Santa Fe Dead

43

JACK CATO TOOK his golf cart over to the studio commissary at lunchtime. He looked around the dining room and spotted Tina López and Soledad Rivera at a table together. He went through the cafeteria line, took his tray over to their table and sat down.

“Hey, Jack,” Tina said.

“Hey, Tina, Soledad. How was Tijuana?”

“You tell me,” Tina said. “You were there, too.”

“Drunk, I guess.”

“You got something for me?”

He picked up her napkin, stuffed an envelope into it and put it in her lap.

She groped around, found the money and smiled.

“Need any help down there?” he asked, nodding at her lap.

“Thanks, but I’m all fixed up for that.”

“He’s back, huh?”

She shrugged.

“I’ll see him at poker tonight, then.”

Soledad spoke up. “Am I going to hear from that cop again?”

“What if you do?” Cato asked, digging into his lunch. “You know what to tell him.”

“Everything turn out all right this weekend?” Tina asked.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Cato replied, shoving a chunk of meat loaf into his mouth.

LUCY DIXON SAT down at her sergeant’s desk. “Boss, we came up dry at Cato’s house; he got to the mailbox first.”

“Who?”

“Jack Cato. That’s his name. J.C.?”

He shuffled through some slips of paper in a tray on his desk. “No money, huh?”

“Well, I think it came, but like I said, he got to it first. The mailman comes early in Studio City; we were about a minute late. I went through what mail there was, mostly bills and a bank statement. All his bills are current, but he’s only got a few hundred bucks in the bank.”

“So what? That’s all I’ve got, too.”

“I pulled a credit report on him: very spotty, lots of payments a month or two late. And yet, everything is current now. What does that tell you?”

“You tell me.”

“It tells me that all his bills are paid because he came into some money.”

“That makes sense.”

“I checked with the studio. He’s on a base salary of fifty-two grand a year, but he gets paid for doing stunt work in movies on top of that.”

“So, if he makes two or three movies a year, he’s flush, huh?”

“He hasn’t worked on a film this year, until this morning, when he started one.”

“All this makes sense to me, Dixon, but you’ve got nothing that the D.A. would want to take to court. Stay on this woman, what’s her name?”

“Keeler.”

“Like Ruby Keeler. I liked her movies when I was a kid.”

“I’ll stay on her, boss.” Dixon went back to her patrol car and drove back to Beverly Hills.

CATO THOUGHT ABOUT it for a while, then he picked up the phone and called the cell number she had given him.

“Yes?”

“I got your package this morning,” Cato said. “Thanks.”

“Then we have nothing further to talk about. Good-bye.”

“Wait! I’ve got a heads-up for you.”

“What?”

“About a minute after I opened your envelope, two LAPD cops showed up with a federal warrant to search my mailbox. Fortunately, I had already put it away, but they opened all my mail. I think you can guess what they were looking for.”

“How would they know about that?”

“Well, they didn’t hear about it from me, Mrs. Keeler. You’d better look to yourself.”

“What did you call me?”

“It’s what they called you. They asked me if I knew you.”

“And what did you tell them?”

“What do you think I told them? I blew them off. Now I’ll say good-bye; I just thought you ought to know about this.” He hung up.

BARBARA PUT THE cell phone away and retraced her steps for the past couple of days. That female cop had followed her to the post office, and she must have seen her mail the envelope. But how did she know it had been sent to Cato? Then the penny dropped. Oh, shit, she thought. She waited for the box to be opened and found the envelope, and I have no one to blame but myself.

And, as a result, Jack Cato now knew her name, and he must think that she was very, very rich.

CATO’S FIRST SCENE wrapped late in the afternoon, and at six, he went over to Don Wells’s offices. Grif Edwards and a couple of other players were already there. Wells came in from the set, and the poker table was set up.

“Give me five hundred,” Cato said to the banker, tossing five hundreds onto the table.

Wells looked at him sharply but said nothing.

Cato won two hundred and twenty dollars, and when the game wrapped at midnight, he got into his golf cart and went back to the stable to get his truck. As he got out of the cart, a Mercedes with its headlights off pulled up next to him, and the window slid down.

“You’re getting careless, Jack,” Wells said.

“What do you men?”

“Throwing hundred-dollar bills on a poker table. Did that money come from my safe?”

“No, Don, it didn’t.”

“Then where’d you get it?”

Cato shrugged. He realized now that he had made a very big mistake.

“A guy owed me some money, and he paid in hundreds.”

“You find a bank where nobody knows you, and you get some small bills, you hear me?”

“Okay, Don.”

“Don’t be caught anywhere at any time with anything bigger than a fifty in your pocket, and not many of those.”

“You’re right, Don; I should have thought.”

“Think more, Jack. The cops have already talked to you once.”

“My alibi is tight, Don.”

“Yeah, I heard about how Soledad cut and ran when the cop showed up.”

“Tina’s got her straightened out.”

“Yeah, I know. She’d better stay straightened out, and so had you.”

“Don’t worry about me, Don.”

“I will, Jack. I will,” Wells said. Then he put up his window and drove away.

Cato stood looking after him, sweating.