Heat

Chapter 40

Jesse woke up feeling elated. It was his last day in St. Clair, and he couldn’t wait to get out of the town with Jenny and Carey. Jenny was no less excited than he; he could see her restraining herself at breakfast, talking casually with Carey about the sights of San Francisco.

“When is your science project due?” Jesse asked Carey.

“In two weeks,” the child replied.

“We’ll be back in plenty of time for me to help you, then,” Jesse said.

“We’re not supposed to have any help,” Carey said.

“Oops, sorry.”

“Well, maybe you could help a little,” she said, smiling.

“You work on it next week, and if you have any questions, make a list and I’ll answer them when we come back.”

“Okay, Jesse.”

At lunchtime Jesse put on his coat and boots and took his periodic walk in the woods, the telephone hidden in the bottom of his lunchbox. He took a fork in the path that went along the mountainside; there was a steep drop off to a stream two hundred feet below, and he kept to the inside of the narrow path. The skies were low with heavy cloud; it looked like snow before the day was over. He ate his sandwich slowly, thinking about what was ahead. He knew a life on the run was not going to be easy for any of them. The telephone weighed heavily in his pocket; he had one more call to make to Kip Fuller, and the single purpose of that call was to buy time.

“This is Fuller.”

“It’s Jesse.”

“Did you get the camera all right? Our man said he couldn’t make a straight pass at the restaurant.”

“I got it, but I haven’t had an opportunity to use it.”

“What else is happening?”

“I’ve been promoted to management.”

“At the factory?”

“No, in Coldwater’s organization. He likes me, but Ruger doesn’t.”

“What’s the problem with Ruger?”

“I don’t know. Certainly I’m too far down the pecking order to be any sort of threat to him. It may have something to do with the fact that Herman Muller trusts me, and he’ll barely speak to Ruger. Coldwater wants Wood Products, and he’s going to use me to get it.”

“How?”

“Right now all he wants is information about the business. It’s wholly owned by Muller, and he plays his cards very close to his chest. He even banks in Coeur d’Alene to avoid dealing with Ruger.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Play along, for now. If I don’t, Coldwater might move a lot faster, and Muller could get hurt. It’s possible that they took out the man’s grandson a while back.”

“Have you learned anything new about Coldwater’s organization?”

“No, but I’m in a better position to do that, now. If I can get Wood Products for him, he’ll think I hung the moon. The man likes me, that much I can tell.”

“Do you like him?”

Jesse hesitated, thinking about what Coldwater had done to Jenny. “He’s a likeable fellow; every con man is.”

“I’ve got some news; Arlene had a baby boy yesterday; nine pounds, one ounce.”

“Kip, congratulations; that’s wonderful news! You’ve waited a long time.”

“We’re thrilled, of course. I had almost given up.”

“Now that you know you can do it, you’ll have to have some more kids.”

“I think one more will do me. Listen, Jess, you’ve got to get back into that building somehow. My people here are really on my back about this.”

“I was at Coldwater’s the day before yesterday, and I noticed a lot of blueprints in his study. If you bust him, then you ought to make his house your first target, get in there and clean it out. Those plans would tell you a lot about the fortifications.”

“Good idea, but I’m not going to get to bust anybody until you get me those photographs.”

“Kip, I can’t just ask to go back in there and have a look around. I’ve got to wait until Coldwater feels the need to take me back inside there, and you’re just going to have to be patient. Unless, of course, you want to just pour in here and nail the lot of them right now.”

“You know I can’t do that, Jess.”

“Kip, if this ends badly, I want you to remember that I did what I was ordered to do; that I got you everything you need to indict.”

“Jesse, you know goddamned well that, if it were up to me, I’d be in there today with a dozen swat teams, the army, if necessary. But I answer to other people.”

“You make sure Barker remembers what I said,” Jesse said hotly.

“That I’ll do.”

“Listen, Kip, I’m not going to be able to call for a while. I’m under a lot of scrutiny right now, especially with Ruger’s attitude being what it is. Every time I leave town there’s somebody on my tail, and the house may be bugged, too.”

“You’ve been leaving town?”

“Just to go to Coeur d’Alene on business.”

“Jesse, if you go any farther afield, I want to know about it, you hear?”

“Sure, Kip. I’d better go now; I’m due back at the plant. You give my best to Arlene and the new baby.”

“I’ll do that, Jess. You call me as soon as you can.”

Jesse broke the connection and put the phone back in his pocket. It had started to snow, and he turned to retrace his steps to the plant. As he did, he found himself looking down the barrel of an automatic pistol, maybe six feet away.

“Just hold it right there,” the man said. “I heard all of that; I’ll take the phone.” It was the young man who had followed him to Coeur d’Alene on his last trip.

“What’s going on?” Jesse asked.

“I said, I’ll take the phone. Toss it over here.”

“Why do you want my phone?” Jesse asked.

“If you don’t throw it over here right now, I’m going to shoot you someplace painful. Nothing fatal, just painful. You have a lot of questions to answer, my friend.”

“You want the phone, you can have it,” Jesse said. “Just don’t get careless with the gun. When I’ve had a chance to talk to Coldwater you’re going to see this in a different light, and it would go a lot better for you if there weren’t any holes in me.”

“The phone,” the man said.

Jesse pointed to his pocket. “It’s in here.”

“Take it out very slowly and toss it to me.”

Jesse slowly removed the telephone from his pocket, and, holding it in two gloved fingers, tossed it high and to the right of the man. As he had hoped, the man’s gun hand swung around in the direction of the phone. Jesse took two running steps and dived at that hand.

The two men hit the ground together, dangerously close to the outer edge of the path. If they went off together, Jesse thought, he hoped the other guy would be on the bottom. He doubled his grip on the man’s wrist and twisted outward. The pistol fell into the snow. Jesse got the man’s arm behind him and shoved his wrist up between his shoulder blades.

The man screamed.

“Shut up, or I’ll break it off. What the hell are you doing following me with a gun?”

“You’d better let me go, if you know what’s good for you.”

Jesse twisted the wrist again. “I asked you a question, and if you want to live through this little meeting, you’d better start talking.”

“Ruger sent me,” the man grunted.

“Not Casey?” Jesse asked, surprised. Casey handled security.

“It was Ruger; I’ve been following you for a couple of weeks. Now do the right thing; let me go, and let’s go see Ruger.”

Jesse didn’t have to think about that for very long. There was only one possible result of this meeting, and it wasn’t seeing Ruger. He grabbed the pistol, then got to his feet still holding on to the man’s wrist. “All right,” he said, “we’ll go see Ruger, but not with a gun in my back, agreed?”

“All right, agreed,” the man said. “Just ease off on my arm, okay?”

“Which pocket do you keep the pistol in?”

“Shoulder holster, left side,” the man said.

Jesse reached inside the man’s coat, found the holster, wiped the snow off the gun and shoved it into the holster. He also found a leather tab and snapped it across the trigger guard. “All right, do I have your word you won’t draw that again?”

“Yeah, yeah,” the man said. “Now, please let go of my arm.”

“Sure,” Jesse said. First he turned the man so that his back was to the steep slope, then he let go of the arm. Then Jesse hit him once, in the gut. He made himself watch as the man left the path and started down. There was one short scream that ended when his head struck a boulder, then the limp body ricocheted down the slope and free fell the last hundred feet to the stream below. The man ended up face down in the stream, wedged between two rocks.

Jesse sat down for a minute and tried to restore his breathing and his thinking to normal. The man was dead, that was sure; either the blow to the head had done it, or he would drown in the stream. He found it strange how easy it was to kill somebody when his own life was in danger. He looked around him; the snow, now falling heavily, was already obliterating signs of a scuffle. In ten minutes the whole area would be covered. Jesse waited the ten minutes before going back to the plant. He had two choices: say nothing and get on that plane tonight; it might be days before they found the man; or play innocent and try to carry it off.

He ran the last two hundred yards; he had to be out of breath when he reached his office and telephoned Pat Casey.