Ricky didn’t worry that he might have misjudged his visitors. In the event that he was mistaken, he would have no regrets.
When the guy in the raincoat asked if he could smoke, just to explain why he was reaching into the right-hand pocket of his coat, Ricky stepped hard on the pedal in the knee space of his desk. A 12-gauge shotgun was mounted to the center rail that supported the desktop. The pedal drew taut a wire that pulled the trigger. The skirt on the front of the desk was a mere quarter-inch panel of Masonite. At such close range, the blast chopped Raincoat Guy mostly in the crotch and lower abdomen, and blew him down.
Skinny Mick had a gun in, of all places, an ankle holster. As the fool bent and fumbled for it, Ricky drew a pistol from a holster attached to the side of his office chair and stood and shot the meth addict twice. He stepped around the desk and shot the screaming guy in the raincoat, who wasn’t long for this world, anyway.
All the gunfire in close quarters left Ricky de Soto half deaf. He stepped around the bodies, left his office, pulled the door shut.
The would-be heist artists had arrived in a Cadillac Escalade, possibly stolen, in any case now hot. It would have to be boxed over to Mexico, given a new identity. Because he hadn’t paid some punk to boost it, there would be a good profit when it was ready for sale.
He didn’t work the operation alone, of course, but the other guys were in the barns farthest back from the highway. By the time he walked there, with grasshoppers springing out of the tall grass alongside the oiled-dirt driveway as if to celebrate him, his hearing slowly returned, though he would have tinnitus for a while.
He told Danny and Tio what had happened. They knew what to do without being instructed, and they headed directly for his office.
One of the benefits of having major acreage was that you had numerous places where graves could be dug discreetly with a backhoe.
Ricky didn’t immediately follow Danny and Tio, but stood yawning elaborately, trying to pop the tinnitus out of his ears.
His iPhone rang, and as usual there was no caller ID, because his clientele preferred anonymity. He took the call. “Yeah?”
She said, “Hardly more than a week since I saw you. I must be the best customer you have.”
Sexy as she was, he knew her voice as much from dreams as from the times she’d done business with him face-to-face.
He said, “You’re so big now, maybe I shouldn’t risk doing any more business with you.”
“Like I’m going to believe your balls fell off. I’m only a few hundred miles away, I’d have heard them hit the ground.”
He laughed. “Bonita chica, maybe yours are bigger than mine.”
“I need a motor home. I’m sure you’ve fitted them out before with cute little hard-to-find compartments.”
“Could be I got a couple right now.”
“Gas, not a diesel pusher. Thirty-six to forty feet.”
“I got a Tiffin Allegro thirty-six. Total refit, custom paint. Nobody ever knew her would know her now, she’s so pretty.”
She told him the size of the custom storage spaces she needed.
She also specified a pistol that she required.
He said, “Doable on both counts.”
“I need everything by late tomorrow morning.”
“Shit, no.”
“I’ll pay a premium.”
“Tiffin Allegro thirty-six-footer, new off the showroom floor, would cost you a hundred eighty thousand.”
“Like you bought it right off the showroom floor. What was your wholesale price—four thousand to some booster?”
“Plus there’s the work you want done overnight.”
“Ricky, Ricky, Ricky. Will you pretend you have to charge sales tax? Listen, one thing you do need to add to the total is delivery.”
“You think I’m Amazon or somethin’?”
“You know the address near Palm Springs. You once recommended the man there to me, but I never needed him until now.”
Enrique’s nephew, Ferrante, operated a legit business in Indio, customizing limousines, high-end SUVs, and other vehicles, not only making them more luxurious than the original manufacturers had made them, but also armoring them and installing bullet-resistant glass and run-flat tires for wealthy people who watched the world grow darker and heard lethal violence justified from podium to pulpit.
In addition, as insurance against another government screwup that would sink the economy yet again and devastate his customizing business, Ferrante dealt in illegal arms from a secret basement under one of his factories. Because his mother, Josefina, Enrique’s sister, had for some reason raised the boy in the Church, he would not sell weapons to criminals, only to the upstanding citizens who purchased his armored vehicles, titans of industry and banking and social-media companies—and probably to a rogue FBI agent who was maybe more righteous than the people who accused her of treason.
“I assume,” Jane Hawk said, “your contact there will let your vehicle on his lot and let me prepare for a trip I have to make.”
“We’re tight. But I have to say he’s a weird duck. He does Mass daily, always saying his rosary like some old abuela who wears a mantilla even in the shower. He’s got this blood obsession.”
“ ‘Blood obsession’?”
“You meet him, you’ll see. But he’s not loco. He’s smart. He knows how the world works. I guarantee you can do your meet there.”
“I’m assuming the Tiffin Allegro can tow an SUV.”
“What SUV you want it to tow?”
She told him. “So how much will you rob me for?”
He stood thinking, watching the insects leap, watching a sudden flock of crows cackle down out of the sun, snaring the bugs in mid jump, glossy black wings thrashing the golden grass and fireweed, the singing of the grasshoppers now like thin screams.
“A hundred twenty thousand on delivery. You got that much?”
“Yeah. But you’re a true bandit, Ricky.”
“There’s a way I could let you have it for seventy.”
“What way is that?”
“Take a break from what you’re doin’, stay a month with me.”
“A month with you, Ricky, I’d be used up, worn out, no good for anything anymore.”
“I’d be gentle. You’d be surprised.”
“I know you’d be gentle. You’re chivalrous. But I’m a widow, you know, and figuratively speaking I’m wearing black.”
“I forgot the whole widow thing for a minute. My apologies.”
“Accepted. And don’t worry about the hundred twenty, it’s all in clean bills. Nobody’s looking for it.”
“I don’t worry about you,” he said. “I know you won’t screw me, not that way, and I guess not any other way.”
“Business and romance never mix, anyway,” she said.
“Guy who had this operation before me,” Enrique said, “hooked up with this lady customer, ended up with his head cut off.”
“There you go. Let’s keep our heads, Ricky.”
She terminated the call.
Up there at the barn in which Enrique had his office, at a door that couldn’t be seen from the highway, Danny and Tio were dumping a dead guy in the open cargo bed of a Mule, a nice little electric vehicle that was useful for a variety of tasks.
20
THE SHADOWS OF THE PARKING LOT LAMPPOSTS, sheathed at noon, now slowly extending west across the truck-stop blacktop, like swords drawn to defend against the dragon growl of diesel engines …