“When you jump the wall, one of you close the gate on them,” said Hood.
“Good,” said Yorth. “We’ll need time to set up, but we’re never going to beat them there now. We have to assume they’re watching the area as we speak. So, what’s across from Buckboard?”
“Cotton and more cotton,” said Velasquez. “But there’s a park-and-ride lot that doesn’t get used that much, right across from the Buckboard entrance. There are always a few vehicles in it. We wouldn’t stand out.”
“Is there a traffic signal?”
“No. I’d remember that from my runs because I hate stopping for them.”
“Perfect,” said Yorth. “We can stage from there and jaywalk to the wall in the dark.
Hood looked at the L.A. agents. They looked badass enough to be cartel soldiers. What might cartel soldiers feel like doing before a big buy? “Do we still have that borrowed DEA dope in the safe here?”
“I just saw it,” said Yorth. “What are you thinking?”
“Say we get there five minutes late, drive by real obvious, let them make us. We’re on a standard paranoid security check, right? We loop back a few minutes later. We park near but not next to each other. All eyes on us. I wait a minute, then walk into the clubhouse, but Marquez and Cepeda stay behind because they’re cartel killers and they’re suspicious. They don’t hurry and they don’t walk into traps. They do what they damned well feel like doing, which is smoke some mota before the big deal goes down. All that’s another ten minutes for you guys to get set. Then I go out and harangue them, try to hurry them along. They argue but finally bring the money inside. They reek of smoke. That’s been another five minutes for you guys to get into position. And another reason for Skull and his friends to think they’re dealing with real bad guys, not us.”
“Janet, you remember how to roll a joint?” asked Yorth with a smile.
“I never learned, Dale,” said Bly.
“I rolled my own cigarettes in college,” said Hood. “I can muddle through.”
This brought knowing laughter, cracks about inhalation, Slick Willie, Slick Charlie.
“Look, there’s an earth embankment in front of the stone wall,” said Velasquez. “Originally they had it irrigated and landscaped-boulders, succulents, and a lot of ocotillo and paloverde. But when the development went belly up, thieves took the sprinkler brass and the valves so everything died. They even stole the boulders and the good trees. So now. . now it’s a bunch of live weeds and dead bushes. It looks like hell but it’s a good place to squat and hide. Same with the streetlights-the thieves cut down the poles with blowtorches, stripped out the copper wire and the conduit and took the light fixtures. It’s good and dark out there now-a quarter moon. Once we’re over the wall, it’s only two hundred feet or so to the clubhouse parking lot. We can do this.”
Yorth set half a brick of mota and a packet of Zig-Zags on the conference room table. The smell was green and junglelike and it reminded Hood of his murderous days in Yucatan just four months ago. “Go get ’em, Charlie.”
• • •
Hood rolled down Imperial Avenue in his Charger. It was brawny and rigid of ride, like the IROC Camaro he’d had to sell in order to finance the wine cellar. He’d loved that car but the wine cellar was a necessity. Just this morning he’d run the Charger through the car wash, so now the black hood gleamed in the streetlights, and the reflections of the street signs rippled across it in yellow and red and blue. The engine growled. Adams to Fourth, then south again. In his rearview he saw the silver Magnum. He checked his diamonds in the mirror. The straw gambler waited on the seat beside him. He had a newly issued Glock.40 on his belt in back, an eight-shot.22 AirLite on his ankle, and a.40-caliber two-shot derringer that once belonged to Suzanne Jones in the side pocket of the seersucker coat, where it rested heavy as a railroad spike. He was hugely in the mood to purchase two shoulder-held Stinger missiles from crooked, crafty, girl-beating creeps.
One minute before seven he passed Buckboard Estates. The wall was rock and the gate was open. He came up a winding drive, past the parking lot, and stopped in front of the clubhouse. The red Commander and the raised F-150 were both there, backed up to the curb as if to stare at intruders. In the darkness the clubhouse looked large and had a spacious roofed patio out front. Faint light came from the building.
Hood watched the Magnum pull up behind him, then he continued right, past the clubhouse, following the drive. The streetlights had been blowtorched off near the ground and their gutted trunks lay about like fallen trees. The lawns were sand. The houses stood around him but they were little more than shapes. The windows with panes shone pale, and those without panes yawned blackly. Hood continued. He saw tennis courts thick with sand drifts, lines invisible, no nets. He thought of the Baghdad Tennis Club. There was a large, flat expanse of concrete with a huge black pit in the middle, and he realized it should have been filled with clean, cool water and lighted and surrounded by chaise longues and barbecues and umbrellas.
He stopped and turned on his radio transmitter and slid it back onto his belt. Looking down on it he could see the faint green LED that indicated power. Don’t fail. His heart was thumping hard and steady. He pulled into a driveway with a NO TRESPASSING sign nailed to the garage door, reversed the car, and slowly drove back to the clubhouse parking lot. It was eight minutes past seven. Hood stopped and glanced back at the Magnum. He looked toward the wall and the open gate and saw nothing of the takedown team. The darkness is a friend tonight, he thought. He swung into a space and shut off the engine, then climbed out. He set the gambler on his head and checked his look in the window, then slammed the door with his foot. The Magnum parked five spaces down and the windows lowered.
“Vamos, amigos.”
“We’ll wait. You check it out, pinche gringo.”
“I’ll do that. I won’t be long.”
Hood ambled toward the clubhouse like a man with time on his hands. When he came to the bottom of the steps, he saw Clint Wampler standing off to the side of the building in his peacoat with a combat shotgun cradled in his arms. He had a hand on the grip and the white tape on his middle finger was luminous in the near-dark. “Good evening,” said Hood. “How’s the finger?”
“It’s fine.”
“Just bad timing. No hard feelings, I hope.”
“You can call it an accident but that’s like the kettle and the black pot. What are your greaseball buyers doing out there?”
“They don’t trust you. Or me, for that matter.”
“They brung the money?”
“Every cent.”
“Go on in, Glitter Gums. If you come out before me getting a prearranged signal from Lyle, I get to blow your head off.”
“Then I hope you have your signals straight.”
“I’m praying for some kind of mix-up. A timing thing, maybe, like my finger. They happen all the time.”
Hood pushed through a heavy wood-and-iron door and stepped into the clubhouse. The room was large and the ceiling high and there were double doors in the back. Near the center of it was an empty cable spool and on the spool stood two camping lanterns that gave off a whispering hiss and clean white light. Skull and Brock Peltz stood behind the spool, their faces beveled into light and shadow as if by stage lights. Skull had a pistol stuck behind his belt buckle and Peltz wore a shotgun strapped to his shoulder. Four open crates rested on the spool between the lanterns. Hood saw the wooden nests of packing material and the glimmer of the hardware within.