Wolf in the Shadows - Marcia Muller [101]
Again we fell silent. I knew his objection to returning to San Diego wasn’t based on a fear of being held by the border control; he just plain wasn’t willing to give this thing up yet.
After a bit I said, “Okay, Ripinsky, if you had a choice, what would you do?”
He answered without hesitation. “Snatch Mourning and the L.C. Take them both across the border and turn them over to RKI. Clear my name with the people who—” Abruptly he stopped speaking.
“The people who what?”
“Give it a rest, McCone. Let’s just say they’re the people I knew when I was a better man than I am now. The people I knew when things like a good name still mattered.”
And that was all I’d get on the subject for now. “Okay, how do you propose to do that?”
“Damned if I know.”
I bit my lip, thought for a while. There were a few possibilities, but I wasn’t sure they were good enough to stake my freedom—maybe my life—on.
I got out of the car and walked over to the wall by the sea. Waves smashed against rocks far below, their spray spurting up, then cascading down the cliffs. For a moment I tried to calculate risks, weigh odds, estimate my margin of error. Then gave it up because I knew—finally, once and for all—that I wasn’t the kind of woman who hedged her bets.
Hy came up behind me, put his hands on my shoulders, his body warm against my back. “It’s not your job, McCone,” he told me.
He’d said something similar to me on a moonlit night several months before when we’d driven into a place called Stone Valley. “This isn’t your fight, McCone,” he’d told me then. And I’d replied, “In some ways, no. But in another, it is.”
Now I thought of Timothy Mourning’s horror-stricken face in the photo that had been sent to RKI. Of his numb bewilderment as he’d stumbled onto the terrace last night. And I thought of the promise I’d made myself when I set out to find Hy.
I repeated my words of months ago. “In some ways, no. But in another, it is. Besides, I know you won’t go back to the States, and I’m not leaving without you.”
His hands tightened on my shoulders. I sensed him struggling to speak.
I added, “So how about it, Ripinsky? Let’s take Tim Mourning and his two million dollars home.”
Twenty-Four
The first thing we needed to do was make ourselves more presentable. We washed in ice-cold sea water. Hy shaved off his stubbly beard and changed to a rumpled but clean set of clothing; I made what improvements I could with a comb and some makeup. Then we drove north toward Ensenada.
We encountered no police patrols, no roadblocks. Fontes, a wealthy and influential citizen, had probably convinced—or more likely bribed—the authorities not to put themselves out investigating a crime that seemed to be the end result of a dispute among Americans. At most they might circulate the descriptions of the man seen on the beach and the woman with the camera to the U.S. Border Control stations and ask for cooperation, but that would be about it.
As I drove, we discussed how to proceed. I’d pinpointed something that might conceivably be used as leverage with Navarro, but that would bear further checking. My main concern was how long everyone would remain at the villa. Diane Mourning was temporarily out of the picture, but the others couldn’t be sure what she might eventually tell the authorities—or what she might do when she recovered. My take on the situation was that Fontes and Navarro would strike a quick deal and put the letter of credit through as soon as possible. As for Tim Mourning, his wife’s shooting had in effect guaranteed his safety for a little while longer; a second casualty at the villa would pose more of a problem than even cops who were conditioned to look the other way could ignore. Of course, Salazar or one of his people could take Mourning to the desert, kill him, and dump him there, but I doubted they’d try that on a day when the household had come under police scrutiny.
One factor working in Hy’s and my favor was that it was Sunday; nothing could be done about the L.C. until the next morning. Possibly one of them