In the upper bunk, Mitch Johnson closed his eyes and let Andrew Carlisle’s almost hypnotic voice flow over him. Mitch was right there again, standing on the bank of Brawley Wash, calling down to the wetbacks marching ahead of him.
“Stop,” he shouted at them, and they did.
“Down!” he ordered. “Get down on your hands and knees.” And they did that, too, all three of them groveling in the burning sand before him, all of them scraping their faces in the dirt. This must be what it feels like to be a king, Mitch thought. Or maybe even a god.
“Please,” the older one said, speaking to Mitch in English rather than in Spanish. “Please, let my grandsons be. I’ll do whatever you want. Just let my daughter’s boys go free. Let them go.”
“What would you do, old man?” Mitch asked him.
“Anything. Whatever you say.”
“Put the barrel in your mouth.”
For Mitch, that was such a sexually charged image that it almost broke the spell, but Andy’s voice, washing over the whole scene, kept the images in play. Reaching up tentatively, the old man took the barrel of the gun and lovingly, almost reverentially, put it into his own mouth. And with the grandsons cowering there on the ground, and with the old man’s eyes full on his face, Mitch Johnson pulled the trigger.
“And this time,” Andrew Carlisle finished, “you can be sure the bastard is dead. What do you think?”
Mitch opened his eyes, unsure of what had happened but with the tracks of a wet dream still hot on his belly and between his legs.
“It beats jacking off, doesn’t it?” Andrew Carlisle asked.
Yes, it does, Mitch meant to say, but, for some strange reason, he was already asleep.
Diana Ladd Walker was at work in her study. On that Friday morning she was supposed to be writing, working on the outline for her next book, Den of Iniquity. What she was doing instead was fielding phone calls. The month before her previous book, Shadow of Death, had won a Pulitzer. Even though the book had been out for nine months, the whirl of publicity surrounding the prize had pushed the book into numerous reprints. Not only that, it was back on the New York Times Best Sellers list as well, sitting at number eight, for the third week in a row.
Which is why, at a time when Diana should have been writing, she had been sucked instead back into book-promotion mode. She had left her desk and was on her way to shower when the phone rang again.
“It’s me,” Megan Wright announced. Megan was a publicist working for Diana’s New York publisher, Sterling, Moffit, and Dodd. She was young—not more than twenty-five—but she was businesslike on the phone and brimmed with a kind of boundless energy and enthusiasm that suited her for the job.
“I’m calling with your weekend’s marching orders,” Megan continued. “I just wanted to double-check the schedule.”
Obligingly, Diana hauled out her calendar and opened it to the proper page.
“First there’s the University of Arizona Faculty Wives Tea this afternoon at two o’clock.”
“I know,” Diana observed dryly. “As a matter of fact, I was on my way into the bathroom to shower and dress when the phone rang.”
“I’ll hurry,” Megan said. “And then there are the two appointments for tomorrow. I’m sorry about filling up your Saturday, but I didn’t have any choice. Tomorrow’s the only time I could schedule the Monty Lazarus interview. Don’t forget, he’s the West Coast stringer for several different magazines, so it’s an important interview. My guess is he’ll be pitching the story to all of them.”
“Where’s that interview?” Diana asked. “I wrote down his name but not where I’m supposed to meet him.”
“In the lobby of the La Paloma Hotel at noon. I don’t have either an address or a map. Can you find it, or will you need a driver?”
Tucson may have been totally foreign territory to Megan, but Diana had lived in the Tucson area for more than thirty years. “Noon, La Paloma,” Diana repeated as she jotted the words into the correct slot on the calendar under the name, “Monty Lazarus.”
“And don’t worry about a driver,” Diana continued. “Believe me, I can find La Paloma on my own.”
“Mr. Lazarus likes to take his own pictures, so you’ll need to go prepared for a photo shoot. I warned him that he’ll have to finish up no later than four, though, so you’ll have time enough to get back home, change, and be at the El Dorado Country Club for the Friends of the Library banquet at six. Mrs. Durgan, your hostess for that event, called just a few minutes ago to make sure your husband will be attending. She wanted to know if she should reserve a place at the head table. Brandon is going, isn’t he?”
“He’ll be there,” Diana said grimly. “If he isn’t, I’ll know the reason why.”
“Good,” Megan said, sounding relieved. “I told her I was pretty sure he was planning to attend.”
When the phone call finally ended, Diana headed for the shower once more. On her way through the bedroom, she found Brandon sound asleep on the bed. She tiptoed by without waking him. No doubt he needed it. He barely slept at night these days, passing the nighttime hours prowling the house or pacing out on the patio. The midday naps he took between woodcutting shifts were pretty much the only decent rest he seemed to get.
Closing the door between the bathroom and bedroom, she undressed and then stood in front of the mirror, observing her reflection. She wasn’t that bad looking for being a couple of years over the half-century mark. The face and body reflected back at her bore an amazing resemblance to what her mother, Iona Dade Cooper, had looked like just before she got so sick.
In the past few years Diana had put on some weight, especially around the hips. Her softly curling auburn hair had two distinct streaks of white flowing away from either temple. But her skin was still good, and with the help of a little makeup she’d look all right, not only for today’s afternoon tea, but also for the photo shoot and banquet tomorrow.
Stepping into the shower, though, she was still chewing on what was going on between Brandon and her. It was too bad that if she was going to win some big prize that it had to be for Shadow of Death, a book Brandon had never wanted her to write in the first place. Not only that, it was unfortunate that what should have been her finest hour, the pinnacle of a writing career that spanned more than twenty years, should come at a time when Brandon, after being tossed out of office, was at his very lowest ebb.
The last month and a half, in fact, had been pure hell. She and Brandon had been at one another’s throats ever since the engraved invitation had arrived, summoning them both to the awards festivities in New York.
Brandon had backed away from the gold-embossed envelope with both their names on it as though that rectangular piece of paper were a coiled rattlesnake.
“No way!” he had declared. “No way in hell! I’m not going to New York for that, not in a million years!”
“Why not? It’ll be fun.”
“For you, maybe. People are interested in you; they want to meet you. And while you’re busy talking, someone will turn to me and say, ‘What is it you do, Mr. Walker? Are you a writer, too?’ And when I tell them I used to be sheriff but I don’t do anything anymore, their eyes will glaze over and pretty soon they’ll wander away. It’s a ball doing that. I love it.”
Diana had winced at the sarcasm in his voice, but she also knew the perils of playing second banana. She had felt the same way about attending political gatherings—the rubber-chicken luncheons and living room campaign coffee hours—back when Brandon had been a candidate for public office. But she had gone. She had kept her mouth shut, she had put on her good clothes and company manners, and she had gone. She had served as the proper political wife and had behaved the way political wives the world over are expected to behave.