The Triggerman Dance

Joshua studied Norton's Scotch-riddled face. Norton was his mentor and trainer, a man who within the limits of a bureaucracy had been as good, decent and honest with him as a man could be. He could bear Norton no ill will. And when he looked at Frazee's aging but unlined face, his innocent expression and unshakable self-faith, he saw someone not only to fear, but to pity. He couldn't even look at Dumars.

He sat for a while after the others had gone. He could see Sharon lingering in the hallway for him. It took sheer willpower to simply stand up and leave the conference room.

He walked across the parking structure with her—his ears burning, his throat tight. He was trying to figure out how to react, what to do.

"What's your plan, Joshua?"

"I have no plan."

"You're lying."

Ever since their nights together—there had been four of them in the last four days—Joshua had noted an increasingly bold and proprietary air in Sharon. She seemed quick to bore into things that most people would simply leave alone. His defenses were no longer unassailable for her, and Joshua wasn't sure whether he liked it or not. " Sharon, I wish I was," he said

Owl didn't call until late that night, when they were sitting in her living room watching Leno. Sharon's cat, Natalie, was sprawled across Joshua's lap, purring. He was stroking the cat though he hated cats. He had not touched his dinner. The cell phone was on the coffee table in front of him, but Joshua dreaded the words he would have to say.

And then it was ringing. Two. Three.

Joshua picked up the handset and went outside to the patio He simply couldn't let Sharon hear his defeat. There was a large enough shred of his pride left to never allow that. John's voice was clear and small, as if coming across the globe rather than the twenty short miles from Liberty Ridge.

John repeated his conversation with Holt and told Joshua about the Baum exhibit. Joshua asked him to repeat it again. He wrote it down in his notepad, as always, as if any of it mattered now. He was furious that they couldn't get an arrest warrant for a man planning to stuff a corpse and put it on display with his elk and lambs and kudu or whatever the fuck they were. Joshua looked up at the sky and wished he were on one of the stars.

Of course, his gears were spinning, no, shearing—he could almost see Wayfarer, Baum and Owl sitting up there on Top o the World, finishing off lunch before Holt finished them off. It was almost more than he could take, being able to see it so clearly but knowing it would never happen, that he would never be there.

And then, of course, the inevitable question from his snitch

"You'll bust Holt while I'm supposed to be getting Baum right?"

"That is no longer the plan."

"We didn't get the warrant?"

"No."

"Why? What in hell more can I—"

"—I don't know, Owl. I honestly don't know how you could have done better."

Joshua explained the meeting with Frazee, the denial of the warrant petition, the reasons. He couldn't remember ever having to give more shameful news in all his life. It was bad enough being governed by fools without having to speak for them, too. In the long silence that followed, Joshua truly accepted that his longstanding appointment with fate had been canceled forever.

And then, while he searched his vocabulary for the best terms of surrender, a light flashed inside him.

The light was so bright that Joshua couldn't look directly at it, only to the side, like trying to peek at an eclipse of the sun.

Was this real? Was he seeing it correctly? Or was it just a mirage hovering over a long, hot, lonely highway?

"Wait," he said.

He thought it through one way, then back again. One more time, then another. It was there. It was real.

"I'm tired of waiting," said Owl.

"I need thirty seconds. Give them to me."

Gentle static. The occasional breathing of his mole. His own accelerating heartbeats thumping in his ears as he flipped back through his little book to the notes of John's second call—after he'd accompanied Holt to Top of the World and seen the statues and the vaults. He backed toward the porch light to see them better. Pay dirt.

"Listen to me. There's a way we can do this. It is possible. You would have to put your head on the chopping block. Right there, directly on it. Then, trust me."

"I'll listen."

"There's nothing for you to listen to, Owl. Just do what Holt tells you. Bring Baum to Liberty Ridge for him. I'll be there when you need me. I promise you that."

Sharon was eyeing him as he returned to the house a few minutes later. He glanced at her, then away, then set the phone back on the coffee table and began pacing the room. Natalie looked at him with eyes that seemed fixed on some other dimension.

"I ordered him out, but he refused. He's going to take Baum back to Liberty Ridge for Holt."

Sharon said nothing and Josh felt the accusing silence. He knew she would unravel his dishonesty in a matter of seconds.

"You asked him to disobey you."

"It was totally his doing. He refuses to come out."