The Fourth Durango

Chapter 23

The fifty-one-year-old Durango detective, who had once worked bunco and fraud in Dallas, looked up from his copy of People magazine when the tall elderly white-haired man with the neat tar-black mustache strode into the lobby of the Holiday Inn and headed for the shallow alcove where the house phones were.

Marking his place in People by turning down a page corner, Ivy Settles placed the magazine on the table next to the couch and rose, not taking his eyes off the man who stood, pine-tree straight, the phone to his ear, waiting for his call to be answered.

Settles studied the man’s muted brown plaid jacket, deciding it was a silk and wool blend that had cost at least $650-maybe even $700. The deeply pleated fawn gabardine slacks, he guessed, would go for $400, even $425. And those two-tone brown and white lace-up shoes with the moccasin toes-a style Settles hadn’t seen in twenty years-were probably handmade and cost as much as the jacket. Including socks, shirt and underwear, Settles figured the man was wearing close to a couple of thousand dollars on his back and feet.

The detective stuck his hands down into the slash pockets of the Taiwanese-made windbreaker he had paid $16.83 for, including tax, at Figgs’ department store and crossed the lobby on feet shod in penny loafers from Lands’ End. The rest of him was clad in chinos by Sears, a white short-sleeved shirt by Arrow and underwear by Fruit of the Loom. Settles liked cheap clothes and guessed that everything he wore, including his white drugstore socks, hadn’t cost as much as the black lizard strap that bound the thin gold watch to the white-haired man’s left wrist.

With his hands still stuck down into the windbreaker’s pockets, Settles stopped just behind the man, as if the pair of them were forming a line. The man was now talking into a house phone in a crisp and pleasant voice that sounded far too young for his age. Settles thought of it as the man’s up-North voice and remembered how easily it could slide into soft southern tones that sounded remarkably like Charleston.

“Yes, in the lobby,” the man said into the phone. “I thought I might pop up for a minute or two with something that should interest you.”

Finally sensing someone behind him, the man turned to face Settles, who stood, hands still inside the slash pockets, rocking back and forth on his heels. The man frowned and pointed to the other house phones. Settles smiled slightly, shaking his head.

The man turned his back on the detective and again spoke into the phone. “Let’s make that five minutes instead of right away. I have another call to make.”

The man hung up, turned to face Settles again and said, “You queer for this particular phone, friend?”

“It’s been a while, Soldier,” Settles said.

The man frowned again, this time trying to look puzzled. He might have succeeded were it not for the glittering green eyes that could never quite conceal their slyness. “Don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,” he said in the nicely chilled up-North voice.

“Dallas,” Ivy Settles said. “February of ’seventy-three. I took you down and put you on the Greyhound to Houston after the stockbroker’s widow refused to press charges.”

“My fiancée,” the man said. “Edwina Wickersham.”

“Who you gave the money back to.”

“Repaid the loan, you mean.” The white-haired man studied Settles carefully, taking his time, starting with the penny loafers and working his way up to the round face, where a delicate nose and a hesitant chin clashed with a pair of know-it-all gray eyes and a thin wiseacre mouth.

“You got fat, Ivy,” the man said. “And you appear to have fallen on hard times-although with you it’s always been kind of hard to tell. What are you now-a Holiday Inn house dick?”

“Who was the call to, Soldier?” Settles asked.

“That’s really none of your fucking business, is it?”

Settles nodded, as if in agreement, picked up one of the house phones and tapped three numbers. When the call was answered he said, “This is Settles down in the lobby. You just get a call from Soldier Sloan?” He listened, glanced back at Sloan and said, “No, no trouble. Just checking. I’ll send him on up.”

After Settles hung up, Soldier Sloan smiled a warm, almost cozy smile and asked, “How d’you like working for Sid Fork, Ivy?”

“It’s nice and quiet and that’s how Sid and I like it.”

Sloan looked around the almost empty lobby. “Graves aren’t this quiet.”

“Well, we got the Fourth of July parade coming up next week.”

“Doubtless a day of revelry and madness.”

“I’ll see you to the elevator, Soldier. Make sure you punch the right button and all.”

As they waited for an elevator, Settles said, “Hear you promoted yourself to brigadier general.”

“And high time, too, don’t you think?”

Settles smiled and nodded happily, not in response to Sloan’s question, but as if he had just arrived at some welcome conclusion. “I sure like that new mustache, Soldier. Reminds me of the one Cesar Romero used to wear before his went white. Now there was a mustache-not like those floppy cookie-dusters Selleck and all the Highway Patrol kids wear nowadays. I bet yours grew in coal-black. Bet you don’t even have to dye it. All that white hair. Black eyebrows. Matching mustache. I’ve gotta say it sure makes you distinguished-looking, Soldier, and how long do I tell Sid you’re gonna be with us this time?”

“Leaving on the evening tide.”

“Sid’ll be sorry he missed you,” Settles said as the elevator doors opened. He watched Sloan enter the elevator, turn and press the 4 button. “Good seeing you again, Soldier.”

“Always a pleasure,” the old man said just before the doors closed.

After half a lifetime in bunco and fraud, Ivy Settles watched the lighted floor indicator of the elevator Soldier Sloan was taking to the fourth floor-just to make sure, he told himself, it didn’t go sideways. The elevator had paused at three and continued on to four, where it now seemed stuck.

The other elevator, to Settles’s right, was on its way down. It, too, had paused at three and Settles decided to ask its passenger or passengers if they knew what the trouble was on the fourth floor.

The doors of the right-hand elevator opened and a very short, very heavy man came out. He wore a giveaway cap advertising Copenhagen snuff, thick tinted glasses and dark blue coveralls that had “Francis” stitched in red above the left breast pocket. In his right hand he carried a large black toolbox that looked old and battered.

“What happened to the other elevator?” Settles asked.

The man stopped, looked up at Settles, then up at the floor indicator numbers and back at Settles. “Beats me.”

“Where’d you get on?”

“Three.”

“You’re not the elevator repair guy, are you?”

The short man turned his back on Settles. An arc of two-inch-high red letters spelled out “Francis the Plumber” across the coveralls. Below the name was a phone number. The man turned to face Settles again.

“I’m Francis and there was a backed-up toilet in three twenty-two and it’s Saturday and I’m on double time. So if somebody wants me to stand around talking about busted elevators, somebody’s gonna get charged for it.”

“Wait here,” Settles said.

“Why?”

Settles brought out his badge and showed it to the plumber. “Because I said to.”

After hurrying to the shallow alcove where the house phones were, Settles snatched one up and tapped three numbers. After two rings a man’s voice answered with a hello.

“Mr. Adair?” Settles said.

“This is Vines.”

“Settles again-down in the lobby. Has Soldier Sloan showed up yet?”

“Not yet.”

“Would you go take a look at the elevator on the fourth floor-the car on your right-and then come down and tell me what’s wrong with it?”

“Come down to the lobby and tell you?”

“Please.”

“All right,” Vines said and hung up.

Settles hurried back to the elevators, where Francis the Plumber had failed to wait. The detective turned and trotted across the lobby to the hotel entrance. He went through it just in time to see a pink Ford van make a right turn out of the parking lot. On the side of the van was a large magnetic stick-on sign that advertised “Francis the Plumber” in big black letters. Beneath them, in smaller ones, was the slogan “Nite or Day.”

Embarrassed and irritated by his own vanity, Ivy Settles fumbled his glasses from his shirt pocket and put them on. But by then, even with the glasses, it was impossible to read the license plate of the pink Ford van.