“Soldier Sloan claims you’re okay, too,” he said and leaned back to wait for Vines’s reaction.
Without expression and using only enough inflection to make it a question, Vines said, “Does he, now?”
Fork nodded. “I guess Soldier’d qualify as one of those guys I mentioned earlier-a smart and charming asshole.”
“Extremely charming, but not too smart. Where’d you meet him?”
“Mutual friends. Soldier says both you and the judge here represented him at different times. But it’s sort of hard to tell when Soldier’s lying.”
“You can believe him, at least on that point,” Adair said. “I did represent him long ago when I was still in private practice and when, I should add, both Soldier and I were considerably younger. Years after I went on the bench I heard he was in some kind of trouble whose exact nature escapes me. So I sent word for him to get in touch with Kelly, who, if memory serves, managed to get him out of whatever mess he was in.”
Turning to the mayor, Adair gave her his most winning smile and said, “So it would seem we are who we claim to be.” The smile vanished. “Are you?”
“You mean have we ever done this kind of thing before?” she said.
“Yes,” Jack Adair said. “That’s exactly what I mean.”
Chapter 10
According to the mayor, it had begun ten years ago with the passage of Proposition 13 that rolled back California property taxes and virtually wrecked the budgets of many of the state’s cities, particularly the smaller ones.
“Thirteen wouldn’t even let a city like Durango issue general obligation bonds until a couple of years ago,” she said. “Not that there was anybody jumping up and down to buy them.”
“How bad did it get?” Adair asked.
“We almost went broke. And we would’ve if the economy hadn’t picked up a little, at least for a while there, and if it hadn’t been for the donations from, well, from certain benefactors.”
Adair nodded, his eyes curious, his expression bland. “How many benefactors have lined up, cash in hand, over the last nine or ten years?”
She looked at Fork. “A dozen?”
“An even dozen.”
“How much did each one-donate?” Vines asked. “On the average?”
“The first four, one hundred thousand,” Huckins said. “Then inflation kicked in so the next eight had to come up with two hundred thousand.”
“Each?”
“Each.”
“Two million all told then,” Adair said. “And in exchange for this generosity, each philanthropist was provided with a safe haven? A sanctuary?”
“A hideout,” said the mayor.
“Were any of them avoiding the law?” Vines said. “Or is that any of my business?”
“One was sort of avoiding the law,” Fork said. “But it was some weird kind of CIA thing, so B. D. and I said to hell with it and let him buy in. The rest of them were all dodging the opposition.”
“Business rivals?”
“Guys who wanted to kill ’em,” Fork said.
“Did they ever succeed?” Adair asked with obvious interest.
“Never,” the chief said.
“Never in Durango,” B. D. Huckins corrected him. “But two of them got antsy, a couple of years apart, and left before they should’ve although we tried to talk them both out of it. The one who left first fell off a building in L.A. Mid-Wilshire, I think. The other got hit by a car in north Dallas that backed up over him just to make sure he was dead. The other ten are all okay as far as we know, but…” She shrugged.
“They don’t write,” Fork said.
“They don’t even call,” said the mayor with a small smile.
“And the two million dollars?” Adair asked, looking around as though hoping to find something it had been spent on.
“It helped keep things going,” the mayor said. “The frills anyhow. The library stayed open, just barely, and so did the VD clinic and the daycare center, at least until GE pulled out and we had to close it. The center, I mean, not the clinic. The rest of the money, what there was, went for police and maintenance.”
“Nobody ever questioned these-donations?” Adair asked.
“We’ve got a mayor-city council type of government here,” she said. “And since I’ve been mayor each new council member has been, well, carefully elected.”
Although Adair nodded approvingly, she volunteered nothing else. Another silence threatened, but Vines fended it off with a question to Fork. “What about your cops, Chief?”
“Mind if I do a little bragging?”
“Why not?”
“Well, I’d say we’ve got one of the best small-city forces going. There’s me, four detectives, twelve uniforms and three clerks who double at the jail when they have to. There’s also a county deputy sheriff, Henry Quirt, who’s got a whole lot of other ground to cover so we make sure he doesn’t waste any time around here.”
“
“Four. And every last one of ’em personally recruited by me. Tell you how I did it. I went looking for experience-guys that’d put in their twenty years and had their pensions and maybe a little baksheesh salted away, but were only forty-one, forty-five, around in there, maybe even fifty and kind of bored with sitting around the house. So I offered ’em thirty a year, God’s own climate, great hunting and fishing, cheap housing, free dental and health, light work and long vacations.”
“And they jumped at it,” Vines said.
“Who wouldn’t? Two of them’re out of homicide in Chicago and Detroit; one’s out of Dallas bunco and fraud, and the other’s a narc who wanted to get out of Miami in one piece. They’ve got about eighty-five years’ worth of collective experience and nobody slips by.” He smiled knowingly at Vines. “Absolutely nobody.”
Vines thought back to the previous night and the blond Dixie. Dixie Mansur. “Those two drunks at the bar in the Holiday Inn, right?”
Fork gave him a small proud nod.
“Congratulations,” Vines said.
It was then that Jack Adair decided to find out whether he could close the deal. Turning to the mayor and forcing a certain amount of unfelt heartiness into his voice, he said, “Well, it would seem that we are indeed in most capable hands.”
“Not yet,” she said, ignoring both the compliment and the heartiness. “Not till we discuss money.”
“Yes. Of course. How much would, say, a month or two cost us?”
“Two hundred and fifty thousand regardless of whether it’s a week, a month or a year. If somebody else is after Vines, the rate doubles. If the same guys who’re after you are after him, you get a two-fer.”
Since hearty had won him nothing, Adair turned grave and judicious, nodding at Huckins as if the sum she had mentioned, although not inconsequential, was by no means staggering. “Suppose,” he said, “your fee were to be increased substantially for only slight additional effort on your part?”
“We don’t do takeouts,” the chief said, his voice firm, his expression forbidding.
The mayor gave the chief an exasperated look, then studied Adair for several seconds. “Go on,” she said.
“I have to confess something first,” he said. “I don’t know who wants to kill me or have me killed.”
Huckins nodded impatiently. “That’s standard. None of them ever seems to know who’ll be sent to do it.”
“I can only presume,” Adair said, “that it’ll be arranged by whoever attempted to make it appear that I and another justice on the court accepted substantial bribes. He was Justice Mark T. Fuller. The ‘T’ was for Tyson.”
