Read Online The Fourth Durango by Ross Thomas, Sarah Paretsky - Free Book Online
Authors: Ross Thomas, Sarah Paretsky
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wildcatters’ firm still owed him but couldn’t pay because oil by then was around $15 a barrel.
The $39,000 fee was what Vines—prior to his disbarment—had billed Sanchez & Maloney for persuading a vice-president of one of the majors to drop a $5-million lawsuit. The suit charged that Joe Maloney had knocked the vice-president down in the Petroleum Club bar and stomped him with an almost brand-new pair of lizardskin cowboy boots as a half-drunk Paco Sanchez had olé-ed his partner on.
The major oil company vice-president withdrew his suit after Kelly Vines let him examine photocopies of registration forms obtained from a motel down in Houston near the Intercontinental Airport.
“The young woman who shared these rooms with you on seven different occasions,” Vines had said in what he always thought of as his iced-snot voice, “does, in fact, bear your surname, although she would seem to have been not your wife, but your sixteen-year-old niece.”
Six months after the suit was dropped, which was two days after Vines’s disbarment, Paco Sanchez and Joe Maloney came by to offer him the keys to the condominium.
“You can stay there as long as talk’s cheap and shit stinks,” Sanchez had said.
“Or until oil’s back up to twenty-five a barrel,” said Maloney.
Sanchez smiled sadly. “Like I said, Kelly. Forever.”
Kelly Vines gave away or abandoned most of what he still owned, packed the one large suitcase and drove to California. This was a month after Jack Adair had entered the Federal penitentiary at Lompoc and two weeks and three days after Vines’s wife had emptied her personal E. F. Hutton Cash Management fund of $43,912 and told friends, if not Vines, that she was flying to Las Vegas for a divorce.
She spent only four hours in Las Vegas—just long enough to buy twenty-four Seconal capsules from a hotel bellhop and lose $4,350 at blackjack—before flying on to Los Angeles, where she checked into the Beverly Wilshire. Up in her room she searched the telephone directory and called the first psychiatrist she found who had a Beverly Hills address. With the use of only minimum guile, she talked him into giving her a same-day appointment.
Danielle Vines convinced the psychiatrist during their nine-minute session that she was very nervous, extremely depressed and unable to sleep because of her father’s imprisonment and her husband’s disgrace. The psychiatrist gave her an evaluation appointment for 7 A.M. the following Tuesday, his first free hour, and wrote her a prescription for twenty-four Seconal capsules.
Danielle Vines thanked him, had the prescription filled at the nearest pharmacy, returned to her room at the Beverly Wilshire and ordered up cinnamon toast, a bottle of wine and some Dramamine, the sea-and motion-sickness remedy. She ate the toast first, washing it down with the wine. Then she swallowed some Dramamine. After that she used what was left of the wine to wash down her hoard of four dozen Seconals, confident that the toast and Dramamine would help keep them down. After that she picked up the phone and called her brother, Paul Adair, in Washington, D.C., to tell him exactly what she had done.
Adair said, “So after she called Paul, he called you.”
“No. He called the hotel back and got it organized. Doctor. Ambulance. Name of a hospital. No cops. No press.”
Adair nodded. “I can almost hear him.”
“He called the hospital then, which turned out to be in Santa Monica, and started out by talking money to them, which he said they seemed to appreciate. Once Paul had the hospital squared away—private room, round-the-clock nurses, a specialist, no visitors and all—then he called me.”
Adair examined Vines thoughtfully. “First he told you about Dannie. And after that I’d say he got around to what was really on his mind.”
Vines sighed. “He parceled out the blame, Jack.”
“Who got the most—me?”
“He was very evenhanded. We each got half.”
“Then
The $39,000 fee was what Vines—prior to his disbarment—had billed Sanchez & Maloney for persuading a vice-president of one of the majors to drop a $5-million lawsuit. The suit charged that Joe Maloney had knocked the vice-president down in the Petroleum Club bar and stomped him with an almost brand-new pair of lizardskin cowboy boots as a half-drunk Paco Sanchez had olé-ed his partner on.
The major oil company vice-president withdrew his suit after Kelly Vines let him examine photocopies of registration forms obtained from a motel down in Houston near the Intercontinental Airport.
“The young woman who shared these rooms with you on seven different occasions,” Vines had said in what he always thought of as his iced-snot voice, “does, in fact, bear your surname, although she would seem to have been not your wife, but your sixteen-year-old niece.”
Six months after the suit was dropped, which was two days after Vines’s disbarment, Paco Sanchez and Joe Maloney came by to offer him the keys to the condominium.
“You can stay there as long as talk’s cheap and shit stinks,” Sanchez had said.
“Or until oil’s back up to twenty-five a barrel,” said Maloney.
Sanchez smiled sadly. “Like I said, Kelly. Forever.”
Kelly Vines gave away or abandoned most of what he still owned, packed the one large suitcase and drove to California. This was a month after Jack Adair had entered the Federal penitentiary at Lompoc and two weeks and three days after Vines’s wife had emptied her personal E. F. Hutton Cash Management fund of $43,912 and told friends, if not Vines, that she was flying to Las Vegas for a divorce.
She spent only four hours in Las Vegas—just long enough to buy twenty-four Seconal capsules from a hotel bellhop and lose $4,350 at blackjack—before flying on to Los Angeles, where she checked into the Beverly Wilshire. Up in her room she searched the telephone directory and called the first psychiatrist she found who had a Beverly Hills address. With the use of only minimum guile, she talked him into giving her a same-day appointment.
Danielle Vines convinced the psychiatrist during their nine-minute session that she was very nervous, extremely depressed and unable to sleep because of her father’s imprisonment and her husband’s disgrace. The psychiatrist gave her an evaluation appointment for 7 A.M. the following Tuesday, his first free hour, and wrote her a prescription for twenty-four Seconal capsules.
Danielle Vines thanked him, had the prescription filled at the nearest pharmacy, returned to her room at the Beverly Wilshire and ordered up cinnamon toast, a bottle of wine and some Dramamine, the sea-and motion-sickness remedy. She ate the toast first, washing it down with the wine. Then she swallowed some Dramamine. After that she used what was left of the wine to wash down her hoard of four dozen Seconals, confident that the toast and Dramamine would help keep them down. After that she picked up the phone and called her brother, Paul Adair, in Washington, D.C., to tell him exactly what she had done.
Adair said, “So after she called Paul, he called you.”
“No. He called the hotel back and got it organized. Doctor. Ambulance. Name of a hospital. No cops. No press.”
Adair nodded. “I can almost hear him.”
“He called the hospital then, which turned out to be in Santa Monica, and started out by talking money to them, which he said they seemed to appreciate. Once Paul had the hospital squared away—private room, round-the-clock nurses, a specialist, no visitors and all—then he called me.”
Adair examined Vines thoughtfully. “First he told you about Dannie. And after that I’d say he got around to what was really on his mind.”
Vines sighed. “He parceled out the blame, Jack.”
“Who got the most—me?”
“He was very evenhanded. We each got half.”
“Then
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