“Hey, Max. Maybe you could retire here.”
“Please do not mention that word to me again. I have no wish to be buried in Boot Hill.”
They watched an animatronic re-enactment of the shootout at the O.K. Corral, jerky robots playing Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday.
“Appalling wigs,” Max said. “I don’t see why you go to the trouble and expense of building a robot and then ruin it by making the wig out of horsehair.”
Afterwards they sat in the shade at an outdoor cafe and had sandwiches and lemonade. Beyond the storefronts, the Dragoon and Whetstone mountains loomed. A quiet descended on the three of them, and Owen knew that Max was worrying about Pookie and what it might mean for the rest of the trip.
When they got back to Tucson, Sabrina insisted on moving to a hotel. “Don’t worry,” she said, seeing their reaction, “I’ve managed to save a little bit, thanks to Bill, so I’ll be okay.” She went over to Max and thanked him for everything.
Max rose to his feet with much huffing and exclamation to receive a hug. “Sweet Lady,” he said, “I hope we shall meet again. When I visit your sainted father in Texas, I hope to hear from him that you have fulfilled your filial duty.”
“I’ll think about it,” Sabrina said, but her smile was faint.
Owen drove her to the Delta. He wrote out his cellphone number and handed it to her as the doorman took her suitcase.
“Um, listen,” he said. “I don’t know how you feel, but I’d really like to see you again.”
“You mean in New York?” Sabrina looked up at the tower of the hotel as if consulting it. “Owen, I’ve pretty much decided to leave crime and criminals in the past.”
“I told you,” Owen said, “this is our last road trip. Max is going to retire, and I’m going to be at school full-time.”
“Let me think about it, okay?”
“You have my number. Just think ‘yes,’ okay? Yes is good.”
TWELVE
“What state or nation is divided by the Great Dividing Range?” Roscoe held his beer up to the light, inspecting it like a chemist.
“Existence,” Max said. “It divides the living and the dead.”
Roscoe shook his head. They were sitting at a table in the Red Rose Tavern, the kind of bar that looks friendly at night but in the daytime looks tawdry and forlorn. It reeked of last night’s cigarettes, the fashion for clean lungs having yet to reach Tucson. The only other patrons seemed to be the two blobs sitting at the bar, one in a stetson, the other in a John Deere cap.
“The United States,” Owen said. “We’ll be crossing the Great Divide in a couple of days.”
Roscoe shook his head again. “Australia,” he told them, “is home to the Great Dividing Range.”
“Well, now that we’ve passed Geography,” Max said, “perhaps we can get down to work.”
“We’re not waiting for Pookie?”
“Pookie won’t be joining us on this outing,” Max said.
Roscoe looked from Max to Owen, and back to Max.
“You may not want to join us either,” Owen said.
Max gave him a sour look.
“You have to tell him,” Owen said.
“Pookie seems to have gone astray,” Max said. “We’ve not been able to raise him, and he’s made no effort to contact us.”
“That’s alarming,” Roscoe said. “That’s not like Pookie. You think he’s …”
“Crossed the Great Dividing Range? I’ve no idea.”
“You think maybe he got pinched?” Roscoe said.
“That’s another possibility,” Max said.
“It’s okay if you don’t want to come with us tonight,” Owen said. “It might be a little riskier than we thought.”
Roscoe stared out the window at the parking lot. “You pay me half if I bail now?”
“Expenses. Not half.”
“It’s not my fault Pookie’s … whatever.”
“How do we know it’s not your fault?”
“You’re not calling me a rat, I hope.”
“Roscoe, I have called you many things over the years-base Hungarian, cutpurse, and once I believe a rhesus macaque-never a rat. But perhaps inadvertently you mentioned our adventures to someone less discreet than yourself-possibly you were overheard.”
“I’m not an idiot, Max.”
“Well, I don’t know what happened to Pookie. But I do know I’m not paying you for a job you don’t do. As I say, expenses for getting here, and even your overnight, but the whole fee? Only if you play your part in the show. Look, help us pull this one off and we’re off to bigger and better things in Dallas. Maybe we could cut you in for a one-time percentage on that one.”
Roscoe raised an eyebrow. “What kind of percentage?”
“Five. Am I not the world’s most reasonable man? Mind, this is strictly a one-time offer. And you have to do this show as well.”
“I’m in.” Roscoe shrugged. “I need the dough.”
Bradford Blake had made so much money in hedge funds that even a self-confessed glutton like himself really couldn’t use any more. Once you’ve got the fourth house, the racehorses, the sports team, what can you do? Buy a fifth house? Consequently, he now put his money into political causes, that is to say, the campaign funds of extreme right-wing Republicans. Name it-gun lobby, missile shield-if it upset liberals, Bradford Blake was all for it. Lately he had developed a taste for owning newspapers.
He was aided in this by his pretty wife, Cassandra, a conservative columnist ten years his junior, who had recently become a favourite on the talking-head circuit. She was a piquant presence, not afraid to heap scorn upon the poor and praise upon the lucky. Most liberals were reluctant to appear on camera with her. Somehow those sparkling blue eyes, those erotically swollen lips, rendered greed sexy and concepts such as world peace synonymous with erectile dysfunction.
Owen had gleaned most of this from an unflattering biography. The author had revelled in the details of the couple’s extravagant parties, their sailing adventures, and most of all Cassandra Blake’s insatiable lust for jewels.
The party tonight was to be a relatively subdued affair of eight people, nothing like the San Francisco show. There would be no point trying to sneak in as caterers. This time, speed would be the crucial factor. The plan had originally been for Max, Pookie and Roscoe to work with the guests in the dining room once everyone was seated. Owen would be upstairs emptying everything of value from Cassandra Blake’s jewellery box into a pillowcase. With Pookie out, it was more risky but still doable.
Owen and Max waited for Roscoe in the parking lot of the shopping mall where they were supposed to meet, but Roscoe didn’t show. Five minutes after the appointed hour, Max said, “Our valiant friend must have had second thoughts.”
“The odds are different now that Pookie’s missing.”
“Pookie didn’t know what our next show was going to be, so despite his having vanished in a puff of smoke, the odds remain exactly what they were: favourable. How many people know when Bradford and Cassandra Blake got married? Or that they always celebrate their anniversary in Tucson, where they met and where they still keep a house? We do a lot of research, young man, which is why we always come out on top.”
“How do we know it wasn’t the Subtractors who grabbed Pookie, and now they have Roscoe too? And Roscoe does know the plan for tonight.”
“How could the so-called Subtractors-who don’t exist in the first place-have got on to Roscoe?”
“Maybe he and Pookie had already decided on a hotel. If they got Pookie, Pookie could have told them where they were planning to stay.”
“Rubbish,” Max said, and started the car. “Absolute twaddle.”
The Blake house was in the exclusive Foothills area, with the Santa Catalina Mountains rising up behind it. Unlike their Connecticut colonial, or their London townhouse, or their Fifth Avenue penthouse, the Blakes’ Tucson abode was a long, low bungalow, mostly glass, with a central living area and two wings branching off to the east, giving it an unexpected, asymmetrical look.