Ross Thomas - The Fourth Durango

“That mean we can’t take off?” Adair said almost hopefully.

“I can take off from anything I can land on. You ready?”

Adair nodded.

“Then let’s go,” Dorr said, turned and started walking back toward the Cessna. Adair gave Vines a good-bye shrug and also headed toward the airplane, swinging his black cane.

Vines watched the takeoff from behind the wheel of his Mercedes. The Cessna headed out over the Pacific and turned south. When he could no longer see the airplane, Vines started the Mercedes and drove back to Durango.

He stopped first at a drugstore where he bought a can of Planters mixed nuts and two Baby Ruth candy bars, which would be his supper. To help him sleep, he bought a paperback novel by an author whose previous books had dealt with slightly depraved, extremely sensitive southerners to whom nothing much, good or bad, ever happened. In case the novel failed to put him to sleep, Vines stopped at a liquor store and bought an extra bottle of Jack Daniel’s Black Label.

It was 6:20 P.M. when he reached the cream and green Victorian house. Vines parked in the street behind the Aston Martin and watched Dixie Mansur get out of it and walk back to his Mercedes. She wore white slacks and a dark blue cable-knit cotton sweater with a deep V-neck.

When she reached the Mercedes she bent down so she could speak to him through the open window. “Parvis made contact,” she said.

“Already?”

“Already.”

“You’d better come in and tell me about it.”

“In the car?”

“The house.”

Dixie Mansur straightened up, looked over the roof of the Mercedes at the old three-story showplace, bent down again and asked, “Who’s home?”

“Nobody.”

“You have anything to drink?”

“Bourbon.”

“One of these days,” she said, “you might buy a bottle of Scotch.”

Vines gave her a tour of the downstairs. She was particularly taken with the parlor’s dark heavy furniture and fat porcelain lamps. “It’s like a movie set, isn’t it?” she said.

“I don’t know,” Vines said. “I’ve never been on a movie set.”

In the kitchen they emptied a tray of ice into a bowl, found two glasses, refilled the tray with water and put it back in the refrigerator’s freezer. As they walked up the old carved oak staircase to the second floor, Dixie Mansur said, “I wouldn’t want to live here.”

“Why not?”

“Too many memories.”

“What memories?”

“Of what happened before I was born,” she said. “I don’t like to think anything much happened before that.”

In Vines’s room they put the whiskey, the ice, the glasses, the mixed nuts and the candy on the walnut dresser. Vines placed the novel on the bedside table next to the small radio. Dixie Mansur looked around, inspecting everything, and said, “Where’s Adair’s room?”

“Down the hall,” Vines said as he dropped ice cubes into the glasses, added whiskey and went into the bathroom for water. When he came back Dixie Mansur was seated on the bed, leaning against its headboard. He handed her a drink and said, “Tell me about it.”

She tasted her drink first. “When we got back to Santa Barbara this afternoon, Parvis started working the phone. He made about a half dozen calls, maybe more, and was about to make another one when the other phone rang-his really private phone.”

“And?”

“And it was them or him. Whoever.”

“You listened?”

“He shooed me out.”

“But you listened to those other calls he made.”

“I got to listen to what he said but not to what the people he called said.”

“What kind of pitch did he use?”

“I only heard one of them.”

“You said you listened to them all.”

“He only spoke English once. All the other times he spoke Farsi-you know, Persian.”

“What about the call that came in on his really private line-the bingo call?”

“It started out in English.”

“And switched to Farsi?”

“I don’t know. He was still talking English when he shooed me out.”

“But you did hear that one call he made in English, right?”

She nodded.

“What’d he say?” Vines asked. “I mean, did he start off, ‘Hey, Al, have I got a sweet one for you’? What I’d like to know is exactly what he said.”

“What’s the matter? Don’t you trust him?”

“Since it’s my neck, I’m curious.”

“I can’t remember exactly what he said. Nobody could.”

“As close as possible.”

“Well, he didn’t ask for anybody after the call was answered. He began by saying this is me-except he said, ‘This is I’ or maybe ‘It is I, Parvis.’ Then he said something about having extremely valuable information about certain officials in a southern California community, well known for its isolation, who were willing to part with two of their-I think he called them ‘guests’-providing they-and I guess he was talking about B. D. and Sid-were reimbursed for their effort or risk or something like that. Then Parvis listened for a while and said, ‘One million firm.’ Then he said, ‘Please see what you can do’ and good-bye.”

“What about when the bingo call came in?”

“He shooed me out, like I said. But when it was over he called me back in. He told me he’d made contact and it was important that you and Adair know so you could get ready. But he didn’t want to call you and go through the hotel switchboard. And since he had to stay by the phone, he told me to drive over and tell you and Adair that he’d made contact. I asked him what if I couldn’t find either of you, and he told me to keep looking till I did. Where is Adair anyhow?”

“Los Angeles.”

“Doing what?”

“Seeing some people.”

“When’ll he be back?”

“Late.”

“Mind if I wait for him?”

“Where?”

She patted the bed. “Here-unless your landlady objects.”

“She won’t.”

“When’ll she be back?”

“Around two-thirty.”

“Then we’ve got plenty of time, don’t we?” Dixie Mansur said, putting her drink down and slipping the dark blue cotton sweater off over her head and dropping it on the floor.

Convinced, for some reason, that she had never worn a brassiere in her life, Vines sat down next to her, put his own drink on the bedside table next to the small radio and kissed her. After the long bourbon-flavored kiss finally ended and Vines was unbuttoning his shirt, he said, “Is this also Parvis’s idea?”

“Would you care if it was?”

“Not in the least,” Kelly Vines said.

After the Cessna landed on the private dirt airstrip a mile or so south of the VenturaFreeway near the Kanan Dume Road in Agoura, Jack Adair decided it was best not to ask who owned either the strip or the fancy new Land-Rover that was waiting for them, its ignition key tucked behind a sun visor.

“Don’t suppose you know where this Altoid nut farm is?” Merriman Dorr said as he started the Land-Rover’s engine.

“I gave you the address.”

“Out here in the boonies, an address seldom does much good.”

Adair shrugged. “We could ask somebody.”

“I never ask directions.”

“Why not?”

“Because where I’m going’s never anybody’s business.”

When Dorr finally found the road they wanted on a Thomas Brothers map, they crossed over the Ventura Freeway, heading north. A mile or so farther, Dorr turned left onto a narrow asphalt road with no shoulders that snaked up into some round drought-seared hills. The tan hills were sprinkled here and there with clumps of green oaks. But even the deep-rooted oaks, Adair thought, were beginning to look thirsty.