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“No drugs!” Gordon called after him. “We don’t want anything in his system.”

“Put him in the submersion tank?”

Gordon said, “Yes, put him in the submersion tank. When he comes out, I want him one step away from a blithering idiot.”

Chapter Forty

“SO NOW WHAT?” Jerry asked Gordon. Max Conroy was out of commission in the flotation tank, and Jerry and Gordon were outside by the pool, enjoying the coolness after the rain. Talia had chosen to stay in her room watching America’s Kids Got Talent .

Gordon had never answered his question.

“What do you mean?” Gordon, clothed once more, this time in drawstring yoga pants and a white tunic top, stretched out his huarache-clad feet and lit a cigar.

“Which way are we going to go?”

“You mean, which one of your harebrained storyboards are we following? I don’t know yet.”

Jerry stifled his anger. He knew that they were in this together. “It’s important, Gord. It could mean millions—no, billions of dollars. All I’m trying to do is—”

“All you’re trying to do is muddy the waters with seven or eight scenarios.” Gordon leaned forward in his lounge chair and pointed his cigar at him. “This isn’t a writers’ workshop, Jerry. This isn’t about storyboards or screenplays or rolling credits , it’s about taking care of a problem. What part of that don’t you understand? We wait until it’s dark and dump him somewhere where no one will find him.”

“You’re kidding, right? Just dump him in the desert? What if he’s found? Do you know what the coyotes and God-knows-what could do to a body? Not to mention the heat! If he’s found…” Jerry shuddered. “Let’s get this right. Let’s save something.”

“How? Your suggestion was to dissolve him in acid. If we do that, no one will ever find the body, sure, but there are the legal issues. Probate. I liked the original idea better.”

“Look, I’m not tied to it.” Jerry wriggled forward in his seat. “Let me see what else I can come up with. All options on the table.”

Gordon nodded. “Seriously, Jer. What about the DePaulentis plan? Maybe we should just go with the original—the way we planned it in the first place.”

“It could work.”

“But what about the sightings? There have been some. And that woman cop?”

“I don’t know, but I’m going to go work on it.” He’d always been a good screenwriter—he was fast and he was good—and this was the ultimate challenge. If he just thought of it from that standpoint, as a mental exercise, as fiction , he could do it. His fingers almost itched. When the creative urge hit him, his fingers tingled and his gut roiled. He was primed. He stood up.

“Where are you going?”

“No time like the present.”

BUT AS THE night went on, Jerry realized that you couldn’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. And was this ever a sow’s ear. Talia huffed around the room, in between long-suffering silences. The room was plastered with Storyboard #1 through Storyboard #7, and none of them worked. The bed was covered with Storyboard #8. Talia now sat cross-legged in the doorway to the bathroom alcove, steaming.

“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing, Jerry? All these stupid scenarios—it’s ridiculous. Do you think this is a game ?”

“There’s a story in here somewhere.”

She grabbed an 8 ½” x 11” sheet of paper taped to the minifridge and crumpled it up. “What’s this ? There’s a secret cult that set him up to make him look like a killer because they didn’t agree with his politics? What kind of crap is that?”

“It’s just one in my chain of ideas.”

“Your chain of ideas.”

“Yes. When I start a project like this, nothing is off the table. I toss in every idea I can think of, because that stimulates creativity. It gets me thinking outside the box. Then I narrow it down to—”

“Oh, shut up.” She pressed the button for room service. “Can I get a massage at this hour?”

Before she left, she told him in no uncertain terms that he was never going to get laid again—not unless they fixed this. “I don’t care how you fix this. But I want him dead and I want his estate intact !” And she slammed out of the room.

AROUND 10:00 P.M., frustrated, stymied, depressed , Jerry turned on CNN. And there it was, an apparent re-airing of a press conference from earlier this evening. Sheriff Bonneville of Paradox, Arizona, speaking into the flashing cameras. Jerry didn’t want to hear it. Didn’t want to hear about Max’s rampage all over Arizona, or how many people they thought he’d killed now.

“The woman may be with a young boy, about ten to twelve years of age. The boy may be wounded.”

Jerry sat up, transfixed, listening to every word.

When the press conference was over, he rang Gordon’s line. Gordon sounded as if he’d been asleep. And he’d definitely been drinking, or maybe popping those peyote buttons again. “Wass?” he asked.

“Gordon, it’s our lucky day,” Jerry said.

“What’re you talking about?”

“We can do it, Gord. Plan A. We can get our money’s worth out of the DePaulentis thing after all.”

“What do you mean?”

“Max isn’t wanted by the law. Near as I can tell, they’re after Shaun and the kid.”

Gordon’s voice changed: he was all business. “Get up here now, Jerry. We need to plan this.”

“See you in five.”

TESS MCCRAE WAS reissued her previous vehicle, the battered old unit with high mileage and an oil leak. Bonny sent her home because he wanted her “fresh in the morning.” And she was tired. Banged up from the crash, and worse, shaken by the sight of the woman walking on the highway, holding the boy. But instead of heading home, she drove onto I-17, going north. When she arrived, the crime scene was lit up like a night football game. The Department of Public Safety was hard at work, measuring the scene. Tess’s car sat on a flatbed tow truck, which pulled out as she arrived.

A detective detached from the roped-off scene, approached Tess’s radio car, and introduced herself as DPS Detective Laura Cardinal.

“Did you find it?” Tess asked.

“Yes.” Cardinal held up the evidence bag containing the purple yo-yo.

The Desert Oasis logo on the yo-yo was clear in the bright-white light that eerily lit the scene.

“It was right where you said it would be, although it was hard to find—it fell into a crevice between those rocks.” The detective nodded toward the rocks close to the road. She looked tired from the long night, but her eyes were probing. Tess wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of the detective. “How’d you know?”

“I saw him throw it.”

“The boy.”

Tess nodded. She didn’t say that she must have been too tired and shaken up after the crash to think about it until now. Her memory was her best asset, and yet it had taken awhile for her to realize the significance. “It was on a string around his finger. He was juggling that and the gun. So he pulled it off and threw it.”

Cardinal stared at her. “That’s quite some memory of yours,” she said.

“Some days are better than others,” Tess said.

Chapter Forty-One

IN GORDON’S PALATIAL suite, Jerry and Gordon went over their plan. Fortunately for Jerry, Talia had decided to take a bubble bath. He’d sneaked out without telling her.