Lassiter 07 - Flesh and Bones by Levine, Paul (best fiction books to read TXT) 📗

mile to the west," Roberto said. "They're pumping God knows how much water into the channel. Some is siphoned off for the irrigation towers, some for drip irrigation, but most of it just flows, west to east, toward the open bay."

"Why?" I asked. "Why waste all that water?"

"No sé, man, and I don't want to know. I just want to get out of here."

We were five hundred yards from the farmhouse when Roberto started bellyaching again. "Ain't gonna add B and E to trespassing, no way."

"We're not going inside," I assured him. "Just a little surveillance."

The house was surrounded by rows of rosebushes, I hadn't thought about it before, but now, working through them, they were a pretty good perimeter defense. Not as good as a minefield maybe, but still . . .

"Ouch!" Roberto winced and pulled a thorn from his shoulder. "Jake, I'm telling you, this is crazy."

"Quiet down."

Two Jeeps were parked in the driveway. So were Guy Bernhardt's Land Rover and Lawrence Schein's Jaguar. Another house call.

"Roberto, stay here. If there's any trouble, take off. I'll meet you at the car."

"Like I'd really wait for you. It ain't Hershey's Kisses they got in those shotguns."

As I crawled toward the house, I thought I heard him praying in Spanish.

The jalousie windows to the den were cranked open, and inside, paddle fans spun. The walls were Dade County pine, varnished to a gloss. A boar's head was mounted on one wall, a rack of antlers on another. I squatted in a bush of Spanish bayonet, and every time I moved, another thorn pierced my skin. Through the louvered windows, I could see about half the room. I was staring at the back of Lawrence Schein's bald head, which appeared above a leather sofa. Somewhere out of sight was Guy Bernhardt.

"Regrets? Hell, no!" It was Guy's voice from a corner of the room. There he was, standing at the bar, dropping ice cubes into a Manhattan glass. "We both got skeletons in the closet from way back, so trust me when I tell you to look ahead. Don't look back."

"My life's been devoted to opening those closets, shaking those skeletons," Schein said.

"Spare me the Hippocratic horseshit, okay?"

I strained to get a closer look, pressing my cheek to the glass. Bernhardt walked toward Schein, carrying two drinks. "Will he figure it out? Before the trial, I mean."

"I suspect he will," Schein answered. "Like his buddy said, he's smarter than he looks."

Bernhardt handed one drink to Schein, then sat down on a leather chair that faced the sofa. Though I knew he couldn't see me through the darkened window, from this angle it seemed as if he was looking right at me, and I caught my breath.

"Then what? What the hell will he do?" Bernhardt asked.

"He'll have an ethical dilemma."

"And . . .?"

A pause before Schein spoke. "Who knows? MacLean says he's honest."

Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked. And somewhere inside my head, cymbals were clanging. "So we're better off than if she had a top-flight lawyer," Bernhardt said.

I was trying to process the information.

The "he" was definitely me.

The "top-flight lawyer" was definitely not me.

What "ethical dilemma" would I have?

"You know what I was thinking?" Bernhardt again. He didn't wait for an answer. "Pop would be proud of me."

"That is a transparent rationalization, Guy."

"No, hear me out. Pop took Castleberry's money and multiplied it tenfold. What I'm doing . . . well, it's even bigger."

"Your methods, Guy. What about your methods?"

Bernhardt snorted a mirthless laugh. "They're okay. I checked them out with my inner child."

"Go ahead, mock me."

Bernhardt laughed again.

What the hell were these guys up to? What methods? The dog barked again, and a second later, splat. A clod of mud landed in the bushes, startling me, and giving me a crown of thorns as I leaped backward. Ping, a pebble this time, banging off the window. Shit. I turned around and saw Roberto's silhouette, arms waving madly.

"What was that?" Bernhardt said, from inside the house.

I flattened myself into the soft earth as Guy Bernhardt walked over to the window. My head buried in my arms, I could sense him above me, barely inches away.

The dog barked louder, then stopped. Maybe it was the Hound of the Baskervilles. Or the Bernhardts.

Guy Bernhardt turned away from the window. I lifted my head and saw that Roberto Condom was gone.

". . . water."

Bernhardt's voice again.

"Are the permits in order?" Schein asked.

"All the i's dotted and t's crossed."

"You're a man ahead of your time."

"You got that right," Bernhardt said. "Twenty years from now, they'll be writing books about me."

Now what the hell were they talking about? Too many questions, too few answers. I didn't have time to think about it, because I heard a husky voice somewhere behind me. "Whoa, girl! Slow down."

Near the corner of the house, not thirty feet away, I caught a glimpse of a man with a German shepherd tugging at a leash. A shotgun was cradled in the man's arms. A radio crackled, and he said, "B-two, I'm at the house. Blossom's got a straw up her ass. Got the scent of something, probably a possum."

Blossom. I liked that way better than Killer.

"Okay." The radio clicked off. "Go on, girl, but don't be bringing back any road kill."

Why did "road kill" sound like a lawyer joke, a dead lawyer joke, just now?

I heard him open the collar latch, and then Blossom headed straight for me, head down, shoulders low, panting hard. Maybe a German shepherd's impression of the high crawl.

I burst out of the bushes, the thorns clawing at me.

"Shit!" the guard cried. "Halt! Freeze!"

I zigzagged away from him, through the rosebushes, giving him a moving target. Yapping loudly. Blossom was at my heels.

The shotgun blast echoed over my head. Way high.

Of course. He wouldn't risk killing his dog. The shot was meant to scare me into stopping. Instead, it sped me up. Maybe all those years of gassers after practice were worth something after all.

I was into