Till the Butchers Cut Him Down (27 page)

“But basically it was just Haddon, the gofer, and a few mentions of Zola?”

“Yeah.”

“Anything else you can tell me?”

He shook his head, eyes still on the money.

I set it on the table, watched as he grabbed it and tucked it away without bothering to count it. He stood up, hesitated,
then started around the table toward me, a swagger in his step now that he’d collected.

“Something else I can do for you, lady?” he asked. “I got pills, crystal, blow. Or maybe you want something more interesting?”

Suddenly my emotions boiled over: rage at Suits and his cohorts, disgust at the greed and corruption that had ended Anna’s
life, had almost ended mine. I took it out on this pathetic loser, brought the gun between us before he could come any closer.
My finger played with its trigger; I had to force myself to ease off.

Spitz’s eyes widened. He made a strangling sound, took a step backwards.

I breathed in deeply, calming myself. Said, “Get the hell out of here.”

Spitz turned and ran for the shelter of the willows.

* * *

“Why not stay over?” Amos Ritter said. “It’s late, you’ll never get a direct flight to San Francisco. I’ve got plenty of room—”

“No, it’s better I leave tonight. Thanks for the loan of the gun. Thanks for everything.” I hugged him and started down the
steps of his Gothic horror.

“Come back sometime,” he called. “Any time.” Then added, “I wish you’d reconsider.”

I shook my head, waved, and ran toward my rental car. Amos’s suggestion made sense, but I couldn’t take him up on it. I was
afraid that if I paused to rest I’d interrupt the momentum that had begun as my plane streaked toward the rising sun yesterday
morning. I needed that momentum more than ever now, needed it to combat the heavy weight of the knowledge I’d gleaned here.

River Park, Monora, Pennsylvania: scene of a drug buy.

Keystone Steel, Monora, Pennsylvania: scene of a drug frame.

The buy and the frame were, I feared, the proverbial tip of the iceberg. God only knew what further crimes and corruption
I’d uncover before I was through delving into Suits’s life and organization. I could see a conflict brewing ahead, between
my loyalty to my old friend Suits and my loyalty to my old friend the truth. And deep down I knew that when I resolved it,
my client might take a fall from which I couldn’t—and wouldn’t—save him.

This was one of those days when I hated my work. I wished I’d never heard of Ed Bodine, never seen his unmarked grave in the
Nevada desert. I wished I’d never seen Monora and River Park. I wished I’d never seen the ruins of Keystone Steel and Moonshine
House.

Most of all, I wished that Suitcase Gordon had never walked back into my life.

October 3

The pay phone’s slot swallowed my credit card, and I punched out eleven digits. Thousands of miles and two time zones away,
the bell rang in an empty ranch house. I didn’t expect Hy to answer, but this slight link would help me get through what promised
to be a long, lonely night. I slouched lower in the booth, counting rings, picturing the dark house and the stark, moon-shot
landscape surrounding it.

And Hy’s sleepy voice said, “Hello?”

“You’re there!”

“Uh, yeah. Where’re you?” He was alert now; he had that ability to come awake quickly and fully.

“Dallas–Fort Worth Airport.”

“Good God, why?”

“Because the only flight west that I could get from Pittsburgh was here. Now I can either hippety-hop all over, to Denver
to Salt Lake to L.A. to San Francisco, or wait for the first direct flight at eight-forty in the morning.”

“So you went to Pennsylvania, too. Thought you would. But what about flights to Reno? If you can get there, I could pick you
up in the Citabria.”

“I checked on Reno and Las Vegas. Won’t work. How come you’re back home so soon?”

“My business in San Diego turned out to be more profitable than I expected, so I canceled out on the East Coast. Was your
trip profitable also?”

“Uh-huh.” There was an edge to my voice now; his failure to elaborate on what he’d done in San Diego annoyed me.

Hy ignored it. “What’d you find out?”

“Plenty.”

He waited. When I didn’t go on, he asked, “So what’d you do with my Land Rover?”

“It’s in long-term parking at McCarran Field.”

“Good place for it.”

“Look, I’ll return it as soon—”

“No problem, McCone. I got a buddy owes me a favor; we can fly down there and he’ll drive it back. So what’s up?”

Because he’d resolved the problem of the Land Rover, I relented and filled him in on the details of the past few days, concluding,
“I really need to get to San Francisco and locate Suits before he does himself or somebody else serious damage.”

“What makes you think he’s there?”

“Facts, plus a dash of instinct. He may not be in the city itself, but I’ll bet he’s somewhere in northern California.”

Hy was silent, thinking it over. “When does the Denver flight leave?”

I glanced over at the gate. “It’s about to board right now.”

“So what’re you waiting for?”

My lips curved in a slow smile. “I’ll call you from Salt Lake if I get lonesome.”

Northern California

October

“Shar? God, what’re you doing up this early on a Sunday?”

“I could ask the same of you.” Rae had a hard time rising on a work morning, let alone a weekend; it was only eight-twenty,
but over the phone her voice sounded curiously alert.

“I’ve been up all night,” she said.

“Working?”

“No.”

“You finally meet somebody?”

“Well, sort of. I’ve been having the most incredible … um, sensual experience.”

“Who is he?”

“It’s kind of hard to explain. Listen, why are you calling?”

“I’m trying to locate Mick. I just got into SFO, and he has my car, so I want him to pick me up. I called both my house and
my office, but I got the machines. Have you seen him?”

“… Not since around eight last night. He came in while I was fooling with your computer—I’m thinking of getting one like it
and knew you wouldn’t mind if I tried it out—and took off again.”

“He say where he was going?”

“No, we only talked for a minute. I told him I was on line to Wisdom and thanked him for letting me know about it. He said
something … let me think. Yeah, he pulled a fax out of your machine and said he’d just received some information that he wouldn’t
have gotten so fast if it hadn’t been for a contact he’d made through the bulletin boards. Then he took off in a hurry.”

“What’s this about bulletin boards and … Wisdom, is it?”

“Wisdom’s a computer network. You remember a few weeks ago when I gave up on the bar-and-club circuit and started hanging
around the Technomat?”

“The … oh, right.” The singles scene hadn’t worked out for Rae; she’d met what she described as two total nerds, innumerable
alcoholics, a guy who was into handcuffs, and an attorney who was well known to clerks in the lingerie departments of various
downtown stores. Next her friend Vanessa had told her about a place to do her laundry in Noe Valley that was hooked into a
citywide computer network; while you waited for your clothes to wash and dry, you could drink coffee and communicate with
other similarly occupied people in other laundries via computer terminals that were set into little café tables. No romance
had developed from that, either, but for a while there Rae had the cleanest clothes in town.

“So,” I said, “Wisdom’s another of these networks?”

“Nationwide. You yourself subscribe to it.”

“I do?”

“Well, I guess Mick does.”

And I knew on whose nickel.

“Anyway,” she went on, “there’re various bulletin boards where you can post messages, and people reply to them, and eventually
you get a dialogue going. I met two guys through the Frank Conversations board, and I’ve got this thing going with them.”

In spite of my concern with what Mick was up to, I couldn’t help but ask, “Separately or together?”

“Uh, together.”

My God, what would she get into next?

“It’s not anything sleazy like phone sex, Shar!”

“Did I suggest that?”

“You didn’t have to; I know how your mind works. But it’s really … like all the barriers to total communication are removed.
You mesh intellectually, and then you just …”

“Yes?”

“I can’t explain.”

“Come on, Rae, remove the barriers to total communication and tell me.” Needling her was often irresistible.

“I
knew
you wouldn’t understand. Why did I ever mention it in the first place?”

“Okay, we’ll drop the subject—for now.” I got back to business. “Will you do me a favor?”

“Sure.” She sounded relieved.

“Thanks. Go to my office and see if the fax Mick got is still there.”

She set the receiver down, and I heard her footsteps patter away. In her absence I tried to conjure up an image of what incredibly
sensual experience one could have with two men via computer terminal. Nothing materialized. Well, I wasn’t going to worry
about it; Rae was a big girl, and it was time I started treating her as an equal—even if she did manage to get herself into
the damnedest situations.

There was a rustle of paper and Rae said, “Looks like the right one—at least the date matches. It’s something to do with a
military service record.”

“Sidney Blessing’s?”

“Uh … right.” She read me the details. Sid Blessing had been an explosives technician in the army.

When she finished, I said, “I need another favor. Will you see if Mick has a file on Blessing?”

“Will you promise not to nag me to tell you more about the guys I met through Wisdom?”

“Yes,” I lied.

“Okay.” She went away, came back. “Got it.”

“There should be a Modesto address in there.”

Pages rustled. “Seven-oh-four Cassie Court.”

“Thanks, Rae. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Wait—any message for Mick, in case I see him?”

“No. I have a feeling I’ll be seeing him soon.”

* * *

Altamont Pass is the gateway to the Central Valley for those approaching from the Bay Area. The 580 freeway cuts through barren,
rolling hills that are dotted with hundreds of science-fictional wind turbines. On a good day their appendages whirl against
the sky, giving off flashes of silver; on a bad day they drag or remain stubbornly still. This morning was one of the good
ones; the mills spun briskly, and I imagined they were waving in greeting as I drove by in the compact I’d rented at the airport.

Maybe it was an omen that everything would turn out okay, I thought. Maybe Suits wouldn’t kill anybody or get himself killed.
Maybe I’d reach him in time. …

Once over the pass, I was into level brown-and-green land, stretching fifty miles toward the Sierra Nevada. Most outsiders
think of California as Los Angeles and San Francisco, or perhaps Yosemite and Big Sur; few realize that a vast portion of
our state is farmland, as fertile and flat as the Midwest. In recent decades the farmers of the four-hundred-mile-long Central
Valley have been hard hit by tough economic conditions and persistent droughts; farms have been sold off piecemeal to developers,
and some of our best agricultural land is now under asphalt and concrete.

Once-peaceful little valley towns have swelled to tractrimmed bedroom communities for commuters from the Bay Area. Families
move there for the relatively low home prices, the schools, the crime-free atmosphere, the small-town life. But too-rapid
growth has brought much of what the newcomers are seeking to escape: crime, higher prices, racial tension, and resentment
from longtime residents. If future growth isn’t planned and controlled, one day the motto on Modesto’s town arch—Water, Wealth,
Contentment, Health—may describe nothing more than a memory.

Cassie Court was in an older tract on the far north side of town. All the surrounding streets bore women’s names; it made
me wonder whether the developer had been paying homage to female friends and relatives or if he’d merely picked them out of
a what-to-name-the-baby book. Enid Tomchuck Blessing’s house stood at the far end of the cul-de-sac where the tract backed
up on a walnut grove; light yellow with dark brown trim, its single-story design repeated that of every third dwelling. I
glanced around, half expecting to see my old red MG parked at the curb, but if Mick had come here, he’d already departed.

The young woman who answered the door of number 704 was very pale; dark smudges underscored her eyes, and strain lines marred
her oval face; her long, straight hair looked dry and brittle. When she saw me, her fingers tightened reflexively on the doorknob.

I introduced myself and handed her my card, asked if I could talk with her about her husband’s death. She barely glanced at
the card before crumpling it and dropping it to the floor.

“First the others, now you,” she said. “I told the blond kid I didn’t want to talk to him when he called a few days ago, so
he showed up anyway, and—”

“Mick Savage was here?”

“Last night. Real late. The bell woke Ariel, and she cried for hours. She misses her father.”

Dammit, Mick! “I apologize for my assistant’s intrusion. I hope he didn’t make trouble.”

“You don’t call a screaming kid trouble? That was enough for me. I ran the son of a bitch off with Sid’s old hunting rifle.
And don’t think it wasn’t loaded!”

My God, what if she’d shot him? I’d better do something about Mick—and the sooner the better.

Tomchuck added, “I suppose the other one was with your agency, too.”

“Describe him.”

“Skinny little guy, looks kind of like a rat.
Total
asshole.” She grasped her wrist, exposed the underside of her forearm; it was purpled in a series of bruises that looked
like finger marks.

“He did that to you?”

She nodded. “You really ought to rethink your hiring policies, if you know what I mean.”

Suits, getting violent with a young woman. Not good, not good at all. “He’s not affiliated with me,” I said, “but I know him.
When was he here?”