Heat (20 page)

O
n their first day in San Francisco they walked. Jesse wanted to know if he was still being followed, and walking was the best way. They walked from the Ritz-Carlton to Union Square, and Jenny went shopping.

She had never seen anything like it; there were Sak's Fifth Avenue, Macy's, Neiman Marcus and the Ralph Lauren shop, all within a few steps of each other. With his first ten thousand dollar payment from Coldwater in his pocket, Jesse made her shop. After all, he thought, they wouldn't be abandoning their luggage at the hotel to sneak out of the country.

Jesse watched constantly for a tail, checking reflections in shop windows, never looking behind him, and it wasn't long before he found his man. He didn't recognize this one; he was tough-looking, better than six feet, more than two hundred pounds, close to Jesse's own size. He was very good at his work, Jesse thought.

They had lunch in a pub, then shopped some more. Finally, when they were ready to drop, they took the cable car up Powell Street and walked a block
or two to the hotel, lugging many packages and shopping bags.

 

At Ernie's that night they were treated as old friends, given a secluded table and served to within an inch of their lives.

“I've never seen such a beautiful room,” Jenny gushed, waving at the mahogany paneling and the fresh flowers. “How much is this costing?”

“It's not costing us a dime,” Jesse replied, smiling. “It's all on Jack Gene, one way or another. We can take some comfort in that.”

 

The following morning, Jesse rented a car and they drove north, over the Golden Gate Bridge, through Marin County and up into the wine country. They followed the road up the Napa Valley and found an Italian restaurant, Tre Vigne, for lunch. It was an unusually warm day for the time of year, and they asked for a table in the garden, which they had to themselves.

They ordered pasta and a good bottle of Napa chardonnay and had a leisurely lunch. As they were finishing, there was a sudden scraping of chairs, and men in suits occupied the tables on either side of them. Then, another man in a suit pulled a chair up to their table and sat down.

“May I join you?” he asked, somewhat tardily.

“Hello, Kip,” Jesse said.

“Hello, Jesse. And may I be introduced?”

“Jenny, this is Kip; Kip, this is Jenny.”

“I'm very pleased to meet you, Jenny,” Kip said. “I wonder if you would be kind enough to go to the ladies' room? Mr. Smith over there will guide you.” He nodded toward a man at the next table.

“It's all right, go ahead,” Jesse said.

Jenny got up and left.

“Well, Jesse,” Kip said, “what brings you to this part of the country?”

“I'm on my honeymoon,” Jesse replied.

“I thought I told you not to travel without…What did you say?”

“I said I'm on my honeymoon.”

Kip's mouth fell open. “You got
married?
”

“That's what you do, right before a honeymoon.”

“Are you completely crazy?”

“Kip, I thought you'd be pleased; it's excellent cover.”

Kip stared at him a moment, then smiled. “You're right, it is excellent cover; I'm pleased. I mean, congratulations. I never thought you'd go this far, Jess.”

“She was my landlady from the beginning. It didn't take us long to fall in love.”

“You're a lucky man, Jess—so far.”

“Why so far?”

“What happens if this all goes wrong? What are you going to do with a wife?”

“Having a wife is good motivation to keep things from going wrong, isn't it?”

Kip shook his head. “I'm flabbergasted, I have to admit it.”

“Kip, stop being flabbergasted and tell me what you're doing here, intruding on my honeymoon.”

“You were spotted on Friday night at the airport. Remember a guy named Hennessy, from the South Florida Task Force?”

“Vaguely.”

“He called Dan Barker, and Barker called me. Barker was
not
happy. He thought you were planning to skip the country.”

“You can put his mind at rest. We're here for the week, and we're going back next Sunday.”

“How do I know that without keeping a tail on you?”

“Jenny has a daughter; she was supposed to come with us, but at the last minute she was required at a weekend school project.”

“So Coldwater is keeping you on a short leash?”

“That's about it. He knows Jenny wouldn't go anywhere without her daughter.”

“Jesse, if you're going to go bouncing off like this, maybe I'd better put somebody else in St. Clair to keep an eye on you.”

“You got somebody you want immediately dead?” Jesse asked. “Or is it just that you want me immediately dead?”

“We're a little slicker than that.”

“Kip, listen to me. You reached into the gutter and you picked just about the only guy in the world who could waltz into that town and do what I've done. Two guys had already vaporized, remember? You send somebody else in there now, you'll not only kill him, you'll kill me. I'm your only shot at wrapping up this crowd, and you'd better not fuck with me, do you understand?”

Kip nodded. “I understand, Jess; I was just pulling your chain a little. After all, Barker's been pulling mine.”

“You tell Barker that if these people tumble to me and start asking me questions under, shall we say, duress, I'll give
him
to them. One dark night they'll snatch him off some Georgetown street corner and disembowel him. They're like that.”

“I'll mention it.”

“Tell me, when you decided to put a team on me, did it occur to you that Coldwater might have been in there ahead of you with his own team?”

“That's the first thing we checked for. Remember, we spotted your tail in New York.”

“Another thing: I was on to the tail yesterday, practically as soon as we left the hotel. If I find somebody else behind me during my honeymoon, I'll drag him into an alley and break his arms, and I mean it.”

Kip held out his hands. “Jesse, Jesse, there's no need to get riled. You did something you weren't supposed to, and you got caught. Don't repeat the experience.”

Jesse nodded. “Now, since I have no information to impart to you that I didn't impart in our conversation on Friday, I'd like you and your merry band of flatfeet to be gone before my wife returns to the table.”

Kip stood up and gestured to the others. “Sorry for the intrusion. I'll give Barker your message.” He turned to go.

“Kip?”

Kip looked back. “Yeah?”

“How's the new baby doing?”

“Just great.”

“I'm glad. Give him my best.”

“Thanks.” And he was gone.

Jenny came back to the table. “What was that all about?” she demanded.

“Kip is the guy who sprung me from the joint.”

“Joint?”

“Prison.”

“And he's who you're working for?”

“He's my contact.”

“What did he want?”

“He wanted to be sure we weren't skipping the country. Seems a colleague of his recognized me at the airport the other night, and there was a general panic that I was about to bolt.”

“What if we had been bolting?”

“It wouldn't have worked. I'm going to have to give bolting some additional thought.”

J
esse and Jenny arrived home late on Sunday evening, exhausted and happy from their time together and, especially, their time away from St. Clair. As they climbed the front steps with their bags Jesse was again feeling the strain of being someone else, and he was filled with dread to see an envelope pinned to the front door. He ripped it open and read the note.

Here we go again, he thought.

 

Jesse was normally at his desk by eight, and he had to call Herman Muller and beg an hour or two. When he arrived at Coldwater's house there were half a dozen cars and pickup trucks parked in the forecourt, and when he was let into Jack Gene's study
there were as many men there. He took a few steps into the room and froze. Sitting in a chair beside the fireplace was perhaps the one person in the world he least wished to see at that moment. His presence meant that Jesse was, from this moment, effectively a dead man, that perhaps the only thing between him and death was torture.

Charley Bottoms rose from his chair at the sight of Jesse, and his gaze bored into him from across the room. He was dressed in neat sports clothes, a contrast to the jeans and leather he had worn in Atlanta Federal Prison. Long sleeves covered the prison tattoos, and he seemed, if anything, more massive than when Jesse had last seen him in the punishment cell at Atlanta.

“Good morning, Jesse,” Coldwater boomed. “I want you to meet some colleagues.”

Jesse's mind went nearly numb as he was introduced and shook hands with four strangers, and finally, he snapped back to reality as Charley Bottoms took his hand.

“And this is Charley Bottoms, who heads a clan of the Aryan Nation about a hundred miles north of here.”

“Pleased to meet you, Jesse,” Bottoms said, holding on to his hand for a moment.

“Good to see you, Charley,” Jesse replied automatically.

“Let's all have a seat and talk for a minute, then we'll take a tour of the top of the mountain,” Coldwater said. Everyone sat down, and Coldwater continued. “Most of us have met before in passing, at least, but it seemed to me that we have enough in common that we might do some good for each other. Yesterday afternoon, after your arrival, you saw the town, some of the local businesses and the Wood Products plant, which Jesse here takes a hand in running. We expect to be in control of that business in the near future, and that will
consolidate our control of the town. In a few minutes I'm going to show you something that might surprise you, and I hope that what you have seen and will see here will give you some ideas about how to gather power in your own communities.”

Coldwater droned on about how much everyone had in common, while Jesse fought the urge to throw up on the beautiful oriental rug at his feet. What was Bottoms waiting for? Did he want to get Jack Gene alone before he blew the whistle? Jesse looked around. There were only two ways out of the room: Casey sat between him and the door, and if he should throw himself through the windows he had at least a fifty-foot drop. He was sweating now, and he didn't want to call attention to himself by mopping his brow.

“Is it warm in here, Jesse?” Coldwater said suddenly. He got up, opened a window and sat down again.

“Thank you, sir,” Jesse said, taking a deep breath.

Coldwater talked about cooperation and togetherness for another ten minutes, then he rose. “We'll have to take more than one car, it seems; you two can ride with me, Pat, you take Bob, there, and Jesse, Charley can ride with you.” Coldwater retrieved a roll of blueprints from the bookcase, then the men filed out of the house and went to their respective cars. Coldwater drove off, leading the way.

Bottoms got into Jesse's truck and slammed the door. He pointed at the dashboard and mouthed, “Is it bugged?”

“No,” Jesse replied. “I've been over it.”

“Well,” Bottoms said, “I guess I gave you a jolt, huh? I mean, I think I scared the shit out of you.”

Jesse glanced across at the big man. “That's a fair statement, I guess.”

“I wanted to warn you earlier, but you were out of town until last night, I hear.”

Jesse nearly drove off the road. “You knew I was here?”

Bottoms laughed. “Haven't you figured it out yet?”

“Charley, what the fuck is going on?”

“Well, a couple of days after Barker sprung you, he sprung me. I'm supposed to keep an eye on you, make sure you're not so unhappy you'd fly the coop, or so happy you'd change sides.”

“I should have known Barker would have a backup in place. It's like him to be that cautious.”

“Backup is not far wrong. The deal was, I'd come up to Idaho, where a couple of old acquaintances had established the Nation up north, and get in good with them. Then, if they popped you, I'd be in place to step in. And, of course, I would burn the whole bunch in return for a free pardon.”

“Let me get this straight,” Jesse said. “You were willing to turn in your biker buddies to save your own ass?”

“Damn straight,” Bottoms said. “I never met anybody on a bike, or on foot, come to that, whose ass was as valuable to me as my own. I never even liked most of 'em. Fuck 'em, is what I say, if it gets me a fresh start.”

“You been dealing with Kip Fuller?”

“Right.”

“I told the son of a bitch not to send anybody else in here. Is he
trying
to get me burned?”

“I doubt it. I think Barker insisted.”

Suddenly, Jesse was delighted to see Charley Bottoms. “Well, I'll tell you, Charley, you aren't going to believe what you're about to see, but I want you to remember every fucking detail of it and report everything to Kip and Barker. They wouldn't take my word for it.”

“Sure thing, pal. You know, I always wondered
what would have happened if you and me had gone toe to toe in the yard. Didn't you?”

“Never crossed my mind.”

“Well, you got out just in time, buddy; I'd have smeared you across the pavement real good.”

“You know, Charley, it might have been interesting. Up until the time we met in solitary, I had just been trying to stay alive. But I think that after our chat, I would have started killing people, and you would have been first in line.”

Bottoms grinned. “I like you, Jesse; I always did. You always handled yourself real good in the yard; took out some guys I'd have thought would have stomped you into the ground. I'd have hated to kill you, but I'd have done it the minute you set foot out of that cell. I'm glad our present circumstances don't require me to do that.”

“That's sweet of you, Charley,” Jesse replied.

“I never saw anybody I couldn't take in about a minute,” Bottoms mused, “except maybe Coldwater.”

“Coldwater scares you, does he?”

“You heard the stories about him in Nam?”

“Nope.”

“Shit, he'd go out in the jungle and hunt Slopes with nothing but a knife; they say he killed more people in silent combat than anybody in any service, including the marines and the CIA. And now he turns up in Idaho with all that hair, talking like a preacher. I bet if you looked at him cross-eyed he'd tear your throat out with his hands without even blinking.”

“You might keep that in mind, seeing that you're doing what you're doing here,” Jesse said. He drove through the gates, then pulled up on the mountain top and parked the truck.

Bottoms stepped down and looked around him. “What we got here, summer camp?”

“Stick around, Charley,” Jesse said. “Your eyes are about to be opened.”

 

They stood around a conference table in Coldwater's underground office, following him as he took them through the blueprints of the installation. Jesse, as he had been doing for the past hour, snapped photographs with his Zippo lighter/camera whenever he had the opportunity. He took the opportunity to look closely around Coldwater's quarters, too, and he saw something he'd seen before: a bookcase that held spines only, and, unlike the one that hid the safe back at Coldwater's house, the false front was narrower and went nearly all the way to the ceiling.

“Jack Gene,” somebody interrupted, “I don't see why you've stored gasoline instead of diesel in your underground tanks. Twenty-five thousand gallons of gas could make this place awful hot.”

“That's an easy one,” Jack Gene replied. “First of all, the gasoline is in super-hardened tanks, no closer than fifty feet to the surface; second, in the last ditch, gasoline can make a powerful weapon, even if only in Molotov cocktails. And we've got flamethrowers we can use, if we have to.”

“I see your point,” the man said.

“Well, that's all, gentlemen,” Coldwater said, rolling up the plans. “Let's go back to the house for some brunch. He handed the rolled-up blueprints to Jesse. “Hang on to those for me.” Then he led the way from his underground redoubt.

 

Back in the truck, Jesse dropped the blueprints behind the seat as he got in.

“Shit!” Bottoms breathed. “You ever seen anything like that?”

“No, and neither has anybody else. When are you talking to Kip again?”

“Soon as I get out of St. Clair.”

“Tell him what you saw, will you? In the greatest possible detail?”

“You better believe it,” Bottoms said.

Jesse drove back down the mountain toward Coldwater's house, feeling optimistic again. Maybe Bottoms's testimony would put some spine into Barker and get him moving. And Jesse now had one more opportunity to convince Washington.