by Lex Lander
When I dried up, Rozon said, ‘Did you know any of the assailants, in particular the one who was shot?’
‘I’m pretty sure I didn’t. I didn’t get a good look at two of them. The little guy with the shotgun was a complete stranger. The dead guy was vaguely familiar. I may have seen him in a restaurant or someplace.’
‘Uh-huh.’ Gratrix sucked his pen. ‘What about Mrs Heider? Did she need to shoot him?’
‘She thought she did. She did it in the belief that she was saving one or both of us. Legitimate justifiable homicide.’
Gratrix shot an ironic glance at Rozon.
‘Can you believe this guy? Maybe he should be doing the interviewing.’
‘I know enough about the law to know that much. You can’t pin a murder rap on her.’
‘Tell us why you were in Mrs Heider’s car. Thumbing a ride, were you?’
I grinned askew at him.
‘We met at her house. Purely social. She had to leave to attend a conference, and was dropping me off in town.’
‘At your new hotel presumably.’
‘You know so much, Detective.’
‘A lot more than you think, Smart Alec,’ Rozon snapped.
‘Now listen, you two. I’m a law abiding citizen.’ I managed to say this with a straight face. ‘I’m cooperating. You’ve no cause to come down hard on me, much as you’d like to. On this occasion, I’m an innocent bystander to a shooting in self defence. Get pissed off at me if you like, if it makes you feel good, but it won’t alter the facts, and you can’t pin anything on me.’
‘Sure we can,’ Gratrix said. ‘And if we don’t, it’s because we choose not to. Capiche?’
‘For Christ’s sake!’ I exploded, kicking my chair back and standing up. ‘I want to see somebody in authority.’
‘Tone it down, Freeman. And pick up that chair or we’ll book you for damaging municipal property.’
A rap came at the door while I was righting the chair. Rozon went to answer it, spoke to someone in the corridor, and called to Gratrix.
‘Chief wants us,’ she said.
‘Maybe he’s been looking in,’ I threw after them.
They let me stew until past midnight. My next visit was from Gratrix solo. Maura was off the hook, he informed me, which meant so was I. Gratrix chaperoned me down a corridor to the lobby, where Maura and I were reunited. She was pale, her hair unruly as if she had been running her fingers through it, her make-up smudged as if she had been crying. I felt for her.
She had company in the shape of Nick Heider. We exchanged cool greetings.
‘You just passing through?’ I asked him.
‘I’m here as Maura’s attorney.’
‘How did you know she was here? I mean she wasn’t being charged or anything.’
He gestured airily. ‘The Heider name has a certain amount of pull in this town. They let her call me.’
‘You okay?’ I asked Maura.
She nodded, dredged up a weak smile.
‘You?’
‘Right as rain. Let’s get out of here.’
‘I’ll take you home, Maura,’ Nick said.
‘No, thanks.’ She turned to me. ‘Will you drive me?’
‘Sure I will. Is your car here?’
‘Yes.’
Nick’s displeasure was unconcealed.
‘Carl’s going to be hopping when he hears about this,’ he said in an undertone. ‘He already had good reason to be sore at you, Freeman, and that was before this latest fuck-up.’
That was a fact.
I was working on a suitable riposte when Gratrix sauntered over.
‘Two of a kind,’ he remarked, hands in pockets; his tie had gotten twisted and was now back to front below the knot. Sartorially inclined he was not. ‘If ever you need a lawyer, Freeman, Nick Heider will do just swell. He’s unbeatable at getting acquittals for vermin like you.’
Inside my skull something snapped, and I went for him. He ducked my swing with insulting ease and came at me with a roundhouse of his own, which I blocked, catching him with a hook to the side of his neck. It made him stagger. By then the half dozen or so uniformed police about the place had piled into me, and I ended up on the hard floor with a cop hanging on to each arm and a third sitting on me.
‘Aw, let him up,’ I heard Gratrix say. ‘I had it coming. Shouldn’t have ribbed him.’
When I got up he was rubbing his neck and his eyes were twinkling. It struck me that this was his idea of fun.
‘No hard feelings, fella?’ he said.
‘No. Just do me a favour, will you? Go pick on a real criminal.’
His hoot of laughter chased Maura and me out of the building and down the steps to her car.
We talked long into the small hours over an endless supply of real coffee and decaff. The cats joined us for a while but eventually grew weary of our debate and made for the circle of warmth cast by the gas-log fire, where they flopped untidily on the semi-circular rug. They were identical except that Griswold had white paws.
Maura urged me to return Silvano’s confession.
‘You think that will make him go away?’ I quipped. ‘Before Cesare got shot maybe, but not now. He’ll be looking for revenge, the same as your brother-in-law.’
‘No, he won’t,’ she argued. ‘You didn’t do it, I did.’
‘That makes no difference. In the first place, we were together, in the second place Cesare wouldn’t have been there, in the line of fire, if I hadn’t made Silvano write the note. Not only that ...’
When I dried up, she prompted me.
‘Not only that what?’
‘For me, it’s as if I killed him. Now I need to protect you too.’
A clock chimed three. Outside a wind had risen and was buffeting the French window. Maura was sitting on the edge of the couch, very uptight, biting her lip.
‘Carl will provide protection, you don’t need to worry about that.’
‘It’s not Carl’s job. It’s mine. If I hadn’t been in your car you would never have been involved, never have shot Cesare. It’s my fault, my obligation, and that’s all there is to say about it.’
She went quiet and very still, her damaged make-up and tousled hair not detracting an iota from her loveliness.
‘I’ll protect you from Tosi, and whatever else you need protection from. Including the Heider family.’
She took a shuddering breath. ‘Yes. Them. We’ll keep to the plan then, shall we? Fly to Mono Lake.’
‘Are you sure you’re up to it?’
‘Sure I’m up to it. Wrestling with demons over killing a man won’t stop me functioning.’
The fragile porcelain exterior was deceptive. The core was made of steel, if not titanium.
‘Let me freshen your coffee,’ she said, the mundane practical side ever present.
While she bustled about with the percolator, I sauntered around the room and reflected on the latest developments and what they meant for me, for her, and for us – if the “us” wasn’t just fanciful thinking on my part. For me, I was no worse off: enemies on all sides, though Silvano Tosi would be more implacable than he was when recovery of a mere note was at stake. He would be set on a terminal result. The Heiders would still be hunting for Jeff’s killer, and the police had the potential to bust my fake identity wide open, with unknown consequences.
At any rate, the incident with Cesare had removed any conflict of priorities. To save my skin, I should leave. To save Maura’s, I would stay, and “maybe” didn’t enter into it. My obligation, I had called it, and it wasn’t for walking out on.
With our cups replenished, we chatted on, away from the subject of our joint jeopardy. She was curious to know how I came to be a contract killer. When I explained that I had simply progressed from doing the job for the British government, to doing it for profit, she didn’t quite go along with the parallel.
‘Doing something for your country isn’t the same as doing it for money.’
‘That’s one
way of looking at it. Here’s the other: the people you kill are usually doing what they do for their country. They may be perfectly worthy people, who just happened to be born somewhere else. Like Sting said in his song – the Russians love their children too.’ That hit a spot; she nodded pensively. ‘In my private enterprise role, sure, I do it for money. But as I explained to you already, I only kill villains. To me, it all balances out.’
It would, of course. I was trying to make myself appear less of a villain than my victims. It’s called whitewashing.
‘As self-justification goes, it’s not bad,’ she said with a faint smile. ‘I want to think good things of you, Drew. You said you wanted to stop. Will you stop?’
Lying to her would have made me feel bad, so I circled around a direct answer.
‘If I can, I will.’
From there, thankfully, we moved on to the Heiders and how she fitted in with them.
‘We rub along together because we have to. They won’t let me go because I know too much about their illegal operations.’
‘It surprises me that they’ve let you live. They’re not squeamish.’
‘It’s mostly out of respect for Jeff. I was his wife, which makes me family of sorts. Richard wouldn’t stand for it either. I was technically his step-mother, and we had a good relationship. Still do.’
‘Would you leave if you could?’ As I spoke, it occurred to me I knew zero about her background. ‘Do you have blood relatives anywhere?’
She laughed a brittle laugh. ‘Sure. My parents, up in Washington State, very snooty and loaded to the hilt. Second generation, from good German junker stock. Our full family name is von Beck. They practice heel-clicking every morning.’ She waved that remark away even as she uttered it. ‘Sorry... I’m being facetious. What they did do, is wash their hands of me when I married – as they put it – a hoodlum. I can just imagine throwing myself at their mercy with the mob yapping at my heels. Then there’s my brother, who’s twenty-two with a brain that’s gone to mush thanks to every drug you can name. That’s it, that’s my family.’
It made mine seem close and loving, and even normal by comparison.
‘But would you leave?’ I persisted.
‘Oh, yes.’ She was back to being agitated, perching on the edge of the couch. ‘But I can’t. You’ll see why tomorrow ... I mean, today, when we go to Mono Lake.’
‘Do you have enough money to live on, if you did take off?’
‘I’m okay. I’d lose out on the casino though. Jeff willed his fifty per cent share to me.’
‘He wasn’t all bad then.’
‘No. No, not all bad.’
‘Does it bother you that the money that financed it came from the Heiders’ rackets?’
‘I’m not sure. Someday yes, other days I don’t agonise over it. In any case, they wouldn’t let me walk away from it, even if I handed over my share.’
Her eyelids were drooping. She hid a yawn behind her cupped hand, smiled apologetically. I was ready for the sack myself. Then she asked me if I wanted to stay.
‘Well, thanks, but ...’
‘You’ll be safer here than at your hotel,’ she pointed out. ‘Nobody knows you’re here, certainly not the Tosis. I’ll feel safer too.’
Her insistence almost but not quite made me jump to the wrong conclusion.
‘The guest room’s always made up,’ she added, as if she read what was going on in my mind.
She was right about the safety. About the guest room too. It was too soon for the alternative, and it was the wrong moment. To go to bed with Maura in the aftermath of the shooting would have made it seem like a knee-jerk response, a means of lessening the trauma. If our relationship was destined to go that far it had to come from mutual desire, not as a distraction from all the nastiness of life.
‘What time do the servants arrive?’
‘They don’t. I let them go. A cleaning lady comes for a few hours on Tuesdays and Fridays, and a gardener three times a week. That’s all.’
‘You don’t mind being alone?’
‘I don’t.’ She glanced at me, then away. ‘That is, I didn’t.’
‘You’ll need something warm to wear,’ Maura warned me. ‘It’s pretty cold at the lake this late in the year. I’m taking a parka. There’s an old one of Jeff’s lying around someplace, if you don’t mind a dead man’s cast-offs.’
‘I’m not superstitious.’
The parka she dug out for me was olive green, with a paint stain on the front. Otherwise, it was clean and fitted me well enough. Trying it on gave me a slightly creepy feeling, nothing worse than that.
We left for the airport just after eight, with the sun already over the hills and threatening a hot day. A car tailed us but made no effort to close up, so it had to be the police. Forensics had held on to Maura’s gun. It was just a formality but it left us without protection in case of another showdown with the Tosis. My own weapon was still in the room safe at the Grand Sierra.
Maura kept her aircraft at North Las Vegas Airport, which was located on the edge of town beside the I-95. It boasted two runways, suitable for most light aircraft and business jets. She left me in the car while she reported to the control tower for the latest weather report.
‘It’s looking good,’ she told me when she returned to the car. ‘Maybe some cumulus over the Sierra Nevada around late afternoon, but it won’t be extensive and we should be able to avoid it.’
Reassuring. My macho side might not be entirely at ease with a woman pilot, so benign weather conditions were a welcome dividend.
We parked in a reserved space beside a finned Oldsmobile 98, throwback from the fifties. From there it was a short walk to the aircraft park. Maura was dressed in cream pants with a blue sweater, and sneakers; she carried a shoulder bag and her grey parka. I was still in yesterday’s gear: grey denim pants, short-sleeved shirt, and hauling a sport coat and Jeff’s parka. I hadn’t been able to shave, but being fair-haired my stubble didn’t show.
‘That’s mine,’ she said, pointing at a sleek twin-prop job with white and red paintwork, in a lineup of half a dozen light aircraft. ‘It’s a Piper Seneca.’
‘Very nice.’
One light aircraft was pretty much like another to me. A means of transportation. I peeked inside. It had six seats, in a two abreast layout.
‘It has a range of seven hundred miles, so we’ll be able to do the return flight without refuelling.’
‘Great,’ I said, trying to inject some enthusiasm to match hers. Flying left me cold.
‘I need to check a few bits and pieces,’ she said, hoisting herself aboard. ‘If you want to take a stroll and look at some of the other machines, I’ll be about ten minutes.’
‘Right.’
I did as she suggested. Exchanged ‘good mornings’ with an enthusiast who was taking apart his engine, and peeked into a few cockpits for the sake of form. If the police tail had followed us into the airport, he was keeping his head down.
By 9.40am we were taxiing towards runway 30R. Maura was wearing headphones and working on her pre-flight check list. Messages were coming thick and fast from ground control for various aircraft both in the air and on the ground.
Maura contacted the control tower.
‘North Vegas Tower this is Seneca five-five-seven-mike-echo requesting clearance to taxi.’
‘Seneca five-five-seven-mike-echo, this is North Vegas Tower,’ the radio blurted. ‘Stand-by to taxi.’
‘Shouldn’t be long now,’ Maura said to me.
‘Wind calm, visibility ten. Seneca five-mike-echo, you are cleared to taxi.’
The Seneca began to roll. Maura was still occupied with her check list, chanting softly to herself as she clocked each item: ‘Oil pressure – green, oil temperature – right engine good, left engine good, mixture okay, flaps zero degrees ...’
‘Can I help?’ I asked.
‘Thanks, maybe next time. Don’t worry, I’m used to doing it on my own.’
More
radio traffic, mostly incoming for other aircraft in the vicinity. We were trundling along the taxiway at about twenty mph, heading for runway 30R. Ahead of us a single-prop plane was weaving from side to side.
‘That Cessna’s a flying school plane,’ Maura said. ‘Must be a student doing the driving.’
The Cessna entered the runway and spurted forward, the noise of its racing engine audible above ours. It didn’t travel far before separating from the asphalt and soaring like a bird released from a cage. A burst of static from the receiver and Seneca five-mike-echo was cleared for take-off on Runway30R. Maura steered us onto it and opened the throttle. The centre line dashes flickered beneath the Seneca’s nose, faster and faster.
Then, all at once, the ground was falling away and we were banking to the left.
‘Gear up,’ Maura called out to herself, and the undercarriage obediently retracted with a double clunk as if operated by a voice recognition system. The mountains ahead angled across the divided windshield, left to right. We picked up speed.
‘One twenty knots,’ she muttered, fiddling with the throttle. ‘Landing lights off.’
I sneaked a look at her. She was multi-tasking with several controls at once, but every movement was fluid and coordinated.
Catching me watching her, she raised a quizzical eyebrow. ‘You okay?’
‘Everything’s hunky-dory. I’m seriously impressed.’
‘No need to be. I’ve been flying since I was seventeen – that’s fifteen years, in case you’re wondering.’
‘Five-mike-echo you’re on your own,’ the radio squawked. ‘Have a pleasant one.’
‘Thank you, Tower. See you later.’
Maura told me she was setting our course at three hundred degrees exactly, approximating to west-north-west. Cruising at 200 knots we would be at the lake in an hour and a half. The sky ahead was pale blue and clear, apart from some cirrus way up high. To the left a mountain reared above the rest, tipped with snow.
‘That’s Charleston Peak,’ Maura said, pointing. ‘Ten thousand feet. Theoretically we could fly above it, but we’re on VFR, so we’re not allowed.’
‘VFR?’
‘Visual Flight Rules. In layman terms, it means we fly with visual reference to the ground and the horizon. The alternative is IFR, Instrument Flight Rules. Those are for aircraft navigating by reference to instruments in the cockpit. Usually only airliners and large transport aircraft. Military flights too, I guess.’