Writ of Execution (15 page)

“What’s out there?”

“I think just one guy.” Moving to the front window, she pushed a curtain aside. “The car’s gone.”

“Let me see.” It was gone, but maybe that was a ploy.

“I’ll go outside and check,” Jessie said.

“Wait for the police.”

“I can take him if he’s out there.”

She clamped her jaw. The skin on her arms, as smooth as marble, stretched to carry the weight of the rifle in her hands. Compact muscles rippled along her body as she moved, all the way to the straining blue veins of her hands. Kenny had never seen anyone so beautiful and dangerous-looking. He could have made her immortal in the City of Gold.

But now he wanted her real. Her real lips. Everything real. “You’re not a soldier anymore,” he said. “The police will come. All we have to do is sit tight.”

“He could’ve hurt Gabe.” But she sat down on the floor with him. She took Gabe and hugged him.

Kenny heard sirens.

13

NOON THE NEXT day. Nina waited at the gas station in Meyers, watching the traffic on the highway, radio blasting, wipers going fast against slaps of rain. Gray sky hung low and threatening overhead. After a few minutes, Kenny and Jessie arrived together in Jessie’s Honda.

“You drive a Bronco,” Kenny said as Nina put her key into the door lock. “Great truck. They don’t make ’em like that anymore.”

“They don’t make them, period,” Nina said. “I’m really hoping this one lasts a long, long time.” She had already totaled one Bronco and would hate to see this one undergo the same sad fate. “Listen, why don’t you two take a seat in here for a minute.”

They climbed into the seat beside her, Jessie in the middle. Nina turned the heat up slightly. Even in summer, Tahoe had sudden dips in temperature and the jarring cold made her want to shiver. “Now, what is this about you being attacked?”

Kenny started out with a wild and vague tale of someone trying to kill him in the Harrah’s parking lot. His story took a long time and included vivid details about his state of mind, his worries about physical fitness, and his pleasure at discovering that he could still run fast when he had to.

“Not like I’ll be trying out for the Olympics or anything, but it’s good to find out I’m in fighting trim.”

At this, Jessie laughed.

“Not funny,” he said.

“You’re right. It isn’t,” she said.

“You say it might be the Glock that Paul took with him the night of the jackpot,” Nina said carefully. “How sure are you about that?”

“It looked like my Glock.”

“But it could have been any nine-millimeter gun, really, couldn’t it?”

“Not really. The shape is distinctive.”

“But how do you know it’s your Glock? The missing Glock?”

“I don’t, but it’s a Glock, and someone up here has it, and from what I saw he likes hooded sweatshirts.”

“But how could a stranger get that gun?”

“In the casino,” Kenny said. “Just lift it out of Paul’s jacket. So anyway,” he continued, “I found out where Jessie was staying. . . .”

“How?” Nina and Jessie asked.

“I remembered her license plate number and hacked into the California DMV.”

“I thought that was supposed to be impossible.”

“It is. It must be getting on toward lunch. Got any snacks in here?”

“No,” Nina said. “Want to get lunch?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Don’t you ever stop eating?” Jessie said.

Kenny looked hurt.

Nina drove down a main drag until she could find a place that suited him, which turned out to be anywhere that served hamburgers.

They took a booth near a window and ordered food, which arrived promptly.

His mouth full, Kenny said, “Mmm. Spicy brown mustard. My favorite.”

“Finish your story,” Nina said, surreptitiously checking her watch. She had squeezed Jessie in, arranging to meet in Meyers on her way back from a rushed deposition down in Placerville. Meyers made sense for Jessie too, who had to drive all the way from Markleeville.

“Let me finish,” Jessie said. She had ordered salad, which she had already disposed of efficiently.

“Fine,” Kenny said, and Nina got the impression he wasn’t too happy to turn the storytelling over to Jessie but wasn’t about to cross her. “Be my guest.”

“Kenny showed up. Someone was out there trying to break into my place. So I broke out a rifle. Told the sucker I was armed and he heard it cock. He drove away and I fired one out the window to speed him on his way. The cops came and we made a report. One of the neighbors saw somebody in a hooded sweatshirt on my porch. That’s it,” she said, refreshingly succinct. “Kenny slept on the couch last night.”

Kenny wiped his face with a napkin, nodding his head.

“Do you have something you want to add to that?” Nina asked, not because she wished to open the floodgates again, but because something in his face told her he found Jessie’s story essentially uninformative.

Kenny looked at Jessie, who looked back at him. “No,” he said.

Nina didn’t believe him, but she could see he wasn’t going to talk. “You say it was a man? Did either of you get a clear look at the person?”

“I’m revising my previous statements. It could have been a female,” Kenny said, directing his eyes at Jessie, “easily.”

“Could have been,” Jessie agreed, “but it wasn’t.”

“How can you be sure?” Nina asked.

“Because the person shooting at my house was Atchison Potter, that’s why,” Jessie said. “He knew my place. He had just sent a process server there. I should have taken off earlier. That’s the reality.”

“Why would he try to kill Kenny?”

“I didn’t say he tried to kill Kenny.”

“Preposterous,” Kenny said, dipping a French fry into ketchup, “that there would be two such similar unrelated events in such close proximity, geographically and temporally, especially if you consider me and my gun as connecting threads.”

“Maybe he did go after Kenny,” Jessie said. “Maybe Kenny’s right and he found out about the marriage. I keep telling you, Mr. Potter’s not just mad at me. He’s out of his mind. He’d do anything to hurt me. The last time I saw him, he screamed—accused me—I’m beginning to understand there is no escaping him.”

“These are affiliated events, that I promise you,” Kenny said.

“There is another possibility,” Nina said. “Someone else who might have done this.”

“Who?” they asked in unison.

“Charlie Kemp. The Englishman who thinks it’s his jackpot.”

“How could he get my gun? Not when he was sitting next to me. Not when he pushed toward Jessie after the jackpot. Because Paul took it later, at your office.”

Nina told them about her conversation with Kemp. “But he never called,” she finished. “We need to involve the police.”

“We did involve the police. But we didn’t see enough of him to recognize him.”

“We could talk to them some more and provide some context, which I’ll bet you didn’t provide.”

“What’s the point?”

“Protection.”

“I’m leaving Markleeville anyway,” Jessie said.

“Me, too,” Kenny said. “I’m going somewhere.”

“Jessie,” Nina said, “you have a court hearing on Monday. You can’t go far. We talked about this. Potter’s lawyer has obtained a court order that you appear for the Examination of Judgment Debtor.”

“I know, I know. Will Potter be there?” She had asked this before. Her dread and the defiance she used to fight it were such disabling emotions that Nina decided to waffle. Potter had a right to be there, though he didn’t have a right to sit in on the examination.

“Mr. Riesner doesn’t seem to think so. Riesner gave me some excuse, said Mr. Potter isn’t feeling well. I don’t even know if he’s in California.”

“Do I have to go? What do I have to do? Can you prevent it?”

“I’m going to protest, but if I lose, you have to be there. Because of the judgment, Mr. Riesner has the right to ask you questions about your assets and liabilities. You have to bring your income tax returns.”

“That’ll be easy. Except—this time he can’t find out where I’m staying?”

“He will want to know that. You see, he doesn’t just have to take your word for it, that you rent for a certain amount of money, for instance. He can gather information from you that will allow him to make an independent inquiry about your finances.”

“Why does he get to do this?”

“Because, you see, the judgment—according to the law, unless and until I can change the situation, you owe this enormous sum of money to Mr. Potter based on this judgment. That’s why the legal papers you received called you a judgment debtor.”

Jessie’s shoulders slumped. She said, “Clever man.” “Monday morning,” Nina said. “Come to the office by eight o’clock, so I can prepare you. And please call on Friday so that I know you are all right. Both of you. Oh. Where will each of you be?”

Kenny looked uncertain. Jessie looked stumped. “I have to be pretty close,” she said. “But not findable. I don’t know.” They all sat there. Nina scratched her head.

“Well, I have a place about an hour and a half from here, and nobody knows it exists,” she said. “It’s a trailer out in the desert. A client gave it to me last year. I haven’t even recorded the deed yet. There is room for both of you for a few days.”

“Won’t it be hot?” Kenny asked.

“It can be at this time of year in the middle of the day, but we’re heading into a cool stretch, if today and the news are anything to go by. If it gets too hot, head into town. Go to the library in Minden or get an ice cream in Carson City.”

“Him too?” Jessie said.

“He’s in trouble, too,” Nina said. “But you come first. You’re my client. You decide.”

Jessie took a deep breath. “I’ll think about it.”

Kenny and Jessie waved as Nina pulled out.

“This trailer out in the desert she offered—it sounds kind of primitive.”

“Sure does,” Kenny said. The minute Nina described the desolate, isolated trailer she owned in the desert, he wanted to go there. He would be with Jessie.

“Remote,” Jessie said dubiously.

“You have a cell phone, remember. With a phone, you can be anywhere.”

“She said it isn’t totally reliable there.”

“We’ll be fine. Nobody will find us. She says there’s electricity. I can use my laptop.”

“If they do, I have the rifle. You know, this doesn’t necessarily mean we should stick together. I told you . . .” Her eyes were troubled.

He talked fast, hoping to change her thinking before her ideas got set in concrete. “I won’t be a pest. I won’t talk much and I won’t make a pass or anything, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Ha! You’d be so sorry.”

“I’ve got nowhere else to go. I need a place to run to as much as you. I’m not going back to Caesars.”

“Why not? I bet it’s nicer than some trailer.”

“That guy knows I was there. And it’s just for a week.

Nina said there was a bed in back and that the dining area makes into a bed. I’ll take that one. I’ll help protect you.”

“That’s a good one!” But his wheedling made her smile.

“I can help with Gabe. We’ll camp out. Barbecue.”

“You cook?”

“My family runs a restaurant.” He hoped his return smile looked as well-intentioned as he felt. “Pack the soy sauce along with the rifle, okay?”

“It’s not that far from Markleeville. I can get Gabe over there if I need someone to watch him. Aunt Anita just loves him.” She breathed deeply. “Okay. Let’s go. Just get back to the cabin, pick up Gabe at my aunt’s, and pick up your car. . . .”

“Why don’t you tell Nina about Gabe?” Kenny asked, climbing into Jessie’s Honda.

“Gabe’s none of her business. Yours either, for that matter. Don’t mention him to anyone if you want to keep those legs of yours.”

People were threatening him left and right these days. He supposed it was a symptom of the times, this tough talk and gunplay. He preferred his clean, well-ordered universe, made of pixels, light, and color. Harmless.

He rolled his window down. The summer squall had cleared and the weather had warmed up. He really loved feeling the heat and cold together, the blasting of the air conditioner, and the hot summer air outside. Things you didn’t get from a computer. The milky smell of Gabe’s breath . . . she would let him stay. He felt outrageously happy.

“I wish I could leave,” Jessie said. “I wish I could ignore the money and just go. We can go far away from Potter with that money. He’ll never need to know about Gabe.”

“It’s kind of sad, though.”

“Sad?”

“He’ll never know about his grandson. I mean, that would kill my dad, never knowing about his grandson.” A pang, as Kenny ignored the improbability of his father mourning a grandson he didn’t know he had, and thought about his family. They would be wondering where he was, wondering at his silence. Well, better that than reading in the morning paper about his brains speckling the bathroom at Prize’s.

“Don’t feel sorry for Potter. He doesn’t deserve it.”

Back in Markleeville, they made a quick stop at the cabin, packing supplies into both of their cars. “What’s it mean?” Kenny asked, lugging a final bag out of the kitchen. “The name on this house, Memdewee. Do you know?”

“Deer run,” she said. “It’s Washoe.”

“Appropriate. That’s what we’re doing, running like deer.”

“Kenny, you’re what my auntie would call an odd duck.”

“Where is the rest of your family?”

“Dead. Father and mother and younger brother dead in a car crash when I was six years old. Middle of winter, a logging truck on Spooner Pass. But I was real young. I hardly remember them. My Aunt Anita raised me. But I have a family of my own now. I have Gabe.”

He thought, but didn’t say, and you have me, too. He didn’t want her to know about that yet. She might make fun of him. She would probably leave him. She barely tolerated him as it was. Kenny had thought of a way to win her. He wasn’t good enough for her yet, but he could be.

He followed her to her aunt’s part of the house, but didn’t go inside while she collected Gabe and talked with her aunt. After stopping at the small general store in Markleeville, they caravaned back to Highway 88, made a right, and drove past the turnoff for the Washoe Indian Reservation and farther into Nevada. They traveled some distance north on 395, then turned onto a dirt road in the Carson Range west of Genoa and followed it for a long time, making more turns here and there.

They had been alone on the road for miles, under a hazy sky. They were not being followed. The desert wasn’t flat: they seemed to be on a gradual slope bearing toward a mountain range to the north. They wound between rocky bluffs and scrub. Some old rusting mining equipment lay dumped by the roadside. They were in prospecting country.

He followed the Honda Civic without any worries. Jessie would not let them get lost.

In the shadow of the mountain’s late afternoon light, as Kenny was watching the horizon, bumping along the sandy road, a green flash lit up the horizon. The sunset came after, magenta and gray, but that green—he had read about it in a book but never thought he would see it, some sort of rare visual effect of the sunset.