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I tucked the tarp around him as tightly as possible and piled high-mounded rocks over him, to keep the animals away. It didn’t matter if someone found the grave; the body could not be traced to me, now that it was away from my home. The tarp was Army surplus, ten years old; in work gloves I left no fingerprints, even if there had been surfaces smooth enough to retain them.

When it was done we both stood by the mound, not speaking. An owl drifted above the saguaro cactus and the wind rubbed itself against us, cooling the sweat on my unclad torso. I was caked with dirt; my hair was matted when I ran fingers through it. Back here in the hills it felt as if civilization was a thousand years away.

In the moonlight Joanne was wan and pinched, near her limit of endurance. I told her to get in the Jeep and drive it down as far as the old rutted mining road a quarter of a mile below. I came along after her on foot, sweeping away tire tracks with a mesquite branch, taking agonizing punishment from the simple exercise of stooping and walking backward to sweep. When I climbed into the Jeep I put my shirt on and let Joanne drive us home. Her hands were locked white-knuckled on the wheel but she drove with steady competence. She astounded me; she seemed to have no breaking point.

We reached the old rock fort before dawn. Getting out of the Jeep and letting her reel past me into the house, I said, “You’re fantastic.”

There was a trace of her old laugh, hearty and mellow—just a trace; she shook her head at me, the laugh dwindling to a wan smile. I said softly, “You’re pretty deep in my guts, you know.”

She rubbed her face with both hands, closed her eyes very tight and let them spring open. She said, “I know you don’t like coffee but you need some.” She went into the kitchen, turning on lights.

I sat down by the phone. I had to think but my brain was stunned. Finally I fished from my pocket the number I had jotted down and dialed long distance. The line rang five or six times before Jerry Sprague grunted fuzzily into the mouthpiece and I identified myself.

“Jesus Christ. You know what the hell time it is, Simon?”

“I know. I’m damn sorry about it, but I’m telling you the literal truth when I say it’s a matter of life or death.”

“Crap. Whose?”

“Mine,” I said. “About Raiford and Colclough—what have you got?”

“A headache,” he said. “I waited at the office till damn near two o’clock, expecting your call.”

“What about Raiford and Colclough?”

“Neither one of them has left the city in the past forty-eight hours. They’ve been here straight through. I know it positive, because—oh, hell, you want the details?”

“No. As long as you’re sure neither one of them could have come down here for a few hours.”

“And bumped off Sal Aiello. Simon, what’s the score down there?”

“Nothing to nothing,” I said, and added with addled wit, “two hits, no runs, a million errors. Go back to sleep Jerry. Profound apologies. If I live long enough I’ll buy you a steak dinner at Porfirio’s.”

“I’ll hold you to it. Listen, Simon, is there anything I can do? I mean, this has got to be something serious, and if I can help—”

“If I think of something I won’t hesitate. Jerry—thanks.”

When I hung up I sat, drained, my hand draped forgotten over the telephone. Joanne came in with coffee. I took one swallow and put the cup down. I said, “I’ve got to wake up. Maybe a shower.” I went into the bathroom and stripped and turned on the water, full cold; stepped in, holding breath against the icy shock, and stayed just long enough to soap away the larger cakes of sand-grit. When I went dripping into the bedroom Joanne was standing by the door, unclothed, indifferent to her own nakedness and mine. She said, “You’re too beaten to think straight, Simon. Go to bed. Don’t try to think about it—don’t think about anything. Forget. Sleep.” She walked into the bathroom and shut the door. I heard the shower begin to splash.

I thought with dismal rage of Mike Farrell, maimed and murdered. Why? Had he found out something and confronted the murderer with what he knew? Had Aiello’s killer murdered him? But why the maiming, the evidence of torture? Somebody had tried to force him to talk. To talk about what? Earlier in the day I had left Mike, convinced I knew everything he knew. What piece of information was there in Mike’s story that could point to the killer who had robbed Aiello’s vault?

Images of pink Cadillacs, guns, open vaults spun kaleidoscopically through my brain. I lay back on the bed and tried to concentrate. My muscles throbbed with pain. Trying to focus my mind, I closed my eyes—and sleep struck me like a club.

Chapter Nine

I woke up drowsily when she came burrowing down under the sheet with me like a warm, furry, inquisitive pet, creeping into my arms, fitting against me with close-together warmth. I felt the soft tickle of her hair on my skin. Burning slivers of daylight lanced into the room through cracks at the edges of the blanket-drape. I looked at her over a stretching interval. Her flushed, unsmiling face was inches from mine. Inside, I felt a visceral quiver, the slow coil and press of wanting her. The macabre ghost of Mike threw a shadow across my thoughts, but the terrifying threat that hung over us, the urgency of hard danger, created in me—and in her—an urgency of blood needs. Joanne sighed and wriggled and gave me a serene unhurried kiss; she stirred against me, her mouth softened and parted; we were drugged with panic. Her short breaths beat a fiery rhythm; her throat pulsed. We moved together and I felt the pound of her blood and mine. The cruel drive of urgency: she gave herself to me with a newer, deeper, more brutal abandon than ever before.

Afterward she said, “Love is a tough animal,” in a puzzled, drunken murmur. “This was crazy—my God, we just performed a funeral! I think now I understand why people have wakes. We—needed this. Am I babbling?”

“Yes. Go on and babble.”

“God, Simon, I’d forgotten all about your—about that son of a bitch last night with his combat boots and his huge revolver. You must hurt like hell.”

“I wish I was one of those movie cowboys who take eight tons of punishment and come right back without a hair out of place and wreck the whole saloon. What time is it?”

“You asked me that yesterday morning, remember? It must be about eight. I slept on the couch because you’d passed out and I didn’t want to disturb you. But I woke up with the sun in my eyes and it was—lonely.” I remembered the tumultuous months we had had together, in what now felt as if it must have been a prior incarnation, a different world—a world without grim, frightful terror.

We dressed and went outside under the burning sky. Heat pressed down. I drove her down to Nancy Lansford’s. Nancy came around from the back of the house, big and shapeless and happy to see both of us. I told Joanne to stay out of sight—I would return by midnight at the very latest; I left her in Nancy’s care and drove alone toward the city.

Almost half my forty-eight-hour grace period was gone, but I had set my own deadline well in advance of Vincent Madonna’s. If by midnight I did not feel substantially closer to finding the loot than I was now, I would give up the search; Joanne and I would run for it. I hadn’t decided where, or how; I knew we had to disappear. I still had in my pocket the name of the plastic surgeon Mike had mentioned, but surgery required more money than I had. As for Mike’s $5,000 roll of cash, only the murderer knew what had happened to it; I hadn’t found it on Mike’s body.

I couldn’t assume that Mike and Aiello had been killed by the same person. It was possible—if Mike knew too much, he could have been killed to shut him up. But the waters were muddled by the unmistakable signs of torture. The obvious questions, then, were: (1) what had Mike’s murderer expected to learn by torturing him, and (2) had the murderer learned it?