Брайан Гарфилд - The Hit

When she put the phone down she gave me a startled look and said, “He’ll be right out Mr. Crane.”

“Thank you.” Obviously she was dying to know what missing property it was. I didn’t oblige; I went to a chair and sat.

It took six minutes. Then Brawley appeared in a doorway and beckoned. The old woman beside me started to get to her feet and Brawley said, “I’ll be with you in just a moment, Mrs. Chandler.”

I followed him down a corridor. Doorways on both sides led into examination rooms, an X-ray room with a fortune in equipment, two labs, several bathrooms, a small operating room. At the back in the corner of the building, he had his office and consultation room. It was large and luxurious, like the office of a senior corporate executive. Picture windows in two walls gave a wide view of the city, a few hundred feet below. Brawley’s desk was placed in front of one of the windows, just enough to one side so that a patient looking at him wouldn’t be blinded by the glare behind.

He didn’t sit, or offer me a seat. As soon as he closed the door behind me he said, “Well?”

“I’m still looking for your money,” I said, which was true enough as far as it went. “Maybe you can help me find it.”

“Me?” He laughed; he was trying to act affable but he was too ill at ease to bring it off; he hadn’t quite settled down yet from the minor manhandling I’d given him yesterday. Trying to look casual, he leaned a crooked elbow across the top of a brown metal filing cabinet. Just behind him, set in the wall, was a three-foot office wall safe, the combination-dial showing. On an impulse I said, “Is that safe locked?”

“Not now. I only lock it when I’m out of the office.”

“Mind if I look?”

His eyebrows went up. “Certainly I mind.” Then he waved a hand through the air. “But go ahead if you must.” He pulled the round door open. There wasn’t much inside — a green lockbox and two stacks of papers and a row of small bottles which, it could be assumed, contained prescription narcotics.

I nodded. “Just a stab in the dark. Obviously I can’t be sure you didn’t steal the money yourself.”

“I’d hardly be looking for it if I already had it.”

“Smokescreen,” I replied.

He smiled. “Have it your way. What progress have you made?”

“I don’t know yet. But you were tied up with Aiello one way or another — don’t bother to argue the point, Doctor — and you must be acquainted with some of the other prominent people who had dealings with Aiello.”

“Assume whatever you want. It may not get you very far.”

“Let’s put it this way. You must have visited Aiello’s house quite a number of times.”

“I did, yes. To put things in his safe and get things out. They weren’t social calls. If he had other people in the house he didn’t introduce me to them — he kept them out of my sight, or vice versa. What are you trying to do, compile a list of his associates? I’m a rather poor subject for that sort of interview, I can assure you.”

“Just tell me this. On your various visits up there, did you ever notice a pink Cadillac parked near his house?”

Brawley’s eyes gave away brief alarm. He frowned to cover it. “What’s that got to do with my money?”

“What kind of car do you drive?”

“Why, a Jaguar. Didn’t you see it parked outside? An XKE sports model.”

“Yeah. You’re quite the image of a sport, Doctor. Who owns the pink Cadillac, then?”

“I’m sure I don’t know.”

“Try again. You telegraphed the first time I mentioned it. It rang your bell.”

He clamped his mouth shut. I pulled the Beretta out of my hip pocket and got tough. “I’m not playing a game. It would be a shame if you got shot with your own gun, Doc, but it’s important to me to find that car. You’re the only one I’ve met who knows anything about it. Now let’s have it.”

He licked his lips; his eyes were fixed on the gun. I took a pace toward him and lifted the Beretta, making an effort to look menacing, and after he backpedaled and put up both hands, palms out toward me, he said, “All right... all right. I do know a man who owns a pink Cadillac, but I’m sure he couldn’t be the man you want. He couldn’t have stolen my money.”

“Why not?”

“He’s too rich to need it.”

“Nobody’s too rich to need three million dollars.”

“Three million? Good Lord, is it that much?”

“Who is he?”

Brawley frowned at me. “Look, I’m sure it’s not the man you want. This man is very rich, very prominent. He’s an old friend of mine, and I must say a lucrative patient — he’s a notorious hypochondriac.”

“The name, Doc.”

“Baragray.”

“John-Ben Baragray?”

He nodded, tight-lipped.

I said, “Well I’ll be damned.”

John-Ben Baragray was a sort of ambulatory national monument. I had never seen him, let alone met him, but I was well versed in the Baragray folklore. He was a mossy-horn Texan who’d made his first fortune in east Texas oil then come west. One of those sleepy old back-porch kingmakers who owned half the land and most of the politicians in his rural bailiwick, he lived on a sixty thousand-acre ranch in the next county, fifty miles from the city. His fortune allegedly measured in the hundreds of millions. Among other things he was one of the state’s most powerful bankers. His wealth was mostly tucked away in a variety of tax-dodge foundations that owned not only most of his own county but half the capital city as well.

When I stopped to think about it, it seemed only natural there could be a connection between a man like Baragray and the Madonna-DeAngelo-Aiello mob. Both were exponents of political bossism; both exemplified the feudal way of life.

It took me an hour and a half in the Jeep to reach the gate of Baragray’s fence. It was a working gate, thrown across a cattle guard, built into a four-strand barbwire fence that stretched in both directions along a straight line to the horizons. This eastern county of the state was plateau land, six-thousand-foot high country carpeted in tall yellow grass. Darker spots on the distant hills were Hereford and Brahma cattle grazing. Three small airplanes buzzed around in the sky — modern cowboys, air-dropping rock salt, herding cattle, reconnoitering the herds.

Beef-raising, for those in the know and those rich enough to do it on a scale of massive efficiency, was one of the most highly profitable ventures available to a man with large capital — certainly by far the most lucrative of all agricultural pursuits. John-Ben Baragray, on this ranch and seven others scattered throughout the West, was one of the country’s biggest cattlemen.

I drove several miles on Baragray’s property, on a road he must have paved at his own expense, before I reached his headquarters. It was more of a village than a ranch. There were an airfield, a filling station, a company store with post office, and a town-sized scattering of small but sturdy frame houses for married employees, as well as a bunkhouse and a far-flung litter of workshops, barns and miscellaneous outbuildings. A forest of windmills sprouted throughout the camp. Most of the vehicles in sight were pickups, Jeeps, trucks and power wagons. There were a few souped-up automobiles.

It was, all together, a nice little baronial empire, all belonging to one man. The master’s mansion was in keeping and in scale. It was a three-story splendor of sprawling wings, screened-in verandahs and balconies.

The ground floor of one wing was a garage, its five doors open against the heat. All five stalls contained cars. A Rolls or Bentley, an Alfa Romeo, a Jeep station wagon and two Cadillacs.

Neither Cadillac was pink.