“At the Ship’s Tavern?”
“Vicky, Vicky.” The lawyer was shaking his head. “You’ve forgotten the street is a small village. Town criers always looking for news. So Vince meets you on neutral territory. Anybody who recognizes the two of you won’t know what to think.” Wes shrugged. “He’s your classic movie-star type—tall, dark-haired, good-looking. Has a roving eye that his wife ignores. The two of you are having a friendly drink, that’s all. But if you’re spotted at the Baider building, or somebody sees Lewis here, Michaels, Starcroft and Loomis’ll have the news in ten minutes. I suspect Roz’d like to line up new counsel before he cuts any ties.”
“I don’t know, Wes . . .”
“Trust me on this.” The man pushed his chair back and got to his feet. “The meeting is a preliminary interview. Lewis’ll ask some discreet questions, gauge your response, and try to figure out if you’d like to represent Baider Industries. You’ve got a mighty big fish on the line, Vicky. Reel it in, and we’ll see that you’re amply compensated.”
Vicky hesitated. The uneasy sense that had gripped her during the brief conversation with Vince Lewis was still there. “He said it was a matter of life and death,” she told the man standing on the other side of the desk.
“Hey, Nathan Baider built the company with that attitude. Everything’s a matter of life and death at Baider Industries.” He came around the desk, and Vicky got to her feet and followed him across the office. He flung open the door and stood back, waiting: the friendly, relaxed smile, the little wink. She stepped out into the corridor.
“Let me know how the meeting goes,” he called.
She kept going in the direction of her own office, the closed doors and oil paintings blurring past like moving trains. She’d forgotten how the game was played—Wes was right about that. But he was dead wrong about Vince Lewis. She would meet the man at the Ship’s Tavern and she’d find out what was going on at the reservation that was a matter of life and death.
7
It was almost three when Vicky struck out for the Brown Palace Hotel a block away, joining the knots of people scurrying along Seventeenth Street, umbrellas floating overhead. Skyscrapers rose around her, like the cliffs of a concrete canyon, the spires lost in the dense gray clouds. Rain spattered the pavement and pinged against the cars that crawled past, windshield wipers swinging in crazy rhythms. The air smelled of gasoline and stale food, so unlike the smells of sage and wild grasses that came with the rain on the reservation.
At the Tremont Place intersection, she waited for the light to change. The traffic spewed flumes of dirt-gray water into the air. Across the street, the doorman at the Brown Palace stood under the striped awning and blew on a whistle, beckoning a cab half a block away. The whistling noise was muffled in the sounds of the traffic splashing past.
On the diagonal corner, several men in dark raincoats stepped off the curb and started across Seventeenth Street, collars pulled up around their heads. Only one carried an umbrella. Vince Lewis. Tall, dark-haired, good-looking guy—movie-star type. Wes had gotten the description right.
The others made a precision turn to the right and headed down the side of the hotel, but Lewis kept walking toward the entrance, shoulders held back, dark, curly head held high.
The light turned green. As Vicky stepped off the curb in unison with the little crowd around her, she saw the black sedan bearing down Tremont Place. Instinctively she jumped back, stomach muscles clinched, fingers tightened around the strap of her black bag. She felt someone take hold of her arm and yank her out of the way as the sedan made a wide arc through the street, then bumped over the opposite curb and onto the sidewalk. She stood frozen in place. It was heading straight at Lewis. The man pedaled backward, holding out the umbrella, as if it might stop the oncoming destruction.
There was a thud of compacted weight against bones and flesh. The man was thrown upward, suspended above the hood a half second before he crashed into the windshield and crumbled onto the sidewalk. The sedan bounced over the curb and sped through the red light. Traffic squealed to a stop, tires sliding on the wet asphalt.
Vicky caught the last three numbers on the plate—672—and the make: a Camry.
She broke through the other pedestrians and ran to the man on the sidewalk. One leg bent sideways over the umbrella, arms flung out, dark hair wet and matted about his head. Blood spurted through a gash that ran from his temple along his cheek and laid open the pink raw flesh inside. There was a stillness, an air of resignation about him, as if he knew that the most vital part of him was preparing to leave and there was nothing he could do.