Relic of Time

by Ralph McInerny

  Before heading up the valley, Crosby realized he was hungry, and once he had admitted the thought, his stomach began a conversation with itself. Even so, he begrudged the time it took him to enter the drive-through of a McDonald’s and pick up a sack full of cholesterol-rich goodies. He nibbled french fries as he pulled back into traffic.

  He did not know the make of the car that had been picked up in the car wash, but it was possible his own was known. Not just possible. His own edge had proved to be dull, and he was dealing with active agents. How long had they been following his movements? Long enough for him to lead them to Bishop Sapienza’s apparently. He hoped that parting blessing had taken.

  Dortmund had not been all that forthcoming when Crosby asked if Traeger had been rescued by two of their own. If rescue was the word. He liked Traeger. It had felt good to be working with him again. He remembered the long drive to Pocatello, which had been the result of his being on the ball and pursuing the vehicle that left long-term parking. Traeger had obviously thought highly of that move. It seemed to have made up for the time he had tapped with his keys on Traeger’s window outside St. Louis all those weeks ago.

  Nice going, Traeger.

  Crosby winced. When he had said that to the fallen and wounded Traeger, the cuffs being wrestled onto his wrists, it had been a cheap shot. Would Traeger recognize the repetition?

  Coming through the town of Pinata, approaching the El Toro Motel, Crosby considered pulling in and getting a room. What he would really have liked was twelve hours of sleep. Start fresh in the morning. But he couldn’t leave Traeger to his fate, whatever it was.

  How peaceful the road looked. Crosby drove slowly now. As he neared Jason Phelps’s place he saw the gate standing open. Impulsively, he turned in, cutting his lights and ignition as he did so, gliding to a stop by the garages.

  He eased himself out of the car, then stood behind it. If he shut its door slowly enough maybe it wouldn’t make any sound at all. Silence seemed to envelope him as he stood there and then slowly it gave way to the twitter of bugs, the rustle of leaves as the palms swayed, other unidentifiable noises. There were lights on in the house. No one seemed to have heard him. Crosby went along the side of the house, toward the path that connected this property with the vaster holdings of Don Ibanez from which it had been cut out. Maybe now, with Phelps dead, it would be reincorporated into the estate.

  Light from the study windows lay upon the lawn. The doors were open. But no one was visible in the study, so Crosby continued toward the lawn. He stopped in midstep when he saw a figure standing motionless not ten feet away. Arms folded, head bowed, the light from the study cast her prolonged shadow into a deeper darkness. A woman. Not Catherine Dolan.

  As if she sensed his presence, the woman turned. A strangled gasp and then she was running for the house. As soon as she was inside, she let out a piercing scream that followed her through the rooms.

  Get the hell out of here, Crosby told himself. Get on that path and get out of here. But his car was in front of the house. He had to find out if Traeger had been brought here. If the woman gave him a chance, he could explain. Where was Catherine?

  He was standing now in the still open doors of the study. He heard a sound.

  “Catherine?”

  “Who is it?”

  She came into the study slowly but, recognizing him, adopted a fetching expression.

  “Myrna,” she called. “Myrna, it’s all right.”

  V

  What had happened?

  It pained Miguel Arroyo that people like Emilio Sapienza and Don Ibanez disapproved of him, people whose approval he desperately wanted. It was one thing to rally the troops and act the role of heroic savior of his people with unquestioning followers. But the bishop and Don Ibanez, and Lowry, too, regarded him as something between a clown and a menace. And now there was Traeger. The protest march in Los Angeles, miles of immigrants swarming through the streets, bearing taunting signs and banners, had been bad enough, but his dramatic call to arms had taken him across a line, one that separated him from Don Ibanez.

  The old man’s theory made sense if patience was your virtue. Time would solve the problem; after the passage of a few years Latinos could take over democratically, since they would outnumber Anglos. That made sense, but it did not call for a leader. What would merely happen inevitably provided no role for a hero. But what had the alternative led to? Arroyo did not like to think of people dying out in the desert, because it was difficult not to feel responsible. The rush of adrenaline as his rhetoric rose before a sea of adoring faces made him cry out things that surprised even himself. The call to arms had seemed inspired when he made it, as if the call were the thing. But, my God, people had responded.

  Traeger’s appearance at the San Diego headquarters of Justicia y Paz, to which Arroyo had moved in the hope that he could control events, had been a shock. Traeger was a desperate and determined man; he had been on the run for days and looked it. What a fool Traeger had made of him. Arroyo did not like to remember leading the troopers through the building to his office and pointing at the washroom door, whispering that Traeger was in there. But when they burst through the door the open window was eloquent of what had happened. But how far could Traeger have gone? The search of the area around the building began with eagerness but that soon faded. They all went away. Those who worked in the building left for the day. Only Magdalena, the receptionist, remained.

  “Who was he?”

  “A fugitive.”

  “I tried to stop him, Miguel. If you hadn’t said it was okay . . .”

  “You did well.” On his office phone, he had instructed her to call the state police, certain that Traeger could not understand his rapid Spanish.

  “He got away.” She pouted. She was a pretty girl, in the full flower of her midtwenties. But she would age and bear children and gain weight. Why was that a sad thought? At the time, it had been a protective thought. Even in defeat, especially in defeat, he wanted to recoup his lost face, and how better than a little fling with Magdalena? Remembering, Arroyo felt virtuous for not taking advantage of the adoring receptionist. He had sent her home.

  When Traeger had gone out Bishop Sapienza’s window, having seen, as Arroyo had, the approach of the state police, Arroyo could have cheered. It was his word against Traeger’s and of course vice versa. If it had come to that, the only way to resolve the issue would be for all of them to pack off for Don Ibanez’s estate and reenact the crime. What would the result of that have been?

  Arroyo had been the key man in getting the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe to that little basilica behind the hacienda of Don Ibanez, but not even the venerable old hidalgo had given him much credit for that. Don Ibanez had been too awed at housing, in the replica he had built of the shrine in Mexico City, the very image that was venerated there. Arroyo had been of two minds about returning the image. Its theft had galvanized Justicia y Paz. Once it was returned, there would only be the slow, if inevitable, demographic takeover of the Southwest. But he had agreed. Not that his agreement had been sought. But his presence there when preparations were made for the return of the image signaled his agreement. What had happened?

  Arroyo could admit to himself that it made no sense to think Traeger had somehow switched the original for a copy. If he had, he would never have gone through the charade of spiriting it back to Mexico City and risking the reaction of the bishop, and everyone else, with the great revelation in the basilica when the package was opened. No, Traeger must have thought he had brought the original. These were thoughts that he had resisted until Traeger had shown up in San Diego, convinced that Miguel Arroyo had somehow switched cases. Oh, he had felt a little tremor of pleasure at the flattering thought that he had done that under the eyes of so many witnesses. But someone had done it. If not Traeger, if not himself, who?

  The answer seemed to lie in yet one more visit to Napa Valley. Clare must be made to see how much he sympathized with her father. Was the old man still
alive? Someone had assaulted him. And someone had killed his neighbor Jason Phelps. When Miguel started north he wished that he had not alerted the state police that Traeger was at Bishop Sapienza’s, making the whispered call from the porch. It would have been far better for all of them to be going to Don Ibanez’s together, where they could collectively figure out what in hell had happened before that package had been taken away by Traeger.

  As he drove, he imagined Traeger in that U-Haul going to where the exchange was made. Some arrangement he had made with his old comrades? But that ran into the difficulty that then Traeger would not have taken a copy to Mexico City. Had Traeger been duped? They had all been duped. But by whom?

  VI

  “He was an old man, Will.”

  When Catherine Dolan led Crosby into the house, through the study and into the living room, the woman Crosby had frightened out back was there, huddled with a little old lady.

  “Myrna, it’s all right,” Catherine soothed. “We know him.”

  “He crept up on me!”

  The little old lady lifted her eyebrows and pursed her lips, obviously finding the suggestion that Myrna was the target of sex-starved men amusing. Her name was Gladys Stone. Crosby got the story from Catherine after she had prepared their drinks and led him outside.

  “She just showed up, one of Jason’s great admirers. All she wanted was to see where her hero had spent his last days. When she heard about our working on Jason’s papers, she insisted we let her help.”

  “Is she any help?”

  “Not really. She wanders around outside a lot as if every inch of the property were sacred. She sits by his grave as if she were his widow. And she will sit in the desk chair for hours even though she knows that it was the chair in which Jason was murdered.” Catherine made a face. “But tell me what you’ve been doing.”

  She had put her arm through his and led him out into the yard, toward the area where chairs were grouped beneath the swaying palms. The drinks she had made were potent, the gin scarcely taking on the taste of dry vermouth.

  “And the screamer?”

  “Myrna?” Catherine purred beside him. “Now she could be called Jason’s widow. Common law widow.”

  Crosby sipped his martini. No need to pursue that remark. It would take them down paths he sensed Catherine would not be reluctant to go. From where they sat, he could see the lights of the hacienda.

  “How is Don Ibanez?”

  “He’s home from the hospital.” Catherine seemed to regard the question as a distraction. “I feel so isolated here. Myrna and now Gladys act like vestal virgins, sad to go on living themselves now that Jason is gone.”

  “The poor devil.”

  “How do you mean?” She leaned toward him. Crosby’s eyes were getting used to the dark.

  “What a way to go.”

  “He was an old man, Will.”

  “Even so.”

  There was someone in the study, the old woman, Gladys. She came to the open doors and was about to pull them shut but before she did so, she leaned into the night.

  “Catherine?”

  “Shhh,” Catherine said to Crosby. “She can’t see us.”

  Crosby was becoming uncomfortable. Catherine made their being out here seem, well, what it wasn’t. He rose and started toward the house, emptying his glass as he went. He called back, “I don’t want to frighten another woman.”

  “You don’t frighten me.”

  But Catherine got to her feet and came after him. The old woman in the open doors of the study saw them coming. She did not scream.

  Some minutes later, in the bathroom, he put through a call to Dortmund after calculating the time in the east.

  “Ah, Crosby. How goes the battle?”

  “I’m at Don Ibanez’s.”

  “Has Traeger arrived?”

  “He’s coming here?”

  “I should imagine. How is the old man?”

  Don Ibanez. The question suggested that Dortmund himself was in the flush of youth. Crosby told him what Catherine had told him.

  “Catherine?”

  Crosby explained that he was actually in the house adjacent to the estate of Don Ibanez.

  “With two ladies?” Dortmund seemed to be chuckling.

  “Actually three.” He explained about Gladys Stone.

  “Gladys Stone,” Dortmund repeated after a pause.

  “Have you spoken to Traeger?”

  “He calls in from time to time.”

  “Recently?”

  “Crosby, I would suggest that you go next door.”

  “Good idea.” He hadn’t liked Dortmund’s suggestive tone when he mentioned the women staying at Jason Phelps’s home.

  “And Crosby . . .”

  “I know. Watch my back.”

  When Crosby emerged, he announced where he was going.

  “I’ll come with you,” Catherine said. “I want to see Clare.”

  VII

  “You know the layout there.”

  They stopped above Oakland, to stretch their legs and because Wilberforce needed to use the men’s room. The area into which they had driven was brightly lit, a convenience store, the service station, several cars at the pumps. When Wilberforce returned, bouncy with relief, Craig asked Traeger if he would mind sitting up front.

  “I want to catch forty winks.”

  “Do you count them?”

  “My dad always called a nap that.”

  “A nap in Napa Valley,” Wilberforce said brightly.

  When Wilberforce got them back on the road, Craig was already settled down in back. Traeger wondered if he were acting wisely with these two. The ride had begun with his apparent arrest, but as the miles rolled away, they might have been three agents on a mission.

  “What exactly is your mission?” he asked Wilberforce.

  “To get hold of that stolen picture and return it.”

  “The agency seemed less than zealous about that.”

  “Not since Grady made fools of us.”

  When they got to Pinata, Craig had had his forty winks. He suggested that they pull into the motel and get organized. Some minutes later, they were seated at a corner table in the El Toro bar.

  “The stolen picture has to be up there, Traeger. At the estate of Don Ibanez.”

  Traeger said nothing. It was the simplest assumption. Besides, it was his own.

  “You know the layout there.”

  Traeger nodded.

  “Who all is there?”

  “Don Ibanez and his daughter, the gardener and his daughter, and Tomas the driver.”

  “He wasn’t at the San Francisco airport when Morgan tried to pull a double cross.”

  Suggesting that Craig and Wilberforce had been. That long-term parking lot had been a crowded place on that occasion. Craig must have called in a helicopter when things went wrong and some hours later descended on Grady’s hideout near Pocatello.

  “You two working alone?”

  Craig thought about it. “As far as we know.”

  “Watch your back.”

  Wilberforce laughed. “That’s what Boswell always says.”

  Boswell? What an original. Traeger was going to mention that Crosby could be at Don Ibanez’s, too, but he let it go. After the conference at Bishop Sapienza’s, where the decision had seemingly been reached that they must all head for Napa Valley to decide whether he or Arroyo was telling the truth, Crosby would very likely have headed here once he found out that Traeger had been spirited away. Surely he must know that by now. And Arroyo? This occasion, too, threatened to become a crowded one, and Traeger didn’t like it.

  “Here’s the plan,” he said, hunching over the table.

  “What’ll it be, gentlemen?” The waitress.

  They ordered beer and waited until it was served and the waitress was gone.

  “Okay, what’s the plan?”

  “Jason Phelps’s property was carved out of Don Ibanez’s estate. From the back, there is a path leading t
oward the replica of the Mexico City basilica. Okay. We drive up there, pull into Phelps’s driveway, go around the house and back to that path. In that way, we can find out who all is there before announcing our presence.”

  Wilberforce said, “I want to see that little basilica.”

  “Are you Catholic?”

  “On my mother’s side.”

  When they had finished their beer and gone out to the car, night was falling. Before getting in, Traeger looked around. Someday he would like to come to Napa Valley just to enjoy the scenery.

  For the first part of the drive, Wilberforce used just driving lights, but there was need of more light before they got to Phelps’s driveway. There was a car parked by the garage. It looked like the one Crosby had showed up at the Old Curiosity Shop in.

  “Let me go in first,” Traeger suggested. “We don’t want to startle Crosby.”

  “Crosby?”

  “We were agents together. Ignatius Hannan hired him.” No need to go into all the details. “He was the big guy who came along when you took me to your car in Santa Ana.”

  “What did Hannan hire him to do?”

  “To get that stolen image.”

  “Jeez.”

  “And to find me.”

  “He lost you.”

  “That’s why I don’t want to startle him.”

  “You want us to just wait here?” Craig didn’t like it, and who could blame him?

  “I think it’s best.”

  “We’re not working for you, Traeger.”