VITTORIO WENT into the house carefully, his gun drawn. He checked the kitchen, then crept into the living room, which was empty. He was headed toward where he thought the bedrooms would be when he heard the truck start outside and the crunch of tires on gravel. Shit, the guy was gone. “Mrs. Eagle?” he yelled. “Are you all right?”
Susannah Wilde Eagle stepped from a doorway, a pistol held out in front of her, and fired two rounds.
Vittorio was spun around and went down.
CUPIE STOPPED TO CHECK on Eagle, who was breathing and pressing a bloody cloth to his throat. “Hang on, Ed, an ambulance is on the way.” He walked into the house just in time to hear two gunshots. “Oh, shit,” Cupie said aloud. “I hope he hasn’t shot Susannah.”
BART DROVE AS QUICKLY as he safely could over the hill, then turned toward the north side of Santa Fe and made his way on back roads until he crossed under I-25. He traveled south, toward Albuquerque, keeping parallel with but avoiding I-25, where he knew the state patrol might already be looking for the truck. At one point, nearly to Double Eagle Airport, he stopped and pulled the FedEx signs off the truck, called the dealer from whom he had bought the truck and told him he could pick it up from the parking lot at Double Eagle and ship it to L.A., as planned. Then he called Barbara.
“Yes?”
“It’s done.”
“You’re sure he’s dead?”
“I cut his throat and left him bleeding out on his front porch.”
“What about the woman?”
“Problem there. She went back into the house. I followed her in, but turns out Eagle had two men, those P.I.s, watching the house. I got out just in time, but I heard shooting from inside. I don’t know who fired or got shot.”
“Do the P.I.s know who you are?”
“They don’t know my name, and only one of them, the Indian, has seen me.”
“Where are you now?”
“I’m nearly to Double Eagle. I’ll ditch the car and be in the air in twenty minutes.”
“Call me when you’re back in town.” She hung up, and so did he.
He drove the last mile to Double Eagle, got his gear out of the truck and wiped the vehicle down with Windex, then hurried to the ramp where his airplane was parked. He’d already paid for his fuel and parking, and he wasn’t going to file a flight plan.
He got the engines started and began working through his checklist as he taxied. At the end of the runway he did a quick run-up of the engines, then announced his intentions over the airport frequency, checked for landing traffic, then taxied onto the runway and shoved the throttles forward.
Half an hour later he was at sixteen thousand five hundred feet, sucking oxygen, on his way to Burbank Airport, in the San Fernando Valley, near where he lived. He felt elated.
34
Vittorio held out a hand and yelled, “Don’t shoot, Susannah!”
“Vittorio?” she asked. “My God, have I shot you?”
“Call nine-one-one and tell them we need two ambulances instead of one,” Vittorio replied, struggling to sit up and check his wounds. He found he had taken a bullet high and to the left in his chest, and after checking his breathing and the blood flow, he figured it had missed the lung and the artery. “You have any bandages?” he asked Susannah. “Just a clean dishcloth will do.”
She ran to the kitchen and returned with a dishcloth, and he pressed it to his chest. “Where’s Ed?” she asked.
“He’s on the front porch. Cupie is with him.”
She ran for the front door.
Vittorio changed his position for comfort and heard something hit the tile floor. He looked behind him and saw a bloody, intact bullet on the floor. Thank God she had been using hardball ammunition instead of hollow-points. He calculated that unless they found internal injuries he hadn’t figured on, he would need only stitches, a dressing and a shot of ampicillin.
He felt exhausted now, having used up all his available adrenaline. “Cupie!” he yelled.
Cupie came running through the doorway. “Vittorio, you okay?”
“Not exactly,” he said. “Did she call for another ambulance?”
“I did,” Cupie said, kneeling beside him and pulling away the dishcloth so that he could check Vittorio’s wound. “Not bleeding too bad,” he said. “Just enough to keep it clean.” He checked Vittorio’s back. “Same here,” he said. “I think you got lucky. Hang on, I’ll get another dishcloth.”
Vittorio waited patiently for him to return with the cloth, which Cupie pressed to his back. Then Cupie leaned him against the wall. “Did you get a look at the guy?” he asked.
“Nah,” Cupie said. “He was already in the truck when I saw it, and I had the light-reflection problem on the window. How about you?”
“He was wearing a baseball cap, and I was looking down on him.”
“Was it Bart Cross?”
“I don’t know. He was tall enough, but that wasn’t Cross’s vehicle.”
“He could have stolen it,” Cupie said. “I hear sirens.”
“About time,” Vittorio said. “Don’t let them give me morphine. I want a clear head.”
“Whatever you say,” Cupie replied.
“How’s Eagle?”
“I don’t know,” Cupie said. “Ed is still bleeding, but holding pressure on the wound may be slowing it down. The cut looks long but shallow to me. Susannah is on the case.”
The sirens got louder, and there was the sound of tires crunching on gravel and doors slamming.
“I’ll get somebody in here,” Cupie said.
Vittorio started to speak, but a wave of nausea overcame him. He took a deep breath, then sagged to the floor and passed out.
VITTORIO WOKE UP in a hospital room with Cupie asleep in a chair next to him. He fumbled around, found the control unit for the bed and sat himself up and elevated his feet.
Cupie stirred. “You’re awake?”
“Yeah. How’s Eagle?”
“In surgery. They have a vascular specialist here, so Ed’s got some sort of shot. I’m type O, so I gave some blood. Eagle is A-positive.”
“I’m A-positive,” Vittorio said.
“You can’t spare any,” Cupie said.
“When can I get out of here?”
“What? You haven’t even talked to a doctor yet. You got some place to be?”
“I want to know if Bart Cross is still out at that guesthouse in Las Campanas.”
“I can check on that without your help,” Cupie said drily.
“Well, stop fluttering around here like an old woman and do it,” Vittorio said.
“I’m not fluttering, and you need some morphine,” Cupie said, pressing the call button.
A nurse appeared. “Can I help you?”
“This man needs morphine,” Cupie said.
“I don’t want morphine!” Vittorio said. “I told you!”
“Ignore him,” Cupie said to the nurse, and she disappeared. “You’re way too cranky,” Cupie said, “and that will get your blood pressure up and slow your recovery.”
“I thought you were going to go check on Bart Cross,” Vittorio said.
“Just as soon as I hold you down for the nurse,” Cupie replied.
WITH VITTORIO SETTLED INTO a morphine haze and Eagle still in surgery, Cupie drove out to Las Campanas, to the guesthouse where Cross had been staying. He drew his gun and hammered on the door. “Police!” he yelled. “Open up!”
That got him nowhere. He walked around the house, looking into windows. “Neat as a pin,” he said aloud to himself. “The rooster has flown the coop.”
He got into Vittorio’s car and drove back to the hospital. Vittorio was sitting up in bed, dozing lightly. He opened his eyes when Cupie walked in. “Eagle’s still alive,” he said. “That’s all I know. He’s in the ICU, and Susannah is with him.”