Short Straw

by Stuart Woods

  "I didn't think he had enough brains for that."

  "Maybe he didn't."

  "What do you want?"

  "The question is, what do you want, Mr. Big Bear?"

  "I want a steak and fries and a six-pack of beer," Big Bear replied.

  "First things first," Eagle said. "Mind if I call you Joe?"

  "Suit yourself. What do I call you?"

  "Mr. Eagle will do."

  "What tribe are you?"

  "I'm from an eastern tribe."

  "I never met a court-appointed lawyer that was worth a shit."

  "I thought you didn't know any lawyers."

  "I've met a few, but I wouldn't say I know them."

  "It's like this, Joe: when the court calendar is crowded and the legal aid people are stretched thin, the judge will appoint local lawyers to handle cases."

  "How'd you pick mine?"

  "I got the short straw."

  Big Bear managed a derisive laugh. "I've had a few of those."

  "Yeah," Eagle said, removing Big Bear's file from his briefcase, "I've been reading about you. Let's see: arrests for assault, domestic battery, public drunkenness, DUI and now for a triple homicide."

  "One: I never assaulted anybody who didn't assault me first; two: the domestic battery was a lie made up by a woman I yelled at, once; three: I wasn't drunk in public, I just pissed off a cop; four: on the DUI my blood test put me at.081. How drunk is that? Oh, and five: I never killed anybody."

  "Oh, well, then, you're a saint. They didn't put that in your record."

  "They didn't put any convictions in there, either, did they?"

  "No," Eagle admitted, "they didn't. Tell me something about yourself."

  "Born on the reservation; educated there, sort of, through high school, did a stretch in the marines, came back here."

  "What kind of discharge did you get from the corps?"

  "General, under honorable conditions."

  "Who'd you slug?"

  "A shavetail lieutenant, right out of Annapolis. I did thirty days."

  "Why'd you slug him?"

  "I asked him not to keep calling me 'Chief.' He forgot."

  "How do you earn your living?"

  "I'm a shade tree auto mechanic, except there ain't no shade trees, to speak of. I take my tools and go to peoples' houses and fix their cars."

  "You any good at it?"

  "There are a lot of crates around Santa Fe that would have already been compacted, if it hadn't been for my work. People get their money's worth."

  Eagle tapped the file. "Says here you killed three people with a shotgun. You want to tell me about that?"

  "You want the long version or the short version?"

  "The short one."

  "A guy was fucking my girl and a girlfriend of hers. That was my job. I came home to my trailer and found them splattered all over the bedroom, and I called the cops."

  "Tribal or local?"

  "Local. I don't live on the reservation. My trailer's parked out near the airport by that junkyard, which I like to think of as my parts department."

  "Who was the guy?"

  "I didn't recognize him; he didn't have a face."

  Eagle glanced at the file. "The name James Earl Hardesty mean anything to you?"

  "Jimmy? Was that who it was?"

  "Says here."

  "Yeah, I know… knew him. We both drank regular at a bar called the Gun Club out on Airport Road. I didn't have nothing against him."

  "Until he screwed your girl?"

  "Well, if I'd known about it, and I ran into him at the Gun Club, I might have taken a pool cue to his head, but I wouldn't have killed him. It's not like she was a virgin."

  "Your call to the cops came in at six-ten p.m. last Wednesday?"

  "That sounds right. They were there in two minutes and asked me a lot of questions. Then two detectives showed up, looked around and arrested me."

  "Where were you before six-ten? Tell me about your day."

  "I left my trailer about seven-thirty, had breakfast at the IHOP on Cerrillos Road, fixed a guy's car out on Agua Fria-that took all morning; I ate lunch at El Polio Loco; I got a call on my cell phone about a job off of San Mateo-a fan belt was all it was. I went to Pep Boys for the belt, then put it on the car. I always check out a car for other things wrong, so I pointed out a couple things to the owner, and I fixed those, so he'd pass his inspection test. I didn't have any other work for the day, so I stopped by the Gun Club for a beer around four-thirty and shot a couple games of pool, then I went home."

  "Who saw you at the Gun Club?"

  "The guy I played pool with, but I didn't know him; never seen him before. I took ten bucks off him, so he'd remember me. The bartender knows me; his name is Tupelo."

  "From the Gun Club, it's a short drive home. Did you stop anywhere?"

  "I picked up a bottle of bourbon at the drive-thru, that was all."

  Eagle tapped the file again. "Says here they found your fingerprints on the shotgun and gunshot residue on your hands."

  "It was my shotgun, so it would have my fingerprints on it, and I picked it up off the floor and set it on the kitchen counter, so I might have gotten some residue on my hands. When they tested me, they found it on my right palm."

  "Nowhere else?"

  "Nope."

  "How fresh was the scene?"

  "Not all that fresh; I couldn't tell you how long, but some of the blood had dried."

  "Did you get any blood from the scene on yourself or your clothes?"

  "No, sir; I backed right out of that bedroom when I saw the mess inside."

  "Step in anything?"

  "That's possible, but if I did, I didn't notice it."

  "I'm going to need the names of the people whose cars you fixed."

  "Look on the front passenger seat of my pickup. It's parked outside my trailer. I've got a plastic briefcase there, and there are two pads of receipts inside. There's one name on the last receipt in each of them; address, too."

  "Anything else you want to tell me, Joe?"

  "Can't think of anything. Any chance of getting out of here?"

  "Let me check out your alibi, and we'll see. How much bail can you raise?"

  "Not much."

  "Well, if your alibi checks, you might not need bail, but I'd plan to spend the weekend in here." Eagle tossed the file and the pad into his briefcase, stood up and offered Big Bear his hand. "You'll be hearing from me."

  "Okay," Big Bear said.

  Eagle left the jail and went back to his car. Big Bear's story was simple enough to check out. If he wasn't lying, why hadn't he already been released?

  Eight

  ONE THING EAGLE COULD GET DONE BEFORE MONDAY: the Gun Club was no more than a quarter mile from the jail. He parked out front and went inside. It might as well have been midnight, for all the light in the place. It seemed entirely lit by beer signs. At the end of the bar, a sign over a doorway said, simply, hell. Eagle didn't want to go in there. The lunchtime crowds were digging into their beer and pork rinds, and the bartender was busy. Finally, he came to Eagle's end of the bar.

  "What'll it be, sport?" Broad southern accent.

  "You Tupelo?"

  "Who's asking?"

  "Name's Ed Eagle; I'm Joe Big Bear's lawyer."

  "I already told the cops; you want me to tell you, too?"

  "Please."

  "Right. Joe got here Wednesday afternoon around four-thirty-something, shot some pool with a guy I'd never seen before, had a couple of beers and left around six o'clock."

  "Describe the other pool player."

  "Short, scrawny, dark hair under a baseball cap, couple days' beard."

  "What did it say on the baseball cap?"

  "Who knows?"

  "How was he dressed?"

  "Dirty jeans, checkered shirt."

  "How'd he pay?"

  "American dollars. We don't take nothing else."

  "Anything you didn't tell the cops?"

  Tupe
lo shrugged. "Did Joe waste those folks?"

  "Not if you're telling the truth." Eagle gave him a card and a twenty-dollar bill. "Call me if you remember anything else. I'll be in touch. Appreciate your time." Eagle went back to his car, glanced at his watch and drove slowly toward the airport. He passed a liquor store with a drive-up window. Just for the hell of it he turned in and stopped.

  "Yessir?" the clerk asked through a bulletproof glass window.

  "A fifth of Knob Creek, please."

  The clerk went away, came back with the bottle, stuffed it into a paper bag, took Eagle's fifty and gave him change through a slide-out cash drawer, like at a bank.

  Eagle drove back to Airport Road and continued his journey. He turned left at the sign for the airport and noted the large automobile graveyard on his right, a sight he saw every time he drove out to visit his airplane. Just past that was a battered house trailer with a new-looking green pickup parked out front. He turned in. The trailer door was sealed with police tape. Eagle looked at his watch: eight minutes since he'd left the Gun Club. He got out of his car and into the unlocked pickup; the briefcase was there, just as Big Bear had said.

  Eagle opened it and found the two pads. Apparently, one was for credit card payments, the other for cash. Joe was filing a tax return but not reporting everything. He also found a receipt from the liquor store with a date and time stamp that said last Wednesday, 6:06 p.m.

  He broke out his cell phone and called both of Big Bear's Wednesday clients, taking the numbers from the receipts. The guy on Agua Fria backed Joe's alibi, and Eagle left a message on the other guy's answering machine. If he came through, his client was looking clean.

  Still, he'd need the medical examiner's report on the time of death and the detectives' report. That wouldn't happen until Monday. He did some grocery shopping and drove home.

  As he turned onto his road from Tesuque, he noticed a black car with darkened windows behind him, and when he turned into his drive, past the stone eagle that marked the entrance, the car followed him in.

  Eagle got out of the car with his groceries and stood, waiting for his visitor to emerge from the black car. After a moment, the car door opened, and the driver got out. He was not a big man-maybe five-eight and a hundred and sixty pounds-and he was dressed in a black leather jacket and jeans, silver belt buckle, black shirt and a flat-brimmed black hat, pinched at the top like a World War I campaign hat. The face under the hat was brown and smooth, the expression impassive.

  "Ed Eagle?" The man asked.

  "That's right."

  "My name is Vittorio. You left me a message."

  Ah, Eagle thought, the other P.I., the one he'd called when he'd thought Cupie Dalton was out of action. "Sure, come on in." He lead the way into the house and the kitchen and began putting things away.

  "Can I get you a drink?"

  The man set his hat on the kitchen counter and pulled up a stool. His thick, black hair was pulled straight back into a long ponytail and secured with a silver clip. He nodded at the bourbon bottle. "A taste of that would be good. Ice, if you've got it."

  Eagle poured two drinks and handed him one. "There was an Apache chief named Vittorio back in the late nineteenth century."

  "He was my great-great-grandfather."

  "How did your great-grandfather survive the massacre in the Tres Castillas mountains?" Eagle knew that Vittorio had left the reservation and conducted a three-year offensive against the whites. He had been cornered in the mountains, and he and sixty of his men and a group of women and children had been slaughtered there by the New Mexico militia.

  "His mother wouldn't let him fight; she made him hide in some rocks, where he saw the whole thing. When it was over, he scavenged the bodies for food and water, then he walked seventy miles to another Apache camp, where he was taken in. He was seven years old."

  "Jesus," Ed said.

  "Yeah. What can I do for you, Mr. Eagle?"

  "The day before yesterday, my wife cleaned out two bank accounts and my brokerage accounts and chartered a jet for Mexico City. I stopped the transfer from the brokerage in time, but she got away with a million one, in cash."

  Vittorio nodded but said nothing.

  "I sent a P.I. from L.A. after her, and he caught up with her at a hotel called El Parador last night. He followed her into the street, where he called me on his cell phone and attempted to hand it to her. She shot him."

  Vittorio's eyebrows moved a fraction, but he still said nothing.

  "The P.I. wasn't badly hurt, and he'll be back on the job soon, but he could use some help."

  "Does he know he could use some help?"

  "I haven't told him yet."

  "How is he going to feel about that?"

  "I don't much care how he feels about it. Can you leave for Mexico City today? There are flights from Albuquerque."

  "Yes. What do you want me to do when I find her?"

  "I want to speak to her on the telephone, then I want her signature at the bottom of six blank sheets of paper."

  "You don't want her hurt, then?"

  "Not any more than it takes to get her signature. I'll explain to her on the phone what it's for. It will probably help if you scare the shit out of her."

  Vittorio nodded. "I get a thousand a day, plus expenses, for travel out of the country."

  "Hang on here a minute," Eagle said. He went into his study and found a legal-size file folder and some of the paper his office used, then he went to his safe, where he always kept some cash, and put five thousand dollars in an envelope. He removed a photograph of Barbara from its frame, returned to the kitchen and handed the paper and the money to Vittorio. "Her maiden name was Miriam Schlemmer before she changed it to Barbara Kennerly; her first husband's name was Rifkin. Or she could be using Eagle."

  "You have any idea where she might go, if she leaves Mexico City?"

  "She told me that she had spent a nice week in Puerto Vallarta once. That's a possibility, but she could go anywhere if she gets her hands on that cash. I've got another man trying to prevent that. You'd better take your passport with you."

  Vittorio nodded. "What's the other P.I.'s name?"

  "Cupie Dalton. He's ex-LAPD, a good man." Eagle wrote his own and Cupie's cell phone numbers on the file folder, and Vittorio handed him a card with his own numbers. "Cupie was going to rest a little after being wounded. I'll let him know you're on the way and tell him to share any information he has."

  Vittorio stood up and put on his hat, and Eagle walked him to the door.

  "There'll be a ten-thousand-dollar bonus, if you can wrap this up quickly and get those papers signed. I'll tell Cupie he'll get the same. Call me every day."

  Vittorio shook his hand and headed for his car.

  Jesus, Eagle thought as he watched him go. I wouldn't want that guy looking for me.

  Nine

  CUPIE DALTON LAY ON THE BED IN HIS SO-SO MEXICO City hotel and blearily watched a soccer game, occasionally refreshed by a sip through a straw in a pint of tequila. Cupie despised soccer, but it was the only thing on Mexican TV he could understand; the plots of the soap operas were impenetrable, even with his pretty good Spanish. His cell phone rang.

  "Dalton."

  "It's Eagle. How are you, Cupie?"

  "Not as good as I thought I was gonna be by now. I ran out of the Percodan, but I've got a call in to the doctor for more. Tequila helps."

  "I'm sending you some more help."

  "I don't need any help, except the Percodan and the tequila."

  "It's coming anyway. His name is Vittorio; no last name as far as I know. He's an Apache Indian with a reputation for finding people."

  "Is he going to scalp me?"

  "Not if you're nice. Anyway, as I recall, you don't have much hair left to take."

  "That wasn't nice. What is this Vittorio going to do that I can't do?"

  "Twice as much as you can do alone. You can work together or split up. I don't care. I just want her found. There'll be a ten-t
housand-dollar bonus for each of you if you find her quickly."

  "I already talked to the desk clerk at her hotel. She took a cab to the airport. The doorman heard her give the driver the name of the internal airline, so my guess is she's headed for one coast or the other: Cozumel or Acapulco."

  "She likes Puerto Vallarta; start there."

  "When is Vittorio going to show?"

  "Soon; he's flying out of Albuquerque today. He'll call you on your cell. Rest as long as you need to, but get him started immediately."

  "Okay."

  "Bye." Eagle hung up.

  VITTORIO PARKED AT ALBUQUERQUE airport and locked his guns and ammunition in a steel box welded to his SUV's frame, under the carpet in the rear compartment.

  Once on the airplane, he used the air phone to call Cupie Dalton's cell phone and learn the name and address of his hotel, then he called a Mexico City number and placed a very specific order. After he had landed and cleared customs he walked out to the taxi stand, where a short, fat man carrying a small canvas duffel approached him.

  "Vittorio?"

  "That's me."

  The man handed him the duffel. "That'll be six hundred, U.S."

  Vittorio opened the bag and checked the contents, then he handed the man six hundreds, already counted out and folded.

  "Nice doing business with you."

  Vittorio gave him another fifty. "Tell your boss thanks."

  The man nodded, then disappeared into the crowd.

  Vittorio got into a cab and gave the driver the address of Dalton's hotel.

  "You want a girl, senor?"

  "No, gracias," Vittorio said. He unzipped the duffel and removed a short-barreled, Colt Defender semiautomatic.45 and three full magazines, then a Keltec.380 and one magazine. He had kept on his holsters, one at his waist for the.45 and one on his ankle for the little.380, and slipped a gun into each. He felt better already.

  CUPIE HAD DOZED OFF, when there was a sharp rap on the door of his room. He struggled out of bed and opened the door, keeping the chain on. An evil-looking guy in black clothes stood outside.

  "I'm Vittorio," he said.

  "Yeah, come on in." Cupie closed the door, unhooked the chain, let in the Indian, then closed and hooked the door again.