Alarm Call ob-8

by Quintin Jardine

  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.’

  Chapter 26

  The man I’d been hunting had a permanent smile on his face; whatever was going on inside his head, it looked as if it was happy. I found myself smiling back at him.

  ‘He can’t see you,’ John told me. ‘His vision went with the stroke, along with just about everything else.’

  ‘How long have you known he was here?’

  ‘For a couple of days, that’s all. There’s one thing you can’t run away from in America, Oz, and that’s your social-security number, if you have one. After we had our talk on Wednesday, I contacted the SSA and told them I had a missing-person enquiry. They came back to me on Friday, and told me he was here. I flew down as soon as I could, and got here yesterday.’

  ‘What is this place?’

  ‘It’s a charity nursing home, run by the Blessed Sisters of Our Lord. It’s ironic that he should wind up here, since he spent half his life laughing at my beliefs and at those of our parents.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘As I said, he had a stroke, a cerebral haemorrhage.’

  ‘Here in Santa Fe?’

  ‘No. He was in Albuquerque at the time; he was appearing in a play in a local theatre, and rooming in a boarding house with the rest of the cast. As near as I can piece together he collapsed during a performance, on stage. They rushed him to hospital, where his condition was stabilised, but there was no hope of recovery. The hospital kept him for as long as they had to, then found this place. The sisters agreed to accept him, and he’s been here ever since.’

  ‘Ever since when?’

  John looked at me; his sombre expression was in contrast to his brother’s permanent goofy grin. ‘He’s been here for over two years,’ he replied.

  Two years? I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, but the evidence was in the chair before me. The man’s body looked completely wasted.

  ‘So how come this is the first you’ve heard of it? Didn’t they try to trace his family?’

  ‘His social-security card was in the name of Paul Patrick Walls. The listed address was somewhere in Palo Alto, but that was long out of date.’

  ‘What about the theatre company? Couldn’t they have helped?’

  ‘The play was almost at the end of its run when Paul took ill. At first all the hospital staff cared about was saving his life: when it came time to ask who he was, the company had all left town.’

  ‘What about Roscoe?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Roscoe Brown; he was your brother’s agent.’

  ‘I think they tried that, but there was nothing in his records that led back to us.’

  ‘Hell, man, my detective was able to trace him on the Internet in ten minutes.’

  ‘Sure, starting with the name Wallinger. Not so easy if you don’t have that.’

  I wasn’t sure that was true; I guessed that someone hadn’t tried that hard.

  ‘What you have to realise, Oz,’ John continued, ‘is that when he was transferred here, Paul brought nothing with him. He had no papers, only his social-security card. He must have had some effects at the boarding house, but either they stayed there or another cast member took them. What you have to realise also is that nobody at our end was looking for him. Paul was an outcast from our family. His lack of respect for our values, his, forgive me, but his choice of profession, they drove a wedge between him and my father and me. When you add in his gayne
ss. .’

  ‘He’s gay?’

  ‘Since high school. My father was a career soldier, Oz, until he was invalided out. He had pretty inflexible views on that sort of thing; I have to admit that he passed them on to me.’

  ‘What about your mother?’

  ‘Paul never had anything but contempt for our mother. That’s why the idea of him going to her for help was preposterous to me.’

  He was hitting me with a lot of information: the way it was coming across, Prim had been conned even more spectacularly than she’d realised. She’d had a child by someone, had lived with someone without knowing not just what he was but who he was.

  John must have keyed into my thoughts. ‘This guy,’ he asked. ‘What do you know about him?’

  ‘I know that he fixed it for Prim and me to be sharing a room in Minneapolis, then bugged it and took some candid photographs of her in her skin. I know that he sent them by e-mail to my wife, which does not make me her favourite husband at the moment. I know that he did fly from London to Minneapolis with Prim’s kid, and that he was there at the same time as us. I know that he diverted her money to a Canadian bank, to this side of the Atlantic, set up so that she can use it to buy Tom back from him. There’s only one thing I don’t know about him.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I don’t know who the bloody hell he is.’ I paused. ‘No, there’s one thing more. He flew as Paul Wallinger, and before that he took Paul Wallinger’s passport to the US Embassy in London and had Tom Wallinger’s name added to it.’

  I could feel the fire in my eyes as I looked at him. ‘John, can you use your badge to ask questions in the passport office? This guy’s got himself a passport in your brother’s name. I know that Paul must have had one of his own, at some time, because he had a part in a movie in Scotland a few years back. The phoney may be using that one; it may have come from the stuff at the boarding house. But if he is, he’s had to change the photograph, and I don’t see him taking a doctored passport to the embassy. Can you find out when, and even where the last application was made for a passport in the name of Paul Wallinger? If he does have a new one, the passport office will have a copy of the photo that’s in it. Get hold of that, and at least we’ll know what he looks like. We might even know who he is.’

  ‘Get hold of that, buddy,’ the detective rumbled, ‘and I can loose the full might of the FBI on him: I do not believe that applying for a passport in someone else’s name is in accordance with federal law. More than that, since the child is travelling on a false passport also, he can be taken into custody.’

  The day seemed brighter somehow, and then it dimmed.

  ‘That leaves one problem,’ I said. ‘We still have to flush him out. Even now, he might be setting up the trade with Prim in Las Vegas, with me out of the way. John, if you can bring in the Feds that will be great; but meantime, I have to get back there.’

  ‘You do that. I’ll make some calls from here.’

  I nodded, then smiled at the chair again. ‘What are you going to do about Paul?’

  ‘I think I’m going to leave him here. If I take him back to Minneapolis will he even know? Not a chance. The Mother Superior told me that the medical staff don’t expect him to live more than another year or two, at most. She’s anxious that he should stay, so he will. I’ll come and visit him when I can; I may even bring Mom. Blood’s blood, after all.’

  I was with him on that; I remembered how much my brief estrangement from my father had hurt us both. ‘Good for you,’ I told him.

  I was ready to leave. He saw it and waved me towards the door; I was almost through it when another piece of the obvious forced its way into my addled brain. ‘There is just one last thing,’ I said. ‘Whoever we’re looking for knows Paul. He knew that he’d been ill, and that he wasn’t getting better. We could well be looking for someone who was in that touring company, or who knew about it and was a close associate of his at the time. I know it’s a long time since you saw him, but if you or your mother can recall anyone he might have mentioned in the past … you never know.’

  ‘I’ll try, but don’t die waiting. Now get on your way.’

  I left him there and walked back the way we’d come, across the river and down to the Cowgirl. Jesus was there, waiting for me; when I arrived I thought he looked relieved that I wasn’t carrying a briefcase I hadn’t had before. ‘Back to the airport,’ I ordered. ‘I have to leave town in a hurry.’ I suppressed a smile as I saw the ‘hit man’ scenario reappear on his face.

  Leaving Santa Fe seemed to be easier than arriving; soon we were on cruise, heading down Highway 85, towards the airport. I leaned back against the leather upholstery and thought about the family skeletons I’d stirred up for John Wallinger the Second. When we’d parted I’d decided that he was glad of my intervention; now he’d be able to give them a decent burial. I thought about him, his mother and the attitudes that had torn their family apart. I thought about Martha, about our time in Minneapolis and about the things that had happened there.

  And as I did, slowly but surely the realisation came to me that in all of my going-on-for-forty years on the Planet Earth, I’d never been so unbelievably fucking stupid.

  Chapter 27

  The jet was fuelled and ready when we arrived back at the airport, but I held it on the ground for a few minutes while I made a few phone calls.

  When we did take off, the return flight was as smooth as the outward journey had been. At first we were headed east; Troy flew a little further than was strictly necessary before banking and turning towards Nevada, so that I could enjoy the pampered tourist view of the mountains that make Santa Fe a ski resort in winter.

  I was grinning to myself for much of the way, barely looking at my script. Rafaela must have wondered what a man can get in Santa Fe that isn’t on offer in Las Vegas, but the only thing she asked me was whether I wanted my white wine topped up. I knew that I’d been drinking too much over the previous week, but that would change soon enough. Lots of things would change.

  The Strip was just starting to cool down, and heat up, when the courtesy car brought me back to the Bellagio. I wondered whether Prim would be waiting for me in the suite, but she was, curled up on one of the big couches in the living area, wearing a sarong that I hadn’t seen before. It looked as if it had come from one of the shops downstairs. There was an ice-bucket on the coffee table, with a bottle of Chablis Premier Cru and two glasses. As I came in she smiled at me, got up, and poured me a glass.

  ‘How did your day go?’ I asked her, as she handed it to me. ‘Any contact?’

  She nodded solemnly. ‘He called. He wants to do it tomorrow.’

  ‘Who called?’

  She looked at me as if I was an idiot; which, of course, I was. ‘Paul.’

  ‘Can’t have been Paul,’ I told her. ‘I’ve just seen Paul, or what’s left of the poor bastard. His brother found him, in a sanctuary for the nearly dead in Santa Fe.’

  Prim’s mouth dropped open and her knees sagged; for a moment I thought she was going to faint, but she sat back down on the couch. ‘You’re mad,’ she gasped. ‘What story did he feed you?’

  I loosened my shirt, kicked off my loafers. . no socks in Vegas. . and slid down beside her. ‘The only thing he fed me was a catfish po’ boy,’ I told her. ‘The guy who’s been dogging our footsteps for a week is not, never was and never will be Paul Wallinger. I have seen the real Paul, not an imitation.’ I was thirsty; I insulted the Chablis by draining half the glass in a swallow, but made up for it by reaching out to top it up again.

  ‘Are you certain?’

  ‘Absolutely. Your Paul couldn’t have been Paul. You want to know why? Two reasons. One, when your guy was making love to you in Gleneagles Hotel, Paul was having a stroke on stage in Albuquerque. Two, the real Paul wouldn’t have fancied you at all, for he’s gay.’

  I found that I was laughing. I shouldn’t have, for she looked so bewildered. ‘So if he isn’t Paul, who is he?’

>   ‘Ah, fuck it. Let’s just call him Jack. That’s the name he used in Minneapolis; Jack Nicholson.’ I looked at her, in a way I hadn’t for a while. ‘I just can’t believe that you were taken that badly, love. Hook, line and fucking sinker.’

  My eyes locked on hers. I went to sip the Chablis, but stone me, it had evaporated again. This time she poured my refill. I chuckled as I sipped it; at least, I thought I was sipping it; the stuff really was very drinkable. ‘What’s the deal, then?’ I asked her.

  ‘What do you mean, the deal?’

  ‘You know. The deal, trade, kiddie barter.’ Suddenly I felt hot, very hot; I unbuttoned my shirt all the way down, and tugged it from my waistband. Or at least I thought at the time that I had done it; maybe it was Prim.

  ‘Well, here’s the deal,’ she whispered. She leaned into me and kissed me. And then it all got confused. I gave the sarong a tug; it just seemed to come away in my hand. I tried to focus on her; I couldn’t, but it didn’t matter. I knew her body well enough; the extra bits were just a bonus. All at once I felt euphoric, exultant, calm and enormously, extravagantly horny. As she undid my belt and slid off my pants, I wasn’t thinking of anything but her and how funny, outrageous and amazingly stupid the whole thing had turned out to be.

  As we rolled off the couch and she went down on me on the carpet, all I could do was giggle like a clown. As she straddled me all I could think of was that she was a fucking lunatic, but right at that moment I didn’t care because I was loving what I was getting. It was so good that a little light kept flashing before my eyes, every few seconds or so.

  ‘It was the duck, you know,’ I chuckled into her ear. ‘Now, it’s so fucking obvious that you put that duck in Martha’s bathroom, then made sure I went for a slash.’ I laughed louder. ‘You even drank all that fucking root beer so I wouldn’t think anything of it. I fell for it too. I bought it all,’ I giggled, ‘right up till this afternoon.’