The Triggerman Dance

"The plot's thickened, Bun-boy. I found this little tape recorder in his room, remember? Listened to the tape that was in it last night, after you and Mr. Holt went up to see the sights in Little Saigon. Snake was just using it for an activity log—what you did each day while we were gone. He was watching you. You know, Snakey wasn't a literary giant like you. But he was a good watcher and he loved to talk, though, so he just used the tape. Some awfully revealing notes on that tape, about you and Valerie. Quite a picnic on the island, wasn't it? Meaningful, touching and all that. How'd you keep the sand from sticking to your pecker tracks? Anyway, he's still up the second morning, watching you leave the main house just before sunrise. What a night. Then at 6:20—he says on the tape—you set out around the lake with your dogs, heading up into the hills. Says—this is right on the tape again—he couldn't figure out how anybody could have so much energy after being up all night drinking and necking, so he's going to follow, have a look. Do his job. That was the last thing he had to say to anybody, as far as I can tell. So, where'd you go that morning?"

"I thought you just told me."

"How far up the hills did you walk that morning?"

John went to the refrigerator. "Beer, Lane?"

"No thanks. So, how far up?"

John returned to the living room with a cold beer. He sat in a leather chair with his back to the picture window overlooking Liberty Lake. He popped the can and drank.

"Lane, beat it. I'm done."

"Come on, John, humor me. Play along. You play along, I won't tell Mr. Holt about touching his daughter."

"I told him anyway."

"Made a quick father figure out of him, didn't you? I loved the Patrick-act for the Missus, by the way. I can see Holt and Carolyn falling for it, but not Valerie. Mister and Missus, they're so fucked up after Patrick they'd believe anything. She's got a bullet in the brain, but I swear some of it chipped off and got into Mr. Holt, too. Anyway, you told him you touched his kid. Good for you. Humor me anyway. Just cooperate for a minute or two. Show me how futile it would be to go to Mr. Holt and tell him we should bounce your ass off Liberty Ridge. He listens to me, you know. I keep him alive."

John felt tired and surprised. He was not expecting to be playing this game on this field now. But he recognized that he needed to play. Anything on earth was worth forstalling now, until noon Sunday.

"I went a ways up the hill, Fargo."

"To the fence?"

"What fence."

"Perimeter, chain-link, electrically charged."

"No, then."

"Why?"

"Exercise. I couldn't have slept. I knew that, so I took a walk with the dogs. It's an old habit."

"When did you first see Snakey?"

"I didn't."

"You're not observant, are you?"

"Gee, Lane. I guess not."

"Then what happened to him, Bun-boy? He just fell in a hole up on the hillside and we haven't found him yet?"

John shrugged. "I guess. I don't care what happened to him."

"Well he didn't, and you should. I followed his trail and there was no Snakey, no hole. Wasn't very hard, either, because the brush is dense and he was paralleling the path you used. You do take paths on these morning walks, rather than blazing fresh trails as the sun comes up, right?"

"Right." The tree, he thought. The gun. The hole. The box of toys.

"The tracks up on the trail are from your Redwings in the closet up there. Plus, Snakey wore these ugly athletic shoes with the wavy pattern on the bottom. I remember because I told him to get some decent hiking boots if he was going to pay good money anyway. So, there was the Snake's shoe pattern, going the same direction as your path."

John looked at Fargo with all the weary patience he could feign. "Next time you drag out my Redwings, put a little mink oil on them, will you?"

"Two sets of tracks, heading up the same way. One was yours, the other Snakey's. Nobody's seen him since."

"Wow, this drama's so thick you could cut it with a knife. I surrender. Where'd he go, Lane?"

Fargo paced the living room once, his black combat boots thumping soft against the wood floor. "I don't know yet."

"Yet."

"I made it to the property line, mostly by following Snakey's trail. Tracks led me almost to the fence—twenty, thirty yards shy, maybe. And there, they mixed with yours. Yours were everywhere. His were, too. A young oak tree. The fence. Two sets of prints. I sat down on a log and tried to figure it. Snakey could have gone over the fence if the electricity wasn't on, though that's a helluva lot harder than just driving his Toyota away. He could have tunneled under the fence, then back-filled the hole. Not likely. He could have been lifted headfirst by God's thumb and index finger, straight up out of there and into heaven. Naw, not Snakey, he was too much of a sinner for that."

John felt a low voltage buzz through his bones. Fargo missed it, he thought. He must have missed the hole. If he had found the hole I'd be a dead informant right now.

"Maybe he did something really wild, like walked back down," he said.