Ross Thomas - The Fourth Durango

“A hideout,” said the mayor.

“Were any of them avoiding the law?” Vines said. “Or is that any of my business?”

“One was sort of avoiding the law,” Fork said. “But it was some weird kind of CIA thing, so B. D. and I said to hell with it and let him buy in. The rest of them were all dodging the opposition.”

“Business rivals?”

“Guys who wanted to kill ’em,” Fork said.

“Did they ever succeed?” Adair asked with obvious interest.

“Never,” the chief said.

“Never in Durango,” B. D. Huckins corrected him. “But two of them got antsy, a couple of years apart, and left before they should’ve although we tried to talk them both out of it. The one who left first fell off a building in L.A. Mid-Wilshire, I think. The other got hit by a car in north Dallas that backed up over him just to make sure he was dead. The other ten are all okay as far as we know, but…” She shrugged.

“They don’t write,” Fork said.

“They don’t even call,” said the mayor with a small smile.

“And the two million dollars?” Adair asked, looking around as though hoping to find something it had been spent on.

“It helped keep things going,” the mayor said. “The frills anyhow. The library stayed open, just barely, and so did the VD clinic and the daycare center, at least until GE pulled out and we had to close it. The center, I mean, not the clinic. The rest of the money, what there was, went for police and maintenance.”

“Nobody ever questioned these-donations?” Adair asked.

“We’ve got a mayor-city council type of government here,” she said. “And since I’ve been mayor each new council member has been, well, carefully elected.”

Although Adair nodded approvingly, she volunteered nothing else. Another silence threatened, but Vines fended it off with a question to Fork. “What about your cops, Chief?”

“Mind if I do a little bragging?”

“Why not?”

“Well, I’d say we’ve got one of the best small-city forces going. There’s me, four detectives, twelve uniforms and three clerks who double at the jail when they have to. There’s also a county deputy sheriff, Henry Quirt, who’s got a whole lot of other ground to cover so we make sure he doesn’t waste any time around here.”

“ Four detectives?” Adair said, raising an eyebrow.

“Four. And every last one of ’em personally recruited by me. Tell you how I did it. I went looking for experience-guys that’d put in their twenty years and had their pensions and maybe a little baksheesh salted away, but were only forty-one, forty-five, around in there, maybe even fifty and kind of bored with sitting around the house. So I offered ’em thirty a year, God’s own climate, great hunting and fishing, cheap housing, free dental and health, light work and long vacations.”

“And they jumped at it,” Vines said.

“Who wouldn’t? Two of them’re out of homicide in Chicago and Detroit; one’s out of Dallas bunco and fraud, and the other’s a narc who wanted to get out of Miami in one piece. They’ve got about eighty-five years’ worth of collective experience and nobody slips by.” He smiled knowingly at Vines. “Absolutely nobody.”

Vines thought back to the previous night and the blond Dixie. Dixie Mansur. “Those two drunks at the bar in the Holiday Inn, right?”

Fork gave him a small proud nod.

“Congratulations,” Vines said.

It was then that Jack Adair decided to find out whether he could close the deal. Turning to the mayor and forcing a certain amount of unfelt heartiness into his voice, he said, “Well, it would seem that we are indeed in most capable hands.”

“Not yet,” she said, ignoring both the compliment and the heartiness. “Not till we discuss money.”

“Yes. Of course. How much would, say, a month or two cost us?”

“Two hundred and fifty thousand regardless of whether it’s a week, a month or a year. If somebody else is after Vines, the rate doubles. If the same guys who’re after you are after him, you get a two-fer.”

Since hearty had won him nothing, Adair turned grave and judicious, nodding at Huckins as if the sum she had mentioned, although not inconsequential, was by no means staggering. “Suppose,” he said, “your fee were to be increased substantially for only slight additional effort on your part?”

“We don’t do takeouts,” the chief said, his voice firm, his expression forbidding.

The mayor gave the chief an exasperated look, then studied Adair for several seconds. “Go on,” she said.

“I have to confess something first,” he said. “I don’t know who wants to kill me or have me killed.”

Huckins nodded impatiently. “That’s standard. None of them ever seems to know who’ll be sent to do it.”

“I can only presume,” Adair said, “that it’ll be arranged by whoever attempted to make it appear that I and another justice on the court accepted substantial bribes. He was Justice Mark T. Fuller. The ‘T’ was for Tyson.”

Sid Fork stretched, yawned without apology and gave the night sky an inspection. “We heard about that. We also heard about your son-Paul, wasn’t it? A suicide down in T.J. And just this afternoon up there in Lompoc some dude with a funny name got it. From what I hear, he was your baby-sitter.” Fork brought his gaze down from the stars. “Blessing something.”

“Blessing Nelson,” said Adair. “A friend and associate.”

Resting her elbows on the trestle table and her chin on her right fist, B. D. Huckins examined Adair curiously. “Maybe I’m just not tracking you,” she said.

“How so?”

“You’re not offering us a lot of money to do almost nothing extra.”

“No. What I’m proposing-” Adair broke off to look at Vines. “Since it’s your grand design, perhaps you’d best explain it.”

Vines nodded, stared at Fork for several seconds, nodded again, as if at some inevitable conclusion, and turned his stare on B. D. Huckins, who grew impatient and said, “I’m listening.”

Directing his remarks solely at the mayor, and choosing each phrase with care, Vines said, “What we want you to do-is send out word-that you’ll sell Jack Adair-to whoever wants him-for one million dollars.”

The mayor leaned back, picked up her tan coffee mug, had a swallow of cold coffee and put the mug down, not taking her eyes off Kelly Vines. “You want us to fake an offer-”

“The million will be real.”

“-that could damage our reputations.”

“Who with?” Vines asked.

“He’s got a point, B. D.,” Fork said.

“Tell me this,” she said. “Why would anybody pay a million for a Jack Adair?”

“Because of what he knows,” Vines said.

She looked skeptically at Adair. “Which is what?”

Adair sighed. “I don’t know what it is. Or maybe it’s something I do know but haven’t sufficiently analyzed.”

“Must be worth a lot-whatever it is that you don’t know you know.”

“Obviously.”

“Have you thought of faking a blackmail pass at them?”

“Alas, I’m not a blackmailer and I don’t know who they are.”

“I said fake a blackmail pass.”

“I heard what you said.”

She turned from Adair to Sid Fork. “Then it’d be up to us to set it up, wouldn’t it?”

Fork frowned. “Won’t be easy.”

She turned next to Kelly Vines, her delicate chin thrust out, her gray eyes calculating. “So how do we split the million?”

“We don’t,” Vines said.

It was obvious to Vines that the mayor didn’t like surprises, pleasant or unpleasant. She narrowed her eyes until they were almost closed and pressed her lips into their grimmest line. If she frowns, Vines thought, the deal’s off. But Huckins didn’t frown. Instead, she opened her eyes wide and let her mouth relax into a faint smile.