I nodded. We drank some more brandy. “How have you been, sir?” I said.
“I am better,” he said. “Time helps. And”-he took some more brandy, and nearly smiled-“I have remarried.”
“Congratulations,” I said. “That’s very good to hear.”
“Life goes on,” he said. “And you?”
“Lately it’s been complicated, but…” I shrugged. “In a while it will uncomplicate, I think.”
Dixon picked up the decanter and gestured toward me with it. I stepped over to his desk and he poured some more brandy into the snifter. He put more into his glass and put the stopper back in the decanter. We drank.
“Will I have to wait to see you again until you need another ten thousand,” Dixon said, nearly smiling again.
“Probably, sir,” I said. “I’m not too sociable a guy.”
Dixon nodded.
“A man who has as much money as I do is used to people who make it a point to keep in touch in case they do need ten thousand dollars. It is a great pleasure to see someone who doesn’t.”
“I took you at your word, sir.”
“Many people say that. You seem actually to do it. I don’t assume you take everyone at his word.”
“Or hers,” I said. “No, sir. Just people who can be taken at their word.”
“And how do you distinguish which are those people,” Dixon said.
I tapped my forehead. “A piercing intellect,” I said.
“Or luck,” Dixon said.
“That helps too,” I said.
The sun was coming in from my right as it set, and where it hit the rug it made the colors seem almost translucent. We drank our brandy quietly. The house was still. It was so big it would seem still if someone were building a nuclear submarine in the other wing.
Lin returned with a square package the size of a shoebox, wrapped in brown paper and tied neatly with brown cord. He handed it to me and left.
“I have other resources,” Dixon said. “In addition to cash in small bills.” He took a small engraved card out of a drawer in his table. It had a telephone number on it and nothing else. Dixon held it toward, me and I took it and put it in my shirt pocket.
“Thank you,” I said. I drank the rest of my brandy.
Dixon said, “Good luck.”
I said thank you again and left.
CHAPTER 49
on Route 55 toward Placerville. We parked our lease car on the shoulder of a barren stretch of road and looked down into a valley in the rolling foothill terrain.
“Map say here,” Hawk said. He held a U.S. Topographical Survey map with detailed directions written in Rachel Wallace’s neat circular hand. The valley ran north and south and the road curved along, the rim of the eastern slope. A stream ran along the valley floor and along its west bank a narrow road curved with it toward a stand of western pine that obscured the north end of the valley.
“That end,” Hawk said. “Behind the trees.” He sat in front with me. Susan sat in the back wearing enormous sunglasses with lavender rims. I put the car in drive and we moved along the rim until we could see around the trees as the valley turned slightly east and the road followed.
I stopped the car and we sat looking down maybe half a mile at the mine entrance. It was square and dark, and even from here looked newly timbered and shipshape. To the right was a helicopter pad, and to the left a wide parking lot. A hundred yards down the road toward us from the entrance was a high chain link fence that encircled the entry area and was manned by a guardhouse. There were concrete vehicle barriers set up in front of the gate in a kind of labyrinth, so that a vehicle could get through, but only very slowly, to the gate. Around the mine entrance the face of the hill had been sheared so that it rose straight up for maybe a thousand feet and some kind of steel wire mesh had been stretched over it to retard erosion. There was a large sign outside the guardhouse but it was too far away to read.
“Bet it doesn’t say ‘Welcome,”’ I said.
“Might say `Step into my parlor,‘ ” Hawk said. We sat quietly looking at the mine entrance.
“We could go down the cliff face,” I said.
“If they don’t have people on top,” Hawk said.
“Or if they do and we can take them out,” I said.
“Without they let anybody know down below,” Hawk said.
“Or we could land in a helicopter inside there,” I said.
“If we find a guy willing to fly one in there and get shot dead,” Hawk said.
“Pilots charge an arm and a leg for that,” I said. “And even then we’re only inside the fence.”
We looked at the mine some more. On the crest of the hill above the mine, across the valley, a man appeared with a dog and a rifle. He stood looking across at our car.
