“You’re connected in Vegas?”
“I know some of the same people you do. Except they listen to me because I have money,” he said. “You won’t change anything. I made some mistakes. There’s no way to undo them. What’s done is done.”
“You’re going to give me Surrette. On this one, there are no lines.”
His eyes shifted sideways, as though he were processing her words. “I’m sure that makes sense to you. It’s lost on me.”
She glanced at her watch. “Your window of opportunity is closing,” she said.
“I’ll walk you to your truck. You’re a filmmaker. Maybe I can help you later. I know a number of people in the industry.” He fitted his hand around her upper arm and squeezed it tentatively. “Nice. You lift weights?”
Jack Boyd was grinning lasciviously.
Gretchen wet her bottom lip before she spoke. “I was never good at communication skills. A psychologist told me that. He suggested I try what he called ‘massage therapy.’ He was going to do it for me in his off hours. For free.”
Caspian was standing beside her as he clutched her arm. Without removing his hand, he stepped in front of her, looking warmly into her face. His eyes were pale blue and didn’t seem to belong inside the graininess of his face, like blond hair on a Mexican. He had a weak chin and a nose that was both sharp and small. She had seen toy men like him on the French Riviera. They seemed like caricatures of nineteenth-century aristocracy whose bloodline had run out. Gretchen wondered what life would have been like for Caspian Younger in the kinds of public schools she had attended in Miami and Brooklyn.
“I told you I could read your thoughts,” he said, sinking his fingers a little deeper into her upper arm, a flicker of lust and anticipation lighting on his mouth. “Be a good girl. Don’t do something rash. If you’d like to stay and have a good time, I’d say all sins are forgiven, including your father’s.”
Jack Boyd’s grin would not go away. “I wouldn’t argue with sloppy seconds,” he said.
“You’re asking me to get it on?”
Caspian raised his eyebrows and smiled. “You can tell me about your documentaries.”
“Can I ask you a question before we go any further?” she said. “Do you really believe you can go up against a guy like Wyatt Dixon?”
“It’s what’s under the hood that counts,” he said. “I’ll let you have a test drive upstairs.”
He worked his thumb deeper into the muscle of her arm, inching his fingers up on her shoulder, kneading the flesh along her collarbone, his mouth coming closer to hers.
Her reaction was not emotional, nor could it be described as vengeful. She didn’t consider it of much consequence and wondered that either man could have expected a different outcome.
“What do you say, babycakes?” Caspian asked.
“Say about what?”
“Going upstairs. You’ve got beautiful arms,” he said. “If the Venus de Milo had arms, they’d look like yours.”
“That’s a great come-on line. If I ever go trans, I think I’ll give it a try.”
“Are we on or not?” Jack Boyd said.
“You sure you guys want to do this?” she asked.
“Say the word,” Caspian said.
“What the fuck,” she replied.
“You won’t regret it,” Caspian said.
“But you will,” she said.
She ripped her elbow into Jack Boyd’s face and drove her fist between Caspian’s eyes. Then she pulled her blackjack from her side pocket and whipped it across the back of Boyd’s head and backstroked it across Caspian’s jaw, knocking the spittle from his mouth. She hit him on the collarbone and the points of his shoulders and shoved him through the open French doors onto the floor. Behind her, she heard Jack Boyd trying to rise to his feet. “Run,” she said.
“Do what?” Jack Boyd replied, barely supporting himself on the back of a chair. She brought the blackjack down on top of his hand. He cradled his arm against his chest, the color draining from his face.
“Run! Don’t come back. You’re finished here.”
She stepped toward him. He bolted through the yard, looking back once, knocking the concrete bowl of a birdbath off its pedestal. She turned to Caspian Younger and slid a pair of needle-nosed pliers from her back pocket. He was sitting up on the floor, pressing his palm against his mouth, looking at the thick red smear on his hand. She got down on one knee. “Do you know what I’m about to do to you?” she asked.
“I don’t know where Surrette is,” he said.
“Where do you want me to start?”
“Start what?”
“Pulling off your parts.”
“Please. I didn’t have a choice. He’s not human. You may think he is, but he’s not. He’s what he says he is.”
“So what is he?”
“I don’t know.”
She bent down closer to him, the pliers extended in front of her. His eyes were tightly shut. There are always lines, she heard a voice say.
He was probably telling the truth, she told herself. If he gave up Surrette, the feds would take him off the board, and no matter how the legal implications played out, Caspian Younger would be free of the man who had probably extorted him for years.
There was a problem, and it didn’t have to do with Surrette. Caspian had said he didn’t know where his father was. This was after his father had left him a note of endearment, one that should have made him conclude he was of some value to someone. Would he have brought a teenage girl onto the property, with the intent of debauching her, if he had no idea of his father’s whereabouts or the approximate time of his return?
She touched the point of the pliers to his cheek, just below his eye. “Where did your father go? You do not want to give me the wrong answer.”
“He has a place on Sweathouse Creek. He goes there because it reminds him of growing up in East Kentucky. Clouds of fog in the hollows and all that hillbilly crap he’s so fond of.”
“You brought the girl here and didn’t worry about him coming back unexpectedly?”
“She just came here to swim.”
“You told Bertha Phelps where he was, didn’t you?”
“No,” he replied, clearly forcing himself not to blink.
“You know what a professional liar never does?” she said. “Blink. His eyelids stay stitched to his forehead. It’s a sure tell every time.”
“I survived, just like you. You know the edge I got on Wyatt Dixon? I don’t care whether I live or die.”
“Dixon is like your father. He’s a self-made man. I don’t think you’re anything at all. You’re a condition, not a man. I feel sorry for you.”
“Tell me that when I take a shit on your chest, because that’s what I’m going to do when I get out of here.”
She tapped him lightly on the tip of the nose with the pliers, then stood up. “Go wash your face. Come around me again for any reason, and I’ll blow your head off.”
She went out the front door and left it open behind her. There were squirrels playing overhead in the trees. She watched them for a moment, then started her pickup and drove away. She tried to think of all the things he had just said to her. Two words stood out in bold relief and were not in harmony with his self-congratulatory statements about being mobbed up in Vegas. What were the words?
Flathead Lake? Why that choice of location for his metaphor about getting rid of Clete Purcel?
Chapter 34
It was 4:48 P.M. when Clete and I starting knocking on doors at the end of the hollow, up the road from Albert’s ranch. The first place we stopped was a remodeled barn that a young couple from California had rented for the summer. They said they taught at Berkeley and knew Albert and his work and sometimes hiked along the ridge above his house but hadn’t seen any other hikers there. They were nice people and invited us in for coffee. I did not want to tell them that Surrette was somewhere in the neighborhood. “Do you all have children?” I asked.