Lassiter 06 - Fool Me Twice (17 page)

“
Never?”

“
Well, not exactly never.
When Simmy was barely out of his teens, he stumbled onto a cache of
double eagles. That’s what got him started.”

“
Whoa. Double
eagles?”

“
Twenty-dollar gold pieces,
San Francisco mint, about three thousand of them, worth about
one-point-five million today. And he wasn’t even looking for them.
He was camping out on Devil’s Head Mountain in Colorado. He didn’t
know it then, but there was a legend about a gang that robbed a
government train near there in the 1870s. They were chased by a
posse and buried the loot at the foot of a towering spruce tree.
They marked the tree by sticking a long knife into it, then took
off on horseback. Winter came, and the next spring the gang tried
to find the tree, but couldn’t. After all, the forest probably had
fifty thousand spruce trees that looked just alike. They kept
looking through the summer. Then a thunderstorm started a forest
fire and burned most of the trees to the ground.”

“
So what happened to the
gold?”

“
A hundred years or so went
by, and Simmy was riding the backcountry by himself, hunting and
camping out. The way he tells the story, he was pounding some
stakes into the ground to pitch a tent when he hit a rotting old
saddlebag that had been brought to the surface by erosion. The
wonderful thing is that gold doesn’t rot. The eagles polished up
just fine, and Simmy had his first nest egg.”

“
No wonder he believes in
secret treasures.”

“
The worst thing that ever
happened to him. He got a taste of treasure, and he became
obsessed. He was always dabbling in mining, but for the next twenty
years, it was buried gold, not mined gold, that consumed
him.”

“
And you don’t believe
treasure exists.”

“
Look, I’ve done some
reading. Simmy’s personal library has just about everything ever
written about buried treasure in the West. Four hundred years ago,
Coronado set out with five hundred conquistadors and a thousand
Indians from Mexico looking for the Seven Cities of Cíbola. What
they found were Zuni Indians growing corn in a dusty village in
what is now New Mexico. Then an Indian guide tells Coronado of the
fabulous city of Quivera where the streets were paved with gold,
and a marble palace was hung with golden bells, and the royal
canoes had oarlocks of solid gold.”

“
Gold seems to be the
operative word.”

“
Right. It drives men mad.
All Coronado had to do was take his men north, the Indian tells
him. Of course, the Indian just wanted to get Coronado the hell out
of New Mexico where he was taking slaves and doing the traditional
macho conquistador stuff. So Coronado falls for it and sets out
with his army in plumes and shining armor with a thousand mules to
carry back the loot.”

“
That’s
optimism.”

“
Verdad
, or stupidity. Anyway, they get all the way to Kansas, and
all they see are hot, dusty plains. But Coronado believed till the
day he died that there were cities of gold out there
somewhere.”

“
And Cimarron does, too. Is
that what you’re saying?”

“
Who knows? He studies
mining claims and trappers’ maps as if they’re holy works. He’s
bought diaries from the families of frontiersmen and borrowed
family Bibles with crude drawings of mines and graveyards. He’s
scoured the files of newspapers from western towns that don’t even
exist anymore. He’s spent months in museums, and he’s filled a
hundred notebooks with his plans. He’s not willing to admit he’s
chasing legends. He figures if one in twenty is legitimate, it’s
still worth the search.”

“
So he believes in Rocky
Mountain Treasures. To Cimarron, it’s not a scam.”

“
Either way, it’s a good
deal for Simmy. He’s got all these leases, and other than the
ranch, that’s about all he’s got left. It doesn’t make any sense to
dig for gold that costs more to extract than to sell. But they can
form a company with suckers’ money, take fees as consultants and
managers, and sell Simmy’s maps to the company at a price they set.
If they find the
Caverna de Oro
of Marble Mountain, then everybody’s happy. If
not, Blinky and Simmy still make money. Unlike Coronado, it’s a
no-lose situation.”

***

I was dreaming of conquistadors in heavy
armor and helmet plumes when I awoke suddenly without knowing why.
Next to me, Jo Jo was breathing deeply, a slight whistling sound
accompanying each exhalation of warm breath. Outside, crickets made
their night music, and overhead, a lone jet made its way toward the
airport. I looked at the digital clock and watched 3:13 magically
become 3:14.

Before we turned in, I had
called Cindy, my loyal secretary, and asked if she would extend her
baby-sitting through the night. She whined and said she was meeting
Dottie the Disco Queen at a South Beach bar, and I told her to take
Kip along but make sure he got home by one a.m., because I promised
he could watch Burt Lancaster in
The
Killers
on the all-night classics channel.
How’s that for parental guidance?

Now I was awake, and Burt Lancaster had long
since been plugged by William Conrad, and I hoped Kip was sleeping
soundly and Cindy was sleeping alone.

I lay there a moment,
wondering why I had awakened. No indigestion, despite putting away
three plates of Jo Jo’s
picadillo
. Cooking was not a skill
passed down from her mother. Jo Jo dried out the ground beef, and
the raisins were as moist as BBs. The flan was fine. It came from a
local bakery.

And then I remembered why I woke up. The
groan of the pine floor planks did all the remembering for me.

Someone was in the house, someone besides
the sleeping woman and me.

In the depths of sleep, I had heard a noise,
and there it was again. Or was it? Old houses are full of sounds.
Pipes clang, walls moan, floors . . .

Creak.

Again, the sound. It seemed louder, or was
it my imagination?

I swung out of bed, my bare feet touching
the cool floor. The rest of me was bare, too, and it did not
inspire the fighting parts—arms and legs, hands and feet—to know
that another part of me was exposed to the air, useless and
vulnerable. I tried to take a step without making a sound, but it
didn’t work. The floor gave under my feet, too, with what sounded
to me like a wail, but was probably no louder than a yawn.

I stopped and listened again.

Silence.

Except for me. My breathing chugged like a
locomotive. My heart was running a marathon.

I tiptoed toward the closed bedroom door. No
light shone from beneath it. The night had cleared, and moonlight
streamed in from outside the window, casting my shadow across the
floor and up the door. I took another step toward the door, heard a
sound from the other side . . .

I spun backward.

Not of my own accord. The door had opened
with a rush, catching me across the shoulder, surprising me,
bouncing me, hop-skip-lurch toward the window. My knee sideswiped
the dresser, and when I was off-balance, teetering like a drunk, an
anvil caught me on the side of the head, just above the right ear.
Okay, so it wasn’t an anvil, but a fist that felt like iron, and it
dropped me to the floor.

I yelled something unintelligible, and Jo Jo
woke up screaming, and then I tried to get to my feet, but a knee
came up and just missed my dimpled chin and caught me on the
shoulder. It did no damage, but set me down again.

I came off the floor, adrenaline flowing.
Before I could get off a punch, he threw a looping left hook. I
blocked it with my right forearm, and he came at me with a right.
Now I was in the defensive position of the double forearm block,
sort of like Floyd Patterson’s peek-a-boo defense. His punches kept
coming, landing like concrete blocks on my triceps and forearms,
and so far, I hadn’t even swung.

I backed up a step and tossed a jab. So did
he, and his reach exceeded mine. He peppered my face with two more
stinging straight lefts. I wanted to get a clear shot at him, but
unlike almost any brawl I’d ever been in, he was bigger and
stronger, and for all I knew, could beat me in the forty-yard
dash.

I feinted with the left, came across the top
with a right and hit him on the side of the nose. I heard cartilage
splinter, and I was showered with blood. His eyes would be closed
and watering now, so I came in close, tucked my head into his
chest, and shot upward, butting him under the chin. I heard a snap
and hoped I broke his jaw. He grunted and gagged.

I took a step back and went for his chin
again, this time with a long left hook. I had a lot of hip behind
it, but I was too slow. Story of my life.

He stepped to his left and hit me squarely
in the solar plexus with a short right I never saw. I doubled over
and fell to the floor, gasping for breath that wouldn’t come. I
dipped a shoulder and rolled into him just as he lifted a foot to
kick me. The foot was encased in pointed burgundy cowboy boots that
shimmered in the moonlight. The toe skimmed the top of my skull,
and the heel slammed me in the forehead. Still, the weight of my
body pinned his other foot to the floor. I kept rolling, trying to
hyperextend his knee and tear his anterior cruciate ligaments into
strands of spaghetti. It would have worked, too, if he hadn’t had
the legs of an ox.

I weigh two hundred twenty-two pounds, and I
didn’t budge him. This left me at his feet. He locked his hands and
brought them down hard on the back of my neck, and I saw the Milky
Way and Orion, with Betelgeuse particularly bright. I reached into
the dazzling light to fight my way into the next galaxy, but just
floated for a while. I tried to grab him behind one knee and buckle
his leg, but I couldn’t have squeezed the breath out of a
kitten.

I heard Jo Jo
screaming.
¿
Qué
demonios haces aquí? Vete ahora mismo!
”
She came
off the bed at him, but he lifted her effortlessly and tossed her
across the room.

I was on my knees, now, vaguely aware of a
voice above me and warm blood dripping onto me. “Where is he?”

I was dazed and didn’t get it. “Who he?”

He grabbed me by the hair and pulled my head
back. “Where’s Baroso? Where’s the little son of a bitch?”

“
I don’t know. Hurt, dead,
I don’t know.”

He yanked harder on my hair. “The two of you
screwed me good, didn’t you, lawyer?”

“
I don’t know what you’re
talking about.”

He dropped my head and called out,
“Josefina, where’s that low-life brother of yours?”

She was huddled on the bed, crying. “I don’t
know. Leave us alone.” She gathered herself up and threw a pillow
at him. It did about as much good as my left jabs. I was on all
fours now, trying to get up, expecting another blow, but it didn’t
come. From above me, a booming voice: “Stay out of my affairs,
lawyer! Stay out of my affairs, or you’re a dead man. Do you
understand?”

I must not have, because he lifted up a foot
and stomped my right hand. I heard the knuckles fracture—the sound
of a cue ball on a break—long before I felt the pain.

Chapter 12

A Bumpy Night

Kip watched in silent fascination as Doc
Charlie Riggs mixed water with plaster for the cast.

“
Does it hurt much?” Kip
asked, gently touching my swollen hand.

“
Only when I play ‘Dueling
Banjos.’

“
Out of the way, Kip,”
Charlie advised, approaching with a strip of gauze soaked in
dripping plaster, some of which had become affixed to his bushy
beard. I was sprawled on the sofa in the pit—not a conversation
pit, just a pit—of my living room, my arm slung onto the sailboard
coffee table.

“
You ever do this before?”
I asked the doc, who was leaning over me, squinting through his
lopsided eyeglasses.

He harrumphed. “You’ll be my first patient
who lived.”

“
Don’t make promises you
can’t keep.”

Kip leaned close as Charlie began wrapping
my hand. “What’s AMAL YNOT?” the kid asked.

I peered at the back of my hand through a
nearly closed eye. The hand disappeared under the wet gauze. “The
lasting impression of a Tony Lama boot, size sixteen, quadruple
E.”

“
Bummer,” Kip said. “The
dude went ballistic, huh?” He ran a finger over bruises the color
of ripe eggplants on my bare arms.

“
Third and fourth
metacarpals fractured, ligaments stretched, but not torn,” Charlie
Riggs announced. “Tylenol with codeine for the pain.” He studied me
a moment. “How do you feel?”

“
Like I was blindsided by a
Mack truck. Next time I run into that cowboy, I’m going to tear his
heart out.”

Charlie gave my hand a gentle squeeze and a
jolt of electricity shot up my arm. “Not for a long time, my
friend.”

Charlie poked around for a while, shining a
light in my eyes to check pupil dilation, taking my blood pressure,
pinching and poking this part and that. When he was done, Kip
nudged me and whispered, “You didn’t thank the doc.”

He was right. I was beginning to take my
friend for granted, another of my failings, right up there with my
inability to ward off bedroom attackers. My self-esteem was taking
a beating, along with my body. “Thanks, Charlie. You’re always
there for me, and sometimes I don’t show my appreciation.”