The Triggerman Dance (26 page)

Holt considers. "I understand that a gift might seem demeaning to your intentions, but we also have to be practical sometimes. Look at it this way, too—if you won't take the trailer, you're denying me a chance to be generous."

"I wouldn't want to do that, Mr. Holt," says John, with just a trace of irony in his voice.

Holt hears it and smiles. "Look. What if you think about it for a few days? During that time, stay here with us. There are a few things you might help me out with."

"Like what?"

"Val could use some help with the dogs. Now that she's out of school it's dogs, dogs, dogs. Headed for vet school next fall, probably out of state.
So ...
well, anyway, she's still field-training her pups."

John sensed that there was something on Holt's mind left unsaid. He waited, but Holt was silent.

"Nice offer, Mr. Holt, but the paycheck calls."

"Lane talked to Bruno today. As of yesterday you didn't have any vacation time coming, but now you've got a paid week. Lane helped him see the value of your complete convalescence."

"You're bluffing now."

"I don't bluff. Bruno wants the story filed by tomorrow afternoon. Then you're free for a vacation. Don't tell me some R &c R on Liberty Ridge would pollute your sense of chivalry, young man."

"Well, it's tempting."

"Settled."

Holt extends his hand and John shakes it. His grip is strong, dry and warm. "I was surprised to learn you used to write for the
Journal.
But when Fargo mentioned it, I remembered your columns. Nice stuff. Very un
-Journal."

"Thank you."

"Do you know Susan Baum?"

John feels his heart tighten, then speed up.

"Not well."

"In touch with her?"

"Not really."

"Could you be?"

"I hear she's kind of in hiding, since the shooting."

"That's what I've heard. Guess I would be, too."

When John finally returns to his lakeside cottage it is almost midnight. He can see his dogs on the porch, lying next to a chair in which a figure sits, rocking slowly. His heart shifts a little, and the ringing begins in his ears again. Somehow he can remember the smell of Valerie's perfume, a light, feminine scent that he was not even aware of registering.

"So, what did you say?" asks Fargo. "Going to stick around?"

John's heart tightens again and a cool sweat creeps over his scalp. The dogs knock against his legs. "I said I would."

"No big surprise."

"Thanks for the vacation time."

"That was easy."

John steps onto the porch and Lane Fargo stands. In the darkness they face each other.

"So, Valerie bought you some clothes today."

"I guess that's pretty obvious."

"Pretty obvious. You like a little dig now and then, don't you?"

"Hard to pass up, sometimes."

Fargo nods. "You're hard to figure."

"How so?"

"I really don't know yet—you're a puzzle."

"You might be overcomplicating me."

"But I might not be. There's two kinds of people in my world, John-Boy—people I trust and people I hate. On you, the jury's still out."

"Well, thanks for the status report."

"Sleep tight."

For the next three days John stayed on Liberty Ridge, the rewarded Samaritan, the model guest. He shot pistol and shotgun with Holt and Fargo. He enjoyed Holt's tales of African safaris. He endured Fargo's taunts and brooding stares as he outscored Fargo on the sporting clays course.

The three of them shot Holt Alley three times each, the best score going to Holt—32 proper kills, no innocents and a time of 3:25. John came in last with a 28 in 3:30. Walking away from the building there was a silence during which John knew both Holt and Fargo were wondering how a mediocre pistol shot like him had managed to clip a biker's shoulder without clipping the girl next to him.

"Tough course," he admitted.

John felt naked and exposed, like a hermit crab scuttling between shells. He tried to forget his purpose. During the hours he spent with Valerie in the meadow behind the Big House he almost managed to succeed. There, they drilled her dogs with dummies and live birds and lead lines while John's labradors sat enviously in the shade and watched. Boomer just howled sadly.

John went about the hours as if they were his own and he was an actual man doing actual things. The very forbiddenness of Valerie Holt made him all the more comfortable in her company. He enjoyed her talk, he admired her skills with the dogs. He was surprised by her easy intelligence and her sense of control. He silently noted her beauty and relished the covert glances he could steal. He was thankful for his sunglasses. Only once did she catch him, but she blushed deeply and looked away, catching her boot on a rock. She was so bold at times, he thought, and so timid at others, so graceful, then such a clod. He tried to remember back to being that young.

He recognized in himself the simple excitement of attraction. How long since he had felt that for Rebecca, and even then, how impacted and joyless.

For the rest of the afternoon he thought only of Rebecca and the commitment he had made to her, letting the dark aura of her memory enclose his waiting, cunning heart.

.

The first light of the fifth day found John and his three dogs following the west shore of the lake. He carried a big cup of coffee in one hand and in the other a walking stick—a long piece of orangewood he'd found near his cottage. To any observer he would have looked like a man on a morning stroll and nothing more. John had temporarily convinced himself that this was all he was.

He walked along unhurriedly, waiting for the fuzz of the night's Scotch to dissipate with the stern clarity of caffeine. He had been pleased to find the bar of the cottage well stocked. The day was cool, but he could tell from the unclouded sky and the dry offshore breeze that the Santa Ana winds were brewing, and it would be hot before nine. The dogs splashed in and out of the lake, chasing each other like puppies.

He rounded the south shore, then left the lake and struck off down a trail leading into the chaparral. It was already warmer just a hundred yards from the water. On top of a gentle rise, he stopped and looked back toward the lake, then to the training buildings for the Liberty Ops cadets. He could see a pair of them entering the library. Two more, dressed in
gis,
talking outside the martial arts building. Young men, mid-to-late twenties, mostly white, close-shaven, clean-cut, alert. He watched a helicopter rise from the helipad. It was painted in the same unmistakable orange and black of the Liberty Operations patrol cars, and it looked like a big dragonfly moving up into the sky. A moment later another rose and followed. The Liberty Ops lieutenants going out to check their beats, thought John. Holt Men in the sky.

Continuing on, he thought of Valerie Anne Holt and the way she looked to him—and at him—at the big dinner. And though his stomach grew warm inside and he heard that faint ringing in his ears, he forced a rational coolness over them and told himself again that any closeness he had with Valerie would be false. He was, in this fabricated world of Joshua Weinstein, her protector. He thought of Lane Fargo, too, and the unabashed hostility the bodyguard had shown him. It was almost comforting to know that Fargo was after him; it defined the threat.
Fargo is Holt's unleashed paranoia, his pit bull. If he comes at you, hold your ground—if he gives you license, take it.
He wondered too if Fargo's interest in Valerie went beyond the professional. He considered whether Valerie might have deeper affections for Lane, and decided not. She seemed too bright a soul to be drawn to Lane Fargo's dark spirit.

Most of all, he thought of Vann Holt. A surprising man. John had been prepared for Holt's confidence and control, the
aura of capacity
that Josh had described. He had expected the easy command Holt exhibited at Liberty Ridge and the deference of his friends, business partners, guests. He had expected the wealth, the grandness of his home, the extravagance of his table. What John had not been ready for was the simple harmony between Holt and his world. John could see nothing of a master's iron hand, no misshapen power, none of the triumphant strutting of the prosperous. Yes, Vann Holt was the unchallenged king of Liberty Ridge. But his kingdom seemed to project from his imagination, rather than surrender to his ambition. He had dreamed the place, not conquered it; he was its heart, but not its body. They belonged to each other. And while Holt's lavish generosity surprised John, Joshua had predicted it, counted on it.
Once Wayfarer believes he owes you, the sky will be the limit. Decline the sky but accept the Ridge. All we need is your presence at Liberty Ridge. His gratitude will be his Achilles Heel.

John turned and continued along the trail. For a few hundred yards it was wide and clear, but then the scrub pressed in and choked it down to little more than a game trail winding through brush. It rose steeply and John stopped again at the top, breathing hard, his empty coffee cup dangling from a finger. The dogs snorted up ahead; he could see all three labrador tails—one chocolate, one yellow, one black—protruding from a clump of buckwheat bush. From here, the lake and the buildings of Liberty Ridge were invisible. The first hot gusts of the Santa Ana wind heaved by him, drying the sweat on his temples.

The trail led him down now, past a stand of eucalyptus trees fragrant in the growing heat. He remembered Joshua's map, and that the stand was roughly one-third of the distance from the lake to the electric perimeter fence. His next signpost was a mammoth California oak tree, easily two centuries old, he thought, that stood haunted and solitary atop a knoll to his right. A redtail hawk perched near the top paid him no attention at all as he continued down the trail. The next half mile was laborious and uphill; the final half mile an easy coast down to where the trail ended in a clearing, and the clearing ended in the fence. He checked his watch: 17 minutes, two short stops, a steady pace but not a hurried one.

He called the dogs, walked them across the clearing and made them sit in front of the fence. He took each dog by the collar, pointed at the fence and issued a harsh "No." The puzzled labs then followed him back into the clearing and sat attentively by as John settled onto a stump, pulled out a cigarette and lit up.
When you get to the clearing, take five. See if any shadows fall.

He smoked and listened to the birds hidden around him. When he was finished he ground the butt into the dirt, rose and commanded his dogs with a firm "stay." He walked across the clearing to a smallish oak tree—no more than twenty feet high— whose branches had been pruned away from the fence. He estimated two yards from the trunk to the fence, then knelt down and began scraping away handfuls of the loose, leaf-covered soil. The box was six inches under. He removed it and opened the lid, then brought out the small flat cellular telephone and slid it into his shirt pocket. He piled the sharp oak leaves around the box before turning to look behind him—just three inquisitive dog faces staring back—then pushing one of the two dial buttons on the face of the little phone.
The buttons are dedicated. You can only call one person on earth and that person is me. Black for business and red for busted. If you're flushed, John, press red. Press red and use the hole. We'll do what we can to help you out but it may take a lot more time than you have.