Relic of Time

by Ralph McInerny

  He nodded and went on eating.

  “Once Grady lets go of the picture, he has no more leverage.”

  “Does he have it?”

  Lulu thought about that. Grady didn’t have to have the picture in order to use it for his own purposes, as he had. Did even Grady have the guts to tell a lie like that? If he didn’t have the picture, someone did. They would not like the swashbuckling head of the Rough Riders stealing their thunder.

  “Maybe that’s why he went into hiding.”

  “Someone contacted Hannan and wants the reward.”

  “That’s what I want to check on with Ray Whipple.”

  But Ray Whipple was on his way west when Neal got through to Empedocles. Could he speak to Mr. Hannan? The answer, as he had expected, was no. No doubt the zillionaire was counting his money. Could he contact Whipple in the plane? Another refusal.

  He finished breakfast and rose. “We’re going to the airport.”

  “Los Angeles?” she wailed.

  “No. Oakland.”

  Ignatius Hannan was not counting his money. If he had, he would be a million short. Ray and Laura had taken that amount to California. As soon as the deal went through, they would call him and he would be with them within hours. He felt he was owed at least a look at what he was paying for before it was returned to Mexico City. Meanwhile, he went out to the grotto and said a rosary for the success of the mission Laura and Ray were on.

  X

  “Anything wrong?”

  Morgan sounded offended when Traeger told him the money would be his as soon as they had authenticated that they were getting what they paid for.

  “How are you going to do that? You don’t get it until I get the money.”

  “We can do it on the spot.”

  “You’re not bringing others with you!”

  “Don Ibanez will know whether it’s the real thing.”

  “Don Ibanez? Isn’t he ancient?”

  “Not as ancient as the picture you stole.”

  “Traeger, all this has to be very, very carefully managed. You realize I’m putting my life on the line.”

  “Just a public-spirited citizen.”

  “Within the next twenty-four hours, okay?”

  Traeger told him maybe less. Don Ibanez wanted to know if he could trust the man. No need to tell the old man Morgan’s background. What did he know of Traeger, after all?

  When the call came from Ray Whipple, en route, Traeger called the altered cell phone number he had finally pried from Morgan.

  “Is it worth a million dollars to you?”

  Reluctantly, Morgan gave it to him. But now, when he called it, Traeger found himself talking with Gladys, the flirty sexagenarian at the abandoned Rough Riders headquarters.

  “Is this Mr. Traeger?”

  “Ah, you remember.”

  “Oh, I never forget a handsome face. You’re calling about Mr. Morgan.”

  “Who’s Mr. Morgan?”

  “If you hold, I will connect you with his cell phone.”

  While he waited, he told himself that Morgan would be a fool not to take precautions. After all, he was double-crossing Grady. Odd that he would trust Gladys. And then Morgan came on.

  “Do we have a deal?” he asked without preamble.

  “The San Francisco airport.”

  “Not Oakland?”

  “In long-term parking.”

  “Not private aviation?”

  “Do you have it?”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “Within the hour.” He hung up. Morgan sounded nervous. Traeger didn’t blame him. Transfers were always tricky, and for everyone involved. Again, he thought of the rooftop of the North American College in Rome. And of Dortmund’s reminder. Watch your back.

  Crosby went on ahead in his rental car; he would play backup and witness to the exchange, from a distance. That was all right with Crosby.

  Traeger went off in Don Ibanez’s car, himself at the wheel. He didn’t want the old man’s driver involved in this. Tomas didn’t like it. Here he was all done up in his uniform and told he wasn’t wanted. He could brood in his apartment over the garages. Beside him, Don Ibanez sat in silence, but his lips were moving. In prayer? They might need them.

  The Empedocles jet came in with Dodger Stadium in view below them, a game in progress. Ray tried to remember how long it had been since he had seen a baseball game live. He repeated that aloud.

  “You could scarcely see one dead,” Laura said.

  Jack Smiley, the pilot, had suggested that he put the suitcase in the baggage compartment, but Ray did not want to let it out of his sight. And Laura kept her large shoulder bag with her. It seemed to Ray that a million dollars should have required a larger suitcase. It was strapped into the seat beside him; Laura sat ahead. If everything went according to Traeger’s and Crosby’s arrangements, their business would be done within the hour.

  While Smiley taxied the plane toward the tower for private aircraft, Ray kept his eye on the parking lots they passed. Then he called out to the pilot.

  “We’re going to get out here, Smiley.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Sure you can. Mr. Hannan’s orders.”

  “He didn’t give me any such orders.”

  “Do it,” Laura said, politely, firmly.

  The plane slowed to a stop. Brenda Steltz, the copilot, came back and opened the door and let down the steps. Ray went first, a good grip on the suitcase, and gave a hand to Laura. The pilot looked as if he would like to cry. As soon as they were on the concrete and Steltz had closed the door, the plane moved away.

  As if they were getting out of a helicopter, they lowered their heads and hurried toward the parking area.

  At the entrance to long-term parking, Traeger lowered the window, punched a button, and took the ticket. He slipped it under the sun visor on his side of the car. And then he moved slowly ahead, looking for some sign of Morgan. He saw the Empedocles plane come to a stop on the runway and two figures get out. Laura and Ray, Ray with a suitcase. So far so good. He stopped and waited for Hannan’s two assistants, then got out of the car and went toward them. The trouble was that there was a steel fence between them.

  Traeger said, “I’ll put that in the trunk of Don Ibanez’s car.”

  “No, that’s okay.”

  Traeger held out his hand and waited. Laura said, “Give it to him, Ray.”

  Whipple reluctantly hoisted the suitcase over the fence.

  “Just follow the fence and you’ll find the entrance.”

  He turned, punched the key he held, and popped the trunk. In went the suitcase. He slammed the trunk door down and got behind the wheel again.

  “Those are Hannan’s people,” he told the old man.

  “And that was the money you put in the trunk?”

  Traeger nodded, and once more drove slowly forward. He went up one aisle and down another but there was no sign of Morgan. Then he noticed the car with the trunk lid up. A convertible with its roof in place. He went by it, went further down the row, then pulled into an empty space.

  “Wait here,” he said to Don Ibanez.

  For answer, the old man opened his door and stepped out. Traeger didn’t like it. Because he didn’t like the look of that open trunk of the car twenty-five yards away. He got out his weapon and advanced on the car. When he got to it, he looked into the empty trunk. He closed it and that was when he noticed the man behind the wheel.

  He motioned to Don Ibanez to stay where he was, then moved carefully along the side of the car. The man at the wheel was Morgan. He was dead.

  Where the hell was Crosby? Traeger went back to the old man and then Laura and Ray Whipple came running up to him.

  “Anything wrong?”

  Traeger nodded at the man behind the wheel and Whipple went forward and looked in. He actually tapped on the window. Laura had a look, too, but she seemed to know immediately the man was dead.

  “Looks like you saved a million dollars,
” Traeger said.

  He got no answer when he called Crosby. They could have left then, leaving Morgan to be discovered by some poor passenger when he came to get his car. Traeger called 911 and reported a dead man in a parked car in the long-term lot at the San Francisco airport. There was no point in not waiting for the police to come. Don Ibanez said he would wait in his car. He walked slowly off. Laura was trying not to look at the body behind the wheel. Ray was wondering if they should stick around. Don Ibanez rejoined them, looking disturbed.

  No wonder. Someone had jimmied open the trunk of Don Ibanez’s car. Traeger and Ray ran to it, then stood side by side looking into its empty depths. Ray looked at Traeger.

  “Nice going, Traeger.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  I

  “Got another?”

  Without Don Ibanez’s patrician presence the next hour in long-term parking at the San Francisco airport would have been more difficult than it was. Laura and Ray Whipple got out of there—no need for them to stay—and off they went to wait for Ignatius Hannan across the field at private aviation. Nice going, Traeger, Whipple had muttered to him when, side by side, they looked into the empty trunk of Don Ibanez’s car. Whipple could not think worse of Traeger than Traeger did himself. There were moments, after Laura and Ray left, when Traeger thought he and Don Ibanez should skedaddle, too. Imagine explaining what had happened. The dead man? I believe he’s connected with the Rough Riders. Yes, the group that outraged Latin America and stirred up what has come to be called Desert War III. Of course the irreplaceable image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, recently stolen from its shrine in Mexico City, is also missing. And Ignatius Hannan had shelled out a million dollars in exchange for exactly nothing. Outside of that, Officer, have a nice day.

  As it happened, none of these annoying details had to be gone into. Don Ibanez was at the complete and unhurried disposal of the homicide officers who arrived on the scene, while at the same time suggesting that he had much to do elsewhere. The two detectives, one with a crew cut fringe and a large natural tonsure, the other looking as if he could smell the body, were deferential to Don Ibanez. The first time the old man referred to Traeger as his driver had been irksome, but then he accepted the role and got lost in it. Let the old man explain how, having parked and started toward the shuttle bus station with his driver, on their way to the terminal, they had noticed the trunk door open and the man behind the wheel. What citizen would not have sounded the alarm? Well, the officers knew the rest.

  “The trunk of the car was open?” The crew cut looked surprised, then thought better of it.

  “It was.” He turned to Traeger. “Was it not, Vincent?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You closed it? Why?” the tonsured one asked.

  “I asked Vincent to close it, yes. Sometimes people, in their anxiety to catch a plane, leave the motor of their car running.”

  Traeger could see the wheels turning in the investigators’ heads. A gangland-type killing; whatever they were after—no doubt drugs—in the trunk. Things fall into categories, crimes into types.

  As to what had happened to Don Ibanez’s car, the jimmying of the trunk and the disappearance of a suitcase containing a million dollars in reasonably small bills—no need to complicate the investigation.

  Don Ibanez gave them his card, indicating where he could be reached if for any reason he could be of further assistance.

  “Your driver there, too?” the detective with the wrinkled nose asked.

  “Of course.”

  A little salute. Don Ibanez bowed slightly. “Come, Vincent.”

  At the car, Traeger held open the back door while Don Ibanez got in. When he was behind the wheel the voice from the backseat asked, “Your name is Vincent, is it not?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now, now.”

  When they got to the private aviation area, Ray told them—actually he addressed Don Ibanez—that Mr. Hannan was due in an hour. He and Laura of course would meet his plane. Don Ibanez said that he, too, would wait, apparently leaving Traeger with an option. He didn’t take it. But where in hell was Crosby? Laura put the same question to him when she joined him where he had gone to make the call.

  “Crosby doesn’t answer his cell phone.”

  “Good Lord, I hope nothing has happened to him.”

  The thought had occurred to Traeger. With one dead body, a priceless religious object, and a suitcase with a million dollars in it, the setting was, as Dortmund might put it, fraught with danger. He did not encourage her fears, not least because Laura’s expression was the one she had been wearing when he insisted that Ray Whipple hand the money to him over the fence. Laura went back to her husband. Traeger imagined what the two of them might very well think: he and Crosby had staged the whole thing and Crosby had gone off with the loot to their eventual rendezvous, where they would open the suitcase and run their hands through a cool million dollars. After all, who else knew about that money?

  Anyone in the parking lot could have seen Whipple pass the suitcase over the fence to him and then put it into the trunk of Don Ibanez’s car. Crosby, the one presumed witness; Crosby, who was to monitor the transaction and come swiftly to the scene if anything went wrong—had Crosby, like Morgan, decided to sell his soul? Traeger couldn’t believe it. Morgan must have had his own Crosby on the scene. Maybe the treacherous Morgan had in turn been betrayed. Stewing in the little terminal of private aviation, Traeger wished that he had made another tour of that parking lot before leaving. Was Crosby, like Morgan, sitting dead at the wheel of his car, or crumpled on the blacktop awaiting discovery?

  Ray Whipple avoided him. Well, Traeger wasn’t anxious to talk to him either. Nice going. He might very well say more now that the loss of that money had really sunk in. Don Ibanez sat, eyes closed, the picture of a man without a worry in the world. But the old man had to feel a million times worse than Ray Whipple. What was a suitcase full of money compared with the miraculous image of the Virgin?

  Traeger went outside for a cigarette. Smoking is dangerous to your health. What isn’t? Think of all the nonsmokers he had known, men younger than himself, who were now dead. They might as well have lit up while they had the chance. Laura joined him.

  “Got another?”

  He passed the package to her, then lit her cigarette.

  “Cigarettes always smell so nice when someone else is smoking them.”

  “How will Hannan take this?”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Me, worry?” He tried unsuccessfully for an Alfred E. Neuman look. He did not want to think how he would explain this to Boswell. Or to Dortmund.

  Laura pointed to Hannan’s plane as it landed and then taxied to where they were waiting. Don Ibanez rose slowly and stood for a moment, as if composing himself.

  “I will, of course, recompense Mr. Hannan for his loss.”

  Laura shook her head and laid a hand on his arm.

  Hannan, in shirtsleeves, his suit jacket slung over his shoulder, moved swiftly toward the terminal and came inside in a rush of air.

  “How’d it go?”

  So they hadn’t told him en route about the screwup. Ray Whipple, as if he had been rehearsing the tale, brought his employer up to date.

  “You didn’t get it?”

  Don Ibanez came forward, and the two men shook hands. It was the failure to retrieve the sacred image that depressed Ignatius Hannan. Again, Don Ibanez said that he would replace the lost money.

  “I just hope they wear Ray’s size,” Laura said.

  The two men looked at her. Traeger, who had been keeping to the edge of the reunion, came forward. Laura hitched her shoulder bag higher and smiled at Hannan. Traeger, unable to stop himself, came up to her and pulled open the shoulder bag. It was full of money.

  “You tricked them.” He could not keep the admiration out of his voice. He felt only half as stupid as he had before.

  “Not intentionally.”

  Their in
structions had been to exchange the money for the image. At Traeger’s insistence, Ray had handed his suitcase over the fence. But it turned out that he, too, thought it contained the ransom money.

  “That was my idea, Ray,” Hannan said. “Always divert the man with whom you are negotiating.”

  So Ignatius Hannan was not out a million dollars. Nor Don Ibanez either, if he would have insisted on recompensing Hannan’s loss. But what Ignatius Hannan had wanted was the return of the miraculous image.

  “We don’t know where Crosby is.”

  Hannan’s nose moved like a rabbit’s. “You smell of smoke.”

  Traeger began to tell Hannan of the arrangements he had made with Crosby.

  “Don’t worry about Crosby,” the zillionaire said. “I need something to eat.”

  “You must all be my guests,” said Don Ibanez.

  II

  “Where exactly are you now?”

  Crosby had arrived early, found a spot in long-term parking, lit a cigar, and waited. Planes landed at regular intervals, and others at less regular intervals took off. Being the backup man had its advantages, providing a few stolen moments of leisure. He and Traeger made an odd team, not that Traeger had wanted a team, but why should two men on the same assignment not pool their resources? Of course he had checked with Dortmund to make certain they were on the same assignment. You never knew with Traeger.

  “Ignatius Hannan could not have made a better choice,” Dortmund had purred over the phone.

  “Traeger was his first choice.”

  “Only because Traeger had worked for him before.”

  In the course of the conversation, Dortmund had voiced his usual admonition. “Watch your back.” They had kidded about such caution, calling him Rearview Dortmund, but it remained sound advice. Crosby smiled, remembering how Traeger, even though watching his back, had failed to notice Crosby on his tail as he whisked along the interstate. Of course he had his eye on another tail and Crosby had admired the way Traeger had shaken it. He himself just waited by Traeger’s car, certain he would come back for it, and so he had. Crosby’s smile faded. And then Traeger had given him the slip. Was Traeger still under surveillance by those who had called him back into action? Not that Traeger had been all that reluctant.