Santa Fe Dead

37

BARBARA WAS SOAKING in a hot tub when Jimmy knocked on the bathroom door.

“Come in,” she called.

Jimmy let himself into the bathroom. “There’s what looks like an unmarked police car parked near the end of the driveway,” he said.

“What kind of car?”

“A green Ford, I think.”

Barbara stood up, allowing soapy water to cascade down her still beautiful, naked body. “Well,” she said, “I think I’ll take them shopping.”

JACK CATO WAITED until the mailman arrived before leaving for work. He took the mail inside; among the overdue bills was a manila envelope. It bore no return address. He opened it and shook out the contents, a Ziploc bag containing two stacks of one-hundred-dollar bills. He stuffed the money into his jacket pocket, then got into his truck and drove to work. On the way, he stopped at a drugstore that took payments for the electric, gas and telephone companies and paid his bills in cash. He was now up-to-date on all his bills, and he intended to stay that way.

Once at the studio stables he found a pry bar and left the barn through a rear door. He looked around for spectators, and, seeing none, he opened the door of a prop outhouse, pried up some of the floorboards and, with his hands, scraped the loose dirt away, revealing a safe set in a concrete pad. He opened the safe and dropped the money into it, retaining enough for his day-to-day expenses. He closed the safe, raked the dirt back over it and hammered down the floorboards with the pry bar.

Soon he would have another fifty thousand dollars to add to his stash, and he had only ten days to accomplish his task. He had no doubt that this woman would make good on her threat to kill him if he didn’t fulfill his mission on time. He had no idea who she was, so she could walk up behind him anywhere and put a bullet in his head. He began planning his work for the coming weekend.

He called Tina López at work, on her cell phone. “Hey,” he said.

“Hey, yourself.”

“You up for a trip to Tijuana this weekend?”

“Listen, Jack, we had a cop from Santa Fe come see us yesterday. Soledad went nuts and went home to her mother’s house. She’s scared shitless, and she might crack if she’s pressed anymore.”

“That’s not good, sweetheart,” he said. “You need to talk to her and tell her to get a grip. The story will hold, if she doesn’t crack.”

“I’ll do the best I can. That’s all I can promise. What the hell are you doing that I have to cover your ass again?”

“You don’t want to know, Tina. Don’t ever ask me that again.”

“Look, we’ve got what we want. If you keep doing stuff, you’re going to blow the lid off this thing, and we’ll all go down.”

“This is my last weekend’s work,” Cato said. “Just get your ass down to Tijuana on Friday, and don’t come back until late Sunday night. There’s five grand in it for you.”

“You think I need five grand? I’m going to have more money than you could believe!”

“Yeah, but you don’t have it yet, and you’ve got rent and car payments to make, right? Five grand should tide you over until it can come through.”

She fumed for a moment. “All right, but this is the last time, you hear me?”

“I hear you. I’ll give you your money on Monday.”

“Right.” She hung up.

BARBARA NOTED THE police car as she pulled out of Jimmy Long’s driveway, and she made it easy for them, driving a steady thirty miles an hour and stopping for all the stop signs. She had never understood why there were all these four-way stop signs in Beverly Hills. Hadn’t these people ever heard of right-of-way streets?

She drove down Rodeo Drive and gave her rental car to the attendant behind the Ralph Lauren store. She had not been inside the shop for more than a minute before she spotted a woman browsing whose cheap pants suit made her look out of place in the elegant store. Well, she could just eat her heart out, Barbara thought.

She tried on half a dozen things and chose a slinky, black dress and a couple of cashmere sweaters. She made sure the policewoman saw her black American Express card as she paid for them.

She walked out the front of the store and made her way down Rodeo, window-shopping, occasionally going inside and buying a dress or a pair of shoes. She had lunch alone in the garden at Spago, then worked her way back to the Ralph Lauren shop and retrieved her car. She was back at Jimmy’s by midafternoon, and so was the police car. Let them report that!

JACK CATO REPEATED his actions of the weekend before, but this time he brought along a set of lock picks. What he wanted from the armory was locked in a large room that he had never been able to get a key to.

He let himself into the building and walked into a windowless hallway, closing the door behind him so that he could switch on the lights. He knelt before the double steel doors and took a close look at the lock. It was the sort of thing you’d see on the front door of a house, really, nothing special. He put on his reading glasses and unzipped the little case holding his lock picks. He selected two and began probing the lock, feeling it out.

It turned out to be a pain in the ass before he could get it open, but at least he knew the lock now, and it would be easier to deal with later. He swung open the heavy door and switched on the lights inside. The fluorescent fixtures flickered on, and he was staring at enough weapons to equip the SWAT teams of a city: assault rifles, machine guns, grenade launchers, even half a dozen mortars. He’d love to have sacked the whole room, but he wanted only one thing: an ordinary-looking aluminum briefcase, tucked away on a high shelf. He pulled up a stepladder and got it down.

It had two combination locks securing it, but it turned out that the combinations were just three zeros. He opened it and checked out the contents: a beautifully crafted, disassembled sniper’s rifle that had been made by an old man named Al, a gunsmith who had a shop on Melrose, for a spy movie that had been made on the lot. Jack doubted if it had had more than half a dozen rounds put through it.

He closed the case and helped himself to a pocketful of.223 ammunition from a drawer. He knew the armorer didn’t log ammo use, so he was safe. He relocked the steel door, let himself out of the building and returned to the stables.

He had already checked the shooting schedules for work under way. Nobody would need the sniper’s rifle anytime soon, so he was good through the weekend.

He called a phone number and waited.

“Compton Flying Club,” a woman’s voice said.

“Hey, Sheila, it’s Jack Cato.”

“Hi, Jack. What can I do for you?”

“Is the Bonanza available this weekend?”

“Let me check.”

He could hear her turning the pages of her desk calendar.

“All weekend,” she said.

“Great, I’ll take it Friday evening and have it back by Monday morning. I’m going up to San Francisco this weekend. Can you have it fueled and left on the line after about five on Friday? Leave the key under the nosewheel chock.”

“Sure thing. Have a good flight.”

Cato hung up. Everything was all set now.