We parked in a real good spot, on a curve where we could just see Anya’s house, between a car in front of us and a tree across the street. Lights off, windows open: this was how it was done. Popping noises came from the motor and soon went silent. We sat up straight and watched Anya’s house, looking as it had before, just that one light showing at the back.
“He paid for the house, that’s pretty clear,” Suzie said after a while. “And none too happy about it, meaning ex-hubby.” She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. Finger drumming was something I couldn’t stop watching, for some reason. “Coming to the door with a gun like he did—who’s he afraid of?”
Me, for one.
Suzie glanced at me. “Besides you, I mean.”
Hey! She was right there with me, practically inside my head. Suzie: she got better and better.
“Could it be her?” Suzie said. “Anya? Oh, God, don’t tell me he’s set up to ambush her. Maybe calling the cops is the right …” She went silent. A moment or two later she reached over, rested her hand on my the back of my neck. “Wow, Chet—where’d you get all those muscles?”
I had no idea, but nice of Suzie to mention it. I pressed against her hand.
“What did Anya hire you two to do?” Suzie said. “That’s the piece I need.” Were we back to the very beginning of the case? I remembered Anya approaching us in the parking lot, a curvy little woman with … with trouble in her blue eyes. Had I seen the trouble then, or was I just seeing it now? Funny how the mind works, sometimes on your side and sometimes maybe not. Hey! Kind of a scary thought, like having an enemy within. I switched over immediately to thinking about nothing.
Suzie sighed. “I jumped to conclusions, Chet,” she said. “I’m a fool.”
Jumping? Weren’t we on a stakeout? Jumping had never come up in any stakeout I’d been on. I kept my eye on Suzie, just in case she was about to make some rookie mistake. But at the same time—my eyes being a little better placed for this kind of thing— I was still aware of what was going on in Anya’s house, namely that the light at the back had suddenly gone out.
Suzie leaned forward a bit: she hadn’t missed it. We watched the house. A few moments later, the garage door opened and a dark car rolled out, turned onto the street, and came toward us. Guy was at the wheel, talking fast on a cell phone, even waving his hand around; he didn’t come close to looking our way. The black car passed under a street lamp.
“Black Mercedes,” Suzie said. “Vanity plate PAYME. This shouldn’t be too hard.”
Good news: soon I’d be back with Bernie. Or did Suzie mean something else? I gave her a close look, learned nothing except that I liked her face. Which I already knew, right? But no harm in reknowing.
The black Mercedes came to the end of the block, went through the stop sign. Suzie turned the key. “Bet you’ve done this a thousand times,” she said. “If you’ve got any pointers, give me a shout.”
Had to love Suzie, and of course pointing was part of my repertoire. She had nothing to worry about.
We followed the black Mercedes through the development— Suzie keeping the lights off, just as Bernie and I would have done—and then up onto the freeway, where she turned them on. She was doing great, although we wouldn’t have eased in so close, me and Bernie, and also we hardly ever got in the same lane as the suspect. But it didn’t matter: Guy was still on the phone, didn’t once check the rearview mirror.
We came to spaghetti junction, this nightmare, as Bernie always called it, where a bunch of freeways met. Round and round some ramps we went, and then, zoom, we were headed toward the moon, low in the night sky and kind of reddish, the way the moon often was in the Valley. Suzie pulled out her own cell phone. For a crazy moment, I thought she was calling Guy.
“Hello?” she said. “Rick Torres, please.”
Rick Torres, our buddy in Missing Persons! Was Donut Heaven in the near future? It didn’t feel like that kind of future, hard to explain how, so I tried not to get my hopes up, something I’m maybe not that good at.
“Suzie Sanchez,” Suzie said. “I need a quick favor—ID on state tag PAYME, black Mercedes.”
Rick’s voice came through the phone, all shrunken. “This is for Bernie?”
“No. Well, maybe, in a sense. I’m not sure where he is, Rick, but I’ve got Chet with me. He was home alone, locked out of the house. I’m actually a bit concerned.”
“There’s hundreds of possibilities.”
“I know but—”
“But the main thing is Bernie can take care of himself. So no need for worry.”
“Rick? Are you coming across or not?”
There was a pause. “Does Chet seem upset?” Rick said.
Suzie glanced my way. I was sitting up straight in the shotgun seat, not letting that black Mercedes out of my sight.
“Not that I can tell,” Suzie said. “He’s very alert right now. Very, very alert.”
Rick laughed. “Car’s registered to a Guy Wenders. Address is Wenders Associates, 14221 Old Apache Road.”
“Thanks, Rick.”
“Don’t do anything dumb.” Click.
“A guy named Guy,” Suzie said. Yes, exactly, and that was just part of the problem. “Bernie could have made that diagram a little—” she began, and then got busy again with the phone. “Carla?” she said.
I knew Carla, a friend of Suzie’s at the Tribune, and one of those humans who was fond of me and my kind, even made sure to always carry a little something in her purse. I hadn’t seen Carla in way too long.
“Working on anything important right now?” Suzie said.
Up ahead, Guy was changing lanes. What was this? We were starting to pass him? Following from in front was one of our specialties, but no way Suzie knew how. I barked, just once, the low, rumbly kind.
“Oops,” said Suzie. She took her foot off that gas. We settled back to where we were supposed to be.
“… sewer extension hearing,” Carla was saying, “plus the strippers at the Lion’s Den just went on strike—Mike wants to slide over there and take some pictures.”
“I’ll bet he does,” Suzie said. “I need anything you can dig up on Wenders Associates in the Northwest Valley.”
“Call you back.” Click.
Digging was about to happen? I liked Carla more and more.
Not long after that, Guy slowed down and took the next ramp. We took it, too, following way too close, in my opinion, but Guy was still on the phone, his shoulders hunched in an intense kind of way. He led us past a golf course, spray from the sprinklers sparkling in the moonlight, and through a gate and down a long cobblestone lane with palm trees and flowers beds on both sides. Hey! I knew where we were.
“Rancho Grande,” Suzie said. “Remember, Chet?”
Of course I remembered. Rancho Grande, oldest hotel in the Valley. We’d come here for a drink in the gardens out back, me, Bernie, Suzie, and not so long ago. The bill turned out to be a bit of a surprise for Bernie, and then came another surprise, some credit card problem, but everything turned out great, and the homemade potato chips, so crispy, were the best I’d ever tasted.
Rancho Grande wasn’t one of those tall hotels you see downtown; instead it spread out wide in both directions in kind of U-shaped wings, U-shape being something I’ve learned from U-turns, of which I’d seen plenty, often at high speeds. Humans have invented a lot of things, but the car was the best, nothing else even close. Guy followed one of Rancho Grande’s wings to the end, parked, glanced around—we’d come to a full stop, lights out, just as though Bernie’d been behind the wheel—and walked away on a gravel path that led to the other side of the hotel, a path I’d been on myself at one point on that visit with Bernie and Suzie, a brief interruption concerning a rabbit who’d hopped onto the grounds without warning, maybe startling me out of my best behavior.
Suzie parked, leaving plenty of distance between the Beetle and the Mercedes. We were getting out of the car when Suzie’s phone buzzed.
“Hey, Carla.” Suzie listened for a moment or two and then said, “Investor? What does that mean?”
On the other end, I heard Carla say, “Not sure. But he’s got a record.”
“What for?”
“DA initially charged him with money laundering, but it got pled down.”
“Yeah?” said Suzie. “Any details?”
If there were, I missed them, but it didn’t matter: money laundering was a complete mystery. We’d worked some money-laundering cases, me and Bernie, and I’d been pretty hopeful the first few times—I knew laundry very well, of course—but no laundry ever turned up, and I’d sniffed for it diligently.
Suzie clicked off. “Let’s see what’s what,” she said.
That was more like it. We crossed the parking lot, passed the Mercedes, and moved onto the gravel path. I picked up Guy’s scent, even the bloody bandage part. Some thought about that bandage and laundry started taking shape in my mind and then collapsed, kind of like a bridge in a war movie Bernie and I liked, name escaping me at the moment.
We came to the back part of Rancho Grande, a huge expanse of lawn and flowers and more palm trees—with a tall fountain in the center, a fountain I knew I had to stay out of no matter what—and far in the distance the tennis courts, lit for night play. Tiny players made tiny jerky movements, but it was too far away to see the ball, the most interesting thing about tennis by far. I took a step or two that way, then remembered myself.
Suzie was scanning the back of the hotel—fire pit, patio, bar, restaurant, piano player. “Don’t see him,” she said. “Where’d he go?”
Actually, toward the tennis courts. I led Suzie down a path that went by sitting areas here and there, people having drinks at a few of them, but most unoccupied. Not far from the fountain, Guy had left the path and veered onto the lawn, which sloped down to a garden of tall cactuses—an unlit garden, but that didn’t keep me from seeing two men seated at a small round table. I smelled cigar smoke and went still.
“What, Chet?” Suzie said, squinting into the darkness in not quite the right direction; but at least speaking in a low voice. At that moment a cloud passed over the moon and the night got even darker. “Can’t see a thing,” Suzie said.
I led her in a long circle that brought us to the cactus garden from the other end. We came up between two big close-together cactuses—a tall flat spiky one, surfboard-shaped; the other barrel-shaped and even taller. I got down low, flat on my belly—Suzie getting the idea right away and doing the same—and peered through the narrow gap.
Two shadowy men, sitting silent at the table. Then came the orange glow of a cigar tip heating up, and in that glow I saw: Guy Wenders, a glass in his hand and a worried look on his face; and the cigar smoker, also with a glass in his hand but not looking at all worried: Judge Stringer. A funny old coot, Sheriff Laidlaw had called him. I didn’t see it.
Judge Stringer sipped from his glass, ice cubes clinking. “Fine hotel,” he said. “An institution. You realize that every president since TR has stayed here, with the single exception of the present occupant? What do you think that means, Guy?”
“How the hell would I know?” Guy said. The cigar glow faded and their faces went dark. I was aware of Suzie feeling around in her bag. Was she carrying? That would have been a big surprise.
“Not a student of history?” the judge said. Guy didn’t reply. “In that we differ,” the judge said. “I find the study of history infinitely rewarding. Here are just two things I’ve learned. First: history only moves in one direction. Second: once it gets started, it has no brakes.”
“For Christ sake,” Guy said. “Give it to me in plain English.”
The cigar glowed again. Guy looked more worried than before; the judge looked like he was enjoying himself. “What happened to your hand?” he said.
Guy stuck his bandaged hand under the table, out of sight.
“Hope it’s one of those you-should-see-the-other-guy situations,” the judge said. Hey! Was he talking about seeing me? No way was I letting myself get seen now. This kind of close-up surveillance didn’t work if you got seen: that was basic.
Guy said nothing. He picked up his drink and took a big swallow. I could hear it going down his throat.
“You’re a tough customer,” the judge said. “Still remember how you played football, boom boom boom. You could hear those hits in the parking lot.”
“That was a long time ago,” Guy said.
“But it made an impression, that’s the point,” the judge said. “Best damn football player ever come out of the county, full ride with the Buffaloes—made us all proud.” The judge smoked some more, blew out a thick stream of smoke that glowed orange and then vanished, but my mind was on buffaloes. If they were in the picture, the case was getting away from us and fast.
“I just need a little more time,” Guy said.
“Not happy to hear that,” the judge said. “I’m more in the mood for good news.”
“I can give you ten grand,” Guy said.
“I hear that right? T-e-n?” The judge tapped his cigar. A fiery little cylinder fell to the ground, and in the momentary light I saw he had a gun in his lap, under the table. “I hope you don’t think that’s the number that’ll make me happy.”
“I’ve got it on me,” Guy said.
“Cash?”
“Cash.”
The judge sighed. “Kind of defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?”
“You want it or not?” Guy said.
“Really want to be taking that tone with me?” the judge said. “Under the circumstances?”
Guy was silent.
“There’s an age-old lesson here,” the judge said. “A nice set of folks works up a nice little business and then one of ’em gets greedy and screws it all up for everybody.”
“I was never going to actually keep all—”
“Don’t want to hear it,” said the judge, his voice rising over Guy’s. “Let’s have what you got.”
“Meaning this is over?” Guy said.
“Over?” said the judge. “Over is when we’re made whole.”
“You will be,” Guy said. “For Christ sake, why wouldn’t I do that, Judge? But it’s all getting out of control.”
“My worry, not yours,” the judge said. “And I’ll accept your partial payment.”
The moon came out again and things brightened up, but in a strange way, making it almost like I was looking at a photograph. A very clear photograph, clear enough to show the sweat on Guy’s face, even though the Rancho Grande grounds had to be the coolest place in the Valley; the wad of cash he was holding out; the judge, cigar, down to a stub, in his mouth, reaching with one hand for the money; and the gun, under the table in his other hand. Suzie must have seen the gun: I heard a quick little intake of breath.
The judge paused, then looked over in our direction. His hearing was good—especially for a human—but not his night vision. He turned away, took the money, and pocketed it.
“Aren’t you going to count it?” Guy said.
“I trust you,” the judge said. “Trust you now, if you see what I mean. And as long as you’ve absorbed this lesson, I’ll be trusting you into the long and prosperous future.”
Guy gave him a hard look, but maybe the judge didn’t see it, on account of the moon getting covered up again.
“How about we drink to that, Guy? The future.”
They clinked glasses. Guy downed what was left of his and rose. “I’ll be in touch,” he said.
“I know,” said the judge.
Guy moved away, stepped around a saguaro, not a big one, and headed toward the hotel. The judge sat quietly for a little while. Then I heard a sound coming from him, kind of rustling or riffling. He took one last puff on his cigar and in that last glow I saw he was counting the money.