Muller, Marcia - [McCone 05] Leave a Message for Willie [v1.0] (htm) (45 page)

I stood under cover of a pine tree, listening. It was quiet back
here, although I could hear men shouting up toward the front gate.
They must still be searching for me up there. I took a chance and
sprinted across the graveled road toward the shed.

Slipping along the wall, I looked inside, saw it was empty, and
darted toward the jeep. There was a wrench sitting on a work-bench; I
picked it up and hurled it at the overhead bulb. In one lucky toss,
the bulb shattered and all went black.

I moved along the driver's side of the jeep, hoping the keys were
in the ignition. If they were, and if I found the escape route, I
could steal the jeep and crash through the gate.

I stood up and reached for the ignition. A hand grabbed mine. I
gasped with sudden terror.

"Relax, I already tried it," a familiar voice said
softly. "No soap."

Willie.

I let out my breath in a relieved gust. My legs were trembling so
hard I had to sit down in the driver's seat. Willie was hunched on
the floor on the passenger side. All I could see was the glint of his
eyes.

"Good Lord," I whispered when I could speak. "You
almost scared the life out of me."

"You did a pretty good job on me too."

"What are you doing here?"

"Looking for you."

"How did you know they'd grabbed me—plus where they'd
brought me?"

"Tell you later—there's no time now."

"You're right. We've got to get out of here. How'd you get
in?"

"The back way, from Levin's cabin. The directions to it were
all I had."

"The back way?" I turned to face him. "Then we can
get out!"

"Nope. They must have forgot to close the gate; it was open
when I got here. I scouted around, looking for you, then decided to
go into Boulder Creek and get the law. When I went back, the gate was
closed. There's an alarm."

"What kind of alarm?"

"Works on a weight principle. Obviously you can't have one
that any field mouse or whatever they've got here could trip. But as
soon as a person tries to climb that fence, all hell breaks loose."

"Bells?"

"Probably. Maybe lights too."

"Dammit."

I sat silently, listening for the sound of the search party.

With what appeared to be limited personnel, they were probably
still concentrating on the area where I'd gone out the window.

Willie reached out, plucked at the arm of the fatigues I'd put on,
and said, "Nice threads. I could move a lot of these at the flea
market. That's probably where the assholes picked them up."

"Yes." But what he'd just said had given me an idea.
"How big a weight would it take to set off that alarm?"

"Couple of pounds. Why?"

"Do you know how it works?"

"I've seen them before. There's a wire. You get enough
pressure to move it, it forces a connection, and bingo."

"Then I think I know what we can do." I reached down and
unrolled one leg of the fatigues, then began pulling the hem out,
making sure the pieces of thread were long ones.

"What the hell are you doing?"

"Hold these." When I had torn enough threads loose, I
rolled the leg back up and got out of the jeep. "Come on. I
assume you know how to trip this alarm."

"Sure, but that's the last thing we want."

"No, it's not." I led him out of the shed, slipped down
its side, and started for the fence. "Show me where the best
place to go over is."

"You mean to get to the road to Levin's cabin?"

"Yes."

He took the lead and we went around the long buildings, which he
said were barracks, to a place where the fence was sheltered by
eucalyptus. "We could go over here, and up the hill behind. It's
a tough climb, but—"

Suddenly voices came from behind us. Willie grabbed me and we
flattened in the tall weeds. The voices came on, and a light swept
over where we were hidden. Footsteps crunched on gravel, and then
became fainter.

It was minutes before we raised our heads. "Real assholes,"
Willie whispered. "They're out looking for you but they can't
keep their fucking mouths shut."

"I think they're convinced I got over the wall. They sent two
jeeps out. Probably the search party is just for form's sake."

"They're still assholes."

"Right." I stood up. "And that makes our job
easier. Do you still have those threads I gave you?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"What we're going to do is trip the alarm by tying it with
the threads. Then we hide. They come running, don't find anybody, and
most likely won't see the threads either. The alarm will keep
sounding, and eventually they'll cut it off. Then we go over the
fence."

"I like it."

"Then let's go."

"Wait a minute," he said. "Where are we going to
hide?"

"Lord, yes, we'd
better
decide that now."

"They'll be all over out here, beating the bush."

"And they'll know we're here this time, so they'll be more
thorough."

Willie grinned suddenly, his teeth gleaming white in the
moonlight. "Then why don't we hide where they'll least expect
us?"

"Where?"

"Inside, in the barracks, under their own beds."

"I like
that
."

We slipped back to the barracks and reconnoitered. The one closest
to the fence contained eight cots, most of them sloppily made up.

"What'd I tell you?" Willie whispered. "Assholes.
You try that in the Corps, and you'd be busted to buck private."
He went over to one cot and pulled the blankets nearly to the floor
so they hid the space beneath it. I followed his lead and did the
same to the one next to it. Then we tiptoed outside and went back to
the fence.

It took all the threads we had, tied together in an elaborate
spider-web arrangement that was strong but barely visible in the
shadows. When it was constructed, Willie attached a final strand,
waved me back toward the barracks, and pulled it taut. A siren went
off in a moaning wail, and lights flashed on top of the fence. We
turned and ran.

At the barracks, I dived under one of the cots, curling myself
into a little ball and tugging to make sure the blankets touched the
floor. Please, I thought, please don't let them come in here. And if
they do, don't let them realize anything's different. Please let them
be sloppy bed-makers from way back…

As I always did at such moments, I wondered if I had reverted to
praying. And if I had, what that meant—

There were shouts and running footsteps. It seemed like dozens of
men were converging on the fence outside. The wailing of the siren
continued. Somewhere close by a shot was
fired. I flinched.

Minutes passed. Feet pounded past the barracks. Men called orders.
Others cursed. But no one came into our hiding place.

After about five minutes, someone apparently remembered to cut off
the alarm. The sounds of men searching continued, but finally they
also subsided.

A few moments after that, Willie let out a sigh. "I think we
did it."

"Yes. If they reconnect the alarm, it'll just start howling
again. They'll think there's something wrong with it, and turn it off
for good."

"So let's get going."

We crossed to the place we'd chosen to go over the fence. All was
still around us. Willie gave me a hand up, and soon I had climbed
over the barbed wire and down the other side. He followed.

"This way," he said, starting up the rocky hillside.

I went after him, sometimes on my hands and knees, taking in great
breaths of the cool night air. I felt I hadn't breathed the whole
time I'd been inside the compound, and the oxygen hurt my lungs,
still tender from the chloroform. We stopped and rested several times
on our climb, looking back at the lights of the encampment below.

When we finally reached the meadow near the ruins of Levin's
cabin, we both collapsed on the grass. I flopped over on my back,
staring up at the black sky. The stars shone coldly and steadily,
like shaved ice.

After a few moments, I said to Willie, "Tell me how you knew
they'd brought me here."

"I called in and got your message at the Oasis. You said you
would be late, but that you'd meet me. I knew I hadn't set anything
up. Then I found your car in the parking lot behind the Villa Romana.
And this in the alley behind the Oasis."

I sat up and looked at what he held. It was one of my earrings. I
put my hand to my earlobe. Funny, I hadn't even noticed the earring
was gone.

Willie handed it to me and I put it back on. I said, "How did
you know it was mine?"

"You had it on Saturday at the flea market."

"Most men wouldn't remember a thing like that."

"You forget—Alida was a jewelry designer." There
was an empty note in his voice. I reached out and squeezed his arm.

"But how did you know to come here?" I asked.

"By then I'd put enough of it together to know who would want
to grab you. I'd suspected Mack and Monty and that Jerry Levin were
up to something for a long time. When Levin started watching me, I
got real nervous. So I pretended I didn't know who he was and hired
you to find out what was going on."

"Why didn't you just tell me the whole story?"

"I suspected they were up to something big, and I didn't want
to mess with them at all if I could help it. Stupid of me, I guess.
Anyway, by this afternoon, I knew what they were doing, but not
where. Then I talked to that rabbi and the other guy about Levin's
cabin. You'd told me about somebody shooting at you down here. It was
enough."

"You're not such a bad detective after all."

"Thanks."

"Willie," I said, figuring I
stood as good a chance of getting it out of him now as ever, "where
were you when Jerry Levin was shot?"

"That's kind of private."

"Don't you think I deserve to know?"

"Yeah." He sighed. "I guess you do. I was with
Sam's lady, Carolyn Bui."

"What?"

"It's not what you think. Carolyn's a friend; so's Sam. I was
trying to help them."

"How?"

"Well, as you probably can tell, Sam's not easy to live with.
Carolyn loves him, but lately that love has gotten worn out. She
started running around on Sam, with lots of different guys, and one
of them turned out to be a decent human being. Carolyn fell in love,
and she wants to leave Sam, but she's afraid what it will do to him."

"Where do you come into this?"

"I've been meeting her on Sunday nights while Sam's packing
up at the flea market, just for a couple of hours, so she would have
somebody who understands to talk it out with. That's why I didn't
tell the cops where I was."

"Surely Carolyn wouldn't have minded—"

"Of course not. But don't you see—it was their private
business, not something to be stuck in a police report."

"Did Sam know you were talking with Carolyn?"

"He suspected, but he had it all wrong. Monty—that
little snake—saw us together at the Oasis a couple of times. He
said something to Sam. Sam accused Carolyn of having an affair with
me, but she managed to talk him out of that idea."

So that was how Adair had known Willie wouldn't be home at five
o'clock on Sunday afternoon, and had had Selena tell Levin that.
"You're a hell of a good friend, Willie," I said.

"Nah, I just don't have many friends, is all. I do right by
the few I've got." We sat there in silence for a minute, and
then Willie said, "Let's get going."

We crossed the meadow, skirted the ruins of the cabin, and went
over the little bridge to the road where Sam's old van stood. Willie
reached in his pocket, handed me a set of keys, and said, "Here,
you go into Boulder Creek and get the law."

"And where will you be?"

"I'm going back."

"What?"

"I've got a score to settle." He patted his denim jacket
down around the beltline, and I realized he had a gun concealed
there. He'd had it all along. "I'm going to take out Marchetti
and Adair and as many of the others as I can."

He turned and started down the driveway to the bridge.

"Willie, if that's the gun you took off Selena, it's hardly a
weapon at all," I said. "If it were such a terrific gun,
you'd have used it while we were in there."

"Don't worry about me." He kept going.

"Willie." I followed him. "Willie, this isn't you.
You don't believe in killing."

"Now I do." He started up the slope to the cabin.

I walked faster. "They'll kill
you
."

"Not before I get some of them."

"Listen, this is stupid."

"A man does what he has to do."

"Now you sound like one of them. You sound like a redneck
right-wing asshole!"

He kept going, into the redwoods by the cabin.

"Willie, neither Adair nor Marchetti killed Jerry Levin."
I hadn't known it long, but I believed it now.

He turned, his face surprised in the dim light. "So who did?"

"I can't tell you yet."

"Well, it doesn't matter. Alida's the one I care about, and
one of them killed her. I figured out enough to know that. She was
coming to see me, and she saw one of them split with those Torahs and
recognized him." He started walking again toward the hillside.

I wasn't going to let him do it. Whatever his faults, I cared
about Willie. He had a big heart—too big, maybe— and a
love of life. I wasn't going to let that life end.

I looked around for the biggest, heaviest stick I could find and
hefted it. Then I went after him. I came up behind him and raised
that stick and whacked him right on the head, as hard as I'd ever hit
another human being.

He said, "Unh?" and went down on his knees. And then he
pitched forward, flat on his face, out cold.

I stood looking down at him, feeling more than a twinge of
remorse. A pity, I thought, a real pity.

Why couldn't it have been Leo McFate instead?