Santa Fe Rules (8 page)
He turned right after the Tesuque Market, as instructed, and farther up the mountain found the sign, which turned out to be a life-size bronze sculpture of an eagle, its wings spread wide, a writhing rattlesnake gripped in its claws. The drive climbed for another half mile until the road leveled out at a broad, graveled area before a sizable adobe residence. As Wolf stopped the car, floodlights illuminated the front of the house. He climbed the front steps, but before he could ring the bell, the large carved door made a clicking sound and swung open.
“In here!” a deep voice called from Wolf’s right. He
closed the door and walked down the wide central hallway. A round table sat at its center, a big arrangement of desert flowers upon it, and doors opened to the left and right of it.
“Come in,” the voice called, and Wolf turned right into a large study, lit only by a fire in the wide hearth. Ed Eagle rose from one of a pair of huge wing chairs arranged before the fireplace. He was slender, dressed in faded jeans, a chambray shirt, and expensive boots—lizard. He extended a hand. “May I call you Wolf?” He towered over his guest.
Wolf allowed his hand to be enveloped. “Sure.”
The guy must be six-five or six-six
, he thought.
“I’m Ed. I’m six-foot-seven, plus another couple of inches for the boots. Everybody always wonders.” He waved Wolf to the other chair, smiling a little. “I expect you can use a drink. I’m having a very nice single-malt Scotch whisky.”
“I’ll have the American equivalent,” Wolf said, sinking gratefully into the comfortable leather chair.
“One Wild Turkey coming up. Rocks?”
“Please. Nothing else.”
Eagle went to a serious bar tucked into a corner and came back with the drink, handed it to Wolf, and sat down. “Good flight?”
“Very nice.”
“Sun at your back. The light must have been marvelous this evening.”
“It was. How did you know I flew in?”
“You came from L.A. You own an airplane—a Bonanza, I believe.”
“A B-36.”
“Ah, the turbocharged version. I’ve got a Malibu Mirage out at Capitol Aviation.”
“How did you know I was in L.A.?”
“When a man runs, he usually goes someplace he knows.”
“Why do you think I was running?”
“Why do you need a criminal lawyer?”
“I’m not sure I do.”
“Sure, you’re sure. Let’s not tap-dance, Wolf; it’s tiring.” He took a sip of his whisky and waited. “Well,” he said finally, “why don’t you tell me about it? And you may consider this conversation privileged.”
“I hardly know where to start.”
“At the beginning, please.”
“I don’t really know where the beginning is,” Wolf said, sagging into his chair. He didn’t, Christ knew. At the beginning of his life? When he met Jack? When he met Julia?
“Start the night of the killings.”
“I have no memory of that night; none whatever.”
“Is that what you’re going to say to a jury?”
“You’ve already decided to put me on the stand?” Wolf asked, incredulous.
“I don’t defend against murder charges unless my client will testify. I reckon it’s more in his interests for him to lie to a jury, if he feels he has to, than to refuse to talk to them. In my experience, juries think that’s kind of stand-offish.”
“I see.”
“You will, as we get further along with this. And you’ll agree. What’s the first thing you remember after the killings?”
Wolf started with waking up that morning, told Eagle about the dog, about the flight to the Grand Canyon, about the newspaper, about the day missing from his life.
Eagle listened in silence, sipping his Scotch, nodding
encour-agement now and then. When Wolf had finished, he was quiet for a time. “Tell me something,” he said at last. “How well did you know your wife?”
Wolf laughed ruefully. “Not as well as I thought I did.”
“I read the
Times
piece; did you know about any of that?”
“None of it. I met Julia in a casting session. We were married four months later. Apparently everything she told me about herself was a lie.”
“Well, you probably had no reason to doubt her. Most people believe what they’re told, if it’s at all credible, until they have some reason to think they’re being lied to. I take it she was credible.”
Wolf nodded. “She was. Julia always seemed such an open person. I never caught her in a lie—not even a little one. If anything, she seemed obsessive about
not
lying. I remember once, some people asked us to dinner—some people she didn’t like much—and she could have said ‘We already have plans,’ that sort of thing, but she said to the woman—I was sitting right there by the phone—‘I think it would be a waste of time for both of us, don’t you?’ And she said it kindly, sympathetically, as if she were doing the people a favor. When she hung up she saw me looking at her, and she said, ’Life is too short to tell anything but the truth.’”
“An admirable attitude,” Eagle said. “One adopted by every con man worth his weight in suckers: get to be known for telling the truth, and the lies will go down like honey.”
“Maybe so, but I never found Julia to be anything but an admirable woman. She was good-natured, considerate, do anything for a friend, do anything for
me
.” Wolf rubbed his temples. “I feel terrible that, since I read the
Times
piece, I haven’t let myself think about her for more than a few seconds, and when I do, I don’t seem to feel much.”
“The first stage of grief is denial.”
“But I don’t
feel
any grief,” Wolf said, shaking his head. “I just feel numb—dead at the center. Since the day after I learned about the shootings, I’ve been cutting a film—completely wrapped up in it—and feeling a lot of affection for a woman I hardly knew a couple of weeks ago. I think I must be insane, or something.”
“That’s always a possibility,” Eagle said. “And it’s not necessarily an inconvenient one.”
“You think I should plead insanity?”
“I think you should see a shrink; then we can talk about it. Were you ever a patient of Mark Shea?”
“Yes, Julia and I both were—me, for a couple of years.”
“Good, that’ll shorten the process; we’ll have an eminent psychiatrist who knows your background and can testify to your state of mind over a long period; Julia’s, too. That could be invaluable.”
“What’s this going to cost me, Ed?”
“A quarter of a million dollars, if we go to trial, and that’s up front. I’ll take a mortgage on something, if you’ve got an unencumbered asset.”
“What about appeals?”
“I’ve never had to appeal a capital case, so if it comes to that, it’s on the house.”
“What’s your opinion of my chances so far? Could I beat a murder charge?”
“Wolf, this is Santa Fe, and everything is done a little differently here. We’re playing by Santa Fe Rules, and that dictates that the first thing I should do is to see if I can work my way through the system to keep you from even being charged. Then we won’t have to beat it. If I can
manage that, it’ll only cost you a hundred thousand. I’ll want that tomorrow.”
“Okay, but you didn’t answer my question.”
Eagle shrugged. “She was in bed with two other men,” he said. “That’s a hell of a motive. Looks like you were in the house, too—that’s plenty of opportunity. As for means—well, it was your shotgun, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, one of a pair of Purdeys. What about the unwritten law?”
“The unwritten law doesn’t exist…” he managed a small smile, “except in the minds of a jury—and at least some of them would think that
two
lovers, present and active, would draw a thick line under the unwritten law.”
“So I’d have at least a chance, you think?”
“Well, let me put it this way,” Ed Eagle said. “If it’s me against the State of New Mexico, it’ll be a fair fight.”
W
olf woke in a pleasant guest room of Ed Eagle’s house. He found his watch—just after seven a.m.—and struggled through a shave and a shower. Feeling better, he found his way downstairs.
Ed Eagle was reading the
Wall Street Journal
, surrounded by the debris of a finished breakfast and a stack of other newspapers. He looked up. “Morning,” he said. “You feeling better?”
“Rested,” Wolf replied.
“I hope you didn’t mind staying over, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to go back to your house just yet.”
“I understand. It hadn’t occurred to me that I’d have to sleep somewhere in Santa Fe. I didn’t want to expose Mark Shea, and I couldn’t have gone to a hotel.”
“Exactly.” An Indian woman came into the room and waited expectantly. “How about some breakfast?” Eagle asked. “Anything you’d like.”
“Bacon and eggs, orange juice, toast, and coffee, please.”
Eagle nodded at the woman, and she disappeared into the kitchen. When the eggs came, Eagle put down his newspaper. “Eat hearty,” he said. “At nine o’clock we find out whether you’re going to be arrested.”
“How do we do that?”
“We visit the district attorney.”
Wolf had trouble swallowing the first bite of his breakfast.
“Something I need to ask you,” Eagle said. “Didn’t think of it last night, and I don’t want you to be offended.”
“Shoot.”
“Did you and your wife ever go to bed with anybody else? Together, I mean.”
Wolf nodded. “We had a couple of threesomes. Julia always arranged it.”
“With another man or another woman?”
“Always with another woman, although I think Julia was angling for two men.”
“How did you feel about that idea?”
“Uncomfortable.”
“Would it have made you wildly jealous?”
“I’m not a jealous person.”
Eagle nodded. “So you wouldn’t have exploded on finding Julia in bed with Jack?”
“I don’t explode much. Anyway, I think that if I had found Julia and Jack and this other guy, whoever he was, in bed together, I would have thought it was bad manners on Julia’s part, but I wouldn’t have reacted by using a shotgun on the three of them.” He managed a short laugh. “Certainly not one of my Purdeys.”
Eagle laughed, too. “I appreciate your delicacy; I hope the D.A. will, as well. One more thing, and I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important.”
“Shoot.”
“On the occasion of your pair of threesomes, were the third partners different?”
“No, it was the same woman both times.”
“Who was she?”
“Her name is Monica Collins.”
“That rings a bell, but I can’t place her,” Eagle said.
“She lives in Santa Fe; divorced from a big-time independent movie producer named Franklin J. Collins.”
“I’ve got her now: blond, fortyish, Beverly Hills dental work.”
“That’s Monica.”
“Tell me about her.”
“We knew them a little as a couple in L.A., had dinner once at their house. It was shortly after that when the divorce happened. Story was, Monica got their Santa Fe house and a few million—opinions vary on that—and Frank got the L.A. property and the debts.”
“And how did your…encounter with Ms. Collins occur?”
“Julia invited her to dinner; the two of them cooked. We had a good deal to drink, ended up in the hot tub. One thing led to another.”
“Who did the leading?”
“At the time, I think I’d had enough to drink to believe I was just irresistible to both of them. But with hindsight, Julia.”
“Did you continue this out of the hot tub?”
“We moved to a bed.”
“Which bedroom?”
“One in the guest wing; the one where…”
“I see. And who chose that room?”
“Julia. She said something about the sheets not being fresh in our bedroom.”
“What about the second encounter?”
“It was pretty much like the first, except on that occa
sion, I think everybody knew ahead of time where the evening was heading.”
“Have you seen Monica Collins since then?”
“A couple of times, at other people’s houses.”
“What sort of terms are you on with her?”
“Good, I think; she was always cordial, seemed glad to see me, as well as Julia.”
“Did she ever make any reference to your earlier encounters?”
“No, but then she wouldn’t have had the opportunity on those occasions.”
“One more thing: Would you say that, during your sexual encounters, Ms. Collins exhibited an equal interest in you and Julia?”
“No. I mean, she certainly seemed excited with me, but once I was done in, she and Julia turned to each other, and I’d say it was pretty clear that she was a lot more excited by Julia than by me.”
“On both occasions?”
“Yes. It was pretty much the same both times.”
“How do you think Ms. Collins would feel about testifying about these encounters?”
“Well, I…my impression of Monica is that she’s a good deal more uptight when sober than after a few drinks—perhaps even a bit prudish. My guess is that she would be horrified at the thought of testifying.”
“If I subpoenaed her, do you think she’d tell the truth under oath?”
“Hard to say, but at the time of her divorce from Frank Collins there was a lot of talk around that during the trial, which was acrimonious, she lied repeatedly on the stand.”
“Oh,” Eagle said.
They arrived at the state court building precisely at nine
o’clock, in two cars. As they walked to the entrance, Eagle spoke only once. “Don’t say anything unless I tell you to,” he said. “And if I tell you to, tell the truth, but don’t be verbose.”
Eagle gave his name to the district attorney’s secretary, and they were shown in immediately.
“Hello, Bob,” Eagle said, shaking the man’s hand.
“Hello, Ed,” the man replied.
“This is Bob Martinez, the district attorney,” Eagle said to Wolf. “Bob, this is my client, Wolf Willett.”
“Hello,” Wolf said.
“How do you—” Martinez stopped talking and looked at Eagle. “
Who?
”
“That’s right, Bob. Mr. Willett is alive and well. May we sit down?”
The amazed Martinez nodded and sat down himself, rather heavily. “Well, you’re quite a surprise, Mr. Willett.”