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  Winter knew that he and Peanut would meet sooner rather than later.

  18

  Ross Laughlin took the first-aid kit from Rudy, located and broke the cotton-sleeved vial of smelling salts, and held it under Peanut’s nose. The big man came to life immediately, kicking and cursing.

  “Ga-damm!” he yelled. “What happened?”

  “You fell,” Ross said.

  “Fell hell. Fell where?”

  “Were felled,” Rudy offered.

  Peanut sat up, put a hand to the back of his neck, and moved his head side to side. “Damn it all. My back and my neck hurts. And my chin. Was it Randall? He get behind me?”

  “Sarnov,” Ross said as he tossed the vial into the trash can. “Rudy, help Mr. Smoot to his feet.”

  “That little commie dick-smoker,” Peanut growled. “I’ll blow his head off.”

  Peanut pulled a handgun out from his belt and Ross Laughlin shuddered at the sight of it. All he needed was for this fool to start brandishing a gun, and somebody calling the cops to the building. All that mattered was getting past Monday morning.

  “Calm down, Peanut,” Ross soothed. Smoot had always had a temper that was very difficult to get the lid back on. “That’s all, Rudy.”

  “Yes, sir,” Rudy said instantly. He took the first-aid kit and left the room, closing the door behind him.

  “Put that weapon away,” Ross ordered. “You can’t do anything to Sarnov.”

  “That little Lenin-loving queer-”

  “Peanut,” Ross said, infusing a hint of fatherly disapproval and concern. “Calling him names won’t help us. Even if what he did was unforgivable.” The lawyer fought back laughter when he remembered seeing Peanut crash-landing on the floor after going through a very expensive coffee table.

  “If I’d been paying attention, he’d a got the ass kicking of his potato-drinking life. I’m lucky the glass didn’t slice my damn head off.”

  “I guess your coat saved you,” Ross said, lifting the coffee table’s scratched walnut base and setting it away from the glass. Luckily, the wood hadn’t been shattered by the big lummox’s weight. “Unfortunately, my vintage Noguchi wasn’t wearing a leather NASCAR jacket.”

  “A three-thousand-dollar coat.” Peanut turned so he could see his backside in the mirror behind the wet bar. “Hellfire!” He tugged off his jacket and looked at the cuts the glass had made in the smooth surface. “Damn,” he bellowed. “My number three’s destroyed!”

  His language, more so even than his appearance, had once made Ross’s skin crawl. But over the years, the hick had brought in a fortune. Of all the groups Ross had earning for him, the Smoots made more than all the others combined. And Peanut wasn’t a slouch in the instincts department. He had more street smarts than any criminal Ross Laughlin had ever known. He kept complicated deals in his head, and his mental numbers were never wrong. He had, as best as Ross could figure, a genetic disposition toward criminality. Were the man normal, he could have been successful at any legitimate business venture, but Peanut Smoot couldn’t think about a situation without viewing it through a filter of greed and larceny.

  Gun in hand, Peanut started from the room. There was an explosive-temper aspect to the Smoots, which sometimes made problems. They got to a point and they lost it, acting rashly and worrying about the consequences later.

  “Peanut!” Ross said sternly. “Listen to me. This is almost over. We need to maintain our relationship with the Russians. If you touch Sarnov, we both know what will happen. We can do profitable business with them for a long time, but if we make a stupid move, they’ll take everything.”

  “They’re going to take it all anyway if they can, and this is a test we’re seeing. Those changes to the deal are to see if you’ll blink, and you did. From this day on out, the Russkies are going to be chipping away, taking bigger and bigger bites. If you don’t send them a message back, we’re history anyway. Why didn’t you tell him we’re partners, that I’m not hired help?”

  “Because,” Ross said, his mind whirring in search of an explanation Peanut would buy. If only for a few hours, and then it wouldn’t matter. “You just deal with the collateral as we discussed,” Ross told him.

  Ross knew that the Smoots were finished. Sarnov had stood over Peanut’s unconscious form and told Ross that the Russians were in for good and that they were taking over the Smoots’ territory and rackets. Laughlin hadn’t argued. In fact, the prospect of Intermat taking over was appealing to him. All of Peanut’s holdings were in accounts Laughlin owned with Peanut. And he had Peanut’s power of attorney in his safe.

  “The Dockery part has to be done right. When the time comes, I’ll handle the Russians. We’re partners. Trust me.”

  “I do trust you, Mr. Laughlin.”

  “Please call me Ross,” Ross said, smiling warmly and placing his hand on Peanut’s shoulder paternally. “We are so much more than mere business partners.”

  “I won’t let you down, Mr. Laughlin.”

  19

  Dixie Smoot just hoped the little bitch tried something. She’d love to see the look on her skinny face when Dixie gave her a good lesson about what happened to people who looked down their noses at other people.

  The kid was finally asleep. A little cough medicine in his juice sure took his little foot off the accelerator.

  Dixie wasn’t exactly the mothering kind, but she kind of liked the baby. He was cute as a puppy, but kids were all more pain in your ass as not. Not like a dog you can feed and water and leave outside as much of the time as you wanted.

  This old trailer was good enough to stay in during hunting seasons, but the coating of dust that covered every flat surface like rust was disgusting. The guys expected Dixie to do the cleaning, but she only did so when Peanut himself told her to do it, and as lightly as she could get by with. Soon as you swept it up, more took its place. Outside, the ground was covered with an inch of the flour-fine silt, and it fell off your shoes onto the linoleum. The TV screen was always murky on account of it, and it got in your hair, your clothes, and under your fingernails so you always felt nasty. It didn’t bother the boys, but nothing bothered her brothers. Well, except Ferny Ernest, the baby. Everybody else called him Click but her. He never came out here to the trailer, because he didn’t much care one way or the other about hunting. He didn’t like poison ivy, chiggers, or snakes, or spiders. The others-Buck and the twins, Burt and Curt-would roll naked in chigger grass and pack their jaws full of poison ivy if they had to in order to slaughter a deer or a turkey or anything else that was made out of meat. During deer or turkey season you couldn’t find a Smoot unless you were riding a buck through the woods.

  The land, about 940 acres of woods, clover fields, and water holes, was for hunting. The place was thick with game, and Peanut and the boys spent a fortune on keeping it that way. And Lord help you if you was to get caught poaching on it. People who knew the family would leave a wounded deer they’d tracked there for the buzzards before they’d risk being caught by the Smoots while dragging it off their land.

  Dixie worked out at Gold’s Gym. She could bench-press 270 pounds. She spent part of her day in there going from one machine to the other until she was sweating to beat the band. She couldn’t outwrestle her three older brothers, because they were a lot bigger, and stronger than bulls. Buck loved staying bulked up and was proud to say that nobody had ever kicked his ass. Not even when he was a Marine, which he was before he got dishonorably discharged for something he would never tell anybody about. Part of Buck’s trouble was the steroids that kept his face broke out, but he’d always just been mean as hell for no good reason. You couldn’t like Buck if you tried, and that was how he liked it.

  Dixie had heard from Burt, who was mad at Buck, that his older brother had been feeling the skinny woman up, saying she asked him to screw her, and that he was going to do just that before it was all over. If you were a woman, you wouldn’t want to spread your legs for Buck, because he couldn’t get aroused
unless he was hurting the girl. That was just how he was, and everybody in the family knew it.

  Dixie was just as tough as her three older brothers were and smarter than all three of them put together. She didn’t get as much money as the boys, but that was supposedly because they got their hands dirtier. Peanut had always said that planned killings were man’s work. Dixie did whatever her daddy said to, and if he told her to cut somebody up and throw the pieces in the river, she could do it as well as her brothers could. What did testicles have to do with getting bloody?

  Dixie’s instructions had been straight. Peanut said she was to watch the pair until he said kill them. She was to make sure that none of her brothers messed around with the woman because it wasn’t right to do it to her under such pitiful circumstances. But Peanut didn’t tell Dixie she couldn’t teach her a lesson or two.

  Dixie looked down at the sleeping child and, despite telling them to get it done, she’d bet the damn twins were out looking for deer signs, and hadn’t yet put a shovel blade into the ground.

  20

  Clayton Able, who had taken a break to go to his own room, returned. He opened another file. “You’ll want to take a look at Smoot family members and known associates and which rocks you might have to turn over to find them.”

  Clayton placed the pictures down faceup, one at a time, like a salesman showing his product to prospective customers. The first picture was a mug shot of an unpleasant young man in his twenties.

  “Here’s what you’d get if you crossed Jay Leno and a silverback,” Clayton said. “Stanley Smoot, Jr., who goes by the very original tag of Buck. Peanut’s firstborn. Twenty-nine and trouble with a capital ‘T.’ Graduated high school at twenty due to a few teachers he couldn’t scare the crap out of. Tried team sports, but Buck was prone to collecting personal fouls and generally considered a negative influence on his teammates. He could have been a poster boy for the Young Sociopath Club if there’d been one in his high school.”

  Buck bore a striking resemblance to his father, Peanut, but the son’s scalp was accented by mogul-like waves-as if the skin on his skull was doing an impression of wavy hair. Buck’s face was filled with small skin eruptions. He wore three heavy steel hoops in his left ear. His head was supported by a neck so thick that it would have looked at home on a rutting elk. He reminded Winter of a maniacal version of a long-jawed simpleton cartoon character from Mad magazine.

  “This picture was a police-sponsored portrait to commemorate the occasion of an arrest for aggravated assault, charges dropped.”

  “Who’d he assault?” Winter asked.

  “Exotic dancer by the name of Kitty Breeze. Kitty initially told the cops that Buck bit her nipple off, flattened her nose, broke her jaw, and shattered her eye socket. After he was arrested and placed in a lineup, she couldn’t identify him and said the man who actually did it was a Mexican.”

  In a surveillance shot, Buck was standing beside a truck in his boxer shorts. Buck’s shoulders rippled with muscles; his arms and hands were massive. Below the muscles, Buck had a swollen belly, his legs were amazingly thin, and his feet appeared to be too small and narrow to support him. It was as if he’d been put together out of the parts of two people and one of them had been a middle-aged accountant with a penchant for beer.

  “Four months in the Marine Corps before they kicked his ass out. Seems the Corps didn’t pay proper attention to his psychological profile. Except for thumping heads and scaring people, Buck would be jobless. He’s a product of blending suspect genetic material, the brain of a Neanderthal, physical exercise, and chemical abuse. Suspect in at least a dozen killings for hire, and more than that many young ladies over the years-all of whom his family was associated with on some level. Dancers, prostitutes, employees of shady businesses.”

  The next set of pictures was of a very large pair of men in football regalia. Feature-wise they resembled Buck and Peanut, but each was half again Buck’s size.

  “These young men are the Smoot twins, Burt and Curt. This is a newer picture.”

  In the next photo, the twins had obviously turned their backs on the weight training that had given them their impressive high school figures, and hadn’t stayed ahead of the results of consuming copious amounts of carbohydrates and beer. Winter couldn’t help but wonder if the twins smiled like idiots all the time, or just when they were in the presence of a camera. They certainly got their share of the Smoot genes.

  Clayton sucked on his pipe loudly. “They were linemen. Big college programs courted them, but they had problems with a lack of motivation, and their SAT scores sucked.

  “These two aren’t explosive, like Buck, but they aren’t any less dangerous. To the best of their abilities, they do what Daddy says.”

  Next Clayton tossed out a picture of a woman, who looked enough like Buck in a wig to be comical.

  “This breathtaking vision of southern womanhood is Dora Jeanne Smoot, known affectionately as Dixie. She is Papa’s little angel. Dixie’s into body sculpting.”

  “She’s a lot like her brothers,” Alexa said.

  Clayton said, “She collects money, keeps Papa’s painted women in line, and furnishes steroids to gyms, coaches, and her brother Buck. Dixie can do pretty much whatever the boys can. She was born with brittle teeth, so she had them all pulled and wears porcelain choppers.”

  “The woman with dentures on phone taps,” Winter said.

  “Almost certainly,” Clayton agreed. “No voice pattern for Dixie on file. Our dentally challenged mystery woman always uses pay phones, and Dixie does the same. She is suspected of committing at least seven prostitution-related murders on her father’s behalf. Problem pimps, a few whores. Dixie’s one very nasty piece of psychotica.” He turned over another picture. “And this is Ferny Ernest Smoot, called Click by his family and friends.

  “Inherited the family brain trust. No arrests. Had some minor behavioral problems in school, but otherwise Click’s probably as harmless as you can be, given his blood and nurturing.”

  “He doesn’t look like a member of the same circus,” Alexa said. “He’s normal looking, sort of in a Civil War tintype way.”

  “If his hair was cut, he wouldn’t look like the lead guitarist for Led Zeppelin,” Clayton said.

  “We still have to find them,” Alexa said. “We can start by checking out their listed addresses.”

  Winter lifted the picture of the youngest Smoot. Something about the face tickled a memory, so he studied the eyes visible through the curtains of wavy red hair. He knew them, the skinny neck, slumping shoulders. And he knew where he had seen the young man before.

  “Don’t need an address for this one,” Winter said. “I know where he was twenty minutes ago.”

  Alexa and Clayton looked at him.

  “He was sitting in the lobby when I got here. Without the curly locks. Wearing khakis, a button-down shirt under a collared Polo jacket, and buckskin oxfords. Looked like a preppy student.”

  “How the hell can that be?” Clayton said. “You sure?”

  Winter nodded.

  “Of course he’s sure,” Alexa said. “Coincidence?”

  “No,” Winter said. “He was settled in. And I thought at the time he was paying me a lot of attention. When I arrived in the lobby, he was there with a computer open in his lap.”

  “How the hell could he be onto us?” Clayton asked.

  Winter said, “I just know he was watching me when I came in.”

  “He must have followed Hailey Fondren here when he came here for lunch,” Alexa said, obviously angry with herself.

  “Why did you insist on meeting the judge in the damned restaurant?” Clayton said.

  “Click doesn’t know who I am,” Alexa said.

  “He can’t know about my association with either you or Fondren,” Clayton told her. “We arrived at the hotel separately. I’ve never spoken to Hailey Fondren period, or to you in public.”

  “How did he latch onto me?” Alexa said, frowning. Th
inking.

  “I’d bet he was following Judge Fondren. The judge came here, Click saw you, and he stuck on you to check you out. Maybe someone else is following the judge.”

  “What can he know about me? I’m registered under my name, but not as an FBI agent. All he knows is that I had lunch with the judge,” Alexa told Clayton. “If the kid was watching the dining room, we all left separately. You and I went up in separate elevator cars.”

  “You know,” Clayton said to Alexa, “I think he was at a table in the dining room. Had a backpack by his foot. Hailey came in after you and I were already seated at different tables. I’m not sure when the kid showed up. I was watching for the judge and you, but I’m sure he wasn’t there when I came down.”

  “Christ. Christ. Okay, let’s think this through,” Alexa said. “Did I look at you? I can’t remember. Did the judge? I think he might have turned to look at you.”

  “I was monitoring you through a reflection in the glass. I never looked directly at you.”

  Alexa was freaking out, which was not at all like her, Winter thought. He smiled reassuringly. “Relax, Lex. Click’s just snooping.”

  “Relax? If they know the judge called the FBI in, Lucy and Elijah are dead.”

  “You’re thinking that Click being onto you is a bad thing?”

  “He saw you, too,” Alexa reminded him. “Of course it’s a bad thing. What the hell could be good about it? We don’t know what he knows.”

  Winter smiled. “And he doesn’t know that we know about him. Seems like a good thing.”

  21

  Peanut Smoot’s back was killing him, and his dislike for Sarnov was a full-blown hatred. There wasn’t any repairing the #3 NASCAR jacket, but that wasn’t nearly as bad as the fact that the Russian bastard had made Peanut look like a fool in front of Mr. Laughlin. No matter how much plain-sense talk Mr. Laughlin came up with about business necessities or how dangerous the Russians were, Peanut was going to deal Sarnov a hand of slow death. Damn the whole bunch of Russians. Their business would go on no matter where the buyers came from, because the merchandise was in demand and profitable to their buyers.