Mark saw the giant buffalo that had been outside of Larry’s cabin reappear alongside the road. “Is that your personal guard bison?” he asked.
“That’s Jackson. He’s a surly bastard. Chased some tourists into an outhouse last year and kept them there until he got bored.” Larry smiled. “I’m partial to Jackson.”
Outside of Silver Gate, Larry got the truck up as high as fifty, at which point the suspension system announced that was the limit. Mark was really beginning to wish they’d taken their chances with the Tahoe.
He wondered where Lynn Deschaine was and whether she knew there’d been a sunrise.
It was midmorning when they arrived at Five Points, and the old resort was quiet. Or at least it was quiet until they arrived. The blue Ford took care of that.
“Couple things we need to be clear on,” Larry said when he killed the engine, leaving a backfire and a cloud of exhaust smoke as final warnings. He’d been quiet for most of the ride, and now his voice was low and contemplative. “You want to move in a hurry, as I understand it.”
“I have to, yes.”
Larry nodded. “Sal Cantu is not going to want to move in a hurry. Such conflicts are sometimes unavoidable.” He sighed and worked a cigarette into his mouth. “He won’t be staying in the main lodge. But they’ll know him at the bar.”
He was right on both counts. When they walked into the dimly lit bar, with the blue-water pools of the hot springs looking bright on the other side of glass doors, there were only employees inside, and maybe half a dozen people out in the water, young couples drinking brightly colored drinks in plastic cups. The bartender, a young guy, asked what he could do for them, and Larry said they were looking for Sal Cantu, and the bartender’s face went from friendly to wary.
“He’s not in the lodge, and he won’t be again.”
“Had some trouble with him?”
The kid picked up a dry glass and dried it again. “If you know him so well, then you’d know we had trouble with him.”
“Sure. But I was told he’d be here, and I was-”
“Fishing camp. We just rent the cabins, we don’t own them, and we don’t have the authority to evict. That’s up to the individual owners.” He put the glass down and looked from Larry to Mark. “You two probably know the owner I’m talking about.”
Mark surely didn’t, but Larry just nodded. “Right. Okay, boss. We’ll take two shots of Maker’s and then get out of your hair.”
It wasn’t noon yet. Mark drank the whiskey with his uncle, though, and it sat sour and burning in his empty stomach as they walked back to the parking lot.
“Who owns that cabin at the fishing camp?” Mark asked.
“No idea, but it wasn’t going to help me to say that. If Sal’s been booted from the main lodge but they can’t keep him out of one of the cabins, it belongs to somebody he supplies something to. Drugs or protection. Maybe both.”
“Protection?”
“Sal’s not a small boy. Or a nice one.” Larry turned and gave Mark a hard look. He seemed like a starkly different man from the one who’d opened the door bleary-eyed and in his underwear just a few hours ago. A lot more like the man Mark remembered. The transformation told Mark plenty about how things were likely to go with Sal Cantu.
The fishing camp was on a dirt road that ran through pasture and down to a trout stream where there was a handful of limited-access, privately owned sites with small cabins that were rented out during peak season. Larry pulled the truck off the road, reached in his duffel bag, and got out a revolver with worn bluing, which he stuck in his belt. Then he brought out a length of paracord, put that in his back pocket, and grabbed what looked like a short piece of a belt. Mark knew it at once: a homemade blackjack. Larry had always carried one. He would cut inserts into a thick leather harness strap and load in pieces of lead shot. He referred to it as a slapjack because of the extra flex. He put that in his back pocket and said, “I’m an old man trying a young man’s game today, Markus.”
He didn’t seem dismayed by that.
They walked up the road and came to the gated drive. The gate was locked and there was barbed-wire fencing on each side. Larry climbed the gate looking very much like the young man he’d said he wasn’t, and Mark followed.
They hadn’t even reached the cabins before a door to one of them opened and a Hispanic man as thick and solid as an oil drum stood before them.
“Private property,” he said. “No fishing, no access, don’t bother asking.”
He was a couple inches shorter than Mark but at least eighty pounds heavier, with an oversize jaw traced by a thin beard. His hair was cut short, and you could see white lines of old scars across his skull. He’d been looking primarily at Mark, but when he let his attention shift to Larry, there was a blink of recognition.
“Shit,” he said, “you really dumb enough to come back around looking for your sister, man? She’s where she wants to be. Stay out of it.”
Larry looked to the side. There was silence for a moment. Then he nodded. Cantu had followed his glance and he looked confused when Larry nodded at nothing. Mark wasn’t confused-it was the old gesture, the appeal for guidance from a voice that rarely counseled peaceful action. He wasn’t surprised when his uncle’s right hand flashed out like a cat’s paw and he cracked Salvador Cantu in the face with the slapjack.
He hit him flush on the cheekbone, and Cantu reeled back and fell into the cabin’s front wall but didn’t go down. Instead he pushed off it with a roar of pain and rage and came at Larry with one heavy fist balled up and raised as if to knock Larry’s head right off his shoulders. Mark caught his wrist before he could come out of the clumsy windup, wrenched his arm down, and slammed him back into the wall. Cantu threw a left hand that was more of an awkward slap than a punch but one that still landed on the side of Mark’s head, and his strength made even the clumsy punch a heavy one. Mark took a step back, just enough to clear space, and then brought his right fist up under Cantu’s jaw so hard that the man’s teeth cracked together. Cantu reached for him as he fell, trying to tackle him, but Mark slipped the grasp and Cantu fell to his knees, his big torso swaying. Mark drew his gun and put the muzzle of the.38 to the top of his head. Sal Cantu’s breath came in hot gasps, and he looked at Mark with hate, a red mouse already swelling high on his cheekbone. Behind them, Larry chuckled.
“How ’bout that,” he said. “You got some of your uncle Ronny in you after all, boy.”
Then he hit Cantu again with the slapjack, two rapid smacks, one above each knee, in the thick muscles of the quads, and Cantu grunted with pain and fell flat on the porch, writhing on his belly. Mark glanced at Larry, who was circling Cantu like a wolf around fallen prey. Mark wanted to tell his uncle that it was good enough, that they didn’t need to push it any further; Cantu was down and they had the guns and there was no need to hit him again. Mark hadn’t been the one tied to a trailer hitch and whipped, though. Larry would decide when it was done.
Larry took off his baseball cap and ran his fingers through his long white hair. When he put the cap back on he spent a little extra time bending the grimy bill, and Mark could see that the busy hands were designed to keep his emotions in check, bleed out a little of the tension that filled him.
“I need you to be able to talk, so be grateful for that,” Larry said. He kicked Cantu in the ass, hard. “Where’s Pate?”
Sal Cantu looked like a trout left on the rocks, bug-eyed and fighting for breath, mouth open wide, a string of spit between his lips. Despite the pain he had to be feeling, though, there was a smile in his eyes, and the smile had risen at Pate’s name.