardenas thought.

He couldn't believe it. Here was Payne, sneaking up to the trailer like some Special Forces wannabe.

Not that Cardenas had paid for the sleek hunting bow, which must have cost six hundred bucks new. He'd seized it as evidence from a hunter who lacked a license. He also confiscated the guy's arrows, broad heads, tree stands, camo gear, and tent. If the hunter'd had an English bulldog, Cardenas would have taken that, too.

Now he sat in his cruiser, under a white alder tree, engine idling, A/C on, iPod plugged in, listening to Salma Hayek whisper
"Quedate Aqui"
from the
Desperado
soundtrack. The cruiser was parked on a small rise near Manuel Garcia's rusted-out trailer. Cardenas had been waiting two hours, convinced Payne wouldn't show up and he'd win Sim's Mossberg shotgun, the combo over-under model with 12- and 20-gauge barrels. That was the bet, the Black Ice bow for the Mossberg shotgun. It seemed like such a sure thing.

They had bantered a few minutes. Planning a trip to Hog Haven up in Geyersville. Been going there since Javier was ten years old. Hunting those huge smelly boars with the wide snouts, sharp tusks, and grouchy dispositions.

Simeon had barked those instructions when Cardenas was a boy and repeated them to this day. Instilled confidence and courage.

Back then, Cardenas knew that if he missed a shot, Uncle Sim would be there to rescue him. These days, Cardenas was not so sure. The certainties of childhood had been replaced by the complexities of the adult world.

He endlessly replayed the phone call with Charles Whitehurst. Like polishing a jagged piece of quartz, he kept finding new angles. On the surface, the lawyer appeared concerned for Simeon's welfare. But underneath, Whitehurst feared losing his biggest client. If the government took over the business, he could say adios to all those legal fees.

So Whitehurst's advice—convince Simeon to plead out—was never sincere. Then what was the real purpose of the call? What message was the lawyer sending? It could only be one thing.

To drive home the point, Whitehurst had told Cardenas about Simeon's will, to hell with attorney-client privilege. And what about that bone-chilling statement?

How the lawyer must have rehearsed that line, pruning the words of any manifest intent.

Earlier today, when Simeon had called, Cardenas did not mention the conversation with Whitehurst. He hoped Simeon would bring up the indictment, ask for advice, but of course, that did not happen.

Cardenas was lost in a fog of conflicting emotions. Simeon was a surrogate father, no other way to put it.

Now Cardenas watched Payne kick open the trailer's screen door.

Heard shouts.

Wondered if Garcia had a gun.

Thinking it was just as likely that Garcia would kill Payne as the other way around. He wouldn't arrest Garcia for murder. The man would be defending his family and his home against a violent invasion by a man sworn to kill him. But if Payne killed Garcia, different story. Cardenas would arrest Payne for premeditated murder.

Either way, Payne was gone, and Sim would be happy. For now.

Poor Jimmy Payne.
Heads, you lose your freedom. Tails, you lose your head.

Keeping his eyes on the trailer, Javier Cardenas checked the clip on his 9mm Beretta and waited to see who walked out the door.

As he burst through the fallen door, Payne scanned the dimly lit trailer, his heightened senses taking in a stained leopard carpet, the glow of a small television screen, and a short, chunky woman washing dishes at a small sink.

The woman dropped a plate and screamed. A piercing sound, made sharper by the aluminum walls. Something stirred behind her, a lump rising from a quilt on a gaucho bed.

The form of a man. Boxer shorts, bare feet, and a dirty wife-beater tee.