What of Terry Conniston? (17 page)

The new ambitiousness could not have sprung full-blown into his consciousness like a fully shaped god from the head of Zeus; it must have been there all the time, undetected, waiting. What had triggered it had been the sudden awareness that Earle was shrinking—no longer the larger-than-life idol who had moved through the corporate world with demoniacal grace, pokerish imperterbability, uncanny judgment, athletic balance. Not until Earle had revealed unmistakably his own weakness had insidious thoughts wriggled past Oakley's puritan conscience, changed wish to desire; and even then, he thought, it was unlikely he'd have done anything about it if Earle had lived. The options would have been unfavorable. Petty embezzlement? Even if he had been convinced he could get away with it, it was beneath him. A full-scale raid designed to wrest the empire from Earle? No: he lacked the calculated brutality for that, the rapier fineness, the stamina, the acrobatic agility. He was a good lawyer, sensitive to subtlety and nuance, alert to opportunity, keen to the openings that were to be found between the fine-print lines of financial documentation. He had discovered, investigated, discarded and recommended countless deals for Earle Conniston; he had protected the empire against incursion and insult; he had unerringly weeded out deadwood and dispassionately called for its amputation. But he had achieved these successes because he had been confident, and he had been confident because he was backed by Earle's weight. Thinking it through relentlessly he had concluded that the lucky timing of Earle's death had been the only event in the world which could possibly have given him both the opportunity and the resolve to make his grab.

He didn't know whether to feel grateful or angry. Something Earle had said ten years ago remained in his head as if written in letters of fire:
In anything you do, risk is determined not by what you stand to win but by what you stand to lose
. Today, for the first time in his life, Oakley had committed himself fully: he stood to lose everything. Absolutely, literally everything. It frightened him.

In his way Oakley had always been a fatalist. Things were determined by chance as often as not. Luck: the very fact that he existed at all was only a matter of chance. How had his father happened to meet his mother? How had he, a bright but undistinguished young lawyer, chanced to meet Earle Conniston at precisely the opportune moment for them both? It had been, he recalled, at a poker game—the perfect setting. The shape of a man's life was carved not only by his own decisions and reactions but, equally as much, by blind coincidence, sheer accident. Luck.

It was Earle's bad luck, and perhaps Oakley's good luck, that Earle had blundered into Louise's bedroom at the wrong moment, blundered into Frankie Adams' drop-kick, blundered against the bedpost. It amazed Oakley that his conscience remained untroubled. Not responsible for Earle's death, he felt no guilt about the course he had pursued since then—unless guilt could be defined as the gnawing fear that his whole scheme would collapse, with him under it.

He inspected his watch irritably and shot his cuff. Ten past eleven. He had arrived before eight o'clock after making the ransom drop along the road as instructed. Presumably Orozco's operatives in Nogales were monitoring the radio signal from the bugged suitcase which contained the money.

He sat it out another twenty minutes, at the end of which time he got out of the car and walked around the clearing, went into the woods and scoured the ground, not sure what he was looking for but half afraid he might stumble across Terry's body. He found nothing at all to indicate the kidnapers had ever been there. He went back to the car and rolled out of the clearing with the air-conditioner roaring softly. The big car took the rutted roads fast, swaying on its springs, bottoming now and then with a sickening bang. By the time he reached Patagonia he had chewed his cigar to mangled shreds; he scraped the remains off his fingers in the dashboard ashtray and bumped across the railroad tracks and put the car onto the paved road to Sonoita, gunning it up to ninety across the rolling valley.

Shortly before one o'clock he turned in at the main gate and started up the last few miles to the house. The ranch sprawled toward the horizons—a thousand miles of fence, a hundred windmills, fifteen thousand cattle, five thousand acres of irrigated Pima cotton, two hundred cowboys and farmhands, six hundred horses and eighteen tractors, uncounted coyotes and coveys of quail. The Conniston ranch: a small corner of the empire. Carl Oakley surveyed it with a proprietary air while he tooled the car expertly toward the big house.

Orozco was waiting by the garage when he came out. Oakley said, “No sign of her. I waited three and a half hours.”

“I'm sorry, Carl.”

“You think she's dead, then?”

“I guess she is. But we got to keep lookin' anyway.”

They walked up to the house, Orozco talking on the way: “Your buddy at the Pentagon built a fire under the dispatcher at Davis Monthan. They let us have the flight plans of the planes they had in the air yesterday and we narrowed it down to five possibilities. I got men out checking all five areas now. One of them was right over downtown Tucson, which ain't going to be much help. I told them we wanted to know where the planes were at twelve forty-four but the guy pointed out one of those jets covers maybe ten miles in one minute between twelve forty-three and a half, and twelve forty-four and a half. Not to mention if your watch was off by half a minute or two minutes.”

They went inside. Louise and Adams sat gloomily at a table in the front room playing gin rummy. Oakley said, “She didn't turn up,” and headed for the corridor, ignoring their questions. Orozco trailed him into the office and shut the door. Oakley said, “What about the bug in the suitcase?”

“It went over the border at Lochiel and they lost the signal.”

“They
what?
” Oakley wheeled.

“Look, Carl, a little transmitter like that ain't got a whole lot of range. Maybe we'll pick it up again. I got men on every road south out of Lochiel.”

“They'd damned well better find it.”

“You get no guarantees in this business. We do our best.”

“You sound like a God damned used-car salesman on South Sixth in Tucson.”

Orozco grinned. “I used to be.” He pointed a pudgy finger and, following his glance, Oakley saw a map pinned up against the bookshelves; it hadn't been there before. Orozco said, “'Scuse me for making the place into a war room but I'm tryin' to run the whole operation by phone from here.” He went over to the map and beckoned. “Look here. I got men in Nogales and Magdalena. Ain't all that many roads leading out of Lochiel—sooner or later the bleeper's got to go through somewhere around there unless they get smart and ditch it or double back this side of the border, in which case I got a man posted at Lochiel. We'll turn them up. Just a matter of time.”

“Unless they stop to divide up the money and leave the suitcase on a junk heap at Cananea.”

“I've got boys closing in. If it's there they'll find it.”

“Sure. Then what?”

Orozco shrugged. “You got to play this kind of thing by ear, Carl.”

“And what am I supposed to do in the meantime? Sit here on my ass and diddle myself?”

Orozco brought up a straight chair from the back of the room and reversed it, sitting down cowboy-fashion, astraddle with his thick arms folded across the high back of the chair. “Time we had that little talk about the ranch, Carl. I told you I'd bring it up today.”

“This isn't the time for it.”

“Hell it ain't. What else you got to talk about right now?”

“I don't want to talk at all.”

“Too bad, because I got a few things to say.”

Oakley sat back in Earle's leather chair and closed his eyes painfully. It didn't discourage Orozco; the fat man launched into a droning speech.

“In the past year Earle's had four fences pulled down and two barns burned to the ground. That's just kid stoff, sure—nothing you can't handle. But you keep turnin' a deaf ear to these
chicanos
and their
machismo
is going to cause a rising. They see black people getting concessions all over the place and they figure it's their turn, you know? If the blacks can do it so can the Mexicanos. You ever been out in the scrub behind this ranch out east, Carl? You ever visited a family of
chicanos
livin' fourteen to a three-room 'dobe hut, the house full of malnutrition and TB and unemployment and infant mortality? When they can they pick peas for a dollar a day and when they can't they live on tortillas and beans. Maybe one kid gets a job as a yard boy or carry-out boy. Sitting up there in the scrub hills lookin' down on this ranch and this big house, all of which got stolen from those people's grandparents. You know how they did that, Carl? Easy. A honnerd years ago the Mexican goes into the crossroads gringo store to buy a sack of feed and the storekeeper says, ‘Sign here and I'll give you credit,' and the
chicano
goes ahead and signs a paper he can't read because he needs the credit. Turns out he's signed a deed to his land. The judges and the lawyers and the tax collectors and every gringo in Arizona defrauded these people out of their birthrights. Now they want 'em back. They want to know if you're gonna give it to them or if they're gonna have to take it.”

Orozco's voice ran down; Oakley kept his eyes shut. His silence argued with Orozco.

Orozco said stubbornly, “I got a cousin out in the back hills there livin' on beans and bread. No meat, no milk. They get their drinking water from an irrigation ditch. Conniston's been gettin' farm payments from the government that exceed the income of every
chicano
in this county put together. My cousin's gettin' fed up, Carl.”

Oakley opened his eyes with a grimace and studied the fat man with cool mistrust. “If he's your cousin why do you let him live like that?”

“Because he's too proud to accept my help. I've offered him money plenty times.”

“But he's not too proud to demand title to land he never earned.”

“That's a redneck argument, Carl. I didn' expect it from you. ‘Look at the lazy greaser, good for nahthing, livin' on welfare.' Only there ain't no welfare down here to speak of. Just gringos complainin' about the lazy nogood greasers.”

“Don't call me a bigot, Diego. You know damn well when I'm in trouble I'd sooner go to you for help than any gringo I know.”

“Sure. And when was the last time you invited a
chicano
into your home for a nice sociable dinner?”

Oakley tipped his head back and closed his eyes down to slits. “You're way out of line, Diego. Don't start calling me names just because your
chicanos
just can't adjust to the times. How can you try to bulldoze me with a fantastic pipedream like this? Conniston Industries has firm, clear title to this ranch. This wild
chicano
talk is going to do about as much good as a girl saying she wants her virginity back.” Abruptly he shot his eyes wide open and leaned forward, elbows on the desk, as if to catch Orozco off guard. “The fact of the matter is you got roped into
La Causa
by some crazy fanatic or other who knew you had a pipeline to Conniston through me and now you're going through the motions because you don't want your friends to call you a
Tio Taco
or a
vendido
or a
Malinchista
sellout Uncle Tom. All right, you made your pitch and I didn't buy it. Let's drop it, all right? Go back and tell them I'm not in the market.”

“You don' think much of me, do you?”

“I think a lot of you, Diego, but I think you got yourself roped into a mistake because you didn't stop and use your head first.”

“You think I'm just an errand boy for some big-shot Mexican that runs the movement, hey?” Orozco smiled slowly. “I got news for you, Carl. I
am
the movement.”

Oakley scowled. “I'm not impressed. I gave you more credit for brains.”

“Did you? Did I mention I'm planning to run for the state senate next year?”

“More power to you,” Oakley said with distaste; he was about to add a sharp remark when the phone rang. He grabbed it spitefully. “Hello.”

“Mr. Oakley, please?” A girl's flat-chested chirp.

“Speaking.”

“Mr. Burns calling, sir? Of Cleland, Burns and Lee, brokerage? Hold on, please, sir?”

“… Hello, Carl? Jim Burns here. On that short-sell order of yours, Conniston Industries common. The stock opened an eighth of a point down this morning and it's lost three eighths in the day's trading.”

“What of it?” Oakley snapped.

“Well, just this. There seems to be a lot of short-selling in the stock and it's disturbed the market. I feel obliged to remind you that you can't complete a short sale unless there's been an uptick since you placed the order. There has been no uptick. As of this afternoon's close, New York time, the stock is half a point below the point where it was when you put through the order. In good conscience I felt I'd better warn you—you could easily be caught holding the bag.”

“There'll be an uptick,” Oakley said curtly.

“Then you're reconfirming the order?”

“Of course I am.”

“Fine—fine. It's just that I felt a duty to make sure you understood that—”

“I understand everything,” Oakley said. “Good-bye.” He dropped the receiver onto the phone with a racket and muttered an oath.

Orozco was watching him with guileless blandness. Oakley picked up the phone and dialed a Los Angeles number; went through a switchboard and a secretary and finally got to the man he wanted. “Phil, I want you to place an order with the floor specialist for five thousand shares of Conniston Industries. I want it done in such a way that the market is aware that I'm the one placing the order. Can do?”