“Sure…but why?”
“Because I’m asking you to, brother.”
A pause. “You can count on me,” Dave said solemnly.
“Good.”
“Hey, where are you, man?”
Max told him.
Silence. Then Dave said, “You know what? I could come out there and pick you up.”
“Come out? What are you talking about?”
“I could bring the bikes. I could drive ’em out there and you and I could ride back to LA. Like the old days, when you were just starting out.”
“That’s crazy.”
“No it’s not. I could leave now. We were filming out near Death Valley and I decided to drive over and see Seth.”
“Seth?”
“The guy with the bike shop in Blythe, remember? I took a couple of Harleys for the shoot and figured I was close enough to Blythe he and I could go for a ride. But I could just as easy drive over so’s you and I could ride back.”
“What about your rig?”
“Seth can drive it.”
“I don’t know.” Max was getting a headache. What Dave said didn’t make much sense to him. “Have you talked to Jerry?”
“Jerry?” Dave snorted. “Why would I talk to that pissant?”
Max rubbed his forehead. The throbbing above his left temple drove him crazy. The heat was getting to him too. What was he thinking, planning to ambush Gordon? What would he do—wave the gun in his face? Could he really get Gordon to fix him?
“That sounds good,” Max said. “I could use a good ride about now.”
“I can be out of here in a couple of hours.”
Max heard an engine—sounded like a truck. Far enough away, but going slow.
“Let me think about it,” Max said. “I’ll call you back, OK?”
“Max, if you—”
But Max didn’t hear him. He was watching the white truck coming his way.
Chapter Eighteen
THE TRUCK WAS a new Chevy. A Silverado 2500HD, the same kind of truck Dave Finley hauled his bikes with. There was something stealthy about the way the truck moved, even though the engine was big. It cruised to a stop just beyond the nearest neighbor to Luther’s, about an eighth of a mile away.
Max had seen it before.
His heart sped up. Something was wrong here…How could Gordon react that quickly? He rummaged through his memory bank, trying to place the truck. There were plenty of expensive new trucks and Suburbans at the Desert Oasis, but all of them had the center’s logo on the side. This one was plain, no frills, the kind of truck a company would buy for a work vehicle.
The passenger door opened and a boy hopped out. The kid wasn’t big—kind of weedy-looking—but he wasn’t a little kid. Closer to a teenager. He held a gun down by his side but at the ready. Maybe he’d learned how to do it from cop shows.
The driver’s side opened and a figure stepped out. From where Max was, the lower half of the person was blocked by the truck’s hood. The person was lean and straight-backed, with hair clipped close to the skull. Max thought it was a woman, but he wasn’t sure. The person was dressed like a man and moved economically. The two of them met in front of the truck.
It was a woman. But like none he’d ever seen. She moved like a man. He wondered if she’d had a sex-change operation.
The woman spoke to the kid. He nodded and trotted across the dirt road toward the west, ran up a desert hill and disappeared. The woman walked up the road. Casual. Glancing at her watch. A big watch—a man’s watch, like his Breitling. When she reached the tall bamboo ringing Sam P.’s yard, she crouched low and followed it to the entrance, gun at the ready.
Max remembered where he’d seen the truck. It had been parked outside the Rat Motel. He remembered the truck pulling out and following the limo.
Either Jerry or his brother Gordon—probably it was both of them—had sent the guys in the limo. So why had the woman and kid followed them? Did they hope the limo would lead them to him?
Did more than one set of people want him?
He was beginning to feel like a pawn.
Max took a deep breath. He had no doubt the woman and boy would come here to the corral, once they finished with the house. Maybe they’d find his kidnappers. They would surely see the shot-up Saturn, the glass, the evidence of a gun battle in the carport.
Where was the kid? He had gone west, which meant he could be circling around the corral. Kid could have seen him from that angle, might be closing in even now. Max had no doubt the kid knew how to use his firearm. Max had spent time shooting at a range; he had been taught to shoot and shoot relatively well. He had worked with marksmen. The kid had carried his weapon as if it had grown out of his arm. Casual, but alert.
Max could easily be seen hiding behind the tank. He should move. But there was no place to go.
He had the semiautomatic. He could shoot the boy if it came to that.
But could he?
He’d almost blown Sam P. to kingdom come. But this was a boy. He didn’t think he could shoot a boy.
But where to hide?
A sharp whistle rent the air.
The woman stood at the edge of the carport, among the broken glass, looking in his direction.
No, not his direction, to the right. Far to the right.
The kid yelled, “What?”
The woman stuck two fingers in her mouth and blew again.
Max sank into the ground, flat on his stomach. He hunched his shoulders like a turtle hiding in its shell. He hoped the color of his body and his clothing would look like a shadow on the earth. He heard the boy run, maybe thirty yards from him, to his right. Pelting footsteps, occasionally sliding on rock and sand, the kid yelling, “What is it?”
Max had the absurd desire to close his eyes.
Instead, he canted his head slightly, so he could see the house.
The woman and the boy stood outside the carport. The woman started around the Saturn, moving loose-limbed but alert, like a panther.
They were swallowed up by the shadows. If Max was going to escape, he’d better do it now.
Chapter Nineteen
WHENEVER JERRY GOLD was conflicted about something—“conflicted” being one of Gordon’s favorite expressions (Jerry’s half brother had upscale hippie psychobabble down to a science, along with the unlimited wardrobe of Hawaiian shirts, tai chi pants, and Birkenstocks)—he reverted to what he’d been before he became Max Conroy’s manager. Always, he went back to the storyboard.
Better to cover all the bases.
He locked Talia out of his office, grabbed a ream of 8 ½" x 11" copy paper and his favorite Sharpie, and set up on the desk overlooking the pool. Talia knocked halfheartedly a couple of times, then gave up. The woman had the attention span of a gnat. He wondered now why he had gotten involved with her at all. Yes, there was the secret pleasure of banging Talia L’Apel, a big star in her own right, and he cherished the idea of cuckolding Max Conroy, heartthrob of girls and women from fourteen to sixty. She was terrific in bed too. You’d be surprised how many hot-bodied actresses weren’t. It sometimes seemed the more alluring and sexy they appeared, the more frigid they were in the boudoir. Not so with Talia, who brought the same exuberance to the sack as she did to the ski slopes.
Gordon had called an hour ago, telling him about the kidnappers in some hick town called Paradox and their demand for a million dollars by sunset. He was relieved that the kidnappers had called again, after Talia had turned them down. But on the minus side, there was no way Gordon could possibly come up with the money that quickly. And the idea of letting go of a million dollars…