Thomas Perry - Sleeping Dogs

He maintained an even, leisurely tourist’s pace, and studied all the houses on the street with equal attention. At the corner he turned, walked to the street behind Andalusia and examined the houses there. There appeared to be nothing of any consequence to protect any of them, but the situation was still troublesome. There were no cars parked on the narrow one-way street, and he had passed only a few pedestrians during his walk, none of them within blocks of Andalusia. Even if he could get in, getting out would be difficult.

It was dark now, and the cold air was still and crisp. The patches of dirty snow that had melted in the sunlight were now furrows and tumuli of iron-hard ice, and Wolf watched for them so that he could step around them on the sidewalk. In his left hand he carried a paper sack from the store where he had bought the gloves and channel-lock pliers a few hours ago, but now it also contained the Ruger .38 and its silencer. If necessary, he could drop the bag surreptitiously, but for anyone who might see him, the bag was an indicator that he had gone out on foot for a purpose and was on his way home.

He moved along the storefronts on Galisteo Street, keeping under the roof and away from the thick pillars, where he could remain only a shadow. Santa Fe was still a sunlit town for most of the year, even now. The inhabitants were out and in evidence when the bright sunlight warmed the ground, reaching it unimpeded by the extra mile of clouds, smog and dust that covered other cities, and without being blocked anywhere by tall buildings. But when the sun set, they disappeared behind the stone and clay walls, the oldest ones a yard thick. Even the restaurants that catered to the small, quiet night trade were hidden in mazes of courtyards and passageways.

The office of North American Watch was even more difficult to find. It had an entrance to the street, but that had been closed for hours. Behind the dusty Venetian blinds he could see a thin slice of the light from the dispatcher’s desk. He walked around the building to look for the cars. These people were in the peace-of-mind business. They provided louts to drive by every four hours with flashlights, and since this was a state where anyone could wear a gun in a holster unless the weight of it pulled down his pants, they were armed louts. He didn’t know the current procedures, but if they hadn’t changed radically, on a cold night when there were few people on the streets, the management would save a few dollars by keeping some cars in the lot. If a call came in or an alarm lit up the board, they would call the police and then send one of the men in the office on a slow stroll to a car so that he would arrive about the time the cops were composing their theft reports.

It was better than he had imagined. There were three blue-and-white imitation police cruisers parked behind the building, and a fourth at the curb. Wolf walked to it and put his hand on the hood. It wasn’t even warm. He ducked down beside it, opened the door and slipped into the driver’s seat. He felt the ignition for the key, but he wasn’t that lucky. They must have a hook inside the office with the keys hanging on it. He took the heavy pliers out of his bag, pried the bar away from the steering column, wrenched the ignition switch out of its hole and tugged the wires out of the back of it. He pumped the gas pedal to the floor once, touched the two wires together and started the car. He let the engine idle for a moment while he watched the back door of North American. There was no sign that anyone had heard, so he pulled away from the curb. Just as he was passing the building, another set of headlights came up the street behind him. As he turned the corner, he saw the car pull into the space he had vacated. It pleased him. If one of the louts happened to glance out the window, he would see a car where he was looking for it.

Wolf kept the car at a crawl as he moved down the quiet, empty street toward Andalusia. He knew that when he had hot-wired the engine, he had started an invisible timer, but the danger would increase if he deviated from the pace people expected of this car. He made the turn onto Andalusia and allowed himself a little more speed. At 1500 Andalusia he applied the brakes and let the rear end of the car swing out a little, so that he could stop at an urgent-looking angle to the wall. He glanced up at the house to be sure the car was visible through the iron gate, left the motor running and ran up the walk to the door, his pistol in his hand.

He rapped on the thick wooden door, then rang the bell. Inside, he could hear feet pounding down a hallway. He turned to the side so that whoever was looking out through the fish-eye lens of the peephole could see the car. As he forced his eyes to scan the yard like a man looking for something, he felt his heartbeat quicken. It was these few seconds that would decide everything. Then he heard the dead bolt slip out of its receptacle and watched the big door open a couple of inches.

A voice said, “What is it?” and Wolf turned to look into the man’s eyes. He was in his thirties and wore his wavy hair long, cut in a style that seemed out of date until Wolf remembered that it might have come back.

He forced his voice into a tone that would carry it. There had to be enough urgency to make the man forget his natural suspicion and want to find out what was going on, but enough confidence to assure him that Wolf was going to take care of it. “North American Watch,” he said. “You Mr. Mantino?”

The man moved away from the door, and Wolf stepped beside him into the warm chiaroscuro of a dimly lit space. There was a fire burning in the big whitewashed adobe fireplace at the other end of the room. He was startled when he saw a man in his fifties, lean and limber in the way that men were who spent a lot of time playing tennis, moving to a big cabinet on the far wall. “What is it? I’m Mr. Mantino.”

“You got an intrusion,” Wolf said. Almost instantly he regretted it. He had expected to have time to attach the silencer before he fired. But now there were two of them, and they moved in different directions with surprising decisiveness. Mantino turned a key in the lock on the cabinet and reached inside. His hand came back holding a short-barreled shotgun, and he didn’t swing it around like a man gripped by panic, but held it pointed upward. He pumped it and moved into the hallway. “Where is he? Have you seen him?”

Wolf had no time to answer, because now the younger man was beside him, and cradled in his arms was a thirty-ought-six hunting rifle with a large clip in it. “Holy shit,” said Wolf, trying to infuse some incredulity into his voice. “He’s probably just trying to boost your hubcaps or something.”

The young man snapped, “Then he made a mistake,” and stepped toward the rear of the house.

Wolf reminded himself that speed was really a matter of deliberate, economical movement. He fell into step with the younger man, pulling Mantino with him. He took two steps, raised the pistol, shot the younger man in the back of the head, stepped back and swung an elbow into Mantino’s face. He was surprised at how fast Mantino’s movements were—he was already moving away, trying to swing the shotgun around in time. The elbow struck Mantino on the shoulder, and Wolf barely had time to jab the pistol against the man’s chest and fire.

Mantino toppled backward, and Wolf fired three more times as he fell. Each time he fired, there was an instant when he wasn’t sure the shotgun wasn’t coming the rest of the way around. The man’s body made a spasmodic jerk backward each time he was hit, and Wolf had the sense that he was pushing a man toward a cliff by jabbing him with his finger. When Mantino finally hit the floor, Wolf kicked the shotgun away and fired the last round into his forehead.