Step to the Graveyard Easy by Bill Pronzini Read Free Book Online Page A

Dumpster, tossed the bag in. The satchel he locked in the ’Vette’s trunk.
    Breakfast in a nearby coffee shop. Then he drove around the neighborhood until he found a chain drugstore large enough to have a stationery section. He bought five self-sealing padded mailing bags and a black marking pen.
    Back in his room, he sat down with a couple of sheets of motel stationery and worked his memory. Names, faces, numbers—the salesman’s stock-in-trade. Over the years he’d developed an almost total recall in all three categories. It didn’t take him long to sort out and set down the loss amounts of the other five vies at last night’s game, starting with their buy-in figures. Then he divided by six the two thousand that no longer belonged to Boone and Tanya, added those amounts to the individual totals. That ensured that everybody, himself included, would not only get his money back but make a small profit for his trouble.
    Once he had the final figures, he opened the satchel and counted out the money into six piles. His cut he stuffed into his wallet; the others went into the five mailing bags. He consideredwriting some kind of note to go with the cash, but he’d have to write it five times—too much work. Unnecessary, besides. The smarter ones would figure it out for themselves, even if they never knew for sure who their benefactor was. The others wouldn’t care. Free ride on a gift horse.
    With the marking pen he wrote their full names on each of the bags and then sealed them. Fifteen minutes later he was checked out and on his way downtown again.
    The desk clerk at the Conover Arms said, “The Judsons are no longer with us—checked out early this morning. No forwarding address, I’m afraid.”
    “Not a problem,” Cape said. “I know where they’re going.”
    Three of the five insurance agents were staying at the Sir Francis Drake. Cape dropped off their money first, requesting that the packages be kept in the hotel safe until claimed. The clerk there didn’t ask any questions. Neither did the one manning the desk at the Hilton, the overflow convention hotel nearby where the other two players were booked.
    When he was done, he picked up the ’Vette and got directions to the Bay Bridge from the parking garage attendant. Half an hour later he was on the other side of the bay, on Highway 80 headed east.
    The High Sierra.
    Highway 50 now, the long, steep descent from Echo Summit.
    Cape pulled off onto an overlook, got out, and stood squinting into the cool mountain wind. Lake Tahoe Basin spread out below, part of the lake a bright blue blot in the distance. White-rimmed peaks, vast stretches of evergreens, massive juts and scarps of bare rock. Rugged beauty, harsh wilderness. Somewhere off to the north, where Highway 80 crested the Sierras on its asphalt path to Reno, was Emigration Gap—the place where the Donner Party had been trapped and perished, and the still living had fed briefly on the dead.
    Behind him cars and trucks hissed by in a steady stream. He stayed there like that for a long time, hunched against the force of the wind, focused on the far reaches.
    Up high like this, standing alone with your back to civilization, you felt that your humanity was safe.
    Down below, among the roaming herds, where you couldn’t tell the weak from the strong, the predators from the prey, you had to be damn careful not to become one of the cannibals yourself.



9
    Lake Tahoe.
    Massive, sun-spattered, placid. Cupped by mountains all around, its far shores obscured by a bluish haze. Pleasure craft and paddlewheel excursion boats skimming like waterbugs over its surface.
    South Lake Tahoe.
    Not much of a town. Most of it stretched out along Lake Tahoe Boulevard, following the curve of the lakeshore. Malls, strip malls, wedding chapels, winter and summer resort businesses, a big new ski tram leading up to the flanking mountain. The last mile or so at the eastern end, it became a gamblers’ town, with strings of