Raising The Stakes

“I didn’t know you’d been a gold miner,” Gray said, with a little smile. The old man was right. He had, indeed, led a long and interesting life.

“I been a lot of things.” Jonas opened his fist, looked at the rock, then put it down. “I was a young man back then. Already made me a pile of money in longhorns and some other things nobody else thought would pay off so when my pal, Ben Lincoln, asked me to go fifty-fifty on a mine in South America, I figured why not give it a try? The mine was s’posed to be played out but Ben had reason to believe otherwise.”

He paused for a long moment and stared blindly out the window. Gray felt the hair rise on the back of his neck. It was almost as if the old man saw something out there that nobody else could see.

“So we took ourselves down to Venezuela and then up the Orinoco to this mine in the jungle somebody had worked an’ then abandoned.”

He paused again, this time for so long that Gray moved toward him. “Uncle?” he said softly.

Jonas looked at him. “Yeah. I’m just thinkin’ back.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway,” he said briskly, “turned out Ben was mistaken. We found some gold, but not enough. So Ben and me, we decided to end the partnership.”

Gray took another look at the rock. It was an interesting story, but what did it have to do with him? Jonas was still talking, something about him and Ben Lincoln, how they’d gone their separate ways and he’d come back to build Espada. Gray shot a surreptitious glance at his watch. An hour had gone by. If he didn’t get out of here soon, he wouldn’t make that flight to New York.

“Dammit, boy, how about payin’ some attention here?”

Gray’s head came up. A muscle knotted in his jaw. “You know,” he said, as carefully as he could, “I don’t like being called `boy.’ And I have been paying attention. I’m here, aren’t I, when I should be meeting with a client—and I still don’t know why in hell I came. What do you want, Jonas?”

“I’m getting to that.” The old man hesitated. “Ben died a long time back. A few months ago, I heard—I heard he had some kin. A granddaughter.”

“And? What does any of this have to do with me?”

The old man’s eyes met his. “I’ve owed a debt to Ben all these years, and I’m a man always pays his debts.”

Gray’s eyebrows lifted. “It’s a little late to worry about repaying this one, isn’t it?”

“Ain’t never too late to do the right thing, Graham. You live as long as me, you might just figure that out for yourself.”

“What kind of debt?”

“A debt, dammit,” Jonas said irritably. “What’s the difference?”

Things were starting to make sense. His uncle owed money to a man who was dead. For all he knew, he’d cheated Ben Lincoln out of some gold. Maybe he’d gone back later and found the mother lode. Maybe he’d done it without ever telling Ben Lincoln. Or maybe he’d palmed a couple of aces when they played cards. Knowing Jonas, anything was possible.

Now, with death looming ahead, he was having an attack of conscience. He wanted to make things right and he didn’t want his sons or even his own lawyer to know about it for fear it would tarnish his image. Gray thought of telling him that there wasn’t anything that could do more damage to an image like his, but what would be the point? The old man really didn’t have much time left. It wouldn’t hurt to do this simple thing for him.

“Okay,” he said. He sat down again, picked up his briefcase and snapped it open. “You tell me the granddaughter’s name, give me her address, and—”

“Don’t know her address.”

Gray sighed. “That’s all right. Her name will probably be enough. I’ve got a couple of private investigators I use all the time. They’ll find her.”

“Don’t know her name, neither.”

“You don’t know her name?” Gray repeated, trying to sound patient.

“Jes’ said that, didn’t I?”

“Okay. Okay, then, just tell me whatever you can about this Ben Lincoln. Where he was from. Where he went after you and he broke up the partnership. Anything you remember.”

“Here.” Jonas plucked a manila envelope from the top of his desk. “Figured you’d want whatever information I got. Wrote it all down for you.”

Gray took the envelope and placed it in his briefcase. “Fine.” He uncapped a pen, put a yellow legal pad on his knees. “These guys I know will find Lincoln’s granddaughter.”

Jonas nodded. “I was counting on that.”

“And how do you want to handle this? After they’ve found her, do you want to mail her a check? Or do you want it hand-delivered?”

“A check?”

“Yes,” Gray said, trying to disguise his impatience. “For his granddaughter. You want to keep it impersonal, or—”

“I don’t intend to give the girl a check. If she’s Ben’s offspring, if she’s a decent woman, I’ll want to meet her. Write her into my will.”

Gray looked up. Jonas was standing over him, one bony hand curled around the back of a chair. His eyes were flat, his mouth a grim line, but a dark blue vein throbbed in his papery temple. Something was going on here, something more than the old man had told him, but what?

“You want to write her into your will?”

“You deaf, counselor? How come I have to repeat everything I say?”

Oh, yeah. Definitely something was going on. There was the look on Jonas’s face. The sudden ringing tone to his voice. More to the point, the on-again, off-again accent had just taken a hike, and that was always meaningful.

Gray capped the pen, placed it and the legal pad inside the briefcase and stood up. He’d been as tall as Jonas for years; now, he towered over him. It was a small but decided advantage, and wasn’t that a crazy thing to think?

“And how will you be sure she’s a decent woman, Uncle?”

Jonas’s mouth curved at the corners. “I’ll rely on your reports, nephew. What else would I do?”

“Now, wait just a minute. I’m willing to use one of my investigators to locate this woman, but if you intend to base your decision on the findings of a private detective…forget it. I won’t take responsibility for somebody else’s opinion of an unknown woman’s moral fiber—assuming the investigator finds her at all.”

“He’ll find her. You just told me he would.”

Hell. Gray ran a hand through his hair. “Okay. I’ll put the best man I can think of on the case.”

“I’ve already done that, Graham. I’ve put you on it.” Jonas seemed to stand a little taller. “Your investigator will do the footwork.” He grinned, and suddenly he didn’t look quite so frail and old. “Wouldn’t expect somethin’ so down and dirty of you, boy. But you’re the one who’s gonna verify what the man says. You’ll take a good, hard look at the lady once she’s found. Observe her. Talk to her, check her out every which way. An’ when you know what she’s really like, why then, nephew, you’ll report back to me and tell me everythin’ I need to know.” Jonas strolled to his chair, sat down and picked up his tumbler of bourbon. “Way I figure it, the whole thing shouldn’t take you no more’n a couple of weeks.”

“Jonas.” Gray spoke gently. “Look, I’d like to help you. But surely you understand that I have a law practice. Clients. I have obligations, and I can’t just—”

“You got an obligation to me, boy. Maybe it’s time you knew that.”

Gray narrowed his eyes. There was an ominous sound to the words. “What in hell is that supposed to mean?”

Jonas got up, walked to the sideboard and refilled his glass. “You never did get along with your old man, did you? Never did cotton to the idea of sittin’ around, watchin’ him grovel to me.” He sipped the bourbon, smiled over the rim of the tumbler. “You ever stop to think how nice it was, gettin’ away from here when you was, what, eighteen? When you went away to that there fancy college in New Hampshire?”

“I was seventeen,” Gray said coldly. “And what does that have to do with this conversation?”

“An’ how ‘bout that law dee-ploma?” Jonas sighed. “The way I hear it, ain’t ever’body can afford a Yale law dee-gree.”

The hair on the nape of Gray’s neck was rising again. “I had full scholarships to both Dartmouth and Yale.”

Jonas chuckled. “Oh my, yes. You was a smart kid, Graham. You won them scholarships, fair and square.” His smile faded. “‘Course, you never did give too much thought as to who funded those scholarships, did you?”

Gray stared at his uncle. He felt as if the floor were dropping from under his feet. “You?” he said hoarsely. “You funded them?”

“And the pocket money that went along with them.” The old man plucked what remained of his cigar from a heavy glass ashtray and stuck it between his teeth. “Your father did the right thing, son. He come to me, said you was smart and he couldn’t afford to do right by you.”

That his father had once said something good about him didn’t seem to matter half as much as learning that he’d gotten where he was today—wherever in hell that might be—courtesy of the very man he’d grown up despising. Gray could feel a cold, hard knot forming in his gut.

“And now,” he said softly, “you’re calling in your markers.”

His uncle shrugged. “Only if you make it seem that way.”

Gray laughed. “Only if I make it seem…? You are some piece of work, Jonas, you know that? You’re blackmailing me into taking God only knows how much time out of my life so you can soothe your conscience before you die, and you say it’s payback time only if I make it seem that way?” His laughter stopped abruptly. “I don’t suppose you’d settle for me writing out a check for whatever I owe you… No,” he said grimly, when Jonas chuckled, “no, I guess not.” Anger flooded through him and he balled his hands into fists, jammed his fists into his pockets before he did something he knew he’d regret. “I’ve got news for you, old man. You don’t need to be concerned with your conscience because the fact is, you never had one.”

Jonas took the cigar from his mouth and set it back into the ashtray. “Yes,” he said softly, “I do, even if it seems to be catching up years too late.” He walked toward Gray, his gaze locked to the younger man’s, his hand outstretched. “You do this, we’ll call things even.”

Gray held his uncle’s eyes for a long minute. Then he looked pointedly at the outstretched hand, ignored it and reached, instead, for his briefcase.

“You’re damned right we will,” he said, and he pulled open the door and marched down the hall, hating Jonas, hating himself, but most of all hating his own father, a man he’d sworn he’d never emulate, because here he was, dancing to a tune Jonas Baron played and stuck with dancing straight to the very last note.

CHAPTER TWO

GRAY boarded the flight to New York still tight-lipped with rage.

If anybody had asked him how he’d gotten where he was today, a partner in one of New York’s top law firms at such a relatively young age, he’d have said he’d done it all on his own. Good grades in college had led to his acceptance at Yale Law. A straight A average there and a stint writing for the Law Review had won him a clerkship with a Federal judge and then interviews at a number of important firms. He’d picked the one where he’d figured he’d have a straight shot at the top after putting in the requisite seventy-five hours a week of grunt work for a couple of years. He’d been right. Those years got him noticed; he landed a partnership even sooner than he expected without having to curry favors from anybody. Watching his father go through life as a suck-up had convinced him he’d sooner end up flipping burgers than repeat Leighton’s pattern.

Now it looked as if he’d been blissfully living a lie, that his successes were all traceable to Jonas’s largesse. Okay. Maybe that was an overstatement. He’d made it to where he was on his own, but his uncle’s money was the reason he’d been able to get his foot on the bottom rung of the ladder. He was just where he’d sworn he’d never be, beholden to the old man, and now Jonas was calling in the debt.

“Sir?”

But facts were facts. You couldn’t change them; you could only use them to serve your client’s best interests. That was one of the things he’d learned in law school. First, make a dispassionate assessment of a case. Then use your knowledge to get the outcome you wanted. Well, he was his own client right now, and what would serve his interests was to do what had to be done so he could get on with his own life.

Truth was, he wouldn’t have to spend much time dealing with Jonas’s situation. He had all sorts of contacts, including private investigators whose fields of expertise involved tracking people even if the trail was old and cold. Actually he didn’t have to do much of anything personally except give Jonas’s information to one of those people, then sit back and wait for the answers to drop in his lap.

Then, if—and it was a huge “if,” considering that Jonas didn’t even know if this Ben Lincoln actually had a granddaughter—if there was such a woman, and if a P.I. could find her, Gray would meet her, spend ten minutes in conversation before contacting his uncle.

“Mr. Baron?”

What the old man did with his money was none of his business. All he wanted was to erase this debt. Hell had to be going through life, knowing you had an obligation to Jonas Baron.

“Mr. Baron. Sir, would you like to see the lunch menu?”

Gray looked up. The flight attendant, smiling politely, leaned toward him. For the first time since he’d stormed out of his uncle’s library, Gray felt good enough to smile back.

“Sure,” he said, “why not?”

Why not, indeed? A couple of days, maybe a week at the most, and he’d be able to tell Jonas to go scratch.

“Here’s the report on the woman you wanted to find,” he’d say. “And now, uncle, for all I give a damn, you can go straight to hell.”

It was such a welcome thought that he went right on smiling, even after the flight attendant placed the airline’s version of lunch in front of him.

* * *

The next morning Gray phoned Jack Ballard, a P.I. who’d done some good work for him in the past.

“I can come by on Monday,” Ballard said.

Gray said it would be better if he could come by right away. Ballard sighed, said he’d be there in about an hour. When he showed up, the men went through a couple of minutes of inconsequential talk before getting down to business. Gray said he’d been asked to do a favor for a client. He told Ballard only as much of the story as necessary, mostly that he wanted him to locate a woman whose only link to his client was through a relationship half a century old, and shoved Jonas’s still-sealed manila envelope across the desk.

Ballard lifted an eyebrow as he looked at it. “You didn’t open this to see what’s in it?”

Gray shrugged his shoulders. “You’re the detective. Not me.”

Ballard grinned, ripped the envelope open and peered inside. “Well, it looks as if there wasn’t all that much to see.”

Three pieces of paper fluttered onto the surface of Gray’s always-neat desk. One bore notes in what Gray recognized as Jonas’s hand. The other two were black-and-white photographs, the edges torn and yellowed. Ballard reached for the notes; Gray scooped up the pictures and looked at them.

The first was of two men dressed in suits, though neither man looked as if he belonged in one. They stood with their arms around each other’s shoulders and grinned into the camera. The men were in their thirties or early forties, strong and young. Curious, he turned the photo over. Ben and Jonas, Venezuela 1950. The words were scrawled across the back of the picture, again in his uncle’s handwriting.

Gray took another look at the photo.

Yeah, he could see it now. One of the men was definitely Jonas. The mouth, the eyes, the grin…none of that had changed. It was just weird to see him so young. Somehow, though he’d always thought of his uncle as fit and powerful, he’d never imagined him as anything but old. The other man, Ben Lincoln, had lighter hair and sharper features. Except for that, Jonas and he seemed like duplicates, tall and handsome and broad-shouldered, looking into the camera through eyes that said they already owned the world.

The second photo was of a woman. Gray flipped the picture over. Nora Lincoln, someone had printed on the back. She stood in a grassy square, maybe in a park somewhere, hands planted on slender hips, chin elevated in a posture of what seemed defiance. She was a pretty woman or she would have been, if she’d unbent just a little. Her expression was hard to read. Were her eyes cool? They seemed to be. Her hair was long and light-colored. It looked windblown and maybe in need of taming, but another look at those eyes and Gray figured everything about her had probably needed taming.

Two powerful, tough-looking men in the prime of life. And a woman who looked as if she’d be a challenge to either of them. Gray felt a stir of interest. What did these people have to do with a sample of ore from a Venezuelan gold mine?

“Well,” Ballard said, “this sure isn’t much to go on.”

He handed the handwritten page of notes to Gray. Ben Lincoln, date of birth unknown, place of birth unknown, had been married to a woman named Nora sometime around 1950. They’d been divorced early in 1952 and Nora had given birth to a child she’d named Orianna in the summer of that year. Orianna had given birth to a baby girl, too, in 1976 or ‘77. The father was unknown. The child had probably been born somewhere in southern Utah or northern Arizona. That baby girl, if she existed, if all the other information was correct, Jonas had written, would be Ben Lincoln’s granddaughter. But, he’d added, there was no way to be sure. Ben Lincoln had died a long time ago. He’d heard that Nora and Orianna were dead, too.

Gray turned the page over. The reverse side was blank. “That’s it?”

“That’s it,” Ballard said, and grinned. “This one’s gonna cost a bundle. I’ll have to hire a bunch of guys to do the legwork. There’ll probably be a couple of dozen leads to check out and the odds are good they’ll all go nowhere long before I can find something usable.” He tapped a pencil against his teeth. “We’re talking six figures here.”

Gray tossed the paper on the desk, tilted back his chair and folded his hands over his flat belly. “That’s okay, Jack. Just do it and send me the bill.” He smiled tightly. “Don’t worry about the cost.”

Ballard laughed. “I never do.”

“Good. My client deserves to pay through the nose.”

The investigator chuckled as he scooped the photos and the single sheet of information into the manila envelope, then got to his feet.

“You disappoint me, Gray. Here I thought you defense attorneys were supposed to be protective of your clients.”

“Nobody needs to protect this one,” Gray said. He rose, too, and came around his desk. “As always, this is confidential, okay?”

Ballard clapped his hand to his heart. “Man, you wound me. Aren’t I always the soul of discretion?”

He was right. Investigators didn’t last long if they weren’t discreet but Ballard was even more circumspect than most. It was one of the reasons Gray employed him.

“Yes, you are.” Gray held out his hand. “What I meant was, if you should manage to find this woman, don’t talk to her. Don’t let her know you’re watching her. Just keep everything under your hat. I’m supposed to check the lady out myself. Client’s orders.”

“No problem.”

The men shook hands. “Truth is, though, I suspect you’re not going to come up with anything.”

“The odds are that you’re right, but you know me. I’ll put all the stuff I don’t find into a fifty-page report, fit the report into a shiny binder and your client will be impressed.”

Both men grinned. “Keep me posted,” Gray said, and Jack promised that he would.

* * *

Two weeks later, Ballard phoned late one morning.

“Got some stuff,” he said.

Gray suggested they meet for lunch at a small Italian place midway between their offices.

“So,” Gray said, after they’d ordered, “what do you have? Information? Or fifty pages of B.S. in a shiny binder?”

Jack chuckled. “Information, surprisingly enough. Not enough to fill fifty pages, but solid.”

“You found Lincoln’s granddaughter?”

“No, not yet. But I figured you’d want an update. I found the town where Orianna Lincoln lived and died, and some people who knew her.”

“Orianna Lincoln,” Gray said. “So, even though she was born after Ben and Nora were divorced, he acknowledged the child as his flesh and blood?”

“Careful, counselor.” Ballard sat back as their first courses were served. “You’re leaping to conclusions. All I know is that Nora Lincoln put Ben Lincoln’s name on Orianna’s birth certificate.” He stabbed a grape tomato, lifted it to his mouth and chewed vigorously. “Orianna was born in ‘52, same as your uncle said, in a little town in Colorado. Her mother—Nora—died in an auto accident not long afterward. Orianna was bounced from foster home to foster home, grew up into what you might expect.”

“Her father didn’t raise her?”

“Ben Lincoln? No. He lit out for Alaska in ‘53, died up there in a blizzard a few years later. The kid—”

“Orianna.”

“Right. She grew up, got herself into a little trouble. Nothing much, just some shoplifting, a little grass, a couple of prostitution convictions.”

“Sounds like a sweetheart.”

“Right. NCIC—the National Criminal Investigation Center—has her getting busted for petty crap all over the southwest. Eventually she ended up with some bozo in Fort Stockton, Texas. He walked out on her and the next record we have shows she set up housekeeping in a trailer park in a place called Queen City, up in the mountains in northern Arizona.”

“Alone?”

“Yup.” Ballard speared another tomato and grinned. “But that didn’t keep her from leading a full life, if you get my drift.” The detective took a sip of water, swallowed and leaned over the table. “The lady believed in an open door policy. One man in, another out, no stopping to take a breather in-between. No kids to slow her down until 1976, when something must have gone wrong with her planning. She gave birth to a girl she named Dawn.”

Gray raised his eyebrows. “Classy name.”

“Yeah, and I figure that was all that was classy in the kid’s life. Dawn lived in the trailer with mama until she was seventeen. Then she married a local name of…” Ballard reached into his breast pocket and took out a small leather notebook. “Name of Kitteridge. Harman Kitteridge.”

“In Queen City?”

“Yup, Queen City. Two traffic lights and half a dozen cheap bars. And local branches of every whacko political organization you ever heard of.” He grinned. “Plus some you’re lucky you haven’t.”

Gray put down his fork. “It sounds like heaven.”

“You got that right. Two days there, I was ready to grab a rifle and go looking for black helicopters. Kitteridge lives on the outskirts of town, on top of a mountain. He’s got a cabin up there. Apparently his grandpappy built it with his own hands.” Ballard put down his notebook and turned his attention to his salad. “You can almost hear the banjoes playing in the background.”

Gray nodded, picked up his fork and poked at his antipasto. Just what he needed, he thought glumly, a trip to the ass end of nowhere for a stimulating conversation with Dawn Lincoln Kitteridge. If he’d thought about her at all during the last weeks, he’d imagined a more up-to-date version of that defiant, almost beautiful woman in the photo, but this conversation had put things in perspective. He could almost envision Dawn Kitteridge, country twang, lank hair, bare feet, gingham dress and all.

“Lucky Dawn,” he said, “she got to trade her trailer for a shack.”

“Yeah, she got herself a shack, and a hubby ten years older than she is.” Ballard paused as the waiter cleared away their appetizers and served their main courses. “But she got tired of both,” he said, tucking into his spaghetti carbonara. “She left Kitteridge and the mountain almost four years ago.”

Gray looked up from his pasta alla vongole. “She missed the trailer park?”