by Rex Burns
I was back in the Healey and turning around when they spotted me. The one catching buckets at the edge of the roof pointed my way and said something to the one on the ground. He wheeled and squinted in my direction, and I kept my face averted and my rearview mirror focused as I quietly pulled the Healey away. So much for the day’s surveillance. The last glimpse I had was of the two men still in that tableau, staring after me.
CHAPTER 6
ERIE WAS IN Weld County, and the Weld County Sheriffs Office was in Greeley, another forty miles north on U.S. 85. The sheriff himself wasn’t available, but I managed to corner an undersheriff who heard what I wanted and shrugged. “Yeah, we know a lot about that bunch, Mr. Kirk, but there’s not much we can do about them unless somebody swears out a complaint. And so far, nobody’s wanted to.” He added, scrubbing the inside of a nostril with his thumbnail, “Can’t blame them, either. That’s a rough bunch.”
“Can you tell me what they’re suspected of being involved in?”
“It ain’t official. Just hearsay.”
“I won’t quote you.”
“You name it: drugs, prostitution, extortion, murder, organized crime … . They’re tied in with another local motorcycle gang, Sons of Silence. And that bunch, I hear, is tied in with the Hell’s Angels to supply drugs and what-all to this area.”
And all I wanted was a picture of one William Taylor doing push-ups or chopping wood. “Does the Colorado Bureau of Investigation have a jacket on them?”
He shrugged again and shifted the thumb to the other nostril. “Doubt it. They don’t do much with organized crime. Forensics is their big thing.”
Which meant that the only central police agency that might have something on this gang would be the Denver Police Department, and that I’d wasted an afternoon touring the northern Colorado plains. I thanked the sheriff’s officer and headed south, making the most of the trip by letting the old girl find a sweetly resonant rpm and settle into the sway of the highway.
By the time I reached Denver, Bunch had returned to the office and left for his afternoon workout; he’d be back in a couple hours. A note on the desk beside the blank contract said, “Guy wants to think about it,” and I had a pretty good idea what that meant. Well, he might find people who would do the debugging job cheaper, but no one who could do it better—for all the good pride did our checking account. I was refiling the form when the telephone rang and a woman’s voice I didn’t recognize said, “Mr. Kirk? I have some information to sell.”
I flipped on the recorder. “About what?”
“Something you’re working on. Something that will help you.”
A lot of tips came with a price tag, but usually the seller wasn’t quite so open about it. “How much?”
“A thousand dollars. Cash.”
“That’s a lot of money.” And more than I was going to give for some vague promise. “What’s this about?”
“I don’t want to talk over the phone. You meet me somewhere.”
“Come to my office.”
“No! I just want to get the money and leave the state—you meet me somewhere safe. Do you know Clear Creek Canyon? You ever go up that canyon?”
“I know it.”
“Meet me at the west end of Tunnel Three. There’s a pullout there. You know where it is?”
“I can find it. When?”
“One hour. Alone.”
The line clicked into silence and I glanced at my watch. An hour wasn’t much leeway for that distance, but if the traffic was light—and if the Healey wasn’t feeling temperamental after her drive up to Greeley—I could get there in forty-five minutes. Early enough to survey that corner of the steep canyon before making a target of myself, in case the tip was more than it promised to be. I left a note for Bunch and swung through the snarl of delivery trucks on Wazee and out toward the Valley Highway.
For a time a hundred years ago, Clear Creek was one of the richest gold lodes in the world. High up its canyon, the town of Central City still mined tourists with its Victorian buildings and Old West gift shoppes. In the old days, when the road was for wagons, it clung like a painted stripe to the twists and angles of the rock walls above the foaming plunge of the creek. The newer road, U.S. 6, is a bit straighter, thanks to the series of tunnels cut through massive shoulders of rock; but the two lanes still swing and wriggle as they follow the creek, and I liked the chance to feel the car do what it was built to do. I went through the gears and we flashed past craggy bluffs, oases of cottonwood and mountain willow, and an occasional car or pickup truck pulled over in a wide spot near the stream.
Tunnel One is just outside Golden; Tunnels Two and Three, a couple miles farther up, are close together and pierce through the mountains where the creek makes a large loop around abrupt faces of almost treeless gray rock. I slowed as I came out of the west portal and saw why the caller wanted this spot. In addition to its being remote and cut off by steep cliffs, on the south side of the highway the remnant of the wagon road— now blocked by carefully placed boulders—formed a pull-off wide enough for three or four cars to park. A worn path led along the old stony roadbed and down toward the water to disappear beyond the ridge’s shoulder.
I was ten minutes early and drove slowly up to the next spot wide enough for me to swing the Healey around and then coasted back toward the tunnel’s black entrance. No other cars were at the pull-off, nor did the whine of an engine signal a vehicle coming down canyon behind me. I eased the low Healey across the eroded shoulder, set the hand brake, killed the motor. Then, loosening the old .38 Police Special I’d grabbed from the office safe, I got out. Without the throaty rumble of the Healey’s pipes, only the rush and clatter of water tumbling against boulders echoed along the canyon walls. My watch said two minutes before the hour. At two after, a diesel thundered out of the tunnel with a push of air and a streamer of black smoke and whined up the lanes and out of sight around the next bend. At five after, my feelings about the whole cheery adventure began to slip toward uneasiness, and at six after, my feelings proved right.
The first shot missed. I heard it hum like a large, angry insect past my scalp and I knew what it was. But before that knowledge could translate into running legs, the second round, coming with the crack of a heavy rifle, yanked at my coat sleeve and thudded solidly into the Healey’s rear deck. Another smacked into the windshield, snowing chips of glass across the cowling and into my hair and splintering a web of cracks from one brace to the other. By the time the sound of that shot reached me from a saddle in the ridge above, I had sprinted for the tunnel’s overhang to wedge myself against the cold, blasted stone. Perched on the six-inch ledge that formed a curb leading into the dim shaft, I waited. The tunnel wind fluttered louder than the creek through the chimney of concrete. But no further shots came from the spine of mountain that the tunnel cut through. A sudden blare of sound and a semitruck thundered past, a road-grimed streak of wind and blatted exhaust and the startled shriek of air horns as the driver’s eye caught me pressed against the jutting rock. Then it was gone, leaving the odor of smoke and my own icy sweat.
The truck—a high, swaying rectangle of grimy doors—faded up the canyon, and I counted ten and then dashed for the Healey, dodging from side to side like a rabbit under a hawk’s claws. Rolling beneath the steering wheel, I crouched low to crank the starter. I didn’t think there was another shot, but I couldn’t tell for certain because all I could hear was the pulse of blood in my ears and the grinding of an engine that had chosen this moment to be coy.
“Come on, you son of a bitch!”
It coughed, died, cranked.
“I’m sorry—for God’s sake, I’m sorry!”
It coughed again and fired, missed, caught.
“Good girl—attagirl—knew you could do it!”
I had the car in motion, spinning dirt and gravel in a rush back onto the highway to plunge toward the shelter of the tunnel’s mouth. It’s usually hard for me to hunker down in the cramped cockpit, but I manage
d, letting the fishtailing car almost steer itself while I kept an eye on the ridge above.
The shots had come from somewhere along the crest between the east and west portals. I figured the assailant had followed me up the canyon, parked at the east portal, then worked up the trail to find a rest that would overlook the west pullout. Using a scope, he—or was it she?—waited until I came back and got out of the Healey. It was a good maneuver, a nicely laid trap, and I had stood there admiring the scenery while the would-be killer zeroed in. But as with a lot of people unused to firing downhill at a steep angle, that first round was high, and that was what had saved me. From the sound of the slug, it had been aimed at my head; and from the speed with which he got off his rounds, the shooter knew how to handle his weapon. But the high round had been his first mistake. The second was letting me reach the Healey.
The tunnel was maybe a quarter of a mile long, and I could already see the pale arch of the other end and the road leading out toward the second tunnel. I might be able to reach the east portal by the time he scrambled back to his car and took off. I wasn’t sure what I’d do if I caught him—his weapon was a lot heavier than the four-inch barrel of the .38. But he might not know that. Besides, I was angry enough to rely on inspiration.
Jamming down the accelerator, I leapt the Healey toward the tunnel mouth and saw the empty highway beyond the opening as I shifted up into fourth. Few other cars would be able to hold the curves of the canyon as well as the old girl, and all I needed was a glimpse of a fleeing bumper and I would have him. I had just dropped into gear when the pale semicircle began to dim with a heavy shadow. Just ahead of me, something was being moved across the entrance. I slammed on the brakes and pushed back against the seat away from the splintered windshield, but there was nowhere to turn. Like a bullet rifled down a barrel, the Healey bounded from one rock wall to the other and shrieked into the side of the still-moving pickup truck, and that was the last I remembered.
The smell was familiar: the clinical sharpness of a laboratory and a kind of empty, odorless tang that reminded me of one of the gas jets in a high school chemistry class. The oxygen jet. That’s what it smelled like, and I blinked against the glare, half expecting to see the long, waist-high tables and the zinc-lined sinks with their superstructures of glass retorts and tubing. But all I saw was a curtain, and I felt under my nose the thin plastic hose that pumped a little more oxygen into my lungs. Hospital. I was in a hospital and injured, and I didn’t know how bad.
Starting with my toes, I began to take inventory, half fearful that something I tried to move wouldn’t be there and too afraid to look down my sheeted body until I had felt everything answer. My head hurt and I could feel bandages pressing lightly across my scalp, so there was some damage there. Which, Bunch would grin, was the safest place for me to be hurt. Bunch. Looking around the drawn curtain, I saw the electronic paraphernalia of beeping monitors and a network of tubes running into various parts of my anatomy. No chair for visitors. No bed table with plastic pitcher of water and house telephone. I was in intensive care, and though it was a relief to know that my brain could recognize where I was, it was no relief at all to find out. Slowly, wincing against a sudden pain somewhere deep in my right shoulder, I groped for the call button that should be at the head of the bed. Almost as soon as I touched it, a nurse came through the curtain.
“Awake at last! How do you feel? Can you tell me your name?”
I answered her.
“What?” She leaned closer and I realized that what had sounded clear to me had come out as a faint mumble.
“Kirk. Devlin Kirk.”
“Good—that’s right. I want you to lie still and rest. The doctor will be right down.”
“Call Bunchcroft.”
“Please lie still, Mr. Kirk. You’re not supposed to move.”
“Call Bunchcroft.”
“You want me to call someone? You want me to let someone know you’re here?”
“My office. Call Bunchcroft.”
She finally understood and, fumbling through my wallet in the personal effects tray under the bed, found a business card and asked if that was the number. It was, and out she went, and I did too.
I woke again to a light burning into my pupil and a thumb peeling my eyelid back.
“Just lie still, Mr. Kirk. You have a slight concussion.”
The doctor’s hands went out of sight and I felt his fingers probe here and there with firm but gentle curiosity. While he was busily checking this and that, he asked me what year it was and the name of the president of the United States. Then the bearded face came back.
“You’re really a very lucky man, Mr. Kirk. I think the concussion’s the worst of it. Do you feel discomfort anywhere?”
“Shoulder.”
“Um hum.” The fingers began poking again and found where it hurt most. “That hurt?”
“Goddamn!”
“Um hum.” The fingers focused on the sorest spot and bore in for a moment. “We’ll take an X ray later, but I think you separated your shoulder briefly during the impact. I don’t feel anything out of place now, but the picture can tell us more.”
“Okay.”
“There are a couple people waiting who need to ask you some questions. I’ll check back in a while.”
The first and most important was a businesslike woman with a clipboard. She wanted to know who was paying for all this.
“Health insurance. Card’s in wallet.”
She fished it out, being careful to let me see everything she took from the wallet, and that she put it all back. When she was satisfied and her admissions form completed, my next interrogator came in.
“Mr. Kirk, how you doing? Want to tell me what all happened?” The highway patrol officer also wanted to see my driver’s license and insurance verification.
I told him about the truck pulling across the tunnel exit. “Did you find out who it’s registered to?”
“We found the truck down the canyon a ways. It was pretty beat up. Somebody drove it as far as it would go, looks like, and then walked, I guess. The owner claims it was stolen—he didn’t know it was gone until he started to go home after work.” The sergeant stuck a thumbnail between two crooked front teeth and thought a moment. “Did you see anybody in the truck at all before you hit?”
I closed my eyes and tried to bring back the moment, the rock walls that seemed to collapse around me, the truck swelling with nightmare swiftness as the Healey shrieked and tried to stop. “No. I can’t remember much except the truck. But I didn’t see anybody in the driver’s seat… . I’m sure I would have seen anyone there.” I ran the scene through memory once more: The driver’s window was empty. “Someone must have pushed it across the tunnel mouth.”
The officer nodded. “I see. Well, Mr. Kirk, we estimate your speed at around seventy miles per hour at the time of the accident. That about right?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t looking at the speedometer.”
“Well, your skid marks show you were going at least seventy miles per hour, and the speed limit there in that tunnel is forty. I’m going to have to cite you, Mr. Kirk.”
“Me? What about the guy who pushed the truck across the road? Doesn’t he get a ticket?”
He handed me a yellow copy of a speeding ticket that explained where I had to be and when, and what it might cost me in money and points. “If we catch him, sure. But tell you the truth, I don’t think that’s very likely. I’m inclined to think it was kids trying to do something funny. Except the truck was wiped clean—no prints at all where you’d look for them. That doesn’t sound exactly like kids, does it?” He waited but I said nothing. “Well, everybody nowadays knows about fingerprints, don’t they?” It wasn’t a question and I didn’t volunteer a nod. “You don’t have any idea who might have done it, do you?”
“No.”
“Kids. Some of them get pretty destructive, anymore.” He handed me some more forms. “You’ll have to fill out an accident report, and
be sure and list your insurance carrier. Mail them or bring them by your nearest highway patrol office within the week, Mr. Kirk.” He started out and then came back. “Almost forgot to give you this, too.” It was another ticket for failure to wear a seat belt. “Have a good day.”
“What about my car? How bad?”
“Totaled.”
A good day indeed.
Sometime during the night I was moved from intensive care into a semiprivate room. That’s what my insurance allowed for, though the businesslike lady did suggest that for a few dollars extra I could have the luxury of private accommodations. The health care business might have been overbuilt, but it wasn’t going to surrender profits without a struggle. Neither was I. My roommate, who had the window bed, lay silent behind drawn curtains with his television flickering and only occasionally shuffled past the foot of my bed to the bathroom, where he spent a long time. I lay and watched the half-open door to the hallway and waited for Bunch. Just after the nurse brought breakfast on a plastic tray holding tiny portions of equally plastic food, Uncle Wyn, leaning heavily on his cane, tapped on the door and was followed in by Bunch.
“Jesus, Dev, you eat this crap?” Bunch asked.
“Not because I want to. At least there’s not much of it. What have you found out?”
“I found out you got a concussion and a few bruises, and you might get out later today if the doc figures everything’s okay.”
“I already knew that much.”
Uncle Wyn lowered himself gently into one of the two chairs, his arthritic knee supported by the cane. “We also learned that the Healey’s in worse shape than you are, and I learned that it probably wasn’t no accident. Want to let your old uncle know what the hell’s going on?”