The Bones of Wolfe

by James Carlos Blake

  “Ah, jeez . . . around two years, I guess. The guy who had the job had to quit and Lance asked me did I want it. Said it’s easy and doesn’t take much time, and it pays pretty good for just a little work, so I said sure, yeah. But that’s it. I deliver the mail. That’s all, I swear.”

  “Easy, Richard, I believe you. Tell me, you ever watch any of Lance’s movies?”

  “Yeah, now and then . . . I mean, it’s not like I watch that kind of thing all the time or anything. I can take it or leave it. It’s only, ah, some nights there’s nothing good on TV and so—”

  “I understand. You ever seen a movie with an actress named Kitty Quick?”

  Even from where I’m standing I can tell by Moss’s face he knows the name. “Listen, mister,” he says, “if Lance finds out I been running my mouth about his business, Christ, he’ll be really pissed.”

  “At this moment, Richard,” Frank says, “Lance is a problem somewhere else and for a later time, but I’m a problem right here and now. Tell me everything you know about Kitty Quick or I’m going to use a hammer on your hands and feet.”

  “No, Jesus, no, don’t!” The tears gush again and he brushes at them with the heels of his hands. “I’ve seen her in only one movie. I don’t remember what it was called. It had to do with nurses . . . yeah, she played a nurse. But that’s it, I mean it, that’s all I know about her. I’m not lying.”

  “And you have no idea where we might find her?”

  “No, I swear to God I don’t! If I knew where she was I’d tell you, believe me. All I know about her is the one movie.”

  “Would Lance know where she is?”

  “Yeah, I suppose. Maybe.”

  “You picked up today’s mail?”

  “I already put the sack in the car. Not very much today.”

  “You take it to him at a certain time?”

  “Usually around eight, little after.”

  Frank and I check our watches. Seven ten.

  “Where’s the company?”

  “Up in the hills. Not too far but it’s slow going.”

  “What is it? Warehouse, office complex?”

  “No, there’s only houses up there. The company works in Lance’s house.”

  “Describe it.”

  “Oh, jeez. It’s a big place. Two-story, lot of rooms. Five bedrooms, I think, plus a little guesthouse around back. Great big front porch, sundecks on the sides and rear. Hot tubs. Big swimming pool. Christ, I can’t imagine what it cost him to put in a pool up there. But, hell, all the houses up there are pretty ritzy, and the area where Lance lives—Raven Heights—it’s about the ritziest. He’s got something like fifteen acres near the top of a hill and his house is on a flat cut into the slope. He makes all his movies and videos there, but you’d never know any two of them were made in the same place, there’s so many different kinds of rooms and patios and all. Privacy’s a big thing with the people up there, so all the properties are big and far apart. All got big iron fences. Lance says they were all built between big curves and behind ridges so that none of them have a clear view of any of the others.”

  “What security he have other than the fence?”

  “There’s a guard company that’s under contract to most of the residents up there. It patrols the hills all night, keeps an eye on things.”

  “What’s the drill when you get there? How do you get in?”

  “When I stop at the gate, a detector somewhere in the driveway signals Judson’s phone, which connects to a gate camera and intercom. There’s a floodlight comes on automatically after dark. He sees it’s me and he opens up.”

  “Who’s Judson?”

  “Lance’s bodyguard, I guess you’d call him.”

  “He big? Carry a gun?”

  “Yeah. Big. Has a gun.”

  “Are there other guards on the place?”

  “No. Only him.”

  “Who else lives there?”

  “Just Josefina the cook. Mexican. The maids and the gardeners are day help. When Lance is doing a project that takes more than a day to make, he has the cast and crew stay at the house till it’s done.”

  “Any movie people there now?”

  “No, uh-uh. He just finished a movie last week.”

  “Once you go through the gate, what then?”

  “I drive up to the house and park. Go up to the front door, ring the bell, and Judson lets me in.” He cuts another look from Frank to me and back. “You fellas are gonna go there, huh? Oh, man, he’s gonna know you found him through me.”

  “For sure, since you’re gonna take us. Where are your car keys?”

  “Bedroom,” Richard says gloomily.

  Frank stands up and says, “Let’s go get them.” He looks at me and juts his chin at the door, and I head out to the Cherokee.

  Rayo has the radio tuned to a rock station, the volume low, but she switches it off as I get in and toss the clipboard in back, then give her the rundown on things. I get a couple of ball gags out of my bag and hook them on my belt.

  The garage door rolls up and the Toyota backs out onto the driveway and stops, Moss driving, Frank beside him. The door comes down again, and Moss backs into the street and gets going and we pull out and follow. We trail them onto the main avenue that brought us to this neighborhood and head north. A short way up the road we turn off at a large minimart, where we park the Cherokee in a far, dark corner of the lot. We quickly remove the signs from the doors and stuff them and the other business signs into a nearby dumpster, then lock the vehicle up tight. I open the Toyota’s hatchback, and we huddle into the cramped space behind the rear seat, pushing aside the baggy sack of mail Moss loaded earlier, and I shut the hatch.

  “Roll it, Richard,” Frank says.

  The avenue ends at a T-junction with a two-lane road branching up into the hills in both directions. Moss turns west on it. The road climbs the hillside in loops large and small, our headlights slowly sweeping past rocky outcrops and creosote shrubs and eerily lofty saguaros. Moss was right about the properties up here being sizable and the residences few and far between. All of them stand well back from the twisting lane and are connected to it by long driveways, and all of them are enclosed by a high railed fence with a lighted front gate. The city below is a carpet of sparkling lights.

  After a while, we come out of another bend in the road and Moss points off to the right. “That’s it there. His fence. Can’t see the house from here, though.” He turns off onto a driveway that runs about fifty yards to the gate, which is lighted by a pair of small flood lamps. He’s advised us that the camera-intercom combination is attached to the stone gatepost on the driver’s side and several feet higher than the Toyota, the better to see into the open beds of incoming trucks. As we close in on the gate, Frank and Rayo and I hunker down and press ourselves close against the right side of the vehicle, out of the camera’s line of vision.

  We halt at the gate, in the full glow of its light. Moss lowers his window and juts his face out of it so the camera can get a good look at him.

  The seconds drag by and then the intercom crackles lightly and a hoarse voice says, “Running a little bit behind tonight, Richie.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Moss says. “I got caught up with—” But the intercom clicks off.

  We hear an electric hum and the gate slides open with a low rattle. Moss puts his window up and drives us onto the property and out of range of the gate light, and we sit up for a look around. The driveway weaves a mostly uphill route through the scrub-and-stone landscape and ends at a paved parking lot abutting a two-story stone-and-tile house in front of the hillside. Directly ahead of us and past the house is an open carport that looks long enough to shelter a half dozen vehicles side by side but at the moment is housing only two, a large SUV and a small sports car. A railed porch runs the front length of the house. A recessed entryway casts a soft yellow light, and as we ease past it we see the set-back front door and the light just above it. Frank has Moss park well away from the porch st
eps and out of the door’s sight line. When Moss cuts the engine, Frank pockets the keys and we get out and pull our pistols and I hand Moss the slack bag of mail. From around the side of the house comes the hum of a big AC unit.

  Holding Moss by the back of his collar, Frank has him lead the way to the steps and onto the porch. The recessed entryway restricts the width of the cast of light from above the front door and leaves the walls to either side of the entry in deep shadow. Frank directs me and Rayo to positions on one side of the entrance, and he pulls Moss into the shadows on the other side. He whispers something to him, their figures vague, and then they come out into the light, Moss still holding the mailbag. He stands at the recessed threshold as Frank moves out near the porch steps, holding his pistol down against his leg, and faces the entrance. He nods at Moss, who goes into the recess and out of my view for a few seconds and then hurries back out to Frank, who pats him on the shoulder and then retreats into the darkness. I catch on that he had Moss ring the doorbell. Moss sets down the mail and faces the door and stands slightly hunched with one hand atop the other at his chest.

  Nothing happens for about a half minute before I hear the door open and then a shaft of bright indoor light more starkly exposes Moss in his awkward stance, his face contorted.

  “What the hell, Richie?” says a gravelly voice I recognize as Judson’s. “What’re you . . . what’s the matter?”

  “Got a pain just all of a sudden. Hurts to breathe.”

  “Having a heart attack or what?” Judson says, coming out toward him. Like Moss said, he’s big. Heavy work boots, jeans, dark oversized T-shirt. But he’s no seasoned pro, stepping out like this, empty-handed and without a look to left or right. Frank glides out of the darkness and puts the suppressor muzzle to the back of Judson’s head. “Stand fast and hands up!”

  Judson halts, hands half raised in front of him. With his free hand, Frank pats all around Judson’s torso and waist, finds a cell phone, drops it on the floor, and crunches it under his heel, then kicks it off the porch. “Where’s your piece?”

  “Rec room.”

  “Good place for it. Put your hands in your back pockets and keep them there. Show a hand, I’ll shoot it.”

  Judson stuffs his hands into the pockets and cuts a look at Moss, who’s gaping at him in fear and says, “They made me bring them.”

  “Shut up, both you,” Frank says. He looks my way and I go to them.

  “This a robbery or what?” Judson says.

  Frank jabs him hard in the back of the head with the pistol muzzle and says, “I said shut up.”

  Frank draws him over to a darker spot on the porch and makes him sit down with his back against the rail, and I cuff his hands behind him and around one of the posts. Rayo’s still hanging back in the shadows and keeping an eye on the entrance.

  Frank squats down beside Judson and says, “All right, we’re gonna have a quick Q&A, you and I. And you have to understand two things—I don’t have time to fuck around and I always know when someone’s lying to me.” He takes out his buck knife and opens the blade. “The first time you lie, I’m going to cut open your knee joints, plus cut your hamstrings and heel tendons. No matter what the surgeons do, walking without crutches will be nothing but a memory for the rest of your life. After that, every lie will make me do something really bad to you. And I’m not lying. We clear?”

  “Fuck yeah, man, yeah.”

  Frank works the interrogation swiftly and Judson affirms that he and Lance and Josefina the cook are the only ones in the house. Judson was in the rec room having a beer and watching a ball game on TV when the doorbell rang. Lance is working in the editing room, on the upper floor and in a rear corner of the house, and he would not have heard the bell, the room being soundproofed because he doesn’t like to be distracted while he’s working. The cook’s only concern is the kitchen. She never pays heed to the doorbell or anything else. She’s finished her duties for the night and retired to her room. There’s no landline in the house, and the only cell phones are his and Lance’s. “Well, only Lance’s now,” he corrects himself, giving Frank a look. The only room in the house with a door that locks is Lance’s bedroom. If he has guns anywhere in the house, Judson doesn’t know of them.

  Frank asks Moss if he knows where the editing room is and Moss says he does. “Then we’re set,” Frank says, and gives me a nod.

  I take a ball gag off my belt and fit it into Judson’s mouth and secure it behind his head. It’s a scary gag and clearly a novel sensation for him, and his eyes enlarge in alarm. He tries to speak but manages only a grunt, and I tell him that trying to talk will make the ball feel bigger and probably make him feel like he’s choking, and what he definitely does not want to do is freak out and throw up and drown on his own puke. I tell him he’ll be able to breathe well enough if he just stays calm. Even if his nose stops up, there’s sufficient leeway around the ball for him to breathe through his mouth as long as he doesn’t panic. I ask if he can keep cool till we get back, and he nods jerkily, his eyes bulging.

  “Good,” I say. “Just relax and breathe easy, Judsie, and you’ll be fine. We’ll take it off on our way out.”

  Frank again grips Moss by the collar, then beckons Rayo out of the darkness and we enter the house, pistols in hand.

  The big living room has been done in Old West decor. Lots of dark wood and leather, Indian blankets and rugs, some Remington sculptures and paintings that could pass for originals and maybe are. Moss leads us to a wide stairway and up to the second floor, then down a long hallway and around a corner into a shorter one, before he stops in front of a closed door and nods at it. The editing room. Not a sound seeps from within.

  Frank draws Moss away from the door and pushes him toward Rayo. She grips him by the collar the same way Frank did and backs up to the wall, holding Moss in front of her and the Glock barrel alongside his head. He looks like he’s just been told he has cancer. Because the door opens inward and to our left, we stand on that side of it, me up against the jamb, Frank a little farther back and aiming his pistol at the door. I gingerly try the knob. It turns with ease and I slowly push the door forward, gradually revealing a large room, softly lighted, the walls lined with shelves holding a variety of photographic and sound equipment. The door’s half open before we can see the blond man sitting at a table on the other side of the room with his back to us. Wearing headphones and dressed all in denim, sleeves rolled to the elbows, he’s intent on a movie on the wall screen before him in which three naked young persons, a guy and two women, are cavorting on a bed. On the table is a bulky electronic instrument of some kind with a broad panel of levers and slides and connected to a computer equipped with an extra-large keyboard. At one end of the table are a big plastic ice chest and a large, lid-covered food tray, a short stack of paper plates and one of paper napkins. He’s engrossed in the scene and working with the panel controls, bringing the action into close-up and then drawing back again into a wide shot of the trio in their writhing. The players are linked to each other in a configuration commonly called a daisy chain. He works a slide that softens the lighting of the scene just a touch.

  Frank juts his chin forward and I advance into the room until I’m ten feet from Lance, who remains absorbed in his work. Frank comes up beside me, digs a quarter out of his pocket and lobs it toward the table in a high arc. It thunks next to Lance’s hand and bounces high, and he recoils sharply—snatching off the headphones with one hand and flicking a switch with the other in what seems an instinctive move that freezes the screen action—and swivels halfway around to gape at us with our pistols pointed at him. He’s bewildered, but I wouldn’t call him terrified. Got a measure of cool. Judging by his incipient crow’s-feet and the few tinges of gray in his hair, I’d say he’s early fifties.

  Frank tells him to toss the headphones, then put his hands on top of his head and stand up. Lance mutely complies. Taking care not to block my line of fire, Frank goes to him and pats him down with one hand, then tells
him to sit again.

  “Can I put my hands down?”

  “Stick them in your front pockets and don’t take them out again unless I say so. There any guns in the room?”

  “No, hell no. Look, fellas, I don’t keep a lot of cash in the house. I think there’s around fourteen, fifteen grand. It’s yours. If you’re after drugs, there aren’t any. I don’t allow them on the place. There’s some jewelry, not much, but—”

  “What is it about us,” Frank says, cutting him off and looking at me, “makes everybody so damn quick to think we’re robbers?”

  “Beats me,” I say. “Makes me feel kinda lowdown.”

  “What?” Lance says. “If you’re not robbers, who the hell are you and what do you want? How’d you get past the gate, anyway? By Judson? And—”

  “First things first,” Frank says. “Are you Lance?”

  “Yeah. How you know that?”

  Frank moves aside so Lance can see into the hall, where Moss is held by Rayo from behind, her gun muzzle pressed up under his chin.

  “Ah, Christ,” Lance says, eyeing Moss. “He in this with you?”

  “Does it look like he’s in with us?” Frank says. “We ran him down through your PO box. And if you’re wondering, Judson’s all right, too, but for now he’s restricted to the front porch.”

  Frank nods at Rayo and she pushes Moss ahead of her into the room. Frank tells him to go sit down with his back against the near wall and his hands under his butt, then tells Rayo to cuff Lance’s left hand to the back of the chair.

  As she turns to hand me the Glock and takes a pair of flex cuffs from her belt, I see Lance getting his first good look at her and admiring what he sees. She goes over to him and he gives her his hand, saying, “Hey, girl, you’re really something.”

  She laughs lightly and says, “Really?” and slips the cuff onto his wrist. “The kinda something that could make a go of it in your, ah . . . art form?”

  “A go of it?” Lance says. “Honey, you’ve got it all in spades—body, moves, everything.”