McGuire spent the afternoon on the balcony of his motel room watching children as they splashed and laughed in the pool while their parents lounged nearby in the sunshine, sipping drinks and gossiping. There was only one topic, of course: the brutal killing of Bunker Crawford, which had taken place barely a hundred feet away and less than twenty-four hours earlier.
There were fewer families than the previous day. Many had fled the hotel and memories of the shootings. A special Palm Springs police field investigating team occupied a lower-level room where strings of temporary lines had been installed to feed extension telephones and computers.
McGuire believed Bonnar had played no direct role in the ambush, but he remained angry at the Palm Springs detective captain for permitting the private interrogation of Crawford by two federal officers.
Bonnar said they were capable of anything. McGuire suspected that he himself might have qualified for that description on occasion. Maybe every homicide cop had. But what does it mean when a government agency can investigate people without either the intent or the means to prosecute them?
He walked from the balcony into his room. Maybe it means you’ve got vigilantes, McGuire realized. Official government vigilantes.
The thought was too absurd to pursue. And yet too credible to ignore.
The phone rang as he passed it.
“You sitting on this damn thing?” Ollie demanded when McGuire answered on the first ring.
“Practically.” McGuire collapsed on the bed, wedged the receiver against his ear and picked up his notebook from the night table. “What’ve you got?”
“Something that could be a coincidence but probably isn’t,” Ollie answered. “Matt Kennedy tried a different route on this Amos character, through archive records instead of active files. Still couldn’t track anything down for the past twenty years, but he learned Amos had a military career. Where’d you say this Crawford guy was stationed when he was in the army?”
McGuire leaned across the bed and retrieved Bunker Crawford’s file, which had been under his notebook. “Nevada,” he said as he flipped through copies of official documents. “Yeah, here it is. Twenty-third Division . . .”
“Mercury, Nevada.” The two men said the words in unison, each an echo of the other.
“Son of a bitch.” McGuire slapped the folder closed. “Son of a bitch.”
“Don’t go feeling for your fly before the lady says yes, Joseph,” Ollie cautioned. “This Amos character, he might still have been postal security. Even the archive files don’t go past 1970. All we know is he and Crawford were stationed in the same unit in the same area of the same state at the same time. So maybe he decided to drop in and see his old buddy, since they’re still working for Uncle Sam.”
“What was Amos’s rank back then?”
McGuire heard Ollie query his wife and Ronnie reply. He pictured them together in the house at Revere Beach, Ollie speculating about possibilities and connections, Ronnie operating the computer at the desk in the corner.
“Colonel,” Ollie Schantz finally replied. “He was a full colonel at the time.”
“And Crawford was a two-bit corporal. Since when does an army colonel call on a guy he probably never ate with, drank beer with or slept in the same room with, after twenty years?”
“Possible, Joseph, possible. Anyway, we lose Amos after he transferred from Mercury.”
“To where?”
“Some place in California named Twentynine Palms. That anywhere near you right now?”
Highway 62 led north from Palm Springs into the Little San Bernardino Mountains and through a strip of fast-food restaurants, gas stations, mobile-home parks and stretches of barren, high desert. Within a mile or two of the interstate, McGuire had driven out of the dry heat and wealth of the valley into the coolness and poverty of the mountains.
Through Morongo Valley, Yucca Valley and Joshua Tree, McGuire passed dusty trails leading into apparently empty desert coulees whose only clues to human settlement were battered mailboxes comforting each other in small groups along the shoulders of the highway.
Just beyond Coyote Wells, a large sign announced the entrance to Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Base, and McGuire swung off the highway down a paved narrow road. Within a mile he reached a security gate.
“Afternoon sir,” the young MP greeted McGuire, his eyes scanning the interior of the car. Two other MPs, pearl-handled Colt .45 automatic pistols strapped on their hips, watched from the armoured guardhouse. McGuire wanted to tell them to drop the macho nonsense with the pearl-handled pistols. The Colts were overly heavy, notoriously inaccurate and prone to jamming, favoured only for the he-man presence they suggested. “May I ask your destination please, sir?” the MP said with pronounced politeness.
“I’m looking for a Colonel Amos,” McGuire replied. “Ross Amos.”
“And may I ask to see any papers authorizing entrance onto the base, sir?”
McGuire removed his ID folder and showed it to the young soldier. “I’m here on a civilian matter on behalf of the Boston Police Department,” McGuire replied.
The MP scribbled McGuire’s name and badge number on a sheet of paper fastened to his clipboard. “One moment please, sir,” he replied crisply, and returned to the guardhouse, where he spoke briefly on a telephone. The other MPs watched McGuire with moderately hostile expressions.
“I have no record of a Colonel Amos on the base, sir,” the MP stated when he returned. “Is there someone else you might care to see?”
“How about your director of intelligence?” McGuire asked.
The phone in the guardhouse rang. One of the MPs answered it.
“That would be Major Vander Hagen, sir. One moment, please.”
The soldier in the guardhouse spoke in monosyllables into the telephone and grew noticeably more alert with each response, his eyes on McGuire. He replaced the receiver just as the first MP entered and spoke to the two other men. The MP who had been on the telephone joined the first soldier and both approached McGuire’s car; one remained several paces away and unbuttoned his hip holster to rest a hand on the Colt’s pistol grip, his thumb on the safety release.
“I regret that Major Vander Hagen is not available at the moment, sir,” the MP said at McGuire’s window. He was positioned a step or two further away than he had been before, and his voice had acquired the hard edge of an impatient traffic cop. “If you care to leave a number where you can be contacted, the major will make an appointment at a later date, sir.”
“No Colonel Amos?” McGuire asked.
“No sir,” the MP barked.
“And no record that he ever served here?”
“I have no information to that effect, sir.”
McGuire stared back at the soldier, trying to read anything beyond aloofness and veiled aggression in the MP’s eyes.
“You can turn around in this area to the right, sir,” the first MP advised. His partner remained alert; the third MP, McGuire noticed, was speaking on the telephone.
McGuire made a U-turn and headed back to the highway. In his rearview mirror he watched one of the soldiers write the car’s licence number on a pad of paper.
“Cover the ground,” Ollie Schantz would tell McGuire in the first stages of a homicide investigation. “Walk where the victim walked and you’ll be walking with the murderer. Just keep your eyes open, your mind clear and your ass low.”
McGuire didn’t know what he might have found at Twentynine Palms. Nor what he would have said to an intelligence officer had he gained entry. He just wanted to cover the ground. But he had touched some kind of nerve with his inquiry about Colonel Ross Amos.
“I don’t know what the hell they have in there,” McGuire muttered to himself an hour later as he began again the long descent to the floor of the Coachella Valley, “but it sure isn’t postal inspectors.”
Back in his motel room, McGuire called the hospital and was told that there was no change in Ralph’s condition.
He walked out of his room into the velvety southern California evening, descended the stairs, turned to his left to check the room numbers, then doubled back until he found a door displaying several Palm Springs Police Department business cards stuck on with tape.
He knocked, and the door opened far enough to reveal a suspicious white eye in a startling black face watching McGuire.
“What do you want?” The man’s voice sounded like he was speaking from the bottom of a dry well.
McGuire introduced himself. “That was my partner who got it last night. I just want to know how you’re doing.”
The door opened wider, revealing a man several inches taller than McGuire dressed in an immaculate silvery suit with white shirt and striped tie. “You’re the guy,” the detective said, looking McGuire up and down.
“I’m what guy?” McGuire asked in an annoyed tone.
Without replying, the detective swung the door all the way open and gestured for McGuire to step inside.
The room had been cleared of furniture. Two police officers in short-sleeved shirts worked at telephones on portable tables in the centre of the worn carpeting; a computer terminal glowed from the far corner where an overweight woman clattered at its keyboard and a laser printer murmured obediently from an adjoining stand. Two large easels, one depicting a layout of the murder scene, the other filled with indecipherable scribbles, stood against one wall. The room smelled of cigar smoke, fried onions and stale pizza, in spite of the best efforts of a tired air conditioner.
“How’re we doing?” the detective repeated McGuire’s question when he closed the door behind him. “We’re doing shit. Nothing. In fact,” he added, his voice dropping an octave in tone and several decibels in volume, “right now you’re our prime suspect.”
McGuire looked at him blankly.
“Relax,” the detective said, and his face broke into a broad, cold smile. “A joke. I made a joke.” He thrust a hand toward McGuire. “Art Lumsden, Palm Springs Homicide. I’m here for the duration, sleeping and working. A vacation from my wife. Knocked on your door a couple of times this afternoon to introduce myself but you were out.”
McGuire seized Lumsden’s hand and shook it. “You don’t have much, then,” he said.
“Much?” The detective sat on one of the few chairs left in the room. “We don’t have nothing. No cartridge shells, no witnesses, no prints. Just five slugs taken from your man and the other guy. Thirty-eights, revolver, standard load. Can’t be more than one, two hundred thousand guns in the valley they’ll fit.” He pulled a small cigar from an inside pocket, lit a match and held it in front of him as he spoke. “You know what I’m gonna ask you next, don’t you?”
“Am I sure there’s nothing I might have overlooked?” McGuire said in imitation of a bored investigating officer.
Lumsden’s cheeks sank inwards as he lit the cigar, the match flame flaring and dying, flaring and dying. “Nice delivery,” he said, extinguishing the match with a flamboyant gesture and flipping it several feet into a wastebasket. “So.” He studied the glowing end of the cigar. “Is there?”
“Nothing,” McGuire replied. “I’ve run it over and over in my mind. There’s not a thing.”
“Except somebody knew where you were going and when you’d get there. He also knew he could blast away from those bushes and disappear in the confusion.”
McGuire leaned against the wall. “Ever seen anything this slick before?”
“Didn’t say he was slick,” Lumsden responded. “All I meant was he was good. Or maybe just lucky.”
One of the police officers at a folding table cursed and slammed the telephone receiver down. Lumsden turned to face him and smiled indulgently.
“How long can you run the investigation out of here if you’re not accomplishing anything?” McGuire asked.
“Long as it looks good for the press,” Lumsden replied, turning back to McGuire.
“Wouldn’t you rather be coordinating it downtown where everything’s handy?”
“Naw,” Lumsden said. He held the cigar up. “Won’t let me smoke these things down there.”
An hour later, McGuire emerged from his room freshly showered and wearing his last clean shirt. He wasn’t hungry, didn’t want a drink and had nothing new to offer Lumsden and his crew of investigators.
But, he remembered, he had somewhere to go.
The Palm Springs Desert Museum was located behind the city’s largest shopping centre, as though it were just another diversion to be visited along with the Gucci shop and the Cartier boutique. McGuire left his car at the far corner of the parking lot to avoid the long line of Mercedes, Rolls-Royces, Ferraris and other exotic machinery waiting for valet service at the museum’s front entrance.
He climbed the wide steps of the sand-coloured building, thankful that his casual summer suit was just formal enough for Palm Springs, where “evening wear” meant men wore silk sports jackets over open-collar shirts and women chose gaudy flowery pantsuits.
The guest pass was waiting for him at the reception desk as promised. He was directed through an open orientation centre, where a few general admission visitors gathered to watch the special guests walk along a stretch of red carpet into the private reception being held in the Sculpture Court.
At the entrance, where several celebrity-watchers peered silently from the foyer through the open doors, an elderly man in tuxedo and cummerbund inspected first McGuire’s pass, then McGuire himself, before approving his entry with a nod. Inside, music hovered over a buzz of soft chatter and polite laughter. A string quartet was performing in the far corner of the court, ignored by the hundred or so guests who stood in small groups sipping wine and nibbling at canapés presented by waiters with downcast eyes.
McGuire declined the offers of food and drink. He found an empty corner where he could watch the crowd and marvel at the expensive jewellery and slim figures of the women and the affected boredom of the men.
Hemingway had been wrong, McGuire decided after observing the elite residents of a community structured entirely upon wealth and status. The difference between the very rich and the rest of the world was more than money. It was attitude and confidence. It was class arrogance.
An overweight man in a lemon-coloured jacket worn over blue slacks in a complex paisley pattern minced past McGuire’s view, holding a martini at eye-level ahead of him. It certainly isn’t taste, McGuire mused.
A small burst of polite applause sounded from the doorway and McGuire watched, amused, as the mayor of Palm Springs, a former lounge singer and comedian, entered with a stunning blonde woman perhaps half his age. As he moved through the crowd, the mayor had something to say to each person he passed, his comments punctuated with a handshake, a back slap, a ruffling of hair or a joke.
There was a new wave of applause from the entrance. Eyes turned from the mayor to the front of the gallery; the mayor, clearly upstaged, brought his hands together once without enthusiasm before seizing a drink from a passing waiter.
The crowd parted to make way for Glynnis Vargas, tilting their heads to whisper to each other as she passed. Donald Mercer escorted her, her arm in his, beaming at each guest in turn.
She was the woman in the portrait again, but her raw sexuality was diluted by the formal lines of her dress and the elegance of her carriage. Her hair had been swept up on her head; diamond earrings swayed like heavy fruit as she walked, creating fire at her neck. She wore a green satiny dress which managed to be both tasteful and alluring as it moved with and against her body. Men’s eyes lingered on her a moment or two longer than necessary as she passed; women assessed her figure, seeking flaws and finding few.
She approached the mayor, who quickly swallowed his drink and set his glass aside. They shook hands, smiled, and brushed each other’s cheeks with their lips. Mercer grasped the mayor’s hand in his, seizing the politician’s elbow with his free hand, each man laughing in turn at the other’s greeting.
Glynnis Vargas refused a drink from a waiter, spoke to a few guests who approached her, then turned to offer a brief, silent smile across the room to McGuire.
McGuire realized she had known he was standing there since her arrival.
The string quartet, which had ceased abruptly when the mayor entered, resumed playing. Mozart’s music accompanied Glynnis Vargas as she walked casually in McGuire’s direction, pausing briefly to acknowledge greetings from guests as she passed.
“I’m pleased you decided to come, Mr. McGuire,” she said, offering her hand. “I had my doubts.”
“So did I.”
“You seem to be enjoying the music. Are you?”
“Very much,” McGuire replied. The mayor had separated himself from Donald Mercer, who was looking around for Glynnis. “All I seem to hear on the radio in this town is Muzak or mariachi music.”
“Acquiring money and acquiring taste are two quite different pursuits, Mr. McGuire.” She raised her hand in response to a greeting from an elderly couple standing near a bronze replica of Don Quixote, the old Spaniard’s sad eyes focused on a distant windmill. “It’s Mozart,” she continued, her eyes still sweeping the room. “His Prussian quartets. He wrote them for the king of Prussia, who was a very good amateur cellist. It must have been wonderful when men of power took time to develop a cultural facet to their lives. Most people in this room would have trouble playing a kazoo.”
“You’re not really one of them, are you?” McGuire said. He was watching Donald Mercer edge his way across the room toward them, a drink in his hand.
“No. I never will be entirely. Because I’m still a newcomer. And because I have different values.”
“They seem to respect you a great deal.”
“They respect my money and my taste,” she said, turning to look at him directly. “That’s how they measure people in this town. Nothing else matters.”
“Didn’t think you’d be here, McGuire.” Donald Mercer unbuttoned his raw-silk jacket, revealing a pink patterned cummerbund which managed to restrain the thrust of his stomach. He swept his arm in an arc, encompassing the room, the guests and the musicians. “Well, what do you think? I’ll tell you, McGuire, you add up all the equity in this room right now and you’d have enough money to buy your own country, I swear to God.”
“Have you seen the paintings, Mr. McGuire?” Glynnis Vargas asked, slipping her arm through his. “They are, after all, the purpose of this evening’s event. Let me show them to you. Excuse us, will you Donald?” She leaned quickly to graze Mercer’s cheek with her lips, then touch it gently with her hand as though reassuring him. “We’ll be just a moment.”
McGuire felt the eyes of the other guests on him as they left the room together, the celebrity-watchers at the entrance parting respectfully. In the public foyer, he hesitated. “Where are the paintings?” he asked.
“Forget them,” she replied. “They’re hideous. I want to visit my babies instead.”
She led him through the foyer, returning the greetings of late-arriving guests. “Through here,” she said. “Beyond the natural science wing.”
A brass plaque near a large open doorway announced “The Getti Vargas Court.” She touched the raised letters fondly with one hand as they entered the dimly lit room, passing a uniformed security guard who stepped aside and nodded before resuming his rounds.
“Look at them,” she said, freeing herself from McGuire’s arm and approaching a display of small figurines. “They’re worth all those ugly bronze and granite lumps back there. Don’t you think so?”
McGuire bent to study the polished ceramic figures arrayed along a low shelf. They represented six men and six women, each totally individual in facial characteristics, dress and pose. One was a man seated on a crude chair, his left leg ending in a stump, holding a wooden staff so its tip was just free of the ground. Beside him stood a woman with a baby in her arms; next to her, a warrior god glared back at the world with vigorous intelligence in his eyes, and strength in every line of his face and sinew of his limbs. McGuire was impressed with the primitive yet exquisite craftsmanship in each figurine—an elderly man leaning forward on a walking stick, a woman bearing ears of corn in her arms, a muscular warrior with a ceremonial dagger extended in a threatening gesture.
In other primitive art McGuire had seen, facial characteristics were bland and homogenous, more concerned with presenting a racial ideal than individual features. He thought of Egyptian pharaohs, Aztec gods and Indian warriors, each depicted as virtual clones of others of their race. But these figurines were created from life with an effortless grace that belied the immense skill and talent of the artist.
There was more to their appeal than the realism of their features. Each figure had been painted, fired and glazed in brilliant shades of ochre, green, coral and crimson, their skin tones in rich copper.
“I’ve never seen anything like them,” McGuire said. He leaned to examine the figures of a boy and girl holding hands and wearing identically patterned dress-like garments.
“There’s never been anything like them here or anywhere,” Glynnis Vargas replied. She knelt beside McGuire, and the aroma of her perfume diverted his attention from the figurines. “Do you have any idea where they’re from?” she asked. “Or how old they are?”
“They look Mexican,” he said. “Am I close?”
“Barely. They’re Mochica. Northern Peru,” she added when McGuire frowned at her, not understanding. “They were made a thousand years before Columbus arrived. They’re burial figurines, created to keep company with the dead on their journey to the next world. That’s the only reason they survived the pillage of Pizarro and the other barbarians who followed him. Because they weren’t gold. And they were buried in tombs, out of sight of thieves.”
She stood and walked to the end of the shelf, where the last figurine stood apart from the others in lighted splendour on a low pedestal. “I own almost half of the world’s entire collection of Mochica ceramic art. My husband collected them. I donated these when I arrived here after his death. In return, the museum insisted I accept a position on its board of directors.” She brightened suddenly. “Look at this one. Come here, Mr. McGuire, and look at this beautiful, beautiful woman.”
McGuire straightened, the cracking of his knees cutting through the silence in the room. He walked to where Glynnis Vargas stood, gently stroking the last figurine.
It was a young woman, naked except for a patterned garment hanging low on her hips. One hand was raised in a gesture of greeting. The other hand was poised at her midriff, either concealing or caressing her navel. Her features were delicate and finely formed in the ceramic material. She wore a ring through her nose and several rings through the lobes of her ears.
“Look at her expression,” Glynnis Vargas whispered. “Look at her face.”
McGuire bent and looked. She seemed about to smile, but there was a sadness in her eyes.
“I call her the Mona Lisa of the Andes,” Glynnis said. “Don’t you think she has the same sweet, sad look?”
McGuire nodded. “How did they get such detail in the faces?” he asked. “And why haven’t the colours faded after all these years?”
“We don’t know.” She stood and looked sadly back at the last figurine. “Their civilization was absorbed by lesser peoples. Farmers, traders, religious fanatics like the Tiahuanacans, who lacked artistic talent, and by the Chimus who were even less gifted. We know virtually nothing of the Mochicas except what we can learn through their art. Eventually all the people in that area of Peru became part of the Inca kingdom. The Incas worked almost exclusively in gold. Which, of course, was the source of their downfall.” She glanced at her watch. “We had better go back. The others will think we’re being terribly inconsiderate.”
“Do you really care what others think?” McGuire asked. His eyes remained on the figurine of the young girl.
“No,” Glynnis Vargas replied. “But I made a decision to live here and I believe anyone who joins a community has an obligation to become a part of it. I learned that when I moved to Brazil with my husband. And I don’t see any reason to change it now.”
As they returned through the large open gallery, she paused and smiled at McGuire. “You really saw something in those figures, didn’t you?” she said.
“Yes,” McGuire replied. The abstract oils and acrylics looked crude and contrived in comparison with the ancient ceramic art they were leaving behind. “Not as much as you. My only cultural taste is in music. But you were right. They were worth seeing.”
“Good,” she said. “That’s why I wanted them displayed here. So people like you could enjoy them for their own sake.”
Entering the sculpture gallery again, she touched his arm gently and left to join Donald Mercer and two couples who were laughing in an exaggerated fashion at one of Mercer’s quips. McGuire chose a canapé from one passing waiter, a glass of wine from another, and strolled to the corner near the string quartet. He stood absorbing the music, but his eyes were on Glynnis Vargas as Mercer led her from one group of guests to another, managing to say something amusing to each. At one point, when Glynnis Vargas turned to McGuire, she rolled her eyes in boredom and smiled.
She was no fragile beauty, McGuire decided, choosing his third glass of wine. Definitely not a woman whose only contribution to the world was her appearance.
He wondered why she had taken such pride in showing him the figurines. Maybe, McGuire mused to himself, because you’re unlike the others. You’re broke, you don’t live here, and you have nothing to be pretentious about.
Or maybe she just felt like slumming for a few minutes. Which, he decided, was a more realistic explanation. He set his empty wine glass on a side table and turned to the entrance just as two security guards shouldered their way through the watchers at the open doorway. They were led by a slim, moustached man in a tuxedo who McGuire had noticed when he and Glynnis Vargas passed through the foyer on their way to the figurines. The man’s moustache appeared to have been trimmed with a scalpel; his hands, which had fluttered in emphasis with his exaggerated greeting to Glynnis Vargas, were impeccably manicured. McGuire assumed he was the museum curator or manager.
But the man had lost his regal bearing. Perspiring heavily, his mouth tight, he stood in the entrance shifting nervously from one foot to the other, clenching and unclenching his hands. Finally he spoke sharply to the security guards behind him before approaching Glynnis Vargas.
Donald Mercer had just guided two men toward an empty corner, walking between them, his hand against the back of each. They were laughing quietly, chuckling in anticipation of the punch line to one of Mercer’s stories. So when the curator arrived at Glynnis Vargas’s side and whispered a few frantic words to her, Mercer didn’t see her face cloud over and her hand fly to her mouth in an expression of horror.
Glynnis Vargas suddenly bolted for the door, the man in the tuxedo trotting to match her pace and motioning for the uniformed security guards to follow.
McGuire exited the gallery a few steps behind; Mercer was well into his story, his back to the entrance, unaware of their departure.
Glynnis Vargas strode through the painting gallery, the tuxedoed man a servile step in back of her. Ahead of them, a third security guard barred the entrance to the Getti Vargas Court. He stepped quickly aside as Glynnis Vargas swept past as though he were invisible.
McGuire was now barely a pace behind, and he nodded authoritatively to the guard who hesitated just long enough for McGuire to enter the sculpture court. There the long line of Mochica figurines waited patiently in the darkness, as they had been created to do.
In the dim light of the narrow room, Glynnis Vargas stared open-mouthed at the last figurine in the row, the young woman on the low pedestal. She was now headless, her slender neck snapped cleanly at the shoulders. Glynnis Vargas reached to retrieve the figurine’s head from the shelf, rolling it between her fingertips.
“Mrs. Vargas . . .” McGuire began.
“Who are you?” the man in the tuxedo demanded. His demeanour had snapped from sympathetic to authoritative.
Glynnis Vargas turned to McGuire. “It’s all right,” she cautioned the man, who was bristling with anger. Her hand touched his shoulder. “This is Mr. McGuire. He’s a police officer. Mr. McGuire, this is Henry Gruenstein, the museum’s curator and manager.”
Gruenstein extended a pink, sweaty hand in reluctant greeting. McGuire shook it, his eyes on Glynnis Vargas. She opened her hand, displaying the severed head in her palm.
“Look what someone has done to the Mona Lisa of the Andes,” she said. “Look what a barbarian did to one of my babies.”
“Who?”
Gruenstein answered for her. “We don’t know. It happened after Mrs. Vargas inspected them just a few minutes ago. . . .”
“Mr. McGuire was with me,” Glynnis Vargas interjected. “We examined them together.” Her sadness had turned to quiet seething.
“Our security guard, Wayne,” gesturing at the man, now sullen and defensive, who had barred entry to the sculpture court, “discovered this vandalism on his rounds.”
McGuire turned to the guard waiting in the doorway. “How often do you make your rounds?”
“Every twenty minutes,” the guard replied. “I go from here, though the McCormick Gallery, up along the north hall, check the Western American Art Wing and return by the south hall . . .”
“It doesn’t matter,” Glynnis Vargas interrupted. “It’s too late for this Sam Spade nonsense. The damage has been done.” She set the figurine’s head gently back on the shelf, looked at it with sadness for a moment, then turned to the men. “Henry, I want the court closed immediately. From now on the figurines will be mounted behind tempered glass to protect them from further damage. Have the new display designed, priced and submitted to me for approval. Until then no one, no one, is to enter this court without two security guards accompanying them and their names recorded. And don’t bother reporting this to the police. There’s always a risk of inspiring other hoodlums.”
Gruenstein closed his eyes and nodded.
McGuire arched his eyebrows in surprise.
“Mr. McGuire, you have a car I presume?” Glynnis Vargas asked.
“It’s parked across the lot,” McGuire began.
“Then please be kind enough to take me home.”
“It may have been an accident.”
They left the parking lot in silence, McGuire driving through the desert dusk along Palm Canyon Drive. The sun had set behind the San Jacinto Mountains an hour earlier. An hour’s less sunlight each day was another price paid by Los Angeles citizens who fled to Palm Springs to escape the smog, chaos and climate of the city.
On Palm Canyon Drive, McGuire noticed young men in valet uniforms standing impatiently in front of restaurants in the downtown area, awaiting the arrival of late diners in their limousines. Their presence amused McGuire—he wondered if the restaurants were rated as much for the quality of their valet service as for the texture of their béarnaise sauces and the selection of their vintage Bordeaux wines. He grew aware of something else. Something about the valets that puzzled him, nagged at his mind.
“It was no accident,” Glynnis Vargas said icily. “It was wanton destruction. Someone seized her with one hand and snapped off her head with the other.”
“Any idea who? Or why?”
She lowered her head, a hand across her eyes. “No,” she replied softly.
“It looked as though it could be easily repaired,” McGuire offered.
She smiled across at him. “What’s your background, Mr. McGuire?” she asked. “Where are you from?”
McGuire told her. “Worcester, Massachusetts. A factory town. My father worked in a foundry. My mother was a housewife. I was a street kid.” He turned west off Palm Canyon onto Vista Chino. “A totally different world from yours.”
“Of course it is,” she purred. “But not better or worse. Only different.”
“You weren’t born wealthy either, were you?”
“No. Just with a desire to be rich. I knew that if I was rich, I could acquire things that matter. Like culture. And freedom. Maybe even wisdom. And I almost have. Unfortunately, I have discovered the wretchedness of being rich is that you spend most of your time around other rich people.”
“You seem to fit in well,” McGuire offered.
“Do I?” She leaned against her door, as though searching for a fresh perspective on McGuire. “Now, you see, I don’t know whether I have been flattered or insulted.”
“I didn’t mean to do either.”
“No, you didn’t. A man like you wouldn’t. Which makes you so different from everyone else who was there tonight. Do you read philosophy, Mr. McGuire?”
McGuire snorted. “I’m a cop, Mrs. Vargas. Philosophy’s not worth much to a cop.” Not true, a voice in his head began. Ollie Schantz was talking about philosophy just the other day.
“Ignorance is degrading when found in the company of riches. That’s what Schopenhauer said about wealthy people. And he was right.”
They were at the end of Vista Chino, where Via Linda began its ascent up the hill to the three isolated villas.
“Then why did you come here?” McGuire asked. There was no reply, and McGuire wheeled the car in front of her security gate. In the near darkness cast by the hills around them he turned to her. “You’re as rich as these people, but you’re not like them. What brought you here from Brazil?”
Her answer startled him. “Poverty,” she said. Her eyes were on the massive shadow of the hill rising behind her house.
“Poverty?” McGuire laughed drily. “Here? In Palm Springs?”
“In Brazil. In Rio, Sao Paulo, everywhere. I couldn’t take it anymore. So I had a choice of either staying and trying to ignore my conscience or claiming my American citizenship and coming here. The poverty is still down there. It’s just out of sight.” She twisted the door handle.
“Mrs. Vargas,” McGuire said. “Somebody doesn’t want you here. Bunker Crawford didn’t show up at your house by accident. And what happened tonight was no coincidence. Crawford’s dead and my partner is barely alive. Can you tell me what’s going on?”
“No,” she said, stepping out of the car. “I can’t.”
McGuire sprang from his seat. “I noticed a man around the back of your house when I left this afternoon. He scrambled up the hill when he saw me watching him. I don’t think he belonged there.”
“What are you saying, Mr. McGuire?” She extended a finger and pushed a button on the side of her security wall.
“I’m saying I don’t think you should go into your house alone. . . .”
A man’s voice crackled through the speaker. “Sim?”
She spoke a few non-English words in reply and McGuire was reminded again that the second language of California was Spanish. The gate slid open, its metal wheels squeaking in the silence, and Glynnis Vargas looked back at McGuire as she strode between them. “I appreciate your concern, Mr. McGuire,” she said. “Thank you for escorting me home. Please call me tomorrow.”
She entered her lush gardens, and the gate closed behind her.
A dark figure awaited her in the open doorway. They embraced briefly and the door closed. The sound of a security latch sliding in place echoed beyond the palms and shrubbery to McGuire, who stood in the darkness longer than he should have before entering the car and driving away.
Art Lumsden answered McGuire’s knock, a cigar clenched between his teeth. He removed it slowly, blew a cloud of blue smoke over McGuire’s shoulder and grinned. “Yeah, I’m still here, McGuire,” his voice rumbled. “What’s up? Or you just here to borrow a cup of gin?”
“What do you know about Glynnis Vargas?” McGuire asked. He moved away from the door to draw Lumsden outside, and to avoid inhaling his cigar smoke.
Lumsden’s smile widened. “Ah, the elegant Miz Vargas. Yes, yes.” He stepped down the walk to join McGuire and rested his considerable weight against the trunk of a sturdy palm. “You ever see so much money and sex on two legs before?”
“You talk to her?”
“Yeah. This morning. She even let me come in the front door. Didn’t send me around to the wetback entrance.”
“Where was she when Crawford was shot?”
Lumsden lowered his massive chin and raised his eyes in an expression of disbelief. “Now let me see here. Are you suggesting that Miz Glynnis Vargas, the pride of Palm Springs society, could have stood over there in her Gucci pumps with a two-handed grip on her Smith-and-Wesson and pumped four bullets into poor old Bunkie?”
McGuire rubbed his eyes. His day’s supply of adrenaline had dissipated hours ago. “No. I’m just curious to know where she was.”
“At the Desert Museum,” Lumsden replied. “Sipping tea and sherry with half the heavies in town. Arrived about six. Left about eight. Couldn’t be more than a hundred, two hundred witnesses with her. How’s that?”
McGuire smiled, shrugged, and turned to climb the stairs to his room.
“Hey, McGuire,” he heard Lumsden call after him. “You want I should check what Sinatra was doing at the time? Hell, he lives just down the road a piece.”