Into Thin Air Page 18

  He scuttled toward the bedroom door, his arms thrashing, a diver searching frantically through muddy water for a drowning child.

  Two men tackled him at once, smothering him in a grunting heap of knuckle and bone. The blows to his head had weakened him but he fought hard, landing punches, biting, a taste of salt and blood in his mouth.

  “¡El cloroformo!” instructed the man struggling with Lennon.

  A wet, harsh-smelling handkerchief slapped against Kurt’s face. Cloroformo was the last word he heard.

  He came to in a close dark place, choking on gasoline fumes and the heavy smell of singed oil. He was cold, his feet bare, the pajama bottoms wrapped around his ankles like a cord. His hands and mouth were taped. The car’s jerking downshift had brought him around and he realized they’d stuffed him into a trunk and were driving him somewhere, probably to kill him.

  “Lennon,” he gagged, rolling over, stretching his legs to feel for his son.

  The boy wasn’t in the trunk. A hot queasy panic churned his stomach. What had they done with his little boy?

  The car stuttered up a sharp incline, slowing, the driver downshifting again to find a better gear. The muffler backfired like an old bazooka. Kurt worked at the tape on his wrists, stretching his forearms, yanking with all his might. In a few moments he managed to free himself and then ripped the tape from his mouth.

  Definitely not professionals, he thought. I would already be dead.

  He tried to find the trunk latch, his fingers fumbling over loose wires and flaking metal. He would jump if he had to. Fifty miles an hour, he didn’t care. He jiggled the latch but it wouldn’t open from the inside.

  The car surged upward along the smooth road, the grade so steep Kurt could imagine only one place like this in the whole range. They were taking him up Independence Pass to the Continental Divide. A desolate place above tree line with many awesome crevasses in which to dump a body.

  Think, he told himself. Think.

  He gripped the trunk matting underneath him and peeled it back, groping into the spare tire well. He ran his hands over gritty rubber and found a gas can lodged in the same cavity. He shook the contents. Two, maybe three inches of gasoline. If only he had a lighter. When these bastards opened the trunk he’d fry their faces.

  The highway leveled out and the huge old car began to drift silently through the darkness. We’ve reached the top, Kurt thought. We’re at the Divide. His stomach turned again when he realized they were pulling off the road.

  He shifted around to a kneeling crouch and searched for the trunk light, finding the smooth little bulb near the latch, breaking it off with a quick snap. The engine shut down, clattered, and then the car was still. A fierce night wind blew over them, shuddering the old junker in its tracks. One door opened, then another. Footsteps crunched in the gravel, coming for him. In a panic he clawed about for something else to use, anything. A greasy tire jack squatted in a corner of the trunk, the handle of a lug wrench wedged against it.

  Two men stood by the trunk and spoke to each other in Spanish. One of them laughed, a chilling, raspy sound deep in the chest.

  Kurt crouched, the gas can in his left hand, the lug wrench in his right. A key clicked in the lock. There was a sudden pop, a vacuum release, and the lid swung upward with a rusty squeak. Cold air rushed into the trunk.

  “Vamos a trabajar,” the man said, reaching into the darkness.

  Kurt rose up and doused him in the face with gasoline. The man screamed and grabbed his eyes and stumbled backward, falling to one knee. His companion reached for the pistol in his belt but Kurt smashed him across the forehead with the lug wrench. He groaned and collapsed deadweight to the gravel.

  The first man was crawling around in the dirt, wailing, rubbing at his eyes. Kurt leapt from the trunk and clubbed him in the head.

  “Where is my son?” he screamed.

  The driver was out of the car now, yelling something, running back toward them. The darkness exploded with rapid fire, a burst from his automatic pistol. Kurt dove for the ground and rolled against the back wheel on the passenger side. He could hear the loud snap of another clip being loaded into the piece.

  It was so dark up here, the cold blustery peak of the Divide, that he couldn’t see more than five yards. Wind howled over the barren landscape, making it impossible to detect movement. He peered around the tire, looking under the car to locate the driver’s feet. There was a long silence. Kurt didn’t know where the man was. He drew his legs to his chest and listened hard, hearing only the pulse throbbing in his ears. He waited, praying for the man to give himself away. The sharp wind flapped his loose pajamas and he shivered. His bare feet were already numb.

  Nothing. No footsteps. Only wind gusts raking the thin line of chaparral off the shoulder. His back pressed against the tire, he could feel the chassis of the old Chrysler rock in the icy current. One of the men lying on the ground began to moan.

  He’d lost the lug wrench in the roll. It had to be somewhere close by, within arm’s reach. He leaned over and slid his hand through the powdery dirt, searching for it. Where the hell was that thing?

  A door creaked and the dome light went on in the car. Kurt withdrew his hand quickly from the spread of light and hunched closer to the tire. Now he saw the lug wrench a few yards away, but he couldn’t risk crawling for it.

  He heard a footstep and looked again under the car. A pair of legs was positioned by the rear license plate, only a few feet from him. There was a loud slam—the trunk lid—and more light shone on the two prone bodies.

  “¡Chingao!” the gunman spat. He kicked the lug wrench out of his way and took three slow steps toward the chaparral, firing a blurt of bullets into the dark brush.

  Kurt sprang up and blindsided him, and the pistol clattered onto the asphalt. The move had come back to him instinctively, the way you drive your shoulder into the ball carrier’s gut when he’s down, planting your entire body weight into him, a somersault spin.

  The gunman choked up his dinner, a foul smell, something ruptured inside. He tried to roll over and get to his feet but Kurt leapt back on him and pinned his shoulders to the gravel.

  “Where’s my son?” he demanded, smashing the man’s face with one fist, then another. “Where is he?”

  In the weak light from the car he could see that this was not a man at all but another Mexican boy.

  “I’ll kill you right here if you don’t tell me something fast.”

  The kid coughed up more stale food. “We don’t hurt him,” he said.

  “Where is he?” Kurt said, slapping his face.

  “We leave him there,” he said.

  Kurt knew this kid. He was the surly young goateed vato from the pool hall.

  “Why did you do this?” Kurt shook him. “Who put you up to this?”

  Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. “Don’t kill me,” he begged.

  “Tell me who put you up to this,” Kurt said, slapping his face again.

  The young man began to cry. “A man say you kill our friends,” he said. “He give us money to take you out.”

  “Who was it? What’s the man’s name?”

  The boy’s eyes filled with tears. Kurt turned him on his side so he could spit out the blood and vomit. It was going to take a long time to get an answer out of him. More time than Kurt had. He needed to find his son.

  “Talk to Angel Montoya,” he said, giving the kid another shove. “He knows I didn’t kill anybody. But if I ever see you again, you son of a bitch, I’m going to kill you.”

  He picked up the cheap Accutek .380 automatic lying on the road and then the little Saturday Night Special that had dropped near the rear bumper.

  “You boys need to learn who your friends are,” he said, tossing the weapons into the backseat of the car.

  One of the Mexicans was sitting up now, holding his head, whining like a run-over dog. The other one was still knocked out cold.

  “Better not leave that guy here overnight
,” Kurt said as he opened the driver’s door. “He’ll freeze to death.”

  The old tail-finned Chrysler handled like a halftrack, but Kurt forced it back down the dark narrow switchbacks of Independence Pass, roaring toward Aspen. At a bend near Lost Man Campground loose rocks had spilled onto the highway, and the car skidded across debris he could feel like a land mine set off underneath him. He careened into the other lane, the huge old vessel taking on a wild pendular rhythm of its own. Just then a bright red Wagoneer rounded the bend toward him, blared its horn, and swung wide, grinding to a stop on a shoulder above the deep river gorge. By the time Kurt reached town he was trembling uncontrollably, his pajama shirt drenched with sweat.

  Please let him be alive, he prayed as the Chrysler rumbled over the bridge near the art museum. Please, dear God.

  From Red Mountain Road he could see that the house was dark. He didn’t trust what the kid had told him. There was another one, an older man with a deep, commanding voice who had held Lennon and given the orders. So where was the bastard now?

  Kurt stopped the car at the turnoff, forty yards from his property fence, and cut the lights. He grabbed the little .22 from the backseat and dashed barefoot across the rocky terrain to the side of the house, where he peered in a living room window. Everything was dark. Quiet. He ducked below the windows and scurried around to his father’s study. He poked the nose of the pistol through the screen and slit it open, then wrapped his pajama shirt around the stock and cracked a pane. Glass fell inward, sprinkling onto the carpet. He reached in and released the latch.

  Slipping quietly around the old Steinway he opened the door to the dining room, listening, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness of the house. He thought he could hear something, a faint sobbing. The sound tore at his heart.

  “Lennon!” He rushed into the living room, the pistol wiggling in front of him like a blind man’s cane. “Lennon, baby, is that you?”

  There was no answer. Blood pulsed in his ears. He tripped over the broken coffee table, fell to his hands and knees, and jerked up, pointing the gun in one direction, then another.

  “Lennon!” he called. “Where are you, son?”

  “Hands up, you’re under arrest!” The toy gun.

  He ran into the boy’s bedroom. “Lennon!” he said. “It’s me!—Daddy!”

  “Daddy?” A tiny sparrow’s voice under the Roy Rogers bunk bed.

  Kurt dropped to his knees and reached under the bed, feeling a thatch of soft hair, a small face wet with tears.

  “Is that man still here?” he whispered, pulling his son out and gathering him up in his arms.

  “Daddy, I’m scared,” Lennon cried. He was clutching the plastic gun.

  “I know, sweetheart, I am too,” he said. “Is anyone still in the house?”

  “The bad guys?”

  “Yeah, the bad guys,” Kurt said. With one arm he held the boy to his chest, squeezing him tight. The pistol was aimed at the door, his finger resting nervously on the trigger.

  “I don’t think so,” Lennon said.

  “Oh, baby,” Kurt said, hugging him close. “I’m so sorry.”

  He kissed his son’s hair, smelling the warm meadowy smell that was Lennon and no other child.

  “You look terrible, Dad. Did they hurt you?” Kurt had a bloody nose, a cut lip, a couple of knots on his head, skinned knuckles, feet he couldn’t feel anymore. The stitches above his eye had begun to bleed again. He sat there holding his son, half naked and shivering from the cold.

  “No, sweetheart,” he said. “Nobody can hurt me when I’ve got you.”

  His son clung to him, a muscular little grip, his face buried in Kurt’s neck. After a few moments Kurt set the gun aside and leaned back against the bed.

  “Come on, champ,” he said, fighting exhaustion and tears. “Let’s go make a phone call.”

  Chapter sixteen

  Muffin arrived in twenty minutes, her eyes swollen from sleep, and raced up the porch steps with a pump shotgun in her hands. Lennon was happy to see her and left his father’s arms long enough to hug.

  “Are you all right?” she asked, placing a kiss on his forehead.

  “I chased them away with my weapon.”

  Muffin embraced Kurt and stood back to examine the cuts and bruises. “You keep this up,” she said, brushing dirt from his cheek, “you’ll earn enough face-lifts to join the gals in Les Dames.”

  Soon the patrol cars began to appear, Sheriff’s Department and Aspen municipal police. Red Mountain was out of the Aspen jurisdiction, but law-enforcement officers in the Valley pulled together like family.

  Mike Magnuson made coffee, and his partner, the rookie cop from Durango, gathered up pieces of broken furniture and helped straighten the living room. The Aspen chief of police, Gerald Ryan, showed up within the hour in his Saab. Ursine, graying, professorial, Ryan had once taught history at the University of Montana. His soft fleshy neck flowed out underneath a weak chin. He was known for slow, relentless pacing with an unlit pipe, a mannerism left over from his years in the classroom.

  “What steps have been taken?” he asked in his usual fustian manner. Everyone knew that Ryan was better suited to slide presentations and computer printouts.

  Muffin explained that two Pitkin County units had been dispatched for Independence Pass. Six heavily armed deputies.

  “The Mexicans won’t get far,” Kurt said. “Not in the shape they’re in.”

  It was three o’clock in the morning. Lennon settled into his father’s lap on the living-room couch, his eyes drooping, and tried to remember what had happened for the questioning officers. He’d watched the bad guys fight his daddy and drag him out of the house, then he was shoved into his bedroom and told to go back to sleep. He ran to his toy chest to get his plastic gun, but when he came out, everyone was gone.

  “I hid under the bed with Michelangelo,” his favorite plastic Ninja Turtle. “He protects you from the bad guys.”

  Ryan scratched his neck with his pipe stem and paced the living room, offering little in the way of discussion, looking very much like someone’s befuddled uncle reaching an important decision. Soon he left, still lost in thought, remote, his face the unhealthy flush of a man suffering from high blood pressure.

  The three remaining policemen went outside to assume their sentry posts for the night, and Lennon eventually drifted off to sleep in Kurt’s arms.

  “You think that Mexican kid was telling the truth about a payoff?” Muffin asked.

  She was walking around the pine-paneled living room, turning off lamps, dimming the house. Everything was dark now except for one kitchen light, whose milky glow made little difference.

  “Somebody bought them,” Kurt said, resting his chin on Lennon’s warm head. “Somebody’s spreading bad bullshit about me all around the Valley.”

  Muffin sat down in an armchair. “Any idea who it is?”

  He shook his head. He had a strong hunch, but it was too early to say. Jake Pfeil was offering good money to find out the same thing.

  “We’ll know more after they pick those kids up,” he said. Through the window he could see Dwight’s blazing tow truck hitching up the old Chrysler. The boys at the garage would tear it apart screw by screw. On a night like this they had nothing better to do.

  “I called you tonight,” Muffin said, her voice hushed in the room’s sleepy silence. “I called you a couple of times.”

  Kurt hesitated, calculating how much to tell her. “I was out,” he said.

  “So I gathered.”

  He was exhausted. He sucked in a deep breath, let it fill his lungs. “I went to a party,” he said.

  “Well,” she said. “I wish I had the time.”

  He would have to tell her something or the room would get colder in a hurry. She wasn’t going to let him off that easy.

  “What do you know about Patricia Graham’s latest husband?”

  The question seemed to distract her. She moved in the chair, straightened her shoul
ders. “Zip,” she said. “Does this one beat her up too?”

  “This one’s daughter knows something about Omar Quiroga.”

  Muffin leaned forward, clasped her hands, rested her forearms on her knees. “Go ahead,” she said.

  He didn’t want to tell her his suspicions. Not until he’d met with Miles.

  “It’s complicated,” he said. “Give me another day and I’ll lay it all out for you.”

  “We don’t have another day, Kurt. The reason I called you tonight was to tell you the results of the lab tests. We dusted that wineglass stem for prints.”

  Kurt lifted his chin from Lennon’s head. “And?”

  Muffin’s voice dropped down in a low register of fatigue. “A partial,” she said. “We faxed it to Denver to run through their computer. But it’s a partial, Kurt. A pitiful little smudge. Those things don’t mean squat in court.”

  Kurt felt the building blocks giving way underneath the thing he’d been constructing in his mind.

  “In three or four hours the follow-up story on Graciela Rojas is going to hit the streets in the Daily News,” she said. “I tried to sit on it, but there was nothing I could do. In about six hours Neal Staggs is coming by my office for the lab results—the wine stem; the sweater. This is not going to be a good day for you, Kurt. I suggest you give Corky Marcus a call first thing.”

  Corky Marcus was Kurt’s attorney, a good friend and a major contributor to Kurt’s last two election campaigns. Over the years Corky had advised him on legal matters in the Sheriff’s Department and had even represented Kurt during the divorce. Corky’s youngest son was in Lennon’s group at the day care center.

  “Staggs is not clean,” Kurt said. “Don’t make his case for him.”

  Muffin stood up and walked to the window to watch the tow truck at work. “How’s this going to end, Kurt?” she asked in a quiet voice that betrayed her own lack of resolve.

  He was too tired and beat up to consider the possibilities. “I don’t know,” he said. “But I need more time.”

  She came up behind him and placed her hands on his shoulders, a gesture of friendship. “You haven’t done yourself any favors,” she said, squeezing the tendons between his shoulder blades and neck. “I hate to be the one to tell you, mister, but for a long time now you’ve been wearing a sign on your back that says ‘kick me please,’ and just about everybody’s taken their turn. The media, the county commissioners, the Feds.”