by R. J. Jagger
Alabama rode shotgun.
Between the two of them on the bench was Jori-Rey. Bringing her might be a mistake but it was too late to worry about it now. Her thigh pressed against Wilde’s.
Jori-Rey had a theory about the boxer, namely that Rojo had gotten the word on the street that Wilde killed Sudden Dance. He hired the boxer first and foremost to kill Wilde and secondly to recover the money that Sudden Dance had picked up from whoever it was she picked it up from.
Wilde agreed.
It fit perfectly.
“The boxer won’t be the last,” Jori-Rey said. “He’ll just be the first. If I were you I’d turn myself into a ghost and disappear. Denver will never work for you at this point, not unless you want to spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder. Go somewhere else, get a new name—I picture you as a Slade, maybe Nick Slade or something like that. Start fresh.”
Wilde made a face.
“That’s not my style.”
“Yeah, well, make it your style. Lose the macho stuff because if you don’t it will kill you.”
“Then I die,” Wilde said. “Can you light me a smoke?”
Thirty minutes later they reached the well. Alabama took the wheel and drove off into the storm. The taillights disappeared almost immediately. Wilde and Jori-Rey cut into the brush armed with a flashlight that could have had stronger batteries. Over Wilde’s left shoulder draped a 100-foot coil of rope.
The ground was saturated.
The storm was fierce.
They were barely off the road when something strange happened.
Headlights came out of nowhere, going the same direction as Alabama, a couple of minutes or so behind. They turned into taillights as they swept past and then vanished.
They were going fast.
It could just be a rough coincidence.
Wilde’s gut, however, told him otherwise.
“That’s not good,” he said.
“So what do we do?”
He searched for options, found none and said, “I put my gun in the glove box. Alabama saw me do it.”
The well appeared exactly where it should.
Wilde shined the flashlight down to be sure the boxer’s body was still there.
It was.
He tied off the rope to the trunk of a scraggly pinion pine and climbed down.
The body stank.
He got the man’s wallet out his pocket and stuck it in his own. He tied the rope around the man’s chest and climbed back out. Then he pulled the body up and got it over the edge of the well onto the ground.
He shined the light into the man’s face and let Jori-Rey take a good look.
“Do you know him?”
“No.”
Wilde wiped water out of his eyes and contemplated the best way to get the body back to the road. He didn’t want to touch it more than he had to and considered dragging it with the rope. On closer thought, that would leave a trail, not to mention that the body would probably snag every ten feet. He picked the man up in his arms like a baby, but the weight was too much. He dropped it down, got his strength and then flung the body over his shoulder with one solid motion.
That was better.
That was doable.
“Lead the way.”
It took an effort, an insane effort, but they eventually got to the road where Wilde dropped the body just out of sight.
The storm pummeled down.
The world was black.
Wilde stared down the road in the direction Alabama would come from.
No headlights appeared.
A minute passed, then another and another.
Nothing changed.
Everything remained black.
The world remained empty.
Jori-Rey wrapped her arms around Wilde and said, “She’ll be here any minute. Don’t worry.”
24
Day Six
August 8, 1952
Thursday Night
Time passed and Alabama still didn’t show up. The storm was under Wilde’s skin. The possibility of being abandoned out in the middle of nowhere with a dead body wasn’t helping matters.
Forty-five minutes had passed.
Alabama was supposed to swing back in thirty. She’d have trouble finding the exact drop-off point so she was supposed to flash the lights when she got in the area. That way Wilde would know it was her and he’d flag her down with the flashlight.
Suddenly something happened.
Headlights came up the road at a high speed. They were flashing. A second car followed, dangerously close. Bursts of orange came from outside the passenger window.
“They’re firing at her!”
Wilde saw that.
He said nothing.
He needed action and needed it now.
He had no gun.
He had no knife.
The second car rammed Alabama’s bumper. Her headlights jerked with the motion and she fought to keep control.
Wilde swept the light to the ground and didn’t let up until he found a rock. It was the size of a baseball, heavy in his grasp. As Alabama approached Wilde pointed the flashlight at her at the last second.
Then he hurled the rock at the second car with every ounce of strength his arm could muster.
The windshield exploded.
The vehicle jerked to the right, tried to counter and pitched into a death roll, eventually grinding to a stop on the roof.
“Stay here!”
Wilde ran towards the vehicle with one thought and one thought only, namely to pound the men into oblivion if they were conscious, before they could regain their senses and get their deadly little weapons back in hand.
The driver was dead, grotesquely dead.
His face was a bloody pulp.
His neck was broken, leaving his head to hang with a bizarre twist. Wilde wrestled the man’s wallet out of his pocket and shoved it in his own, not for the money if there was any, but to know who he was.
The other man wasn’t in the vehicle.
He must have been ejected.
Wilde swung the light to the ground and swept it back and forth, searching, knowing he was a sitting duck because of the light but counting on the violence of the roll to rip the gun out of the shooter’s hand.
The man didn’t appear.
Wilde searched more, quicker, with more intensity.
Still the man didn’t appear.
Alabama returned, shaken to the core but beautifully alive, and getting a tight full-body squeeze from Wilde to prove it. The back window was shattered and there were bullet holes in the dash but she was unharmed.
“There were two men in the car, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then one got away.”
“Forget him. Let’s just get out of here.”
Wilde contemplated leaving the boxer there for the police to find, as some unknown piece of a mysterious puzzle. Then he thought better of it; the body was too decayed to be part of the accident. So they put it in the Studebaker’s trunk, drove into the mountains and dropped it over a high jagged cliff. The bears and coyotes and hawks would find it long before a human did. Twenty-four hours from now it would be unrecognizable. The important thing was that it wasn’t at the well any longer, the well that Fingers had Wilde connected to.
Ironically, the new accident was at the well.
The murder attempt wasn’t against Alabama, that’s what Wilde told her once and then twice and then two more times. “They were trying to get me. They thought I was in the car. They didn’t know you dropped me off. So don’t worry, no one’s out to get you.”
“Okay.”
“Plus tonight’s safe in any event. If the missing guy is actually still alive it probably isn’t by much, not to mention he’s stuck out in a storm in the middle of nowhere.”
Out of an abundance of caution, though, he didn’t want her to be where anyone could find her tonight, so he got her a room at the Kenmark and tipped the receptionist a soggy five
to make sure that if anyone came in looking for her they didn’t find her, not in a hundred years.
Wilde wrote down his phone number and said, “If anyone asks about her, give him the big stone face and then call me at home.”
“You bet.”
Then he headed home through the storm with Jori-Rey still in the car.
He checked the house, found no unwanted scumbags lurking in the corners, and brought Jori-Rey in. They were no longer dripping but were clammy clingy damp. Wilde got a hot shower going for her, laid a dry T-shirt, fresh boxers and pair of pants out on the bed, and closed the door.
With a beer in hand, he plopped down on the couch and went through the driver’s wallet.
Inside was money, over a G in twenties.
It brought a smile to his face.
Being a target was starting to have its advantages.
Also inside was a condom and more interestingly a folded page torn out of the yellow pages. It was the listing for investigators, meaning Wilde’s number and office address.
Outside the storm raged.
The windows rattled.
Lightning flashed and thunder rolled over Denver with the force of a thousand maniac drums.
The shower shut off.
Two minutes later Jori-Rey walked into the room wearing the T-shirt but not the pants. Her legs were strong and shapely, capable of rivaling Norma Jean’s six out of seven days. Her hair was wet and incredibly erotic. Her eyes had a depth that Wilde had never seen before.
She turned off the lights.
Then she came to the couch, straddled Wilde’s lap and brought her lips to his.
25
Day Seven
August 9, 1952
Friday Morning
Friday morning a well-dressed man walked into Wilde’s office. He was strong, intense and polished; the kind of ego-infested guy who could hold his own in an alley fight during the day and chat-up the high-society dollfaces at night. An expensive suitcase dangled from his left hand. He sized Wilde up and said, “My name’s Jack Strike. I’m a lawyer with a law firm here in Denver by the name of Banders & Rock. I’d like to retain your services for a project if you’re available.”
Banders & Rock.
Banders & Rock.
At first Wilde couldn’t place why the name was familiar. Then he remembered. Banders & Rock was the law firm where Alley London worked, the woman Wilde found in the well.
Wilde tapped two cigarettes from a pack and offered one to Strike, who declined. Wilde lit his and said, “I’m a little surprised you’re here.”
“Why?”
“I thought all your work went to Nicholas Dent.”
“It does, normally, but this is something that needs to be done right away and he’s tied up.” He pulled an envelope out of his jacket and set it on the desk. “That’s $1,500, half-payment upfront. You get another $1,500 when the job’s done.”
Wilde focused on the envelope but didn’t pick it up.
“That’s a lot of money,” he said.
“We buy confidentiality in addition to services,” Strike said. “I assume your services come with confidentiality—”
Wilde nodded.
“A hundred percent worth. So what’s the job?”
The man set the briefcase on the desk and said, “The job is to deliver this to a lawyer in El Paso.”
“El Paso, as in Texas?”
“Right.”
“Just deliver it? Nothing else?”
“No, nothing else. You drive down, you hand it over, you drive back and get your other $1,500. If everything goes without a wrinkle, you’ll see more work from us down the road.”
Wilde focused on the briefcase.
Then he raised his eyes and stared into Strike’s.
“So what’s inside?”
Strike frowned and shook his head.
“You don’t need to know that,” he said. “It’s for your own good, to help you keep the confidentiality part of your commitment. The briefcase is locked. Here’s the important part; it’s to stay that way at all times. You’re not to open it and you won’t have the key. If you pry it open or force it open in any way, it will show and we’ll know that you did it. See the hinges and hardware and leather? They’re all pristine, without a scratch or a mark. Your job is to make sure they stay that way, meaning that they’re not tampered with. I’ll repeat it again just to be absolutely sure we’re on the same page. You are not to open the briefcase or attempt to open it under any circumstances. You’re to deliver it and that’s all. Is that something you can do?”
Wilde blew smoke.
“How do I know there’s not something illegal in there?”
“You know it because I’m telling you that right here and now,” Strike said.
Wilde wrinkled his face.
“That’s a lot of money to be a delivery boy.”
“It’s fair pay.”
“It seems a little more than fair to me.”
Strike shifted his body.
“There’s a little twist I haven’t mentioned yet. There may be people who will try to take it from you. Be sure they don’t.”
“Who?”
“Unknown.”
“But someone?”
“Possibly. To be honest, that’s why you’re getting the case instead of Dent. Between you and me, Dent’s a good sneak but he’s not much of a man.”
Wilde focused on the briefcase.
“Who do I deliver it to?”
“A man named Lester Trench.”
Lester Trench.
Wilde knew the name.
The man’s business card was stuffed in the envelope of money Wilde found in the boxer’s hotel room.
His heart raced.
Something was going on, something dangerous.
He needed time to figure it out.
It was too complicated to piece together in the next two minutes.
“If you want the job, I need you to leave right away,” Strike said.
“You mean today?”
“No, I mean right now, as soon as I leave.”
Wilde chewed on it.
He couldn’t let the case get away.
It had secrets to tell him.
He blew smoke and said, “I’ll need an hour to wrap a few things up.”
Strike looked at his watch.
“Okay. Be sure you take your gun.”
26
Day Seven
August 9, 1952
Friday Morning
At the window Wilde set a book of matches on fire and watched the lawyer, Jack Strike, through the flames as the man slid into the passenger side of a shinny black Lincoln and pulled off as soon as the door shut. When the vehicle turned at the corner Wilde got a good enough look at the driver to tell it was a female. A fashionable hat kept her face from view.
She was probably Strike’s personal secretary, that or a lawyer in the firm, or possibly a client.
It didn’t matter.
Two minutes later Jori-Rey showed up, her face obscured by oversized sunglasses and an equally offensive hat. In her hand was a bag of donuts. She set it on the desk, pulled one out—cake with chocolate frosting—and held it to Wilde’s mouth.
He took a bite.
She took the second and said, “You were pretty rough last night.”
“Sorry.”
“That wasn’t a complaint.” Her eyes fell to the briefcase. “What’s that?”
“That’ something I’m going to take to El Paso.”
“El Paso?”
He nodded.
“That Rojo’s territory,” she said.
“I know.”
Wilde filled her in on the assignment. “Here’s the interesting part. It’s going to a lawyer in El Paso by the name of Lester Trench. I know he’s connected to the boxer—the guy we dumped over the cliff last night. But the guy who hired me this morning, Jack Strike, doesn’t know that I know that. The only reason I know about the connection is because I found the El
Paso lawyer’s business card in the boxer’s hotel room.”
“So what do you think is going on?”
He tapped two smokes out and lit them up.
“Hold on,” he said. “There’s another thing of interest. The woman I found in the bottom of the well, Alley London, worked at the same firm as the lawyer who hired me this morning, Jack Strike. The firm’s Banders & Rock. I found their phone number on a piece of paper in the ashtray of the boxer’s car. So the two lawyers are both connected to the boxer.”
“Do you think Strike killed her?”
Wilde blew smoke.
“It’s possible, hell, maybe even probable. He’s capable of it. Two seconds of looking into his eyes will tell you that.”
She wiped frosting from Wilde’s lip with her finger and then sucked it off.
“Don’t go to El Paso.”
“Why?”
“We both know why.”
That was true.
He’d end up dead.
He went to the window and looked down.
The lawyer wasn’t there.
No strange faces were lurking around.
Still, a sense of danger drifted up.
“I was going to end up there sooner or later anyway,” he said. “It may as well be sooner.”
“Then I’m coming with you.”
Wilde frowned.
“Around me is the last place you should be.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” she said. “You only need to know one thing. If you go, you’ll either have me sitting in the seat next to you or following behind in my own car. If it ends up being the latter, you won’t be able to put your hand on my leg.”
Wilde blew smoke.
“This isn’t a game.”
She hardened her face.
“No, it isn’t. I’m going to Rojo. He’s either going to tell me where Maria is or I’m going to kill him. I don’t care if it takes the rest of my life.”
Wilde pulled a donut out and took a bite.
“Does he know about you?”
“You mean that Sudden Dance has a sister?”
“Right.”
“No,” she said.
