Los Alamos

by Joseph Kanon

  “Maybe he needed the ride.”

  Connolly looked up. “So where was his own car?”

  Holliday shrugged. “He could have walked to the church.”

  “If he was already in Santa Fe. How did he get there?”

  “You’re assuming the guy was from here.”

  “Yes.”

  “Bus. They’ve got buses running from here, don’t they? Saturday night. You got a few people on passes, right?”

  Connolly nodded, thinking. “Then why not take a bus back? Just leave the car.”

  Holliday leaned against the car, staring at the ground. “Well, what did we think happened? When we found him?”

  “That it had been stolen.”

  “Uh-huh. Which fit, right? That kind of crime. Bump him off and the next thing you know you’re in Mexico. Valuable thing, a car in wartime. You leave it on the street, you’ve got somebody asking questions. Plus you’ve got the blood,” he said, nodding to him.

  “So you’ve got to get rid of it.”

  “Seems a shame, a nice new car, but I guess you do.”

  “But there are lots of ways to do that. Leave it in the desert, push it over a cliff.”

  “Well, the trouble is, you never know how that’s going to turn out. It falls wrong or the damn thing catches fire. You don’t want to attract any notice, you just want it to disappear. For good. Or a good long while, anyway. And maybe you don’t have time for any of that. Maybe you don’t even have time for all the thinking we’re doing about it. You just hide it.”

  “Here.”

  “Here. Like I said, maybe he needed the ride. He comes here, the gate is closed. Nobody around. Maybe he knew the gate was closed.”

  “Then he’d still have to get over to the east gate. The only way to do that—”

  Holliday nodded. “That’s right. If somebody else was driving his car.”

  Connolly stared at the ground, silent. “Two. I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “I don’t say it happened that way. Just that it could have.”

  “It makes sense. There had to be another car.”

  “Could be and had to be are two different things.”

  But Connolly dismissed him with a wave of his hand, still thinking. “Okay, he gets the car here and someone else gets him back on the Hill. You agree he’s on the Hill?”

  “I’d say it was indicated,” Holliday said, a cop giving testimony.

  “So why leave the keys? Why not just throw them away?”

  Holliday sighed and took out a cigarette. “Yeah, why not? I’ve been thinking about that. Maybe just force of habit, you know? You don’t throw keys away—what for? You don’t want them on you, but you don’t know if you’re going to need them again either.”

  “You think he was going to use the car?”

  “No, I was thinking of something else.” He looked up, searching the canyon rim with a turn of his head. “Must have been pretty dark when he parked it here, right? So he can’t tell if it’s been hid real good. I mean, that time of night, you can’t see anything. So I think—it’s just a guess, now—that he wanted to take another look in the day, see what he could see. What if you look down from up there,” he said, pointing to the rim, “and there’s this shiny new car. Even just a piece of it. You’d have to move it, make sure it was really out of sight. So he might’ve left the keys just in case. ‘Course, he never thought you boys would be shooting up the place.”

  “He’s on the Hill,” Connolly said.

  “Yes, he is,” Holliday said quietly. “Or was.”

  “He’d be taking a hell of a chance, coming back for the car.”

  “Mister, he took a hell of a chance when he murdered a man.”

  As a V-E celebration, he took Mills to dinner in Santa Fe, following Holliday’s car down the back road, past Bandelier and the Rio Grande Valley and the humpy stretches of twisted piñon and red earth. The plaza was crowded, the sleepy square awake with people waving little flags and drinking openly, shouting victory with the bells of the cathedral. It was early, but La Fonda was packed, and they spent an hour at the bar before they could get a table.

  “Do you really think he’s FBI?” Connolly said, indicating the bartender.

  “That’s what they say. Makes a great martini, though,” Mills said, sipping at the rim of the wide glass.

  “Maybe he’ll go legit after the war. A good bartender’s never out of work.”

  “The FBI always finds something for them to do.”

  “What about you?”

  “After? A nice house on the North Shore. Nice office with a window. Wacker Drive, I think. How does that sound?”

  “Nice.”

  “Yeah, I know, dull as hell. Christ, it’s something, isn’t it, to think this might be the most exciting time of your life? And all I did was not get shot.”

  Dinner arrived, a broad platter of chiles rellenos, and Mills ordered another martini.

  “You could catch a murderer,” Connolly said. “That’s exciting.”

  “You catch him.”

  “He’s on the Hill,” Connolly said slowly.

  “I know. I figured, what with the car and all.” He ate.

  “That what you and Holliday were talking about?”

  Connolly nodded.

  “You think he’s still up there?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that doesn’t bother you?”

  “No, why should it?”

  “It scares the hell out of me. Did it ever occur to you that if he did it once, he’d do it again?”

  “But we don’t know why he did it.”

  “The motive’s easier this time. You get away with murder and some guy tracks you down to nail you for it. So you nail him first. You’d have to.”

  “Two guys tracking you,” Connolly said, looking at him.

  “That’s what I mean. I’ve never been a target before.”

  “Do you want to be reassigned?” Connolly asked seriously.

  Mills went back to his food. “No, that’s all right.” He smiled. “You’ve got me interested now. Just watch my back, will you? Be nice to get back to old Winnetka in one piece.”

  “He doesn’t know,” Connolly said. “He doesn’t know I know he’s there.”

  Mills raised his eyes again. “He knows you’re looking.”

  So they celebrated the end of the Third Reich with martinis and chiles rellenos, as if the war had caught them posted somewhere overseas. Afterward, pressured to give up the table, they walked out into the plaza, where people were shouting in Spanish, slightly rowdy but good-natured. It was beginning to get dark, the warm pink and coral of the adobes fading back to earth.

  “Do me a favor,” Connolly said. “Let’s drive down to San Isidro.”

  “There’s nothing to see there. They’ve been all over it a hundred times.”

  “I know. I just want to be able to picture it in my mind. Indulge me, okay?”

  “For a change.”

  It was slow going over the Cerrillos bridge, with the streets still filled with pockets of celebration parties, but they thinned as the road headed south, past gas stations and quiet houses. There were a few cars in the alley next to the church and, inside, the glow of candles and the sound of voices. Mills idled the car across the street, watching Connolly study the building.

  “Seen enough?”

  “Let’s go in for a minute. They must be saying mass. They do this every night?”

  “No, we checked. Probably a celebration. For the war.”

  “Not very many cars.”

  “People walk. It’s a neighborhood church. Only the tourists drive out here.”

  Connolly frowned, brooding, then shook the thought away and entered the church. It was crowded inside, rows of women with shawls over their heads and men holding hats. The small lights of votive candles licked against the whitewashed walls, and the reredos, intricate and dark during the day, glowed now as if it were simmering on a low flame. At the altar end of
the narrow room, carved wooden saints, crude and bright with paint, looked down on the congregation like primitive Aztec gargoyles. A priest was speaking in Spanish at the lectern. Connolly felt he had literally stepped back in time. The faithful had gathered like this for centuries, fingering rosaries, praying for rain, while the rest of the world went to hell. But these were the people who had beat the Nazis too. In the room there must be Gold Star mothers. He wondered if they sent telegrams in Spanish or if the bad news was the piece of yellow paper itself, the army messenger. From the outside their lives seemed timelessly simple, hoarding squash and chiles, sticky candy on name days, but they had driven tanks and thrown grenades at scared, frozen teenagers who were trying to kill them. All those mad northern people who wanted—what? More room to breathe, or something like that. Now a victory in Europe. And they had walked here. Only the tourists drove.

  Connolly stepped back out the door, feeling like an intruder. San Isidro had nothing to do with them. He asked Mills to head for the Alameda, trying to imagine that other drive as they passed the quiet streets. It was dark in the ribbon of park along the river, but a few people were out strolling, lit by passing headlights. He saw one couple kissing against a tree. Mills parked the car by the murder scene without being asked, and they sat looking at the bushes.

  “There are people,” Connolly said finally. “Why bring him somewhere where there are people?”

  “There weren’t,” Mills answered. “It was late. It was raining.”

  “But he couldn’t be sure.”

  “Maybe he drove around until the coast was clear.”

  “Maybe.”

  “It’s a park. You mind your own business, especially at night. Look at those guys.” He nodded toward a man walking unsteadily, propping up a drunk friend under his arm. “Who’s to say he isn’t dead? Who’s going to ask?”

  “You have an answer for everything,” Connolly said.

  “Let’s go home, Mike. There’s nothing here.”

  But Connolly, not yet satisfied, asked that they drive the back way to the canyon by the west gate.

  “Retracing steps?” Mills said as they climbed the road to Bandelier.

  “I can’t see it. Look, we figure the car’s here because the guy needed to get back to the Hill, right? Then why leave the Hill at all? You’ve seen the church. If you were meeting somebody, there are a hundred places on the Hill that would be better. Why go all the way to Santa Fe to a public place?”

  “I thought the idea was they didn’t want to be seen together. You know.”

  “That was the idea. It’s wrong.” Mills looked from the wheel, surprised. Connolly ignored him. “They could just go into the woods for that. Or for anything.”

  “If the other guy was already on the Hill.”

  “Exactly. That’s what doesn’t make sense. He was. He must have been. There’s no other explanation for the car. So why go all the way to San Isidro to meet somebody who’s just down the street?”

  “I give up. Why?”

  “He wasn’t meeting Karl.”

  Mills drove in silence for a minute. “Want to run that by me again?”

  “He was meeting someone else. Someone off the Hill. It’s the only way it makes sense.”

  “But Karl’s the one who’s dead.”

  “He wasn’t supposed to be there. It was—a surprise.”

  “You don’t know any of this.”

  “No, I’m guessing. But follow me. Tonight I stood there in that alley next to the church and I thought, no one in his right mind would pick this place to kill someone. Open like that. A Mex neighborhood. But no one did pick it. It must have been an accident—an accident that it happened there, I mean. But it happens. Then what? Everything has to be done in a hurry. You have to take some risks, even. All along we’ve been trying to follow Karl’s moves. How would Karl see it? What would he do? Like he was the criminal. But all that stops in the alley. It’s the other guy we ought to be thinking about. What would he do? Tonight I was trying to imagine how he saw it.”

  “And?”

  “I had to get rid of a body. I had to get rid of a car. And I had to get home.”

  “I’d say you did a pretty good job.”

  “I was lucky too. Nobody saw. The one thing I couldn’t imagine, though, was Karl. If I’d wanted to kill him, I would have done it somewhere else. Why go to San Isidro to see him? Answer: I didn’t.”

  Mills thought for a minute. “But he was there anyway. Another accident?”

  “No. He followed me.”

  “Now you’re really guessing.”

  “Why not? He was security, wasn’t he? He was used to tailing people.”

  “There isn’t much of that. We go with people. Guards. We don’t usually tail them. That’s FBI stuff.”

  “But Karl might. He was capable of that, wasn’t he?” Mills hesitated. “Yes,” he said finally.

  Connolly looked at him. “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “He did tail people, didn’t he?”

  “I guess so. He knew things—where people went, things like that. He liked knowing things. He’d say something once in a while. How else would he know? I guess he must have been following them. I never thought about it before.”

  “Yes you did.”

  “All right, I did. But it wasn’t official, so what was it? I figured it was just Karl. He liked being the sheriff. You learn not to pay too much attention to things like that.”

  “That’s a hell of a thing for a security officer to say. You’re supposed to pay attention.”

  “Yeah, well, how did I know he was going to get himself killed, for Christ’s sake? I just thought he was a nut like the rest of them.”

  “The rest of who?”

  “Security. They’re all a little nuts. Maybe you too. How do I know? Look, I didn’t ask for this assignment. I don’t get shot and I keep my head down. You stick it out and there’s always somebody ready to chop it off. You never know what anybody’s up to. For all I knew, Karl was FBI—he sure acted like it. So you don’t look too closely. Just keep your head down and stay out of the way.”

  “He wasn’t FBI.”

  “You know that for sure?”

  “Groves would have told me.”

  “Yeah.” Mills laughed. “Just like he told Lansdale about you, right? You’ve got the head of project security sitting there in Washington and his boss puts an outside man in and he doesn’t know what the hell is going on. He’s a little nuts already. Now how do you think he feels?”

  “I don’t know,” Connolly said quietly. “How does he?”

  Mills looked ahead at the road, saying nothing.

  “He asked you to report on me, didn’t he?” Connolly said, his voice low. Mills still said nothing. “Didn’t he?”

  “I’m sorry, Mike.”

  “Jesus Christ.” He felt disgust mingled with irrational fear, the way he had felt the time his apartment had been burgled. There was nothing to steal. It was just the fact of someone’s having been there at all. But now there was something. He imagined Emma’s name sitting in a Washington file. “Tell him anything interesting?”

  “No, nothing like that,” Mills said. “It’s just the case, Mike. He wants to know what’s going on. He thinks Groves should have put him in charge.”

  “So your boss tells you to spy on me so he can spy on his boss. All in the family. Nice.”

  “I was ordered, Mike,” he said quietly.

  “What a fucking waste of time. And who’s checking up on you?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe you. That’s what it’s like. Maybe Karl was.”

  Connolly thought for a minute. “Is that possible? Would he be asked to do something like that? Unofficially?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t think they trusted him that way.”

  “The way they trust you. Why not?”

  “He was foreign.”

  “Everybody here’s
foreign.”

  “That’s what makes them crazy. They can’t trust anyone. Mike, look, I have to ask. Anything I tell you—”

  “You can trust me,” Connolly said, his voice heavy with sarcasm.

  They were driving around the bottom of the mesa, away from the canyon where the car had been hidden, back toward the east gate. Connolly looked out the window, again imagining the drive that night.

  “I don’t want any trouble,” Mills said.

  But Connolly was lost in his own thoughts. “You have to admit, he’d be ideal from their point of view.”

  “No. You don’t know them. He was too smart for them.”

  “You weren’t.”

  “They didn’t have much choice. I’m the only one you’re working with. Anyway, I’m not a Communist. Karl might have been. For a while, anyway. That makes them crazier than anything.”

  “I thought he was tortured by them. Or was that a lie too?”

  “No, there’s no question about that. He hated them. But there it was in his file. They’re not going to use anybody with that in his file. I know. They had me on the clearance files the first few months I was here. Lansdale’s like a maniac with that stuff. Van Drasek’s worse. You met him yet? He’s a real cutie. Crazy.”

  Connolly smiled. “Pretty high opinion of your colleagues.”

  “They’re just following orders too. But look who’s giving them. Van Drasek’s specialty is Reds, so he keeps busy. You know what it’s like here. Half the Berkeley crowd were parlor pinks. The unions, the Negroes—the usual. It doesn’t amount to a damn thing, but try to tell old Van Drasek that. He’s on a mission. He’s out at Lawrence’s lab again—goes through the place over and over.”

  “Maybe he’s just trying to get away from his wife.”

  “We’d all be better off. He’s serious, though. I’ve seen him deny clearance to scientists here and then call the university to get them fired. A real vindictive prick. And he’s got Lawrence running in every direction, scared shitless they’ll stop his funding. He’s got files on everyone. I know.”

  “You know a lot,” Connolly said, thinking of that first night, Mills’s shiny head bobbing at the square dance. “Why doesn’t Oppenheimer put a stop to it?”