Santa Fe Rules

by Stuart Woods

  He’d been transferred to administrative duties, and his first job, for which he had been totally unqualified, was to make a film about carrier operations for his unit. This allowed him to stay with his flight school class as they trained in the Pacific, and it had introduced him to the only man aboard the ship who knew how to operate a movie camera, one Jackson Tinney, a skinny, Tennessee-born good ol’ boy who was, unaccountably, a wizard with a 16mm Arriflex.

  Together, the young ensign and the even younger able seaman had put together a cinema verité account of life aboard an aircraft carrier that was still shown to Navy pilots; it had been put into general release and had won an Academy Award nomination for best short subject.

  When the documentary had been completed, Jack had been transferred to a shoreside film unit and Wolf to other administrative duties aboard ship. It would be years before they saw each other again.

  After being discharged from the Navy, Wolf, who had learned to love California while briefly stationed in San Diego, traveled to L.A. and began looking for a job in a law firm while studying for the state’s bar examination. No L.A. law firm displayed much interest in a University of Georgia Law School graduate who had not risen to the top of his class, but Wolf had been invited by an old Navy buddy to play tennis at a Jewish country club, and there he had met and begun playing twice a week with a top agent and senior vice president of the William Morris Agency. Shortly, he had a job as a legal assistant at the agency and, when he had passed the bar exam, was promoted to staff lawyer.

  Some years later, after Wolf had risen to head the William Morris legal department, Able Seaman Jack Tinney had appeared in his office with four cans of film under his arm. Using Navy equipment and studio space, he had shot a film of his own, and when Wolf had run it in the William Morris screening room he had thought it rough, but the funniest thing he’d seen in years.

  Wolf had rented a cutting room, and together the two men had gotten it into shape. Wolf played jazz piano, and he and some musician friends, with whom he jammed once a week at a Santa Monica bar, had recorded a sound track, and after months of work they had found themselves with a completed feature film.

  Wolf had then taken the biggest risk of his life. He went to his patron, the senior vice president, and resigned from his job; then he hired the man as his and Jack’s agent and dragged him down to the screening room to see Rough Water, as they had named the film. Their new agent had loved it. Within a week, they had nailed down a distribution deal at Centurion, one of the big studios, and within a year, Wolf and Jack had each earned better than half a million dollars. The film was still making money on late-night television and video rentals.

  Twenty-five years and eighteen films later, Wolf Willett and Jack Tinney were still in business together. Jack wrote and directed the movies, and Wolf, their agent having died fifteen years before, produced, negotiated contracts, and oversaw every aspect of production. They had an in-house production deal with Centurion, and Jack had long been established as the Woody Allen of the West Coast. His films never lost money and usually did quite well, though they had never been blockbusters—not so far, anyway. They were shot on tight budgets, with big-name stars who were happy to play parts for small money just to get into a Tinney film.

  All this had earned Wolf a house in Bel Air, another in Santa Fe, a nice little airplane, and the assorted cars, boats, pools, and tennis courts that went with a seven-figure income. He earned, in fact, even more than he spent, and he had even managed to put away something for his old age, which wasn’t as far away as it used to be.

  Wolf was brought abruptly back to the present by a red light on the instrument panel before him. Red lights were not good. This one said LOW BUS VOLTAGE. He started looking at gauges. Alternator failure. He switched on the backup generator. Nothing happened. Backup generator failure. He started turning off electrical gear and consulted his chart. He’d never make it to L.A. on battery power, and he didn’t want to fly in L.A. airspace without radios. Grand Canyon Airport looked good for repairs.

  Wolf switched off the autopilot and began hand-flying the airplane.

  CHAPTER

  2

  The eastern end of the Grand Canyon was in sight when the instrument panel went dark.

  “Shit!” Wolf yelled. He tried switching things on and off, but nothing worked; the battery was too low to operate anything. He had a hand-held radio somewhere in the airplane; he didn’t use it often. He began rummaging through the pile of charts, manuals, and other debris behind the passenger seat, while trying to hold the airplane straight and level with his free hand. He unearthed the small radio, found the adapter wires that allowed him to plug his headset into it, turned it on, and tuned to the Grand Canyon control tower frequency.

  “Grand Canyon, November one, two, three, tango foxtrot.”

  “Aircraft calling Grand Canyon, please say again. Your transmission is weak.”

  Shit again; his hand-held’s batteries were nearly dead, too.

  “Grand Canyon,” he said, enunciating carefully, “November one, two, three, tango foxtrot. I am a Bonanza B-36, estimate fifteen miles east of the airport. I have electrical failure and am using a hand-held radio.”

  “Roger, November one, two, three, tango foxtrot; runway two-six is active; wind is two-seven-zero at eight. You’re number two behind a Grand Canyon Airways twin now on final.”

  “Tango foxtrot.” He rested the small radio on top of the instrument panel. What now? Get the landing gear down. He hoped to hell there was enough battery power left for that. He pulled out the gear lever and pushed it down. The red IN TRANSIT light came on and drag on the airplane was noticeably increased. Was it down? Two miles out he called in again. “Grand Canyon, I will fly down the runway at one hundred feet. Please tell me if my gear is locked down.”

  “Roger, tango foxtrot.”

  Wolf tried the flaps; they didn’t work, either. He reduced power slowly and got the airplane down to 120 knots for his low pass down the runway.

  “Tango foxtrot, Grand Canyon. Your landing gear appears to be partly down, but not locked. What are your intentions?”

  “Goddamn it!” Wolf screamed, but not on the radio. “Grand Canyon, I’ll try to crank it down.” He had never done this before, although he had been trained to do it. The hand crank was behind the passenger seat where all his junk was. He began throwing stuff indiscriminately into the backseat. Finally the small crank was exposed. He began cranking. How many turns? Seemed he had been told fifty. On the twentieth turn, the gear-down lights came on: all three wheels down and locked. Wolf heaved a sigh of relief; he was sweating heavily from the tension and the effort of cranking the gear down. “Grand Canyon, gear down and locked,” he said into the radio.

  “One, two, three, tango foxtrot, cleared to land, runway two-six.”

  With no flaps to slow him, Wolf had to make a fast approach, but there was plenty of runway length, and he got the airplane down smoothly. He cleared the runway and taxied to the maintenance hangar.

  “Well,” said the shop foreman, wiping his brow, “you got a dead alternator there, all right. Dead standby, too. I haven’t got either in my stock.”

  “How soon can you get replacements?”

  “Day after tomorrow,” the man replied.

  “Can’t you call the manufacturer and get the parts overnighted in?”

  “Tomorrow’s Thanksgiving,” the foreman said. “I’ll call today, but Fed Ex won’t deliver till Friday.”

  “This is Tuesday,” Wolf said, relieved that the man had got his days wrong. “Thanksgiving isn’t until day after tomorrow. You can have the parts here tomorrow, and I can be on my way.”

  The foreman turned to the mechanic waiting beside the airplane. “What’s today, Charley?”

  “Wednesday,” the man replied.

  “Thanksgiving’s tomorrow,” the foreman said to Wolf.

  “No, no…” Wolf looked at the day and date displayed on his wristwatch. “It’s…” He stoppe
d and stared at his wristwatch. “That can’t be,” he said, shaking his head.

  “Sure can, Mr. Willett. It’s Wednesday, and tomorrow’s Thanksgiving. I can have the parts here by ten-thirty Friday morning, and we’ll have ’em installed by early afternoon.”

  Wolf rubbed his forehead. Something was terribly wrong here. “Okay, where can I get a room?”

  “Try the lodge. Rent yourself a car at the terminal over there, and follow the signs. It’s real nice, and they won’t be full this time of year.”

  The lodge, a huge place, had a room for him. He explained why he didn’t have any luggage, and a bellhop took him upstairs. He immediately called the Bel Air house and got a recording of his own voice. He hung up. Julia could never remember to play the messages on the machine anyway, so leaving a message would be a waste of time. He didn’t have his address book with him, and the Carmichaels’ number was unlisted. He telephoned his office, but got a recording saying that it was closed until Monday for the Thanksgiving holiday. He didn’t remember giving everybody Wednesday, but when he hadn’t shown up for work yesterday, Jack had probably given them the day off; Jack was too softhearted.

  He hung up the phone and walked to the window. He had a fine view of the canyon, and it was truly grand, but he hardly noticed. Try as he might, he could not remember the past twenty-four hours. He remembered going to bed, but that must have been on Monday. He picked up the Tucson newspaper that came with the room and checked the date to be sure. Wednesday.

  He had lost a day out of his life. And it wasn’t the first time.

  Wolf woke up the next morning feeling horny and reached for Julia. She was not there, of course; she was in L.A. At least he thought she was. He had rung the Bel Air house a dozen times and gotten only his own recording. He had rung Jack’s house, too, and gotten no answer.

  He and Julia had been married a year. It was a second marriage for him—he had been widowed for more than twenty years—but the first for her. She was twenty-six at the time, and an actress. Two kinds of women he’d promised himself he’d never marry—a woman in the business and somebody half his age. It had gone well, though, had exceeded his expectations. Julia was wonderful company, and she had revived his nearly dormant sex life. She made him feel eighteen again, and he would always love her for that. God knew, she was too friendly with other men, and she was making a career out of shopping, which drove him nuts, but she was beautiful and shrewd, two qualities that had always appealed to him. She would probably leave him on his sixty-fifth birthday, but if she lasted that long, it would be worth it.

  He reached for his wristwatch: nearly noon. He never slept that late—what was the matter with him? He stood in the shower long enough to wake him, but when he got out, he still felt fuzzy around the edges. He shaved with the razor the hotel had lent him and got dressed, squirming in the damp underwear and socks that he had rinsed out the night before. There was still no answer at the Bel Air house.

  Downstairs, he asked for a New York Times.

  “Sorry, sir,” the young thing at the desk said, “we don’t get any papers at all on holidays. Will you be having Thanksgiving dinner with us?”

  It was that or McDonald’s in the village, he thought. “Yes, of course.”

  He ate hungrily, having slept through breakfast; he drank nearly a bottle of wine with lunch, feeling sorry for himself for being alone on Thanksgiving, then had a long after-lunch nap in his room. Later, he forced himself to go for a walk along the rim of the canyon, but he had seen it many times before, and it wasn’t working its charm today; he was too depressed. Here he was on his favorite holiday, far from wife and friends, stuck with no way out until the new parts arrived tomorrow.

  He went back to the hotel, bought a paperback novel in the shop, and tried to read it. He was asleep again by nine.

  He was wakened in broad daylight by the sound of something sliding under his door. He raised a sleepy head: a New York Times! At least he could start the day with the news. He glanced at his watch: noon. He ordered breakfast from room service, then retrieved the newspaper, scanning the front page. He was about to open the paper and look inside when a small article in the lower right-hand corner of the front page caught his eye:

  FILM DIRECTOR AND TWO OTHERS IN TRIPLE DEATH

  Oh, God, he thought, it’s going to be somebody I know. He read on quickly. It was somebody he knew.

  The film director Jack Tinney of Los Angeles has been found dead in circumstances that police sources are describing as murder.

  Wolf dropped the newspaper and put his head in his hands. He took deep breaths, trying to get hold of himself. He tried not to believe it, and he tried not to think of the consequences. He picked up the paper again, read the same sentence twice, then looked at the masthead. It was truly the New York Times; it was not a joke newspaper; this was not some horrible gag somebody was pulling on him; this was really happening. He swallowed hard, tried to quiet the pounding in his chest, and read on. What came next nearly stopped his heart.

  Tinney, 48, was found in a guest bedroom of a house in Santa Fe, New Mexico, belonging to his longtime business partner and producer, Wolf Willett. He appeared to have been killed by a shotgun blast.

  He immediately thought of Flaps and how she had wanted to get into the guest wing. But Jack hadn’t even been in Santa Fe, he thought desperately. He read on.

  Also found in the room were the bodies of Willett, 53, and his wife Julia Camden Willett, 27, an actress. They appeared to have been killed in the same manner.

  This got him breathing hard. He read the words again. They still didn’t make any sense. He continued.

  The bodies were discovered by a housekeeper, Maria Estavez, who had been alerted to their presence by a dog in the house. The apparent murder weapon, an expensive twelve-gauge shotgun made by Purdey, the famous gunmakers of London, England, was found in the room. The Santa Fe Police Depart- ment has issued a statement saying that the murders were committed sometime Tuesday evening and that so far they have no suspects. Obituaries on page B14.

  Wolf fell back onto the bed, his head reeling. He closed his eyes and clutched the covers, trying to lie as still as possible, fighting nausea. Gradually he restored his breathing to something like normal. Then he tried to think.

  He could come up only with this: His wife and business partner and some other unfortunate human being were dead; they had been killed in his house with his shotgun, one of a matched pair; they had been killed at a time when he was obviously present in the house. And he could remember nothing of that day or night.

  It wasn’t much, but it was enough to scare the shit out of him.

  CHAPTER

  3

  Wolf resisted the impulse to immediately bolt from the hotel, primarily because he had no place to go. He drove to the airport and paid his repair bill, then returned to the hotel and spent the afternoon fighting an overwhelming feeling of guilt—for what, he was not quite sure. By the time it got dark and dinner had arrived from room service, the guilt had become localized. He must have been responsible for what had happened. He tried to dredge up his reasons.

  He had been drunk, of course—else, why would he not remember? Or were his deeds on that lost day so terrible that his mind simply could not cope with them? Sex was at the root of this, of that he was sure. Since meeting Julia he had lived with the fear that he could not satisfy her, that she would turn to another man to supplement or—God help him—replace his attentions. She had always been insatiable, but she had always had the talent of keeping him aroused. He had been keeping up with her, but just barely, and he had lived in fear of what might happen if she nudged him some night in bed and he wasn’t up to it.

  More disturbing of late was that Julia had begun to evince an interest in more than one sex partner. This had frightened him when she had first broached the subject, then excited him when he had realized that her interest was in having another woman in bed, a longtime fantasy of his. Twice, both times in Santa Fe, Julia had su
ccessfully propositioned another woman. They had been nights to remember. Even now, recalling it, he found himself stimulated. Both women had satisfied him beyond his fantasies, then had turned to each other, and he had been held rapt by that sight. Then he had suspected that all this was a prelude to inviting another man into their bed.

  This thought seemed to point to what might have happened: He got drunk, Julia took Jack and another man to bed; he had caught them and, in a drunken fit of jealousy, used the shotgun on them. As he thought about this scenario, he realized that he had to find out exactly what had happened. First, he had to see the room where the three had died; then he had to find a way to penetrate the shield of his own memory. He had an idea of how to do that.

  He waited until after dinner before leaving the hotel. Santa Fe Airport closed at ten P.M., and after that it became a ghost of a landing field. He knew, because once he had landed at a quarter past ten, his car battery had been dead, and he had nearly frozen before he had found a telephone and gotten some assistance.

  It was just after nine when he took off from Grand Canyon and headed east; this would put him at Santa Fe around ten forty-five. He had filed no flight plan, and he climbed to eleven thousand five hundred feet before leveling off; this altitude would give him some westerly tail wind without requiring oxygen. He sat immobile in the airplane for nearly an hour, numb with grief, guilt, and fear. Then his eye caught something in the New York Times on the seat beside him: “Obituaries on page B14.” His curiosity got the better of him.

  There were only three obituaries on the page: his, Julia’s, and Jack’s. Jack’s occupied the whole of the page above the fold. There was a detailed analysis of his career, his childhood in Tennessee, his four marriages, his many women, and anything else that could be found out about him by a shrewd newspaperman. It was obvious that the piece had been written well in advance.