The man nodded, smiling his thanks, reached into the right pocket of his black suit and withdrew a five-by- seven-inch sealed manila envelope. He slid it across the bar to Trice, who looked down to read the white peel-off label. On it someone had typed: Mayor B. D. Huckins, Durango, California.
Trice picked up the envelope, noticing it contained some kind of stiffening, cardboard probably, and placed it on a shelf beneath the bar. “I’ll see she gets it.”
“You won’t forget?”
“I just said she’d get it.”
The man with the clerical collar smiled, nodded his thanks again and said, “Maybe you could do me another little favor?”
“What?”
“Could you cash this?”
He handed Trice a personal check made out to cash for $50 and drawn on a Wells Fargo bank in San Francisco. The name signed to the check was Ralph B. Farr. Up in the left-hand corner, the same name was printed above a San Francisco address that Trice thought was probably in the Mission District.
Still staring down at the check with something akin to revulsion, Trice said, “Well, maybe if you could get the Pope to endorse it, Padre, or even just a bishop, I might see my way clear to-”
Trice’s elaborate refusal collapsed as he looked up from the check and saw the.22-caliber semiautomatic in the false priest’s left hand.
“I’ll just take what’s in the register then,” the man said in his thin tenor that Trice decided was the only thin thing about him except his lips. Two hundred pounds at least, Trice memorized, maybe two-ten and no more’n five-one, if that. The fucker looks like an eight ball in that priest suit-like Father fucking Eight Ball.
Pretending to consider the demand for the cash register’s contents, Trice frowned with unfelt regret and said, “Well, Your Eminence, there’s really not a hell of a lot in there, not much more’n you’d find in Saint Maggie’s poor box, if that-fifty, maybe fifty-two bucks.”
“That’ll do nicely,” the false priest said and shot Norm Trice in the face, once just below the left eye, and once just above the mouth, the.22 short rounds making scarcely any more noise than two doors slamming.
The short man in the clerical collar hurried out of the Blue Eagle and into the waiting pink van. Diagonally across the street from the bar, another man stepped out of the dark recessed doorway of Marvin’s Jewelry. The other man was in his mid-thirties and had graying hair. He wore a white shirt, faded blue jeans and old high-top Converse basketball shoes, the pro model, even though he was an inch or so under six feet. He also wore a sad, almost resigned look.
After he watched the speeding pink van disappear down North Fifth Street, the man stuck his hands in his pockets, turned and, with head bowed and sad expression still in place, walked slowly in the opposite direction.
Chapter 12
Kelly Vines and Sid Fork walked into the empty Blue Eagle Bar eight minutes later. Fork looked around for Norm Trice, called his name, even looked in the men’s toilet and, finally, behind the bar, where Trice lay dead on the duckboards, the $50 check, made out to cash and signed by Ralph B. Farr, still clutched in his right hand.
The chief of police said, “Aw shit, Norm,” and knelt beside the body. He noticed the check and removed it from Trice’s hand by pinching a corner of it with the nails of his right thumb and forefinger. Rising, Fork carefully laid the check on the bar and warned Vines not to touch it.
Kelly Vines twisted his head around to read what was written and printed on the check. “Fifty dollars, made out to cash and signed by a Ralph B. Farr. Wells Fargo bank in San Francisco.”
“Don’t touch it,” Fork warned again, turned to the old mechanical cash register, hit the no-sale key and glanced at the cash drawer’s contents. “About a hundred and fifty, around in there,” he said, closed the drawer and picked up the bar phone. “You want to get back here and pour us a couple?”
“Sure,” Vines said and went around the bar as Fork tapped out a number on the phone. Vines selected a bottle of Wild Turkey, found two glasses and was looking for the ice when he noticed the manila envelope. He read the mayor’s name on the peel-off label, dropped ice into the glasses, poured in the whiskey, added tap water and turned to tell Fork what he had found.
The chief of police was still on the phone, talking in that low and confidential tone often used either to announce deaths or spread rumors. After Fork hung up, Vines handed him a drink and said, “I found an envelope addressed to the mayor.”
“Where?”
Vines pointed. “You touch it?” Fork asked.
“No.”
Fork walked over and bent down to read the stick-on label. “It’s to B. D., all right.” He straightened and had a long swallow of his drink. “Maybe I oughta open it.”
“You’re the chief of police.”
“I don’t want to mess up any fingerprints.”
“There won’t be any fingerprints,” Vines said.
“Why not?”
“Let’s say the shooter comes in and orders a beer.”
“Why a beer?”
Vines pointed to the two-thirds-full glass of beer on the bar that still had condensed water beads on it. Fork gave the glass a grudging nod. Vines said, “He orders the beer, drinks some of it, hands the bartender-”
“The owner,” Fork said. “Norm Trice.”
“He hands the owner the envelope and-”
“How do you know about the envelope?”
“I’m guessing,” Vines said. “Anyway, he hands it to him and now we’re supposed to have fingerprints on a manila envelope and maybe on a beer glass. Then he asks the owner to cash a check. More fingerprints on the check-plus yours all over the phone and the cash register. When the owner tells him he won’t cash his rotten check, the guy shoots him. Twice. In the face. The shots go in six inches apart, maybe five, which tells us the shooter’s either very lucky or very good. The owner drops and the shooter empties the cash register.”
“Except he didn’t.”
“I know,” Vines said. “Which means that although he may’ve left the mayor a message-the envelope and the body-I wouldn’t bet on any fingerprints.”
“A pro, huh?”
“Open the envelope and find out.”
“It’s evidence.”
“That’s why you should open it,” Vines said. “Before somebody else does.”
Fork put his glass down, picked up the manila envelope and ripped its flap open with a thumb. He pulled out a piece of gray cardboard with six glossy black-and-white photographs bound to it by a tan rubber band. Fork stripped away the rubber band and, one by one, dealt the photographs onto the bar.
Five of the six photographs had been taken through the windshield of Vines’s blue Mercedes. The first showed a startled Vines, raising his hands to his face. The second showed him with his hands over his face, peering through his fingers. The third showed a startled Jack Adair. The fourth showed Adair smiling. The fifth showed Jack Adair sticking out his tongue. The sixth and final photograph showed Sid Fork and B. D. Huckins standing beside a car, the driver door open, deep in conversation, Fork doing the talking and Huckins looking up at him.
“Whose car?” Vines asked.
“B. D.’s.”
“When was it taken?”
“Beats me,” Fork said. “When’d they take the ones of you?”
