Wolf in the Shadows (30 page)

“How did she know Stan would arrange something like that, though? As far as I know, he’s always stuck to white-collar crime.”

“When this is all over, maybe we’ll know. Tell me about Brockowitz,” I added. “What was he like?”

“Out to get whatever he could for himself. At first he wanted to be a star in the environmental movement. When that didn’t
work out, he got petulant and said fuck the environment. Founded his firm to get back at the people who’d ousted him. Along
the way he discovered he liked money. Not what it could buy, from what people tell me, although he lived well. But the real
appeal was money for its own sake, piling up numbers. He was one of those guys who would’ve been happy to do anything for
money—didn’t matter what, or on whose side.”

“And Navarro?”

“She’s a little harder to figure out, Has never been allied with any cause except furthering her own interests. Her people
are poor, live somewhere in southern Baja, but they managed to scrape up the money to send her to school in California. She
never finished, married a U.S. citizen, got her green card, then divorced him. In the years before she met Brockowitz, she
developed three successful retail operations. She and Stan got together, I’m told, when he wandered into her shop in San Juan
Capistrano a couple of years ago. They must’ve recognized a mutual acquisitiveness and lack of scruples. One guy I know calls
their marriage ‘an unholy little alliance.’”

“Not too well liked, huh?”

“Not by environmentalists
or
anti-environmentalists. So far as I know, neither had a friend in the world except each other.”

“And now he’s dead, and she’s alone.”

“Or she may be dead, too, if that’s who was shot at Fontes’s place.”

We were silent for a moment. The antiquated VW bus began to rock; a big guy with a beard halfway down his chest and practically
no hair on his head stumbled out. He wore a rumpled tie-dyed shirt and jeans and a pained scowl. Genus, hippie; species, unreconstructed.
He shambled over to the edge of the lookout, unzipped, and urinated. Turned while zipping up and nodded casually to us, then
climbed back into the bus.

Hy and I exchanged wry smiles, I asked, “How does all this sound to you so far?”

“Pretty solid. The Terramarine thing was just a cover, because Brockowitz knew they were one group that wouldn’t deny it if
the press got hold of the kidnapping story. Where d’you suppose they’ve been keeping Tim all this time?”

“Well, Brockowitz and Navarro have a big isolated house in eastern Orange County.”

“Why keep him alive at all?”

“I suppose they thought they needed to be able to produce him for RKI until they collected the ransom. Navarro probably didn’t
know
what
to do with him when Stan didn’t show up again.”

“She doesn’t know Stan’s dead?”

“I doubt it. By the time they got an I.D. on the body, Navarro’d already come to Baja. And when I spoke with the detective
in charge of the case yesterday afternoon, he said they were withholding Brockowitz’s name from the press pending notification
of next of kin.”

Hy nodded. “Okay, another question: who decided to bring Tim Mourning down here, and why?”

That was one of the things I’d considered as I sat outside the shack before dawn. “Fontes and Salazar probably figured out
where Mourning was—after all, Salazar must’ve taken Brockowitz’s I.D. off his body after he shot him—and sent Jaime to Blossom
Hill for him once Navarro was down here. As for why they all came here, I think they gathered at the villa to bargain. Fontes
has the L.C. Navarro has the contact who can put it through. Mourning wants her cut. Salazar’s either got a stake in it or
is working for Fontes.”

“You know all that for sure?”

“I don’t
know
anything, but it’s the feeling I got from watching them on the terrace last night. It reminded me of a plea-bargaining session.
Navarro acted forceful, as if she had all the evidence on her side—the defense attorney. Mourning seemed frightened, but
stubborn—the defendant. The men played good prosecutor–bad prosecutor. Salazar’s function was to intimidate, and his tactics
weakened Diane, Fontes—he stayed cool, said very little, but exerted a strong presence. And then they dropped their bomb.”

“Timothy.”

“Right. When Timothy stumbled out there, Diane panicked. And Navarro was shocked, kind of chagrined. She knew their grabbing
him had tipped the scales.”

“And that brings us to the big question: what happened there this morning?”

“A question we can’t answer until Tomás shows up.” I looked at my watch. Amazingly, it was only quarter to nine. Had I reset
it since I got it going again? Yes, last night while we talked.

The door to the VW bus opened again and a woman with long, matted hair lurched out, took off at a run toward the edge of the
parking area, and knelt, vomiting into the brush. After a while she dragged herself back to the bus, paying us no notice.

Hy said, “I’m just as glad that decade’s over.”

“
They
don’t know it ended.”

“Now that I think of the seventies and eighties, maybe they’re not so bad off.”

“What about the nineties?” I asked lightly.

“Too early to tell. You hold any hope for them?”

Our eyes met; I felt a stirring of our old wordless communication. “Some parts of them I do,” I said, entwining my fingers
with his.

*    *    *

Tomás didn’t arrive until after ten. As he got out of an old pickup with a winch for hoisting a boat on its bed, he looked
grave. Hy unlocked the back door of the rental car; Tomás got in, cupping his hands and lighting a cigarette in an odd furtive
manner. As he spoke with Hy, I was able to follow most of what he said; when I couldn’t, Hy interjected a translation.

The police had come to the riverbed and questioned everyone about a drifter who had been seen on the beach and in the village—a
tall, thin man with a craggy face and a stubbly beard. They were also interested in an American woman who had been sitting
on the beach with an expensive camera around sunset the previous evening. The police wanted to talk with them about a shooting
that had occurred outside Fontes’s villa at about five that morning.

Hy asked, “
Que
?”

A young blond woman, Tomás told him. She had been shot in the back on the beach and sustained a punctured kidney. The helicopter
had taken her to the trauma unit at Ensenada.

Diane Mourning.

I told Hy to ask if anyone had gone with her.

No, Tomás replied. He’d been curious about the situation at Fontes’s house himself, so he’d gone into the village and asked
around. The woman had gone alone, and no one else had left there since. The automobile gate was locked, and no one intended
to fly anywhere; Fontes’s pilot had been given the day off.

Hy continued talking with Tomás, but I lost the thread of the conversation, thinking back instead to around five that morning,
when I’d been outside the shack. Mourning could not have been shot on the beach; it was a place where sound carried, and I’d
heard nothing. Why had the people at the villa lied to the police? To shift attention away from themselves? Perhaps they’d
seen it as a convenient opportunity to focus suspicion on Hy and me? But that didn’t feel right. The last thing they would
want was for Hy to tell his story to the authorities. And so far as I knew, they weren’t aware I was in El Sueño.

Tomás was shaking Hy’s hand. He nodded to me, then slipped out of the backseat and walked toward his truck. “Where’s he going?”
I asked.

“Home. He’s lost his morning’s fishing as is.”

“What about us?”

“We can’t go back there.”

“I know. But now what?”

“Good question.”

We were silent for a while, watching the gray of the sea pale as the sun silvered the cloud cover. The VW bus started with
a puff of dark exhaust, lurched into reverse, then drove toward the road. As it passed us, its driver waved jauntily.

I said, “Mourning wasn’t shot on the beach, you know,” and explained.

“You think she was shot inside the villa, then.”

“Probably.”

“By whom?”

“Salazar?”

“Guy’s got to be the world’s worst shot, then. And why’d he let her live?”

“I suppose it could have been an accident.”

“So they moved her to the beach and tried to throw suspicion on us.”

I shook my head. “They may have moved her, but I don’t think they were the ones who alerted the police to us. What probably
happened was that the Federales canvassed the neighbors and came up with our descriptions.”

“Huh.” He was silent for a moment. “Back to the immediate question: what do we do now? We can’t stay around here.”

“Go back to San Diego?”

“And do what? Besides, look at us. You’re grubby, and I’ve seen spiffier guys than me being brought into detox. You really
want to brave the border control in this condition, when the Federales may have requested them to pick up and hold?”

“No, but I suppose appearances can be improved.”

Again we fell silent. I knew his objection to returning to San Diego wasn’t based on a fear of being held by the border control;
he just plain wasn’t willing to give this thing up yet.

After a bit I said, “Okay, Ripinsky, if you had a choice, what would you do?”

He answered without hesitation. “Snatch Mourning and the L.C. Take them both across the border and turn them over to RKI.
Clear my name with the people who—” Abruptly he stopped speaking.

“The people who what?”

“Give it a rest, McCone. Let’s just say they’re the people I knew when I was a better man than I am now. The people I knew
when things like a good name still mattered.”

And that was all I’d get on the subject for now. “Okay, how do you propose to do that?”

“Damned if I know.”

I bit my lip, thought for a while. There were a few possibilities, but I wasn’t sure they were good enough to stake my freedom—maybe
my life—on.

I got out of the car and walked over to the wall by the sea. Waves smashed against rocks far below, their spray spurting up,
then cascading down the cliffs. For a moment I tried to calculate risks, weigh odds, estimate my margin of error. Then gave
it up because I knew—finally, once and for all—that I wasn’t the kind of woman who hedged her bets.

Hy came up behind me, put his hands on my shoulders, his body warm against my back. “It’s not your job, McCone,” he told me.

He’d said something similar to me on a moonlit night several months before when we’d driven into a place called Stone Valley.
“This isn’t your fight, McCone,” he’d told me then. And I’d replied, “In some ways, no. But in another, it is.”

Now I thought of Timothy Mourning’s horror-stricken face in the photo that had been sent to RKI. Of his numb bewilderment
as he’d stumbled onto the terrace last night. And I thought of the promise I’d made myself when I set out to find Hy.

I repeated my words of months ago. “In some ways, no. But in another, it is. Besides, I know you won’t go back to the States,
and I’m not leaving without you.”

His hands tightened on my shoulders. I sensed him struggling to speak.

I added, “So how about it, Ripinsky? Let’s take Tim Mourning and his two million dollars home.”

The first thing we needed to do was make ourselves more presentable. We washed in ice-cold sea water. Hy shaved off his stubbly
beard and changed to a rumpled but clean set of clothing; I made what improvements I could with a comb and some makeup. Then
we drove north toward Ensenada.

We encountered no police patrols, no roadblocks. Fontes, a wealthy and influential citizen, had probably convinced—or more
likely bribed—the authorities not to put themselves out investigating a crime that seemed to be the end result of a dispute
among Americans. At most they might circulate the descriptions of the man seen on the beach and the woman with the camera
to the U.S. Border Control stations and ask for cooperation, but that would be about it.

As I drove, we discussed how to proceed. I’d pinpointed something that might conceivably be used as leverage with Navarro,
but that would bear further checking. My main concern was how long everyone would remain at the villa. Diane Mourning was
temporarily out of the picture, but the others couldn’t be sure what she might eventually tell the authorities—or what she
might do when she recovered. My take on the situation was that Fontes and Navarro would strike a quick deal and put the letter
of credit through as soon as possible. As for Tim Mourning, his wife’s shooting had in effect guaranteed his safety for a
little while longer; a second casualty at the villa would pose more of a problem than even cops who were conditioned to look
the other way could ignore. Of course, Salazar or one of his people could take Mourning to the desert, kill him, and dump
him there, but I doubted they’d try that on a day when the household had come under police scrutiny.

One factor working in Hy’s and my favor was that it was Sunday; nothing could be done about the L.C. until the next morning.
Possibly one of them would fly to Mexico City with it today, but maybe not, and the L.C. was of secondary importance, anyway.
The prime objective had always been to rescue Tim, and to do that we’d have to move fast.

Before we arrived in Ensenada, we’d figured out the details. So many to be arranged, and so carefully. Omit even one, and
we’d condemn Mourning to a certain death. Tacitly we agreed not to discuss what we might condemn ourselves to if the plan
failed.

In Ensenada we stopped at a phone booth and Hy called the trauma unit where Tomás had said Diane Mourning was taken. They
told him that she’d been stabilized and flown at the request of her personal physician to Cabrillo Hospital in San Diego.
No, the police had not questioned Señora Mourning; she was in critical condition.

Again we drove north, this time to Tijuana’s Avenida Revolución, the gaudy tourist shopping area. While Hy waited in the car,
I hurried along the crowded sidewalk, avoiding peddlers hawking jewelry and ignoring the entreaties of shopkeepers who stood
outside like barkers at sleazy sex shows. In a clothing store I bought a colorful embroidered dress and sandals; a few doors
down I stopped at another shop and bought typical tourist things—a serape, marionettes, a piñata, a sombrero, some wood carvings.
Laden with them, I hurried back through the carnival atmosphere to the car and piled them on the backseat. It was after two
when we finally checked into Hotel Fiesta Americana Tijuana on Boulevard Agua Caliente.