Mr. Grijalvas said, “It is now exactly twelve-fifteen.” Juan knew what that meant. Morrison and his men would already be at the valley station of the aerial tramway. In a moment they would leave their car and climb into the gondola, then ride it up the long cable to the mountain station at the top. It was easy to see why Mr. Grijalvas was who he was. Morrison’s ride to the top would take fifteen minutes. His ride back would take another fifteen minutes. During that time he couldn’t change his mind or come back or do anything but dangle a thousand feet above the desert floor in the little glass box. In that half hour Mr. Grijalvas could take the money from Morrison’s car and disappear. That, at least, would be what Morrison thought, but that was only part of it. Juan thought about the new car he was going to buy. After that, there would be other things, but they would occur to him while he was driving the new car.
JOHN KNOX MORRISON STOOD IN THE PARKING LOT and stared at the little blue-and-yellow corrugated steel building on its concrete platform. It looked tiny and insubstantial at the foot of the mountain. The small pool of yellowish light from the flood lamps made the garish building and the pitiful red flowers look unreal. Around the globes of the streetlights in the parking lot huge moths and bugs fluttered and buzzed, their bodies making tapping sounds as they battered against the hot glass. He waited while his companion, Morton, joined him. He glanced back once at the car to see that Morton had left the newspaper on the hood, then walked toward the little metal building.
At the stairway he could see the end of the tramway cable. He sighted along the thin wire, following its sagging length to where it turned up again and became invisible against the dark mountainside. Far above him at the top of the mountain he could see another little pool of bilious yellow light. From here the dim incandescence brought back some long-forgotten memory of a carnival, with the smell of stale popcorn and cotton candy and crowds and the strong sweat that came with the fear of falling from some whirling metal machine that jerked the body upward and pressed it against worn metal safety bars with the centrifugal force of its demonic spinning. He wished he felt more comfortable and could say something to Morton, but Morton was as alien to him as this place. Morton had the calm, efficient, unimaginative look that some of the operational people had, not feeling anything, not really seeing anything. There was also the nagging suspicion that somehow Morton had been chosen by some awful mechanical system in Langley that was based on the similarity of their names.
He followed Morton to the ticket booth and then to the wooden deck, where they waited while one of the tiny lights moved down the mountain toward them, then grew into a set of lighted windows, then resolved itself into a little rectangular box floating down the cable. Morrison listened to the heavy machines behind the wall of the building, a cyclical sound like wheels turning and an armature thumping. He listened for a flaw, an uneven sound that he could invest with his uneasiness, but it only sounded heavy and powerful. Then he remembered that in a few minutes this place would be dangerous, and this machinery was going to take him up and out of it. He felt a terrible eagerness as he rushed into the tram gondola. As it jerked forward and swept away from the deck, it swung gently on the cable. He clung to the hand grip in front of his seat and stared down at the little blue-and-yellow building. It was beginning to look small already. As he watched he saw the tiny headlights of a car come up the road and enter the parking lot. He resisted an urge to drop to the floor of the gondola and kneel out of sight.
A recorded voice came over a speaker in the ceiling. “Welcome to the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway. We’ll be going from the Valley Station, elevation 2,643 feet, to the Mountain Station, elevation 8,516 feet, a trip approximately two and a half miles long and over a mile straight up. The car is suspended on a cable about three inches thick and is driven by the turning of a large wheel…”
THE CONTINENTAL COASTED INTO THE PARKING LOT and moved up the line of cars near the little tram station and stopped behind a tan Chevrolet with a rental agency sticker on the bumper and a newspaper on the hood.
“All right,” said Grijalvas. “Very quickly now.”
Juan walked to the Chevrolet and looked into the back seat, then opened the door and pulled out two suitcases. He walked purposefully up the steps to the tram station, onto the wooden deck, and into the waiting gondola.
“Fine,” Grijalvas said, and Miguel drove the car to the edge of the lot near the entrance to the road.
ON THE HILLSIDE ABOVE THE PARKING LOT an agent spoke softly into his radio. “There’s something wrong. One of them took the suitcases into the tram station, and the others didn’t leave.”
A bored voice answered, “Then wait. We’ve got the road blocked, so they can’t go anywhere. He’s probably going to count it or something.”
“But there’s nothing to count.”
“You don’t say. Won’t he be surprised. Look, we have to wait until Morton has Morrison safely into the chalet up on top before we do anything. Nothing changes that.”
JUAN STEPPED OFF THE GONDOLA and walked along the sidewalk outside the restaurant, where Morales and Figueroa were waiting to take the suitcases. He watched while they carried them a few yards down the hillside, then reappeared in the light.
The three walked beyond the glass doors to the foyer of the chalet, but as they did, Las Crusas was already on his way out of the gift shop and moving toward the telephone booth. The four men converged on the spot. Juan could see Morrison and another man standing outside the booth waiting for an elderly woman with bluish-white hair who was on the telephone.
The four men pulled out their pistols when they were within ten feet of Morrison, and fired. Morrison jerked backward against the wall, his body jumping as the bullets tore into him. Morton crouched and reached inside his coat, but the first shots punched his head back, and he toppled against the telephone booth and sprawled on the floor.
As Juan and his three companions ran toward the door, the old lady said into the telephone, “If you didn’t hear that, it was everything going wrong. They’re both dead.”
The four men burst through the doorway and scrambled down the hillside toward the suitcases. Morales and Figueroa snatched them up and ran as Juan turned to see if anyone was watching from the windows. It was done —no head was visible. Making it at night on the trail down the side of the mountain would be difficult, but the four-wheel-drive truck was waiting for them on the flats. They’d drive along Andreas Canyon to Indian Road, then eastward toward Indio.
Juan ran and caught up with the others, who were trotting now. In the darkness he could hear the rhythmic sound of their deep breathing as they moved down the trail in single file. The trail wound around a large slab of rock, and Juan wondered when they would slow down. In this darkness, after a few twists and turns they were already invisible. The sounds they made seemed loud, but there was no ear that could hear them.
Juan heard a sharp metallic click in front of him that must have been one of the suitcases hitting something, but it sounded like the pump slide on a shotgun. Then there was a clatter of metal sounds that seemed to come from beside the trail and behind him at once. Suddenly glaring lights went on and he saw Figueroa caught in the center of a glowing circle. Figueroa froze, his hands before him as though he were riding a bicycle. Then there were bright flashes of fire that seemed to come from everywhere at once, and Juan saw Figueroa’s body swatted away into the darkness as though a wind had carried him. He didn’t see anything else happen. He felt a terrible, wrenching pain and he was on the ground and his breath was gone, but when he tried to gasp for another it didn’t come.
“Four, if you count the one that came in right after Grijalvas.”
“I’m counting it. There were five men in it, mean, ugly men.”
“You couldn’t tell if they were mean and ugly.”
“No, but they were right on time, and what are five men in suits doing driving to the aerial tramway together at midnight? A basketball team on a wholesome junket?”
“How about a law firm?”
“I’d say they’re blocking off the road behind old Jorge. I guess that’s that. Another trap.” He turned the key and started the van.
