Cool Heat (5 page)

“But you are now.”

“I am now.”

She was seeing this guy from an angle she would never have even considered a short time ago. He was one of those guys living in that gray world, that no man’s land, the lawless underbelly, and she was becoming more and more comfortable with that. And hers was a story not all that far removed from his. It was a definite connection.

And nobody does favors for Homeland or the feds and gets his record washed after he’s killed people and spent time in a Mexican prison unless he’s really good at something they want. She wondered just what it was and whether that skill set might be of use to her. But she was a major threat to his chances of a new life. He was Tony Cillo’s nephew, and that made it a very complicated situation for both of them.

“Your uncle’s Italian. Cruz is Spanish.”

“I’m half Italian, half Mexican on my father’s side.”

She glanced at him. He had a very heavy background. If she wanted help, she couldn’t have ordered up anyone much better prepared for whatever she decided to do. All she knew was, she had no interest in running.

9

On the way into Tahoe City, Sydney replayed the shooting in her mind. She tried to fit the size and shape of the shooter to someone from her past. Who the hell was he?

The problem with running through her internal contact list was that she’d been involved in a lot of arrests, busts, and—later—prosecutions with the sheriff’s department. Then there were her many investigations with the DA. She’d gathered more enemies than friends. It was a very difficult environment because South Lake was divided between California’s jurisdiction and Nevada’s, and further divided by counties.

One conclusion she had to face was that she couldn’t believe Ogden Thorp, a man who really wanted her dead, would send somebody so incompetent to take her out. That complicated everything in her mind, because it was Thorp she wanted to bring down, and having some random fool out there looking to kill her was an unwanted complication.

“Your doc live right in town?” Marco asked.

“He lives a few blocks off the main drag. Go through town, and I’ll show you where to turn.”

When they crossed over the bridge on the Truckee River, Marco said, “I used to love boating down this river. One of the first things I learned from my uncle was that the Truckee River, instead of flowing west toward the Pacific, flows east into the lake, then continues on east to Pyramid Lake. He said the lake takes forever to drain. Supposedly, if you dropped a cup of coffee in Lake Tahoe, it wouldn’t be gone from the lake for six hundred fifty years. You believe that?”

“I’ve heard that. Nobody has been able to test it yet.”

He looked over at her. “How you doing?”

“Miserable. I’ll be a lot better as soon as I get some pain pills and medical attention. And some food.”

“Wanting food is always a good sign.”

The center of the city was slow, a lot of foot traffic crossing every block. Marco said, “I don’t remember it being this busy. Especially on a Sunday night.”

“New restaurants, walkways, plus new, well-lit trails along the water,” she told him.

Sydney directed him to the doctor’s house on Fairway Drive on the north side of town, a green and white bungalow on a quiet, unpretentious street of mostly single-story houses. He put the Range Rover into reverse and parked few houses back. He told her to wait. He wanted to look around.

“This is a very safe neighborhood—”

“You called him. He knows you’re coming. I just want to be sure he didn’t call anybody.”

“He wou—” she started to say, but he was already out and walking away.

He had the Beretta under his shirt, a button opened so he could get to it in a hurry. She watched him as he paused, studied the street, the houses, and then moved between the doc’s place and the neighbor’s, quiet and stealthy as a ghost.

When he came back a few minutes later, he nodded, and she got out and followed him around back. A patio door wasn’t locked. She didn’t ask if he’d done that or James had just neglected it.

The doc was sitting in his home office doing something on his computer when he looked up and saw Marco, then her. Then his gaze drifted to her blood-stained clothes and his eyes flashed alarm. “Sydney, what the hell is going on?”

“I’m sorry to come in on you like this, James. But I have no choice. I ran into a problem. I need you to take a look at some scratches.”

The doc looked at Marco like he might be the source of the “scratches.”

“I just need a quick patch-up. Maybe some of those new type of stitches. This is the guy who saved me or I’d be dead.”

The doc nodded, not showing the shock she knew he felt. “Syd, what is going on?”

“No time for Q and A,” Marco said. “Just fix her up and we’ll be out of here.”

Sydney nodded. “I have some problems. Do what you can for me. And we need a few things. We were never here, and you don’t know anything about anything.”

“Be smart,” Marco added. “This can be nothing to you, or it can end up being everything.”

The doc didn’t waste time. He went to work on Sydney’s wounds.

Marco said he needed a few food items from the kitchen. He laid some money on the desk, but James said he didn’t need any payment. Marco took the money back and left the room.

James Young, one of a dying breed of GPs, gave her questioning looks as he worked.

“Just do what you can and let us go. He’s not my problem,” she reassured him, nodding toward the kitchen. “I’m sorry I put this on you, but I needed a place to get cleaned up. And, obviously, you can’t report this because it never happened.”

Sydney apologized profusely for smelling of fish and sweat, but the doc didn’t seem to care about that. He still seemed unsure of what Marco was really all about but went about the business of getting her fixed up.

After cleaning and sanitizing the wounds and using Dermabond, a kind of superglue liquid stitch, he wrapped the graze wounds. Then he went into the adjacent guest room and came back carrying a clean blouse and loose jogging pants. “My sister won’t miss these. I’ll buy her new stuff when she visits again.”

Then he gently cleaned the bottoms of her feet. He didn’t ask how that had happened. He put some ointment on them, bandages, and then got her some socks and slippers to wear.

When he was finished, he handed her some antibiotics and some cover bandages, then a bottle of ibuprofen.

Sydney said, “I was never here. This never happened.”

“I understand.”

“Thanks.”

Marco returned holding two filled paper grocery bags. “We all on the same page?”

The doc nodded.

Marco smiled. “As they say in Mexico, stay smart,
mantenerse con vida
. Stay alive.”

10

They left the doc’s house out the front door. Walking back to the car, Sydney said, “The Spanish bit, that wasn’t really a necessary touch.”

“You lay the coffin nails out on the table, and it tends to get attention.” They both got in the Range Rover and Marco eased away from the curb.

Just as they were about to turn into town to head back, Marco got a call from his uncle. He pulled into an empty strip mall lot and put Cillo on speaker.

“Marco, we need to meet now,” Cillo said, sounding highly stressed. “This is way out of bounds.”

“I’m not sure what ‘this’ is.”

“Don’t play around, Marco. The big boys at Incline know what’s going on. Word is out. Was out before you got half a mile from my place. I can’t talk on the damn phone. I got to meet with you. This has to get settled fast. Tonight. Where are you?”

“Just driving around thinking.”

“Where’s that damn Jesup woman?”

“I assume she’s long gone. I dropped her on a back street behind the casinos and some friend picked her up. She’s probably on her way to who knows where.”

“Don’t bullshit me. I know you too well. You got her stashed somewhere or you know damn well where she’s headed. That’s your nature and your problem. Marco, you and me need to talk, and right now. Not on the phone. Pick a place.”

Marco glanced at Sydney as if wanting her opinion. She nodded in the affirmative.

“No problem,” Marco said. “Go past Camp Richardson. Take that turnoff that puts you at the museum. I assume it’s still there.”

“Valhalla?”

“Yeah, that’s it,” Marco said. “Park back there. I’ll meet you in an hour. Don’t bring anybody else. We’ll figure this out.”

“It’s bigger than you know. Don’t even think about playing games.”

Marco hung up and turned to Sydney “Well, this is where it ends. I’ll deal with my uncle, make amends. You need to be long gone. You should be in Truckee and on the 50 in about half an hour, and in Sac—”

He stopped as a black Ford 250 pickup truck shot past. The driver paid no attention to two people in a Range Rover. Besides, with tinted windows they were all but invisible in the night.

“You think that’s him?” Marco asked.

“Could well be,” Sydney said.

They watched the pickup disappear up the street heading to the north end of Tahoe City.

Sydney said, “I want to find out what’s going on, what your uncle has to say. Maybe he has an idea who the shooter is, or who ordered it. Anything will help. I don’t want to leave until I have some idea what’s going on. I’m coming with you.”

“That can’t be a good idea,” Marco said. “You get someplace safe, you call me, and I’ll let you know what I find out.”

“You might have a target on your back for rescuing me and then letting me get away.”

“I’ll deal with that.”

“You go by car, you’re vulnerable to getting trapped. The shooter is hunting right now, and maybe some other guys, too. You can’t go meet him by car. Especially
your
car. And if you want me to take off, it’s in this car. No, we’ll take the Shaws’ boat. I know how to get there and where to drop you off. You can see Cillo. Nobody will expect you to come in that way.”

He stared off a moment, shook his head, but he didn’t seem to have a counterargument.

She said, “You don’t understand how things are up here, and I mean with your uncle as well. You need to have an easy escape if it comes to that. I’ll sit in the boat. Let you off where you can hike through the woods to the museum parking lot. Talk to Cillo. Be real careful. He’s not running things, and somebody could be using him right now. On the way, I’ll explain some things you need to know about what’s going on.”

He stopped at the Shaw house drive, unlocked the gate, and pulled in. “You sure about this?”

“As a cat on a hot tar roof. But I’m not ready to run just yet. I’m not happy somebody tried to kill me, and I need to know if it was some minor-league fool or somebody connected to the major players around here. Sometimes you run, nobody follows. Sometimes there’s nowhere you can run they can’t get to you.”

He didn’t argue with that.

***

Corbin hated the voice at the other end of the GPS. Stupid bitch. “That’s not what I asked, goddamn you.”

The robot said she didn’t understand. If he knew how to hunt
her
down, he would have.

Mustangs were everywhere, but not many were red convertibles. He had never realized there were so goddamn many of them.

“Where are you, dammit?” he yelled as he headed for the next medical clinic on his GPS. “You can’t hide. I’m gonna find you bastards!”

He felt a degree of sobriety coming on and he needed it. This was getting crazy. He wondered what he’d do if he found them in some damn clinic. Shoot them on the spot?

He drifted slowly now, looking at all the parking lots, all the tourist cars. So goddamn many stupid tourists. The GPS idiot robot lady telling him to go here, go there, West Lake, 505, now 531.

“Jesus, these aren’t clinics.”

“Take the next right in three hundred feet, then take the first left on Christy Hill…”

“Jesus, how the hell many places are there?”

He couldn’t stand the sound of her voice. “You stupid bitch!” he yelled. But she just cut him off or something. He sometimes felt she knew him and deliberately gave him a lot of shit. Goddamn robot.

Shaun reached the clinic’s empty lot. He needed a drink at the moment more than he needed to be sober, so he took one, a strong one. His hand shook so bad, he had to hold the flask with both hands.

He called Kora North again and it went to voice mail. He left her a message. “You better start answering, Kora. You don’t, I’ll be coming over and paying you a visit. You hear me?”

Kora North was now exclusive to Thorp and his party scene. She’d know when Thorp was coming back from Vegas. And if things went to hell, and he had to get out of Dodge, she always had a lot of cash, and he had plenty of things on her she’d trade for.

Corbin knew he was running out of time. His cousin found out what happened, every stinking hitman in Vegas would be heading up to Tahoe to find
him
first.

11

Sydney watched as Marco pulled the lock rod and opened the door of the boathouse so she could ease the Reinell 220 out into open water. She was already feeling much better. The doc had done good.

“Nice,” Marco said, climbing on board and getting into the front passenger seat. “It fast?”

“Fast enough, but we won’t be using speed unless something goes wrong. We’ll be running with no lights along the shoreline, which the coast guard patrols. If there’s one out tonight, they won’t appreciate it. Their channel is on the boat’s radio, so we’ll know if there’s any activity.”

“Good,” Marco said, removing the Beretta clip, reinserting it with a slap of the palm of his hand. “Are they still headquartered in Tahoe City?”

“Yes. They have new rules thanks to the regional planning agency. Like a no-wake zone six hundred feet from shore. The white buoys are the ones to watch for. They show where the rocks and other obstacles are. It’s easier on this side of the lake. Mostly wilderness, and I can run it blind. You just have to know where the pilings from the old docks are, and the rocks. If we need to run, nobody will catch us in this baby.”

He didn’t say anything more. She eased the boat away from the Shaw house and headed down along the west side of the lake, riding a soft chop. It was all designated wilderness along most of the west side, and pitch black. As planned, they went lights-out, sliding along at a low purr.