The Man Who Risked His Partner

  “My wife,” her husband said softly. “My wife.”

  But she couldn’t stop. “It is my right! To hold the son of my body in my arms and to mourn him as he should be mourned, it is my right! Of what use is his death if he is not mourned?”

  “Señora, hear me.” It hurt to defend what the cops were doing, but I owed that to Encino. And to the Santiagos. They would get into terrible trouble if they did anything rash. “For what they do, the chotas have reason. They wish to conceal from Pablo’s killer that his crime is known. Considering himself safe, he will be careless, and more easily snared. This they believe. Therefore they have withheld your son from you.

  “You must permit them to work as they will.”

  I didn’t say the rest. I didn’t tell her that el Senor might have another reason for insisting on a funeral. It might be a deliberate effort to sabotage the cops. To clear the field for himself. All I wanted was to persuade the Santiagos to be passive, so that they wouldn’t stick their heads on the block by defying either el Senor or Cason.

  But Señor Santiago wasn’t interested. “A great and worthy purpose,” she shot back. The force of her rage made me feel crude and ugly. “For this a mother and father are denied their grief? For a secret which is known even to you?”

  “Señora.” In simple self-defense, I put some bite into my voice. “He who revealed this secret to me will suffer greatly if what he has done becomes known to Capitán Cason.”

  She stopped. She didn’t acknowledge my point or make any promises, but she didn’t aim any more of her pain at me. For a minute I feared that her face would fall apart. Somehow she held it together in front of me. After all, I was little better than a stranger. Dignity counts for something.

  She turned to her husband. In a thin strained voice, she asked him to invite me to Pablo’s vigil. Then, slowly, as if she knew how fragile she’d become, she left the room.

  He didn’t respond. His eyes were squeezed tight, but the rest of his body sagged, slack and useless. Moving like they had minds of their own, his hands took out his cigarettes, stuck one between his lips. He didn’t light it.

  I wanted to apologize again, but there wasn’t much point. I gave him a moment to say anything he might want me to hear. Then, torn between rage and misery, I crossed the room toward the door.

  “Señor Axbrewder.” His voice sounded like dust settling.

  I paused at the door, waited for him to go on.

  “When you discover the killer of my son,” he said after a while, “I wish to assist you.”

  Wondering what he had in mind, I said as gently as I could, “Leave the chotas to their work, Senor Santiago.”

  “I spit on the chotas,” he replied without inflection, without energy. “When you discover the killer of my son, I wish to assist you.”

  I couldn’t promise that, so I opened the door and let myself back out into Puerta del Sol’s leaden and threatening winter.

  14

  From the old part of town, I went back to Ginny’s apartment. Funny how I still thought of it as her apartment, even though I’d been living there for six months—and taking care of it. I didn’t find any cops staking out the place, so I let myself in.

  Its impersonal tidiness felt safe to me, made me want to go to bed and not wake up again for about six weeks. But I fought that off. Instead I took a shower. Ran water as hot as I could stand onto my face until the marks of Gail Harmon’s nails burned like stigmata and the bones of my skull felt like cracked glass. Then, trying for a little self-respect, I shaved and put on clean clothes.

  After that I packed a suitcase for Ginny and me. Since I wasn’t thinking very clearly, I had to go through it like a catechism several times before I could believe that I had everything we were likely to need for a couple of days. Her prosthetic hand I left where it was. At the time, it didn’t seem like my responsibility.

  By a little after three I was ready to leave. I couldn’t come up with anything useful to get done in the time I had left, so I decided to go to the bank and wait for Haskell.

  Left entirely to myself, my personal approach to this case wouldn’t have involved trying to solve it myself. Instead, I would’ve asked someone else for the answer. Somewhere in Puerta del Sol—if you knew where to look for him, and how to talk to him—lived some old Mestizo or Chicano drunk with a grizzled face, cirrhosis of the liver, and no experience at all with personal hygiene, who knew exactly why Pablo was killed. He also knew what Roscoe Chavez had done to get himself thrown in the river. He might even know who wanted Reg Haskell dead. And he might sell that information, if he trusted me—and if I offered him the right price.

  I knew how to find men like that. And I’d spent enough time lying in my own puke with them to be trusted. Unfortunately, they only came out at night.

  Since I didn’t seem capable of solving the case by reason or intuition, I spent the drive wondering why it wasn’t snowing yet when the weather looked as angry as a high sea and the wind coming down off the mountains made the Olds rock like a rowboat. That kept me awake until I got up into the Heights and reached the ice cream parlor.

  The Continental wasn’t there—which didn’t exactly surprise my socks off. The fact that I had no idea what Ginny might be doing made a small worm of fear crawl across my stomach, but I figured I didn’t have the right to complain. I could stand a little fear for the sake of recovering my partner.

  Unfortunately, when I’d parked the Olds I still had almost an hour to kill. Saying to myself that I would sit there and wait was easy. Doing it wasn’t. Without quite meaning to, I slumped farther and farther down in the seat. Before long I was asleep.

  Which was a mistake. I knew it was a mistake as soon as it happened, because I found myself standing alone in the parking lot with all the cars gone—except for my rented Buick, which was down at the far end. Without warning, I heard an explosion. When it hit, the car filled up with fire. I could see the kid inside, clawing at the door, trying to scream.

  At the same time, all the lot’s concrete powdered and turned into snowflakes. Snow blew into my face from all sides. I could hardly see the Buick.

  When I headed toward it, someone started shooting.

  I turned. I saw muzzle flashes and a dark shape behind them, but the snow hid the shooter. Whoever it was, however, wasn’t shooting at me. The shots were aimed at the Buick.

  Suddenly I understood. Ginny was pinned down behind the Buick. The shots were meant to trap her there until the car exploded.

  I couldn’t figure out why she wasn’t shooting back.

  I ran to help her. Now the bullets came after me, tugging through my clothes like snow. But I didn’t feel them.

  I ran for a while. Then I reached the Buick and dodged around behind it.

  Ginny knelt there near the car. Her .357 lay on the ground beside her.

  “Pick it up!” I shouted. “Shoot back!”

  She gave me a look like a lash of hate and shoved her arms in my direction. Both arms.

  Her hands were gone. Both of them. Blood pumped desperately from the stumps.

  “This is your fault,” she said like the snow in the air and the fire in the car. “You did this to me.”

  Then something grabbed at my shoulder, and I think I yelled.

  When I got my eyes open, the snow was gone. I lay sprawled in the Olds, one hip wedged under the wheel. The door stood open, letting cold blow into my bones.

  Haskell bent over me in his rich man’s coat, one hand on the door, the other just leaving my shoulder. Past him, I saw people from the bank on the way to their cars. They were hurrying, hunched into their coats and scarves against the weather.

  Haskell looked angry enough to start shooting himself.

  Oh, good, I thought. Just what I need.

  “What happened to you?” he demanded. “Is that how you do your job? You go around brawling?”

  It took me a few seconds to realize that he was talking about the marks on my face.

  I coul
dn’t resist. “Actually,” I rasped, pulling myself up in the seat, “it was a former girlfriend of yours. Remember Gail Harmon?”

  “Damn it!” he snapped back, “I didn’t hire you to dig up my life.” I knew the signs. I could tell he wasn’t afraid of me. “First you browbeat Eunice. Then you drag Gail into this. God only knows why. I’ve had enough. You’re fired. Hear me? You and Fistoulari don’t work for me anymore.” That was the trouble with him—he didn’t seem to be afraid of anyone.

  I didn’t care. I’d had all I could stand. “Do tell,” I growled. “What do you suppose your wife’s going to say when we tell her you fired us because we found out about your girlfriends?”

  Inside his coat, he became as still as a poised snake. Like the edge of a straight razor, he said, “Don’t tell me you’ve talked to my wife.”

  Maybe he was as good at playing people as he said. His tone made me ashamed of myself. “What are you afraid of?” I retorted angrily. “She’s bound to find out about them sooner or later. What difference does it make if we get to them first? We’re still trying to save your life.”

  “No, you’re not.” He was so good at outraged innocence you’d think he practiced in front of a mirror. “You’ve been fired. Leave my wife out of this.”

  The cold made the raw skin around my eyes hurt worse. Parts of my brain were still muzzy with sleep and nightmares. I didn’t know how to argue with him. “Oh, come off it,” I said intelligently. “You can’t fire me.”

  “It’s already done.”

  “You can’t,” I repeated. For some reason I didn’t shout at him. “I’m just the hired help. You can only fire Ginny.” A snarl came out of him, but I cut through it. “Until she tells me we’re fired, you can’t get rid of me.”

  The wind ruffled his hair, giving him an unexpected look of wildness. “Fuck you,” he said. “I don’t need you.”

  “Of course you don’t.” Suddenly I wasn’t angry at him anymore. Anyone who could make a statement like I don’t need you and believe it needed all the help he could get. “But in the meantime, how are you going to get home? Ginny has your car. You’re stuck with me for a while anyway. You might as well let me give you a ride.”

  He chewed on that for a minute. His face was red with cold and tight with anger, but something about his stare reminded me of playing bridge. Abruptly he nodded. “All right. I’ll take it up with Fistoulari.” He walked around the hood, pulled open the passenger door, and got in. Preserving his air of righteous indignation, he didn’t look at me. “Let’s go.”

  With a mental shrug, I closed my door and started the engine. The Olds coughed a few times—sympathy pains for the way I felt.

  Haskell sneered at the dashboard, which didn’t make me or the car any more cheerful.

  I made a special effort to be on my good behavior while I drove. But I couldn’t stand the silence. That nightmare repeated itself across the back of my mind, and I needed distraction. After a few blocks I said as conversationally as I could, “Explain something.

  “I’ve met your wife. I don’t think I told her anything you wouldn’t want her to hear. But I talked to her long enough to know how she feels about you. I don’t understand why you involve yourself with all these other women.”

  He cocked an eyebrow. Apparently my naïveté amused him. “Wouldn’t you? Don’t you want to sleep with every attractive woman you see?”

  Driving carefully, I answered, “I’m not that predatory.”

  He snorted. “You mean you’re afraid of the consequences.” His tone suggested disdain for consequences of all kinds. “Let me tell you something, Axbrewder. I love my wife. I know how loyal and trusting she is. She gives me exactly what I want in a wife. But that isn’t all I want.

  “I want everything.” The way he said it made it sound special rather than unreasonable, as if the sheer size of his desires were a virtue. “All of life. I want to make love to every woman. I want to have the best of everything. I want to stretch myself right to the limit and prove I can do anything.” He watched me sidelong to see how I took it. “Accounting doesn’t provide many opportunities for that.”

  “So you play bridge.”

  That observation didn’t raise his opinion of me. “I told you. I don’t play games. I play people.”

  Trying to get even, I asked, “What does that have to do with those investments you’re having trouble with?”

  His attitude curdled. “Forget it,” he retorted. “You’re off this case as soon as I talk to Fistoulari. Stop prying.”

  Well, at least he still had that raw nerve. Maliciously I said, “I’ll tell you what I really don’t understand. You talk a good game, but any moron can see that you wouldn’t want to fire Ginny and me unless you’re afraid of what we might find out. You’re so determined to protect your secrets, you’d rather risk being killed.”

  In reaction, he swung toward me on the seat. “Listen, Axbrewder,” he said like the wind thumping against the side of the Olds. “Pay attention. I’m going to say this so that even you can follow it. I’m not afraid of you. I don’t have anything hidden. I just don’t like what you’re doing.

  “I live the life I want, and I’m not going to permit two airhead detectives to mess it up. If you were actually trying to protect me, that would be fine. But you act like I’m the enemy. I can’t think of one good reason why I should put up with that.

  “The only thing el Señor can do to me is kill me. At the rate you’re going, you’re going to wreck my life. Any moron can see that I’m better off without you.”

  Coming from him, that was quite a speech. I didn’t care whether he meant it or not. “Too bad,” I replied acidly. “You’re really not as smart as you think. Instead of bitching so much, you should ask what we’ve uncovered.” I wanted to make him ask. But I was afraid he wouldn’t, so I spelled it out. “Maybe el Senor wants you dead, maybe he doesn’t. But Gail Harmon has a boyfriend who wants to kill you so bad it keeps him awake at night. And he’s a Special Forces vet. He’s perfectly capable of doing it.”

  Haskell didn’t respond. Instead he turned away in his seat, his face expressionless. But that was all I needed. While he stared out through the windshield, I couldn’t restrain a smile.

  By then we were on Foothill, nearing the turn down into Cactus Blossom Court. Instinctively I slowed down. Just for the exercise, I drove past Cactus Blossom to look for signs of a stakeout. Parked cars with people in them, that sort of thing. But I didn’t spot any. Cason had apparently given up his interest in us. So I turned around in a driveway, went back to Cactus Blossom, and nosed the Olds over the hill.

  As we started down the slope, I saw the Continental parked in Haskell’s driveway.

  Other cars occupied other driveways around the Court. Only one sat at the curb, a black Cadillac the size of a hearse. It was parked facing downhill above Haskell’s house and across the road.

  When I looked at it more closely, I saw exhaust thick with cold wisping away from the Caddy’s tailpipe—and the silhouette of a driver behind the wheel.

  Fuck. Without transition, sweat filled my palms, making them slick and uncertain.

  Coasting slowly down the hill, I muttered to Haskell, “Don’t get out. If anything happens, hide under the dash.”

  He snapped a look at me. “Why? What’s going on?”

  Maybe I was wrong. Maybe the Cadillac was just waiting for passengers. Any second now people would come out of the nearest house, and I could relax.

  I didn’t take the chance.

  Carefully I pulled in behind the Caddy. Left the engine running. The driver looked short and wide through his rear window, and he wasn’t wearing a hat, but I couldn’t tell anything else about him. He may’ve been watching me in his mirrors—I couldn’t tell that, either.

  I checked the .45 for reassurance. Then I opened my door. Pretending to be a good neighbor, I intended to ask the man in the hearse if I could help him. At least see who he was.

  But as soon as I stuck my
head and shoulders out of the Olds, the Caddy started to roar. Tires screaming, it burst away from the curb, accelerating wildly down into the cul-de-sac.

  Just for a second, I watched him go—not so much surprised as simply wondering whether he might plow between a couple of houses and end up in someone’s backyard or maybe the arroyo. Then I saw him begin to turn.

  He made the kind of squealing, fishtailing turn you see in the movies, tires tearing their hearts out on the pavement, and came clawing back up the hill at us.

  What looked like the barrel of a shotgun protruded from the driver’s open window.

  Fortunately, I was still half in the Olds. With my right hand on the wheel, I wrenched myself back into my seat.

  The Caddy closed on us fast. It would pass right by me. The driver would fire at point-blank range, blow me halfway to next Saturday. I didn’t even have time to close the door.

  I didn’t try. Jamming the gearshift into drive, I stomped down on the gas pedal.

  My heart beat once while I sat there thinking that the Olds was going to stall. I couldn’t see the man’s face, but I could sure as hell see the shotgun.

  Then the Olds moved. It sounded asthmatic and miserable, but it did its best to match the Caddy’s haul-ass lunge down into the cul-de-sac. Momentum slammed my door for me.

  By guess or by God, my timing was perfect. The shotgun seemed to go off right in my ear, but the blast missed me. Some shot licked the trunk of the Olds. The rest tore a huge clump of dry pampas grass in the nearest yard to shreds.

  Haskell clung to his door and the edge of his seat—scared or excited, I couldn’t tell which.

  Careening down the hill, I snatched a look in the mirror and saw the Caddy smoke into reverse. The driver began backing up after us.

  I stood on the brakes. While the Olds tried to stop, screeching like tortured steel, I twitched the wheel to the right. Damn near flipped us, but I got what I wanted. Now we looked like we were trying to turn in that direction. And we hit the curb almost hard enough to burst a tire, which helped the illusion I was trying to create.

  Immediately the Caddy angled over to that side to cut us off.