The Triggerman Dance

The stunt-packs of blood had gone off perfectly, assuaging Weinstein's second-biggest worry. They'd worked hard on the choreography, but he knew that a lucky, unanticipated move from Valerie could dislodge the wiring duct-taped to Sam's shoulder beneath the t-shirt and denim vest. They'd been thorough enough to use a half pint of Sam's own blood, on the off chance that a suspicious Holt, or, more likely, Lane Fargo, might try to run some lab work on what would surely splatter all over Valerie's body and clothes. Weinstein's greatest fear, though—that some genuine innocent bystander would come by and skew the whole delicate charade—never materialized. The Riverside County Sheriff was a worry, too. So Weinstein, Dumars and all four of their teammates had flooded the Indio Sheriff's Substation with calls just before noon. Posing as property owners, they reported hunters trespassing onto posted property many miles from Anza Valley—a common enough occurrence in many parts of the desert on any October Not a deputy was seen.

Watching through the binoculars while the sweat ran down his back, hearing the soundtrack projected wonderfully by John's transmitter, Weinstein had been anguished at how slowly the whole thing seemed to take place. But later when he checked the time it was almost exactly as they'd planned: one minute and thirty-three seconds from the bikers' surprise encore to their final departure. Josh had taken a deep breath as he watched the war party roar away, and noticed the high-pitched, anxious smell of his own body.

Weinstein could only hope that Mickey—the giant—and Sam would make it to John's trailer undelayed, open the propane valves and toss in the flare without interference from Tim, the groundskeeper at the High Desert Rod and Gun Club. If necessary, Mickey would engage the groundskeeper. But twenty minutes after he'd set the fire, Mickey called on the cellular phone—stashed in the toolbox of his Harley—to say that all had gone well. He reported that Tim had looked on from a few hundred yards away as the two bikers did their biker thing on John Menden's helpless domicile. The four men and three bikes had zoomed up the lowered ramp and into the back of a "State-to- State" moving trailer waiting at a turnout on Highway 371, which is where Mickey had placed the call.

Of course, the best laid plans didn't amount to much without luck, and luck was what Weinstein had been praying for ever since Norton had green-lighted him after lunch that afternoon in Santa Ana. They could lead Wayfarer to water, but they couldn't make him drink. And all John could do was save the day, be polite and a little recalcitrant, and use his native likeability to sway Wayfarer toward meaningful gestures. Josh had told John to "aw-shucks the sonofabitch to death."

An invitation to stay at the Lake Riverside Estates home would be the best they could reasonably hope for. If Holt went even this far, however, there was at least a small chance that John's generous refusal ("They'd find me here pretty easy, Mr. Holt—then we'd both be out of a home.") could lead to the ultimate goal: Liberty Ridge. It was the kind of common sense pessimism that would appeal to Vann Holt.

The backup plan, if Holt offered John no sanctuary whatsoever, was to let John appeal directly to Wayfarer—at some point—for work, shelter, perhaps a little start-up loan to get a new trailer. Burning down the trailer was John's idea, and Weinstein was impressed by his informant's sense of follow-through. Weinstein also saw that John was profoundly moved by the thought of losing the trailer, nasty little piece of aluminum that it was.

Things were out of Joshua's hands now, and luck was what he needed. He had always been a lucky man, except with Rebecca Harris, and, by extension, John Menden. Guiding the van from the feed and tack parking lot after the pickup and Land Rovers had caravanned away, Josh Weinstein could not deny the faint nausea he felt at so brazenly tempting the Fates.

But one hour later, after John's mock chase of his tormentors through the Anza Valley desert, Josh's nausea was banished by pure elation. Josh parked the van two houses away from Holt's Riverside Estates home, assuming that, after the fire, this would be the logical place for Holt and his party to take John. He watched as the two Land Rovers pulled into the wide, semi-circle of a driveway, and John's Ford lumbered up behind them. Weinstein's ears roared with blood.

"God, I'm good, he whispered to Sharon.

"Yes, I am."

"We're good. We're just too damn good, Sharon. We get done with this, they'll want us to run the whole country."

"You're really not worried about that radio on his belt?"

"He's a newspaper editor, and the only full-time reporter. He's always on call. If Wayfarer has an allergic reaction to a beeper at this point, we're sunk. But we're not sunk. What we are is damned good."