McGrath’s shoulders hunched slightly. “You play a very dangerous game, friend. A man could get himself — hurt, in that game of yours.”
“I know,” I said. “Look at my face.”
A bulky figure moved into the doorway of the building. It was Carvy. He was looking at us with interest.
“The FBI has an informant,” I said. “Are you sure all your Eagles are high flyers?”
He released an expletive. “This is crap, Bannon.”
“The informant says he can lead them to Nancy Canales. But if this is all crap, you have nothing to worry about.”
McGrath squinted up at two birds flying against the yellow sun. “They say the air here is unhealthy for foreigners from Puerto Rico,” he said. “If I were you, I’d take care of myself.”
“Thanks for your concern.”
He gave me his easy Western smile. I walked back to my car. Carvy was still watching from the doorway.
Well, we’d see if it worked.
I pulled out into the road and turned right, headed for an idle quarry area about a hundred and fifty yards away that I’d noticed on my way in. I hid the car behind a massive pile of gravel and myself behind another closer to the road, where I could watch the entrance to McGrath’s tourist attraction. My watch read three fifteen; I might have a long wait. It was one of those times when I wished I hadn’t given up cigarettes.
In less than ten minutes one of the cars that had been in the parking lot left. It contained a tourist family of four. After that three cars pulled in, and another left.
But the Ford and the red pickup were still in there. It was like that till almost dark. By then I felt done in, as much from boredom as anything. Then the red pickup came out of the gate and turned toward me. There was still enough light to see that McGrath was driving and that he was alone. I scurried for my car.
He led me back to 1-25 and then north to Santa Fe. We drove past Santa Fe on Route 84 and then along the Rio Grande on 68.
By now it was dark, but a bright moon was rising. We took 68 into Taos, but still he didn’t stop. Past Taos he turned left onto 64. We’d been driving for nearly two hours. Finally I saw his taillights slow down and pull over to the right side of the road. I pulled over myself at the first spot I saw. He cut his lights, and I cut mine, as well as the engine.
On foot I crouched along the side of the road toward his pickup; by the time I got close to it he was out of sight. Where the hell was he? In front of me was a long silvery bridge. There was a metal sign beside the road, but I couldn’t read it in the dark. I walked a ways onto the bridge. Moonlight glistened off water that seemed to be miles below me. The bridge appeared to span an incredibly deep and narrow gorge. I dimly recalled reading about a famous bridge somewhere near Taos — six hundred and something feet high. Was this where he’d buried Nancy Canales’s body? Why go so far out of the way? Why use a tourist attraction?
I leaned over the rail and wondered how many people had tossed themselves off — it would be so easy to do. And that was when I saw what was happening. I was outlined out there like a perfect target; McGrath was in the rocks and brush below me. I dropped to my hands and knees but not quickly enough. There was a sharp pain in my left arm as if I’d been punched. McGrath, not I, had been the one to set the trap.
Occasional cars were passing, but no one was going to stop for a crazy man with a bleeding arm. I crawled toward the entrance of the bridge. My car seemed as far away as the bottom of the gorge. To get to it I’d have to dash from the semi-protection of the bridge rail. But what were the alternatives? If I stayed there, he’d come for me. If I tried to stop a car, I’d make myself a target. I dashed, like a pair of ragged claws, waiting to hear the next shot. But it didn’t come. I made it to my car, gasping like a fish out of water, and shoved myself behind the wheel. I jammed the lever into drive and U-turned out of there with a squeal they could hear in Albuquerque. Only when I was speeding south at eighty miles an hour did I start breathing at something like a normal rate.
My bleeding arm was drenching the car seat, but it was still partly functional. I didn’t think a bone had been hit — the pain wasn’t bad enough. Thank God it had been my left arm.
In Taos I got directions to the hospital and presented myself in the emergency room. The doctor there told me I was lucky: the bullet had gone clean through, and no bone had been damaged. He fixed me up as though gunshot wounds were not all that uncommon and told me a report would have to be filled out for the police. I reported the part about a sniper’s taking a shot at me at the Gorge Bridge, but I didn’t mention McGrath. I’d tell Daniel Serpe about that part of it.
The young doctor gave me some pills for the next morning. “The pain will be much worse then than now,” he assured me.
It was well past midnight before I got to my hotel. I looked at the car seat and at the two windows and reflected that the rental people were going to be very unhappy with me.
It was the next day, a little after one o’clock, and I was having lunch with FBI Special Agent Daniel Serpe at a Mexican restaurant of his own choosing. He ate with a hearty appetite. He was putting it on his expense account.
“Does it hurt much?” he asked, not looking especially concerned.
“I’m on painkillers.”
“You won’t be doing much with that arm for a while,” Serpe observed. “But all in all, you’re very lucky you’re not dead, Bannon.”
“I know. I’m beginning to feel like I have a bull’s-eye painted on me.”
“They won’t miss the third time,” Serpe said. “And you don’t even have a weapon with you — it’s not sporting.”
I didn’t reply. What was there to say? Serpe’s handsome Indian ring flashed as he helped himself to more salsa picante.
“Why don’t you go back to Puerto Rico,” he said. “There’s nothing more you can do here. We’ll continue with our own investigation.”
“I don’t like leaving things half done.”
“You have no choice: there’s not a shred of evidence. Nancy Canales’s body hasn’t been found and I doubt it ever will be. As you’ve learned, these guys may be cuckoo, but they’re not stupid. No body: no murder. No slugs from either time they shot at you.”
“Just search the Rio Grande Gorge,” I said with lame humor.
“It’s a dead end for now,” he said. “But we’ll catch up with them eventually.”
“Maybe you’re right,” I said tiredly. “I might as well leave.”
“No maybe about it,” Serpe said. He’d finished eating and was popping Tic Tacs. “Get on a plane and go home, my friend.”
So I did.
I won’t even describe the encounter with the car rental people at the airport. I got on a five thirty P.M. flight to Miami, and after a long layover there, I arrived in Puerto Rico at four in the morning local time. At that hour the airport taxi drivers try to relieve you of every cent you own. I finally arrived at my apartment at five A.M. and fell into a deep, grateful sleep.
I guess it had started to come together on the flight back, and I think the sleep helped some, but by the time I took my shower at noon everything made so much sense it was scary. That’s when I called up my pal, Special Agent Bill Evans, and arranged to meet him at the Berliner during happy hour for a drink. He arrived right on time, crewcut, slightly overweight, always affable. “Nice place,” he remarked. “I’ve never been here. I like the German decor.”
“It’s different,” I said. “What’ll you have?”
He went for a dark beer, and I ordered a margarita. Our trigueña Puerto Rican waitress looked very incongruous in her German getup.