The Tribucci brothers and Walt Halliday were the first Hidden Valley residents to reach the slide. They met on Sierra Street where it narrowed into County 235-A, and from there they could see it clearly through a light sifting of snow. Solemnly, wordlessly, the three men tramped up the sharp incline of the roadway and stopped when they could go no further, staring at the solid blockage rising up into the gray morning sky.
Sheer slabs of granite and splintered trees with branches and strips of bark torn away, protruded from the irregular surfaces like shattered bones. The western cliff face seemed steeper than it had been, scarred with an inverted fanshell chute that shone blackly against the dove-colored surroundings. In the stillness you could hear the mounded snow and ice and rock settling with a soft rumbling sound, like a thin echo of the slide itself.
Halliday said, his voice subdued, “Bad. Jesus, about as bad as it could be.”
Both Tribuccis nodded gravely; there did not seem to be anything else to say.
Several other Hidden Valley residents began to arrive, among them Lew Coopersmith and Frank McNeil and Mayor Matt Hughes. They, too, were quietly stunned by what they saw.
Hughes said finally, “My God, do you suppose anybody was in the pass when it happened?”
“Not likely,” Vince Tribucci answered. “What with the amount of snow dropped by the blizzard last night, I doubt if the road was passable even before the slide. If it had to happen, this was probably the best time for it.”
Hughes blew on chilled hands; in his haste he had forgotten his gloves. “I’d better get on the phone to the county seat and let them know about this and ask them to get men and equipment out as quickly as possible.” He turned and hurried back to where he had left his car.
Frank McNeil turned to John Tribucci. “How long you figure it’ll take to clear through?”
“From the way it looks, I’d guess at least a week. But if we keep getting heavy snows, it could take two or more.”
McNeil pursed his lips sourly. “Merry Christmas,” he said, “and a Happy goddamn New Year.”
Thirteen
By nine o’clock the clouds had thinned and scattered to the east, and the whitish eye of a pale winter sun dominated a widening swath of sky. There was no wind, and the thin air had lost most of its chill. On the inner valley slopes and in parts of the valley itself, some of the deep powder drifts created by the night’s storm began to slowly melt, forming little cascades in intricate, interconnecting patterns. Ice unprotected by pockets of shadow crackled intermittently in the warming day; the snow on the village streets commenced liquefying into slush.
Kubion started in from the Mule Deer Lake cabin just before noon, handling the car cautiously, squinting through the streaked windshield. The glare of sun on snow hurt his eyes and intensified the dull ache in his temples. He felt lousy today, badly strung out. Not much sleep last night, that was one of the things responsible-and that dream he’d had, the spiders crawling over him with their red gaping mouths. Jesus! He loathed spiders; they were the one thing which terrified him. He’d never had a nightmare like that before, and it worried him; it was as disquieting as the recurring headaches and his irrational inclination to violence.
The headaches were another source of his uptight feeling. The dull pain in his temples and forehead hadn’t developed into one so far, but he knew it could happen easily enough, he knew he could lose control again. He could feel the impulsive need to destroy lying just below the surface of his emotions, like something ineffectually chained in a dark cave, waiting for the opportunity to break free and come screaming into the light.
And there was the need to get out of this frigging wilderness, to get back to civilization, where they could set up another score; the attendant frustration of knowing they couldn’t chance it the way things were. According to the morning radio reports, the Sacramento cops had finally found the rented garage and the dummy armored car; there would be no lessening of the heat for some time yet.
Kubion drove down onto Sierra Street and noticed that there was more activity in the village than usual-that two people were walking up the middle of the road toward the pass. Then he became aware of the huge mound of snow and rock and splintered trees which blocked the valley entrance in a long downward fan. What the hell? he thought.
He kept on past the Mercantile-he had come in for a few minor supplies, to get out of the cabin again for a while-and pulled the car into the Shell station and parked it on the apron. He went up the rest of the way on foot, stopping next to the man and woman he had seen trudging along the road: a couple of senior citizens in plaid mackinaws and woolen hats. “What happened here?” he asked them. “Avalanche, is that what it is?”
Lew Coopersmith looked at him, frowned slightly, and then seemed to place him. “That’s what it is,” he said at length.
“When did it happen?”
“Just at dawn. Woke up the whole village.”
“Yeah, I can imagine.”
“If you and your friend planned on leaving before Christmas, I’m afraid you won’t be able to do it. According to estimates, we’ll be snowbound at least a week and maybe more.”
“You mean nobody can get in or out of the valley?”
“Not unless they use snowmobiles around and through ten or fifteen miles of heavy timber. The pass is blocked solid.”
Some country, all right, Kubion thought: the frozen bunghole of creation. Well, what difference did it make? If anything, it was a favorable occurrence; for the next week or so they would be cut off completely from all the fuzz on the outside.
But he said, playing it cautious, “My friend’s wife is going to scream like a wounded eagle. She was expecting us for the holidays, back in San Francisco. We were leaving Saturday.”
Ellen Coopersmith said, “Oh, that’s too bad.”
“Yeah.”
“Phone lines are open,” Coopersmith told him, “so it isn’t like we were completely isolated. Your friend will be able to call his wife and tell her the circumstances.”
“He’ll want to do that, okay. Thanks.”
Coopersmith nodded. “Sorry about the inconvenience, but it’s just one of those things that happens. Nothing you can do.”
“I guess not,” Kubion said. He turned away and walked back to his car and sat unmoving behind the wheel, staring up at the slide. An idea began to nudge his mind. Snowbound, he thought. Nobody can get in or out of the valley. No contact with the outside except by telephone. Made-to-order kind of situation, by God. And he remembered the check Matt Hughes had cashed for the old man in the Mercantile the previous afternoon: unofficial bank and how much was there in that office safe? Ten thousand? Maybe not even that much, and then again maybe more-maybe a lot more. How many people in Hidden Valley? Seventy-five or so, wasn’t it? Hicks; but hicks sometimes had plenty of money, you were always hearing about some old fart who kept his life’s savings in a fruit jar because he didn’t trust banks. Might even be as much as thirty or forty thousand in the valley…
Abruptly, Kubion shook himself. Christ! He was thinking like a punk again, there was no score for them here, how could there be? They were trapped along with the rest of the damned people, and there was the safe house to think of. The hicks knew him and Brodie by sight, if not Loxner, and realistically there just didn’t figure to be nearly enough in it in the first place. Even if there was a hundred grand in cash and jewelry in Hidden Valley, it wouldn’t be worth it. Still, it was a wild concept: rip off an entire valley. Wouldn’t that be the cat’s nuts! But three men couldn’t execute a caper like that-or could they? Well there was probably a way to do it and get away with it, all right; the snowbound business took care of any outside interference, it would be like working in a big sealed room… Oh shit, it was crazy and stupid to even consider it. They needed a job like Greenfront should have been: safe, clean, big take, no loose ends, no people who knew what they really looked like and could identify them afterward.
But a whole valley, a whole goddamn valley.
Could it be done, with just three men?
Kubion lit a cigarette and sat drumming his fingers on the hard plastic of the steering wheel. Come on, come on, he thought, it’s a pipe dream. And then: Okay, so it’s a pipe dream, so actually doing it is all the way out. The thing is, can it be done on paper? Is it workable at all?
