The first part of the hike was the toughest. The canyon rose at a steep, straight angle for a quarter mile. Twenty feet and Curtain wanted to stop for a breather. But he couldn’t do that yet. He kept at it. Switchbacks would have made the climb easier. But while the canyon was on government land, no park service crew was going to cut a trail in a meandering gash that any sensible billy goat would avoid.
Rock and shale slipped beneath their boots. Two miles hard and they’d be at the Mercedes. Even then, twenty miles of desert separated them from the slightest rumor of a town.
But it would be good to get back to the Mercedes. The ride was a first class toy. An ML320 — king of the sports utility vehicles, these days known as SUV’s. Curtain figured he deserved the best.
Wyatt would ride in the back seat. In a bigger car, that spot was reserved for Curtain. But in the SUV, there wasn’t much leg-room in the back, and the air-conditioning was less effective. So Curtain would ride shotgun.
Kirby would drive. He always drove. In a way, it bothered Curtain, because the car was his. But Curtain was the boss. The only time he drove was when he was alone. Kirby was his employee, so it was only right that he play chauffeur. If that was the price of keeping up appearances, then —
Damn, Curtain wanted to stop and catch his breath.
Below, Jesus Sanchez screamed in Spanish. Still proclaiming his innocence. Now adding his curse.
Curtain had his excuse. “Hold up,” he said.
Looking down, Curtain experienced a little spin of vertigo. They’d climbed higher than he thought.
The Mexican was not where they had left him. He had crawled about ten feet, onto a forked tongue of rock. He had the canteen, but the cap was still in place.
“Will you look at the little bastard,” Kirby said.
“Yeah,” Wyatt said. “Seems like Jesus isn’t a very quick study.”
“Give him time,” Curtain said.
They stood there in silence. Curtain tried to control his breathing. He thought about taking a shot at Sanchez, just to shut him up. Curtain was packing a Glock M24, which was just a little larger than the M22’s he’d purchased for Kirby and Wyatt.
Chalk the selection up to Money magazine. Curtain had read an article about corporate hunting retreats. Tips for managers, that kind of thing. The gist of the article was that the boss should always carry the biggest gun as a symbol of his authority.
But when it came to guns, Curtain knew that size didn’t matter. Skill was what counted. And Curtain doubted that he could hit Sanchez from this distance. If he missed, he’d hear it from Kirby. Even at this range, the big Irishman could probably pick off the Mexican. He was damn good with a gun. Even Wyatt ran a distant second to Kirby when it came to small arms work.
But there wasn’t any need, because Wyatt was right about one thing. Jesus Sanchez wasn’t a quick study.
Still, Walter Curtain had faith in his teaching methods.
Sanchez would catch on sooner or later.
Eventually, he’d shut up. Eventually, he’d have to.
Eventually, he’d be dead.
Curtain sidled past Kirby and Wyatt and took the lead.
“Carne muerta,” he whispered.
“What?” Kirby asked.
Wyatt translated. “Dead meat.”
Curtain’s heart pounded in his chest. Leading was harder than following. He had to set the pace, and it was disheartening to find that the pace he set wasn’t anything the hired guns couldn’t handle. The way they dogged his heels — Wyatt in the middle and Kirby in the rear — you’d think that he’d grown a couple of shadows.
Curtain grinned. That’s how it is when you’re the boss, he thought. And he liked being the boss. He liked to see people jump when he snapped his fingers.
Wyatt had figured that out a long time ago. Kirby was still learning. Jesus Sanchez was another story completely. And so was Curtain’s wife.
Her name was Rita. Half Mex, half Irish, but she kept the Irish to herself. She called Curtain “patron.” The way she said it, you’d think she really wasn’t joking at all.
“Patron.” Wyatt had to translate that one for Kirby, too. Curtain still remembered laughing as he eavesdropped on their conversation, the one hardcase telling the other that “patron” was Spanish for “big daddy.”
That was the way Curtain saw it, too. When they met at a college fund-raiser, he was forty and Rita was twenty-two. Part of a mentoring program, someone’s bright idea to shake some extra scratch from the alumni. They kept it pretty quiet through her senior year, and Curtain really thought he’d been a perfect gentleman about the whole thing.
And he took the mentoring seriously. Rita finished with a 3.83 GPA and an MBA. Not that she was ever going to need her degree. Curtain didn’t want a business partner. He wanted a partner between the sheets.
For a couple years, it went just that way. Everything seemed okay. Rita was a little bored, sure. Sometimes she got on Curtain’s nerves, wanting to get involved in the business. He was tempted to develop a home study course, Corporate Wives 101. But instead he kept Rita happy with trips when he could steal a few days away from the business and expensive gifts when he couldn’t.
Then Curtain started noticing things. Rita would disappear for an afternoon, take off for a weekend.
With friends, she said. The old college gang.
He knew better. Rita had never been the type to have many friends. And as far as he knew, he was the old college gang.
Curtain told Wyatt to check things out. He didn’t have time to do it himself. Besides, he couldn’t do something like that. Surveillance wasn’t his game. What Curtain did was manage the Bahamian accounts, the holdings in the Pacific Rim.
What Wyatt did was something very different.
And Wyatt was good at what he did. He wasn’t a hothead like Kirby. Wyatt understood the way things worked. He knew when to talk and when to shut up.
Eventually, Wyatt told Curtain about Jesus Sanchez. Sanchez handled a few racehorses for Curtain and ran his private stable. There wasn’t much to it, really. The guy was a glorified stableboy. Of course, Wyatt didn’t say that. He knew what to say and what to leave out. He knew better than to rub his boss’s nose in it.
Curtain could do that job for himself. He imagined the stableboy doing Rita in the fucking barn. Right there in a stall, bent over a hay bale with her riding breeches down around her knees. Sanchez playing the show stud, Rita the brood mare —
No, Walter Curtain wasn’t going to start thinking those thoughts again. You thought like that, the next thing you knew you’d lose it all.
But that was the way it was when you were the front runner.
You always imagined what it was like to finish out of the money.
Curtain was sweating like a pig. He didn’t want to stop, but he needed a breather.
‘You all right?” Wyatt asked.
Curtain nodded. “Just give me a minute.”
“Shit, give me two,” Kirby said, and he slouched against a rock in a muted patch of shade.
Curtain stared ahead. At least they were done climbing. The trail had leveled out. They had another mile and a half to go.
Mile and a quarter, if they were lucky.
No matter how far it was, there wasn’t an inch of it in the shade.
“From here on out, we’re cookin’,” Kirby said.
“It could be worse,” Wyatt said. ‘You could be Jesus Sanchez.”
‘Yeah.” Kirby laughed, and it seemed his anger had dulled. “I’ve got to admit, the patron here knows his way around a hammer just like a Roman centurion on Easter Sunday. Fuck, ol’ Jesus sure lived up to his name, the way he got nailed.”