'Let me check out your alibi, and we'll see. How much bail can you raise?'
'Not much.'
'Well, if your alibi checks, you might not need bail, but I'd plan to spend the weekend in here.' Eagle tossed the file and the pad into his briefcase, stood up and offered Big Bear his hand. 'You'll be hearing from me.'
'Okay,' Big Bear said.
Eagle left the jail and went back to his car. Big Bear's story was simple enough to check out. If he wasn't lying, why hadn't he already been released?
Eight
ONE THING EAGLE COULD GET DONE BEFORE MONDAY: the Gun Club was no more than a quarter mile from the jail. He parked out front and went inside. It might as well have been midnight, for all the light in the place. It seemed entirely lit by beer signs. At the end of the bar, a sign over a doorway said, simply, hell. Eagle didn't want to go in there. The lunchtime crowds were digging into their beer and pork rinds, and the bartender was busy. Finally, he came to Eagle's end of the bar.
'What'll it be, sport?' Broad southern accent.
'You Tupelo?'
'Who's asking?'
'Name's Ed Eagle; I'm Joe Big Bear's lawyer.'
'I already told the cops; you want me to tell you, too?'
'Please.'
'Right. Joe got here Wednesday afternoon around four-thirty-something, shot some pool with a guy I'd never seen before, had a couple of beers and left around six o'clock.'
'Describe the other pool player.'
'Short, scrawny, dark hair under a baseball cap, couple days' beard.'
'What did it say on the baseball cap?'
'Who knows?'
'How was he dressed?'
'Dirty jeans, checkered shirt.'
'How'd he pay?'
'American dollars. We don't take nothing else.'
'Anything you didn't tell the cops?'
Tupelo shrugged. 'Did Joe waste those folks?'
'Not if you're telling the truth.' Eagle gave him a card and a twenty-dollar bill. 'Call me if you remember anything else. I'll be in touch. Appreciate your time.' Eagle went back to his car, glanced at his watch and drove slowly toward the airport. He passed a liquor store with a drive-up window. Just for the hell of it he turned in and stopped.
'Yessir?' the clerk asked through a bulletproof glass window.
'A fifth of Knob Creek, please.'
The clerk went away, came back with the bottle, stuffed it into a paper bag, took Eagle's fifty and gave him change through a slide-out cash drawer, like at a bank.
Eagle drove back to Airport Road and continued his journey. He turned left at the sign for the airport and noted the large automobile graveyard on his right, a sight he saw every time he drove out to visit his airplane. Just past that was a battered house trailer with a new-looking green pickup parked out front. He turned in. The trailer door was sealed with police tape. Eagle looked at his watch: eight minutes since he'd left the Gun Club. He got out of his car and into the unlocked pickup; the briefcase was there, just as Big Bear had said.
Eagle opened it and found the two pads. Apparently, one was for credit card payments, the other for cash. Joe was filing a tax return but not reporting everything. He also found a receipt from the liquor store with a date and time stamp that said last Wednesday, 6:06 p.m.
He broke out his cell phone and called both of Big Bear's Wednesday clients, taking the numbers from the receipts. The guy on Agua Fria backed Joe's alibi, and Eagle left a message on the other guy's answering machine. If he came through, his client was looking clean.
Still, he'd need the medical examiner's report on the time of death and the detectives' report. That wouldn't happen until Monday. He did some grocery shopping and drove home.
As he turned onto his road from Tesuque, he noticed a black car with darkened windows behind him, and when he turned into his drive, past the stone eagle that marked the entrance, the car followed him in.
Eagle got out of the car with his groceries and stood, waiting for his visitor to emerge from the black car. After a moment, the car door opened, and the driver got out. He was not a big man-maybe five-eight and a hundred and sixty pounds-and he was dressed in a black leather jacket and jeans, silver belt buckle, black shirt and a flat- brimmed black hat, pinched at the top like a World War I campaign hat. The face under the hat was brown and smooth, the expression impassive.
'Ed Eagle?' The man asked.
'That's right.'
'My name is Vittorio. You left me a message.'
Ah, Eagle thought, the other P.I., the one he'd called when he'd thought Cupie Dalton was out of action. 'Sure, come on in.' He lead the way into the house and the kitchen and began putting things away.
'Can I get you a drink?'
The man set his hat on the kitchen counter and pulled up a stool. His thick, black hair was pulled straight back into a long ponytail and secured with a silver clip. He nodded at the bourbon bottle. 'A taste of that would be good. Ice, if you've got it.'
Eagle poured two drinks and handed him one. 'There was an Apache chief named Vittorio back in the late nineteenth century.'
'He was my great-great-grandfather.'
'How did your great-grandfather survive the massacre in the Tres Castillas mountains?' Eagle knew that Vittorio had left the reservation and conducted a three-year offensive against the whites. He had been cornered in the mountains, and he and sixty of his men and a group of women and children had been slaughtered there by the New Mexico militia.
'His mother wouldn't let him fight; she made him hide in some rocks, where he saw the whole thing. When it was over, he scavenged the bodies for food and water, then he walked seventy miles to another Apache camp, where he was taken in. He was seven years old.'
'Jesus,' Ed said.
'Yeah. What can I do for you, Mr. Eagle?'
'The day before yesterday, my wife cleaned out two bank accounts and my brokerage accounts and chartered a jet for Mexico City. I stopped the transfer from the brokerage in time, but she got away with a million one, in cash.'
Vittorio nodded but said nothing.
'I sent a P.I. from L.A. after her, and he caught up with her at a hotel called El Parador last night. He followed her into the street, where he called me on his cell phone and attempted to hand it to her. She shot him.'
Vittorio's eyebrows moved a fraction, but he still said nothing.
'The P.I. wasn't badly hurt, and he'll be back on the job soon, but he could use some help.'
'Does he
'I haven't told him yet.'
'How is he going to feel about that?'
'I don't much care how he feels about it. Can you leave for Mexico City today? There are flights from Albuquerque.'
'Yes. What do you want me to do when I find her?'
'I want to speak to her on the telephone, then I want her signature at the bottom of six blank sheets of
