Lone Creek

55

We made sure Balcomb wasn't carrying any other weapons, then put him in the front seat of the ranch pickup truck that I'd driven here. Madbird took the rifle and he and Reuben sat behind us.

Balcomb kept his cool and put on quite a show.

"Hugh, I'm really sorry about what happened," he said. "I'm sure we can get past it."

So we were finally on a first-name basis. I didn't answer.

He made a play for Reuben's sympathy next, not realizing how misguided it was.

"Any news of Kirk?" he said. "I'm worried sick about him."

None of us spoke. He tried again.

"Reuben, I can't think of anything I've done to get on your bad side. Will you at least tell me that?"

"We'll get around to it, Wesley. Now, you got a chance to negotiate here. But I'm starting to get impatient."

I could almost hear the gears whirring in Balcomb's head for the next thirty seconds.

"You want diamonds?" he said. "All right, I'll get you diamonds. You're going to have to let me go for a few minutes."

"Wesley, I don't believe I've ever seen a man as sick as you," Reuben said, in a voice that could have broken stone. "You're one red hair short of dead, with your goddamned guts all over that dashboard in front of you."

The gears whirred again-not as long this time.

"Take that road," Balcomb said, indicating the gravel track that circled the outside of the compound's perimeter. I started the truck and turned onto it, headlights out.

Balcomb kept talking in his smooth, persuasive way. Some unfortunate things had happened, but they were over. He congratulated us on our shrewdness, laughed ruefully at himself for getting conned by Madbird, and intimated that he was taking us into his confidence-was prepared to pay us handsomely and even cut us in on a very lucrative setup. The unsubtle message was that we were all men of the world, conducting business-the catchall word to justify a million ways of fucking people over-and that we'd be fools not to join him.

The road continued on past the compound through the woods another quarter mile, then opened into a wide level stretch of ground. Light from the moon and stars filtered through the hazy clouds to create a sort of luminescent dome, enough to see that the terrain looked like grass, except there was something slick and unnatural about it. Off to one side lay a whitish depression about twenty yards across. I hadn't been in this area for many years, but I realized this must be his Astroturf golf range, and the white spot was a sand trap.

"Over there," Balcomb said, pointing at a small shed. When we got closer, I made it out as one of those cute prefabs you saw advertised at the big building supply stores-shaped like a miniature barn, with a gambrel roof and a big white X on the door. It had probably been brought here on a flatbed boom truck and set in place entire.

A few bags of golf clubs and other paraphernalia lined the walls inside, but most of the space was taken up by a fancy motorized cart. That seemed strange-there was no actual course here. I supposed he used it to run back and forth collecting the balls he hit on the driving range.

I held the flashlight, keeping a close watch on Balcomb's hands as he got into the cart and started it up. He backed it out and parked it, then crouched down inside the building and pried up a half-sheet of plywood flooring that the cart had been covering.

So that was its real purpose-disguise.

The nail heads had been left in so the plywood looked permanently attached, but the shanks were clipped flush on the bottom. The joist backs had been chiseled down a quarter inch or so, with Velcro strips glued onto them and matching ones on the plywood, so if someone did walk on it, it wouldn't squeak or seem loose.

The two-by-eight floor joists were set on flat concrete pads, giving a couple of inches of space between them and the Astroturf underneath. Balcomb pulled loose a three-foot square section of that and slid it aside, revealing a round metal hatch with a recessed handle, like a giant pot lid. He slid that aside, too. Below it was a cylindrical cavity about two feet deep, formed by a section of corrugated iron culvert like the kind used for road drains, but set vertically. A heavy-duty safe lay inside it, faceup. Its back edges had been spot-welded to the culvert's metal bottom.

We all stared. It was a pretty goddamned slick hiding place. I could see why'd he'd wanted it outside his house or the other main buildings. Installing a vault in those would take skilled construction, and even well concealed, it would be vulnerable to discovery by searching, checking blueprints, and questioning the men who'd done the work. But all this had taken was a shovel and some basic tools. Nobody would ever think to look here, and he could come and go without attracting attention. There was nobody and nothing anywhere near, just a rich man's little golf playground.

Balcomb glanced at Reuben.

"Kirk can be very industrious when he has the proper incentive," he said.

There was just enough light for me to see Reuben's jaw tighten.

I kept the flashlight carefully on Balcomb's hands again while he worked the dial, in case he had a gun inside. But there was only a flat box of aluminum or stainless steel, about the size of a laptop computer. He took it out, set it on the floor, and opened it. It was lined with plum-colored velvet.

And studded with dozens of diamonds, a couple as broad as a man's little fingernail. If Josie's was two carats, these must have been five. Most were in the range of hers-still good-size stones. All of them shone with a luster that was almost breathtaking. I felt that if I'd turned off the flashlight, they'd have kept on glowing like stars. There had to be close to a million bucks in that box.

Balcomb rocked back on his heels and looked up at us, with a hint of a Cheshire cat smile.

"I've saved some of the finest ones as they passed through," he said. "Go ahead, each of you take a couple. We'll call it a goodwill gesture-a down payment on what's to come."

That was another wrong thing to say to Reuben-reminding him that Balcomb had offered the same lure to Kirk.

"That's a good start, Wesley," Reuben said. "Now tell us about those horses."

A hint of nervousness started creeping into Balcomb's voice, and there was a clear sense that he was shading the story to justify himself. The horses had been used for the most recent run of diamonds, he said, because the human mule on the Canadian side of the border had gotten arrested. The charge wasn't related to the smuggling-like most of his colleagues, the mule had an extensive criminal career-but it raised the fear that he'd roll, and the police would stake out the area where he and Kirk had been crossing. There was no time to scout a new route and no way to delay the shipment.

"Believe me, gentlemen, the people at the top of that operation do not accept excuses," Balcomb said. "If the diamonds don't arrive on schedule, they collect body parts instead."

So the Canadian operatives had enlisted a veterinarian to implant the cargo into the horses-roughly half a kilogram in each, pumped in a slurry into their stomachs through a tube. They'd been taken quickly across the border, along with a shipment of others, by a professional stock transporting company that made routine crossings and got rubber-stamp inspections. The truck driver, unaware of the implants, had then delivered them to the ranch.

Balcomb claimed that the first thing he'd known about it was a phone call telling him the horses were on their way. He'd protested but had no choice, and once they arrived, he'd had only a few hours before a courier was due to pick up the diamonds. There was another wrinkle besides. Not surprisingly, the vet who'd done the tubing was at the low end of the scale in terms of competence-Balcomb had gleaned that he was a drug addict-and had admitted that he might have mistakenly passed some of the stones into their lungs instead, which apparently wasn't uncommon when administering medicine by that method. With no veterinary skills of his own, Balcomb hadn't been able to tranquilize them-he hadn't even trusted his ability to handle them. Desperate, he'd resorted to slaughter, and had to thoroughly eviscerate them in order to make sure he recovered all the stones. He was very convincing about how gruesome the experience had been, although it leaked through that his outrage was more for himself than for them.

"Kirk did all your other shit work," I said. "Why not that?"

His eyes shifted evasively. "I couldn't get hold of him until late that night. He was off on a tear and wouldn't answer his phone."

I was sure that Reuben and Madbird picked up the same thing I did-the truth was that Balcomb had been enraged at the position he'd been put in, and had taken it out on the horses.

Reuben lowered his shotgun barrel and gave the lid of the diamond box a tap, knocking it shut.

"Being as how this is the U. S. of A., you're entitled to a trial by jury," he said. "Let's go, they're waiting."