Alarm Call

Chapter 25

I said nothing to Prim about my trip. John Wallinger had made me promise to tell no one, and I sensed that he hadn’t envisaged any exceptions. Besides, I feared that she wouldn’t like being left alone, and the idea of having two women pissed off at me at the same time didn’t attract me.

There had been no call from Susie, or from Wallinger, and when I checked AOL I found no new e-mails either.

Prim wasn’t keen on leaving the suite but I wasn’t keen on staying there either, so I persuaded her that we should see some of the sights. We waited until some of the heat had gone from the day, and then set out.

We stopped on the bridge that crosses the road from the Bellagio to watch the fountains, the hotel’s main public attraction. . apart from the slot machines, roulette and black-jack tables inside. They kicked off every half-hour or so, in a fantastic choreographed display, with Andreas Bocelli and Sarah Brightman singing their wee hearts out in the background.

When that was done, we headed across the bridge and past Bally’s until we came to Paris, an enormous casino complex with streets lined with shops and restaurants and its own Eiffel Tower rising up out of it all, not quite as tall as the real thing, but going on for five hundred feet high, with an observation platform on top and a restaurant on the eleventh level. When we’d done that, we moved on to Venice, which has its own Grand Canal, singing gondoliers, the works. The people who are building Las Vegas. . oh, yes, it’s still growing. . don’t think small: they want Americans to keep their money in America, so they’ve brought Europe to them.

We knew the real thing, though, so we crossed the Strip and explored New York, New York, which is a sort of Medium-sized Apple, with its version of the Statue of Liberty. I didn’t look for an inscription on its base, but if there is one I’ll bet it doesn’t say, Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses. . like the real one does. There’s a fair chance you’ll leave tired and poor, but the casino owners want you to arrive rich and wide awake.

We grabbed a couple of chimichangas in a Mexican restaurant in a reproduction of SoHo village, then lost a few bucks in the slot machines. . you feel you have to; maybe their constant tinkling din is addictive. . before walking back to the Bellagio just before eleven, soaking up the spectacle of the Strip, all lit up in its night clothing.

Before going up top, we looked in at the Fontana Bar; Liam was in there, with Erin, his wife, so we stopped to have a drink with them. If Erin was puzzled to see Prim with me, rather than Susie, she didn’t show it; but she was an air steward, so she’d probably seen all sorts of celebrity situations in her time. Liam, of course, knew Prim from Barcelona; there had been an incident there once, involving Jerry Gradi, and her nursing skills had come in very handy indeed.

There were no messages showing on the phones upstairs, and nothing new on e-mail when I checked. I had to be downstairs for the car at eight, so I turned in. I looked at Prim. ‘How are you feeling?’ I asked her.

‘Okay. I know what I’m going to do: I just have to wait for Paul to contact us again, that’s all.’

‘Good. In that case, since there don’t look like being any floods of tears tonight, that’s your room and that’s mine. Sleep tight.’

She smiled at me. ‘You too. I really am sorry I’ve caused you all this bother, Oz.’

Still I hadn’t said anything about my trip to Santa Fe. My intention was to be out of there before Prim surfaced in the morning, leaving her a note to say I’d be back later and to call me on the mobile if anything happened. But it didn’t work out that way: when I stepped out of my room, there she was in the living area, in T-shirt and shorts, and drinking coffee.

‘Where are you going?’ she asked, when she saw how I was dressed.

I improvised. ‘I told Santi Temple I’d look in on the filming, to get to know the boys and girls.’ You see? It wasn’t a direct lie. I’d have told her the truth, whatever John Wallinger had said; I didn’t, only because I thought that if I had, she might have been afraid that I was walking into a trap, designed to take me out of the picture. Actually, I hadn’t discounted that possibility entirely: the private plane and car were a kind of insurance. If I didn’t show up for the return journey, the alarm would be raised right away.

‘I’m not sure how long I’ll be,’ I went on. ‘You know how to get in touch with me if you need to.’ I was out of the door before she had a chance to ask me anything else.

Troy Hawkins’s Lear jet turned out to be a Hawker Siddeley; I was pleased by that, because it’s slightly wider than the Lear. Captain Hawkins was a very sharp dude indeed, as was his co-pilot, Matthew, and the steward Rafaela, for all that her English was largely incomprehensible to my ear… even the unmangled one.

We took off two minutes early from McCarron airport; when Matthew gave me our flight plan to New Mexico I wondered how we’d manage to get that high in that little bird, but the journey was as smooth as silk. I’d brought my script with me, and spent much of the time learning my lines for the scenes I’d be shooting with Liam through the week. I wasn’t worried about the part at all; there was nothing taxing in it. All the viewer needed to know was that my character, Oscar, was a thoroughly bad dude; they didn’t have to be given a window into his soul.

Our touch-down at Santa Fe airport was as smooth as our take-off had been; we taxied into the general aviation terminal, and the door was opened in no time at all. I told Troy that I expected to be back in three hours, and that if there was to be any change in that I’d let him know.

The car they had waiting for me was a Buick; my first impression was that New Mexico does not go big on European imports. When I told Jesus, my driver, where I wanted to go, he grinned; I could read the words ‘gringo tourist’ clearly from his expression.

He took it steady on the way into the city. I had plenty of time and I didn’t want to be early; since Wallinger had summoned me there, he could get the bloody drinks in. We drove in through the suburbs on Highway 85, but since the airport is around twenty miles give or take a few, from the centre, we didn’t have that much time to kill.

I read somewhere that the late Will Rogers. . he’s an American institution, but I’m not certain why… said, when he was still running to time, that the person who designed Santa Fe did so while riding on a jackass, backwards and drunk. I didn’t see any jackasses, going in either direction, drunk or sober, on the way, but by the time we’d reached the meandering heart of the place and Jesus began to pick his way though a maze of one-way streets, I began to get old Will’s drift.

Many of the street names in Santa Fe are more redolent of Old Mexico than New. The Cowgirl Hall of Fame is on South Guadalupe Street, where it meets Aztec Street. I told Jesus to find the car park and wait for me somewhere visible. I didn’t quite tell him to keep the motor running, but he got my drift. His expression had changed as he looked at me; now it was switching between ‘drug courier’ and ‘hit man’.

I stepped inside. My first thought as I looked around was that I’d never realised there were so many cowgirls; Calamity Jane and Annie Oakley are the extent of my knowledge of the breed. The bar was called La Cantina, and it could have been a wild west movie set, apart from the television mounted high on the wall.

John Wallinger was sitting at a table, waiting. I was pleased to see that he was by himself, with only a Coke and a dish of peanuts for company. He rose as I came in, and extended his hand; this time he didn’t try the crusher grip.

‘I’m glad you could make it, Mr Blackstone. Did you drive?’

‘No danger, I hired a plane. . and call me Oz.’ I looked across in the direction of the Mustang Grill. ‘Would you like to eat?’ I asked.

‘If you would,’ he said, ‘but we don’t have long.’

The lieutenant ordered a buffalo burger; I settled for a catfish po’ boy and a pint of Breckenridge. We had them served on the outdoor patio area; it was set up for music, but happily there was none. I knew what it would have been and I wasn’t in Merle Haggard mode.

I quizzed him as we ate on the purpose of the expedition, but he wouldn’t tell me a thing. ‘I want you to see for yourself,’ was all he said. He asked me a few things, about Prim and about her problem. I repeated the story, but this time I added the bit about how they’d met at Gleneagles, when he’d been playing the part of the jilted broker finding consolation on the golf course.

That amused him. ‘My brother and golf have never been compatible,’ he said. ‘If you’d asked him about Tiger Woods, he’d have thought it was a jungle full of fierce creatures.’

We skipped the coffee; I waved to the waitress for the tab but John insisted on picking it up. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Where we’re going isn’t far from here. We have to be there for one o’clock. That’s when the rest hour begins; they don’t like visitors after that.’

‘Yes, but you’re a cop.’

‘Not here.’

‘Okay, then: I’m a movie star.’

‘That won’t cut any ice either, not with these people.’

‘I’ve got a driver waiting,’ I told him. ‘We can go by car.’

‘Trust me, we’re quicker walking.’ He set off at a brisk pace along South Guadalupe. I had no option; I caught him up.

In no time at all we’d reached the Santa Fe River, which is actually more of a stream in the summer. We crossed the bridge, then turned right into West Almeda Street, and took a left turn a few hundred yards along. Almost immediately John stopped in front of a three-storey stucco building that covered half a block. There was a sign over the dark brown entrance door, reading ‘The Blessed Sisters’.

‘What the hell is this?’

‘You’ll see.’ The big detective turned the heavy metal handle and led the way into a cool shaded hallway. In a corner, there was what looked like a reception desk, only there was nobody receiving. He stepped up to it and rang a hand bell. It made hardly a sound, but it did the job: in seconds a blue-habited nun appeared through a door.

‘Lieutenant,’ she said softly, then looked at me. ‘Is this your friend?’ Her Irish accent sounded wildly incongruous in the state capital of New Mexico, except. . a convent’s a convent wherever it is. ‘You’re just in time. If you go on through, he’s been made ready for you.’

For the first time, I realised what was happening.

The big guy led the way out of the foyer and into a long corridor. All the doors off had opaque glass panels, which helped to light it. He stopped at the third on the right, opened it and went in.

There was a bed in the room, but it was empty; the man who, I assumed, was its usual occupant was sitting in a wheelchair by the window, wearing pyjamas and with a light rug over his knees. It had a view over the trickling river; he was looking out, but I could tell at once that he wasn’t seeing anything. He was stick thin, with lank dark hair, and he had the pallor of a man who hadn’t been in the sun for a while. His eyes were unblinking and his mouth hung open slightly, a trickle of saliva coming from one corner.

John took the handles of the chair and turned it towards me. ‘Oz,’ he said. ‘I’d like you to meet my older brother, Paul Wallinger.’