Stuart Woods: Heat

They drove down the main drag, blinking in the desert sunlight and agog at all the neon. Jesse picked the biggest, gaudiest hotel he could see and pulled into the driveway.

“Checking in, sir?” a doorman asked.

“You bet.” Jesse handed him the keys. “Take everything in the trunk, please.” The man began removing their bags. “I’ll carry this one,” Jesse said, taking the plastic bag from him. As they were about to enter the hotel, there was a huge roar behind them. They turned and stood, transfixed, as a man-made volcano erupted before their eyes. “Only in America,” Jesse said to the sleepy girls.

Jesse presented himself at the front desk. “I’d like a two-bedroom suite, something very nice,” he said to the desk clerk.

The young man typed a few strokes on his computer keyboard. “I’m afraid we don’t have anything at all, sir,” he said, eyeing the rough-looking man in the sheepskin coat with the hillbilly accent.

Jesse placed the plastic bag on the counter, counted out ten banded stacks of hundred-dollar bills and stacked them on the counter. “And I’d like a hundred one-thousand-dollar chips,” he said.

A sharp-eyed older man in an expensive suit practically elbowed the clerk out of the way. “Good morning, Mr... ?”

“Churchill,” Jesse said. “W. S. Churchill.”

The man scribbled out a receipt for Jesse’s money, then hit a bell on the desk. A bellhop materialized. “Take the Churchill family up to the Frank Sinatra suite,” he said to the man, then turned back to Jesse. “Your accommodations and all your food and drink will be compliments of the house, Mr. Churchill. May I send your chips up to your suite?”

“Thank you, yes,” Jesse said. They followed the bellman toward the elevators.

Jenny tugged at Jesse’s sleeve. “Did that man mean everything is free ?”

“Sweetheart, when you can afford to buy it, you often don’t have to,” Jesse replied.

“I don’t understand this place at all,” Jenny muttered as they got onto the elevator.

The following morning, they breakfasted en famille on their rooftop terrace. The living room was filled with boxes and tissue paper and luggage from their shopping, and there were one hundred and twelve one-thousand-dollar chips on the coffee table. Jesse had been down nineteen thousand dollars at one point, but he had come out ahead.

Jesse was transfixed by the New York Times . The story began on page one and was continued inside on two full pages. The explosion at St. Clair was being compared to Mount St. Helen. Troops were in charge of the town, hundreds of people were being questioned at the church and, in spite of sporadic gunfights, casualties were light, and there had been only two deaths, the guards on the mountaintop. Jack Gene Coldwater and his principal lieutenants were presumed dead in the explosion. He’d have to do something about that.

Jesse got up from the table and found the plastic bag. He emptied all the money into a new plastic briefcase, then took the papers from Coldwater’s safe and spread them out on the coffee table. Jesse became short of breath. The documents were bank statements from all over the world, and, at a rough calculation, the balances totaled something over fifty million dollars in Coldwater’s accounts alone. Letters from the various banks contained the secret numbers for all the accounts — Coldwater, Casey and Ruger’s.

It occurred to Jesse that he was now rich beyond his wildest dreams. If he wanted that. He thought about it for a while, then he put the documents in an envelope, along with the recorder he had worn, and scribbled an address. He picked up the phone and asked the hotel manager to come to his suite.

When the doorbell rang he cinched his new silk robe around his waist and went to answer it. The manager stood at the door. “Good morning, Mr. Churchill. You wished to see me?”

“Yes, please come in,” Jesse replied.

The man removed an envelope from his breast pocket. “Incidentally, here are the air tickets to Los Angeles you requested.”

“Thank you.” Jesse had made Tokyo reservations from Los Angeles in their new name at a travel agent’s. “Please have a seat.” The two men sat in chairs on opposite sides of the coffee table.

“What else can I do for you, Mr. Churchill?” the manager asked.

Jesse set a plastic briefcase on the coffee table beside his chips. “I have a hundred and twelve thousand dollars in chips to cash in, and inside this case is another one million, four hundred thousand dollars in cash, all quite legal, I assure you. I probably shouldn’t be carrying around this much cash, and I would like your advice as to what sorts of negotiable instruments I could exchange it for.”

“Will you be traveling abroad?” the man asked.

“Possibly.”

“I would suggest either gold certificates or bearer bonds,” the manager said. “Either can be negotiated at any large bank in the world in a matter of hours, and I could arrange either for you by lunchtime.”

Jesse scooped the chips into a large ashtray and handed them to the manager, along with the briefcase. “A million and a half in bearer bonds will do very nicely,” he said. “I’m sure there will be some fees and commissions involved; the extra twelve thousand in chips should cover that.”

“Oh, much more than cover it,” the manager said.

“See that anything left over goes to your favorite charity,” Jesse said.

“Thank you, sir,” the man said, writing out a receipt for the funds. “Will there be anything else?”

Jesse held out his parking check. “Would you see that this rent-a-car is returned to Sky Harbor airport as soon as possible. There’s a five-hundred-dollar cash deposit there; that can go to charity, too. And may we have your limousine for the airport at two o’clock?”

“Of course.”

“One other thing.” He handed the manager the large envelope containing Coldwater’s banking documents. “I want to send a friend this package, and I don’t want him to know where it came from; sort of a little joke.”

“I understand,” the manager said. “Perhaps I could forward it through our New York office.”

“Excellent. Could you Federal Express it to them and have them take it to a FedEx office there and resend it?”

“Of course.” The manager looked at the envelope and repeated the address. “Mr. Kipling Fuller, Nashua Building Products, 1010 Parkway, College Park, Maryland.”

“That’s it. And I think that’s all you can do for me.”

The manager stood. “May I say what a great pleasure it has been having you and your family as guests in our hotel? We hope you’ll come back soon and often.”

“Thank you very much. You may be sure that when we are in Las Vegas we will always stay with you.”

At two o’clock, the Churchill family departed the hotel in the longest limousine Jesse had ever seen, even in Miami. Outside the terminal, Jesse dropped a paper bag containing his pistol in a trash can. The luggage was checked at the curb and the skycap handed Jesse his baggage tickets.

“Gate three, sir; you have thirty-five minutes before your flight.”

Jesse gave the man twenty dollars and followed his family to the departure lounge. He had been there for ten minutes when a uniformed airline employee approached.

“Excuse me, Mr. Churchill, there’s a problem with a piece of your luggage; could you follow me, please?”

“What sort of problem?” Jesse asked.

“They didn’t say, but it should only take a moment.”

Jesse turned to Jenny. “I’ll be right back, but in any case, you get on that plane, you hear?” He handed her the briefcase containing the bearer bonds. “Take care of this.”