Short Cut to Santa Fe (27 page)

“But it worked,” said Fernando, with some animation in his voice. “We knew someone up here looked after his interests. I thought he was in our detachment, because Deever knew exactly what was going on. I didn't think of my brother and all his friends and drinking buddies.”

“Well,” said Victoria, “like I said, I'm sorry. Because a brother is a brother. Even if he did try to kill us.”

“You had no way of knowing it, but you were perfectly safe as long as he was just waving a rifle at you,” said Fernando. There was pain in his eyes, and Kate caught his hand in hers. “He hated guns.”

“I can't say I felt safe,” said Victoria. “Looking into the business end of a firearm is rather unsettling, I find.”

“I don't think he ever fired a gun in his life,” said Fernando. “And when our father was shot, Guillermo told me only fools carried guns. Guns were for scaring people, and if you did that too often you'd get shot yourself. But he had knives, a lot of knives, all razor-sharp. Jesus,” he muttered, and ran his hand through his hair. “All those people.”

Victoria shuddered and stood up. Kelleher scrambled to his feet at the same time. “I'm dead tired,” she said. “I could use about three days' sleep. I was too strung out before, so we came down here. It was real nice talking to you. It helped.” And they swept out.

“I'm glad,” said Harriet. “I found listening to her unsettling.”

“It's from being married to Deever for five years. She'll recover,” said John.

“Come on, Kate,” said Fernando suddenly. “It's late. Let's go.”

“Where to?”

“I got us a room in a smelly, flea- and rat-infested boardinghouse. Ready to chance it?”

“Is it cheap?” said Kate, getting to her feet a little stiffly.

“Damn right.” He helped her up the last bit and they walked out of the bar, hand in hand.

As they disappeared into the lobby, Harriet heard Kate moan, “I'm starving. I won't last for another ten minutes.”

“Now there's an interesting development,” said Harriet. “I knew something drastic had happened to her. It has. Sergeant Rodriguez. I like him,” she added sleepily.

“Shall we retire to our palace on the fifth floor?”

“By all means.”

“John—”

“Yes?”

“What are we going to do?”

“Now? Tomorrow? Or for the rest of our lives?”

“It scares me to hear you say that. It sounds so final. Like death.”

“The cure for death is love,” said John, running his hands down her back. “Now and for the rest of our lives. I'm not sure about tomorrow.”

“Say—I'm beginning to like this place for breakfast,” said McDowell, looking up as the others trailed in to join him. “A man could get used to doing this every day instead of sleeping.”

“Have you eaten?” asked Harriet.

“Yes,” he said cheerfully. “And I've ordered continental breakfast for four. Don't want to waste a lot of time this morning, do we? After working all night, I needed something substantial, so I came early.”

“What have you been doing all night?” asked Kate.

“Talking, and listening. Mostly listening. Ginger—whose name, by the way, is Giancarlo Giovanni Cardone—wants to cut a deal and he's talking to anyone who'll stand still. The guy from the feds has him now, trying for bigger, more important stuff than just plain little murder.”

“Can I just ask what was supposed to happen?” said Harriet. “I mean what in hell did they think they were up to?”

“Sure. As far as I can tell, it goes something like this. Deever suspected his wife was cheating on him, and he figured she'd try to get rid of him by going to the feds. So he'd been watching her for more than a year. Ginger says she got ready to leave at least three times before, but chickened out—she knew what he'd do to her if she walked. Then she tells him she's taking a vacation with this friend, Jessica, and she buys the tickets and everything, but Kelleher—the boyfriend—is also buying tickets and Deever is also watching him. So he knows. And they're all waiting around to see if she'll do it this time.”

“Why not just get rid of her?” asked Harriet.

“No need if she isn't going to leave him,” said McDowell. “And it'll look suspicious. So Deever offers Bill Rodriguez a million bucks to get the bus hijacked and Mrs. Deever killed in the process, because by this time he knows the feds are pushing her hard, and he wants her dead in a way that leaves him absolutely clean. Bill hires the King brothers and books a spot on the tour for himself and his girlfriend, as Brett and Jennifer Nicholls, so he can manage the operation. The King brothers are supposed to sandbag the driver, pick up the passengers at the airport, drive them to some remote—but prearranged—location and abandon them there, unharmed. Except for Mrs. D., who's being taken care of by ‘Brett Nicholls' in a sad accident. The two guys get their twenty thousand bucks and disappear. No one said, but I suspect Guillermo was planning on a brave rescue attempt in which Victoria
and
the King brothers would get shot.”

“But the brothers thought something on the bus was worth a million and they wanted it. How did they find out?” asked John.

“My brother no doubt got canned one night and told them,” said Fernando.

“Then everything went wrong. The bus took off in the wrong direction and disappeared. Deever found out you two had been following it and figured you were feds. The only person you had contacted was Kate, so he went after her. I guess Bill decided it was time to look out for himself; he started getting rid of everyone who could finger him, the two hijackers, Jennifer, and Donovan. Donovan was on the bus as a backup. Catching Victoria was real important to Deever.”

“I still don't see why he didn't just hire someone to put a bullet through her as she walked down the street,” said Kate. “People aren't that hard to get rid of in a place like Dallas.”

“I'm sure he thought of it, and reckoned it was too risky. When the wife of a crime boss is gunned down in the street, people think contract. And from there it isn't too far to a contract put out by the husband.”

“Who was Jennifer?” asked Harriet.

Fernando shook his head. “I didn't keep up with my brother's love life.”

“Anyway, Deever didn't know about the kids. That also screwed up the operation. You see, once he knew she was going, he canceled the hotel reservations, and no one should have missed that bus for two days. Maybe more.” McDowell yawned. “But what happens? There are kids who are supposed to be on the bus, and hysterical parents demanding action within minutes or maybe an hour from the time it disappeared. That was pure bad luck for Deever, and can only be counted as counterbalancing his extraordinary good luck so far.”

A tall, thin, limp man with small eyes, dressed in a suit that hung loosely on his frame and a tie that drooped from his curling shirt collar, materialized at their table, unobtrusively, like a waiter. “They told me you'd be here.” His reproachful voice chided them for looking happy and comfortable. “Morning, Ed, Rodriguez,” he said, and sat down. “And Harriet Jeffries, John Sanders, Katherine Grosvenor. Am I right?”

“So far,” said John. “Who are you?”

He flipped a black wallet open and shut, displaying a blur of colour picture and print. “Fred—” he muttered, adding a mumble that might have been a last name. “I'll have coffee,” he said to the waitress, “and some of those pastries.” He turned back to them. “I've just finished talking to Mr. Cardone,” he said. “Most interesting. And I'm about to meet with the district attorney. Our feeling at the moment is that it might be awkward if a trial for murder here in New Mexico were to take place before existing federal charges could be heard . . .”

“Come on,” said Fernando. “This is McDowell's turf. Let him deal with it. Let's go.”

They left Fred and McDowell deep in conversation and strolled out of the dining room. “Why don't we go for a coffee somewhere where the feds aren't polluting the atmosphere with gray suits?” said Kate. “I never got my second cup, not to mention my third. And I'm still hungry.”

“Good idea,” said Harriet.

“How about a real breakfast?” said Fernando. “Follow me.”

Several corners later, they came to a small restaurant, bright and noisy with tiles. Fernando walked briskly through the indoor section, stopping to speak briefly to the waitress in Spanish, and out the other side onto an almost deserted patio, hung with vines and filled with birds, singing and quarreling with each other. They sat down at a brightly painted table and looked around them. “She'll be here in a minute with coffee. Proper coffee. None of this international hotel school shit.”

“Did you know Deever?” asked John, as he finished off his very large breakfast. “Before all this?” A sparrow was making dashes for crumbs under his feet and he moved aside to give it more scope.

“Yeah. I've known Deever forever. He's the curse that hangs over my family. My father was killed smuggling illegal aliens for Deever. In a shoot-out with the feds. Can you believe it?” he asked bitterly. “Just like the movies. Anyway, I sort of grew up at Deever's ranch. Pedro would be out teaching me to ride, and Deever would be working on multimillion-dollar deals inside with my father. But I wasn't the reason he took us kids out there with him all the time. It was Guillermo. Deever was crazy about Guillermo. He wanted to adopt him after my father died and Antonia freaked. Screaming about not selling her child to a pervert.”

“Was he?”

Fernando looked extremely uncomfortable. “I don't know,” he said. “As far as I can tell, he's not homosexual. But maybe he likes boys. The trouble is that my evidence is lousy.” He shook his head. “Guillermo was furious with Antonia. He was dying to be rich and live like Deever. He didn't give a damn if the guy ruffled his hair and patted his bum and worse, for all I know. Deever used to give him money, and Antonia would find it and make him return it. She swore we'd make our own way without using blood money. But then he said he wasn't going to see Carlos anymore and we believed him. Or I did until he took me up to Deever's cabin.”

“What happened at the cabin?” asked Kate.

Fernando's cheek darkened with blood. “I don't know if— What the hell—it was probably all bullshit anyway.” He stared down at his plate and began speaking in a low monotone. “Guillermo told me he'd promised Deever he'd bring me to the cabin that day. And then he told me why, and how much money he'd give us, and that Deever wanted to pay for me to go to college, and that we wouldn't have to slave at home to try to make ends meet. He said Deever was willing to marry Antonia, if that was what we wanted, so that I could live at his house. My brother said—” And Fernando stopped. The colour had drained out of his face once more. “My brother said,” he went on, “that he was getting too old for Deever.”

“What did you do?” asked Kate.

“I freaked out. There was a hunting rifle on the wall of the cabin, and I grabbed it and pointed it at Guillermo, and said I was going to kill him. He said I didn't have the guts, and I just ran. He was right. I didn't.”

“That's awful,” said Harriet. “Not that you ran, but that Deever—”

“Wait,” said Fernando. “The next day, Guillermo said that none of it was true. He'd only wanted to see how I'd react and then he said it was the funniest thing he'd ever seen. And he did do things like that. And so I don't know, and by now it doesn't matter.”

“What are you two going to do now?” asked Harriet, in a determined attempt to change the subject.

“Eat,” said Kate, “and get fat. But aside from that—” She paused. Not being quite sure whether she was taking entirely too much for granted.

“We have to go to Albuquerque, and then I thought we might take a few days and go up in the mountains. How does that sound?” Under his serene assumption of agreement, his eyes looked sharp and uncertain.

“Sounds marvelous. What about you two?”

“We have to stick around and see about my equipment,” said Harriet, “and then—I don't know. We have almost a whole glorious week with nothing we have to do. Except give ourselves over to complete abandonment.”

“If we're going to do that,” said John, “we'd better rent another car.”

The rain started south of Eugene and hadn't let up. The countryside was silvered over with rain and mist; every shape was soft, vague, indefinite. Walt Frankel smiled. Fifty miles from Portland and the downpour increased in intensity. He turned his windshield wipers up to maximum and eased his foot off the gas to compensate for the lack of visibility. Here it was, May, and the world was cool and brimming with moisture. The leaves were bursting with it, the grass was green and rampant with it, every ditch and stream and hollow was overflowing with it.

Frankel's request for a six-month leave of absence from his position as personal assistant to the governor—for medical reasons—was lying on his boss's desk. It had been placed there, accompanied with an authentic-looking doctor's letter, several hours before the story of the collapse of the Deever empire reached the press. Because as soon as word of the imminent arrest hit the governor's office, Frankel had begun to count up every traceable action he had taken on Deever's behalf. It was time to leave. He cleared Deever's money out of his safe-deposit box and packed it away. With a valedictory wave at the clear, deep blue sky and bright sunshine, he jumped into his car and headed for Oregon.

As he edged his way happily around a three-car collision caused by wet roads and poor visibility, he wondered what kind of job he might be able to get in Portland. Because he was home at last.

Harriet parked the car well past the bridge over the Rio Grande and they walked slowly back. The flat mesa covered with gray-green sagebrush looked like a calm sea trapped in a circle of mountains, except for the stark brown slash of the river gorge cutting through it. Small clouds darted across the sky, casting their shadows on the gray-green sea as they moved. The air was clear and cold. They stood close to the edge of the canyon and stared down into the river below. The steep layered rock was frantic with life, home to a countless host of small birds who were unendingly busy with the labor of spring. Otherwise the land was quiet and serene. A car stopped illegally on the bridge to allow its passengers to disgorge, take a picture, and leave again. A rabbit hopped by them, apparently assuming they were some kind of exotic bush, not to be included in its scheme of things. It nibbled on a small plant, gazed around suspiciously, and hopped on to the next likely looking edible object.