The Pallbearers

Chapter 57

Gary White, Chris Calabro, and Kimbo Sledge were all with jack at the rear of the truck.

"Get em inside," Calabro said to Jack. "Mesas upstairs getting ready. Ill go tell him."

Jack pulled us roughly out of the truck, and Gary shoved us through a side gate in an eight-foot wall that guarded a mansion. A stocky young Indian kid in a green khaki uniform, packing a side-arm in a crisp new holster, stood by the gate.

This house was a huge, modern, two-story hacienda-style structure with a red tile roof. It was at least twenty thousand square feet, with its own private security force and perimeter wall.

We followed Gary single file along a walkway next to an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Jack walked beside me with Kimbo Sledge following. Nobody spoke.

Three young uniformed Indian security guards wearing sidearms in new leather holsters escorted us.

Alexa and the others were pushed off and herded toward the main house, but Jack grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the pool house. One guard followed us, never more than a few feet away.

I was pushed by Jack through the open sliding-glass door into a large entertainment room outfitted with a mahogany pool table, video-game consoles, big screen TVs, and a wet bar. The Indian guard followed. I looked around the spacious pool house. There were eight or ten changing cubicles along the perimeter of the room.

Jack shoved me up against the wet bar and turned to the young guard. "I got this," he said. "You can go."

"But Mr. Calabro said we should…"

"I got it!" Jack shouted. "Get the fuck outta here."

He wasn't moving, so Jack wheeled and hit me hard in the side of the head. I didn't see it coming, and with my hands tied, couldn't block the blow. The best I could do was try to roll with the punch. Even so, my knees buckled. I went down again.

Jack glared at the guard, who seemed shocked by this sudden assault. "You got the picture now?" Jack said. "I owe this shithead some payback. I wanta do it in private. Now get the fuck out of here."

The Indian guard was unnerved by Jack's behavior and quickly left. But he stood a few feet outside the closed glass door, where he could still observe us. Jack pulled me to my feet and leaned me against the bar.

"Too bad there ain't a teeter-totter," he whispered.

"Untie me. I gotta get to Alexa and the others."

"I can't untie you. This place is loaded with security. That guy is right outside looking at us. Use your head, Scully."

"Where's Diamond?"

"I don't know. She's hanging by a thread with these guys. They don't trust her but they haven't decided what to do about it yet."

The guard was still at the window. Still watching through the closed sliding-glass door.

Jack followed my gaze and said, "Hold on, I gotta make this look right."

He hit me in the stomach, but pulled the punch as it landed. I doubled over, making a show of it. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the young security guard take a step back and shake his head in disgust. Then he moved further off and sat in a chair by the pool.

"What's Diamond up to?" I said as soon as the guard took his eyes off us. "None of this makes any sense."

"She's fucked up. She needed cash and struck a deal with O'Shea, got Pop to sign those documents for ten percent of his scam. She was playing the horses at Hollywood Park, got in debt to a loan shark or something. I don't have all of it but she started helping O'Shea siphon off money, and once she was guilty of that crime, she got threatened into helping O'Shea pin the missing cash on Pop."

"If she's in on it, why didn't she tell them I was a cop?"

"Because she never thought they'd kill Pop. She's as fucked up over his murder as the rest of us. She didn't rat you and me out because she was certain those guys would kill us too. She's not a killer. She's a good Catholic girl trying to have this both ways. It ain't working. She's shaking apart."

"How do we get out of here?"

"I don't know. Like I said, Mesa's got a ton of these Indian security cops. Most are just kids, but they got a few genuine tough guys who run things."

"O'Shea's pretty stupid, but you can bet Mesa will have some kinda workable plan if he intends to kill four people, two of them cops," I said.

"He's gonna stage a shootout that all of you are going to accidentally get caught in," Jack said. "It just might work. Last year they had a hundred shooting deaths on this reservation. Those braceros are robbing the Indians blind as they cross the border. There's shootouts almost every night. Mesas hired some coyotes as triggers. T hey should be arriving anytime through a secret tunnel he has under this reservation's wall. Its how Diamond and O'Shea got in here. These coyotes are Mexican hard cases who will have no trouble pulling your drapes. The story will be that you and the others accidentally wandered into the line of fire."

"And Mesa can arrange that? What about the tribal police? Four U. S. citizens die and nobody asks any questions?"

"Fuckin-A right he can arrange it. Eugene C. Mesa was born on the Mexican side of the res. Half-Indian, half-Mexican, no parents. Growing up, he was a half-breed who nobody gave a shit about. He ran away when he was eight, but thirty years later he came back in a Gulfstream jet and built the Talking Stick Resort, the local school, a library, and just about anything else that's worth a shit around here. Even the tribal police chief is his man. He's like a god."

Before I could reply to that, the door opened and Rick O'Shea entered the pool house.