Wolf in the Shadows

by Marcia Muller

  We were deep in the canyon now. Mojas’s hand stayed me, pulled me down beside a rock pile. Mourning was breathing hard. Hy’s body tensed—with pain, I thought.

  As we waited there, I remembered the story Gloria Escobar had told me in my office at All Souls last Tuesday while trying to persuade me to accept the proffered promotion. Remembered her pregnant mother, who had brought her older sister through this same canyon unassisted by a coyote, separated from the others, attacked by bandits—and yet she had made the crossing and then walked some fifteen miles to the safe house, carrying both her daughter and her unborn child.

  Gloria, I thought, I think I can understand what you were trying to tell me. Can grasp the full value of the life you’ve shaped for yourself and your daughter. I hope I get the chance to tell you that your mother’s story has given me courage….

  We waited for ten minutes or more, Mojas watching and listening. As I knelt on the hard rock ground, I gradually felt a metamorphosis taking place inside me. My heartbeat slowed to normal; my adrenaline flow stabilized. Calm set in, and all my senses sharpened. My skin and fingertips began to tingle. I glanced at Mojas, impatient to be on with it.

  I’d experienced this phenomenon before when I’d spent my fear and come to terms with danger. Whenever that happened, I instinctively knew that I’d continue to leave myself open to danger my whole life. In a way, it was like a friendly adversary with whom I was at my best, against whom I’d often taken my measure.

  Mojas stood and beckoned. We moved out….

  4:28 A.M.

  The huge black-mouthed drainage pipe lay ahead of us. Above the embankment that it butted into—twenty or more feet high—the sky glowed from the lights of the South Bay.

  Mojas stopped us a few yards away. “Pipe comes out about fifteen yards from here in a ditch. You cross it, you’re on the road. La migra stops you, you say your car broke down and you’re waiting for a ride. All they’ll do is tell you you got no business being down here in the dark. I’ll check things out now. Then you’re on your own.”

  “Which way do we go to get to the old dairy?” I asked.

  “Right, maybe a mile. Wait here.” Mojas darted toward the pipe, stooped, and disappeared into the blackness.

  I shivered as a gust of cold wind hit us. Looked up at the sky and saw hints of a gray dawn. Hy put his hands on my shoulders. “Almost there, McCone.”

  “Thank God. Is your arm still bleeding?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Bad pain?”

  “I’ll live.”

  “You okay, Tim?”

  Mourning nodded, teeth chattering.

  Mojas was a long time coming back. I kept checking the luminous dial of my watch as five, then another four minutes went by. When he finally emerged from the pipe he ran toward us in a crouch. “Something funny’s going on,” he said. “There’s nobody in the pipe.”

  Hy asked, “Should there be?”

  “It’s a regular crossing place. La migra was smart, they’d just stand on the other end with a net. Pipe’s always full of people who’ve lost their nerve or’re too tired to go on.” He hesitated. “I could’ve swore a gun’s been fired in there.”

  “Those shots we heard earlier?” I asked. They’d echoed off the canyon walls maybe fifteen minutes before we got to the pipe—the stutter of a semiautomatic weapon.

  Mojas shrugged.

  “Did you see anybody in the ditch or on the road?” Hy asked.

  “No.”

  It didn’t feel right to me. “Al, is there another way to get to the road?”

  “We’d have to backtrack, and it’ll be getting light soon.”

  “And you say a lot of people know about this pipe?”

  “Well, people like me, who need to know.”

  I considered. “All right,” I finally said, “we’ll go through here.” I felt in my pocket for the coyote’s remaining three hundred dollars and extended it to him. “Thanks for guiding us.”

  He took it, grinning. “Sure. You got any more crazy gringo friends want to come home the hard way, you know where to find me.” Then he was gone, disappearing into the shadows.

  Hy began to move toward the pipe. I put a restraining hand on his arm. When he frowned, I mouthed the words, “I don’t trust him. Wait awhile.”

  4:49 A.M.

  Ten minutes passed with no further sign of Mojas. We got up from where we huddled on the ground and went over to the pipe. Hy and Mourning crouched and stepped inside. I took a final look around and joined them.

  Blackness enveloped me. Silt and rocks and debris lay underfoot. The slightest sound echoed off the curving concrete walls. Far ahead I could see a round opening full of gray light. There might not be any people in there now, but I could smell their leavings, feel remnants of their fear and despair.

  I could also smell the faint trapped odor of cordite.

  I stiffened, tugged at Hy’s sleeve. “Something is wrong,” I whispered.

  “Yeah, I was afraid of that.”

  Quickly I thought through our options; they were few. “You and Tim stay here. I’ll go back, climb the embankment, and take a look. Give me around five minutes, then move closer to the other end and make some noise. If anybody’s waiting for us, that might flush him out.”

  “McCone, you climb up there, you’re making a target of yourself. I can’t let you do that.”

  “Yes, Ripinsky, you can and you will. You’re hurting, and it’s the only way to find out if it’s safe to go on.”

  4:54 A.M.

  Gray dawn was breaking as I reached the top of the high embankment. The shapes of the rocks and scrub vegetation on the other side had begun to take on definition. The cold sea wind blew more strongly in this unsheltered place. I lay flat on my stomach, then slowly raised my head and looked around.

  Things moved down below: they could have been animals, polios, human coyotes—or merely branches stirring in the wind. Like the phantom wolves of my childhood bedtime stories, they slipped in and out of the shadows, eluding identification. For a moment my calm deserted me; I wanted to scramble back down the embankment and run as blindly as I had from the wolves in my long-ago nightmares.

  Then the calm reasserted itself, and I knew I was done with stories for good.

  I took out my father’s .45 and braced it experimentally on the mound of earth in front of me. Checked my watch again. Nearly five minutes had gone by. I scanned the surrounding terrain, saw no one. Listened. Waited.

  Then there were sounds below, echoing in the drainage pipe. I tensed, peering through the half-light. Sniper’s light, they call it—

  And there was a sniper.

  At first I thought it was only a tamarisk tree moving in the wind. Then I made out a man’s figure, down on the opposite side of the ditch. I squinted, strained to identify details. Medium height and slender, holding a weapon. More noise came from the pipe, and the man slipped forward.

  Marty Salazar, with a semiautomatic pistol.

  He stood in a place where he wouldn’t be visible from the pipe’s outlet. Would only be visible if you were on his side of the ditch—or up here. He held himself ready, primed to fire, but patient. He’d wait until he identified his quarries, had them clearly in sight, then spray them with bullets. A person coming out of the pipe would never see Salazar. Would never know what hit him.

  But he was clearly visible to a person up here. Only yards away—easily within range of her gun. If she was a good shot. And she was—very.

  My fingers tightened convulsively on the .45. I relaxed them, steadied the weapon on the mound of earth.

  Everything I believed in told me this was wrong. Everything I cared about told me this was right.

  One shot, two at most. Shoot to kill. A gun has only one purpose: if you use it, be prepared to take a life.

  More noise below. Salazar moved forward, his stance steady, footing firm. He raised the pistol, ready.

  I sighted on him. Waited until he was completely still.
/>   And pulled the trigger.

  Thirty-Two

  Tuesday, June 15

  “Listen, Shar, you are rich! What’re you going to do with all that money?”

  “Save it for when my unemployment runs out,” I told my brother.

  John, Hy, and I were sitting on the purloined park bench on John’s hill, sipping beer and watching the sunset. We’d been there since four that afternoon, and by now felt mellow and a little giddy, and would probably regret our behavior in the morning. But for the time being, a spirit of good fellowship prevailed, a pizza was speeding to us from John’s favorite Italian restaurant, and I’d managed to keep at bay the terrible images that threatened to invade my mind.

  Images such as Ann Navarro dropping to the floor as Jaime’s bullet smashed her skull. Such as the flight through Smuggler’s Gulch in the moonless early morning. Such as the murder I’d committed on the embankment above Monument Road,

  Well, I wasn’t fending off the images any longer….

  The murder: it was just that, no sugarcoating the fact. Sure, the authorities considered it self-defense. Sure, Lieutenant Gary Viner had congratulated me on ridding the county of one of its more noxious vermin. But I’d shot a man in cold blood. Taken his life to get my people through.

  Hy glanced at me, frowned, and touched my cheek. “Don’t brood.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You are. I always can tell.”

  John said, “She’s been a brooder her whole life.”

  The two of them exchanged wise looks. I sighed.

  Yesterday had been taken up with getting medical attention for Hy’s bullet wound and seemingly endless formalities with the local authorities, the FBI, and RKI. Then we went back to my bungalow at La Encantadora and slept nearly around the clock. After a late lunch, I brought Hy over here; John greeted him in that wary manner a big brother adopts when meeting his little sister’s lover. Then they discovered a mutual fondness for Beck’s dark beer, baseball, western movies, and hiking. Hy told John about his collection of Western Americana and novels; John showed Hy his sound system. The three of us had spiritedly talked about politics, sports, the illegal alien problem, the future of the planet, and why you can’t get a decent chicken-fried steak anyplace in the state of California. I had to admit I was somewhat awed by how famously we all got along. Relieved, too: the kidnapping and my shooting Salazar had been widely reported in the press; I’d feared the killing would reerect the barrier between John and me. But he’d seen Salazar, seen the evil I was up against; taking him along while I’d investigated had allowed him a glimpse of the realities of my world that he would never forget, and created a stronger bond between us.

  Now we fell silent as the sun sank behind the yucca trees. After a while John asked, “You’re not still upset over Ma and Melvin getting pissed at you?”

  I shook my head. “By now they’re almost over it.” My mother and Melvin Hunt had found out about the border crossing and shooting from the TV news hours before I’d been free to call them. Strangely, my mother had seemed angrier that I’d been in San Diego for days without contacting them than that I’d once again placed my life in jeopardy. Melvin had merely asked me not to provoke Ma any more; at his advanced age, he said in his wry way, his heart couldn’t stand it.

  John stood. “By now they’re probably bragging to their friends about you. Listen, if the pizza guy comes, you pay him. You’re rich now, and anyway, I gotta go shed a tear for Garfield.”

  I shook my head as he shambled up the hill to the house. Shedding a tear for a dead president is another of my mother’s too-cute euphemisms, and John only says it because he knows it annoys me. Normally he would have announced that he had to go take a leak.

  “So you’re rich, huh?” Hy said. “And not only that, you now own a seventy-five-buck silk parrot.”

  “I can’t wait to show W.C. to my cats. And I’m certainly richer than I’ve ever been. RKI was generous.”

  Renshaw had been waiting where I’d told him to when we arrived at the old dairy, with a company car and two fat envelopes full of cash for us. Because I’d shot Salazar, though, we weren’t able to just drive away. The red tape was hideous, the conference with the FBI—to which the security firm finally reported the kidnapping—exhausting. Then we’d agreed to meet with Renshaw, Dan Kessell, and a few of their operatives for a debriefing. Before we left RKI’s offices, Kessell—a blond, burly man who looked like, and was, an ex-marine—presented each of us with an additional check matching the cash payment, and Renshaw said he’d be in touch. Personally, I hoped he’d leave me alone.

  “Yeah, now they’re generous,” Hy said bitterly. “But a week ago Renshaw was going to shoot me on sight.”

  “Well, he’s a violent man. You must have known that going in.”

  He was silent.

  “Are you ever going to tell me about those years?” It was the first time I’d had the nerve to ask outright, and it was surprisingly easy.

  “… Someday, probably. I’m building up to it. Hard to talk about something you’ve never told a living soul.”

  “Not even Julie?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “She suspected some things, but I couldn’t get into it. I loved my wife, but she was such a … purist. Such an idealist. Not at all like you.”

  “Thanks, Ripinsky.”

  He tipped my chin up, looked into my eyes. “Didn’t mean that the way it sounded. It’s supposed to be a compliment. You’ve got both feet on the ground, you face facts, no matter how unpleasant. You’ve got what it takes, in any situation.” He smiled smugly. “You’re like me.”

  * * *

  Ten minutes later John still hadn’t returned—giving us time alone, I supposed. The shadows of the yuccas lengthened and turned purple, bleeding into the dusk. The cars climbing the streets below began to put on their lights. One stopped at the foot of the driveway, and I heard its door open and close. I stood to see who it was; a long, lean figure started up the hill.

  Gage Renshaw.

  Hy stood, too. “What’s that son of a bitch doing here?”

  I shrugged, watching Renshaw. He came up the drive in his long, loose-limbed gait, wearing the same rumpled suit and frayed tie that he’d had on yesterday afternoon. I wondered if the man possessed any decent clothing.

  Renshaw spotted us and came over. Before he could speak, Hy said, “Don’t you think we’ve spent enough time together this week, Gage?”

  “When’re you going to brush that chip off your shoulder, Ripinsky?”

  Hy made a disgusted sound.

  I said, “Why don’t we let Mr. Renshaw tell us why he’s here?”

  “You can call me by my first name, Sharon.”

  I ignored that. “Why are you here?”

  For a moment he seemed at a loss for words—surely an unusual state. Then he said, “I have some information and two offers. First, Fontes and Julio Sandoval, Navarro’s contact in the comptroller’s office at Colores, were picked up when they tried to draw on the L.C. at Banco Internacional in Mexico City yesterday afternoon. They’re admitting nothing, of course, but I assume being held in a Mexican jail will loosen the tongue of one or the other.”

  When he didn’t go on, I prompted him. “And second?”

  “Jaime’s okay. You can’t seriously hurt anybody that stupid by hitting him on the head. And he’s talking. You wondered how Salazar knew you’d be crossing with a coyote?”

  I nodded.

  “After you snatched Mourning, Salazar began phoning, tapped into his network of contacts here in the South Bay. Someone saw you talking with Luis Abrego in the Tradewinds Sunday afternoon. Salazar put it together, then got in touch with his contacts in T.J.”

  “Al Mojas gave us away?”

  “That I don’t know. But Salazar knew him, knew where he’d be likely to take you across. My guess is he paid Mojas to deliver you.”

  “But why did Mojas warn us about something being wrong?” Hy asked.

  Rensh
aw shrugged.

  I said, “I think in his odd way he’d come to like us. He tipped us, figuring we’d at least stand a chance.” I turned to Renshaw. “Anything else?”

  He smiled grimly. “The last missing piece: who shot Diane.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “Her husband.”

  “What?” Hy and I spoke in unison.

  Renshaw nodded. “Seems that a lot of drinking went on at Fontes’s villa Saturday night and early Sunday morning. Security got lax. Before they doped Tim up and broke his glasses, he managed to get hold of Jaime’s gun. Fool could’ve escaped, but instead he encountered Diane hitting up the living-room liquor cart and decided to sever his marital ties. Failed miserably.”

  “Good Lord,” I said. “She’s not going to try to press charges, is she?” If so, it would be on a par with the mugger who sued the San Francisco cab driver who pinned him to a wall with his taxi while trying to apprehend him. In a great miscarriage of justice, the mugger actually won the initial round.

  “No, ma’am,” Renshaw said. “Diane’s not admitting to complicity in the kidnapping, of course, and Tim’s willing to overlook her participation in exchange for her not going to the Mexican authorities about the shooting, a speedy divorce, and a distribution of their community property that’s weighted heavily in his favor.”

  “I wouldn’t be that charitable toward her,” I said.

  Renshaw glanced at Hy. “Don’t ever marry this woman.”

  Hy grunted.

  I said, “Okay, you’ve given us your information. What about the offers?”

  He hesitated, then addressed Hy. “The partnership’s still open, Ripinsky. We need somebody with your talents.”

  Hy’s lips tightened. He stared straight ahead, arms folded across his chest.