Still, he barred the door, stationed guns around the room, and tried to close his eyes.
It was no use.
So he got up, showered, conditioned his beard, put his long hair into a ponytail, and stared out the window, drinking coffee while planning how to kill Kirk Biglione, if it came to that.
The last time he was in the desert, he and Jeff Hopper were searching for Sal Cupertine. While Jeff humped through Las Vegas, Matthew went door to door between Palm Springs and Indio, stopping anywhere that had a contract with Kochel Meats, the company in southern Illinois that aided in Sal’s escape, shoving him in the back of a truck to get him out of town. In fact, it was just a few miles from here, at the Royal Californian motel, where he found out Jeff Hopper was missing. Of course, that wasn’t true, Matthew knew now. Jeff was dead. Sal Cupertine killed him. And now Matthew was back, doing Sal’s bidding in hopes of clearing his own damn name. It was senseless.
There had to be a way to break this cycle. He would find Sal’s wife and kid. He’d deliver Sal to them. He’d bring down The Family and the Native Mob. Cupertine would surely go state’s and get protective custody, because he wasn’t the decision maker, he was just the tool, and the government was predictable in how they dealt with tools. And then, maybe five years from now, maybe ten, maybe fifty, Sal Cupertine would be walking down a street somewhere in Arizona or South Dakota or Rhode Island and a sniper would take him out from fifteen hundred yards away. And Matthew would pack up his gun, toss it into a river; the scales would be even, Hopper could rest in peace, Matthew’s sister could rest in peace. All the fucking bad guys would lose.
He made another pot of coffee, watched the shadows stretch across the desert, then called Kirk Biglione from his burner, told him where to meet, gave him an hour, and hung up.
THE NORTH SHORE BEACH AND YACHT CLUB WAS ONLY A FEW MILES, AS THE pelicans and seagulls flew, from where Gold Mountain Mining was set to begin looking for lithium just south of Salton City, but it was a good four decades in the past. It opened in 1959 as part of the Salton Sea’s original business grift, gangsters like Ray Ryan and Chicago Outfit hitters developing a toxic pit with the idea of turning it into an inland riviera, the Beach and Yacht Club where the Rat Pack could perform, where Desi Arnaz could sip scotch at sunset, where poker games could go all night, until it all went south a few years later.
Today, though, the club was a living wreck sticking out over a two-foot-deep expanse of water, desert where the sea used to be. Over the years, the Salton Sea had receded so dramatically that the marina was now three hundred yards from water deep enough for boating, leaving it useless. The modern design of the club had persisted through time, but the garish yellows and bright blues of the original paint job were long gone, leaving the building dull.
Biglione was already there, sitting at a table on the dilapidated patio of the club, smoking a cigarette, like he was Dean Martin, reincarnated. Matthew thought that if he got out of this mess in one piece, maybe he, too, could graduate to some meaningless corporate security job that paid well and gave him some peace.
“Nice joint,” he said when Matthew got out of his car. “There’s not even a place to piss.”
Matthew said, “Stand up, lift your shirt up, and do a turn for me.”
“You think I’m wired?”
“Empty out your pockets, too,” Matthew said. “I don’t want you making any calls while we’re out here.”
“Let me know when you see a cell phone tower,” Biglione said, but he did as he’d been asked. “How about you do the same?”
“I didn’t ask you to dump the gun you got on your ankle,” Matthew said. “And I’m not gonna dump the one I got on my belt or the one on my ankle, so let’s just call it even. Pretty sure I’m not wired up, seeing as I’m a wanted man.”
“Fair enough.” Biglione tucked his pockets back into his pants, sat down.
Matthew made his way up the stairs to the patio, made sure there wasn’t a strike team hiding inside, not like there was anywhere they could have hidden their cars, since there was nothing but water and desert for miles around. He looked into the sky, made sure there wasn’t an Apache descending from the clouds, but only saw birds. Out on the water, he could make out a few fishing boats, a couple people on Jet Skis doing lazy figure eights, not much more.
Biglione held a thin manilla envelope. “I got what I could,” he said and pushed it across the table. Matthew dumped the contents out. There was a faxed photo of a one-story cinder block house—white with blue trim—with a carport, a black Ford Explorer inside. There was a semicircular driveway made of crushed shells in front of the house, a mature oak tree sitting in the middle of a well-tended lawn. Second faxed photo showed the rear of the house from above, which was an open field leading to a canal, which fed into a bell-shaped lake. There was a double-wide trailer as well, pushed off to the southern portion of the field. The faxed photo was fuzzy, but the trailer looked new. Like where they’d put a Marshal or FBI team.
“Where’s this?” Matthew asked.
“Land O’Lakes, Florida,” Biglione said. “Thirty miles north of Tampa.”
Made sense. Tampa field office had a significant organized crime division, plus community access to keep a single mother and child as comfortable as possible. The house location made sense, too, backing up to a lake. No one was going to surprise them. One less direction mom and kid could run if they decided to do that, too.
“You get the names they’re living under?” The picture of the house had a street number—837—but not a street sign. It would take some work, but that was fine. He had nothing but time.
“Be happy with what you have,” Biglione said. “Wasn’t cheap.” A flock of egrets flew above them, landed on the shoreline. Must have been forty of them. White as snow.
“Good you still got people you can pay off,” Matthew said. He slipped the photos back into the manilla envelope. “What can I do for you?”
“Keep your word,” Biglione said.
“I find Jennifer Cupertine at this house,” Matthew said, “I’ll keep my end. She’s not there, I’m coming back.” He stood up. Looked out to the Sea. The Jet Skis he saw earlier were speeding toward the marina now, racing. It looked like fun.
“I know,” Biglione said.
“Wait here for twenty minutes,” Matthew said. “Can’t have you following me to my hotel.”
“I’m just gonna enjoy the view.”
Matthew began to back away from Biglione. He trusted him, kind of, but not so much he’d give him the back of his head. He was down the stairs and just a few feet from his car when the roar of an engine came from the Sea. Matthew saw two men on Jet Skis skidding into the marina. Did they realize how shallow it was? They disappeared for a moment behind the flock of egrets, which were spooked and taking flight, a wall of white filling Matthew’s vision. He saw Biglione reach for his ankle, realized the setup, the men from the Jet Skis sprinting up the beach toward him, guns out. Matthew ducked low, came up with guns in both hands, firing at Biglione, firing out toward the mass of white, taking one in the leg, the shoulder, the other leg, the stomach, the back, Matthew on his side now.
I should have brought backup, Matthew thought, waited for another bullet to hit him. I should have brought the fucking Rain Man.
But nothing happened.
Matthew tried to sit up, tried to run, tried to shoot his guns, which he could see at the end of his hands, but for some reason the messages weren’t going through.
He saw two sets of legs moving toward him from the beach. Soon, another pair of legs joined them. A man knelt beside him, looked into his eyes.
“Can you speak?” Peaches asked.
Matthew tried to say, Yeah, motherfucker; I’ll be waiting for you wherever you end up.
“He’s past that, I think,” Biglione said.
“You want me to finish him?” the second man asked. He was younger than the other, smaller, had on a backpack.
Peaches put up a hand.
“I want you to know that when my nephew Mike here killed your sister,” Peaches said, “she called to you. Over and over again. With each finger Mike cut off, she called to you. When he dug her eyes from her head, she called to you. Your name was the last thing she said when he pulled her tongue from her mouth and shoved it down her throat. And you never showed up. You never even looked for her. You spent all that time looking for Sal Cupertine and not one minute looking for your sister.” Peaches grabbed Matthew’s jaw. Didn’t squeeze. No pain. Matthew thinking he was being very gentle. “I owe you,” Peaches continued. “What you did to Mr. Cupertine has allowed me to rise up in this organization and get rid of loose ends that have been dragging us down for decades. But there’s one thing I still don’t know: the location of Sal Cupertine.”