“A fair assumption,” Walter agreed. “How did you get the guy to do all this?”
“Shit, Walter, we even got the idiot to make us cosigners on his bank accounts, so we can draw out his money and give it back to you once he’s dead. Actors are the easiest marks in the world! Jesus, they’re so fucking narcissistic. Stroke ’em a little and they lay down like a two-buck whore. He probably never even read a single one of the documents. Besides, for him it was just a gig, a role.”
“Keep it,” Walter said.
“Keep what?”
“The money in bank account, as a tip for a job well done.” He actually shook both men’s hands. “Good work, boys. Now I’m going to leave. Give me a ten-minute head start and then enjoy the rest of your lives!”
Neither Mel nor Paul could figure out how they’d run out of gas this far short of Phoenix. They had filled up just before meeting with Walter outside of Palm Springs, but it was a moot point now. Help was here in the shape of a Jeep pulling up behind their car. The tall, elegantly thin man with pocked skin shot Paul in the heart as he stepped out of the car. He put a second shot in the dying man’s head as insurance. Mel ran. Joey didn’t waste time chasing him. He was heading straight for the two holes he had already dug for them in the desert. First thing he did was put the attaché case into the Jeep.
Now Harry Garson finally understood why he fit. He’d been born here and was of the Pima people, but he wouldn’t be of them for very much longer if he didn’t get a handle on what was going on. It occurred to him that Marissa LaTerre had probably not taken off of her own free will and that she had more than likely come to the end of the road prematurely and violently. Harry spent the rest of the morning and afternoon visiting many of the offices he had visited in the last few weeks, trying to collect copies of the documents he’d signed and blindly filed without taking a second look. And once he had gathered as much of the paperwork as he could, he made two last stops.
While he drove back to the bungalow, a bungalow he was shocked to discover he owned free and clear, in a pickup truck he also owned free and clear, Harry ignored the thick envelope on the seat next to him and kept staring at the photograph of his biological father. Even after more than seventy-five years of life, it was an amazing feeling to fit in and to belong, to know your place in the world. Maybe all those years made it that much sweeter. Rebecca and the ancient woman, Issac Hart’s youngest sister and Harry’s aunt, explained that his father had fallen deeply in love with a teacher at the Indian school and had gotten her pregnant. He had wanted to marry her, but she refused. She’d had the baby, but disappeared a few weeks later. He had never stopped trying to find her and the child he had named Ben.
“He worked hard to purchase many acres of land off tribal territory, so he could prove his worth to the teacher when she returned or he found her,” Rebecca explained. “He never found her and she never returned, but in your father’s will he left the land to you and your children. Until you returned, it was to be kept by the family. We were not allowed to sell it or use it. I have been told this story since I was a child. The fact that your father bought white land when he did has been a source of great pride for us, but I always thought it was only a story.” It was no story and the proof was there on the seat next to Harry.
It was dusk when he got back up to the little abobe house in the foothills, a place he had come to love. He also loved how the light of the vanishing sun lit up the sky with streaks of orange and purple, gold and blue. And although his eye-sight wasn’t great in the falling darkness without his glasses, he caught sight of the Jeep parked across the road from his house. If he hadn’t been looking for a strange vehicle, he probably wouldn’t have spotted it, but after what he’d learned today, he expected it to be there. He rolled to the side of the road, reached into the envelope, and pulled out one particular document. He took his deep breaths, flicked up his famous on switch, put the truck back in gear, and pulled onto the dirt driveway. When he got out of the Ford, Harry held the document out in front of him like a shield. He had it all planned, the words he was going to say to save himself. Yet, now out of the truck, he decided not to speak. Harry Garson was an old man, too old to be fully transformed into Ben Hart at this late date. Belonging, being Ben Hart, son of Isaac Hart, even for only a few hours, had answered all the important questions that he’d kept locked up inside all these years. What he really hoped for was that the end wouldn’t hurt too much when it came.
The elegantly thin man with the pockmarked skin and cold fish eyes stood in the trashed living room and dialed the untraceable number Walter had given him. He had been thorough, making sure it looked like his target had walked in on a robbery, surprised the thief, and was shot to death in the process. Joey had even used a .45 on the old man, not the kind of weapon a professional killer would generally use.
“You’re fucked,” Joey said when Walter finally picked up.
“How’s that?”
Joey explained about the document the old Indian held when he got out of the truck.
“He was holding a piece of paper in his hand, so what?”
“It’s a last will and testament,” the assassin said, “a brand-new one, dated today.”
“Shit!”
“Shit is right. He left the land to the tribe and some woman named Rebecca to do with as they please. I don’t know how he managed it, but the will was witnessed by the mayor of Tucson and a tribal elder. He’s got a Polaroid of the signing stapled to the will. You’re fucked.”
“You said that already.”
“My money?”
“You did your job. It’ll be in your account in the morning.”
There was a click on the other end of the line.
As Joey left, he took one last look at his victim to make sure everything was just so. And as he did, he thought he recognized the old Indian from a TV show he had watched as a kid.
“Bearstein!” he whispered to himself. “Sorry, chief.”
Part IV
NORTH
Getting lucky
by Lawrence Block
Upper Peninsula, Michigan
He was wearing a Western-style shirt, scarlet and black with a lot of gold piping, and one of those bolo string ties, and he should have topped things off with a broad-brimmed Stetson, but that would have hidden his hair. And it was the hair that had drawn her in the first place. It was a rich chestnut with red highlights, and so perfect she’d thought it was a wig. Up close, though, you could see that it was homegrown and not store bought, and it looked the way it did because he’d had one of those $400 haircuts that cost John Edwards the 2008 Iowa primary. This barber had worked hard to produce a haircut that appeared natural and effortless, so much so that it wound up looking like a wig.
He was waiting his turn at the craps table, betting against the shooter and winning steadily as the dice stayed cold, with one shooter after another rolling craps a few times, then finally getting a point and promptly sevening out.