Parts Unknown (29 page)

“Anything going down?”

“No. No one in, no one out.”

Bunch leaned on the dash and eyed the building. “You sure he came here?”

“No. But this is where he’s running his experiment. I don’t think he would go off and leave it hanging—he wants things wrapped up so someone else can take over.”

“Wants his money, is what he wants.”

“I don’t think that’s all of it.”

We peered through the gloom at the still building as the streetlights began to shine more brightly against the darkening sky.

“I did a little checking on this guy Gilbert,” said Bunch. “He came here from LA maybe ten years ago. Worked in commercial real estate until the market went flat. Then somehow he moved over to the private health business.”

“Kiefer said he didn’t have a record.”

“I didn’t find one either. He does have a lot of contacts around town from his real estate days. What he did was set up Antibodies and get out a prospectus that promised to pay a twenty percent return on investment the first year, thirty percent the second. He has a board of directors with Matheney at the top and a whole shitpot full of big names underneath.” He told me some of them, all recognizable. “It’s no wonder Kiefer got pulled.”

“Did the company pay off?”

“First year. I hear the returns were thirty-five percent. Now he’s got people kissing his ass to take their money.”

“A Ponzi scheme?”

“Don’t count on it—he made a million off Nestor, didn’t he?”

The door opened and two figures in overalls came out. One was tall and thick-bodied; the other was shorter and almost round and had an arm braced with an elastic sling. They stood talking for a few minutes, in no hurry.

“Working late tonight,” said Bunch. “Probably had a body to cut up.”

There was something vaguely familiar about them. The smaller one. Perhaps a face I’d seen before … . No, more the shape of the man, his way of carrying himself … .

“Bunch, those are the ones who broke into our office.”

“Say what?”

“The short one. The way he moves, kind of sidling. That’s them, Bunch—the burglars.”

We watched the big one climb into a Chevy Blazer and back out. The other went to a Toyota pickup and followed. We noted the license numbers as the vehicles turned into the street.

“Think I should follow one of them?” asked Bunch.

I was tempted. “No. Gilbert and Matheney are the ones we want to keep an eye on right now.”

He sank back against the seat. “The brown Caddy—that has to be Gilbert’s.”

The other was a Nissan sedan of some sort. I didn’t think it was Matheney’s, but the possibility was there. We sat, talking a little bit about one thing and another—the other being the meeting tomorrow morning with Billy Taylor.

“You’re all set for that?” I asked Bunch.

“Yeah. I got a camera rig with a remote tripper. We can pick up that goddamn dog at seven and be over there in half an hour.”

“It’s got to come off, Bunch. I promised Schute.”

“Hey, have I ever failed?”

“Yeah. More than once.”

“I mean besides those times.”

Before I could answer, a hefty, sandy-haired figure pushed quickly through the glass door and half trotted to the brown Seville that sat nearest the entry.

“Uh-oh—here comes Gilbert,” said Bunch.

“In a hurry, too.” I started my engine.” I’ll follow him. You sit on the last car.”

Bunch slid out and stepped into the shadow of a doorway as the Cadillac’s headlights swept across us. I ducked down while it rushed past, then watched the car in the rearview mirror as it rocked into a hard turn at the corner. Squealing the tires, I swung around and followed, staying far enough back so that I had to occasionally guess where Gilbert would turn. But after a couple miles, I thought I knew and dropped back even further. We turned west on Hampden, and Gilbert pushed the speed limit as his heavy car wove through traffic toward Metheney’s home.

Off at Sheridan south and a quick turn onto Mansfield. Far ahead, the brown car swung under the iron gateway bearing the ornate M, and I slowed to a halt at the entry. Through a screen of blue spruce and elms, I saw the wink of flashing emergency lights, and in the quiet of the peaceful country club neighborhood heard the crackle of official radio traffic with its cryptic, terse messages.

After a while, a blue-and-white coasted down the drive, its flashers dark and the officer saying something into his microphone. I hopped out and waved him to a stop.

“Can you tell me what happened, officer?”

He looked at me for a long moment. “You a reporter?”

“No. I’m a friend of Dr. Matheney’s family—I live just down the road. I don’t want to intrude, but if something’s happened and my wife and I can help … .”

It wasn’t the offer of Christian charity that decided it; rather, it was the idea that I lived just down the road in another of the sprawling mansions that paid so much city tax and had such well-connected residents. He shrugged and scratched at a wing of his mustache. “It looks like the doctor shot himself. You might go up there and tell the detectives you’re a family friend— his wife’s pretty shook up.”

“My God,” I said, and I meant it. “All right. Thanks.”

The officer lifted a hand and cruised down the lane—his part of the drama was over, and it was back to serve and protect. I sat in the car and thought. Things had, indeed, been put into motion. But as is often the case, the exact direction of things hadn’t been foreseen, and this wasn’t the outcome I wanted. Matheney was dead. So were the others: Nestor, Serafina, Felicidad. I really couldn’t find a great amount of sadness and sympathy for the man, no matter how deeply I looked. What I did find was anger—a dead man couldn’t testify, and Matheney’s death meant a weak case against Gilbert. He had destroyed himself—fine. But he had also destroyed his usefulness, and that wasn’t so fine.

As I pondered, a black Oldsmobile swerved past me and up the driveway; the man behind the wheel had a preoccupied look, and I wasn’t surprised to see a medical badge fastened to the car’s rear license plate. A few minutes later, Gilbert’s brown Cadillac glided down under the branches that shaded the drive.

The headlights caught my face and the car braked abruptly. In the dash lights, I saw Gilbert’s mouth twist in anger. The window slid down.

“Matheney killed himself,” he said accusingly.

“Maybe you can sell his body.”

Gilbert’s mouth tightened. “I warned you, Kirk. Goddamn you, I warned you!”

“Going to have your two boys break into my office again?”

The man blinked, anger stifled by caution. “I don’t know what you mean. And I don’t know what you think you’ve found out.” The thick lips clenched up into a semblance of a smile. “Matheney didn’t leave a suicide note. He didn’t give his wife any reason why he killed himself. And now he will never testify to one damn thing, Kirk. No one will testify to anything.” He pushed a button and the window rose smoothly as he spurted gravel from his rear tires.

I turned, my headlights picking out two or three figures standing in the shadows of trees and staring up the drive. Then I headed back downtown.

A yawning Bunch drove the Bronco toward the mountains, etched sharply by the low morning sun. “I left a note for Kiefer, Dev. He didn’t catch the suicide, but he’ll learn about it when he gets in.”

“We’d better go to work on Chiquichano again,” I said.

He nodded, voice stifled by another vast yawn. “That Nissan, it belonged to the secretary. She drove straight home. Still there, as far as I know.”

In the far back, Sid Vicious scratched at his carrying case and breathed an unending rumble of growls and doggy curses. On the backseat behind us, the mound of camera equipment jiggled as the Bronco turned off the paved road and started up a dirt track.

“Chiquichano might run now,” I said.

“I don’t think so. I think as long as Gilbert stays, she’ll stay—he’s her golden goose.” He added, “I did get party and plate on those two clowns: Earl Vercher and Toby Dunlap. Dunlap’s got a jacket for boosting cars and assault. Nothing on Vercher.”

“You think they’re a better bet than Chiquichano?”

“I think she’s a hell of a lot tougher than they are. But she probably knows more about what went on.” Another yawn. “The way things are going, we’ll be damned lucky to get any kind of hard evidence. You see the paper this morning?”

The headline in the Rocky Mountain News said, “Prominent Physician Kills Self,” and the article quoted a spokesman for the family who explained that extreme pressures from overwork and depression brought on by the failure of funding for his research contributed to his death. There was no mention of his affiliation with Antibodies Research. A picture of his family—red-eyed wife and two shocked-looking teenaged children—left me staring into space for a long time. “Yeah. I saw it.”

Bunch’s head wagged. “Too bad he had no guts. He could have done something to straighten things out by testifying.”

“Maybe he found out he was only playing at being a god.”

“Naw—probably thought he was doing the noble thing. Damn fool.”

We rode in silence. The springs of the lurching vehicle creaked with each mudhole and spur of rock. Bunch finally pulled the car into the shelter of a thick stand of aspen, and we unloaded the gear to push through the underbrush. We were going in the back way in case the bikers had sent people ahead to stake out the meeting site. You couldn’t trust people like that, Bunch said, because they were sneaky, underhanded, immoral, and sly. So we had to best them in each category.

I followed the big man up a steep hill through a stand of ponderosa and spruce. We crossed a ridge and paused at the edge of a clearing that overlooked another dirt road. It curved around a sharp bluff bitten into the cliff face and narrowed between the rock wall and the rush of the stream that had carved the notch. A barely visible two-rut track branched off toward us through the grassy field, with its orange and white and coral washes of gilia and billows of coneflowers and Indian paintbrush. Across the glade, abrupt against the deep blue sky, a mountain shaggy with black timber gradually lifted to the ragged and crumbled stone of its naked crest.

“Now this is really pretty,” sighed Bunch.

It was. But the time was past when a landscape could be admired solely for its beauty; it was useful, too: the open field made it difficult for anyone to approach without being seen, and the steep mountain across the narrow valley blocked anyone from circling around and closing off escape. The trees behind us gave cover and concealment, while the narrow gap the road twisted through meant a bottleneck for vehicles and motorcycles, one that a single rifleman could hold for enough time to cover an escape.

We searched the area carefully with binoculars, finally satisfied that we were the only people there. Then Bunch hefted the carrier with the unhappily muttering Sid and carried him out to the center of the glade. The top of the plastic box was scarcely visible above the grass and flowers; I went another hundred yards and tapped in a stake with a shiny orange pennant and came back to wait. Bunch went back in the trees to set up the cameras and the telephoto equipment.

Taylor was supposed to arrive at ten. About nine-thirty, I heard the distant rap of motorcycle engines somewhere down the canyon. The sound was tossed on the breeze, so its direction was vague, and it quit before coming closer. Then there was a long silence, broken by the occasional tweet of a bird somewhere on the mountain flank and the startled caw of a raven eyeing me from overhead. The muted hiss of the small radio transmitter popped once, and Bunch’s voice made a tiny noise: “Can you read me, Dev?”

“Loud and clear. How me?”

“Same. Don’t forget to smile for the camera.”

Then silence.

At five after ten, a pickup truck ground slowly up the road, nosing for me. It stopped once just beyond the narrows, then came on carefully to stop again where the track branched off. Through the binoculars, I could see that the bed was empty and the front seat held only one silhouette. As instructed, the driver got out and stood with arms lifted to show he was unarmed. I stood up in the grass and waved him forward. Taylor got back in and started up the track.

“Son of a bitch was supposed to ride his motorcycle, Dev. We were supposed to get pictures of him riding his goddamn motorcycle. This isn’t working worth a damn!”

“Too damn late now, Bunch.”

The truck stopped a hundred yards down the path where the pennant had been driven, and Taylor got out again.

“You Kirk?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s all this crap about?”

I hoisted the dog carrier. Sid’s growls turned into snarls. “Here he is. Come and get him.”

The man started to get back in the truck.

“No—leave the truck there. You walk up and get him.”

“Well, shit.” Taylor, his paunch pushing the T-shirt out between the wings of his leather vest, plodded up the hill.

“That dog all right? That’s a valuable dog.”

“I can tell you he doesn’t have rabies. You were supposed to come on your bike.”

“How the hell could I carry a goddamn dog on my bike?”

“Well, judging from some of your girlfriends … .”

“You’re funnier’n shit, ain’t you? Want to tell me why you made me go through all this shit?”

He’d find out soon enough if he received a summons from Schute’s lawyers; and if he didn’t, it wouldn’t make any difference anyway. “Your insurance scam. The company wants proof you aren’t permanently disabled.”

“Is that it? Those fuckers want to get out of paying what they owe me? That what it is?”

“That’s what it is.” I handed him the carrier and Sid lunged to the grille to bite whatever was nearest.

“Well, shit!” He turned and whistled sharply, and two figures tumbled from the truck cab and sprinted uphill toward me. “Get the fucker—get him!” I grabbed the transmitter. “Bunch—Bunch, come on!”

T
AYLOR HIT ME
first, dropping the dog cage to drive his shoulder into my chest and plunge me backward into the grass so he could aim heavy boots at my head. I rolled, scissoring my legs and clipping him at the knees, and he flopped into a bed of gilia, cursing and swinging at air. The next was Benny, and he was hefting a fighting knife complete with finger guard.