The heat was too heavy and soon everyone had gone back inside except the young boy, who continued to fish the pond. He hadn’t had a strike in over an hour but he still seemed keenly interested in what he was doing. The boy changed his lure for the fifth time. Lupercio saw that he could either kill them all and then search for his diamonds, or he could come back another time when they were gone. The trouble was that Suzanne Jones would likely fence his jewels soon, and this opportunity would be lost forever.
Then the young boy reeled up his lure to the rod tip, turned and started across the meadow toward Lupercio.
Lupercio watched the boy approach and the distance between them shorten, and he rapidly weighed cause and effect and made up his mind what he would do.
The boy was slender and dark-skinned and his eyes were gray. “How do you catch the fish?”
“With patience.”
“I mean bait or a lure?”
“Worms.”
Lupercio picked up his Styrofoam cup of worms and handed it to the boy, who lifted the lid and pried through the earth with a finger.
“These look good,” said the boy.
“They are good.”
“You don’t have a bobber. How do you see the strike?”
“By feel. The small fish are brave and confident. You can feel them take the worm if it’s hooked right.”
“Teach me how to catch them,” said the boy.
“They’ve stopped biting in the heat,” said Lupercio. He lifted his hat and wiped his forehead as if to prove this, then set the hat back in place slightly higher up, enjoying the new strip of cool. “And I have to go home now to my family.”
“Maybe later today when it’s not so hot?”
“Maybe.”
“No, never mind. We’re going to the movies today. Sunday afternoons. I just remembered.”
Lupercio smiled inside. “Then some other time. Keep the worms. Put them in the refrigerator and they’ll stay alive for days.”
The boy looked at him. “I’ll pay you for them.”
“Okay.”
The boy pulled a wallet from his back pocket. It was smooth leather, and new, and Lupercio read the name embossed across the back: Jordan.
Jordan tucked the worm cup under one elbow, took out a dollar and handed it to Lupercio.
“Thank you,” said Lupercio. “When you feel the hook move, set it. Even at the slightest movement, set it. If you’re not sure, set it. You’ll be surprised.”
Jordan nodded, then turned and walked back across the meadow.
Lupercio watched him go, understanding that he had just determined his own fate. He had revealed himself for the diamonds. He’d always believed that he would die in the pursuit of something beautiful but never imagined his death would begin with a boy trying to catch a fish.
When the family drove away at four in a red Yukon, Lupercio rose from the shade of the greasewood trees alongside the stream.
He had a good feeling about the barn and decided to search it first. Two hours was plenty for the barn, the house and the garage, so long as you had a feel for where to hide things. Lupercio had that feel from years of hiding his own earnings-the cash and dope and jewelry and stolen everything that he’d spent a lifetime amassing and protecting.
He picked open the padlock, slid the heavy rolling door aside just a little and slipped in. He found the lights. He saw the pickup truck and had an even stronger feeling that this was where she’d put the gems.
He had just put his hand on the green latex painter’s gloves in his pants pocket when the door thundered open to a bright sky and two men appeared in the doorway silhouetted by the orange sun.
They walked toward him. They were young and even bigger than the Hawaiian, with long black hair and faces that looked chipped from stone. Indians from the reservation, thought Lupercio.
Their hands were empty and then they weren’t. Shiny blades appeared. They moved apart, putting some space between them as they advanced. The sun was behind them and Lupercio still could not see them clearly.
“Suzanne hired me to do landscape maintenance,” he said.
“So you sneak into the barn?” said the big one.
They came out of the sunlight and Lupercio truly saw them for the first time.
“Put up your hands,” said the big one. Lupercio guessed him at six feet four, two-ninety, maybe three hundred pounds. The other was bigger. They were both very young and Lupercio felt relief.
“She told me to use these tools,” said Lupercio, nodding to the far wall, on which dozens of yard tools hung on hooks in pegboard. He raised his hands and looked down at his boots, humbly.
“You know her number?” Big asked Bigger. “We could call her.”
“I don’t know her number.”
“Then let’s just chain him up and wait,” said Bigger. “If Suzie hired him, fine. If she didn’t, we’ll tie him to the truck and drag him through Indian country. You ever had your ass dragged through prickly pear?”
“No,” said Lupercio.
“It’s the worst thing there is.”
“I’m a gardener,” said Lupercio. “Why do you need knives for a gardener? I ask you to be reasonable. I would like to do my job because I need the money. I have identification in my pocket. You can hold it until Suzanne comes back. And I can work.”
Bigger stepped closer to Lupercio, and Big went behind him. With one huge hand Bigger flipped his knife closed and slipped it back into the scabbard on his belt. Out came his wallet on a chain, then the wallet went back into his pocket but without the chain. Bigger stepped toward Lupercio to bind him.
“My identification,” said Lupercio. He stared into Bigger’s eyes now and lowered his right hand toward his pocket deliberately but not quickly.
“Leave it where it is,” said Bigger.
In a flash of steel in sunlight Lupercio popped the machete out of its breakaway scabbard and cut off Bigger’s right hand at the wrist. Then he pivoted left and swung the weapon in both hands across Big’s belly, high and deep enough to feel the tip scrape vertebrae as it passed through. Following the blade Lupercio completed the circle and augured down on his short strong legs then jumped and brought the machete straight down through the top of Bigger’s head with the sound of an ax splitting a log. Bigger collapsed, but Lupercio held tight to the long handle and braced his foot on the man’s face to pull the weapon free; then he spun again and brought the blade down with all of his considerable strength onto the fallen brother’s neck. The steel cleanly split the big column before bouncing sharply off the concrete floor in a rooster tail of blood.
For a moment there was no sound but his breathing and the weakening splashes of blood on cement; then Lupercio searched the barn and the house and the garage and found no diamonds.
From the house he took jewelry so that this whole mess would look like a burglary gone wrong, but he knew that Suzanne Jones would instantly see it for what it was. He took a battered leather address book from a desk in a room full of books.
Lupercio was an optimist, though as he made his covert way back to his car he admitted his problems: the police would soon be crawling all over this place, Suzanne Jones would clear out and try to sell the diamonds very quickly, the Bull would be angry.
All that, and the boy could identify him.
But throughout his eventful life Lupercio had found that chaos is opportunity. He made his plan as he drove the dirt road toward town.
10
“We’ll call her Allison Murrieta because we don’t know who the hell she really is,” said the captain.
His name was Patmore, and he was leading an interagency task force briefing on the armed robber Allison Murrieta. He stood in a Sheriff ’s headquarters conference room beside a television screen on a stand, with a remote control in one hand and a laser pointer in the other. There were cops and deputies from all over Southern California, FBI, even a popular Channel 4 reporter. It was Monday morning and already ninety degrees.