“You’re just sore because I was making time with Giovanni.”
“He tried to buy you,” said Runyan in perfect seriousness.
“Tried to...” Then she realized he was putting her on and laughed. She didn’t know when she had felt so happy. She wanted it to go on forever. “If Moyers did follow us, where do you suppose he is right now?”
“Probably the Ahwanee Lodge — one of the big old national park hotels built by the CCC back in the ’thirties. Really beautiful — hand-laid stone fireplaces and formal dining rooms and carved hardwood...”
“Can we see?” she exclaimed.
“Better not, he might catch us poking around. We need him playing our game, not the other way around.”
“Just what is our game?”
“Rock climbing,” he said.
She looked over at him in the starlit darkness. “Sometimes I wish I knew what was really going on in that head of yours.”
The room was spacious but simple, hardwood floors and knotty pine walls and a lot of blankets on the double bed. On the floor beside it the homing transceiver from the car pinged intermittently to itself. Moyers, on the phone, waited through the clicks and windy silences of his credit-card call until Stark, the Las Vegas detective, answered the phone.
“I’ve got a little more for you on her,” Stark said.
“I hoped you might.”
“She was getting a little salty, they were afraid they couldn’t trust her any more, so they tossed a scare into her,” said Stark’s heavy voice. He stressed all his syllables equally, like the computer-generated voice of Information. “The usual, we’re gonna toss acid in your face — like that. She bought it and lit a shuck out of town, which was all they wanted anyway.”
“Alone?”
“You kidding?” Stark gave a grating chuckle. “She already had a visiting fireman lined up, panting to play house with her.”
“Tell me about him,” said Moyers.
As he listened, he unconsciously nodded to himself several times. Then he started grinning. Just what he’d thought but hadn’t dared to hope. It was all going to work out. He had Runyan just where he wanted him.
On the canvas floor was a French four-in-one handtorch which cast a pale white fluorescent glow over the interior of the tent. When Runyan came crouching through the zippered flap, Louise was already inside, kneeling half-undressed on their double sleeping bag. God, he wanted her! Looking at her smooth bare shoulders, the delicate ivory slope of her brassiered breasts, he knew he could never get enough of her.
“Can you believe I’ve never slept in one of these?”
“What makes you think you’re going to sleep tonight?” he leered.
Then he remembered what Taps Turner had said on the phone: It was set for two nights from now in L.A. The plane would be at the airfield from 10:30 on. He turned quickly away, on the pretext of zipping up the tent flap.
He’d told Taps he’d be there. Alone. Goddammit, why couldn’t it be simple? Why had he had to overhear that damned phone call? Why had Louise had to make it? Why...
Louise’s hot, naked body landed on his back. Runyan tumbled sideways onto the sleeping bag, breaking her grip, his gloom of a moment before dispelled.
“You’ve led me on long enough,” she exclaimed in baritone tones. “Now I’m taking what you deny me!”
“Get away from me!” he squeaked in a girlish falsetto. “I’m not that kind of girl!”
“Then why are you taking off your pants?” she demanded suspiciously.
“I thought I’d slip into something more comfortable.”
Louise switched off the torch. “Hi,” she said in the dark, “my name is Comfortable.”
A few minutes later, Runyan said, rather breathlessly, “It certainly is.”
Chapter 22
Monday Morning Slab, near the base of the north face of Glacier Point, was an upended triangular plate of granite 400 feet high. Moyers sat on a fallen tree a quarter of a mile away, using his binoculars to bring up Runyan and Louise. The early morning sun cast their shadows long and thin across the carpeted pine needles at the foot of the massive slab.
Runyan, with that remarkable combination of daring and caution which marks the skilled climber, scrambled up a pitch like a monkey going up a tree. No wonder the man had ended up a cat burglar; what else could he have done?
Moyers switched to Louise, watched her with conditioned, almost indifferent lust — and a great feeling of power. He knew enough to make her get out of it any time he wanted, leaving Runyan out there naked and alone. Except for Moyers.
Back to Runyan. He had driven a piton into a crack in the rock and clipped a carabiner to it; through this was run the safety rope which trailed down the rock to Louise. She was still on the ground a dozen yards below, looking up, shading her eyes with her hands, the safety rope running down from Runyan, under her backside, and up to be tied around her waist.
Runyan gave it a healthy jerk. Since it was wrapped around her butt, she was slammed painfully against her rock.
Moyers chuckled as he watched her yell angrily up at him. He lowered the glasses. Giving him hell. He’d like to give her something, all right, when all of this was over. But right now, TCB, as the hookers said — Take Care of Business.
He unclipped his canteen awkwardly from his belt, drank half the contents straight down, lowered it, and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. Tough work, this rock climbing. When he raised the binoculars again, Runyan was far up the face on a ledge, with the safety line tied off around a rock.
Moyers found Louise below, carefully climbing upward, searching out toe- and finger-holds, her face red and sweating and contorted with effort. Do the bitch good, he thought with surprising bitterness. He hadn’t forgotten how easily she’d given him the slip at the airport.
Of course she was a pro. Running casino skim to L.A, for laundering, being nice to important clients from time to time for the pit boss; then, when things went sour, cold-bloodedly picking out a protector to get her out of Vegas. A protector, as last night’s phone conversation with Stark had confirmed, whom Moyers had seen sneaking out of the hotel after the shooting attempt on Runyan. A lethal lady to fall for.
In his binoculars, Louise was just below the ledge. Her foot slipped, her knee bashed the rock face painfully. He could see her yelping her pain, but Runyan’s grip on the safety rope kept her from sliding. She got a hand on the ledge, he caught her wrist and helped her up.
Moyers lowered the glasses and turned away. They were safely up on the rock face for the next couple of hours; plenty of time to snoop their car and tent and duffel bag and make sure he left no trace of his visit. He was really getting into this. It was all downhill for him from here.
An hour later, Louise was standing under a steep overhang with the safety line hanging down from it to a loose coil at her feet. Her neck was stiff and her eyes burned from hours of looking up into the sun. Her body prickled with the salt crust of drying sweat; her inner thighs stung from chafing. All her muscles ached. She just knew her face was blotchy and her hair a mess from the pitiless sun. This was fun?
Runyan rappelled down the rope from above to land lightly beside her. He grinned. “How you making it?”
“Fine,” she snapped irritably.
He unsnapped from the safety line, went over to rummage in their black nylon haul sack. “I know this is just easy practice stuff, but we have to get ready for—”
“I’ll keep it up as long as you, damn you!” she exclaimed.