Fool's Gold

by Ted Wood

  "Of course." Her eyes widened. If she couldn't score as a sex symbol, she would be the indispensible helpmate. Later we could go our three rounds of wrestling, no holds barred.

  "I wonder if you'd go out and find Chief Gallagher and ask him to come in. He's most likely down the block at one of the neighboring houses, that's if he's not still in the garage."

  She nodded, a big motion that made us co-conspirators. I figured she had set herself me as a project for the evening. I was the only man within range except for the pastor and Gallagher, who was impervious. "Right away," she said. "Is there anything else you need?"

  "Not at the moment, thank you, but I'm sure there will be later on."

  It took her about ten minutes to find Gallagher. First she had to put on her mink and high-heeled boots, then she had to let the world know what was happening. But I used the time well. I didn't want to risk losing the material if the widow refused permission for us to take it, so I copied out the names, addresses, dates, and figures from the back of the photographs, concentrating on the more prosperous-looking and younger men, guys who might just have found the personal strength or the money to put an end to Sallinon. Then I went through the rest of the drawers, doing it properly, turning them all out and examining the undersides. There was nothing much else in there except for a little black phone-number book with no names in it, just initials. Then, when I was through with all the routine checking, I found what I had expected. It was on the bottom of the bottom drawer, a pair of flat keys, the kind you get with a safety-deposit box. I laid them on the top of the desk and put the drawer back in place as Gretchen came back with Gallagher.

  He thanked her with a crisp nod. I guess if he'd seen her compromised enough times he didn't have to apply as much charm as I did. She smiled at me, affecting a little sadness, and I thanked her and she went out, whisking her bottom like a San Diego bar girl.

  "What've you got?" Gallagher asked.

  I pushed the file of photographs to him. "A tie between Sallinon and Eleanor. Looks like the pictures she took were being used for blackmail."

  He whisked through them, reading the back of the first one, then flicking through the others. "So that's where his bread came from," he said, narrowing his eyes. "No wonder somebody wanted him iced."

  "I think it's deeper than that. Look what he had in his desk." I took out the .22, broke it, and handed it to him. He took it and whistled. "You figure he killed her?"

  "It was a gun this size that was used. And if we were right to begin with, he was tied in with Prudhomme and the rest of the conspirators in this claims scam." I rocked back on my chair.

  "There's another file folder of pictures and at the bottom of the pile is the picture of Prudhomme, just as Eleanor told me on the telephone."

  Gallagher swore. "What you don't see when you haven't got a gun," he said disgustedly. "With this information yesterday I could have had the sonofabitch safe inside. We could have tied the whole case up without getting you and Onyschuk shot at."

  I waved my hand. "Water under the bridge. The thing is, What do we do next? Ideally we should impound all the evidence and take it away, including this." I handed him the safety-deposit keys. "They were taped under a drawer."

  He put the gun down, still broken, and picked up the keys. I swung the cylinder shut and put it back in my coat pocket. "We've got to find out where this fits," he said, shaking the key at me. "There might be something to do with the other killings wrapped up in it. But to do that I'm going to need a court order." He hooked his head back toward the other room. "Otherwise the guardian angel is likely to get awkward and prevent any of it going."

  "That's the way I saw it. What: I've been doing is copying down names and addresses from the photos. I figure I should keep on until I've got them all, then take the shape of those keys and the numbers off them and tape them back where I found them and leave."

  "You're going to keep the heater," Gallagher insisted. "I know for a fact he doesn't have a license for a handgun; there's only two in town, one at the bank, one collector."

  "Okay, so you do the arranging for the court order. I'll finish up here and join you. That's what I figured. Tomorrow when the trail's cold we'll start following up on these photos. Oh, and by the way, I found a phone list. No names in it, just numbers."

  Gallagher sat on the edge of the desk. He was tired, his shoulders sagged with it. "Let's see it, maybe I'll recognize the numbers if they're local."

  I handed it to him and he leafed through. "There's initials but no names," he said. "Cagey little bastard, wasn't he?"

  "D'you recognize any of the initials?"

  He looked through the book again. "Not offhand. We should try and match them to the blackmail names, maybe that's it." He yawned. "The way I'm feeling, unless somebody comes out soon with his hand up, saying, 'I did it, take me in,' he's safe. I'm still out there knocking on doors. Nobody's seen screw-all. They were all watching television like good little robots."

  I felt for him. I've had nights like this myself. If nobody encourages you to stop, you keep on until you fall down and your efficiency dies with every extra move you make. "Why not call it a night? I don't see what else we can do. We've got a mess of work to do tomorrow on what we've found here. But for now all we should do is call Montreal again, keep the police there looking for Laval. It's my bet that he's the guy behind this killing, as well as the others up in the bush. He's connected to all of them."

  "You're right," Gallagher admitted. He ran his hand over his chin with a loud rasp. "I've still gotta question Tettlinger when his shyster gets here. I tell you what. Finish here, like we decided, and go back to the motel. I'm going to make a few more calls about Laval, see if we can turn up anything more on him. Then I'll get a court order for all this stuff and catch a few zzzs until the lawyer gets in." He stood up and tapped his hat more firmly in place. "I'm getting too old for this nonsense."

  "All right. You tell the padre about the unregistered gun, make it sound like a precaution we're taking to remove it. I'll finish copying these names and numbers and I'll come out."

  "Right." He turned and left, almost colliding with Gretchen, who came bounding in, all anxious smiles, like a little girl out to please her daddy. "G'night," he said to her, and she waved at him with her fingertips and came over to me.

  "Would you like a refill on the coffee?" She checked my cup and found it full. "You bad boy, you haven't finished the first one." I thought she was going to slap me on the wrist.

  "Sorry, I got busy. But yes, please. If you get me a fresh cup I'll drink it all."

  "You'd better." She shook her finger. "Otherwise you don't get any dessert." She left and I rolled my eyes to heaven and went on copying names and addresses.

  She came back, set the cup on the desk, and perched on the edge of it, her neatly rounded haunch jutting toward me like a piece of pie. I had shut the folder and she reached for it, but I caught her hand. "Police business, very official," I kidded. "Out you go like a good girl."

  She slid off the desk and pouted. "I know you've had a hard day. The others"—she indicated the other room—"they said you'd been shot at when poor Officer Onyschuk was hit. But you don't have to be nasty to me."

  I decided it was time to cut the games out. "Sorry," I said calmly, "getting shot at does that to a man sometimes. Now I'm going to have to ask you to leave, please. I promise to drink the coffee."

  She decided to keep her options open. "Bossy," she said with another pout and left, switching her tail like a lioness.

  It took me ten more minutes to finish the copying. Then I retrieved Sallinon's vodka and fortified the coffee and sipped it. It was cool but good and the vodka gave it an extra bite. As I sipped I began putting everything back into the desk. First I traced the outline of the two safety-deposit keys, doing it like a brass rubbing. And then, as I finished the coffee, I picked up the phone book and glanced through it.

  I was tired to my bones and my head was working at half speed, it seemed, l
ike an engine on a cold morning missing on half the cylinders, but as I flipped toward the middle of the book I came across initials that made me sit up straight. P.K., and a local number. I stood up and looked around for the local phone book. It was on a stand beside the door and I went and picked it up and checked the connection my memory had made. I was right. The number belonged to the helicopter company I had used for the last two days. I looked back in the little book, rechecking the initials. P.K. Paul Kinsella.

  22

  I picked up the little book and put it into my shirt pocket, then I relocked Sallinon's desk and shut and locked his file cabinets, just like a banker finishing up for the day. I picked up my cup and saucer and put my coat over my arm, the gun heavy in the pocket, and went back into the living room of the house.

  Ida Sallinon was kneeling with the pastor, praying silently. The rest of the women had gone, including Gretchen, for which I was glad. I stood and waited for them to finish and when the pastor said "Amen" and opened his eyes, I waited further for some kind of sign I could move.

  He gave it at once, getting to his feet and helping the widow to her seat on the couch. Then he came to me. "Have you finished?" He made it sound like I was a storm trooper ravishing a convent.

  "Yes, thank you, padre. I guess the chief spoke to you."

  He nodded impatiently. "It's all very distressing," he said.

  I wasn't about to apologize. It was his job to lay on the relief. My job was to solve crimes. "It's a dreadful thing to happen," I said. "We can't let it go without trying to find the person responsible."

  "I suppose not." He stared at me with his colorless eyes.

  I went over to the widow. "Thank you for your help, Mrs. Sallinon." She looked up slowly, as if she were smoked up. I guessed her emotions were all jammed with the horror. She nodded, looking through me, as if I were the glass in an aquarium.

  "You're welcome," she said.

  I left, nodding to the pastor, and went out to the garage. There was a hearse in the driveway with two men in black topcoats beside it, leaning on a gurney, smoking cigarettes. The media people were all gathered at the mouth of the driveway. Gallagher was inside with his constable and a photographer.

  Gallagher looked up when I came in. "Ready to go?"

  I beckoned him to one side with a flick of my head and he joined me out in the darkness, out of earshot of the other men.

  "I think so. One of the sets of initials in his little black book was Paul Kinsella's."

  Gallagher straightened his tired back as if he'd been galvanized. "Sonofabitch! You said these guys had air support."

  "May be innocent, but let's check it out." The wind was cold on the back of my neck and I shrugged deeper into my combat jacket.

  "Let's go talk to him." Gallagher was excited, all his tiredness gone. "I'll just brief the kid."

  He stepped back inside the garage and spoke to the constable, then to the photographer. They nodded. The constable looked less than eager. I guess he was cold. Pity Gretchen had gone home; she would have warmed him, once he was alone. We walked down the drive and out to the patrol car. The constable came after us, walking ahead to the corner. Sam came, too. I walked over to Gallagher's police car and let Sam into the backseat. Then I got in the front, glad to be out of the wind. Gallagher got behind the wheel and whisked away up the street, past the constable who immediately stepped into the roadway and flagged down the procession of cars full of reporters that was trying to follow us. I grinned. What we had to do would be done more easily without cameras sticking over our shoulders while we did it.

  Gallagher said nothing until we were out of town, heading up the side road to the highway, gunning the Chevy to 130 klicks an hour over the undulations. "You said you thought you heard him pause on his way back to pick you up," he said at last.

  "Not for long. He didn't change note enough to make me think he had set down," I said. I wasn't anxious to paint Kinsella black. He had the same battle scars as me, we were blood brothers.

  "Maybe he just let somebody down on the hoist, like he picked you up," Gallagher ventured, braking for the intersection with the Trans-Canada. A truck passed, heading east, and he swore. "Have to pass that bastard now, he complained.

  I sat quiet, thinking over the events of those crowded few minutes when the chopper had come for me, and then I had a thought that had eluded me then. I reported it. "One thing I forgot to mention. He had a spare coil of cable in the back of the chopper. I'm wondering if that was part of it."

  "How?" Gallagher wondered aloud, flicking on his flashing lights to bring the truck over to the shoulder, then flying past him, speed building to the right-hand limit on his gauge.

  "I'm wondering if he was planning to have me killed, then leave me dangling, maybe cut me loose over the middle of the bush somewhere. Nobody would ever have found me in a million years."

  Gallagher sniffed, "Could be, I guess, but if he was gonna do that, why didn't he?"

  "Training," I said, and Gallagher took his eyes off the road far too long to stare at me.

  "Training? What are you smokin'?"

  "No, I thought about it at the time. He was in Nam. Chopper pilots were more gun-shy then most grunts. They knew they were the prime target any time they were in range. I think the sound of gunshots, plus the fact that I was close enough to look like I was ready to shoot him myself, had him spooked."

  Gallagher wound his window down and spat into the cold slipstream, then wound it up again. "Possible," he allowed. "And another thing. When you see how they've been knocking one another off, maybe he was afraid the guy on the ground would hit him, kill two birds with one stone. After all, if he's part of this he's as vulnerable as any of them. If there's a couple of billion dollars involved and the Mob wants it, they'll make sure they knock off anybody who could get in their way."

  I said nothing. It was only guesswork on our part, but the amount of blood that was flowing in this case was phenomenal. It had to be a Mob action, and if it was, Kinsella was just as expendable as Misquadis or Prudhomme had been. He must have known it.

  It took us fourteen minutes to cover the twenty-some miles. The needle of the big Chevy had been hanging on the peg most of the way. As we rounded the last curve and saw the motel beside the highway, Gallagher shouted, "He's back. Look ,the chopper's on the pad and there's a light on in the shed."

  He swung in, squirting gravel every way, and pulled to a stop in front of the shed. "Let's go," he said, and ran out of the car toward the shed.

  I followed him, groping in my pocket to get a grip on Sallinon's peashooter. It wasn't much, but it was the only card I had to play. Gallagher hit the door running, but it was locked and he swore. And then the door at the other end of the hut clattered open. I could hear it as I wrenched the rear car door open to release Sam. Gallagher heard it too. He ran around the hut, drawing his gun, turning the corner at the moment the sound of the shot reached me, then buckling backward, clutching his left leg. I pulled my gun and ran up behind him, crouching, holding Sallinon's pistol as I stepped around the corner and fired twice, not aiming, just returning fire.

  I heard a yell and a clatter of something falling. It was dark there except for the lights at the front of the motel, fifty yards back from the road. I dived to the right, away from the hut, rolled, and came up pointing my gun the same way. This time I saw the figure on the ground move, an anguished flopping like a landed pickerel. I ran up to it glancing around me. On the far side of the hut I heard the churning of the starter on the chopper. Kinsella was getting away. I stooped for a second over the fallen man. It was the guy I had seen at the motel when I got back from Montreal. He was dressed in the same kind of combat jacket I was wearing, and a rifle was lying beside him. He was alive, squirming in pain.

  I grabbed the rifle, stuffing the pistol back in my pocket, and ran around the hut. The helicopter was lifting away, tilting its blades toward me. I thought Kinsella would be using both hands and prayer to lift so hard but as I stood there
he snapped off a shot at me, missing by a foot. I fired back, but he was lifting too fast so I aimed this time at the stopping point, the hub of the tail rotor.

  He was thirty feet up now, climbing like an elevator, but I scored. The bullet whang-g-ged away off metal and suddenly the chopper was pirouetting around and around in the air, all directional control gone.

  Kinsella was cool. He did the only thing he could, cutting the motor to stop the spinning, letting the bird crunch back to earth. It fell like a brick, still turning, hit the ground, and half rolled. The air was full of the smell of jet fuel and I heard him cursing in a frightened wail over the dying echoes of the spranging metal and plastic.

  Keeping the rifle at the ready I ran forward and looked in through the shattered side, covering him. His face was covered with blood but his hands were empty, fiddling with his escape harness. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a lick of flame spring up on the edge of the spreading pool of jet fuel. I reached through the door and grabbed him, unsnapping the harness and hauling him out of the seat, through the door and behind me in a one-handed motion, using strength I wouldn't have had in less dangerous circumstances.

  He landed loosely and rolled as I dived after him. Behind me the flames had raced over the surface of the fuel and were eating into the fabric of the chopper. I came up on one knee, still holding the rifle, pointing it at his body, but it didn't matter. He was scrabbling away from the burning craft on knees and elbows the way he had been taught a million years ago by experts. I crouched and ran up to him, grabbing him by the collar and hauling him away behind the shelter of the hut. Beyond us, at the motel, the doors had burst open and crowds of customers were standing on the steps, shouting, screaming.

  I roared at them, "Get down," and fell with Kinsella on the other side of the hut as the fuel tank finally cooked off and exploded like a bomb. Chunks of metal thunked into the side of the hut, but it didn't burn. Up at the motel the shouts changed to screams of terror. I ignored it all, running my hands over Kinsella's pockets, seeking his gun. He was clean. "I'm sorry, Reid. I'm sorry. These guys wanted you out of it, you were too close to them," he babbled.