She stood in front of John Brayer’s desk with the computer copy in her hand. “Fieldston Growth Enterprises,” Elizabeth said. When Brayer didn’t react, she set the sheet in front of him and touched her finger to the line. He could hear her pointed nail tapping the glass top of the desk. “Fieldston Growth Enterprises is the name of the building where this lawyer Orloff was murdered. It’s also the name of the company that turned up in the investigation of the Veasy murder in California.”
“Oh, yeah. You didn’t get anything much on that one, did you? Too bad we had to pull you out so fast. You’re keeping up with what the locals are doing, aren’t you?”
“John,” said Elizabeth, letting just a hint of the exasperation she felt seep into her voice, “this company has turned up at least twice now in murders that might be professional within a week. It’s a match as it is, and I think there’s a third.” She waited until she knew he had to speak.
“All right,” said Brayer. “It’s slim, but I’m willing to pursue it, to a point. The third, if I remember, was that the initials turned up in something of Senator Claremont’s, right?”
“You know it is,” she said.
“What’s the name of the staff counsel on Claremont’s tax committee again?” He matched her impatience with a fair imitation of sluggish complacence, but she saw that he already had the telephone receiver in his hand.
“Justin Garfield,” she said in a sweet alert voice he would probably have believed in another conversation.
“You might as well go wait for me at your desk,” said Brayer. “If this guy says FGE is Fieldston Growth Enterprises, I’ll want a report I can use to get a subpoena for their records before you get on the plane.” He started to dial the telephone.
“What plane?”
“To wherever this company is—oh, yeah,” he said, staring at the computer copy she’d laid on his desk. “Las Vegas.”
HE KNEW WHAT HE HAD to do without stopping to think about it. When he drove past the Frontier he spotted two watchers without even turning his head. One was in a Mark VI parked in perfect position to block the front exit of the parking lot if he slipped the hand brake and let it roll forward five yards. The other was just inside the lighted front lobby, waiting for a taxi within a few feet of a half dozen of them. He drove eastward toward the other end of the city.
There was no simple way to do it without making a lot of noise. He wouldn’t have the kind of time it took to be clever, and there were sure to be a lot of people around who were ready to avert just this kind of thing. Castiglione was old, but he was old the way a retired president was old, living behind a high fence in a house that was built like a fort and cost somebody plenty. If you had a reason to see him it was hard enough to get in, but if you didn’t have a reason it was worth your life to try. Still, it had to be Castiglione. He was the only one. He was the elder statesman, the one who had always had the juice to keep Balacontano and Toscanzio and some of the others in check. If he was out of the picture there would be confusion. None of the capos would ever believe that one of them hadn’t done it, and the only reason to do it was to make a bid for ascendancy.
Eventually one of the others would come out on top, but it would take time for them to devour the losers. If he couldn’t be sure of getting the one he wanted, this was the next best thing. He drove up Grayson Street slowly, a good citizen of Las Vegas trying not to wake up the neighbors after he got off the eight-to-two shift at the Thunderbird or somewhere. Grayson Street was a ruler-straight parkway with a hairpin turn at the end of it dominated by the imposing adobe facade of Castiglione’s house. As he swung past the house he studied it carefully. There was nobody outside patrolling the grounds. It had probably seemed unnecessary to have somebody freezing in the cold desert wind to protect a man whose personal enemies had been dead for decades. The adobe wall around the yard didn’t obscure the view of the house, which sat on a little rise in the center of a vast lawn. No shrubs had been allowed to grow within a hundred feet of the house, so anyone who approached it would be in the open all the way back to the street. And there would be lights, although at a glance he couldn’t see them, big floodlights that would change night into day in the first seconds of danger. The windows of the place were negligible squares cut into the adobe of the house’s Spanish-style facade, more because a blank wall that size without some variation would offend the eye than because old Castiglione would want to look outside at the shimmering heat waves of the desert floor.
It wasn’t promising, he thought. Castiglione had been in too much danger for too many years before he’d come West. Besides the front entrance, there was a side door that opened on a stone walkway to the swimming pool. He parked the car in the driveway of a neighbor, facing the street. He took the rifle and began to walk the circuit of Castiglione’s wall. Now that he could see the place clearly, it was even more forbidding. There were only the two doors he’d seen from the street, and at the back of the house even the small windows had been eliminated. He began to wish he had some dynamite. He couldn’t see any lights burning in the house, but he knew that the old man who lived here would have someone awake, if only to be sure the telephone didn’t disturb his sleep.
He felt frustrated and disappointed. It was going to be a pain in the ass. He carefully climbed the fence and approached the house, watching where he placed his feet. It wouldn’t be out of the question for the old bastard to have the lawn booby-trapped. He cautiously walked around the house looking for points of vulnerability until he found what he needed. There was a barbecue pit big enough to roast a side of beef, and near the swimming pool were two cabinet doors built into the wall. When he saw them his heart began to beat faster. It could be done. He took his pocket knife and quietly jimmied the first of the doors. Inside was the hot-water heater for the house. Behind the second door was a collection of miscellaneous objects: garden tools, charcoal and a can of fire-starter for the barbeque pit, bottles of chlorine for the swimming pool, a long hose already attached to a faucet. He leaned his rifle against the house.
In the darkness it was difficult to work silently, but he moved with care and deliberation. First he took the charcoal and the can of fire-starter and moved around to the front door of the house. He banked the charcoal against the gigantic wooden door and soaked it with the odorous liquid, getting as much as he could on the door itself. Then he left it to sink in and moved back to the patio. He took all of the garden tools and spread them on the pavement in front of the door. The hose he propped between two gallon jugs of chlorine so that it aimed from the side into the doorway. He checked the loads of his rifle and pistol and set the rifle on the deck next to the swimming pool. He looked around to see that everything was ready. The hot-water heater was the key to all of it, so it would have to be first. He turned off the gas valve and then disconnected the heater from the gas pipe. He went around to the front door and started the charcoal fire.
He trotted back to the patio, turned on the gas and lit the jet, then turned it up so the flame was high enough to lick the top of the cabinet. Then he turned on the faucet and adjusted the pressure so that a steady, hard stream of water rushed across the doorway. Finally he retreated to the swimming pool. He lowered himself into the water at the shallow end of the pool and gasped. It was colder than he’d imagined. He ducked down to wait, holding the rifle above the surface and shielding himself from the growing glare by clinging to the gutter of the pool nearest the house.
It seemed to be taking a long time. He peered over the edge of the pool at the house. There were still no lights on, but he could see the glow of the fire in the front of the house, and the gas jet was flaming steadily. The eaves had caught, and part of the roof. Already the facade of adobe was crumbling, and the plywood siding beneath it crackled into flames almost instantly. He began to shiver, whether from the cold of the water or the cruelty of the night wind he couldn’t tell. It suddenly occurred to him that Castiglione might not be home. What if he wasn’t even home?
But then the lights went on, one after another, each window now glowing. The fire from the hot-water heater must have eaten its way into the back of the house. He ducked down again. When they were ready to leave, the outside lights would blaze on. He listened to the muffled shouts inside the house, trying to gauge how many voices there were. There were doors slamming and the sound of running feet. He knew when someone reached the front door, because he heard a yelp that escaped into the night air, then footsteps back toward the rear of the house. The pool, he judged, was about seventy feet from the side door. He steadied the rifle on the cement deck and lined up his sights.
At last the side door burst open and a man ran out onto the patio. When he was sprayed by the hose he turned and shot at it, then swore when he stepped on a rake. He ran toward the hose, since it seemed to his dim, confused, frightened brain to be somehow the source of the trouble. He was easy to hit because when he got near enough to see that there was no one holding the hose he stopped short, silhouetted in the growing light of the fire
