At The Edge

3

They had come to a farmhouse. White, with peeling paint that revealed weather-grayed siding, the single-story house looked as if it were slowly dissolving. Moss-clad gutters appeared useless, and brush and tall grasses had taken over the area around the building. A Ford half-ton pickup truck was parked in a carport to the side. In front of the house was a tired Buick with a visible rust spot near the back window.

The presence of two vehicles looked promising. Dan stopped and blocked her way, as if to settle this matter before moving on.

A million words went through his mind, but he knew none of them would do any good. Changing his mind, he turned to walk to the farmhouse.

"Wait a minute," she said, grabbing his shoulder and yanking him around. "Just stand right here and don't move. You are being crazy and you're making me crazy. If you end up a bullet-ridden, Republican corpse, I have to think about that the rest of my life. And I refuse to spend the rest of my days thinking about a dead Republican."

Looking down at all 120 pounds of her, at her chest heaving with determination, he started to smile, then stifled it. "What can I do for you?"

"Some discussion. Nobody gives us briefcases full of money, and not five hundred thousand at a time. I mean, that in itself is unbelievable. But now we have a robbery by someone who obviously knew what was happening."

"Seems that way."

"So did someone on your end tell somebody, or someone on my end?"

"How many people on your side knew about this money drop?"

"As far as I know, just me and Patty McCafferty. How many on your side?"

"With the exception of the donors, I was the only one who knew it was today and the manner of the delivery."

"So according to what we know, this couldn't have happened except by pure chance."

"Saturday-morning purse-snatchers with a getaway car? I don't believe it was chance."

"I'm with you," she said. "What are you going to do if you catch them?"

"I don't know yet," he said. "For starters, I want to know where they're going."

"They'll be long gone."

"The longer we stand here discussing it-"

"Well, we need transportation no matter what. Once we get a car, we can talk about where to go."

He rapped on the door of the house. A middle-aged woman with obviously dyed flaming-red hair answered the door. A cigarette dangled from a mouth rich in red lipstick.

"What can I do for you?" She seemed intent on their filthy, semi-dressy clothes.

"Need to rent your truck."

"It's not for rent."

"We just crashed our car. We're in a hurry. How about two hundred fifty dollars?"

"How do I know you'll bring it back?"

"I was a Boy Scout." The woman didn't seem amused. "I'll show you picture ID, and give you my home address and phone number."

"We need to use your phone," Maria said.

"What for?" Dan asked.

"Because we're going to call our people and tell them what happened."

"Now hold on-" he began.

"While you two argue, I'll get the keys," the woman interrupted. "You get your checkbook ready."

"This is not negotiable," Maria said.

"Shit-"

''Are you afraid your boss-what's his name, Hutchin? — will stop this insanity?"

"I didn't know that it was any of your damn business what I tell my firm and what I don't."

''I don't want to force the issue. I need a little cooperation here."

"What do you mean force the issue?"

"I could go to the press, go to the police. The money was ours."

"You're a real piece of work," he said.

She just glared at him.

"I hid a radio transmitter in the briefcase. There's a radio signal. I need to follow it, so now you know."

Maria looked stunned.

"I don't have to depend on ESP."

"That's not the point. You put that… device in the briefcase without telling me?"

"It's called an ADF. It's used to track a target, like a wild animal. But aren't you glad it was in there?"

He pulled the automatic direction finder (ADF) receiver out of his coat pocket, trying to reassure her.

"But this is a really small receiver. We have to be close."

She sighed. "So you were keeping this secret, hoping to get rid of me. You're still holding out on me. If you don't call, I'm going to the cops with the whole story. It's that simple."

"I'll call Hutchin," Dan said, resigned but irritated.

"You can use the phone if you want to." The woman pointed to an oak stand where the hallway opened up into a living area.

Dan told Hutchin a much abbreviated and safer-sounding version of the story, then waited.

"Don't you think you should come back and regroup?" Hutchin said.

"I've got Maria Fischer with me," he told Hutchin. "She's no cowboy. We won't confront anybody, but I've got to do this while there's still a chance of a signal. Once they discover the transmitter, our odds go way down."

Hutchin reluctantly agreed they could drive around public roads and try for a signal, but nothing more. With maddening precision, he spelled out the terms of their understanding while Dan waited for the moment he could hang up.

"Now what do you intend to do?" Maria said when he returned.

"Just what I've been doing."

She nodded and turned to the woman. "Do you have any boots that I could buy? You can put them on the car tab."

The woman waved her new cigarette as if it were part of the thinking process, then nodded. "You can have my husband's old ones. Fifty dollars."

"Fifty dollars?" Dan interjected.

"Don't argue. What size?"

"Eleven."

"Great. And two pairs of thick socks."

"Twenty dollars."

Dan shook his head.

"Relax. You can afford it."

The woman brought the boots and socks, took the hefty check, and smiled between drags. Before Dan spoke, he ushered Maria out of the house and away from the woman who seemed grateful to close the door on them.

"I'm going to look for a black sedan whose owner lives in these mountains. I'm going to find a Chevy with the letters SRH on the license. I'm ninety percent convinced it was a woman who attacked us, and she knew how to use that billy club. Maybe she's got a police background. She or her accomplice has to be from around here or they wouldn't have headed into the mountains. City people don't do that. Don't know the roads."

They hustled to the truck and jumped in. Dan cranked the engine and it took a few turns before the throaty sounds of the un-muffled exhaust vibrated the floorboards. "Of all the people to get stuck with-to be donating to the coalition… or representing somebody who would. Why you? I just don't get it," Maria complained.

"I don't like it any better than you do. Why didn't you call your office?"

"Don't want to worry people."

"You know that if McCafferty hears about this, she'll have you on the next plane home to Sacramento."

"I suppose."

"And you wanted me to call Hutchin, hoping he'd tell me not to go after the money."

"Someone should know where we are and what we're doing."

"Don't you think we'd both be happier if I did this by myself?"

"Not a chance," she said as he roared back up the mountain road.

Corey Schneider thought it interesting that her silent partners wanted their half of the money immediately. There was some risk to them in an immediate transfer. Traveling toward the meeting spot, she had fumed at the presence of the man. Nothing had been said about some big macho fucker sticking around after the delivery. Another few seconds and that guy would have been all over her. Even with her baton, he would have been tough. So she'd have used the gun. And wouldn't that have been a mess. According to her sources, it was to have been a simple money drop to Maria Fischer and not a long, cozy rendezvous.

Another puzzle was that Corey's unknown accomplices set up a meeting site on a back road where they could be spotted should someone follow. These people who called her in the night were far too cautious and sophisticated for amateurish plans. She glanced down at the map to make sure Denny was on the right road. Although she knew these mountains well and had traveled most of the ranching roads, the location for the drop was remote, and she could only recall having traveled through that area once before.

"I can't believe you did that. We could have lost them." Denny had looked tense and completely distracted since the shooting. "I'm not going down for this."

"Relax."

Denny was a cheap grunt. He was spineless, and she knew she would need to do something about it. And soon. Other than having the hots for her and his willingness to "help," he was unsuited for everything they did.

She pulled down the mirror over the visor. Even without makeup, which she almost never wore anymore, she looked good. She had clear skin, a small and slightly narrow-lipped mouth, but great cheekbones and good symmetry. Not that it meant anything to her. She flipped the mirror closed as if disgusted that she'd even looked.

"What's this?" Denny said.

A chopper had swooped low over the car and dropped something in a small parachute.

"Chopper's unmarked. Must be somebody who doesn't want to be recognized," she said. They were on a ridge covered mostly by grassland and oaks. "Pull over."

When they were opposite the spot where the chute had fallen, the chopper hovered in the distance. Attached to the chute was a small plastic cylinder, and inside a rolled-up map. On the map an X marked the place where she was to meet the mysterious voices on the phone.

Beside the X it simply read "no." At another spot very near their current location was a second X marked "yes." Now it all made sense. They were almost twenty miles from the originally designated point. They knew her route, could follow with the chopper, see everything for miles around, including someone following. They had picked a different location so that she could not plan a trap. They were in complete control.

"We're going just up the ridge and stopping. I suspect that helicopter will come to us."

"What's in that briefcase? Drugs?"

"Nothing illegal."

"I don't think I'm getting paid enough for this."

"We'll fix that. But for the moment just shut up and do your job."

When they had moved up the ridge, the helicopter approached.

"Stay here," she told Denny, and went to the car trunk. She set the briefcase inside and rapidly began counting out ten packets of $10,000 dollars each. The money was all in $100 bills. It took her only a couple of minutes. She paid no attention to the leather pocket in the lid of the briefcase nor the bulge at its center. In a rush she closed the lid the instant she put her portion in a nylon bag in the trunk.

A man dressed in black and wearing a ski mask stepped from the copter. Since he made no move to approach her, she ran to him, wanting at this point to make the transfer and get out of the area. As she approached, she saw an automatic weapon with a silencer clutched in the man's hand. She handed him the briefcase, and with a quick nod he jumped in the chopper. Immediately it pulled up steeply and was gone over the hill, leaving nothing but the mountain quiet.

It was midafternoon and Dan hadn't found anything. They were parked on an old log-landing dark with stirred earth and woody debris, green with naturally sprouting redwood and Douglas fir. The fir loved the bare mineral soil and the sunlight in the man-made clearing. Above them, perhaps 1,000 feet, the hilltop loomed lush with spring grasses and dark with black oak. Below them the hillside fell away in a sea of young redwoods and mixed conifers interspersed with black oak, tan oak, and madrona.

The mountainside redwoods below them, about three years old, had sprung from stumps left from recent logging. Now mere babies, they eventually would obscure everything around them. Stretching below them in a giant bowl grew an old-growth redwood forest-the Highlands.

Dan's receiver had five channels and spindly fold-out antennae. The channel selected had been correct for the animal collar in the briefcase when he experimented with it. There was no reason to try the other channels, but he did so anyway. With the first click on another channel, the receiver gave a very faint beep. The needle barely registered. He switched it back to the briefcase channel.

At that moment they heard the whine of a jet helicopter, then saw it flying low over the trees. The receiver picked up a stronger signal apparently emanating from the copter; then after perhaps thirty seconds, and as the copter was still coming closer, the signal died.

"Damn," he said aloud. "I'm sure I got a signal from that helicopter, but as it got closer, it disappeared."

"It looked to me like it might be coming down," Maria said. "But where would it land over there?"

"It's hard to believe they could land. Maybe the signal was coming from something else."

Dan switched back to the other channel and once again got a faint signal.

"There," she said.

"It's not even the right channel," he said. "You stay here. I'll go down and check things out."

"Wait a minute. I heard your call with Hutchin. If you got a signal, that was it. You were supposed to call him."

"Do you see a phone booth? Besides, this probably isn't the signal. I told you I changed channels."

"That helicopter was the right channel?"

"Yeah, but it could be long gone."

"I think we should let Hutchin know what's happening."

Privately, Dan had thought the helicopter was landing. "We can't do that from here."

"Then we'll drive back."

"You drive. I'm going down that hill."

White particles of dust and pollen hung in the rays of the sun. Heavy forest scents of musty humus and the sweeter odor of jasmine permeated the air. There was a barely visible animal trail leading into the woods.

"I'm going with you" Maria said.

"No way. You'd slow me down. Stay right here in the car."

"It's a free country. I can walk where I want. As far as slowing you down…" She looked him up and down. "That's ridiculous."

"All right." He paused to search for words. "But don't complain and don't ask me to turn around every five minutes."

"You're a boor." Her expression said "asshole." Tension stretched the air as she stood with her hands on her hips. After a time of silence she let out amp; deep breath.''We're overdoing it here. Let me be the first to apologize. I'm… well… sorry for being so… whatever."

"Stubborn. You're sorry for being so irrationally stubborn. And for tagging along."

He grinned and she allowed a small smile.

"If I were a man, would I be 'tagging along'? I said I would be the first to apologize."

"And you did it very well, very well indeed. With a little coaching."

She shook her head. "You are really something else."

"Try to overlook it."

"If we're going to go chasing into these woods, wouldn't it make sense if I knew what you know?"

"Yeah, well, I've got this little problem known as attorney-client privilege."

Strangely, though, he found himself wishing he could tell her exactly what had happened, and why.