Authors: Rex Burns
“I see. How long did she work for you, doctor?”
“I believe it was two years. I don’t remember the exact dates.”
“Do you know who her other customers are?”
“No. I had no reason to ask.”
“Not even for references when you hired her?”
“I’d rather judge a person’s worth by their work for me, not by what someone else—who may be far less demanding—says about them. If her work had not been highly satisfactory, I would have fired her.”
Hire and fire—now I remembered where I’d heard of the Associated Medical Pavilion. “You do the health tests on Mrs. Chiquichano’s employees too?”
“I beg pardon?”
“TB tests—blood tests. Felix Frentanes … and Nestor Calamaro. Doesn’t your group provide the screening tests for the people who work at the Apple Valley Turkeys plant?”
Matheney’s fingers tugged at his chin whiskers. “Our lab does a lot of industrial screenings. Immunology is one of our areas of specialty, after all.”
“And Mrs. Chiquichano brought them here for the tests?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Kirk. She may have—especially if she was working here at the time. But that kind of scheduling is taken care of by one of the secretaries, so I couldn’t tell you if Mrs. Chiquichano arranged it or not.”
That was it: straight answers to straight questions, and nothing more to ask. I thanked the good doctor and wound my way back through color-coded halls with a sense of letdown. Whatever I had expected to discover, it wasn’t here.
The drive up to Lafayette took about thirty minutes, but with the top down and the September sun cooled by the wind, it was a pleasant ride. The Healey enjoyed the curving country roads that branched off the freeways, and so did I. Lafayette was one of the faster-growing towns in the area, serving as a bedroom community for both Boulder and Denver, and support businesses had begun bringing people and money into what had been a village as small as Erie. Surrounding housing developments rose and fell with the prairie and looked naked and sun baked on the grassy ridges, but the old part of town had settled under tall trees.
That’s where the machine shop was, on a street that was still predominantly residential but unzoned. A familiar blue pickup truck with a tar-bucket trailer sat in front of the cinder-block building, and a pair of tar-stained ladders leaned against the walls. At the foot of one, a deeply tanned and shirtless man ladled melted tar from a portable heater into a bucket and hauled it up to the roof by a pulley at the ladder’s top. On the flat roof, another bronzed man, heavier, carried the buckets away. Neither was Taylor, but noise and gestures indicated more workers out of sight somewhere in the center of the roofs expanse.
I drove past slowly and then circled the block to get a good look at the building. Through my telephoto lens, the bearded faces zoomed close, and I shot a couple of stills, hoping that the men hidden beyond the eave would come forward into focus. But they didn’t, and I drove to another angle, cruising along a rutted dirt alley crowded with rusty oil drums used as trash cans. From this spot I could make out another shape busy on the roof, but couldn’t get a clear picture of it through the heavy leaves. Parking, I walked down the alley and tried half a dozen shots. Maybe dark room magic could bring out what I couldn’t see. And maybe if I swung around to come down the other end of the alley, I’d have a clearer view of the workman.
I was back in the Healey and turning around when they spotted me. The one catching buckets at the edge of the roof pointed my way and said something to the one on the ground. He wheeled and squinted in my direction, and I kept my face averted and my rearview mirror focused as I quietly pulled the Healey away. So much for the day’s surveillance. The last glimpse I had was of the two men still in that tableau, staring after me.
E
RIE WAS IN
Weld County, and the Weld County Sheriffs Office was in Greeley, another forty miles north on U.S. 85. The sheriff himself wasn’t available, but I managed to corner an undersheriff who heard what I wanted and shrugged. “Yeah, we know a lot about that bunch, Mr. Kirk, but there’s not much we can do about them unless somebody swears out a complaint. And so far, nobody’s wanted to.” He added, scrubbing the inside of a nostril with his thumbnail, “Can’t blame them, either. That’s a rough bunch.”
“Can you tell me what they’re suspected of being involved in?”
“It ain’t official. Just hearsay.”
“I won’t quote you.”
“You name it: drugs, prostitution, extortion, murder, organized crime … . They’re tied in with another local motorcycle gang, Sons of Silence. And that bunch, I hear, is tied in with the Hell’s Angels to supply drugs and what-all to this area.”
And all I wanted was a picture of one William Taylor doing push-ups or chopping wood. “Does the Colorado Bureau of Investigation have a jacket on them?”
He shrugged again and shifted the thumb to the other nostril. “Doubt it. They don’t do much with organized crime. Forensics is their big thing.”
Which meant that the only central police agency that might have something on this gang would be the Denver Police Department, and that I’d wasted an afternoon touring the northern Colorado plains. I thanked the sheriff’s officer and headed south, making the most of the trip by letting the old girl find a sweetly resonant rpm and settle into the sway of the highway.
By the time I reached Denver, Bunch had returned to the office and left for his afternoon workout; he’d be back in a couple hours. A note on the desk beside the blank contract said, “Guy wants to think about it,” and I had a pretty good idea what that meant. Well, he might find people who would do the debugging job cheaper, but no one who could do it better—for all the good pride did our checking account. I was refiling the form when the telephone rang and a woman’s voice I didn’t recognize said, “Mr. Kirk? I have some information to sell.”
I flipped on the recorder. “About what?”
“Something you’re working on. Something that will help you.”
A lot of tips came with a price tag, but usually the seller wasn’t quite so open about it. “How much?”
“A thousand dollars. Cash.”
“That’s a lot of money.” And more than I was going to give for some vague promise. “What’s this about?”
“I don’t want to talk over the phone. You meet me somewhere.”
“Come to my office.”
“No! I just want to get the money and leave the state—you meet me somewhere safe. Do you know Clear Creek Canyon? You ever go up that canyon?”
“I know it.”
“Meet me at the west end of Tunnel Three. There’s a pullout there. You know where it is?”
“I can find it. When?”
“One hour. Alone.”
The line clicked into silence and I glanced at my watch. An hour wasn’t much leeway for that distance, but if the traffic was light—and if the Healey wasn’t feeling temperamental after her drive up to Greeley—I could get there in forty-five minutes. Early enough to survey that corner of the steep canyon before making a target of myself, in case the tip was more than it promised to be. I left a note for Bunch and swung through the snarl of delivery trucks on Wazee and out toward the Valley Highway.
For a time a hundred years ago, Clear Creek was one of the richest gold lodes in the world. High up its canyon, the town of Central City still mined tourists with its Victorian buildings and Old West gift shoppes. In the old days, when the road was for wagons, it clung like a painted stripe to the twists and angles of the rock walls above the foaming plunge of the creek. The newer road, U.S. 6, is a bit straighter, thanks to the series of tunnels cut through massive shoulders of rock; but the two lanes still swing and wriggle as they follow the creek, and I liked the chance to feel the car do what it was built to do. I went through the gears and we flashed past craggy bluffs, oases of cottonwood and mountain willow, and an occasional car or pickup truck pulled over in a wide spot near the stream.
Tunnel One is just outside Golden; Tunnels Two and Three, a couple miles farther up, are close together and pierce through the mountains where the creek makes a large loop around abrupt faces of almost treeless gray rock. I slowed as I came out of the west portal and saw why the caller wanted this spot. In addition to its being remote and cut off by steep cliffs, on the south side of the highway the remnant of the wagon road— now blocked by carefully placed boulders—formed a pull-off wide enough for three or four cars to park. A worn path led along the old stony roadbed and down toward the water to disappear beyond the ridge’s shoulder.
I was ten minutes early and drove slowly up to the next spot wide enough for me to swing the Healey around and then coasted back toward the tunnel’s black entrance. No other cars were at the pull-off, nor did the whine of an engine signal a vehicle coming down canyon behind me. I eased the low Healey across the eroded shoulder, set the hand brake, killed the motor. Then, loosening the old .38 Police Special I’d grabbed from the office safe, I got out. Without the throaty rumble of the Healey’s pipes, only the rush and clatter of water tumbling against boulders echoed along the canyon walls. My watch said two minutes before the hour. At two after, a diesel thundered out of the tunnel with a push of air and a streamer of black smoke and whined up the lanes and out of sight around the next bend. At five after, my feelings about the whole cheery adventure began to slip toward uneasiness, and at six after, my feelings proved right.
The first shot missed. I heard it hum like a large, angry insect past my scalp and I knew what it was. But before that knowledge could translate into running legs, the second round, coming with the crack of a heavy rifle, yanked at my coat sleeve and thudded solidly into the Healey’s rear deck. Another smacked into the windshield, snowing chips of glass across the cowling and into my hair and splintering a web of cracks from one brace to the other. By the time the sound of that shot reached me from a saddle in the ridge above, I had sprinted for the tunnel’s overhang to wedge myself against the cold, blasted stone. Perched on the six-inch ledge that formed a curb leading into the dim shaft, I waited. The tunnel wind fluttered louder than the creek through the chimney of concrete. But no further shots came from the spine of mountain that the tunnel cut through. A sudden blare of sound and a semitruck thundered past, a road-grimed streak of wind and blatted exhaust and the startled shriek of air horns as the driver’s eye caught me pressed against the jutting rock. Then it was gone, leaving the odor of smoke and my own icy sweat.
The truck—a high, swaying rectangle of grimy doors—faded up the canyon, and I counted ten and then dashed for the Healey, dodging from side to side like a rabbit under a hawk’s claws. Rolling beneath the steering wheel, I crouched low to crank the starter. I didn’t think there was another shot, but I couldn’t tell for certain because all I could hear was the pulse of blood in my ears and the grinding of an engine that had chosen this moment to be coy.
“Come on, you son of a bitch!”
It coughed, died, cranked.
“I’m sorry—for God’s sake, I’m sorry!”
It coughed again and fired, missed, caught.
“Good girl—attagirl—knew you could do it!”
I had the car in motion, spinning dirt and gravel in a rush back onto the highway to plunge toward the shelter of the tunnel’s mouth. It’s usually hard for me to hunker down in the cramped cockpit, but I managed, letting the fishtailing car almost steer itself while I kept an eye on the ridge above.
The shots had come from somewhere along the crest between the east and west portals. I figured the assailant had followed me up the canyon, parked at the east portal, then worked up the trail to find a rest that would overlook the west pullout. Using a scope, he—or was it she?—waited until I came back and got out of the Healey. It was a good maneuver, a nicely laid trap, and I had stood there admiring the scenery while the would-be killer zeroed in. But as with a lot of people unused to firing downhill at a steep angle, that first round was high, and that was what had saved me. From the sound of the slug, it had been aimed at my head; and from the speed with which he got off his rounds, the shooter knew how to handle his weapon. But the high round had been his first mistake. The second was letting me reach the Healey.
The tunnel was maybe a quarter of a mile long, and I could already see the pale arch of the other end and the road leading out toward the second tunnel. I might be able to reach the east portal by the time he scrambled back to his car and took off. I wasn’t sure what I’d do if I caught him—his weapon was a lot heavier than the four-inch barrel of the .38. But he might not know that. Besides, I was angry enough to rely on inspiration.
Jamming down the accelerator, I leapt the Healey toward the tunnel mouth and saw the empty highway beyond the opening as I shifted up into fourth. Few other cars would be able to hold the curves of the canyon as well as the old girl, and all I needed was a glimpse of a fleeing bumper and I would have him. I had just dropped into gear when the pale semicircle began to dim with a heavy shadow. Just ahead of me, something was being moved across the entrance. I slammed on the brakes and pushed back against the seat away from the splintered windshield, but there was nowhere to turn. Like a bullet rifled down a barrel, the Healey bounded from one rock wall to the other and shrieked into the side of the still-moving pickup truck, and that was the last I remembered.
The smell was familiar: the clinical sharpness of a laboratory and a kind of empty, odorless tang that reminded me of one of the gas jets in a high school chemistry class. The oxygen jet. That’s what it smelled like, and I blinked against the glare, half expecting to see the long, waist-high tables and the zinc-lined sinks with their superstructures of glass retorts and tubing. But all I saw was a curtain, and I felt under my nose the thin plastic hose that pumped a little more oxygen into my lungs. Hospital. I was in a hospital and injured, and I didn’t know how bad.
Starting with my toes, I began to take inventory, half fearful that something I tried to move wouldn’t be there and too afraid to look down my sheeted body until I had felt everything answer. My head hurt and I could feel bandages pressing lightly across my scalp, so there was some damage there. Which, Bunch would grin, was the safest place for me to be hurt. Bunch. Looking around the drawn curtain, I saw the electronic paraphernalia of beeping monitors and a network of tubes running into various parts of my anatomy. No chair for visitors. No bed table with plastic pitcher of water and house telephone. I was in intensive care, and though it was a relief to know that my brain could recognize where I was, it was no relief at all to find out. Slowly, wincing against a sudden pain somewhere deep in my right shoulder, I groped for the call button that should be at the head of the bed. Almost as soon as I touched it, a nurse came through the curtain.