'I rented it from him the day before yesterday,' Fuentes protested. 'I've got the agreement in my truck.'
'You talked to Joe the day before yesterday?'
'Sure, I did. He came to see me in jail.'
'Is that when you hired him to kill Ed Eagle?'
'Now, wait a minute Detective Alvarez,' Harold said. 'Maybe I better explain this a little better.'
'Okay, Harold,' Pedro said, producing handcuffs. 'Let's go down to the station, and you can explain it to me and the D.A.'
Thirty-eight
EAGLE AND SUSANNAH HAD LUNCH AT THE TESUQUE Market, sitting on the front porch. The weather was gorgeous, as it usually was in Santa Fe.
'I'm kind of drowsy,' Susannah said. 'Maybe I'd better have a cup of coffee.'
'No, you should have a nap. What you have is a mild case of altitude sickness; you have to remember that we're at seven thousand feet of elevation here, and it takes at least twenty-four hours to get over it. Let's go back to the house, and you can stretch out for a while.'
They drove back up the mountain, and on the front doorstep Eagle picked up a Federal Express envelope with a shipping label showing that it had been sent from Mexico. He put Susannah to bed, then went into his study, sat down and opened the envelope with a real sense of satisfaction. Inside were six blank sheets of paper.
Furious, he called Vittorio's cell phone, but all he got was voice mail. He tried Cupie's, too, and the same thing happened. What the hell was going on down there? Then he noticed the light on his answering machine was flashing. He pressed the message button.
'Ed, it's Cupie,' a voice said. 'I've got some bad news: Vittorio is dead. We were on a ferry across the Gulf of California yesterday, and he disappeared from the upper deck. The coast guard has conducted a thorough search, and they haven't been able to find him. Vittorio couldn't swim, it seems. Apparently, he borrowed my cell phone, so that's gone, too. I won't be able to get another one until I get back to the states. I'm calling from a hotel in La Paz, but Barbara and I are leaving for Tijuana right now. I'll call you again when we're across the border.'
Eagle was stunned. Vittorio dead? Cupie and Barbara on their way to Tijuana? She was coming back to the States? The phone rang, and he picked it up. 'Hello?'
'Ed, it's Bob Martinez. We've arrested the man we believe called you from the Santa Fe jail. You might want to come down to the police station and hear what he has to say about the attempt on your life.'
'I'll be there in twenty minutes,' Eagle said. He hung up and looked in on Susannah, who was sound asleep, then he got into the Range Rover and started for town.
CUPIE DROVE ALONG at a steady sixty miles an hour, glancing regularly in his rearview mirror. For a long time he saw nothing that worried him, then he did. He drove faster, then slower. 'Barbara?'
'What?' she said from the backseat.
'You sure there's nothing you want to tell me about that might cause the Mexican police to be interested in you?'
'Cupie, I already told you, there's nothing. Now leave me alone.'
'Reason I ask is, there's a red car following us, keeping well back. When I speed up, he speeds up; when I slow down, he slows down.'
'Oh, shit,' she said.
'My sentiments exactly. Now, maybe if you told me what's going on here, it might help me figure out what to do.'
'I'll tell you what to do,' she said. 'You give me my gun back, and get ready to use yours.'
EAGLE WAS LED to a small room separated from an interrogation room by a one-way mirror. Martinez and a detective were waiting for him.
'You know Detective Pedro Alvarez?' Martinez asked.
'We've met in court, I believe,' Eagle said, shaking the man's hand.
'The gentleman handcuffed to the table in the next room is Harold Fuentes,' Martinez said. 'He's a small-time offender who imagines himself capable of bigger things. He was released from the county jail this morning and, with his wife, went directly to Joe Big Bear's trailer, broke in and started ransacking it. Pedro and I followed him and watched as he forcibly removed a safe that was bolted to the floor. We arrested him on a burglary charge, and we've got somebody working on the safe right now, to see what he was stealing.'
'Have you questioned him at all?' Eagle asked.
'Not yet.'
The door opened, and a uniformed officer walked in carrying a basket containing a substantial sum of cash. 'Here we are, Mr. Martinez,' the officer said. 'The safe had over thirty-six thousand dollars in it and a copy of a receipt from Western Union, showing that a Pepe Oso Grande received a wire transfer of twenty-five thousand dollars the day before yesterday.'
'Spanish for Joe Big Bear,' Alvarez said.
'The money was wired from a bank in Mazatlan, Mexico,' the officer said. 'There was no name listed in the space for the sender.'
'Thank you,' Martinez said. The man set down the basket and left.
'My wife is in Mexico,' Eagle said.
'Pedro,' Martinez said, 'I think it's time for you to wring out Mr. Fuentes for us. We'll watch.'
Alvarez got up and left the room, and a moment later, appeared on the other side of the glass. Martinez turned up the volume on a speaker.
'I've read you your rights,' Alvarez said. 'Do you understand them?'
'Sure,' Fuentes replied.
'Sign this,' Alvarez said, placing a sheet of paper before him. Fuentes signed.
'Well, Harold,' Alvarez said, 'it's more than simple burglary, now; it's grand theft. There was thirty-six thousand dollars in that safe.'
Fuentes didn't looked surprised. 'That money belongs to me,' he said. 'I didn't steal nothing.'
'So, the day before yesterday you were in Mexico, instead of in jail?'
'Huh?'
'Twenty-five thousand dollars of that money was wired from a bank in Mexico on that day. How'd you manage that, Harold?'
'It was the woman wired it, then,' Harold said. 'The other twelve thousand, five hundred was mine, what I gave Joe Big Bear.'
'Let's start at the beginning of all this, Harold, and while you're telling me the story, don't leave out the part about the woman.'
'Okay, a couple of weeks ago, right before I got arrested and sent to jail, I'm sitting at a traffic light on Paseo de Peralta, and this woman in a big SUV pulls up next to me and waves. She says, 'Follow me; there's money in it for you,' and drives off. I'm curious, so I follow her. We go up Canyon Road, and we make a few turns and she parks, waves me over, gets out of her car and gets into my truck. She says she's heard that I'm a man who can get things done, and she has a job for me. Am I interested?
'I say, maybe, and she says she wants somebody killed. I ask who, and she says her lawyer, name of Ed Eagle. I heard of him, and I ask why she wants him dead. She says, none of my business, and she says how much? I say fifty grand, and we bargain some. We settle on twenty-five grand, all of it up front, because after that moment, we won't meet again.'
'Wait a minute, Harold,' Alvarez said. 'You're telling me she gave you twenty-five grand up front? What's to keep you from just walking away with the money and doing nothing?'
'That's what I figured to do,' Fuentes said, 'but after she counts out the cash from her pocketbook, she says there's another guy who's going to be watching me, and if the job doesn't get done, he's going to kill me.'
