Free The Fourth Durango by Ross Thomas, Sarah Paretsky Page B

and leaned back to wait for Vines’s reaction.
    Without expression and using only enough inflection to make it a question, Vines said, “Does he, now?”
    Fork nodded. “I guess Soldier’d qualify as one of those guys I mentioned earlier—a smart and charming asshole.”
    “Extremely charming, but not too smart. Where’d you meet him?”
    “Mutual friends. Soldier says both you and the judge here represented him at different times. But it’s sort of hard to tell when Soldier’s lying.”
    “You can believe him, at least on that point,” Adair said. “I did represent him long ago when I was still in private practice and when, I should add, both Soldier and I were considerably younger. Years after I went on the bench I heard he was in some kind of trouble whose exact nature escapes me. So I sent word for him to get in touch with Kelly, who, if memory serves, managed to get him out of whatever mess he was in.”
    Turning to the mayor, Adair gave her his most winning smile and said, “So it would seem we are who we claim to be.” The smile vanished. “Are you?”
    “You mean have we ever done this kind of thing before?” she said.
    “Yes,” Jack Adair said. “That’s exactly what I mean.”

Chapter 10
    According to the mayor, it had begun ten years ago with the passage of Proposition 13 that rolled back California property taxes and virtually wrecked the budgets of many of the state’s cities, particularly the smaller ones.
    “Thirteen wouldn’t even let a city like Durango issue general obligation bonds until a couple of years ago,” she said. “Not that there was anybody jumping up and down to buy them.”
    “How bad did it get?” Adair asked.
    “We almost went broke. And we would’ve if the economy hadn’t picked up a little, at least for a while there, and if it hadn’t been for the donations from, well, from certain benefactors.”
    Adair nodded, his eyes curious, his expression bland. “How many benefactors have lined up, cash in hand, over the last nine or ten years?”
    She looked at Fork. “A dozen?”
    “An even dozen.”
    “How much did each one—donate?” Vines asked. “On the average?”
    “The first four, one hundred thousand,” Huckins said. “Then inflation kicked in so the next eight had to come up with two hundred thousand.”
    “Each?”
    “Each.”
    “Two million all told then,” Adair said. “And in exchange for this generosity, each philanthropist was provided with a safe haven? A sanctuary?”
    “A hideout,” said the mayor.
    “Were any of them avoiding the law?” Vines said. “Or is that any of my business?”
    “One was sort of avoiding the law,” Fork said. “But it was some weird kind of CIA thing, so B. D. and I said to hell with it and let him buy in. The rest of them were all dodging the opposition.”
    “Business rivals?”
    “Guys who wanted to kill ’em,” Fork said.
    “Did they ever succeed?” Adair asked with obvious interest.
    “Never,” the chief said.
    “Never in Durango,” B. D. Huckins corrected him. “But two of them got antsy, a couple of years apart, and left before they should’ve although we tried to talk them both out of it. The one who left first fell off a building in L.A. Mid-Wilshire, I think. The other got hit by a car in north Dallas that backed up over him just to make sure he was dead. The other ten are all okay as far as we know, but…” She shrugged.
    “They don’t write,” Fork said.
    “They don’t even call,” said the mayor with a small smile.
    “And the two million dollars?” Adair asked, looking around as though hoping to find something it had been spent on.
    “It helped keep things going,” the mayor said. “The frills anyhow. The library stayed open, just barely, and so did the VD clinic and the daycare center, at least until GE pulled out and we had to close it. The center, I mean, not the clinic. The rest of the money, what there was, went for police and maintenance.”
    “Nobody ever