Monkey on a Chain (27 page)

“What did he want you to do?”

“Call you,” he told me.

“I see.”

April was confused. “What did he think Rainbow could do?”

“Rainbow has talents,” Roy spoke as though I weren’t present. “That’s why I recruited him. He can deal with problems. They don’t bother him like the rest of us.”

“Easy, now,” I said.

He looked at me coldly. “You object? You deny it?”

“They bother me,” I told him.

“But you still deal with them. Toker knew that. That’s why he called me. He didn’t know how to reach you. He thought I would.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense!” April said.

I looked at her and shook my head.

“What?” Roy said. “What doesn’t make sense?”

She ignored my warning. “Why would he call you when he knew where Rainbow lived? He told me how to reach him!”

“It wasn’t the call that was important,” Roy told her. “It was pressure he wanted from me. Our boy here doesn’t work for free. But maybe you found that out for yourself?”

She looked at me. An expression of distaste grew on her face.

“So…,” she said.

“Cut the crap, Roy,” I told him. “Corvin is the problem. Not me.”

“Okay, let’s talk about Corvin.”

“He has to be taken out.”

“So take him.”

“It won’t work that way,” I said. “The only thing sure to draw him out is a chance to solve all his problems at once. If we don’t give him a shot, he’s going to stay in hiding and we’re going to spend the rest of our lives looking under the bed every night.”

“You and Walker more than me,” he said. “Sissy most of all.”

“He’s close to finding Sissy. And once Sissy goes, the rest of us are all fair game. Even you.”

He thought about it. “Okay. How?”

I described the plan Sissy and I had come up with. “The only problem will be contacting him,” I said.

“There’s a better place,” he told me. “Las Colonias. My ranch. Sixty miles south of here. No federales, no nothing for miles. All the action will be contained. Anything left over can be disposed of right there.” He spent a few minutes telling me about the place.

I liked it, and it would also solve Anna’s problem. “How do we get him there?” I asked.

“Call me at the El Paso number. Tell me that you’re going to bring Sissy down. If Max has it tapped, he’ll show up. And if he shows up, we’ll know he is the one.”

“We already know it.” But I agreed.

Roy frowned at me. “Are you sure you can get Sissy?”

“He’s tired of hiding,” I said. “He’ll come.”

“Who else? Johnny?”

I shook my head. “Walker won’t play. He’s got a wife and a kid on the way.”

“It would be better if we could get him there.”

“It’s a no can do.”

Roy worked on his drink while he looked it over, examining all sides of it the way he always did. Finally, he nodded. “How many guns do we need?”

“We’ve got three,” I said. “You, me, and Sissy. Max has only two that I know of, the guys that staked out my place, but we’d better figure that he’ll pick up at least three more, and maybe twice that. He’s going to want odds.”

“I’ve got a couple of men I can trust. And Max is going to figure he has an edge. Surprise. If we set it up right, he won’t have a chance.”

“What about ordnance?”

“I’ve got plenty.”

“And the time?”

“You can’t get Sissy down before noon tomorrow. It’ll take a couple of hours to get to my place. We’ll have to get set up there. We’d better plan on the next morning for Corvin. But he might show up anytime after sundown.”

“Then we’d better get moving.” I stood. “Let’s go, April.”

Roy put his hand on her arm. “I need her with me,” he said.

She looked surprised. “Why?” she asked.

“There’s a lot to do at the ranch,” he said. “All Porter has to do is make a couple of calls and show up tomorrow afternoon. You can help me set things up while he’s doing that.”

I leaned over the table and spoke to April while staring at Roy. “He’s covering himself,” I told her. “He doesn’t want your help. He just wants to be sure I won’t leave him there to face Corvin alone. He figures I’ll have to show up if you’re with him.”

She looked at him. “Is that right?”

He nodded, watching me.

“Then I’ll go with him.”

“I don’t like it,” I told Roy. “I don’t like it at all.”

“Just show up. She’ll be fine.”

“You know the score. She better be smiling when I get there.”

“For God’s sake, Rainbow, she’s Phoung’s daughter!”

“I remember. See that you do.” I hugged her before I left. She was stiff in my arms and pushed me away before I was ready to let go.

It took half an hour to walk back to the border and collect the car. I drove to the hotel and called Tierra Amarilla. Sissy listened without comment as I described the change in plans.

“We’ve got no choice,” I told him. “It’s Roy’s game now, and he’s right. Las Colonias is better. You don’t want to crap in your own backyard. Think about how Anna would feel, living at the ranch after that.”

“My family is here,” he said. “We’d have all the people we need.”

“You’d have to bury him on your own land. You really want him there?”

“No.”

“Then let’s do it Roy’s way.”

He agreed, reluctantly, and said he would be in town by noon tomorrow.

“Are you coming alone?”

“Don’t be crazy.”

“Who are you bringing?”

“I don’t know yet.”

After we hung up, I went down to the car and carried up the weapons. I spent the afternoon cleaning them and repacking the clips, just for something to do. I ate in the hotel. After dinner, I called the El Paso number and asked for Señor Rodgers.

“
No esta aqui
,” the woman told me. I told her to put him on or else.

Five minutes later, Roy picked up. We spoke for Corvin’s benefit. “Who is this?” he asked.

“It’s Rainbow,” I told him. “Look, we’ve got to talk.”

“We talked this morning. There’s nothing more to say.”

“Bullshit. I’m bringing Sissy and April over the border tomorrow night. You either see us or things are going to get unpleasant. Very unpleasant. You understand me?”

He got belligerent and then caved in. He gave me directions to Las Colonias, just in case Max hadn’t gotten them from the dead detective. When the charade was finished, I hung up and went to bed sweating. The hand had been dealt. I hoped I could figure out which cards were up which sleeve before the betting started.

There was no telling if the call to Roy had been necessary. At least not yet. Tomorrow night would answer that question, among others.

Sissy showed up at eleven
AM
. When he knocked at my door, his son, Juanito, and the brown bear of a deputy who had hassled us in Tierra Amarilla were standing behind him, along with another man, about thirty. The boy looked both excited and frightened. The others were grim. I let them in.

Sissy introduced us. The deputy’s first name was Andrew. The other man was Steve, the cousin from Santa Fe Roy used as a contact. He had been in the infantry during ’Nam, but stationed in Korea, and he’d never seen action. Still, he looked like he could do what had to be done. I wasn’t sure of the boy. I gave Sissy a questioning glance.

“He has a right to be here,” he told me. “This is a family matter.”

“And his mother?”

“She isn’t happy,” he said simply.

“You remember Freddy, from Luzon?” I asked.

He nodded. I told him about the last time I had seen Freddy’s son, lying in the clearing in the forest. He looked sick. “This is not cowboys and Indians,” I added. “Men are going to die. I don’t want your son on my conscience.”

“It will be as God wills,” he said.

I shrugged.

The war conference lasted about an hour. I described the layout at Las Colonias as Roy had described it to me. “It’s about twenty miles off the main highway south. The dirt road is graveled past the turnoff. From that point, it’s about five miles to the ranch. The road runs straight most of the way, then does a dogleg to the east and enters a canyon. The house is about half a mile up the canyon. According to Roy, the walls of the canyon are pretty steep at the entrance and turn into cliffs thirty or forty feet high before you get to the house and buildings. We’ll make our stand in the rocks below the cliffs.”

“Wait for Corvin to come to us?” Sissy asked.

“Right. And then close with him.”

“How do we draw him in?” the deputy wanted to know.

“You don’t,” I told him. “I want you and Steve and the boy to watch at the turnoff. Pick up food and water on the way out of town. When you reach the turn, get out of sight and wait for Corvin. He may come tonight, or he may come tomorrow morning. Try to get some rest, but keep one man on watch all the time. After Corvin comes in, you close the road behind him. Then wait ten minutes, no more, and follow Corvin as far as the dogleg. Come the rest of the way on foot. Come slowly and cautiously.”

I pointed to the deputy. “You will be in charge,” I told him. “Spread out. Move quickly, but not too quickly. I think they’ll take about half an hour at the entrance to the canyon to make plans. Then they’ll start in. They’ll probably move slowly, hoping for surprise. Be sure you don’t overrun them. If possible, disable their vehicles, then come in slowly. Stay to the sides of the canyon. You don’t want to be in the line of fire.”

He nodded. “What do we do if there’s shooting?”

“This isn’t a police action,” I told him. “There isn’t any if about it. We aren’t here to arrest Corvin. This is going to be an ambush. The shooting will happen. I’m going to make it happen.”

His face showed that he didn’t like it, but he said nothing.

“When you hear the firing, you move forward. Take a defensible position. Don’t close with Corvin right away. He’ll try to withdraw when we spring the trap. He should be exposed at that point, because he’ll be trying to cover his front. That’s when you open fire.”

“We shoot them in the back?”

Juanito looked sick. “I won’t shoot anybody in the back!”

“This wasn’t a game,” I told him. “This is real life and real death. What matters is that I don’t have to tell your mother that she’s lost a son. Or a husband.”

I turned to Sissy. He was just beginning to realize what he had gotten the boy into. It was a family matter, he had said. He hadn’t remembered that funerals were family matters, too. “What kind of weapons did you bring?” I asked him.

He cleared his throat. “Rifles and pistols,” he said.

“Hunting rifles?”

All three of them nodded.

“I was afraid of that.” I picked up the AR15 from the bed and tossed it to Steve. “You remember how to use that?”

His training took over. He checked the weapon expertly, then nodded.

“Corvin’s crew will have automatic weapons,” I told them. “When you take your position, your job will be to turn them back to us. I want heavy fire. Try to sound like there are more than three of you. They won’t expect anyone behind them, so they’ll be confused. Keep them confused. I expect about six of them. Try to take out as many as you can, but pin them down. We’ll move on them from the front when you start firing. We’ll have them surrounded. With luck, it’ll be a turkey shoot.” I didn’t believe that for a moment, but it didn’t hurt them to hear it.

I looked each of them over in turn. They looked like they needed a pep talk. “One thing to remember,” I said. “This has been going on for twenty years, but it’s going to stop now, one way or the other. Corvin will put an end to it, or we will. I want to drive back across the border with you. All of you. I want to buy you a drink in Tierra Amarilla someday. You’re good men. If you do as I told you, that day will come.”

We packed the weapons and headed for the door. I pulled the deputy to one side. “Keep Juanito out of it if you can,” I told him. He nodded.

We split up in the parking lot. They had driven down in a Chevy pickup. Andy, Steve, and the boy took the truck. Sissy and I took my car and led the way.

It took half an hour to navigate through Juarez and find the highway. The drive south was through the same sort of country you see in southern New Mexico. Dry. Barren mountains that look as though they haven’t seen shade in centuries. The heat rose off the blacktop in waves and formed a little mirage on the pavement way ahead of us that looked like a puddle of water, a puddle that you could never reach, no matter how fast you drove or how thirsty you were.

I’d bought a pack of cigarettes the night before to keep me company at the motel. Sissy and I worked on them while the mountains crept slowly northward around us. He had smoked in Saigon, but he hadn’t lit up while we were in Tierra Amarilla. I supposed that Anna would have one more thing to thank me for. An hour passed while we followed the blacktop south.

We found the graveled turnoff without any trouble. We’d lost sight of the pickup somewhere along the way. I drove quickly, kicking up a cloud of dust that rose twenty feet behind me and drifted south in the slight, hot wind. You wouldn’t call it a breeze. The word sounds too cool.

Sissy rode in silence. He was sweating heavily, despite the hot air blowing through the open window beside him.

“When we get there,” I told him, “don’t say anything about the others.”

He looked surprised. “Why the hell not?”

“Just because.”

The road to Las Colonias was on the right. It had been graded recently, but not well. Dust from the grading lay in the old ruts like fine powder and kept pulling my wheels to one side. I hadn’t expected this. Our passage was too well marked. I slowed and looked behind us. There was no dust on the road as far back as I could see. I hoped the deputy would realize what was happening and slow down to avoid advertising himself. I hoped he hadn’t missed the turn.

It was almost three when we arrived. Las Colonias wasn’t a true ranch. The land around there would take at least a hundred acres to support a steer, and it’d be a damned tough steak you cut off it. But there was a corral with five horses watering at the trough attached to an old stable. The house backed up to the cliffs on the left side of the canyon, facing the corral and stable. It was a large hacienda with a mission tile roof and walls plastered white. Behind it, a rough trail cut up through the red sandstone of the canyon wall toward the top of the mesa. There must have been water close to the surface. A stand of cottonwoods towered over the house. I could not see a windmill, and only a telephone line led to the house. No power lines. That puzzled me at first, but when I shut off the engine I heard the low drone of a generator coming from somewhere up the canyon.