Doubleback: A Novel (25 page)

“I wouldn’t have much luck,” I said ruefully. “She’s so stubborn she makes a mule look reasonable.”

“Well, make sure she does nothing for at least a week,” the nurse sniffed, handing me two slips of paper. “Here are two scrips. One’s for antibiotic ointment, the other for pain. And she needs to come back to the clinic next week for a follow-up.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said meekly. The nurse handed me Georgia’s discharge papers and arranged Georgia in a wheelchair an orderly had brought in. All of us knew she wouldn’t be coming back

I stopped at a drugstore on the way back to fill the prescriptions. I picked up more bandages and some magazines, as well. After she directed me to her apartment, I helped her out of the car. She was barely able to close her good hand around the handle bar of the crutch they’d given her, but somehow we hobbled inside and up the stairs. I opened her door with her key and guided her to her couch. Then I filled a glass with water and gave her two Darvocets. She gulped them down.

“Do you have any food?” I asked.

She shrugged. I wandered into the kitchen. There was nothing in the refrigerator except moldy cheese and a jar of mustard.

“I’ll be back.”

I returned a half hour later with three bags of groceries. I sliced down a cooked chicken, put salad in a covered bowl, and made sure it was all within reach. Then I threw together a tuna sandwich and soup and carried it out to the living room. I pulled up a chair. “Your place...,” I said, looking around, “... it’s nice.”

She caught my hesitation. “For a barracks, you mean.”

“Well,” I confessed. “It is spare. But it’s nice.”

“Thanks, Ellie. For all of this.”

I waved it away. “First, I want you to eat your sandwich. Then I want you to tell me what the hell happened.”

She obediently took a few bites, then told me about the accident.

“Thank god for airbags,” I said when she finished.

She nodded. “That’s what knocked me out.”

“The brakes didn’t work at all?”

“Nope.”

“You know what this means.”

She glared at me. “I may be down, but I’m not brain dead.”

I almost smiled. “You file a police report?”

“Couldn’t not. Lots of blue around. It’s a major intersection.”

“Which means O’Malley knows. Or will soon.”

“He already called.”

“So maybe now they’ll take the homicides seriously.”

“Maybe,” she said.

I paused. “And maybe you’ll let them do their job.”

Georgia went quiet. Then, “There’s something you should know. I’m going to Arizona.”

I crossed my arms. “Pardon me?”

“I’m going to Arizona.” She repeated. “Place called Stevens.”

“You’re not going anywhere for a while,” I said with more authority than I felt. “But—well, let’s say hypothetically—you
were
healthy enough to travel, why Arizona?”

She explained who’d received the cashiers’ checks and that two of them were now dead after working for Delton in Arizona.

I frowned. “Where is Stevens?”

“It’s a border town in the southeastern part of the state. The town on the Mexican side is Esteban.”

“A border town? Georgia, have you lost your mind? Do you know what goes on there?” I shook my head. “Drugs. Illegals. Violence. I don’t like it.”

“You don’t have to.” Her voice was firm. “But the best lead we have points to Stevens.”

I processed the word “we.” So nice of her to include me in the mix. “If what you say is true, and I don’t disbelieve you, whatever is going on out there is clearly bigger than you or me. I think it’s time to bring in the cavalry.”

She hesitated. “We
are
the cavalry.”

“Huh?”

“Just because the police suspect foul play doesn’t mean they’re gonna do much about it. They’ve been trying to back-burner the whole thing since it started. Plus, I know something they don’t.”

“What’s that?”

“Remember how the elevator in the Midwest National building suddenly stopped the same afternoon that Chris closed the Delton account?”

I nodded.

“The man who kidnapped Molly Messenger was on that elevator.”

I sat back in surprise. “How do you know?”

“I tracked down the woman on the elevator. You know, the one Cody told us about. She distinctly remembers a man in there who was missing a chunk of his left index finger. So does Molly.” Georgia spooned soup with her good hand. “The asshole who came after us at Sandy Sechrest’s cabin was missing part of the same finger.”

I swallowed.

“Which means the kidnapping and the bank job are definitely related.”

“You suspected that was the case. At least, Cody Wegman did.”

“I’m starting to think this missing finger guy is behind a lot more.”

“The brake tamperings?”

She nodded.

“All the more reason to let the cops go after him.”

“I told you. They’ve already decided this isn’t a heater case. George Emerlich isn’t even in their jurisdiction. Neither is the bank. And I don’t see Parker doing much to connect the dots. Even with the Arizona connection, he’d just make a few phone calls and call it a day.”

“What about the FBI?”

She shook her head. “The kidnapping’s over. Finished. There’s no need for them to come in.”

“Aren’t they looking over the bank records?”

“Possibly. But they’re here in Chicago. Not Arizona.”

I tried one more time. “Georgia, you can’t even walk to the corner of Ashland and Ridge. How are you going to manage a trip to Arizona?” I fumed. “And what about Terry Messenger? Is he going to finance this little jaunt?”

“He already agreed.”

“You talked to him?” I eyed her warily. “If that’s true, he’s as crazy as you.”

“Actually, it might be more dangerous for me to stay here.”

“What do you mean?”

“Whoever tampered with my brakes, whether it’s the guy who’s missing a finger or someone else, isn’t gonna stop just because I’ve been in the hospital. It’s probably safer for me to disappear for a while.”

“Yeah, but what if the missing finger guy, or whoever’s behind this, is doing the heavy lifting out in Arizona, too? You’d be walking into a trap.”

“If that’s the case, then it doesn’t matter where I am.”

Despite my irritation, I marveled at her courage. Or was it fool-hardiness? Whatever it was, there was clearly no way I could talk her out of it. “If you are crazy enough to fly out there, you’re going to have to check in with me every day. We’ll set a time. If I don’t hear from you, I call O’Malley. Or Parker. Or whoever I need to.”

“Yes, Mom.”

“I mean it.” I took the tray back into her kitchen. I washed the dishes, helped her change the bandages on her face, then left. On the drive home, I made a call.

chapter
30

T
umbleweeds hugged the desert floor as Georgia headed south from Tucson two days later. The sky was vast and cloudless, the sun blazed. Shimmering waves of heat rose from the road, making her eyes ache. She drained the bottle of water she’d bought at the airport and squinted through her sunglasses. There was no subtlety to the high desert.

By Friday she’d no longer needed the crutch, and the contusions on her face were healing. Her left arm was still in a sling, and she liked the support from the brace they’d given her for her ribs, but she couldn’t delay her trip. She made a reservation, rented a car, and packed a small bag with t-shirts, extra jeans, her blazer, and her Sig. She made sure both her PI license and tan card were in her wallet. She’d have to check the gun in Chicago, but there’d be less red tape at the other end with the proper ID. Not that she had any plans to use the Sig—she was on a fact-finding trip, no more—but Arizona was an open carry state. Better to be a Boy Scout.

She hesitated when she considered who to tell she was going. Pete? Not any more. O’Malley? He’d try to talk her out of it. Her friend Sam was on vacation in Italy. The truth was the person she was closest to these days was Ellie Foreman, and Ellie already knew. She felt a flicker of a smile. She wouldn’t have considered Ellie a friend a month ago.

She turned south off Interstate 10 onto Arizona Highway 80. A few minutes later, as she passed a billboard for Tombstone advertising a daily “gunfight at the OK corral,” a memory of her father surfaced. He’d liked to watch old westerns on TV between ball games. Wasn’t Tombstone near that hole-in-the-wall the outlaws always fled to after fleeing the sheriff and his posse? She’d worshipped the lawmen in those movies. They were heroes, always risking their lives to fight the bad guys, regardless of the danger. They would never come home from work, toss back a belt of bourbon, and knock their kid around.

Her ears started popping as the elevation rose. A few miles farther south, rugged mountains sparsely covered with brush closed in on both sides of the road. As she passed through Bisbee, an old mining town with tiny houses dotting its hills like some low-rent Italian village she’d seen in pictures, she saw the remains of a huge copper mine carved into the rock. Bisbee was the seat of Cochise County, which she’d read was one of the ten most economically depressed areas in the country. She believed it. She’d been passing abandoned churches, car dealerships, even empty trailers the whole way.

After Bisbee, the desert suddenly flattened out as if a giant boulder had smashed down on it. She pulled into Stevens a short time later. The Stevens Hotel was a six-story building that took up the entire block on the main drag, but its peeling shingles and crumbling stucco façade said it had seen better days. She followed the signs to a ragged parking lot in back and parked. With her good hand she pulled her bag out of the rental, a blue Ford Escort. She headed in, skirting broken glass and trash.

The lobby was cool and dark. Gilt-edged columns flanked the room, and wide marble steps led up to a series of stained-glass panels depicting desert scenes. When she’d booked the hotel online, the website called it the “grandly elegant Stevens Hotel.” On closer inspection, though, the marble was scuffed and the carpet threadbare. Underneath the smell of furniture polish was the musty odor of decay.

A lonely grouping of brown leather furniture took up the center of the lobby. An old man sat on the couch, grasping a cane with both hands and staring vacantly ahead. The man was pale enough to be a ghost, which, she recalled from reading the website, wasn’t so far-fetched. Like the Gadsden in Douglas, the Stevens was supposed to be haunted by the ghost of Pancho Villa, the famous Mexican revolutionary general from a hundred years ago. Apparently he had stayed here on one of his forays across the border.

The desk clerk couldn’t be bothered to stop clacking her gum as she checked Georgia in. So much for “grandly elegant.”

Georgia took the elevator to her room on the third floor. Spider-web cracks laced the ceiling, and brown streaks, water damage probably, stained the wall. She found rust stains in the bathroom tub, and the mirror above the sink was permanently fogged. She thought about checking out and finding a Motel 6—it had to be in better shape. But her broken wrist was throbbing, her ribs were sore, and fatigue was climbing all over her. She took a pain pill and fell onto the lumpy mattress.

When she awoke it was nearly dusk, and she was famished. She took a quick shower, relieved to find plenty of hot water. Then she rinsed out her tank top and underwear, and changed into clean clothes. She put on the brace and tried to cover the bruises on her face with make-up. Because of her cast, everything took twice as long.

She flipped through the yellow pages scanning the listings of bars and restaurants. But the phone directory covered Cochise County, not just Stevens, and it was impossible to figure out where anything was. Then she remembered the hotel had a restaurant.

It was small, maybe fifteen tables, most of them empty. She took a seat in the corner. A middle-aged Latino man with salt and pepper hair and a bristly mustache put down his newspaper and brought her a bi-lingual menu listing a good number of Mexican dishes. She ordered a hamburger—rare—and fries. Before he left, she asked whether she could borrow the newspaper.

“Sure.”

While she waited for her food, she scanned the
Stevens Star
. Stevens was only about ten thousand people, and the paper was full of the stories you’d see in a small town: an article about the upcoming school budget, a new stoplight, a neighborhood fair.

She flipped back to the front page. The lead article was a response by police to a bogus bomb threat at a neighborhood bank. The reporter, Javier Garcia, quoted a police spokesperson as well as the bank’s president.

Georgia tapped her finger, then checked her watch. It was well after five, but journalists generally didn’t work bankers’ hours. She pulled out her cell.

chapter
31

A
fter finishing her dinner, Georgia headed slowly down seventh Street, testing her ankle with progressively more weight. Not bad.

Light was fading, but she could see that the parkways were filled with rocky red dirt, not grass. The absence of green gave a primitive feel to the block. Most of the buildings were generally one or two story structures and featured Spanish signage. Some of the buildings were close together, while others were separated by long gaps. Clearly space, not height, was the architectural directive in Stevens. Though it was evening, a hot wind still gusted as if eager to blow the town back to its desert roots.

A sidewalk chalk board with several missing letters proclaimed she had reached Chevy’s Cantina. As she walked in, a gust of cool air slapped her. She tried not to think of the westerns where the bad guy swings through the saloon door. To her left was a bar that wasn’t much more than a slab of splintered wood. Cheap looking tables and chairs sat on an uneven floor. The overhead light was dim and the adobe walls were bare except for a Corona sign, a dusty mirror, and an Arizona map with Cochise County outlined in black. No guitars, serapes, or sombreros here. A radio blared out Mexican pop music. Several people sat at tables, nursing drinks and playing poker.