A few smiles greeted this remark, but no chuckles.
“How long is this state of emergency going to last?” Duquesne pressed. Jake Grafton had met Senator Duquesne before, a year ago when he was working on the A-12 project. Apparently Duquesne hadn’t mellowed any these past twelve months.
“I haven’t declared a state of emergency.”
“Call it what you like,” Hiram Duquesne shot back. “How long?”
“Until we get results.”
“It’s going to cost a lot of money to change the currency,” another senator pointed out. “You going to want to do it again next year?”
“I don’t know.”
“This marriage of the FBI and DEA,” said Senator Bob Cherry. “I think that’ll go over like a lead brick with Congress. The last thing this country needs is a bigger, more powerful police bureaucracy.”
“It’s efficiency I’m after.”
Bob Cherry raised his eyebrows. “You won’t get it with that move. More layers of paper pushers means less efficiency, not more. All you get when you add bureaucrats is more inertia. And a big police bureaucracy that can’t be stopped is the last thing this country need or wants.”
“I want to try it,” the President insisted.
“Good luck,” Cherry said.
“I need you on this, Bob. I’m asking for bipartisan support. I’m asking for your help.”
“Mr. President, we in Congress are getting just as much, if not more, heat about that incident last night than you are. People want to know why tourists should have to run the risk of being slaughtered in the streets just to visit the capital of this country. My office this morning was a madhouse. We had to take the phones off the hooks. But Congress is not going to be stampeded. I can promise you this: we’ll immediately look at your proposals, and those that have a chance of working we’ll approve. Speedily. Those that don’t …” He shrugged.
That evening at dinner Jake Grafton told his wife about his day.
“On television one of the commentators said the President has panicked,” Callie told him.
Jake snorted. “And last year they said he was timid. The poor devil gets it from every side.”
“Will these proposals work? Can the drug crisis be solved?”
The captain took his time answering. “There aren’t any easy solutions. There are a lot of little things that will each have some effect on the problem. But there are no easy, simple, grand solutions just lying around waiting to be discovered. None.”
“You’re saying drugs are here to stay.”
“At some level, yes. We humans have learned to live with alcohol and tobacco and prostitution—we’re going to have to learn to live with dope.”
“Even if it ruins people’s lives?” Amy asked.
Jake Grafton chewed a bite of ham while he thought about that one. “A lot of things can ruin lives. People get so fat their hearts give out. They literally eat themselves to death. Should we have a law that regulates how much you can eat?”
“Drugs are different,” Amy said.
“Indeed they are,” Callie said, and gave her husband a sidelong glance with an eyebrow ominously arched.
Jake Grafton wisely changed the subject.
Later Callie said, “Did you read that terrific article in today’s paper that Jack Yocke wrote about Cuba?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m inviting him and his girlfriend over for dinner Saturday night, if he’s back from Cuba. I’ll call him tomorrow at the paper.”
“Oh.”
“Now, Jake, don’t start that. I had him in class all semester and he is a bright young man with a lot of talent. You should take the time to get to know him.”
“Doesn’t look like I’m getting an option.”
“Now dear, you know better than that.”
“Okay, okay. Invite him over. If you think he’s a nice guy, I’m sure he is. After all, look how right you were about me.”
“Maybe you should reevaluate, Callie,” Amy said tartly, and went off to her bedroom to do her homework.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE wind was out of the northwest at fifteen or twenty knots. Small flakes of snow were driven almost horizontally in against the sage and juniper that covered the sloping sides of the arroyo. Higher up on the hillsides the pines showed a tinge of white, but the dirt road leading down the arroyo was still free from accumulation.
From a window in his living room, Henry Charon scanned the scene yet again.
The snow would accumulate as the day wore on and deepen significantly during the night. How much depended only on the amount of moisture left in the clouds coming down from the San Juans. The air was certainly cold enough. It leaked around the doorsill and the edges of the window and felt cold on his face.
Charon inserted another chunk of piñon in the wood stove. Then he went into the bedroom and got out the old .45 Colt automatic he kept in the drawer by the dresser and checked to ensure it was loaded, with a cartridge in the chamber. It was. He shoved it between his belt and the small of his back and pulled the bulky sweatshirt down so it couldn’t be seen. Then he went back into the living room.
He liked sitting in the old easy chair here by the stove, with the window on his right. From it he could see the barn and the road, and against the sky, several tall hills. The mountains that were normally visible were obscured by clouds this morning.
Really, when you thought about it, it was a shame that life doesn’t go on forever. To sit here and watch the winters, to spend the summer evenings on the porch listening to the meadowlarks and crickets, to step out in the morning with a rifle under your arm and walk off up the trail looking for deer and elk as the sky was shot with fire by the rising sun, he had done that all his life and it was very pleasant.
Very pleasant.
But this other hunt would be a real challenge, in a way that hunting deer and elk and bear had long ceased to be. And he would have to pay his dues. He had learned that in life. This might well be the last morning he was ever going to sit here feeding logs into the stove and watching the snow come down. So he let his eyes travel across the juniper and pines and took it all in, one more time.
About ten or so he saw the car coming up the road. The snow was beginning to stick. He pulled on his coat and went out onto the porch.
“Hey,” Tassone said as he climbed out from behind the wheel.
“Come on in.”
“Got some stuff here in the trunk. Help me with it.”
There was a suitcase and two army duffel bags. They left the suitcase and carried the duffel bags inside. The bags were green, with U.S. ARMY stenciled on them, and they sported padlocks.
Inside, with the door closed, Tassone shivered involuntarily. “Getting cold out there.”
“Winter’s here.”
Tassone tossed Charon a key ring and went to stand with his backside toward the stove.
Charon used the key on the padlocks of the duffel bags. Each was full of money, bundles of twenties and fifties.
“Five million in each bag,” Tassone said. “Count it if you want.”
Henry Charon felt deep into each bag, ensuring it was full of money. “No need for that, I think.”
“It’s a lot of money.”
“You want the job?”
“No, thanks. I want to keep on living. My life’s worth more than that.”
“I hope to keep on living too.”
Tassone nodded and looked around the room, taking it all in. Charon replaced the padlocks and put the duffel bags in the bedroom. When he came back Tassone had his coat off and was in the easy chair.
“I got coffee if you want it.”
“Yeah. I’ll take a cup. Black.”
They both got a cup of coffee and sat listening to the wind. The snow continued to fall.
“What you gonna do? Afterward, I mean.”
Henry Charon thought a moment. “Live here, I hope. I like it here.”
“Lonely, I bet.”
They drank their coffee in silence. After a bit Charon added a log to the stove.
“What do you think about the other names on the list?”
“I’ll do what I can. I told you that.”
“A million each. I’ll wait two or three months, then come up here with the money. If you aren’t here, you want me to leave it?”
“Yeah,” said Henry Charon, thinking about it. “Yeah. That would be good. I’ll get here sometime.” He hoped. “Leave the money under the porch. It’s dry there. It’ll be okay.”
“There’s going to be a couple other hit teams in Washington while you’re there.”
“You never told me that before.”
“Didn’t know before. I’m telling you now. You can back out if you want.”
“I don’t want out. But that does change things, of course.”
“I know.”
Change things! Henry Charon stared out the window at the snow. My God! They’ll be searching every nook and cranny. Still, if he could evade long enough, one of the teams might get caught. This might be the red herring he had been thinking about.
“Well,” Tassone said, draining his cup and setting it on the windowsill. “I don’t want to get snowed in here. Got a flight from Albuquerque this evening. I’d better get going.” He stood and put on his coat.
“Be careful going down. The road will be slick in places.”
“Yeah. It was starting to get that way coming up.”
“Keep to the high side and take it easy.”
Charon followed Tassone out on the porch and stood watching him as he walked for the car. Then he put his right hand under his sweatshirt behind his back and drew the automatic from his belt. He leveled it, holding it with both hands.
As Tassone reached for the car door Charon shot him, once.
The big slug sent Tassone sprawling in the mud.
With the pistol ready, Charon went down the three steps and walked over to the man on the ground.
Tassone was looking up at him, bewilderment on his face. “Why?” Then all his muscles relaxed and he stopped breathing.
Charon put the muzzle of the pistol against the man’s forehead and felt for a pulse in his neck. He felt a flutter, then it ceased. The bullet had hit him under the left shoulder blade and exited from the front of his chest.
The assassin carefully lowered the hammer of the weapon and replaced it between his belt and the small of his back. Then he went back inside to get his coat and hat and gloves.
Why? Because Tassone was the only link between whoever was paying the freight and Henry Charon. With him gone, the evidentiary link could never be completed. He had to die, the fool. And he had been a fool. The FBI would inevitably pick up the trail of the Stinger missiles and the guns. And that trail would lead to Tassone, who was now a dead end. Why, indeed!
He had shot Tassone in the front yard because he didn’t want any blood or bullet holes in the house. The rain and snow would take care of any blood outside.
Charon fished Tassone’s wallet from a pocket and took it inside to the kitchen table. There was very little there. A little over three hundred dollars in bills, some credit cards and a Texas driver’s license for Anthony Tassone. Nothing else.
He carefully fed the credit cards and driver’s license into the stove. Even the money. The wallet he put into his pocket.
Outside he pulled the pickup around and placed the body in the bed. He got the suitcase from the trunk and inspected the car carefully. As he suspected, it was a rental from one of the agencies at the Albuquerque airport. He would drive it down there himself tomorrow and park it at the rental car return and drop the paperwork and keys in the express return slot. At that moment Tassone would cease to exist. Then Charon would board the plane to Washington.
There was a candy wrapper on the floor of the car, and Charon pocketed that too.
The contents of the suitcase were as innocuous as the wallet. Several changes of clothing, toilet articles, and a paperback novel by Judith Krantz. He put everything back and tossed it into the bed of the truck.
It took him twenty minutes to travel the five miles up the mountainside to the old mine. He had the pickup in four-wheel drive, but still he took it slow and easy. The higher he climbed on the mountain the worse the snow was and the poorer the road. Tomorrow he might not even have been able to get the truck up here.
Visibility was poor at the mine, less than a hundred yards. The delapideted, weather-beaten boards and timbers that formed a shack around the shaft were half rotted, about to fall down. The mine had been abandoned in the late fifties. Henry Charon walked up on the hill, then around the mountain, then back down the road. Fifteen minutes later, satisfied that no one was around, he pulled the corpse out of the pickup and dragged it across to the mine shaft and dropped it in. The suitcase followed.
He then tied a rope around the front bumper of the pickup and lowered that into the shaft. He got a reel of coated wire from the tool chest behind the truck cab, and unwound a hundred feet or so and lowered that down the shaft. Finally, he put a flashlight, four sticks of dynamite, and a blasting cap into his pocket, took a last look around, and, using the rope, lowered himself down the shaft.
He worked quickly. He dragged the body fifty feet down one of the two drifts that led off from the bottom, then brought the suitcase and put it beside the body. He left the wallet and candy wrapper.
The dynamite he wedged between the rock wall and a six-by-six oak timber that helped hold up a weak place in the roof. He stripped the insulation from the wire he had lowered into the shaft and twisted the raw wire to the blasting cap, which he then inserted into one of the dynamite sticks. With the dynamite packed into place with dirt and small rocks, he took a last look around with the flashlight.
Had he forgotten anything?
The keys to the rental car. They were in his pocket. Okay.
Charon was not even breathing hard when he got to the surface. He pulled the rope out of the hole.
He had a little wind-up detonator in his toolbox. He attached the wire to the terminals, wound it up, and let it go. A dull thud that he could feel with his feet followed. Using his flashlight, he looked down into the shaft. It was all dust, impossible to see the bottom.
He got back into the pickup and started the engine. He turned the heater up. The visibility had deteriorated to less than a hundred feet. About four inches or so of snow on the ground.
Tassone was going to be missed, of course, but Charon thought that whoever wanted George Bush killed ten million dollars worth was not going to miss his messenger boy very much. And Charon would try to get as many of the other people on the list as he could. Of course, Tassone wasn’t around to deliver additional money, and Charon didn’t know who to go to to get paid, but so be it. Somebody was going to get his money’s worth and that would be all that mattered.
And ten million was enough. More than enough. It was more money than Henry Charon could spend in two lifetimes.
Fifteen minutes later Charon tried to pull the wire up out of the shaft. It wouldn’t come. Probably a rock lying on it. He dropped the rope back into the shaft and went back down. The dust had almost completely settled. The flashlight’s beam revealed that the drift tunnel was blocked, with a huge slab pinning the detonator wire. Charon cut the wire, then came back up the rope hand over hand.
He coiled the rope and wire and stowed everything. Going down the mountain the pickup truck slid once, but he got it stopped in time. It took most of an hour to get back to the house. Only an inch of snow on the ground there.
Inside the cabin he threw another log in the stove and washed the cup Tassone had used and put it back in the cabinet. Henry Charon made a fresh pot of coffee. After it had dripped through, he poured some into his cup and stretched out in the easy chair.
“Your ten o’clock appointment is here, Mr. Brody.”
The lawyer reached for the intercom button. �
��Send him in.”
T. Jefferson Brody walked over to the door and met Freeman McNally coming through. Brody carefully closed the door and shook Freeman’s hand, then pointed to the red leather client’s chair. “Good to see you.”
“Yeah, Tee. Howzit goin’?”
“Pretty good.” Brody went around his desk and arranged himself in his eighteen-hundred-dollar custom-made swivel chair. “How’s business?”
“Oh, you know,” McNally said and made a vague gesture. “Always problems. Nothing ever goes right.”
“That’s true.”
“You been watching the TV the last couple days?”
“You mean that car-bus crash? Yeah, I heard about that.”
“One of my drivers. Some of our guards tried to rip off his load. He was lucky he wasn’t killed.”
“A lot of heat,” Brody said, referring to the President’s press conference and the announced government initiatives. The papers were full of it.
“Yeah. That’s why I came to see you. Some of those things The Man wants to do are going to hurt. I think it’s time we called in some of those markers for donations we been making to those senators and congressmen.”
“I was wondering when you might want to do that.”
“Now is when. Putting the DEA and FBI together is not going to help us businessmen. Yeah, like they say on TV, it’ll take ’em forever to decide to do anything, but someday they’ll know too much. I mean, it’ll all go into the same paper mill and eventually something will pop out that’s damn bad for me.”
“What else?”
“Well, this new money proposal. Now that will hurt. I got about ten million in cash on hand to run my business on a day-to-day basis.”
“I understand.”
“Seems to me this whole thing is sorta antiblack, y’know? The black people don’t use whitey’s banks and they’re the ones who’ll lose the most. Shit, all the white guys got theirs in checking and investments and all that. It’s the black women and poor families who keep theirs in cookie jars and stuffed in mattresses. Damn banks charge big fees these days for checking accounts unless you got a white man’s balance.”
“That’s a good argument. I’ll use that.”
05.Under Siege v5 Page 26