Breakdown

Chapter 18

The Suisun Marsh is the largest single estuarine marsh in the country-thousands of acres of tule grass, freshwater sloughs and backwaters, and unpaved roads spread out along the northeastern rim of Suisun Bay. The California Department of Fish and Game controls most of it, maintaining large sections as a wildlife refuge; those sections are off-limits to hunters and fishermen. But along the network of sloughs there are numerous privately owned parcels of land, whose owners can obtain seasonal permits to hunt certain species of ducks and birds that flock there during the winter months. For men like Coleman Lujack, to whom all life came cheap, it would be a shooter’s paradise.

Grizzly Island Road is the main access into the marsh, a narrow, two-lane paved road that winds in off Highway 12. Fairfield and Suisun City, the two towns that flank the east side of the highway, used to be small, quiet places populated mainly by people connected in one way or another with Travis Air Force Base nearby. In recent years both had grown rapidly, thanks to the burgeoning cost of real estate in the Bay Area; now families had to come this far out-some forty miles east of San Francisco-to find affordable housing. Tracts and shopping centers had blossomed along Highway 12, in places butting right up against the protected marshland.

It was late afternoon when I turned onto Grizzly Island Road. At this time of year, even on a Saturday, it was mostly deserted; I saw only two other cars, both parked, as I drove through miles of low green hills and empty fields broken now and then by huddles of ranch buildings. Finally the road curved around and drew in close to the main part of the marsh-a broad, flat, lonely expanse of green and brown, of gray glistening water. The only signs of life were hundreds of birds making shifting patterns of color against a thickening overcast sky.

Montezuma Slough, the biggest of the estuaries, appeared ahead. I hadn’t been out here in years and it seemed wider than I remembered, as wide as a football field where the road climbed up over a narrow humpbacked bridge. Along the far bank, scattered cabins-green and brown and gray like their surroundings-were visible among stretches of tule grass and stunted swamp growth; each had its own spindly pier and boat shed.

When I came down on that side of the bridge, the road hooked sharply left to parallel the slough. The numbers on the mailboxes along here told me I was getting close to 15678 — less than a quarter of a mile, it turned out. I couldn’t see much of the Lujack cabin from the road, because of a tangle of bushes and gnarly trees. I parked just beyond the driveway, retransferred the.38 from the glove box to my jacket pocket, and then walked back and in along deep ruts.

The drive widened out in front of the cabin, where the tangle of vegetation ended. One vehicle was parked there, but it wasn’t Coleman’s Imperial. It was a Dodge Ram van.

The cabin was a long low affair, with brown shingled walls and a saggy green composition roof. Very rustic. Not very primitive, though: Telephone lines ran overhead and there was a satellite TV dish mounted to one side. Coleman evidently liked his creature comforts after a hard day of killing things.

I could hear voices as I approached-at least three people having a conversation in there. Was Coleman one of them, even though his car wasn’t here? If so, I wasn’t sure how I’d handle him with more than just his wife on the premises. Play it by ear. I touched the revolver in my pocket. And get tough if I had to.

When I rapped on the screen door, the conversation died inside. I knocked again, and there was the thump of heavy steps, and the inside door opened and I was looking through the screen at a beefy middle-aged guy with a shock of iron-gray hair. I had never seen him before. He had no idea who I was either; he looked me over with a mixture of puzzlement and mild annoyance before he said, “Yes? What can we do for you?”

“I’m looking for Coleman Lujack.”

“Oh? Mind if I ask why?”

“It’s a business matter. Is he here?”

“Well, he was.”

“When did he leave?”

Behind the beefy guy a woman’s voice said, “Who is it, Jay?”

“Somebody looking for Coleman.”

The woman appeared at his side. Late thirties, muscular and heavy-breasted in a man’s plaid shirt; short brown hair, plain features. “I’m Carla Lujack, Coleman’s wife,” she said. She gave me a quick appraisal through the screen. “I don’t believe I know you.”

“We’ve never met.”

“Are you a friend of Coleman’s?”

“Business acquaintance.”

I hadn’t offered a name and she didn’t ask for one. There was no wariness in her voice or manner; interest, yes, but of the polite wifely sort. I figured it right, I thought. As with Eileen Lujack, she’d been kept in the dark all along about the coyotes. Nor did she figure in Coleman’s future plans; he intended to do his running alone.

“When did your husband leave, Mrs. Lujack?” I asked.

“What time was it, Jay? Around eleven?”

“Closer to noon,” Jay said.

“Well, between eleven and twelve, then. Earlier than he’d expected to go back to the city today.”

“It wasn’t you he called, was it?” Jay asked me.

“No. Why?”

“Would’ve been a funny coincidence if he rushed off to see you. I mean, the two of you getting your signals crossed and you coming all the way out here and him on his way to meet you.”

“Very funny.”

“Sure was in a hurry when he left,” Jay said. “Didn’t even say good-bye.”

“He has a lot on his mind,” Carla Lujack said.

“Don’t I know it? Poor Tom.” Jay shook his head. “I guess it wasn’t easy for him to sell this place either. Even if it does remind him too much of Tom.”

“He sold this property?” I asked. “When?”

“Just yesterday. The wife and I bought it-that’s why we’re all here this weekend.”

“You pay cash for it, by any chance?”

“As much cash down as I could raise. How’d you know that?”

“Just a guess.”

“You wouldn’t be in on that stock deal with him?”

“Stock deal?”

“That’s why he wanted cash. I wouldn’t take a flier like that myself, but I guess Coleman knows what he’s doing.”

“He’s always been very careful with our money,” his wife said. “I’m sure he’ll be careful this time too.”

Yeah, I thought. “Did he say where he was going today?”

“No, he didn’t.”

“What time did he expect to be back?”

“Well, he probably won’t be back at all. He thought he might have to work through the weekend.”

“We’ll take Carla home,” Jay said magnanimously. “No problem.”

“Is there any message I can give him when he calls?”

“No,” I said, “no message. I’ll get in touch with him later.”

I smiled and did an abrupt about-face to avoid any more questions. I had to force myself to walk at a normal pace out to the road; there was a sharp driving urgency in me now. That call Coleman had made … to Teresa Melendez, no doubt, because he hadn’t heard from Vega and was getting anxious. In spite of my warning, she must have told him what had happened to Vega. That was the impetus for Coleman leaving early and in such a hurry. He knew I’d be after him, and that if the authorities weren’t also on his trail, they would be soon.

He was already on the run, or damned close to it.

And he had a three-hour head start.

* * * *

It took me better than two hours to get from the Suisun Marsh to Burlingame, because of moderately heavy traffic and earthquake-related detours. Night had closed down when I finally pulled up in front of Coleman’s house.

It was as dark as the sky, the driveway empty.

I got out anyway, first unclipping the flashlight from under the dash, and went up through the rock garden. Alongside the front door, the burglar-alarm light burned like a bright red hole in the darkness. I walked around to the garage, put the flashlight up against the window I’d looked through earlier, and briefly flicked it on.

Still only one car parked inside, but now it was Coleman’s Imperial. The sleek white foreign job was gone.

He’d been here, all right, and switched cars when he left — another effort to buy himself more time. It was as much confirmation as I needed that he was on the run.

In my car again I sat with my hands tight around the steering wheel. I was tired from all the driving, drawn tight inside. And frustrated and worried. Maybe I should go to the police, lay everything out as I saw it, let them and the feds take up the chase. The only problem with that was, I didn’t have any proof. The INS might have gathered some on the Lujacks’ coyote activities, but not enough to make formal charges stick or they’d have pounced already. And until Vega could be made to talk, there was no evidence, hard or soft, to prove that Coleman had conspired to murder his brother, me, and probably Nick Pendarves. Without proof, the wheels of justice grind slow. Coleman could be in South America or the Antarctic by the time the authorities got around to putting out a dragnet for him.

All right-he was still my baby until I’d exhausted all the possibilities. There was at least one other place he might have gone before leaving the Bay Area entirely; check that first, and then start backtracking.

I drove over to 101, went north again. Heading for Containers, Inc.

* * * *

He was there.

By God, he was there.

He’d parked his wife’s car at the rear of the lot, in heavy shadow beyond the last of the sodium-vapor arcs. I couldn’t see it clearly from the deserted street, but it was the only car on the lot and therefore a dead giveaway. So were the lights burning in the office wing. Who else was likely to be here at this hour on a Saturday evening?

I drove on past, made a U-turn, parked alongside a weedy vacant lot that blended into the abandoned railroad yards, and fast-walked into the factory lot. There was no fog here tonight, just a high overcast, but the wind was sharp and gusty across the flatlands from the bay. It created odd, disturbed sounds-flutterings, purlings, murmurs, low moaning cries. I could have made all sorts of noise and Coleman wouldn’t have heard me coming.

The car back in the shadows was the white foreign job, all right. I got close enough to make sure, avoiding the puddles of greenish light from the arcs, then changed direction and went to the office entrance. The door was unlocked. Careless, Coleman, I thought; you’re in a big hurry, huh? I took Vega’s.38 out of my jacket pocket. The odd thing was, now that the hunt was almost over, the tension had gone right out of me and I was calm to the point of detachment. The hatred was still there, but it was like a core of heat inside a casing of dry ice.

I rotated the knob with my left hand, eased the door open and myself inside. The waiting area and outer office were dark. But he’d left the door that led to the private offices partially ajar, and light showed back that way. I stood still for a few seconds, listening. Silence at first; then, above the wind, I heard some sort of thunking noise. I moved again, heel and toe, through the open doorway and along the wall. Now I could hear other sounds: papers being hurriedly shifted around.

The door to his office was wide open. I stepped into the outspill of light with the.38 at arm’s length, saw where he was and what he was doing, and said, “Hello, Coleman.”

He nearly jumped out of his skin. He was down on one knee in front of his safe, transferring stacks of currency from there into a leather briefcase. The sound of my voice brought him up so fast, in a twisting about-face, that he cracked his elbow on the upper edge of the safe, staggered, had to brace himself against his desk to keep from falling down. As soon as he focused on me and the.38, his eyes bulged as wide and terrified as Vega’s had last night. He stood clutching his elbow and shaking-literally shaking, head to foot.

“End of the line, Coleman,” I said.

He said, “No,” squeakily, as if trying to deny it.

“Too bad for you you decided to keep some of your runout money here. But then, I’d have just caught up with you somewhere else.”

“What … what are you going to do?”

“Well, let’s see. I could turn you over to the cops. Or I could do to you what you tried to have Vega do to me last night-I could blow your damn head off.”

“You wouldn’t … Jesus you wouldn’t …”

I was tempted to keep on tormenting him, the way a cat will torment a cornered rat, but I didn’t have the stomach for it. One little twist of the knife was as much cruelty as I could muster, even for a piss-poor human being like Coleman Lujack.

I said, “Finish what you were doing. Hurry it up.”

Two simple commands, but I might have spoken them in Arabic; he didn’t comprehend because he was thinking about dying. He stayed where he was, wagging his head, trembling as if with a fever. His face was paper-white. Sweat stained it, ran like melting parentheses around the corners of his mouth. Thief, killer, sociopath-and underneath it all, coward.

“Come on, Coleman.” I waggled the gun. “Finish loading the briefcase.”

“Briefcase,” he said.

“Right. Put all the money into it. Now.”

He moved all at once, jerkily; went to one knee and clawed up handfuls of currency and shoved them haphazardly into the open case. At first his hands were so palsied he dropped or spilled as much as he stuffed inside. Then he seemed to gather himself, regain part of his control. When he finished emptying the safe and looked around at me again, I saw a small desperate cunning mixed in with his fear.

“There’s more than a hundred thousand dollars here,” he said. “But it’s not all I have. There’s another hundred thousand … some bearer bonds and jewelry. You can have it, all of it … I’ll take you to it … just let me go.”

“Still trying to buy time. You’re a pistol, you are.”

“No, I mean it, I swear …”

“I’m not selling, Coleman.”

“Take what’s here, then. I don’t care about the money. I don’t want to die, I don’t want to go to prison. …”

“You should have thought of that before you murdered your brother.”

“No! It wasn’t me, it was Vega … all Vega’s idea.”

“Sure it was.”

“It was. I swear to God-”

“Shut up, damn you.” I was sick of him-of what he was, of the sight and sound of him. I wanted Coleman Lujack out of my life as fast as possible. Take him out to my car and handcuff him-I keep a pair of handcuffs in the trunk, along with other emergency equipment-and then drive him to the Hall of Justice. Even if he refused to talk, the money in his briefcase and what I had to say would be enough for the police to hold him until the INS could be brought in and Vega cracked open. “Get on your feet.”

He did that, in the same jerky movements. “Now close the briefcase and pick it up.”

He did that too-and then held the case out toward me as if it were a pagan offering. His half-popped eyes begged me not to sacrifice him.

“Uh-uh,” I said. “You carry it.”

“You … you won’t kill me?”

“That depends on whether or not you do what I tell you.”

“I’ll do anything you say. Just don’t kill me, please….”

“Walk out of here, not too fast, not too slow. And keep your mouth shut from now on. I don’t want to hear another word out of you.”

I backed off to one side as I spoke. Immediately he came away from the safe and around the desk in jelly-legged strides; he was no longer looking at me. He went through the door, turned along the hall with his shoulders hunched, as if he expected a bullet in the back at any second. I followed by several paces, warily. I doubted he had the guts to try jumping me and the.38, but you never know. Even a coward will fight if he’s desperate enough.

Through the darkened waiting area, outside into the cold rackety wind. Coleman kept walking; I paused to reach back and pull the door shut. Then I saw him break stride, half-turn toward the rear of the office wing. A second or two later I saw what he saw: the shadow breaking away from other shadows along the wall.

Coleman screamed, “No!”

Then the shooting started.

* * * *