Ararat #3
Mine
Uranium (laughter)
It looked like a neat puzzle for Sherlock Holmes. I got on the phone again and called a lawyer I had met socially. He said that a lot of mines had screwy names like that—Biblical names, in particular, were quite commonplace—but that tracking down the location of the property was a little out of his line. He referred me to a man named Garcia who, since I could not come to the office, sent over a young fellow named Montoya—the Garcias and Montoyas are the Smiths and Joneses of New Mexico. Bob Montoya turned out to be a nice-looking dark kid in his early twenties. They run to extremes. A nice-looking Spanish-American kid you would trust with your life and your daughter’s virtue; a mean-looking one looks as if he’d slit your throat for a nickel and give back four cents’ change.
“I get the idea, Dr. Gregory,” Montoya said after I’d explained the situation as far as I thought necessary, which wasn’t very far. “I’ll see what I can do for you, but I’d better warn you it could turn out to be a tough and expensive assignment. Nobody knows just how many people are wandering around out there with Geiger counters staking claims they figure will make them rich by Christmas; and their notions of surveying are pretty inaccurate. There’s supposed to be at least one county up in Utah where the filed claims add up to twice the total area of the county… It looks to me as if what you’ve got here is the name of the hole and not the company, if you get what I mean. I’d say a couple of fellows calling themselves, say, the Jackrabbit Mining Association, had at least three claims which they called Ararat One, Two, and Three. That’s the usual custom. Do you know anything about uranium mining, Dr. Gregory?”
I really didn’t know a great deal about how the stuff got out of the ground and into the laboratory. I said, “Not very much. I hope to learn.”
He grinned, his teeth very white in his dark face. “Sí, Señor. So hope about a million other people. I suppose you’ve got a kind of roundabout tip on this Ararat property?” I nodded. He said, “You can’t tell me any more about it?”
“No,” I said. “That’s all I’ve got to go on.”
“Well, I’ll do my best to find it for you.” He rose from his chair and grinned at me wisely. “I suppose you want it kept real quiet.”
If I’d told him I wanted just the opposite, it would only have confused him. “Well, don’t broadcast it,” I said, and watched him go out, and hoped he would not run into trouble but could see no reason why he should, since I had made sure his boss and the lawyer also knew I was looking for a mine called Ararat. It seemed unlikely that anyone would tackle the job of silencing us all.
The following morning I woke up strong and healthy. I called Espanola and learned that, barring complications, the patient would live. Miss Rasmussen was not in the building, which was just as well. I had the garage send my car around, checked out of the hotel, and drove down to Albuquerque. It was a clear and beautiful spring day, so warm that I had the windows open. If it had snowed down here at all, no traces remained. The Sandia Mountains made a friendly and homelike shape behind town as I approached; the air was so clear that I could see the TV towers on the crest quite distinctly, even at this distance. I picked up some groceries at the nearby shopping center, drove home and parked in the drive, and carried the stuff inside. The house was cold and empty. It seemed much too big for one person. I made myself some lunch in the kitchen, feeling like a tramp camping out in a barn.
Eating, I read the mail that had been stuffed into the box while I was away. One envelope had no stamp; it had apparently been delivered by hand. I knew an odd little moment of expectancy as I tore it open, but the slip of paper inside bore the heading: William Walsh Enterprises, Inc. The typewritten note asked Dr. James Gregory to call Mr. William Walsh at the Alvarado Hotel at his earliest convenience. I leaned back, snared the kitchen phone, and got the number. A switchboard operator and a secretary later, I had my father-in-law on the line.
“Hi, Pop,” I said. “When did you get into town?”
“Where the hell have you been?” he demanded. “I’ve been trying to reach you for two days. Where can we talk? I’m tied up this afternoon; but how about the bar downstairs at five o’clock?”
“Five’s fine,” I said. “Be seeing you, Pop.”
The kitchen clock read a little after twelve. I got up and washed the dishes and put things away. I went out and organized the gear in the trunk of the car, but did not unpack. Instead, I replaced the supplies we had consumed up in the mountains. I took the .270 into the house, cleaned and oiled it thoroughly since it had been wet, and put it back into the trunk. That made the car ready. All it needed was a place to go.
I went back into the house. It seemed as empty as a vacuum chamber. I opened Natalie’s door. The black-and-white room had a well-preserved and lifeless look, like a bedroom at Mount Vernon. I closed the door and went into my own room, drew the Venetian blind, sat down on the bed, took out Nina Rasmussen’s little .22 automatic and cleaned it. The clip was fully loaded. It held ten cartridges. She had not given the gun to me with a shell in the chamber and I did not jack one in now; I’d rather risk being a little slow getting a shot off when I wanted it than have one go off when I didn’t want it. I tucked the weapon back inside my shirt. Wearing it was both illegal and uncomfortable, but I didn’t want to leave it around where anyone could see it. A .22 isn’t much of a firearm, but a .22 that nobody knew I had might come in handy. At four-thirty I dressed and drove downtown.
The bar of the Alvarado Hotel is an insult to New Mexico, being a dead ringer for any New York cocktail lounge. What’s the point of living in the great southwest if you have to do your drinking in a chrome-plated martini trap to the tune of, so help me, a character with a Hawaiian guitar? Not that I’ve got a thing against martinis, or Hawaiians, either; but I do like a little local atmosphere with my drinks. Mr. Walsh was sitting in a booth dictating to an earnest young lady with a notebook and horn-rimmed glasses. He waved her away when he saw me coming. Receding, she looked less earnest and more interesting; I found myself wondering if her duties involved anything besides typing and shorthand, which was probably unfair to my father-in-law. He was a solid, medium-sized man with stiff gray hair cut quite short all over his head. The steel-gray hair made a nice contrast to the deep sun-tan he had picked up somewhere recently, probably in Florida. I don’t know anything about men like William Walsh, and I make no effort to learn. His daughter is a big enough problem for me to try to solve. I had wired him the bare details the night she disappeared, and had not been in communication with him since.
Mr. Walsh said, “Sit down, boy. Where the hell have you been hiding? I’ve been trying to get in touch with you ever since I got your wire.”
“So you said over the phone,” I said, sitting down facing him.
“What’ll it be?”
“A martini, I guess.” As I said, I’ve nothing against them; I just prefer to drink them, out here, in tequila-and-pulque surroundings.
Mr. Walsh caught the eye of the waitress and she came right over, which indicated that he must have done some tipping during his short stay. Usually they’re almost as hard to catch as desert antelope.
“Another of the same for me,” he said, pushing a tall glass in her direction. “And a martini for my son-in-law; and none of that tired old bar mix, sister. Have him make it up fresh: Noilly Prat vermouth and Gordon’s gin, one to five—is that about right, Greg?”
“One to five is fine,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “And none of those damn olives, sister. Just a twist of lemon. Got it?”
Now, I like the olive in a martini; you can’t eat a lemon peel. But I wouldn’t have spoiled his act for the world. I looked around the place. It was scantily filled with the usual bunches of men. In Albuquerque they have an odd custom: they leave the women home and the men go out to dinner together. I suppose there’s nothing actually wrong with this, but it looks queer to the transplanted easterner, besides making the s
cenery very dull: who wants to look at tables full of men?
“Well,” Mr. Walsh said, “they haven’t found her yet, they tell me.”
“No,” I said.
“They seem to think she may be mixed up in a murder. Not to mention a lot of other things.”
“So I’ve been told,” I said.
“Do you believe it?”
I looked at him. “I don’t believe anything, or disbelieve it, either. It’s not my job to prove my wife guilty; and I’ll wait to prove her innocent until I’ve heard some specific charges. Right now all I want is to find her.”
“Are you working on it? Is that where you’ve been?”
I nodded. “And I have a clue, for what it’s worth,” I said, and told him about it.
“Ararat Number Three,” he said thoughtfully. “Hell, you should have got in touch with me yesterday, instead of ringing in this yokel up in Santa Fe. I’ve got the boys who can track it down and never let anybody know they’re looking. You’d better get on the phone and call him off; this has got to be handled right—”
“No,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s got to be handled wrong,” I said. “As wrong and as obviously as it can be done without looking phony. I want these people to know I’m on their track. They’ll find out by watching young Montoya.”
“It looks to me,” he said, “as if you were asking for trouble, boy.”
I said, “Any trouble I get on top of what I’ve already got, I wouldn’t even notice, Pop.” I never could call him “Dad” because that’s what I had called my own father while he was alive; and “Mr. Walsh” sounded too formal. Besides, I guess I always felt the need to show I wasn’t really impressed by all that money.
He studied me across the table. “Has it occurred to you—” He paused and drank from his glass. “Has it occurred to you that the kid may have good reason for not wanting to be found? She always did have a lot of screwball ideas. Not that I think she—” He let the sentence die. I did not say anything. He took another swallow. “What’s the matter with kids these days, anyway? They get themselves in the damnedest jams!”
I watched him for a while longer, until he looked away. I got up. “Thanks for the drink, Pop,” I said. “I’ll be seeing you.”
When I pulled up in the drive, the house was dark. There was no reason it shouldn’t be, of course, since I had left no light on. I started along the concrete walk toward the front door, and something broke out of the ornamental shrubbery by the garage and came for me. There was no time to dig through topcoat, suitcoat, and shirt for the gun; I simply threw myself down and back, into it, hitting it low, bringing it down as neatly as if I’d played football for dear old Chicago, which hasn’t got a team.
Then I rolled over and came to my hands and knees facing Ruth DeVry who was sitting on the lawn with one shoe off and her hair in her face, gasping for the breath I had knocked out of her.
NINETEEN
I GOT UP and brushed myself off—painfully, since I had taken a heavy blow across the back. Ruth did not move except to hug herself, gasping. There were no knives or pistols on the grass around her, and her hands were empty. I went over and picked her up by the armpits and set her on her feet. For all her narrow look, she was no feather. I found her missing shoe, one of those ballet-slipper things, and held it so she could put her foot in it.
“Don’t jump out behind me like that, Ruth,” I said. “My reflexes aren’t under very good control these days. Come on in the house.”
Inside, I closed the door behind us and turned on the hall light. She stopped at the mirror to pat her hair into place; then pulled her glasses off and set them back straight. Tonight they had big white rims set with some kind of sparkling stones. She always said that she wasn’t ashamed of having to wear them and wasn’t going to have anybody thinking she was, either. Besides the jeweled glasses, she was wearing a pair of those tight kneepants women have been inserting themselves into of late, that are undoubtedly the most unbecoming garments to be invented since the beach pajamas I barely remember as a kid. These were of black velveteen or some similar material. She was also wearing a loose and rather flimsy short-sleeved sweater, white with shiny gold threads, and some copper bracelets that clashed when she moved her arms. The whole outfit looked like a kind of arty cocktail costume that had not quite jelled. Being thrown for a ten-yard loss accounted for part of her disorganized appearance, but not all; I remembered that she was always having these bright ideas about clothes that didn’t quite pan out.
She spoke at last. “I was driving by this afternoon and saw your car outside so I knew you were back… I’ve been waiting hours for you to get home! Freezing slowly to death! And then you knock me down and walk all over me!” She laughed ruefully, and turned to face me. “What got into you anyway, Greg?”
I said, “I’m sorry. The last person who came at me like that had a knife.”
“A knife! Heavens, you really lead an exciting life these days!”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “What with friends hiding in the bushes and popping out at me like champagne corks.”
She laughed again. “I was just… just going to fall on your neck and sob out my tale of woe. You certainly spoiled my big moment but good, darling.” She drew a long breath. “Well, are you going to ask me into the living room and offer me a drink?”
“Sure.”
I let her go by me, and followed her in, switching on lights as I came to them. She turned to face me in the middle of the room.
“It isn’t really funny, Greg. It isn’t funny at all. Look.”
She touched the tip of a finger to her lip and held the finger out for me to examine. I couldn’t see anything on it.
She said, a little annoyed: “Well, it was bleeding earlier! Look here!”
She leaned forward, pulling at her lip to show me. It might have been slightly swollen, and there might even have been a small cut, but you know how inconspicuous those lip-cuts are, once they stop bleeding. They feel big, but you can’t see them.
“Did I do that?” I asked.
“No, he did.”
“Who?”
“Larry, of course!”
The thought of little Larry DeVry hauling off and socking his wife in the teeth didn’t make good sense; and if it had happened I wanted no part of their family row.
I said, “Well, he’s probably sorry by now. Why don’t you run along home—”
“Sorry!” she cried. “You don’t know what he’s like these days! He’s always been a surly and impossible person to live with—you’ve no idea of all the things I’ve put up with all these years, darling—but lately he’s turned positively ugly. I mean, I’m truly afraid of him, Greg. I really am. He’s not… I think he’s actually a little crazy. He imagines things!”
“Such as?”
“Just… just things. About me. Insane things—” Her face kind of crumpled and tears started running down it. She sank down on the near-by sofa and sat there, crying helplessly. You have to be very much in love with a girl to like her when she cries. I discovered that any tender feelings I might once have had—or imagined I had—for Ruth DeVry, were long since gone.
“I’ll get you that drink,” I said.
“No, don’t go. Please! Just sit down and… and be nice to me, Greg. I’ve had such an awful time. I’m so m-miserable I just want to die.”
I stood there awkwardly. I had no intention of sitting down beside her, knowing perfectly well that the minute I did she would fling her arms about me and weep on my coat; and it was perfectly possible that, since we were old friends, and since I was somewhat less innocent and idealistic these days than I had been in Chicago, one thing might lead to another, even without any tender feelings being involved… It was not a matter of being faithful to my wife, who had after all left me to go to Reno, nor was it a matter of being faithful to anybody else, or even of being loyal to my old, if somewhat tarnished, friendship with this woman’s husband. It was
simply a matter of my life being complicated enough already without complicating it further with Ruth DeVry.
I was saved from embarrassment by a knock at the door. Ruth came to her feet abruptly. “It’s Larry!” she gasped. “If he finds me here—”
I said, “Sit down and relax, Ruth.” I went to the door and pulled it open. It was Larry, all right. “Come in and join the party,” I said.
“Is Ruth here?”
“Yes,” I said. “I don’t know why, but she’s here.”
His face had a funny, intent look. “She mentioned seeing your car this afternoon. I thought I might find her here. Now that Jack Bates is no longer with us.”
I said, “With a little effort, that could be developed into a dirty story. Come in and work on it while I get us all something to drink.”
He hesitated, watching me through his heavy glasses. There’s always something a little sinister about a man with thick-lensed spectacles, perhaps because they’re standard equipment for every mad scientist in the movies.
“I’ll come in,” Larry said at last. “But I won’t drink your liquor, Greg.”
“Suit yourself,” I said, and let him pass me, and closed the door without turning my back to him. Everybody seemed to be acting a little cracked tonight, and there was no sense in taking unnecessary chances. Entering the living room behind him, I looked at Ruth, who had settled back on the sofa. Except that she had all her clothes on, she looked pretty much like what a jealous husband might expect to find: her face was flushed, and her hair still a little mussed from our recent collision. There was dust on her velveteen pants; and the thin, glinting sweater had slid down to show part of her shoulder. She looked rumpled and rather attractive; some women look their best with a high polish, but others do better with part of it knocked off. “Larry’s not drinking with us,” I said. “A matter of principle, I understand. What’ll it be, Ruth?”
Assassins Have Starry Eyes Page 14
