The Triggerman Dance (15 page)

Of course, the longer Foster remained at large the better, and the Bureau would help him stay that way.

Unsettled as she was by her subterfuge, Sharon was thrilled by the power of it, too. What a feeling, to sway and influence the media. Deceit ruled. She consulted the rearview mirror to see if dishonesty had changed her face. No, Sharon decided: it was the same 34-year old biological-clock-ticking-away face she'd left home with that morning. She wondered about Retin-A.

She drove by the old apartment she had shared with Donny, at the base of Third Street hill. It was still there, though freshly painted. A new Honda sat in the place her old Chevy Malibu once occupied. The apartment had new curtains. She parked in the driveway for a moment. She remembered the life she had then, all the books and part-time jobs and sharing every expense with Donny, all the lovemaking and fighting and tears and long Sunday morning hours in bed with the newspaper strewn across the covers and cups of coffee growing cool on the nightstands. Those were the best times, she thought, those Sunday mornings.

She thought about Josh Weinstein and John Menden—the men in her life now—and how close they could be to her heart, yet so far from it. Maybe that was the price you paid for a career like hers. Men all around you, really, but what did they amount to except teammates, competitors, flirts, maybe friends at best?

A woman could do worse, she thought.

October the fourteenth hovers gently upon Liberty Ridge. It is an autumn evening scrubbed by breeze, cloudless and dry, ripe wit the promise of change. If seen from above, the dominant feature of Liberty Ridge is the blue oval of lake in its center. In the middle of the lake is small round island, densely wooded and dark. The lake seems to stare upward at you, like an eye, with its calm black pupil of an island taking you in.

To the north are two hundred acres of orange grove, a perfect rectangle bordered by a windbreak of eucalyptus. Early each morning the irrigation rows fill with water and glisten like stripe of poured silver. Holt has gone to enormous expense to bring his citrus up to certified organic standards, though never applying for the final papers because his operation is not commercial ant he detests inspectors of any kind on Liberty Ridge. Without this use of chemical herbicides to control weeds, or chemical insecticides to kill pests, the two hundred acres are labor intensive Holt's ranch workers are relatively small in number and well paid. Behind the lake, to the south, lie four hundred acres of Southern California coastal scrub and savanna. Because this natural habitat is part of a greater belt of undeveloped land, it is impossible to tell, from above, where the southern boundary o Liberty Ridge lies. Only from the ground can you see the actual border—an eight foot chain link fence topped by another two feet of acutely angled barbed wire, all charged with 24,000 volt of current. The electricity to the fence is turned off and on at arbitrary hours during the day, but it is always on at night. The charge is strong enough to send a deer spasming hoof-over-ear back into the brush, or to knock a man completely senseless. One of Holt's independent springers roamed far from the pack last summer, urinated on the fence and snapped its own spine in a howling recoil. The animal scratched back to the compound a day later using only his front paws, setting off a dispute between Holt and his daughter, Valerie, that Valerie, as usual, won. She demanded surgery for the pup. The dog was operated on that day, but expired during the ordeal.

East of the lake, inland, lie soft foothills of oak and sage, grasslands, and Interstate 5, which marks the edge of the property. From a frontage road used mostly by surfers and the Marines of nearby Camp Pendleton, a private asphalt ribbon lined with date palms winds west toward the house and outbuildings, the lake, and groves. There is a gate near the frontage road—just out of sight around the first bend—which is manned round-the- clock by Liberty Ridge Security, a team of five men supervised by Vann Holt's ubiquitous protector, hunting companion, drinking buddy and personal assistant, Lane Fargo.

To the west is the Pacific. The property line ends almost half a mile before the beach, which is fine with Vann Holt because beach access in California is nearly impossible to restrict anymore, and because a long, narrow, brackish slough runs parallel with the coast on the western edge of Liberty Ridge, making electric fences, guarded gates or even routine security patrols all but unneccessary. In light moments he jokes about stocking the slough with crocodiles. It would be nice to have a beach, but when a strong south swell powers up from Mexico and Holt wants to surf, he and Valerie and Fargo just drive to the dirt parking patch like everyone else, then paddle out and fight for the waves. As a boy he'd belonged to a private surf club there, but privacy in current day Orange County—Holt once pointed out to a client visiting from South Africa—has gone the way of the mastodon, the full-service gas station and apartheid.

The compound itself is built around what Holt calls the Big House—a little joke on himself, a retired Federal crime buster. This house is made primarily of restored adobe over cinderblock and steel I-beam. This expensive combination of materials makes for very good insulation against heat and cold, and of course provides the Big House's old-time California Mission flavor. Holt often points out to guests that it is bulletproof, apropos of little but his desire to raise eyebrows. It is an imposing structure with three stories that seem to just wander on forever once you're inside. Holt designed the remodel himself, which captures the Mission ambience but has contemporary touches such as oversized double-paned windows and twelve-foot ceilings that gather plenty of sunlight. Some of the rooms are furnished with genuine Mission-era appointments, others feature pale gray walls hung with the somewhat sentimental
plein-air
landscapes of the early twentieth century that Holt admires.

There is a separate residence for Lane Fargo. Fargo's home is actually a portion of the restored orange-packing house that sits between the Big House and the lake. It has the functional tin facing and cavernous interior of the original. Holt has kept great deal of the old packing equipment in tact: the convey and hoppers, the processing tables, the two roll-up doors large enough for a truck to drive through. But Fargo keeps the doors locked and the windows shut on all but the hottest days, giving the old plant an air of rusty malignity. The dogs kill an occasional rat along the decking that runs around the perimeter of the packing house.

There is one more home for the two other members of Holt's inner-inner circle: Laura and Thurmond Messinger. This is the adobe church that has stood on the grounds since 1853, topped by a wooden cross to tell travelers they would be treated with Christian respect here. Holt gutted the old interior when moved onto Liberty Ridge, in keeping with his desire to provide the Messingers with a convenient place to live, and with his profoundly bitter loss of faith in the church after the shooting of his wife and son. Much remains of the old religious ambience inside. Because, as Holt discovered, a church is always mainly a church no matter what you do to it. This is fine with Laura Messinger, a Catholic, and Thurmond, a lapsed Presbyterian.

Nearby, in a loose archipelago that borders a rolling central landscape verdant with grass and trees and flowers, stand four spacious cottages where the cadets of Liberty Operations are trained. One building is for classroom sessions. One is for martial-arts work. The third is an indoor pistol range and the four a library stocked with books that are handpicked by Holt and required reading for any cadet hoping to graduate into Libery Operations. These volumes include the Old Testament,
The Riverside Shakespeare, The Man-eaters of Kumaon,
the Magna Carta, the Constitution of the United States and Holt's own self-published rumination,
Conscience and Character.
Beyond these are the recreation building, two bungalows for the live-in help, two generous guest flats; and several outbuildings for the vehicles, the helicopter, propane, generators, water supply and storage. The helipad and tennis courts are hidden in a hollow on the other side the main house, as are the swimming pool, whirlpool, rock garden and aviary. Down by the grove are four sizeable cabins for the citrus workers. Beside the lake sit the boathouse, another guest cottage, the kennels for Holt's army of springers, the marina and the drydock. Beside the drydock is a large cinderblock structure, windowless and cheerless as a coffin. Inside is the notorious "Holt Alley," a walk-through small-arms range featuring a city block with 25 bad guy mannequins that can pop out at you from just about anywhere, and 15 innocents who scuttle about their daily lives. No one has ever shot a perfect score in less than three minutes and fifteen seconds.

On the south end of the lake is the beach, cabanas, and the rifle and pistol range. Next to the rifle benches is a modified sporting clays course where, since the beginning of August, Vann Holt has spent many hours getting ready for quail season.

As the sun loosens its orange into the western sky, Holt stands here, on the sporting clays range, at the last station. Behind him is the tower, with its mechanical throwers, stacks of targets, platforms and railings. Holt is in a small wooden cage shaped like a portable toilet stall, with the front and back panels cut away but the two side panels up, to make his shots more difficult. He is a large man, thick-limbed and suntanned. His straight silver hair is neatly trimmed on the sides and back, but in front it juts outward over his forehead like a youngster's. His face is slender, clean shaven and deeply lined; his mouth is taut but unexpressive; his eyes, though pale gray, are now a kind of translucent blue behind the yellow lenses of his shooting glasses. He is dressed in khakis, chukkas and a blue oxford shirt, and has a shell pouch around his waist. He raises the shotgun to his shoulder and calls "pu//." It is not the sharp
pull!
of the aggressive shooter, not the interrogative
pull?
of the hesitant shooter, but an unhurried, relaxed command that somehow sounds like a prefix.
Puuull
. . . His voice is deep and clear. The clay bird hurls from his blinded left side, streaks in front of him, rising, then disappears in a cracking little cloud of black dust. Holt steps back and reloads, staring down at his gun in the way a tennis player might ponder the strings of his racquet. There is a distinct air about him. Seen from any angle, Vann Holt is a man who emanates assurance, engagement and capability.

Behind the station, Lane Fargo rests his gun across the crook of one elbow and watches.

Holt steps forward into the box again and calls for the second bird. It comes from his left again, but flies lower, faster, and more directly away from him. There is a quick pop, a short follow-through of barrel, and the disc jumps ahead, nicked but still flying.

"The magic pellet," says Lane Fargo. "Pick up your double now, Boss."

Holt appears not to hear. He steps back, breaks open his Browning over-and-under, puts the spent shell into his pouch, then pushes two thin green .28 gauge loads into his gun and snaps it shut. He enters the station house again, positions his feet and raises the stock to his shoulder. Everything he does seems deliberate, experienced. He calls for the bird in his usual way,
puuull.
. ., the way that seems to presage an automatic bursting of his target. The first bird whizzes away, untouched, through the report of Holt's gun. Then the second, faster and further out, escapes too, streaking across the clay-blackened range and settling out of sight behind a hillock.

For a moment Holt stands there, looking out as if he can see them again, each missed bird. He raises the gun again and makes the shots in his imagination. Then he backs out of the station, breaks open his weapon, removes the shells and joins his partner.

"Well, that's an eighty-four," says Fargo. "Put you in A's almost any club in the world."

"Behind them again."

"Yep."

Lane Fargo goes into the station, knocks down both singles and the double. He's shooting a .12 gauge with a heavy load, and the report of his gun booms across the range. He returns to Holt with a cautious look, but apparently pleased.

"Ninety," he says.

"That's good shooting, Lane. You'll slay them tomorrow."

They case their guns and lay them in the bed of a little pickup truck.

"You're not picking them up as soon, Boss," says Fargo.