by Robert Ward
“Philly?” she called, her voice in the “guilty sweet,” too high register.
“Out here, baby,” Phil said, going for the mocking but not too mocking voice so she couldn't tell if he was psychotically angry or not.
She pranced out onto the balcony, looking kind of too fresh. He knew the look. It was the fresh-makeup-and-combed-hair look, the identity a guilty woman assumed after fucking her brains out for the last five hours.
He took a deep breath and smiled at her.
“Did you and Kiki have fun?”
“His name is Ziko, as you well know, Phil,” she said, plopping down in the recliner and looking out at the lovely mountains.
“Yes, of course,” he said. “Did you have a good time?”
“You bet,” she said. “What did you do, nap?”
The way she snapped out “nap” was unbearable. It sounded all hard-edged and metallic, like two pieces of chrome banging together. “Nap,” as in “you old piece of shit who can't get it up anymore, Flaccid Guy!”
Phil felt his temperature rise. The way she had pushed and pushed him to make the business successful. The way she had made him cut corners. Why, he would have been happy with half the money they sold it for, but Ms. Greedy had to have it all, every goddamned last dime, no matter who they hurt.
And, he thought, looking at her with fresh eyes, they had hurt plenty of people. Hundreds of them—no, be honest, probably thousands of them—over the years.
But it wasn't him. No, it was Ms. Nickel and Dime, gotta have it all. It wasn't him who was greedy.
Was it?
He looked at her sitting there on the patio with her legs propped up on the drinks table. He thought about how he used to live to see those thighs. How important it had been, how impossibly wonderful her breasts had seemed.
But now, now her legs, her breasts, her ass—none of it did a thing for him. Nothing at all.
He thought of Annie, impossibly cute Annie, with whom he would soon be bopping in the boudoir, and he felt such happiness and freedom.
He was still almost young and cool, and he didn't have to listen to this skank ever again.
He started to ease into a wild sexual fantasy about Annie, but Dee Dee's chrome-clank voice cut through his reverie.
“I'm not going to be around tonight,” she said. “Ziko and I are dining together at a special party with his friends.”
“That's wonderful,” Phil said. “May you have a wonderful time together, Dee Dee. And don't worry about me because I've run into someone and I'm also dining out. And I might add she's way hotter than you.”
Dee Dee looked horrified. Her lips curled up and her eyes turned into rattlesnake slits.
“You son of a bitch. What is she, some kind of nurse/whore you paid to change your bedpan?”
She threw her cocktail in his face and headed back across the room.
“Have a great night, loser!” she screamed, opening the door.
Phil threw his own glass after her.
His head was splitting, so he popped an Advil. It was all over. This relationship was history. He had a new thing going with lovely, youthful Annie. In a mere two hours!
Better pop a Viagra, too, and get ready to rock and roll!
Chapter Twenty-six
Michelle was furious with Jack. He hadn't called her, and he and Oscar seemed to be running around in circles.
She should have handled this herself all along.
What she needed to do, she had decided, was to stake out Lucky's place until he led her to wherever he was holding Jen. She should have done that in the beginning, really. But she still had a hard time believing that Lucky would take her sister. There was no need for it. She had found out that he was pulling some kind of deal with drugs for the old people at Blue Wolf, some concoction that was supposed to make them feel younger for a while. She had been half kidding when she had mentioned to him that she wanted in on it. It had to be bullshit anyway, right?
But Lucky had become furious, told her that she had no idea what she was getting into. That made her all the more curious, so she had followed him around for a couple of days until she saw him meeting with his supposed enemy, Alex Williams.
She didn't really know what they were up to but she had tortured him a little while they were having sex, telling him again that she wanted in on whatever it was they were doing. That was when he warned her again.
And so she had backed off, had the lunch with him and her sister. But Lucky had gotten furious at her. She had thought it was because they didn't want a threesome but now she understood.
He had gotten angry because he felt the pressure from his boss, Williams.
They had decided to kidnap Jen in order to shut her up.
She had known she could never get Jen back on her own, so she had sent for the most capable man she knew, Jack Harper.
She had believed that Jack would find Jen, bring her back, and the villains would lose their bargaining chip. Then they would have to pay her.
Only Jack hadn't gotten anywhere. And now she had started to really worry. Maybe she had it wrong. Maybe they had no intention of giving Jen back.
It came down to one thing: she would have to get Jen back herself. She would follow the bastard until he went to her sister's prison and she would kill him and they would get away.
Which was what she was doing right now.
She sat on her motorcycle and used her Leupold Wind River binoculars to keep tabs on the entrance of Lucky's hangout, El Coyote. Anywhere Lucky Avila went she was going as well. Maybe it was a lame idea, but at least she was doing something.
And now, after sitting there for two and a half hours, it looked as though her patience was about to pay off. Lucky had just left El Coyote in his black Hummer, with that giant idiot who worked for him at the wheel of the car.
She waited until they were a little way down the highway, then quickly went after them. Thank God it was getting dark. She could stay far enough behind them on the twisting road so they couldn't see her.
Still, she worried that they might catch sight of her on a straightaway, though with her helmet on Lucky probably wouldn't guess who she was.
They had only gone about nine or ten miles, to just beyond the Red Sombrero, when they turned off the road.
She slowed down, waited for them to get a few hundred feet up the road, and then made the turn herself and cruised after them.
This must be it, Michelle thought. There would be some old mine out here, or one of the hundreds of ancient Indian caves. She'd heard of people living in them for years until the government came and threw them out.
But if you were Lucky Avila you could pay off some government worker and no one would be the wiser.
She felt a twinge of excitement. Yes, this was it... she was certain.
She recalled something she'd read on the Internet about New Mexico's underground tunnels. Many of them had started out as caves but then various business groups and apocalyptic doomsayers had connected the caves using giant boring machines, something called the “ Subterre.” It was like a giant submarine, which some sources said was run by both humans and aliens.
Michelle didn't believe any of this, but she had heard of tunnels under the earth from her own grandmother and from other members of the crew she'd been in. After all, there were drug tunnels from Tijuana to San Diego, tunnels with air conditioning.
She knew that was true because she'd been in them.
And the Indians of the Taos Pueblo were said to have built an underground system in case the white men who had tried for years to wipe them out should ever come after them again. Just like the tunnels in Vietnam, which saved the villagers from napalm bombs.
It was wild stuff, all of it, but Michelle had been coming to Santa Fe long enough to know that things that sounded like sci-fi or the ravings of a lunatic could often be reality here.
She parked her bike, took out her Glock, and moved through a small passage in the rocks. She was terrified that she woul
d make a telltale noise and that Lucky would pounce on her.
She moved forward through a wash and came to two giant boulders. There was a slender crack between them and she could see out into the endless desert.
There, the moonlight streaming down, she saw Lucky standing above a kneeling, whimpering Zollie.
With his right hand, Lucky stuck his .38 in Zollie's face. In Lucky's left hand was a plastic bag with something in it.
“You took the hog, didn't you?”
Zollie shook his head.
“No, I didn't.”
“I told you we needed Biggie. I told you and you just ignored what I said, right?”
“No, honest I didn't,” Zollie said. He was crying now and shaking his head back and forth.
“Tell me the truth,” Lucky said. “I need to know for sure. If you tell me the truth everything will be all right. I can still protect you.”
Zollie wept harder and Michelle felt panic sweep through her. What should she do?
“Tell me now, Zol,” Lucky said. “You know you want to.”
“All right,” Zollie said. “But you promise you'll let me go?”
“Of course I will,” Lucky said.
“All right then. I thought if you guys were going to do some experiments on Biggie that you would bring him back afterward. I thought I could nurse him back to health. But when I got him in the car, I saw how cut up he was. So I just drove out of there with him. You understand that, doncha?”
“Of course, I do,” Lucky said. “ See, that wasn't so bad. So where did you take Biggie?”
“I took him home to bury him.”
Without a word, Lucky smashed the gun into Zollie's face, breaking his nose, causing blood to gush down his shirt.
The big man fell over on his side, screaming in a high-pitched wail.
“Liar,” Lucky said. “ You know you can't lie to me like that. Get up. Back on your knees.”
Lucky crawled slowly up to his knees, crying and bleeding.
“Now tell me where you took him,” Lucky said.
“I took him to the Jackalope. It was my shift there. I carried him to this place in their old storehouse so nobody would see him in my truck. I looked him over and realized you guys had operated on him. I was going to take him home after my shift and bury him. It was very upsetting. He was like family to me.”
“I thought I was like family to you, Zollie.”
“You were. I mean you are. But he was like a little brother or something. I was gonna give him a nice home-style burial but that guy, Harper, he got in the way.”
“Yes, he did,” Lucky said. “And if he saw the surgical cuts on the hog, he'll be able to put two and two together.”
“No. Wait. I'm almost sure he didn't see anything like that.”
“Really?” Lucky prompted.
“Yeah, for sure,” Zollie said. “See, it was real dark in there. And I came right in after he got there. I kicked his ass, too.”
“I'm sure you did, Zol,” Lucky said. “'Cause you are one badass mother. Well, I must say, Zol, this has been very disappointing.”
“I'm so sorry, Lucky,” Zollie said, weeping.
“I'm sure you are, big guy,” Lucky responded.
He put the pistol in his belt and quickly took something out of the bag. Michelle couldn't make out what it was.
“What's that?” Zollie asked, his voice high-pitched again.
“It's a toy,” Lucky said. “ I believe there just isn't enough play in the world. Everyone is so darn serious.”
“That a Super Soaker?” Zollie asked.
“Yep,” Lucky said. “ You got it, hoss. ‘Cept I had it retrofitted by one of the boys to make it a real, honest-to-God grown-up toy!”
“What ‘chu going to do?” Zollie asked, shaking and crying.
“Just gonna give you a good soaking,” Lucky responded.
“What ‘chu got in that thing?”
“Well, I'll give you three guesses,” Lucky said. “And to make it easy for you I'll tell you up front that it ain't water.”
He pumped the gun forward and back. A stream of gasoline shot out and ignited as it hit the cigarette lighter that was now embedded in the barrel. The lighter was attached to the gun's trigger and activated as the gasoline shot through the barrel. The gas ignited and a flame engulfed Zollie's surprised face. The big man screamed and rolled over, trying to put his face out in the dirt, but Lucky, laughing wildly, shot him with the Super Soaker again, this time on the back and legs.
Zollie screamed and tried to roll again but then a third flame finished him off.
Michelle gasped and turned away. And found herself looking directly at two men with shotguns. One of them hit her in the face, knocking her to the ground, unconscious.
“Well, well,” Lucky said, as he walked around the boulders and looked down at her. “At last the chicken has come home to roost. Pick her up, fellas. I know just where she needs to go.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
Jack and Oscar were in Jack's room at La Fonda looking at Blue Wolf's building plans, which had been filed with the city. It had been easy to get them: a simple request from the FBI to city hall and within minutes they were looking at the old drawings.
The problem is they had been over and over them for hours and there seemed to be no way there could be a secret underground lab set up beneath the hospital.
Jack nodded and felt an intense frustration rising. Then he spotted something.
“What the hell? Look at this.”
“Look at what?”
“Look at the name of the engineer on the plans.”
Oscar looked down.
“Says approved by city engineer Gerald Hoffman.”
“Right,” Jack said, “and when I first met the Blue Wolf council I was introduced to a guy named Jerry Hoffman. He was Blue Wolf's architect.”
“Very interesting.”
“Isn't it? Let's say you're a young guy in Santa Fe and you have this cozy job as a city engineer. Not bad, as city jobs go, but maybe it's as high as you can get in city government. Then you meet a guy like Alex Williams who says Blue Wolf is going to be building for years and years.”
“Yeah, so you maybe don't worry about a basement they put in the building.”
“Or wherever it is. What we need is something that tells us more about the surrounding landscape.”
“I know exactly what we need.”
Jack typed into his laptop: “Geological Surveys, Santa Fe, New Mexico.”
A few minutes later they had found what they were looking for: geological surveys of Santa Fe from the 1800s to the present.
They quickly went through the first few, then found something interesting. It was a survey that had been done by an architect named Gerald Hoffman and a geologist named Gary Wohl.
Jack was stunned.
“Look at this. Wohl says in this survey that they were looking for one of the lost Tewa Pueblo Indian tunnels that the Indians had built to hide from the Spanish conquistadores. The caves were never found but are said to still exist. Wohl claims to have found remnants of the old cave and tunnel system.”
Jack looked at it and shook his head in amazement.
“It's odd, though. The rest of the report gives the soil and rock composition but never says whether or not they found the actual cave.”
“Come on,” Oscar said, “that's because there is no cave. Even if it had been there it would be gone by now. The sands out there are shifting constantly. Whatever existed probably would have caved in by now.”
“Maybe not,” Jack said. “Trey built those burial caves to last. They might have thought they would have to be underground for long periods of time. Let's say Blue Wolf found the remnants of a cave and then, if they had a need for secrecy, maybe they rebuilt it deep in the ground. Maybe no one but a few of the elect on the staff even knows about it. Then they could take people from Blue Wolf to the cave for the ceremony.”
Oscar shook his head. “But these
are all just old legends,” he said.
“But remember that Tommy said something about ‘under.’ Underground. That's got to be it. Whatever is happening is happening out there. And I just thought of someone who might know a lot more about it than she let on.”
He turned off the computer and grabbed his shoulder holster.
“C'mon, Oscar, we got a party to crash.”
They roared out on the highway toward the mountains of the moon.
They were stopped by the guard at Blue Wolf, but Jack showed him his FBI card and they were quickly buzzed through.
They drove to the residence buildings, parked in the lot, and walked into the lobby.
Jack hit the buzzer and Kim Walker answered.
“Hi, Kim. It's Jack Harper.”
“Jack, what a surprise. But do you always just show up without calling? I'm afraid I'm rather busy just now.”
“This won't take long, Kim,” Jack said. “ I think I've found Jennifer and I really need your help.”
“Jack, I'm happy for you,” she said in a hesitant voice, “but I'm not at all sure what I can do. And I'm afraid I'm going out tonight.”
“This is a matter of life and death,” Jack said.
“Well, all right then, though I can't imagine what help I'll be.”
She buzzed the door and Jack and Oscar were inside, headed up to the fourth floor.
Kim Walker was dressed in a bathrobe, her wet hair combed back.
“Kim, this is my partner,” Jack said. “Oscar Hidalgo. I haven’t been frank with you, I’m afraid. We’re both FBI agents.”
She turned away and walked toward the bar.
“Is that right?” she said. “Well, that’s very interesting. But as I said before, I’m not sure how I—”
“I’ll tell you what’s interesting,” Jack said. “Kidnapping. Kidnapping is a major crime. Especially if there’s violence and guns involved. Don’t you agree, Oscar?”
“Si, es muy malo. You could go to prison for eight or nine years for just holding the person. Then, when firearms and violence are involved, well, that could make things much more interesting. Like eighteen years. And, of course, if the person kidnapped is a woman, well, many judges are very unforgiving. Could be maybe twenty-five years.”