Metzger's Dog (19 page)

29

PERSONALS

619352. No need for more dramatics. I’ve read the book. Talk to me, and maybe we can start over.

“Is that supposed to mean something to me?” Jorge Grijalvas opened his fingers and let the page of newspaper float to the desk.

“It means quite a bit, actually. You wanted to ride that silver saddle in the Pasadena parade. Now you’ll be able to afford to buy a horse to put under it. That’ll make you look a lot taller.”

Grijalvas drummed his fingers on the desk. “Mr. Gordon, this is the third time you’ve come to me. In the first instance you graciously allowed me to buy back my own merchandise, recovering some of my losses. The second time I was able to make a telephone call for seventy-five hundred dollars. I’ve enjoyed these transactions, I’ll have to admit, but I’m a busy man. What is it, exactly?”

Chinese Gordon said, “I’ve been having a hard time selling something. My customer agrees to the price, but when the time comes he just doesn’t seem to be able to part with the money.”

“What you’re selling is drugs. Why didn’t you come to me?”

“It’s not drugs.”

“What, then? If it’s worth anything, I’ll buy it.”

“It’s not transferable. I’ve got some evidence about somebody who can’t bear to see it in print and has lots of money. I offered him a perfectly good chance to buy it back, but he set up a trap.”

Grijalvas covered his eyes with his hands and chuckled. Chinese Gordon could see a gold pinky ring with a ruby the size of a pea. “Blackmail. I’m afraid you’ve learned the first lesson, Mr. Gordon. People who have lots of money are seldom the best targets for extortion. They have little to fear from the police, and if necessary lots of money buys lots of professional assistance. It’s a fool’s game.”

Chinese Gordon nodded his head. “That’s about the size of it, Jorge. My customer has so much professional help I don’t know where he gets it all. Sometimes I’m afraid he’ll spend so much just to make his payroll that there won’t be enough left for fools like me.”

“Take my advice and get out of that business. You’ll never see any money, and the richer your target is, the more likely he is to have connections who would be happy to hunt you down and kill you just to do him a favor.”

“I guess you’d know, wouldn’t you?”

“I would know.”

Chinese Gordon stood up and shrugged. “Well, I’ll think about your advice, Jorge. God, I hate to give up on this one, though. I’ve gone to so much trouble already, and all that’s left is taking the money. That’s the hard part, and that’s why I wanted to cut you in for it—you know, lots of money buys lots of professional assistance.”

Grijalvas stared at the newspaper again. “How much professional assistance did you want?”

“Hell, you’d have been able to ride the winner of the Preakness in your parade and have yourself declared Rose Queen besides. The price for handling the payoff is a half million dollars.”

Grijalvas studied Chinese Gordon. This was not a man whose first offer would be more than 10 percent. Who had secrets worth five million? Grijalvas succeeded in keeping the tension out of his voice. “Just who is this person?”

“Well, actually it’s several people, but I’ve decided that the one I want to deal with is this one, because he’s the only one I have a picture of.” Chinese Gordon handed him a black-and-white photograph of a man with graying hair, shaking hands with another man. The photograph had been clipped from a magazine.

“Where did this come from?”

“I cut it out of a kind of newsletter in the library. He works for the National Research Foundation, handing out money to colleges and things.”

Grijalvas smiled. “That sounds like good practice for what you want him to do. What’s his name?”

“John Knox Morrison.”

Grijalvas shook his head. “I’m very sorry, Mr. Gordon. I can’t get involved in this kind of thing. There’s too much risk. A man like that might have called the FBI already, and there are not a few private corporations he could hire that specialize in handling embarrassing situations for wealthy families. But good luck to you.”

“Jorge, I think you’re making a hell of a mistake.”

“I’ve made a safe, prosperous life out of just such mistakes. But if you succeed and find yourself with a large amount of marked money to trade, I’ll be happy to help you out for very advantageous rates.”

When Chinese Gordon climbed into Kepler’s car he was humming “La Cucaracha.”

“Well,” asked Margaret, “will he do it?”

“Of course he’ll do it.” Chinese Gordon peered into the cooler in the back seat and examined Kepler’s supply of beer. “He can’t get to ride Seabiscuit to the moon on the Fourth of July if he doesn’t use some ingenuity.”

“What?”

“He’ll do it.”

T
HE
D
IRECTOR STEPPED INTO THE CONFERENCE ROOM
, smiling. Pines followed, closing the door behind him, but not before Porterfield saw the two large men taking their posts outside in the hallway. He whispered to Goldschmidt, “Are those two yours?”

Goldschmidt shook his head. “I’ve never seen them before. He doesn’t want professionals. He thinks those football players will do him some good.”

The Director tossed a file on the table, but it landed harder than he’d intended, giving an audible slap and letting a single sheet skitter out and float to the floor. He bent over and picked it up, and when his face reappeared over the edge of the table, the smile was still there. “This will be quick, and you can all go on with your business. Ben, you were right.”

“About?”

“The people who have the Donahue papers are still willing to talk. We’ve still got a chance to salvage this situation. We heard a response to our advertisement last night.”

“Good. How much do we have to give them?”

“They want five million dollars.”

“I’m disappointed in them. They could have gotten twice that. But I’m glad you decided to get it over with.”

Pines nodded. “It won’t be long now.”

The Director said, “Of course, there will be some mopping up to do, and undoubtedly we’ll have to meet again when we’ve received the results of whatever interrogations occur.”

“Interrogations?” said Kearns. “What interrogations?”

Pines snapped, “Well, after all, we do hope to be able to take at least one or two of them alive. We ought to have the expertise to do that much.”

Porterfield closed his eyes and sighed. Goldschmidt said quietly, “You’re going to try to trap them again.”

The Director extended his hands in front of him as though he were holding up an invisible object for inspection. “Not
try
, my friends. This time we’ve got them. Last night they placed a telephone call to Morrison and set up the payoff.”

Porterfield opened his eyes. “To Morrison.”

“Yes. John Knox Morrison. His name was in the papers, so they must have thought he was important. They called him at home, and of course the call was recorded. This time we know where and when in advance, and we’re going to take this thing seriously.”

Kearns was tapping the table with a pencil but didn’t seem to be aware of it. “Has the voice been analyzed?”

“Yes,” said the Director. “That’s going to be your favorite part of it, Jim. It’s not a voiceprint we’ve ever seen before. But there was the tiniest trace of an accent, and the analysis people say it’s definitely a Spanish accent, and definitely Latin American. So that puts this group squarely in your bailiwick. This operation may very well solve some problems for your section.”

“I’d like to recommend that you reconsider,” said Porterfield. “In spite of the accent, these people might be domestic. We have to remember that the other thing they stole from that building was cocaine. If they’re domestic, then paying them off won’t have any consequence that we need to worry about. It may even induce them to stop taking risks and retire.”

Pines smirked. “And what if they’re a Latin American terrorist group? We’ve already given them lessons on taking over a major city. We give them five million dollars to help overthrow some friendly government? Brilliant.”

“I second Ben’s motion,” said Goldschmidt.

“Me too,” said Kearns.

Pines shouted, “I’d like to remind you people that this isn’t some damned men’s club. Nobody’s voting on anything here.”

The Director held up his invisible object again, but this time it seemed to have grown. “I’m afraid that I really do have to take this decision on myself. I can’t see myself as the first Director to yield to the temptation to take the easy solution and pay to keep someone quiet about the Company’s secrets.”

“Not by a long shot,” said Goldschmidt. “They’ve all done it. Half the world’s diplomatic corps has been on the payroll for twenty years, and the KGB pays the rest.”

“That’s hardly comparable to paying five million dollars to a gang of criminals, foreign or domestic. Besides the possible consequences, it’s just not cost effective. Five million dollars is a lot of money.”

Porterfield cleared his throat. “Have you ordered an accounting on this operation yet? I don’t mean what it’s cost Los Angeles or what it might cost the Company if the Donahue papers come out. I just wondered what we’ve spent so far.”

The Director contemplated his imaginary object again. “Oh, I suppose we could—”

Pines interrupted, his head shaking with what could have been rage, but seemed to be somehow debilitating, like a palsy. “No. No audit has been done, and nothing of the kind has been considered. This isn’t some project we’re working on. This is war. Five million or ten million or ten billion don’t mean a thing.”

“They do if you lose,” said Kearns.

Porterfield was watching the Director. His arms were still held before him, but his hands had gone limp, as though he had dropped the object he’d been holding. He seemed to be contemplating Pines.

30
                  
Jorge Grijalvas sat in the back seat of the Lincoln Continental, watching the last of the great patches of green irrigated land sweep past the window and disappear. It was all desert now, the earth a dusty brown with slabs and outcroppings of gray rock visible in places where it broke through the thin, powdery covering of soil. The sky behind his head was a glowing pink already, but the high rocks ahead were still in the strong, direct rays of the late-afternoon sun.

He turned to Juan and started to explain again. He spoke patiently and precisely so that the others, who were older, could listen without appearing to. “This man is rich, so there’s no question he’ll bring a number of armed men with him. Just to carry so much money he’d need help.”

“I understand,” said Juan. He adjusted his dark glasses again, a gesture that had already become unconscious. He had been proud of the tear tattooed on his cheekbone until Mr. Grijalvas had taught him that it was a mistake, the mark of a loser. There was no honor in the mere fact of having been in prison.

Grijalvas said, “This man will be a coward. He’s ready to pay the money because he’s afraid not to. He’s also afraid to pay it, and if he sees a chance to avoid it, he won’t have any pity. The men he’s hired will be the ones to watch. They’ll be feeling foolish because they didn’t kill him and take the money themselves. The only way they can give themselves ease now will be to try to kill us. If he shows the slightest sign of wavering, they’ll try it.”

Juan said, “And what if he doesn’t give them the chance, and we get the money?”

“Then there will be a number of men walking away from this who are accustomed to being paid for carrying guns and who know that we have five million in cash.”

“I understand.”

The car crossed a bridge over a dry streambed that was choked with rocks and small, spiky plants. In a half hour they would cross another, and then the patches of green would begin again. This time they wouldn’t be irrigated fields of alfalfa and hay, but the first of the carefully tended golf courses of Palm Springs. Grijalvas looked out the window. From the quiet, air-conditioned interior of the car it all looked still and inviting, like a painting. The bright sunlight made the jagged rocks stand out in relief, throwing long, dark shadows on the empty flats. Outside the car the air was beginning to lose some of its ferocious dry heat. By the time they reached the first of the stoplights on Palm Canyon Boulevard it would be down to a hundred degrees. By the time John Knox Morrison ventured out of his refrigerated hotel room it would be in the seventies, a calm, clear, pleasant night.

C
HINESE
G
ORDON SAID
, “Well, Palm Springs it is. That’s the last turnoff.”

Margaret sighed. “Do you have any idea how hot it is? Why in the world would people come all the way out here when they could climb into an oven just as well at home?”

“We know why old Jorge is here. It’s not a bad choice, either, considering what he knows. It wouldn’t be hard for him to outnumber the police.”

“And you still expect to be able to take the money away from him afterward?”

Chinese Gordon shrugged. “No matter how many people he has there, he has to split them up when he leaves. If he gets the money and we see a chance, we may do it tonight. If not, tomorrow is another day, and it’s always a long, lonely drive to Los Angeles.”

Chinese Gordon let the big Continental drift off into the distance, dropping the van back to the speed limit. It was several minutes before Margaret realized that what he was humming was “Tenting Tonight.”

J
UAN SAT ERECT AND PROUD
, as the companion of a powerful man should. He tried not to look directly at Mr. Grijalvas but to keep his eyes forward, staring at the hundred feet of rock and gravel in front of the car’s headlights. Beside the road a gnarled joshua tree appeared, like something crouching to gather energy to stretch itself, then floated back into the darkness. The headlights caught a patch of yuccas clustered in the rocks ahead, and he could see a haze of dust drift across them. A few seconds ahead another car must have passed by here, disturbing the still night air. He could see Mr. Grijalvas’s silhouette in the periphery of his vision, and he unconsciously shifted his posture to imitate it.

Mr. Grijalvas said, “It is now exactly twelve-fifteen.” Juan knew what that meant. Morrison and his men would already be at the valley station of the aerial tramway. In a moment they would leave their car and climb into the gondola, then ride it up the long cable to the mountain station at the top. It was easy to see why Mr. Grijalvas was who he was. Morrison’s ride to the top would take fifteen minutes. His ride back would take another fifteen minutes. During that time he couldn’t change his mind or come back or do anything but dangle a thousand feet above the desert floor in the little glass box. In that half hour Mr. Grijalvas could take the money from Morrison’s car and disappear. That, at least, would be what Morrison thought, but that was only part of it. Juan thought about the new car he was going to buy. After that, there would be other things, but they would occur to him while he was driving the new car.

J
OHN
K
NOX
M
ORRISON STOOD IN THE PARKING LOT
and stared at the little blue-and-yellow corrugated steel building on its concrete platform. It looked tiny and insubstantial at the foot of the mountain. The small pool of yellowish light from the flood lamps made the garish building and the pitiful red flowers look unreal. Around the globes of the streetlights in the parking lot huge moths and bugs fluttered and buzzed, their bodies making tapping sounds as they battered against the hot glass. He waited while his companion, Morton, joined him. He glanced back once at the car to see that Morton had left the newspaper on the hood, then walked toward the little metal building.

At the stairway he could see the end of the tramway cable. He sighted along the thin wire, following its sagging length to where it turned up again and became invisible against the dark mountainside. Far above him at the top of the mountain he could see another little pool of bilious yellow light. From here the dim incandescence brought back some long-forgotten memory of a carnival, with the smell of stale popcorn and cotton candy and crowds and the strong sweat that came with the fear of falling from some whirling metal machine that jerked the body upward and pressed it against worn metal safety bars with the centrifugal force of its demonic spinning. He wished he felt more comfortable and could say something to Morton, but Morton was as alien to him as this place. Morton had the calm, efficient, unimaginative look that some of the operational people had, not feeling anything, not really seeing anything. There was also the nagging suspicion that somehow Morton had been chosen by some awful mechanical system in Langley that was based on the similarity of their names.

He followed Morton to the ticket booth and then to the wooden deck, where they waited while one of the tiny lights moved down the mountain toward them, then grew into a set of lighted windows, then resolved itself into a little rectangular box floating down the cable. Morrison listened to the heavy machines behind the wall of the building, a cyclical sound like wheels turning and an armature thumping. He listened for a flaw, an uneven sound that he could invest with his uneasiness, but it only sounded heavy and powerful. Then he remembered that in a few minutes this place would be dangerous, and this machinery was going to take him up and out of it. He felt a terrible eagerness as he rushed into the tram gondola. As it jerked forward and swept away from the deck, it swung gently on the cable. He clung to the hand grip in front of his seat and stared down at the little blue-and-yellow building. It was beginning to look small already. As he watched he saw the tiny headlights of a car come up the road and enter the parking lot. He resisted an urge to drop to the floor of the gondola and kneel out of sight.

A recorded voice came over a speaker in the ceiling. “Welcome to the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway. We’ll be going from the Valley Station, elevation 2,643 feet, to the Mountain Station, elevation 8,516 feet, a trip approximately two and a half miles long and over a mile straight up. The car is suspended on a cable about three inches thick and is driven by the turning of a large wheel…”

T
HE
C
ONTINENTAL COASTED INTO THE PARKING LOT
and moved up the line of cars near the little tram station and stopped behind a tan Chevrolet with a rental agency sticker on the bumper and a newspaper on the hood.

“All right,” said Grijalvas. “Very quickly now.”

Juan walked to the Chevrolet and looked into the back seat, then opened the door and pulled out two suitcases. He walked purposefully up the steps to the tram station, onto the wooden deck, and into the waiting gondola.

“Fine,” Grijalvas said, and Miguel drove the car to the edge of the lot near the entrance to the road.

O
N THE HILLSIDE ABOVE THE PARKING LOT
an agent spoke softly into his radio. “There’s something wrong. One of them took the suitcases into the tram station, and the others didn’t leave.”

A bored voice answered, “Then wait. We’ve got the road blocked, so they can’t go anywhere. He’s probably going to count it or something.”

“But there’s nothing to count.”

“You don’t say. Won’t he be surprised. Look, we have to wait until Morton has Morrison safely into the chalet up on top before we do anything. Nothing changes that.”

J
UAN STEPPED OFF THE GONDOLA
and walked along the sidewalk outside the restaurant, where Morales and Figueroa were waiting to take the suitcases. He watched while they carried them a few yards down the hillside, then reappeared in the light.

The three walked beyond the glass doors to the foyer of the chalet, but as they did, Las Crusas was already on his way out of the gift shop and moving toward the telephone booth. The four men converged on the spot. Juan could see Morrison and another man standing outside the booth waiting for an elderly woman with bluish-white hair who was on the telephone.

The four men pulled out their pistols when they were within ten feet of Morrison, and fired. Morrison jerked backward against the wall, his body jumping as the bullets tore into him. Morton crouched and reached inside his coat, but the first shots punched his head back, and he toppled against the telephone booth and sprawled on the floor.

As Juan and his three companions ran toward the door, the old lady said into the telephone, “If you didn’t hear that, it was everything going wrong. They’re both dead.”

The four men burst through the doorway and scrambled down the hillside toward the suitcases. Morales and Figueroa snatched them up and ran as Juan turned to see if anyone was watching from the windows. It was done—no head was visible. Making it at night on the trail down the side of the mountain would be difficult, but the four-wheel-drive truck was waiting for them on the flats. They’d drive along Andreas Canyon to Indian Road, then eastward toward Indio.

Juan ran and caught up with the others, who were trotting now. In the darkness he could hear the rhythmic sound of their deep breathing as they moved down the trail in single file. The trail wound around a large slab of rock, and Juan wondered when they would slow down. In this darkness, after a few twists and turns they were already invisible. The sounds they made seemed loud, but there was no ear that could hear them.

Juan heard a sharp metallic click in front of him that must have been one of the suitcases hitting something, but it sounded like the pump slide on a shotgun. Then there was a clatter of metal sounds that seemed to come from beside the trail and behind him at once. Suddenly glaring lights went on and he saw Figueroa caught in the center of a glowing circle. Figueroa froze, his hands before him as though he were riding a bicycle. Then there were bright flashes of fire that seemed to come from everywhere at once, and Juan saw Figueroa’s body swatted away into the darkness as though a wind had carried him. He didn’t see anything else happen. He felt a terrible, wrenching pain and he was on the ground and his breath was gone, but when he tried to gasp for another it didn’t come.