From A Dead Sleep Page 24
Moretti laughs under his thick mustache when my eyes widen, thinking I’m reacting to Tony’s words. He hasn’t a clue what she just told me. Arianna’s lips twist into a seductive smirk, and I’m forced to look away to avoid turning red.
Alvar raises the partnering walkie-talkie to his mouth, with the muzzle of the rifle in his other hand lowered toward the dirt. He broadcasts a message back to Tony, turning his back to us first so I’m not sure what he’s saying. From across the narrow, open alley in front of us, Tony, with a cigarette dangling from his mouth, disappears behind a bordering tree. He retrieves what looks to be a long, broken-off tree branch. It doesn’t look completely dead like the hundred other ones that litter the ground around us. It’s got some green on it and is rather flexible, bent into the shape of a cane. Tied to the tip of the cane is a short piece of rope or twine that is attached at its bottom to a dangling object that has some weight to it—weight that is the cause of the bend in the branch. At first glance, it looks to me like a child’s stuffed animal. When it begins wildly flapping around in the air, I realize it’s no toy. It’s a wild rabbit, scared out of its mind.
“Oh, you gotta be kidding me,” I see Moretti mouth with a half-smile draped across his face. “Who are you now? Elmer fucking Fudd?” He snorts in captivation.
Arianna’s not amused, but Tony sure is. He’s dancing around like an idiot teenager while holding the branch up in the air as a trophy, like a fisherman who’s just caught the big one. He then wedges the base of the branch between two of the relatively flat rocks that played table to the beer bottles. The branch holds firm and vertically in place as the rabbit squirms and kicks, to no avail. Tony skips out of the line of fire.
Alvar gets off on this stuff—tormenting the helpless. At least it’s just a rabbit today. Lord only knows how he managed to trap it alive in the first place.
He’s hunched forward now, sizing up his new target. From behind, his pearly hair above his broad, tall shoulders makes him look like a silverback gorilla who’s envisioning himself devouring a banana. To everyone’s surprise, he lets the rifle drop from his hand to the ground. We all exchange glances, wondering what theatrics are in store for us. He twists his shoulders parallel to the direction of the struggling animal. He then slowly raises his arm closest to his prey. He holds it there, outstretched to its extent, and he looks like a magician ready to will something to appear in front of him. He holds perfectly still in the position and seconds that seem like minutes go by. Arianna doesn’t bother to watch, completely agnostic to the display. But she jumps when Alvar’s elbow snaps and gray mist appears in front of him. I can tell by the others’ reactions as well that a sharp noise just discharged.
I poke my head up over Alvar’s shoulder and see Tony again bouncing around like an imbecile, now pointing to the bloodied, lifeless corpse of the rabbit. When Alvar turns back to us to take a bow for his performance, I spot a small, toy-like gun poking its muzzle out from under his jacket sleeve. Frank snickers at the sight of it and asks to take a closer look at the weapon, but Alvar shakes his head in rejection. The magician’s not revealing how his trick was pulled off. This irritates Frank, who swats his own hand in the air and starts walking back toward the house in protest, much to Alvar’s toothy delight.
Tony comes sprinting in from his stage with his cigarette pinched between two of his fingers, trying to latch onto Alvar’s glory like a pilot fish swimming under the belly of a shark, eager for scraps. No one pays him any mind, even with his trademark dopey, attention-begging grin plastered on his face. With his dark hair spiked out in front of him and his oily complexion, he looks more like he could be Moretti’s teenage son than one of his paid flunkies. He’s wearing a dark gray, short-sleeved dress shirt with his bolo tie in an apparent attempt to fit in among the other Colorado ranch hands in town. He probably bought it wherever Alvar bought his boots.
Moretti slaps Alvar on the shoulder, thanking him for the entertainment, and tells him something about an “appetizer for tonight.” He holds Alvar’s stare, then the two men exchange mischievous grins as if an inside joke had just been recollected.
Moretti then turns to me and says with a laugh, “You’re not gonna get scared and lonely by yourself tonight, are you Kimble? I hear there are bears up here!”
“No, sir, I think I’ll be just fine,” I answer quickly before lending him the assured grin he’s expecting.
“Good. I’ll try not to feel too guilty eating steak and drinking wine in town while you’ve got your head stuck in the contracts.”
The counterfeit grin remains on my face. “Have a good time tonight,” I reply, fighting back the urge to tell him to go fuck himself.
Moretti raises his hand and drags his index finger toward the house, motioning us to follow.
“I’m going to take a little walk around, if you don’t mind,” I say. “Catch a few more minutes of that mountain air before I bury my head in paper.”
He nods his head and leads the rest of the group back, jubilantly shouting something up toward the sky like a war cry. His lackeys laugh like hyenas in response. As they walk away, I leer at Arianna’s legs. Her chiseled calves, preserved from her early years as a trained gymnast and countless hours on the StairMaster, stand above her black, stiletto heels. They’re never easy to ignore. I imagine them wrapped around me like they were three days ago. She steals a glance back to me and flashes a wink in my direction. It’s amazing that she can walk through the forest in those shoes, but I’m always in amazement of the things she can do with her body.
I take a gander out at the thick forest to the west. The large, imposing army of pine trees with peeling bark on their trunks seems to go on forever among their dead and rotted ancestors lying along the battlefield.
It’s good to be outside for a change. I was beginning to think that the closest I’d get to the mountains on this trip was the scenic views I’d grab from inside the car or behind the windows of buildings. With my hands in my pockets, I meander along a little aimlessly and can’t resist the temptation to step on pinecones and feel them crunch beneath the soles of my shoes like I used to do often as a child. The forests in Kentucky never had such a wide assortment of pines, though. What used to be a form of amusement is right now more of a stress reliever than anything else.
Tomorrow, maybe Sunday if there’s another holdup, there’ll be white sand beneath my feet as I walk alongside the lake with Lisa and uncomfortably sputter out the words I’ve been working on for weeks. Most would think it’s one hell of a sick plan to tell your wife “it’s over” in the midst of a presumed romantic vacation. They’d be right. Still, I feel like I at least owe her one last trip up to the cottage before I end it. She loves it there. Besides, I need Moretti and this life out of my mind for a few days. No distractions.
This trip’s already taken a day longer than expected due to a last-minute renegotiation over the Colorado deal. It’s just about done now. I’ll get the contract reviewed tonight and everything will be signed first thing in the morning. The Timberland Hotel and Casino— it’s got a nice ring to it.
A couple of scurrying brown critters weave in and out of a family of large, rounded rocks as I make my way up a modest slope. Either squirrels or chipmunks. I’m not sure which. I think I used to be able to tell the difference.
I’m sure I look a bit ridiculous, hiking out here along the rugged terrain in a pair of Oxfords and pleated pants, but besides the crew, no one’s around for miles. I need a little bit of this to clear my head. I won’t be out here long.
The sun’s already beginning to dip below the treetops. I find myself longing to hold onto its brilliance for just a few more minutes, so I climb to the top of a boulder and stand on my toes to embrace its fading warmth on my face. When I can no longer see it but only its influence on the bright, crisp outlines of churning clouds hovering above, I hop down. The dimness reads as another closing chapter in a series of novels, with the promise of a new book beginning sometime in the near future.
I’ve never been much of a history buff, but the solitude that surrounds me in the forest makes me think of the journeys of the pioneers that once traveled through here, unsure of what they’d find in these mountains but fearlessly carving their way toward a better life nonetheless. I wish I had their courage, like I did the first time I started anew in a world unaware of my past. This time will be different. This time, I’ll have to go to great lengths to assure my past won’t come looking for me.
The shape of a heart carved with a knife into the side of one of the larger trees reminds me that I’m no pioneer. The wording spelled out inside it reads Leslie and Jaime. I wonder which one is the guy and which one is the girl, and if either is related to Moretti’s new business partner.
If you’re going to have hundreds of acres in your name, it might as well be out here. In addition to the casino, Moretti’s partner owns a couple of residential properties in the area and was generous enough to let us stay at one. Three cheers for the man with the comb-over worse than Donald Trump’s. After one of the meetings, he mentioned something to Frank about a river marking the western boundary of this property. It looked like he called it the Blue River, but I might have been mistaken. I’ll just assume that if I come upon water, I’ve reached the end of the line. I probably won’t even get that far. It’s getting dark.
After a few minutes of trouncing along rocks, occasional animal droppings, and splotches of wild grass that snag my socks with burry-stickers, I come upon what looks like the bottom portion of an old chimney sticking less than six inches up from the ground. There are four walls of gray, stone bricks formed in the shape of a square. Their color and texture nearly let them blend in with the natural surroundings. Each wall is somewhere between four and five feet in width. It looks to have been constructed a long time ago, as attested by the crotchety wooden planks that cover the opening at the center.
Despite its resemblance, I’m certain it was never part of a chimney. When I put the weight of my foot down on one of the planks, I sense some depth below it. My curiosity gets the better of me and I find myself on my knees, leaning forward with my inverted head acting as a periscope while I peer down through an open divot where a knot in one of the planks used to reside. I smell water, and I’m sure I see a sliver of reflection from what little light is creeping over the sloped horizon to the west. No sooner do I realize that I’m kneeling above an old water well does the plank I’m resting my arms across crack in half. I only fall about shoulder deep before the other planks fork my body and halt my momentum, but that doesn’t stop me from nearly having a heart attack from the short drop. I pull my arm out and check it for cuts but find only minor scrapes.
The well is deep enough that I can’t find the bottom. The reflection I’d seen was from some rainwater trapped in a small pocket of concrete along the wall. Long, thick mazes of spider webs line the shaft that I sense was abandoned and boarded up decades ago. I take the evening’s drama as a sign to head back and get to work, but not before I toss a couple of large limbs over the lair of the well. I doubt the area gets any hikers, being that it’s on private property, but maybe I’ll spare a mountain lion or something from falling to its death.
The others have already left by the time I reach the house. Both cars are gone from in front of the cobblestone garage that serves as a walkout basement below the main floor. I muse over the celebratory havoc Moretti and his entourage will wreak tonight among the locals and tourists. Bottles emptied into bottomless glasses. Live up the good life while you can, Moretti. Once your prize possession is gone, you might learn a long-deserved lesson in humility.
It surprises me that Alvar went along. He doesn’t do well in social situations, and it’s not like Moretti to bring him along unless his expertise is needed.
I smell some moisture in the air and I wonder if I might be in for a bit of a storm as I marvel again at the unique style of the custom home. It looks like a rustic lodge with dark-stained wood and three large gables in the formation of a pyramid across its face. Under the sloped roofs of the bottom two are sprawling windows and a walkout porch that joins at the top of the short flight of steps leading to the front door. I guess it’s around 4,000 square feet of modern luxury, and probably worth somewhere around two or three million. Not bad at all.
I’m relieved when I find that the side door to the garage was left unlocked. I didn’t even think to ask Moretti for a key before he left and my pulse skipped a beat when the knob along the front door wouldn’t budge. I peel off my shoes once I enter onto the brilliantly lit hardwood floor of the kitchen and pull seed barbs from my socks. I retreat to the office at the back of the house where I’ve been doing most of my work. It’s largely bare, other than a good-sized oak desk with a curved metal lamp on top and a couple of tall bookcases lined with more bookends and figurines than actual books. The room doesn’t seem to get a lot of use. I pore through the papers stacked on the desk.
An hour later, I’m rubbing my strained eyes and notice beads of water crawling along the window beside me. When I tilt forward in my chair in the dim room and twist open the shutters, I see that the sky has gone dark and it’s beginning to sprinkle outside. I’m taken aghast by the sudden, streaking flashes of light from above that accompanies the shower. I’ve heard about how quickly Colorado weather can change and now I’m experiencing it firsthand. Minutes go by and the rain doesn’t pick up all that much, but the lightning is a different story. It dresses up the night sky like a lattice of Christmas lights blinking randomly but in continuous succession. I find myself mesmerized by its brilliance.
When I scoot myself back to the front of the desk, I steal a departing glance out through the window and notice a reflection in the glass beyond the glare from the lamp. It’s in the shape of a large man, standing in the hallway behind me and remaining perfectly still.
Chapter 33
“Jesus, Alvar!” I yelp after spinning in my chair.
My heart pummels inside my chest while I glare at him in abashment. There’s no grin on his face, which isn’t typical for him just having spooked me. That kind of thing usually gives him a rise. His shoulders are damp from the splatter of rain and his hair’s flat to his head. He’s breathing harder than usual and he looks almost strung out, like he’s just returned from a late night out on The Strip. He’s saying something but the hall light behind him leaves me with little more visibility than a silhouette. Unable to read his lips, I motion for him to turn on the overhead light. He does. Though it’s a single bulb and my view of him hasn’t been significantly enhanced, I make out what he says.
“I’m going to be downstairs for a while. I don’t want to be bothered.”
I shrug my shoulders and say, “Okay,” letting him know that I couldn’t care less. I had no plans of even leaving the room until I finished the paperwork. I ask him if everyone else is already back as well and he tells me, expressionless, that it’s just him. He stands there an extra few seconds after I turn my head back to the books. I sense him glaring at me and the awkwardness of it gives me a chill. It’s as if he’s assessing my reaction to his request, for which the paranoia is lost on me. He disappears behind the doorframe, but I can see his shadow cast along the floor in the hallway and I know he hasn’t left.
My body stiffens with uneasiness that nags me with the feeling that something is very wrong. I extraneously shuffle through the pile of papers on the desk in an attempt to diffuse any lingering sense of his unusual behavior. A moment later, the shadow disappears and I let myself breathe. I shake my head and get back to work, wondering if he’s headed down there to snort some coke.
The lightning is rising in intensity outside, as is the wind that I feel pressing against the back of the house. When the floor beneath me rattles, I can only imagine the wicked crack of thunder that just whipped down from the angry sky. After fifteen minutes or so, there’s a flash that gleams in through the slits in the wooden shutters so brightly that the entire room is aglow. Seconds later, all lights
go out and I’m left in the dark. I wait for them to flicker back on but they don’t. I collapse back in my chair, frustrated by the distraction. Visibility only comes in spurts when dazzle from the spectacle outside imposes itself. Time rolls by slowly and out of boredom, I eventually feel my way along the walls of hallways until I reach the living room where a large arched window overlooks the Continental Divide. With my thumbs hooked in the pockets of my pants, I observe Mother Nature’s extravaganza perform its way through the valley below, illuminating the forest range and humbling the vast line of mountains that towers above it.
I’m surprised by a pair of headlights that is hastily revealed along the stone driveway below. It’s Alvar’s Buick, already rolling quickly in reverse. He reaches the private dirt road where he flips the car at a wicked angle, sending light gravel into the air before he winds up facing the opposite direction. His wheels spin and in no time, he’s tearing down through the valley like a Roman chariot pulled by wildly whipped horses.
“What in the hell is he doing?” I say out loud, just moments before his taillights disappear around a bend.
I find a deep, comfortable couch and I settle into it to watch more of the lightning show. No more than ten minutes drag by before I feel a pulse of life through the walls of the room. Decorative lamps and some overheads flare up. The ceiling fan above begins to rotate. I unravel my interlaced fingers from behind my head and begrudgingly rise to my feet. I return to the office to find that the dim light hung from the ceiling is now on but the desk lamp is not. I flick its switch at the base a few times and determine that it didn’t survive the surge. Great. My work is laid out in purposeful piles along the desk so I don’t want to relocate, but I definitely need more light.
I check a couple of hall closets and some cupboards in the kitchen—places one would expect to find a replacement bulb, but I find none. I do find a cold bottle of ginger ale in the fridge though, and I remove the cap and take a swig before I head down the staircase and into the basement. It’s the first time I’ve been down here, and I’m surprised to find that the area is small and unfinished—a stark contrast from the luxurious furnishings in the rooms above. It makes me wonder what Alvar was doing down here before he took off like a dinner bell had been rung. I check the furnace room and find nothing but dusty paint cans, extra sheets of drywall leaning up against the walls, and cobwebs. Whatever he was doing, it wasn’t cleaning.