Justice Rain (Chris Seely Vigilante Justice Book 11) Read online

Please meet me in front of the Clown Motel at 4pm.

  I’ll see you there.

  Wishing you safe travels.

  John P.K. Worthington

  on behalf of Lucy Pitts and family

  It took a moment to register why he picked Tonopah out of thin air, but it was on account of the various southern Nevada YouTube videos he was hooked on.

  He’d known about a Tonopah Range for a while, and that was a restricted military installation where they tested stuff -- some of it maybe top-secret -- and the Range was in the vicinity of Area 51, so the whole shebang tied together.

  Then not too long ago one of the YouTubers visits the actual town of Tonopah, which Chris wasn’t aware of -- and the guy gives you your money’s worth, a nice tour, points out the couple landmarks they have, and you learn that Tonopah is an old mining town and not exactly thriving these days but still hanging in there.

  There was a main hotel in the center of it, probably 150 years old, supposedly haunted, and Chris wanted to meet the idiot there but couldn’t remember the name and didn’t want to waste time looking it up, but he did remember the Clown Motel, a low-rise deal, more modern, and it did have a convenient good-sized parking lot right off the main drag, which if Chris had it straight, was old US two-lane 95, which in a roundabout way took you from Vegas to Reno, give or take a hundred miles.

  The return message came back quick.

  John. Again, I appreciate you moving on this. My Grandpa always told me to handle your business promptly. Which I see YOU are doing on YOUR end. As for me I’m in Denver (not exactly, but in the region) and I can’t get there that soon. I’m good for Sunday though. - Alan

  Chris flipped channels for a while, and Jeez, still in the 80’s out there at the moment and you had the dumb finals of the Stanley Cup Hockey going on. Though you couldn’t be a jerk about it, plenty parts of the country, not to mention Canada, were still chilly in early June. He settled on the women’s college softball World Series, and it was a game you could get into, a pitching and defensive battle, every at-bat meaning something, and man, the two pitchers were big gals. The shoulders on them alone were imposingly scary, if you were stepping into the batter’s box.

  Florida State against Washington. The Huskies carried a 2-1 lead into the 6th, and Chris got back on the computer and typed:

  Fine Alan. I will be waiting for you Sunday, the day after tomorrow, June 3rd.

  Time and location unchanged.

  I’d advise bringing an empty briefcase or similar.

  Kind Regards,

  John P.K. Worthington

  After which he shut off the ballgame, and as he expected had trouble falling asleep, or staying there when he did, and the late-night radio talk shows were useful on nights like this, but they could only help you so much.

  ***

  Chris knocked on McBride’s door Saturday around noon, and Jeez, McBride seemed a bit caught off guard . . . and Chris could see through the open slit in the door a youngish woman wrapped up in her phone, munching on a piece of toast and dressed in loose fitting sweat clothes with a towel around her head like she just took a shower.

  Chris said quietly, “Hmm. Am I supposed to . . . like, know her from pickleball? Or that other deal you guys are into? . . . If I am I don’t recognize her.”

  McBride rubbed an eye and shook his head and said, “Someone else . . . Listen now’s not the best time, maybe. What do you need?”

  “You have 10 grand I can borrow?” Chris said.

  McBride woke up better and gave Chris a long look. “Come back at 3,” he said, and he closed the door.

  Chris walked away fairly awed by that one. Not so much the 10 grand coming his way -- maybe -- but the fact that McBride first of all had it apparently laying around, but secondly seemed to say yeah, no problem.

  Though Chris knew that was part of why he approached the guy -- he figured the guy was just mysterious enough that he could have what you needed.

  Anyhow . . . the idea today was to wrap shit up around here, the Rancho Villas, and be on the road to Tonopah bright and early in the morning, with google maps showing you 511 miles from Eclipse, which translated to just under 8 hours.

  So you meet the mope tomorrow afternoon and take it from there. Chris researched the location a bit more. There were some abandoned mines in the area, up in the hills, and Chris committed some directions to memory . . . and a guy like this, maybe when Chris was younger and more reckless -- meaning 6 months ago -- he might have figured, you push the guy down one of the shafts.

  Since they had open mine shafts out there, in fact one guy featured them in his YouTube video excursion.

  They weren’t the traditional mines that Chris pictured -- where you enter into a tunnel-like situation and gradually go deeper and further underground, until when you look back the light from the opening that you’ve been seeing all along finally disappears.

  Those type of mines often had tracks in them, which Chris supposed you followed, so not to get lost, and when the mines were operational the miners ran carts on the tracks. Or however.

  The point being with the Tonopah one he was zeroed in on, nothing like that, no tunnels or tracks, just holes in the ground that you had to be damn careful of . . . since the things appeared to evolve into tubes that you assume sent the unlucky person halfway to the center of the earth.

  But no. You bring the guy out there to give him what he wants -- partly -- and to conclusively bring the hassling and threatening of Lucy to a satisfactory halt.

  A win-win situation, even if Alan (or Grady Melindoo, his email handle) may not realize it at the time, but eventually he’ll see the wisdom of his ways, meaning moving on from Lucy.

  Which frankly, in thinking about it, Chris wasn’t totally crazy about. Leaving it open-ended like that.

  But again . . . you pick your spots these days. No need to kill a guy, for example.

  Though the reason Chris wasn’t totally crazy about Alan moving on from Lucy, is there likely were other unsuspecting seniors in the hopper.

  When you put it together, such as in Lucy’s case . . . a mope roams around Facebook, reads all her candid posts -- since she knows nothing about Facebook security settings -- latches onto an event, such as her remembering her dad on his birthday.

  Then the back-and-forth comments underneath her post, and soon enough the guy learns about her dad’s tragic life, and what might have gone down . . . and now the fucker has a few names and is curious and does what Chris did -- with an obviously different motivation -- which is checks old news articles online . . . from the comfort of his own home.

  And before you know it, one of the unfortunate people he references, he turns into being his grandpa, and the guy decides he misses whoever it is, and wants money.

  That’s just one victim, Lucy. One con-game.

  You cookie-cutter it on Facebook -- the same type searches, the same criteria, the same innocent seniors -- who knows what you can dredge up and latch onto and politely message the person, that you feel shortchanged, and do they agree?

  Ooh boy. There was always something, wasn’t there. One more dang layer taking shape when you gave it a chance. That’s why Chris was starting to appreciate Raymond Carver short stories. And Hemmingway before him. Because they were pretty much what you see is what you get. No further complications. At least on the surface.

  Chris made the rounds, said so-long to a few people, quit his job, and was able to get back the security deposit on his apartment, and packed the car.

  It was bittersweet. He’d become more attached to this place than he would admit.

  At three he stopped back at McBride’s, and McBride put up a finger, went in the bedroom, and came back with the ten grand rubber-banded-up in a big Target plastic bag.

  “You sure,” Chris said. “Because . . . I mean, I wasn’t kidding, exactly . . . but I didn’t expect it. Just like that.”

  “Don’t be a stranger,” McBride said. He seemed preoccupied . . . since wouldn’t you
at the minimum, a situation like this, ask the other guy when he might be returning the money?

  “Everything good otherwise?” Chris said.

  “I’ll snap out of it,” McBride said. “Relationship stuff. You know how it goes.”

  “Yeah well, it looked okay about three hours ago.”

  “It did . . . but I made a subsequent error in judgment. It went downhill fast.”

  “Oh. Sorry to hear it,” Chris said.

  “Nah,” McBride said. “What it is, with me . . . I start off a pretty nice guy, normal. Then I can turn on a dime, and convert to an ass. Something I need to work on.”

  “Well I’d say welcome to the club,” Chris said, “but I think you already knew that.”

  Chapter 18

  It was a pleasant but slightly tricky drive from Eclipse to Tonopah, and yeah you had the wide open vistas and the high desert plateaus and the dramatic cloud formations, but there were sections where you really had to pay attention to oncoming traffic and you couldn’t relax and take in any of the scenery.

  He passed the center of town, and the Mizpah Hotel was the one he couldn’t think of the name of when he was emailing the meeting place to the jerkell, and it was just as well because things were a bit more congested there -- by Tonopah standards -- than the Clown Motel further along toward the edge of town, the apparent last stop before you hit another long unbroken stretch of Nevada desert.

  The Clown Motel seemed a bit gimmicky -- someone had amassed a collection of thousands of clowns, many of them glassy-eyed, and they were on display in the place -- which Chris decided, okay, that is admittedly a bit over the top -- and when you added to it the old abandoned Tonopah cemetery being right next door -- fine, that made things a bit creepy.

  He got there at 3:30, made a pass, drove back south and parked for twenty minutes. It was always interesting, a place like this, to put yourself in someone’s shoes who lived here and try to imagine a typical day for them. The town and old-time no-frills lifestyle appealed to Chris, but he figured in reality he was too conditioned to modern amenities and would get bored.

  What you wanted to do was let the guy show up first. So Chris made a couple more passes and at 4:03, nearly right on the nose, a guy pulls into the Clown lot with Colorado plates and gets out like he’s pretty stiff, shaking off a long drive, and starts looking around.

  Chris drove alongside and called out the driver window, “Alan, I take it?”

  “Right on man,” the guy said, reaching in and shaking hands. “I told you I was good for it. Hit me a little road construction when I got on 6, past Ely, was a little concerned there for a while.”

  “But you made it up,” Chris said. “The deficit.” The guy was about 30. Shoulder-length hair and a two-day old beard. Scattered tattoos on both forearms, which included some Kanji lettering. When the ‘grandpa’ died in 1961 -- the one he allegedly missed so bad -- this guy would have been 25 years away from being born.

  “I’m good that way,” the guy said. “I meet my obligations.”

  “I know,” Chris said. “Another good quality that your grandpa instilled in you.”

  The guy didn’t say anything except, “I’m thirsty, you know it? Can I buy you a beer?” Pointing to the motel, which apparently had a little restaurant attached, and that did sound pretty good right now, but Chris said, “Love to. Any other circumstance . . . I’d like to put this to rest though. Before either of us changes our mind.”

  The guy said that sounded logical, and Chris didn’t waste any time. “One or two cars,” he said.

  “Excuse me?”

  Chris said, “My delivery system is up at the mine. Come with me, or drive yourself?”

  The guy was clearly confused -- except for the delivery part, which tended to trump not understanding the where and why. He said, “All right, then. I’ll follow you.”

  Chris’s rudimentary research said you make a left out of the parking lot and keep going north on 95 . . . and he was wrong about the Clown Motel being on the very edge of the desert and feeling like an oasis for long-last travelers, since ahead of you were a Cisco’s, a Comfort Inn and the Tonopah RV park -- but then after all that you were back in essentially the middle of nowhere, desert terrain on both sides . . . and 7 miles up the road the left turn that Chris had memorized for State Road C-19.

  This took you across the valley floor, due west, and halfway to the hills the road turned awful gritty and it was a mix of dirt and pavement, and a mile further you were driving on strictly a dirt road.

  The Chevy Malibu was handling it okay, though Chris slowed down as a precaution. Once again . . . a situation where you could have exercised that option, the used car lot on Sepulveda Boulevard after the Camry got stolen during the visit to that Roland guy in South Central . . . but you had business at hand, the mope following you in the rear view mirror, no 4-wheel drive himself, and bouncing around pretty good.

  The mine was on top of a bluff -- Chris figured from the map -- but then a couple miles back in, it turned out -- and the ruts got worse and he almost stopped a couple times and said screw it.

  But they got there, and you could tell it had been an impressive operation at one time, but the productive ore either dried up or the modern methods bypassed the set-up . . . whatever . . . but the point being you could still throw a guy down one of several holes, it sure looked like.

  Someone had tried to cordon off the entrances to the mine funnels, probably for insurance purposes, because they didn’t do much of a job of it -- there were limp barriers around the perimeters which looked like 1 by 2 slats nailed together, that was about it, and if you leaned on one you’d be taking your chances.

  The reason this seemed like a good idea, dragging the guy out here, was you at least indirectly imply that you’d deposit him down of the them, if Lucy ever heard from him again.

  “Well,” the guy said, getting out of his car. “Thanks for the sightseeing tour. A little more than I bargained for, but that’s all right . . . Where’s my fucking money now?”

  Chris had run over to Goodwill and found a beat-up flat briefcase after McBride loaned him the 10 grand, and there were two latches where you flicked buttons and the thing popped open.

  Chris got the case out of the trunk and put it on the roof of Malibu. “20 thousand,” he said. “As per our agreement . . . My instinct was that’s being overly generous, but I got out-voted by the family.”

  “Sweet,” the guy said, reaching up and fingering the packets.

  “So then,” Chris said. “We’ll simply need a gentleman’s agreement, that, in a nutshell, we’ll never hear from you again.”

  The guy was inspecting the cash just a little too long for Chris’s taste.

  Unfortunately he said, “You’re short, my friend.”

  Now you were at a kind of crossroads.

  Do you tell him politely but in no uncertain terms that he’s insulting your intelligence? And that he has about 10 more seconds to comply, or the deal’s off?

  Probably not. This guy had some experience with cash obviously, how hundred dollar bills lay and how thick the rubber-banded packets need to be to add up to a required total.

  The guy said, “Tell you what . . . Since even though you’re cheating my ass blind, I’ll show you what a decent person I am . . . We find us a cash machine, you supplement your initial offering, ballpark it, and we’ll call it a day.”

  This guy wasn’t real big and didn’t look particularly like a tough customer -- Chris had encountered worse, and it was hard to know how it would play out, if you did grab hold of the idiot and circumvented one of the cheezy barriers and dangled him over a mine pit, such as the one Chris was eye-balling up the hill to the right -- that ran minimally several hundred feet into the ground.

  But you might as well try diplomacy first, and Chris said, “Sorry my man, I counted it and put it together as best I could, and we’re going to need to wrap up the show.”

  The real point was, Chris didn’t have this one scr
ipted out, meaning he wasn’t crazy about the guy driving away with the 10 grand, that’s for sure, and planned to kind of ad-lib his way through the situation, and if you did have to part with a little cash for the sake of resolution -- then maybe.

  The guy reached inside his jacket and across his chest and produced what sure as shit looked like a late-model steel automatic weapon . . . and naturally he pointed it at Chris.

  “Uh-oh,” Chris said.

  “Yeah, well,” the guy said, “you forced my hand. Though we’d have gotten to this stage sooner or later, even if you hadn’t.” The guy belted out a disconcerting laugh that sounded like a cough.

  Chris said, “You’re angling that thing at me . . . for what reason now? I’m kinda mixed up.”

  “First of all, you got more on you, I can tell. Secondly after I relieve you of that, and whatever else you might have stashed in or around that vehicle, we take a nice friendly trip into town, and then if we have to, back down to Vegas, employing whatever credit cards and ATM’s might be necessary.”

  “Make up the difference, you’re saying,” Chris said.

  “Sure. Don’t have to be exact, won’t hold you to the penny. But we’d best be in the vicinity . . . for your general health to remain intact.”

  Chris was projecting ahead, that didn’t ATM’s typically limit your daily withdrawals?

  The guy probably had a point with Las Vegas, that you walk into a casino with a bunch of credit cards, there’s usually a way you can max ‘em all out at the cashier’s window without the normal banking security safeguards hassle. Then they give it to you in chips, but you figure this Alan is okay with that.

  That would admittedly be rough, driving the three-plus hours south to Vegas, this guy in the passenger seat with the weapon, the likely scenario.

  Chris took a moment to weigh it all . . .

  And he couldn’t help thinking of a scene in a James Bond movie, God knows which one, where Bond borrows a move from the old Westerns, and tells the guy to put the gun down.