The Fourth Durango

Chapter 21

After Parvis Mansur had listened to what Adair and Vines had to say about disbarment, Lompoc penitentiary life, the death of Blessing Nelson and murder in the Blue Eagle Bar, the Iranian took over the discussion and aimed it right at what obviously disturbed him most.

Making no effort to disguise his skepticism, he said, “In effect, Mr. Adair, you’re saying that nobody really wants to kill you-at least not yet. If they did, they could easily have done when they photographed you from the rear of that pink van. After all, an Uzi’s as simple to operate as a Minolta. Some say simpler.”

“Or they could’ve had me killed in prison.”

“But since they didn’t, you believe you’re still alive because of what you know, correct?”

“Because of what they think I know.”

“Is there a possibility that your memory might improve at some propitious moment?”

“If there really is something to remember, it could come to me one of these days. Or nights.”

“What if someone were to put a gun to your head and say, ‘Reveal or die’?”

“That might jog the memory. Then again, it might not.”

After permitting himself a fleeting look of utter disbelief, Mansur turned to Vines. “I assume Mr. Adair’s enemies are also yours?”

“That’s a safe assumption.”

“Not exactly pussycats, are they?”

“Apparently not.”

Mansur grimaced and closed his eyes, as if at some sudden pain, which Vines thought was probably mental. When he opened them to look at Vines again, they still appeared as skeptical as ever. “If I understand my sister-in law correctly,” Mansur said, sounding almost bored or possibly resigned, “you want me to winkle these enemies of yours out of their concealment. And to do this I’m to spread the word that the pair of you can be purchased from your putative protectors, Mayor Huckins and Chief Fork, for one million dollars in cash. Correct so far?”

“So far,” Vines said.

“May I ask how you arrived at that nice round sum?”

Adair said, “I decided a million’s just small change to them. Respectable change, of course, but still small.”

“One other item,” Vines said. “We also want you to make it look like a setup-as if you’d tricked us into it.”

“Well, now,” Mansur said, sounding interested and pleased for the first time. “A touch of humbug. Marvelous. It could work nicely, providing…” The sentence died as he gave Huckins an amused look. “Well, B. D.?”

“Sid and I want a straight switch, Parvis,” she said. “You pass the word and Mr. Mysterious makes his approach. When the time and place are agreed to, you trade Adair and Vines for the million any way you can. After that, they’re on their own.”

Mansur cocked a questioning eyebrow at Adair. “Satisfactory?”

“Sounds fine.”

Mansur leaned back in his chair to study Adair. “For some reason, neither you nor Mr. Vines look like a couple of guys who’d willingly walk through death’s front door.”

“We’re not,” Adair said.

“So you have some…contingency plan.”

Adair only stared at him.

“Which is none of my affair, of course. My only task is to establish contact and make sure no one is cheated or harmed-at least until the money is safely in my hands.”

“That’s what you’re good at, isn’t it?” Vines asked.

“Arranging things?” Mansur said. “Yes. That’s what I’m very good at.” He looked around the table, wearing a bright smile, and said, “Any other questions, comments?”

“Only one,” Adair said. “I’m always curious why a man takes on a lousy job. Since we’re not paying you anything and, as far as I know, the mayor and the chief aren’t either, my question’s the usual crude one: What’s in it for you?”

Mansur turned to his wife with a fond smile and covered her hand with his. “Continued domestic bliss,” he said.

“Which we all know is beyond price,” said Adair.

“Precisely.”

Dixie Mansur withdrew her hand from her husband’s, looked at Kelly Vines and said, “You forgot something.”

“What?”

“You told the judge-or said you told him anyway-that you thought you could find out who put those two shoeboxes full of money in his closet. Well. Did you? Find out?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“I asked the doorman at Jack’s condo building.”

“The one you went to high school with who didn’t remember you?”

“He remembered me,” Kelly Vines said.

The doorman looked down at the fifty-dollar bill in his right hand, then up at Vines. “What’s this for, Kelly, old times’ sake?”

“Some friends played a joke on Judge Adair and he’d like to find out how.”

“What kind of joke?” the doorman asked. “Sick? Funny? Practical? What?”

“Practical.”

“Tell me about it. I could use a giggle.”

“They put something in his apartment-or had somebody put it there.”

“What?”

Vines used his hands to indicate something about the size of a breadbox. “About this big-maybe a package.”

“You’re a lawyer now, right? I remember in school how you were always on the debate team. I even remember how you got to go to Washington, D.C., one time and debate some other team from Wisconsin. I think it was Wisconsin. Is that how come you decided to be a lawyer-because you like to get up in front of everybody and argue about stuff?”

“Probably,” Vines said.

“Something about yea-big, huh?” the doorman said, using his hands to shape his own breadbox. “What was in it that was so funny?”

“Dead fish.”

“I don’t get it.”

“It had to do with a fishing trip the judge had to cancel at the last minute.”

The doorman frowned, as if he still couldn’t quite appreciate the humor. “So the guys who went on the trip dropped off some of their catch to show him what he missed, right? But by now the fish’re kind of old and beginning to stink.” He thought about it some more, nodded grudgingly and said, “Yeah, well, I guess some people’d think that was funny.”

The doorman’s gray-blue eyes widened, then narrowed, as if he suddenly remembered something-or wanted it to appear that way. “Hey, is that what you brought down from his apartment this afternoon in that Hefty bag you tossed into your Mercedes trunk-the fish?”

“We had a good laugh,” Vines said.

“You and the judge, huh?”

“Right. And now we’d like to play one back on whoever dumped the fish on him.”

The doorman took off his Ruritania guards cap with the shiny black visor, examined the fifty-dollar bill he still held in his right hand and tucked it behind the cap’s sweatband. But instead of putting the cap back on, he held it waist-high and upside down, as if waiting for alms. When none was dropped in, he said, “You know, I seem to remember somebody that had a key to the judge’s place.”

Vines sighed, reached into a pocket, brought out another fifty and dropped it into the cap.

“I’m trying to remember if it was a real big package or a real little one.”

Vines put another fifty in the cap.

“Or if it was a man or a woman.”

When Vines’s hand came out of his pocket this time, it held three fifty-dollar bills. “You just bumped the ceiling,” he said, dropping them into the cap.

The doorman immediately covered his head with the cap and its treasure of $300 in fifty-dollar bills. “A short guy,” he said. “With what looked like a sack full of groceries. He had a key to the judge’s place and said the sack had legal documents the judge wanted dropped off. Funny-looking guy. Short-like I said. Five-two and chunky fat. He was also mud-ugly and had this funny nose with one hole twice as big as the other. That nose was something you couldn’t help noticing because it sort of turned up and took aim at you. Well, anyway, he had a key and slipped me a twenty, so I told him to go on up.”

“You didn’t ask for some ID?”

“Well, shit, Kelly, you don’t ask a priest for ID.”