Tales of Chills and Thrills: The Mystery Thriller Horror Box Set (7 Mystery Thriller Horror Novels) (106 page)

“Sounds like him.”

In the scheme of things, Markleeville, in the mountains
southeast of Tahoe, was nothing much, a half-horse town in the mountains south
of Tahoe. Quaint. Old.

“I used to like this hotel,” he said, pointing out the
window.

By the looks of it, the hotel, the Creekside Lodge, wasn’t a
hotel anymore. One-block town, that was about the sum of it. The sign said the
population was 165. It was on the Indian Creek Reservation, not far from a small
airport, Alpine County Court, Monitor Creek, and the East Carson River. The road
led over the pass, down to 395. Would be a great ride on a motorcycle.

“You have some good times up here?” she asked.

He smiled. “You won’t tell, neither will I.”

She figured March had seen plenty of good times all around
the lake. This particular mountain town was an unpolished gem that lay at the
merge of the Monitor and Wolf Creeks on 89. Popular with bikers and people
coming over the pass, they had a courthouse, sheriff’s office, and a general
store.

“The Cutthroat Bar,” Marco said, looking toward a shabby
building. “I can’t believe myself sometimes. I never connected it to the fish. I
always thought it was some pirate thing.”

“You didn’t—really?”

“Really.”

Sydney said, “When the shooter came in, that’s what I was
holding in my hand. A Cutthroat fingerling.”

“Then this is appropriate.” He pointed again and said,
“There’s a sign that says rooms. I’ll check it out.”

He went in through the back entrance to see if any rooms
were actually available. He learned there were, located in the building next to
the bar in a motel-like building. He paid cash for a room back off the street.

He let her in, then went on a coffee run to the bar.

Back in the room, when he sipped his coffee, he winced and
swore. “Damn!”

“It’s that hot?”

“Not really, but I have sensitive tissues in my mouth.”

“What from?”

He sat on one of the beds, a small table separating the two
twins. She was lying with her arms slung across her stomach.

He said, “My mouth never fully recovered from
la tehuacan
.”

“Which is some kind of hot Mexican sauce?”

“Well, yes and no. You won’t find it in a restaurant. During
my time in that Mexican prison, when they wanted better conversation, they
introduced you to
la tehuacan
. Carbonated mineral water laced with the
juice of chili peppers.”

“Sounds nasty.”

“Then, when your mouth was burned out, they stuck it up your
nose while your mouth was gagged. That happens, you tend to become very
cooperative.”

“Sounds really nasty. What did they want from you?”

“Whatever it was, they didn’t get it. I wouldn’t have made
it, but I had some outside powers interested in me. I ended up in
apando
,
a punishment cell, but under the protection of the most powerful man in the
prison, the
Tio Mafia,
the prison godfather. Something was in the works.
About a week after that, I’m walked out by this
federale
, thinking they
might just drive me up in the hills and kill me.”

“Our boys?”

“I was met by the guy who put me there. They had work for me
in a very deep task force.”

“An offer you couldn’t refuse?”

“Yeah. When I walked out, I’m standing there blinded by the
sun, one of those hard glare days. I’d been in the hole for a long time. No
light. I’m not believing anything he says. I’m thinking,
That’s it for me.
The air stinks like a welding shop, and this guy’s smiling at me and the
federale
who escorted me out says, ‘You go home, my friend.’ I remember his
gold tooth flashed at me like a strobe. He said, ‘No more trouble for us, no
more trouble for you.
Tomelo facil, amigo.’
”

“You have a habit of getting in and out of bad situations.”

“So far. So, this gringo gets me out of there. Had Federal
or Homeland agent written all over him. He was one of a kind. A real trip. I
finally get my vision back. He’s standing there like the prison warden in
Cool Hand Luke
.

“So this guy thinks he’s funny. He starts talking to me in
this phony Southern accent as we walk to a waiting car. ‘Let’s get you the hell
outta town, boy. A town without pity.’ At that moment, this
autobus de la
prision
passes, kicking up a dust storm, and I’m choking on the dust. He
says, ‘You need to learn to stay off the bus, Cruz, and we’re gonna give you the
opportunity to do just that.’“

“What did he want?”

“A job. Turned out to be a few others after that.”

He told her about the guy in prison who’d protected him. He
was a great mural painter. “They let him paint murals all over the prison. A
real genius. This one, the biggest of them and the most brilliant—I wished I’d
had the means to take a picture of it.”

“Describe it.”

“Well, in the center, you had peasants searching among
grotesque bodies sprawled on splotched orange terracotta tiles looking for those
they could save. On one side, this Mexican Indian woman wept over an open
casket, and around her men were laughing and dancing and firing rifles into the
air, many dressed like the paramilitary
Guardias Blancas
. Overhead in the
fire-red sky, small hawks with boomerang-shaped silver wings—drawn more like
knife blades—tacked in the breeze, swinging this way and that, some down in the
fields, some riding the thermals he had a genius way of painting. It was like
the whole thing was alive. You could see so many things when you studied it.”

“Sounds like he was really good.”

“He was. I remember was a funeral procession in the fields
outside of buildings that represented
San Cristobal
. The women were
dressed in black, homespun cloaks, their mouths covered against the smoke and
cold, weeping for the dead on the road. In the background, fierce
Chaumla
warriors rose from the smoke among the caskets that lay everywhere. Beyond them,
the burning rain forest, the
Selva Lacandones
, and in the fields,
thousands of mummies, tiny mummies from the museum in
Guanajuato
, tiny,
baby-sized
pistoleros
climbing from the fish raceways led by naked,
wounded, bleeding soldiers. A young girl’s eyes wide and dark as dying suns…”

She was transfixed by the description, and by his passion
for the mural.

At some point, he fell asleep. She didn’t. Her mind was in a
real spin. She kept thinking the door would burst open and killers would come
in. She had the Beretta next to her. Close.

21

On a “hunt” day, Leon didn’t eat. He believed that predators
were much more alert when hungry. So he saved eating until after the job was
done. If it took long, he’d eat bites of a protein bar, drink coffee and lots of
water. It kept the edge.

He went up the mountain in the provided Ford SVT Raptor, the
best off-roader in Leon’s opinion. He had a little trouble finding the roads
that led back to Cillo’s place, but Leon eventually left the Raptor a hundred
yards back in the trees off the logging road, way up on the mountain. He fixed
the silencer to his Glock.

He noticed the outstanding way the reddish moon looked. It
reminded Leon of a bullet hole in the sky. And he liked the way the night
smelled here in pine country, high in the mountains, that lake black as oil
after the hot day.

Great place,
Leon thought. It was so pure, nicely
tucked away up in the mountains. Vast water below, pure darkness—a primitive
magnificence. He breathed in the aroma of heavy pine tinged with smoke from some
distant fire. It filled the air as he walked along the dirt road, his gun with
silencer at his right side. From time to time, Leon stopped because he had such
an outstanding view of the whole basin. He appreciated it more than he thought
he would.

Near the house, he spotted two cars: a small one, a Prius;
the other, a Jeep Cherokee. The house looked dark save a small light from the
back. He moved through the trees toward the porch, then a big, ugly dog rose
slowly and came down off the porch to greet him. The dog, looking half-wolf,
didn’t bark.

“Hey, boy,” Leon said in a low, confident command voice to
show authority without hostility. “C’mon, here…” He stepped closer, open hand
out, palm down. If the dog barked, he’d have to shoot it.

Without much of a sound, the dog displayed teeth and came
snarling toward him. Leon shot him in the head. Close up, he confirmed that it
looked half-dog, half-wolf, a violation of nature.

“You miserable fucker. You come at me!” Leon said in a low
voice. He kicked the big, dead animal in the head. Kicked him a couple more
times. “I should skin you, you piece of shit. Attack me, damn you. I’m an animal
lover.”

Now he’d have to get rid of the creature. A suicide wouldn’t
look so good if the dog was shot in the head.

He waited to see if the silenced shot had been picked up by
any other ears. Still, he saw no movement in the mostly dark house. Porch empty.

Then he heard voices, but they were coming from up in the
woods. A girl giggling. Laughing. Somebody having some dirty fun.

He grabbed the dead animal’s hind legs and dragged the
flea-bitten, half-dog fraud out of sight fifty yards down into the woods so he
could be food for natural creatures. Then Leon went up on the porch and in
through the unlocked sliding glass door and said, quietly, “Don’t shoot. I’m
just here to ask you something. Your friend from Incline sent me.”

No answer. There was the stink of cigarettes in the house.
Maybe pipes and cigars. Leon left the house and followed the stone path lit by a
few Malibu lights up through the trees, leading to a stone hut.

The old man he took to be Cillo was playing stud with a
young girl in the rock pool in front of some kind of building. The lovers played
in the water like kids. Leon, hidden in the trees, wondered how much she cost.
There, in the pool, the old man sitting on a rock with the whole of Tahoe below,
the girl was giving him a blow job. And she had to work at it. She jerked and
blew on him, him trying like hell to get to the end of it all and then finally
appearing to.

Leon got a little excited and a little sick. He waited,
hoping the little skank would leave so he didn’t have to do something with her
body. He wasn’t in the mood for complications. That was the whole problem with
not having time to plan, track, assess, predetermine. These guys were in a panic
to shut down the threat, and that led to haste. And haste always, always,
brought on unforeseen, unplanned complications.

Fortunately, half an hour after getting the old man off and
having finished a drink, she climbed out, then got a towel from a little shed
next to the hut. She mumbled something about the night and went down the hill
toward the house, wrapped in the towel. A few minutes later, dressed in shorts
and a halter top, she crossed the porch and disappeared down the steps. Moments
later, she pulled out in the Prius and left.

About damn time,
Leon thought. He figured the old man
would slip, hit his head on the rock, and drown. Nice, fitting end. They’d find
him in a week or so. Instead, the old man smoked a cigar, naked in his rock
pool, enjoying that his ancient cock still had some life in it.

“Nice place you got here,” Leon said. “I take it you’re Tony
Cillo, master of this domain.”

The old dude turned, not showing as much shock as you’d
think. Anger was more like the expression. Looked a little high on something.

“You on Viagra?” Leon asked, smiling.

“Who the fuck are you? What are you doing spying on me like
some kind of sick voyeur?”

“I see where the damn half-breed dog got his attitude,” Leon
said. “So far, everybody I’ve met in Tahoe has some kind of messed-up attitude.
People up here in paradise should have more chill. You’re either a dog or you’re
a wolf. That in-between shit doesn’t make it.”

“Get the hell off my land!”

“Soon as I get what I came for. You got a nice pad here.
Isolated. View of the whole basin. Sit up here getting stoned, having some skank
getting you off. Hard work for her.”

Leon loved to see how people lived. How big they made their
lives. It was so meaningless. Life was short and you were dead forever; all the
shit you built up meant nothing.

“I’ll tell you what,” the old man said, showing no fear.
“You best get outta here.”

Leon smiled. “Tough old bastard, aren’t you? I gotta ask you
a question, and you better have a good answer. I’m not here by accident. There’s
this dude thinks he’s God’s gift to the planet sitting in his pad at Incline
Village. He brought me all the hell the way out here to get some answers. I’m a
kind of a liaison between him and you. So let’s cooperate so I can get out of
your way.”

This information changed Cillo’s expression. Now he knew the
name of the game. His voice went down to a more civil tone. “All he had to do
was call. What does he want to know?”

“Where your nephew is. The one who has the woman who’s
causing all this trouble.”

“I don’t know.”

“Now, now,” Leon said. “Let’s be smart. I didn’t come all
the way out here, put up with assholes and mean dogs, for ‘I don’t know.’”

“It’s the truth. I don’t know where he went,” Cillo said. “I
tried to bring him in, but so far, he’s out there, and you’ll have to go find
him. I can’t help you. If I could, I would. If he contacts me, I’ll let your
boss know.”

Leon frowned. The nice-guy attitude didn’t last long. The
bastard couldn’t resist getting back to his tough prick self. “Let’s get
something straight. I haven’t eaten in a long time. Makes me mean. I don’t want
to get mean. Like I said, I didn’t fly three thousand miles to hear any
bullshit. I asked you a question, and I want an actionable answer.”