Lizardskin (50 page)

“Yeah, and then it reverts to Merced, technically?”

“True, and then you’d have the right to go over there, ask the driver to prove that he has the legal right to remove his property using a vehicle that is technically under an act of impoundment according to section 337, paragraph 9 of the Civil Bankruptcy Act, wherein—”

Beau held up a hand. “Very nice, Freg, but what state law have they broken? You ran them. They’re paid up, they have all the plates. What’s the infraction?”

Calder was still smiling. Freg smiled, too.

“Well, they’ve got two broken headlights. That’s a clear violation of the safety laws, and that would violate the terms of the lease, since it can’t be legally leased unless it’s insured, and it can’t be insured without proper safety equipment.”

Beau looked over at the big steel truck. “You know, maybe it’s my arthritis, but I’m buggered if I can see anything busted on that truck.” He opened his eyes very wide and looked innocently at the two L.A. cops.

Freg and Calder both laughed. Freg got out of the car and walked around to the front. He put on a pair of dark glasses and walked away toward the open freightyard. On the way across Ditman he picked up a chunk of rock.

“Vandals,” said Calder, shaking his head sadly.

“Yeah,” said Beau. “What’s the world comin’ to, huh?”

They both watched Luis Freg duck around a passing Chevy and scoot through the gate.

“Freg is not your average cop, Calder.”

“He’s a good kid. I first saw him, I figured him like you did. You know, suitrack with a gun. And this lawyer stuff, that always puts me off. But he’s sharp, knows how to work the system. Our beefs hold up, and the juries
love
him. Listen, why’nt you park that boat there, hop inside with me. Soon as Luis gets done, we’ll just roll in there, real casual and laid back, just cruising the yard, you know, me and a visiting trooper. We stop—
say
, isn’t that a pair of broken lights on that Freightliner. Well, golly, we oughta stop and tell the guy!”

Beau rolled away to lock up the Lincoln Town Car. Then he came back and got inside with Calder.

Across the street, Luis Freg was strolling down the line of parked trucks, nonchalance in every stylish line.

“So Eustace says you guys humped the sixty in the war.”

Calder put his head down and smiled to himself. “Yeah. You in?”

Beau told him about his knees.

“Well, you didn’t miss shit.”

“Meagher talked about a hill once, you called it the Lizard.”

“Co Roc? He mentioned it, huh?”

“Yeah. Well, I thought it was a kind of a coincidence, the lizard thing.”

“Yeah? How come?”

“Well, I live in a place called Lizardskin, up in the hills there.”

Calder was looking at him blankly. “Yeah? And?”

“And—it just seemed, you know, like a coincidence. Both of us having a place named that. At the time, anyway.”

Calder was grinning at him.

Beau started to laugh softly, at the absurdity of … everything.

“Well, there you go,” said Beau.

“Yep,” said Calder, watching Freg as he reached the front end of the big Freightliner. “There you go.”

Freg moved, and there was a glitter, a tumbling of broken light. Calder started the green LTD.

“Okay—lock and load, boys.”

The wind howled around the phone booth, rattling the glass and whipping at Meagher’s pant legs. His ankles burned with flying sand and dirt. God-
damn
the cellular phone system.

The line was ringing.

“Hello?”

“Sig?”

“Meagher!” Tarr’s voice boomed in the earpiece. Meagher pulled the headset away from his ear and winced.

“Yeah, keep it down.”

“What’s that noise?”

“It’s the goddamned wind.”

“No shit. Power’s out in Hardin and Billings. Good thing it isn’t dark yet.”

“Yeah. Look, I called in and the dispatcher said you were real upset, wanted to talk to me or McAllister.”

“You’re damn right I do. Listen, what the fuck are you guys up to? This is some weird shit you got me into.”

“What is it?”

“Oh no, you don’t! I thought about this, and the first thing is, I did this work for you, and I want something for it.”

“You want an exclusive. I can’t do that. You know that.”

“I know you can’t gimme an exclusive. But you can gimme a jump on it. If this is hairy enough, we’ll have the networks in, it’ll be
huge
, Eustace. And I want the first quarter-mile.”

“What have you got?”

“Promise me?”

“I promise. I just don’t know what I’m into. What did you get? Anything on Merced and the others?”

“Oh, yes. I’d say so. Have you got a minute?”

“No, I gotta go for a bikini wax and get my toes oiled. Why the hell you think I’m calling you from a phone booth on the goddamn interstate?”

“Okay. I peeled most of this off the CompuServe system. They can boil the whole country down for you, pump out all the corporate histories. The rest I got from the Corporate Registry Service in Wilmington.”

“I’m listening.”

“First off, Merced Industries filed for bankruptcy yesterday, outta the headquarters in Visalia. They own that address at 220 Ditman, and a couple of other properties. Now, Merced also leases trucks and cars, and one of their customers is this Kellerman Cold Haulers, the same guys who have this sublease from Farwest Beef and Dairy.”

“Okay. So what?”

“Well, first off, it looks like they didn’t
have
to. It looks like they were bled white and dumped by whoever operates it.
And
Kellerman Cold Haulers is a subsidiary of Merced Industries, through a shell corporation in Delaware.”

“Why do that? Taxes?”

“Maybe. That’s what you’re gonna tell
me
when this is all out in the open.”

“Okay. What else?”

“Farwest Beef and Dairy looks legit. They’re incorporated in California, at the Ditman address, got their headquarters in Kyoto, and they’re also in Montana, through a subsidiary called Buenavista Ranch. That’d be Ingomar’s old spread, the one these guys bought out last year. To raise beef?”

“Yeah.”

“So what am I into?”

“Finish up first! Then I’ll tell you.”

“Well, all this stuff goes round and round, through a couple of shell corporations in Delaware.”

“Why Delaware?”

“Delaware’s like Liberia. You can get anything registered there. It’s a trigger name. Anyway, it goes round and round, a couple of numbered corporations, until you get to a company called Oceanic Group.”

“Oceanic? Who are they?”

“I can’t tell you. The shareholders are based in Kyoto, and the Japanese don’t file with CompuServe. You have to go to Japan, and even then you may not get it. They import and export stuff, and they have a subleased fleet to do the hauling. One of the subsidiary corporations is Merced, the same guys who just filed bankruptcy. Oceanic has a contract to ship beef for Farwest. They got Merced to lease the trucks to Kellerman Cold Haulers.”

Meagher’s forehead ached. “Man, sounds like a bag of snakes to me.”

“Every snake has two ends, Eustace. One end bites, the other end doesn’t.”

“Hey, words of wisdom, Sig. Hold on, I’ll get my needlepoint and do a wall hanging.”

Tarr laughed. “I mean, it works out. Oceanic owns Merced, right? And Merced files for bankruptcy. So when one of your subsidiaries files for bankruptcy, the parent corporation has to file a petition for claims, just to get the tax write-off.”

“Yeah. So what?”

“So when Oceanic did that, they had to do it through their lawyers. Through
a
lawyer, anyway.”

“And?”

“And the lawyer has to give the U.S. reporting address of the firm. The reporting address is usually the place where the American papers of incorporation are. Usually, it’s the lawyer’s office.”

“Where was this lawyer?”

“Address is on West 84th Street, in Denver.”

“What’s his name?”

“Charles Kellerman. The same guy who’s on the shareholder’s list of Kellerman Cold Haulers. But that’s just white noise, I think. The point is, you recognize that address?”

“Should I?”

“It’s the Denver branch of a local law firm.”

Meagher’s headache went away in a flood of cool light. “And—”

“And that local law firm is Mallon, Brewer, Hogeland and Bright.”

“Jesus!”

“To cut to the chase, it turns out that Dwight Hogeland’s firm also leased some vehicles from Merced, including family cars and a jet plane.”

“What car?”

“Well, there’s a 1975 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham, a Porsche 911, a Cherokee, some others.”

“Does it say who drives them?”

“No. Anyone connected with the leasee, I’d guess, depending on insurance restrictions. No way to tell. But that’s not the really neat part. Guess what the plane is? The one they lease?”

“A Learjet?”

“Buy the man a cigar!”

“Jesus Christ!”

“My sentiments exactly, Eustace. And I’ll tell you something
else
. I’m not the first guy been asking these questions. CompuServe has a query registry, part of their service to newspapers. You can punch it up, find out if anybody else is making the same kind of inquiry. See who’s on to the same story? So, routine, I punch that up and I find out they did a one-time printout for a Visa customer, the whole package, and that Visa customer’s name was Joseph Bell of South Wyatt Drive, Hardin, Montana.”

“Look. I gotta tell you something else.”

“Else? You haven’t told me dick so far!”

“Who’ve you talked to about this?”

“Nobody. I came home, tried to reach you. Why?”

“Okay. I want you to stay put, and don’t answer the door. Don’t go out for beer, keep the lights off. You got a gun?”

“Yeah.”

“Go get it, load it, and keep it in your hand. Don’t put it down to pee, understand?”

“Eustace, you trying to make me nervous?”

“Yes! I sent a Big Horn County guy out to Joe Bell’s place today. He found Joe Bell. At least, he’s pretty sure it’s Joe Bell.”

There was a long silence while Meagher listened to Sig Tarr’s breathing and the wind rattled the phone-booth glass.

“Bell’s dead?”

“Unbelievably dead, Sig.”

Calder angled the green LTD in front of the Freightliner, partially blocking the left fender. Luis Freg was waiting at the side of the trailer. They could hear carts rolling into the trailer, and footsteps. A portable radio sitting on the loading dock, beside the sealed tarp, was playing a Bob Dylan song.

It was “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.”

Beau remembered the movie where he’d heard that song. It was a Peckinpah movie called
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid
.

Beau figured it was a lucky thing he wasn’t superstitious. He tugged out his big blue Smith. Calder saw that and pulled out a matte-finish steel Colt Python. Beau figured Luis Freg for a fancy nine-mill. He was kind of surprised when Freg tugged out an army .45.

Hey. A traditionalist.

Freg went around to the far side of the truck. A driver sitting on his Kenworth saw Freg walk around and said “shit” and slid off the hood. Freg smiled at him.

Beau nodded to Calder. Calder slapped the steel hull of the trailer. It boomed like a drum. The footsteps stopped, and a small Japanese man peered out of the folds of the tarp.

“Yes. What you want?”

Calder showed his badge, keeping the gun at his side.

“Police? What’s the matta?”

“You have a broken headlight out here, sir. Can you come down, take a look at—”

They heard a voice from inside the trailer: “Who is it, Jenji?”

The man turned and looked inside the tarp. “It the police. They—”

Beau glanced up at the steel wall of the trailer, and maybe it was luck, but he happened to be looking at a panel where a line of rivets was showing a brown track of rust, and then there was a big star-shaped hole about two inches above the third rivet and a clap of thunder so loud, his ears were hurting, because something had slapped the side of his head
very
hard, and he could hardly hear for the ringing. A round slammed into the stake truck behind him—Calder was firing his Python, Beau saw him, his thin body crouched, the Python up and out, the cylinder working, the hammer going back, a sliver of blue fire from the muzzle. Beau fell back against the stake truck, felt it hitting him in the shoulder blade, and now he had the Smith up—the red bar was rock-steady, and then the gun bucked hard and another booming explosion hammered at his cheeks and ears and the red bar blurred into a haze of smoke and blue fire—he wondered what that was—when he saw his own wrist, the sleeve of his blue suit, and the Smith bucked again in his hand—he felt that in his wrist, it hurt and he knew he was firing. He straightened up, still firing, the concussions slamming around in between the trucks—dust jumping from the seams and rivets—the noise almost continuous now—seeing the rounds punch in—seeing daylight on the far side—more holes appearing like a conjurer’s trick—one-two-three-four in a ragged row—more rounds were coming out of the steel wall—he could hear them humming by his body, hear the wooden stakes of the truck behind him cracking, hear a tire squealing with escaping air—the trailer rang and rocked and clanged and shuddered and over that the solid pounded-earth
booming explosions of weapons and someone was shouting a word and the word sounded like
stop stop
. Beau was suddenly aware that his Smith—there was something wrong with it—a dry metallic clicking, and then he knew it was empty, and he heard one more solid gunshot like a punctuation point, and he looked to his left where Calder was crouching, his mouth open, his right arm out and rigid, the steel Python vibrating from the muscular tension in the arm, and there was sunlight—
sunlight
—in yellow discs on Calder’s face and the material of his beige suit, and something caught Beau’s eye, a glitter of hard light, and he looked back up at the trailer and straight into a shaft of sunlight shining through the body of the trailer, and then a wave of absolute silence crashed in on both of them and they could hear each other breathing and Beau could feel his heartbeat in several different places in his body—a thumping under his left jaw and a hissing sound in his right ear and inside his chest a deep continuous rolling tremor and under that the sound of something wet dripping onto the crumbling asphalt.