The Fourth Durango (17 page)

After the Cessna landed on the private dirt airstrip a mile or so south of the Ventura
Freeway near the Kanan Dume Road in Agoura, Jack Adair decided it was best not to ask who owned either the strip or the fancy new Land-Rover that was waiting for them, its ignition key tucked behind a sun visor.

“Don’t suppose you know where this Altoid nut farm is?” Merriman Dorr said as he started the Land-Rover’s engine.

“I gave you the address.”

“Out here in the boonies, an address seldom does much good.”

Adair shrugged. “We could ask somebody.”

“I never ask directions.”

“Why not?”

“Because where I’m going’s never anybody’s business.”

When Dorr finally found the road they wanted on a Thomas Brothers map, they crossed over the Ventura Freeway, heading north. A mile or so farther, Dorr turned left onto a narrow asphalt road with no shoulders that snaked up into some round drought-seared hills. The tan hills were sprinkled here and there with clumps of green oaks. But even the deep-rooted oaks, Adair thought, were beginning to look thirsty.

Adair was surprised that there was no chain-link fence surrounding the Altoid Sanitarium. At first glance, the place resembled an exclusive country club that somehow had misplaced its tennis courts and golf course. There was a fence of sorts that ran around what he guessed to be fifteen acres of rolling grounds, but it was a benign split-rail fence, useful for decoration and property lines, but useless against humans, rabbits, coyotes or reasonably determined deer.

Whoever had designed the sanitarium had managed to save many of the oaks. The gravel drive that went between a pair of fieldstone pillars and on up to the sanitarium’s main entrance took sudden zigs and zags to avoid at least nine of the old trees whose trunks had been whitewashed.

The Land-Rover stopped in front of the recessed entrance door that was the size of a small drawbridge and fashioned out of thick redwood planks bound by hammered iron bands. Next to the door was a polished brass plate, no larger than an envelope, with small engraved black letters that read, “The Altoid Sanitarium.” Below that, in smaller and, if possible, even more diffident letters, was the mild request, “Please Ring Only Once.”

“How long d’you think you’ll be?” Merriman Dorr asked.

“An hour. Not more.”

Dorr looked at his watch, a workmanlike stainless-steel affair with a sweep second hand that Jack Adair somehow found reassuring. “It’s six fifty-five now,” Dorr said. “I’ll be back for you at eight sharp, okay?”

“Fine,” Adair said, climbed down from the Land-Rover, went up the two steps and rang the bell exactly as the brass plate suggested.

Danielle Adair Vines, the thirty-five-year-old mental patient who sat at the far end of the small conference table in the cozy room with the big picture window, looked not much different to Jack Adair from the daughter he had last seen more than fifteen months ago. Paler, he thought, and not nearly as animated or maybe frenetic. But no big change really, which is exactly what that resident psychiatrist just told you. Nicely stabilized, he said. We soon expect marked progress.

Adair nodded and smiled at his daughter as he took a seat at the other end of the table. “How’re you feeling, Dannie?”

She smiled back at him and said, “Who are you? Do I know you?”

“I’m Jack.”

“Jack?”

“Jack Adair.”

“I’m feeling very well, thank you, Jack.”

“That’s wonderful. Anything you need?”

“No. I don’t believe so. Why?”

“Kelly sends his love.”

“You mean Mr. Vines?”

“That’s right. Kelly Vines.”

“Mr. Vines is such a silly man. He comes to see me almost every month, I think. Sometimes he says he is Kelly Vines and sometimes he says he is someone else. Once he said he was a movie actor but I didn’t really believe him.” She smiled. “He’s such a silly man.”

“Do you get many other visitors?”

“The coyotes come sometimes. And the deer. The deer will come almost up to this window but the coyotes don’t come nearly so close as that.”

Adair nodded his appreciation of the visiting wildlife. “Did you ever get a visit or a call from Soldier Sloan?”

“Who?”

“Soldier P. Sloan.”

“Whatever does the ‘P’ stand for?”

“Pershing.”

“I remember him.”

“Then he did visit you.”

“He died.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Before I was born.”

“Who died?”

“John Joseph ‘Blackjack’ Pershing. Born eighteen sixty. Died nineteen forty-eight.”

Danielle Adair Vines rose slowly from her chair, clasped her hands loosely in front of her and, Adair thought, suddenly looked closer to thirteen than thirty-five. She cleared her throat, lifted her chin slightly and began to recite.

“‘I Have a Rendezvous with Death,’ by Alan Seeger, born eighteen eighty-eight; died nineteen sixteen.” She cleared her throat again. “‘I have a rendezvous with Death / At some disputed barricade / When Spring comes back with rustling shade / And apple-blossoms fill the air.’”

She smiled shyly at Adair. “I know another one about the war your friend General Pershing fought in. It’s called, ‘In Flanders Fields.’”

“I think I know that one,” Adair said. “It’s also very nice. Very moving.”

She sat back down in the chair and placed her still folded hands on the table. “Will Mr. Vines come to see me again?” she asked. “He’s such a silly man.”

“I’m sure he will.”

“And will you be coming back?”

“If you like.”

“I’ll have to think about it. You’re not silly like Mr. Vines, but I still have to think about it. And I am so very sorry about your friend.”

“Who?”

“The one who died. General Pershing.”

“Thank you, Dannie,” said Jack Adair as he rose. “That’s very kind of you.”

The resident psychiatrist was Dr. David Pease, a forty-three-year-old twice-divorced Jungian, who held a twenty-percent interest in the Altoid Sanitarium. He wore a green jogging suit and had a wedge-shaped head, some thinning curly gray hair and a pair of sooty eyes that blinked so rarely that Adair was almost willing to believe they had been painted on his face.

“Dr. Altoid still with you?” Adair asked.

David Pease shifted in the chair behind his desk, didn’t blink, twitched his mouth and said, “Like Marley, Dr. Altoid has been dead these seven years.”

“Died rich, I bet.”

“Comfortable.”

“How many more months do you think my daughter will have to spend here at six thousand dollars per month?”

“We can’t provide you with a timetable, Mr. Adair.”

“What about a guess—even a wild surmise will do.”

Dr. Pease shook his head, the unblinking eyes never leaving Adair’s face. “If I guessed, you’d take it as prediction. And if it were wrong, you’d understandably hold me to account.”

“She’s out of it, isn’t she?” Adair said. “She’s floating around out there in her own private galaxy.”

“She’s much better than she was.”

“She doesn’t recognize her own father.”

“She must have her reasons.”

“Or her husband.”

“She recognizes Mr. Vines now. But not as her husband. She thinks of him as a harmless eccentric who visits her once a month.”

“Can you cure her?”

“We can help her. We obviously have helped her.”

“What if the money runs out?”

That made Dr. Pease blink. “Is that likely?”

“Considering that her father’s just out of jail, her husband’s disbarred and her brother’s dead, it’s what you might call a real possibility.”

“What about her mother?”

“Her mother can’t come up with seventy-two thousand a year.”

“We’ll keep Danielle as long as we can, of course. And if it should ever prove to be no longer possible, we will, if you like, see that she’s accepted by a well-managed state facility.”

“I didn’t know there were any well-managed state facilities.”

“Some are better run than others—like everything else.”

“How long would the state keep her?”

“Until it’s determined she’s no longer a danger to herself or to others.”

“That could be a week or ten days, couldn’t it?”

“I wish you wouldn’t try to pin me down, Mr. Adair.”

Adair rose. “Either Vines or I will be here with the money on the fifteenth as usual.”

Dr. Pease also rose until he reached his full height, which was a stooped six-foot-four. “She’s worth every cent, Mr. Adair.”

Jack Adair studied the unblinking Pease for several seconds, nodded and said, “Well, I suppose none of us reared our daughters to be bag ladies, did we?”

Adair waited for Merriman Dorr in the sanitarium’s reception area, which resembled the lobby of a very expensive residential hotel. As he sat, shifting restlessly in a deep wingback chair, Adair fretted about his daughter, longed for a drink and repeatedly ran Soldier Sloan’s cryptic notation through his mind: C JA O RE DV. But he could come up with nothing better than his original interpretation: See Jack Adair alone regarding Danielle Vines.

At exactly eight o’clock he hurried out the sanitarium’s front door just as the Land-Rover pulled to a stop. Adair climbed into the front passenger seat and was turning around, reaching for something in the rear, when Dorr asked, “How’d it go?”

“Lousy,” Adair said, facing the front again, the black cane in his right hand.

“So we don’t stay overnight or anything?”

“No,” Adair said, twisting the cane’s handle to the right rather than the left. “We go back.”

Dorr watched, obviously fascinated, as Adair removed the handle and the silver-capped cork, lifted out the glass tube and drank. As the whiskey’s glow spread, Adair offered the tube to Dorr, who shook his head. “Not when I fly.”

“Good,” Adair said and had another drink.

After they passed the twin fieldstone pillars at the end of the drive, Merriman Dorr slowed the Land-Rover to a stop, looked both ways for approaching traffic and said, “Want to sell me that thing?”

“The cane?”

“The cane.”

“It’s already promised to somebody else.”

“Who?”

“Sid Fork.”

“That shit,” said Dorr as he fed gas to the Land-Rover’s engine and went speeding off down the winding narrow blacktop road that had no shoulders.

Because he had stopped to open a can of Budweiser, his third in three hours, Ivy
Settles almost didn’t see the pink Ford van as it sped along Noble’s Trace, heading east toward Durango’s city limits and, possibly, U.S. 101.

Settles had spent the last three hours cruising the streets of Durango on his own time in his own car. He was searching for the pink plumbing van and trying, without success, to lose the rage and humiliation that had almost engulfed him after the murder of Soldier Sloan.

The fifty-one-year-old detective had nearly convinced himself it wasn’t his fault that Sloan was dead. But Settles’s powers of rationalization, which, like most policemen, were formidable, had failed him when it came to the short fat false Francis the Plumber. You let him walk, Ivy, he told himself. You. Nobody else. And that’ll make your name in this town from now on. Ivy Settles? Sure. He’s the one Sid Fork hired off the turnip truck.

Such dark thoughts finally had caused Settles to yell at his thirty-seven-year-old bride of six months, storm out of their two-bedroom house on North Twelfth, get into his four-year-old Honda Prelude, stop at a liquor store for a six-pack of Budweiser and cruise Durango for the next three hours, waiting for his rage to subside and his humiliation to go away.

He had begun his search for the pink van at 6:03
P.M.
down near the Southern Pacific tracks. He worked his way out toward the eastern city limits, circling every block and driving down almost every alley. By 7:15
P.M.
, he had reached the city limits so he popped open another can of beer and repeated the search, this time from east to west.

By 9:02
P.M.
, he was back near the eastern city limits again and had decided it was time for a third beer. He had just opened the can at 9:03
P.M.
when he glimpsed the pink van speeding east on Noble’s Trace as it went past the 25th Street intersection.

Settles threw the full can of beer out the window, slammed the Prelude into first gear and chased after the van. When he had shifted into second, he opened the glove compartment and took out his .38 Chief’s Special. Settles had had the revolver for twenty-one years but this was the first time he had ever really believed he might shoot some particular person with it—in this case, the fat false plumber. The thought ended his rage and humiliation and dangerously elevated his mood to one of near elation.

The Prelude had no siren but Settles had bought himself a red flasher that, after shifting into third, he plugged into the cigarette lighter. When he was no more than half a block from the pink van, he switched on the flasher and noticed he was two blocks past Durango’s eastern city limits. It was an area of virtual wasteland that once had been promoted as an industrial park. The only industry ever to express any interest was a Go-Kart racetrack, which later changed its mind. The park had gone into bankruptcy.

After the red light began flashing, the pink van slowed, pulled off onto the shoulder of Noble’s Trace and stopped. Settles parked twenty feet behind the van and got out of the Prelude cautiously, the revolver in his right hand, a foot-long flashlight in his left. When he reached the driver’s side of the van, he noticed that the Francis the Plumber magnetic stick-on signs had been removed, which didn’t surprise him.

He was surprised to discover the van’s driver was a dark-haired woman of twenty-seven or twenty-eight who stared at him with wide eyes that narrowed when the flashlight’s beam struck them.

“Put your hands up where I can see them and get out,” Settles said.

The woman nodded, raised her hands so he could see them and said, “How do I open the door if I keep my hands up here where you can see them?”

“I’ll open it,” Settles said, stuck the flashlight under his right armpit, reached for the door handle, turned it, opened the door two inches and stepped back four feet, his pistol and flashlight again aimed at the van door.

The woman came out slowly, her hands raised, palms forward. She wore jeans and a dark red T-shirt that said “I Shoot Anything” across its front in white letters. On her feet were blue and gray jogging shoes without socks. Her dark brown hair was cut fairly short and she was almost as tall as Settles, nearly five-nine. Her eyes, he noticed, were what he always thought of as “cow-brown.” He also noticed that if she weren’t so obviously frightened, she would be quite attractive, even pretty.

“Turn left and walk toward the rear of the van,” Settles said.

Hands still raised, she turned and walked three steps before Settles told her to stop. “Turn toward the van,” he said. After she had turned, he told her to lean on it. When she said it was too far away, he told her to lean on it anyhow. She almost fell toward the van, catching herself with her hands and forming a sixty-degree angle.

After again sticking the flashlight into his right armpit, Settles patted the woman down, missing neither her breasts nor her crotch. But he did it quickly, impersonally, and the woman neither flinched nor said anything.

“Okay, stand up,” Settles said.

The woman stood up. “Do I turn around?”

“Turn around.”

She turned and the flashlight’s beam caught her in the eyes again. She blinked and narrowed them. “What’s your name?” Settles asked.

“Terri,” she said. “Terri Candles.”

“Terri with an ‘I’?”

“With an ‘I.’”

“What d’you do, Terri?”

“I’m a photographer.”

“What kind?”

“Freelance.”

“Like the T-shirt says, you shoot anything.”

She nodded.

“Where d’you live, Terri?”

“Santa Barbara.”

“What’re you doing in Durango?”

“I don’t think I was speeding.”

“I said what’re you doing in Durango, Terri?”

“I’m on assignment.”

“Who for—the plumber?”

“What plumber?”

“Who were you taking pictures of in Durango, Terri?”

“A couple of kids. I’m good with kids.”

“Where’s your driver’s license?”

“In the van. Want me to get it?”

“Later. Let’s open the rear door first, see what’s inside.”

“It’s locked. I’ll have to get the key.”

Settles thought for a moment and shook his head. “Let’s see if it’s really locked.” He waved her toward the rear of the van with the flashlight.

The handle of the van’s single rear door was on the left. Settles positioned himself six feet away from it. “Open the door and tell whoever’s inside to come out,” he said.

“There’s nobody inside and it’s locked.”

“Try the door anyway, Terri.”

Her hand went to the rear door’s handle and pulled it down. “It wasn’t locked after all,” she said.

“Open it nice and slow, Terri,” Settles said.

She opened it quickly instead, moving with the door as it swung to the right. The flashlight revealed the double-barreled shotgun first and then, above it, the remarkably ugly face of Francis the Plumber who stood, crouched over, holding the shotgun at hip level. Ivy Settles hesitated for a tenth of a second before he began to pull the trigger of his revolver. But by then the right barrel of the shotgun had fired and its load was knocking Settles backward. As he fell, his Chief’s Special fired up into the air toward the stars and a full moon. The shotgun blast tore away much of the left side of Settles’s chest and he died seconds after he fell to the ground.

The woman who said her name was Terri Candles moved from behind the van’s open rear door and looked up at the short fat ugly man who was sometimes a false priest and sometimes a false plumber.

“Did I do okay, honey?” she asked him.

“You did fine,” the man said and pulled the trigger that fired the shell in the shotgun’s other barrel.