Silence

34

SCOTT SCHELLING STRAINED to bench-press the weight, his arms trembling as he pushed the bar and straightened his elbows. “Three more, give me three more.” Dale, his personal trainer, was shouting into his ear. “Three. Two. One.” Schelling pressed the weight into the air above his face, the big hands appeared above Schelling’s head and then the thick, hairy arms and the olive-drab T-shirt, and Dale guided the heavy weight bar onto the support above the bench. “Fair, Scott. Pretty fair. Now we still have time for a quick run.”

Scott Schelling sat up, his arms limp, and looked at the clock on the wall of his exercise room. “I don’t think so. I have a meeting in a few minutes. But I’ll run tonight when I get back, and then take a swim.”

Dale squinted. “I hope you get around to it, Scotty. You’re in a good place now, and you’ve got to keep your heart pumping every day to get to the next level.”

Schelling looked at Dale and nodded in solemn insincerity. He was comfortable lying to Dale Quinlan. Schelling had paid to have him investigated, and found that he really had been a marine, and he really had arrived in California as a physical-training instructor for recruits at Twenty-Nine Palms. Dale had a tattoo of the eagle, anchor, and globe on his left arm, a bristly whitewall haircut, and a brusque, strutting manner. But Schelling knew that he had gotten the tattoo and the haircut only after he had been out of the marines for a year or two, trying to break into the personal-training business. People who had money felt they needed a big jarhead shouting at them as though they were going to war instead of losing five pounds of flab.

Scott Schelling took a towel off the pile and wiped the sweat off his face and neck. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Right, Scotty. I’ll be here at six. Be ready to work.” He walked to the door, where he had left his gym bag, and then he was out in the corridor. Schelling watched him check his complicated-looking military watch, turn his cell phone on, and start along the glass wall up the corridor toward the front of the house. In a few moments, he would be outside, driving to his next appointment.

Schelling walked into his shower room, adjusted the array of showerheads, and let himself be sprayed with hot water from four angles for a few minutes. Then he stepped out, dried himself on two more towels, and walked through the bathroom into his closet, a huge square room with clothes hanging along two walls and drawers and cabinets along the others. He could see that Kimberly, his personal assistant, had selected and laid out his clothes on the long, padded island in the middle of the room. He was color-blind, but he could see well enough to tell that the tie and handkerchief were not a match, and he knew that whatever colors she had chosen for them and the shirt were the most fashionable for this day in Los Angeles. His shoes gave off the proper shine, and the gently laundered condition of the socks and underwear she had chosen did not escape him.

He did not raise his voice. He said, “Kimberly,” and she came in from the desk in the bedroom. She was wearing a headset with a microphone, which meant she was already in a telephone conversation with Tiffany in the office. She held a clipboard, taking notes as she listened, making no acknowledgment that Scott was naked. “We’re on with Scott,” she said to Tiffany. To Scott she said, “Some of the people for your meeting have begun to arrive. Quentin, Ali, and Tara.”

As he dressed, he said, “Treat them as well as you can, Tiffany,” as though he were speaking into the telephone. Kimberly repeated his words exactly as he said them. “Are they in my meeting room?”

“Not yet.”

Schelling liked the way Kimberly and Tiffany connected to become a single intelligence. They conveyed things to each other, asked each other questions in advance because they knew he would want to know. But they weren’t presumptuous. Neither of them ever said no. Everything was “not yet,” which was only a variation on “yes.” “Put them in my office, then, on the couches. Patch me into the room so I can talk to them while you bring them drinks.”

While Kimberly repeated his words she was unclipping the telephone from her belt. He continued dressing, and when Tiffany was ready, Kimberly disconnected the cord to her earpiece and handed the telephone to Scott.

His voice was smooth and unconcerned. “Tara, Ali, Quentin. Thanks so much for doing me the kindness of coming to my office and the courtesy of being on time. I’m apologizing for not being there to greet you, but I had an unexpected delay and I’m on my way. Tiffany will give you copies of the release schedule I’ve worked out. I want all of you to take a look at the projects you’re running and see how the schedule meshes with your progress. If there are differences, I want to hear them. I’d also appreciate it if you would explain what’s up to the others as they arrive, so everybody can be ready when I get there. Thanks.”

He handed the phone to Kimberly and stepped into his pants. She reattached herself to the telephone, clipped it to her waistband, listened to Tiffany, and took notes. After a few seconds, she said, “They took it well, Scotty. They’re getting over being there before the others. Now they’re studying the schedule and working trades so they can move up the releases that are ready now and hold back others.”

“Good. Keep watching them. What else?”

“Good. Keep watching them,” she repeated. To Scott she said, “Ray Klein’s party is tomorrow night at his house in Santa Fe.”

“I remember.”

“The limo will pick you up here and take you to the airport at four P.M. When you arrive, you go to your hotel, the Eldorado. The party is at eight. Your present for Mrs. Klein is an antique map made by Herman Moll in 1719. It shows New Mexico, including Santa Fe, and California is still an island.”

“What did that cost me?”

“Twenty-seven thousand, but you won’t have to worry about her showing it off. The provenance is reliable and clean, and that’s hardly ever true of rare maps. It’s being professionally packed and shipped to their house to arrive at five P.M. tomorrow, so they will have had time to unwrap it and make some calls to find out how grateful to be.”

“What else?”

“You have meetings at three and five with the groups Code 187 and Nine-One-One Bang. Your haircut and manicure are set for five forty-five in your office today. The drafts of the cover notes on next month’s releases are on your desk now, so you can look them over between appointments. Also the sales figures for the week, and the proposals for ad budgets for next week.”

“Fine. Put the demo tape for Code 187 on in the lounge while they’re waiting for me, so everyone has heard it before I get there.”

He stepped into his shoes, tied his necktie, and put on his coat. Kimberly was beside him, still repeating “before I get there” while her hands smoothed the coat on his shoulders and adjusted the back of his shirt collar so the tie was not rolled beneath it. They walked together through the master bedroom. “There was a call in to Mr. Densmore, but he hasn’t returned it yet. His assistant says he’s in court, but she’s covering.”

“When he returns the call, switch it to my cell,” said Schelling.

They made their way down the long hallway, across the huge two-story living room, the two-way conversation between Tiffany and Schelling-Kimberly continuing all the way to Kimberly’s office on the ground floor, and then out to the car in the cobblestone turnaround outside the main entrance. His dog King came trotting around the house to be petted. Scott scratched him under the chin once, and Kimberly held King’s collar so he couldn’t get dog hairs on Scott’s suit.

Carl was waiting beside the car. He opened the door to admit Schelling and held it so Kimberly could slide in, but she shook her head, so he closed it and got into the driver’s seat.

Schelling looked out his window while Carl put the car in gear. Kimberly was talking into her headphone again, and although her eyes were on Schelling, they were blank, unseeing. The car slid forward around the turnaround to the driveway, and Carl hit the button to open the gate.

Schelling was pleased with Kimberly and Tiffany. Together they were doing an excellent job, but even with their sharp understanding of detail and information, he could not have kept them around if they had not been decorative, too. He was in a business where death stalked people who weren’t fashionable.

The two assistants also were participating in one of his experiments. He’d had sex with Tiffany only once, a year after she had come to work for him. It had been late at night, after everyone had gone and the office had been locked up. It had been a droit de seigneur kind of sex: He had merely been claiming her as a member of his staff. He had left her alone after that. He had wanted her to wonder whether it was going to happen again, and then to wonder why it had not. Right now, he knew, she was trying to form theories about whether it would be more to her advantage if it did or didn’t, and how to accomplish one or the other.

With Kimberly he had decided to behave differently. Since she had come to work for him, he had treated her as a sexless personal servant, maybe even an appliance. He paid no attention to her, or to what she might be thinking. Today and for the past few months, he had summoned her into the dressing room while he was still naked, as though she were his valet, and begun their work while he was getting dressed. He knew that the two assistants spoke to each other all day long every day.

He also knew that both of the assistants were supplementing their income and preparing the way for promotion by sharing his schedule and the substance of his business activities with his boss, Ray Klein, the CEO of Aggregate Industries. He didn’t mind that at all, because it gave him two extra ways to feed Klein what he wanted him to know.

As the car moved along the street toward Sunset he said, “Carl, what’s the situation on Densmore?”

“Those two guys he hired to hang out at the DA’s office had more balls than brains.”

“I know that.” People weren’t supposed to tell Schelling things that he already knew.

“Sorry, Scotty. Kaprilow and Stevens are watching his house and his office this morning. His Mercedes was in its spot at his office before they got there, and the engine wasn’t warm. His wife is at his house, and she doesn’t seem to be doing anything. She’s not packing to run off and meet him in Brazil or something. She hasn’t left the house yet.”

“Any signs of police at his house or his office?”

“Not yet.”

“Let me know right away if anything like that turns up.”

“Will do.”

“You’re doing a good job, Carl.” Schelling had made a decision to say that long before he had left the house. Carl was not doing an especially good job, but he could be made to work harder and smarter with a few words of encouragement, and he would turn sullen if he felt unappreciated. He paid Carl very well, but no amount of money was enough to keep a man like Carl absolutely loyal. His best interests had to be exactly the same as Scott Schelling’s. To keep the connection strong, Schelling sometimes reminisced with Carl about things that they’d done together, but he couldn’t face that today.

In the old days, Carl had often scouted the fashionable bars and clubs to find women for Scott. Schelling had been a young music-company executive, barely out of business school. He had already discovered he could make surprisingly good money in the music business, but he had not been very successful at attracting women.

Carl procured an introduction to Kit Stoddard at the bar in Gazebo at around midnight one night, and called Scott immediately. Schelling had been getting ready to leave for a business party, but he had already had enough experience with Carl to know that he should come when Carl called. While Carl was waiting for Schelling to arrive, he started a conversation to stall for time. Carl was a muscular, athletic-looking man in his mid-twenties, with lots of wavy black hair, strong, sculpted features, and a tanning-salon tan. Scott Schelling had never, even now, met a man who looked that way and was intelligent. It was some obscure law of genetics that prevented anyone from having every advantage at once.

Carl kept Kit and her companions amused with his patter. Schelling had heard enough of it on other occasions to know what he must have said. “You’re actresses, aren’t you? I thought you had to be. How do I know? It’s just a look, like a glow. Either a woman has it, or she doesn’t, and you do. And besides, what are the chances that three such amazing women would be together unless they were acting, or they were triplets? You’re not triplets, right? Am I disappointed? No. I’ll admit triplets are a fantasy, but I have so many others I have to get through first. I’m still working on things I promised myself at age fourteen. Anyway, let’s be honest. I’m not in your league. A woman like you deserves to be with a man who can buy you things and take you places. Who? My boss, for instance. He’s barely thirty and he’s a gazillionaire. He’s in the music business.”

In those days, Scott had not been comfortable trying to meet women. He was small-boned, narrow-shouldered, and wore thick glasses. He had a New York accent, and had been out of the city long enough to know that women in the rest of the world found it a cause for suspicion.

Whenever Carl managed to get him successfully connected with a new woman, he had given Carl a bonus with his next paycheck. As Scott sat in the car thinking about it, he remembered that Nancy Russo and Carol Peters, the two before Kit, had each earned Carl ten thousand dollars. Carl must have made at least fifty thousand in bonuses that year. But Carl seemed to get more out of these services than money. It occurred to Schelling that Carl enjoyed some vicarious sexual titillation, too, because he was the one who had accomplished the initial seduction.

When Scott walked into Gazebo that night he was aware of the importance of first impressions. He had worn a dark Armani suit that had been altered beautifully to fit him, a pair of handmade Italian shoes, and his most expensive Rolex. When a woman looked at him, she didn’t see the prematurely middle-aged slouch. She saw the suit. She didn’t see the dull brown hair that had already begun to thin on top and still looked unruly after a two-hundred–dollar haircut. She saw the two-hundred–dollar haircut.

Schelling watched Kit Stoddard sitting at the bar and lifting her graceful, long-fingered hand to touch her shining red hair, pushing it out of her eyes, not so the eyes could see him, but so he could see the eyes and add them to his appraisal of her. Scott invited her to come to the party with him. She shrugged, looked at her two friends, and agreed.

He took her to the party at the new house in the Hollywood Hills that Mechanismo had bought with the signing bonus he’d received from Bulletproof Records. Scott walked with Kit through the faux Tuscan villa, looked at the things that all young musicians bought that year: a huge flat-screen television set, a saltwater aquarium with a couple of sharks in it, a couple of bad portraits of themselves. They crossed the broad veranda, and went down the widening steps to the lawn, where Scott had seen Artie Bains from Bulletproof Records trying to be part of a gaggle of recording artists. Scott stepped close to Bains and said, “When are you putting him on the road?”

Bains said, “The new CD isn’t finished yet, but the week it comes out. He hasn’t thought as far ahead as tomorrow, so don’t say anything.”

“Professional courtesy,” Scott agreed.

“I’ll explain it to him in a couple of days, when he’s sober, and then we’ll start booking dates. I’ll call you to see if we can avoid conflicts.” He saw Kit Stoddard and held out his hand. “Hello,” he said. “I’m Artie Bains, from Bulletproof. I know I would remember if Scotty had ever had a friend as beautiful as you.”

“Thank you.” Kit had never heard of Artie Bains, but she had certainly heard of Bulletproof.

Scott steered her out of Bains’s reach. “Good luck with the tour.”

Bains understood his good wishes. It wasn’t quite a threat, just a reminder that he had just given Scott information that Scott could use to make his next few days more difficult.

Kit saw the party exactly as Scott had wanted her to. He introduced her to the members of Los Federales and The Scheme, both of them groups he had signed. She met Marsha Steele in the powder room and then watched her come out, pick up a guitar, and give an impromptu performance of two of the songs on her next CD. At around two-thirty, Little Nancy’s limousine pulled up at the front of the house, and Little Nancy made an entrance wearing so much diamond jewelry that she was weighed down by it. Before she went down the lawn to disappear among the group there Little Nancy stopped and embraced Scott Schelling.

Later still, as they walked past the people at the buffet tables and milling around the three bars, toward the driveway where the valet attendants would bring his car, Kit said, “It’s amazing how anybody can make this much money.”

Scott said, “Mechanismo’s not only broke, but he already owes more money than he’s made in his life. He just doesn’t know it yet.”

“He is? After one CD?”

“He’s good. If he holds up, he’ll work his way out of debt someday. But he’s going to be on tour a lot, and the second CD had better hit.”

“Why is he in debt?”

“Because he’s new. He doesn’t know yet that there’s a difference between money and credit, and it wasn’t in Artie’s interest to tell him. I think Mechanismo’s signing bonus was two million. He put a million or so down on this house, which means he owes the bank about ten. If he got two, the government wants the rest, and they want it yesterday. He’s spent a lot on cars, jewelry, and parties. Tomorrow or the next day, Artie will sit down with him, add up the figures, and explain to him how money works. Then he’ll tell him what he has to do to get more.”

“Do you do that, too?”

“Do what?”

“Get them into debt to control them.”

“Of course not. Whenever I see this kind of thing coming, I try to head it off. I’m in this business because I love music and I want to find wonderful artists and help them create. Along the way, they make money, and the company I work for makes money.”

After only a few of those parties, Kit had begun to hear comments about Scott from people she met. She repeated the words to him with a worried look, as though she were bringing news to him that would break his heart. “Scotty, I think you’ve got to try to let more people know who you really are and what you’re like, and not be so aloof and invisible. Tonight I heard this person call you the Prince of Darkness.”

He grinned and shrugged. “If your competitors say you’re the worst, then you’re the best.”

Scott had become infatuated with Kit. He began referring to her as his girlfriend, and treated her generously. He let her buy expensive clothes in the boutiques along Montana Avenue with his credit card. He went off to work each morning at five-thirty and left her in charge of a big, luxurious house until eight P.M. or later. He took her to the best parties in town.

But eventually the relationship began to lose its freshness. Kit said she was bored and that she missed her friends. He did not want to meet her girlfriends, or let Kit take a car to the clubs. He ordered Carl to drive her to a restaurant where she had agreed to meet her friends, and then pick her up at a prearranged time and place. Scott didn’t want to have all of her friends, family, and acquaintances invading his life. He wanted her—the long red hair, the white skin, the soft lips. He wanted to see himself through her deep green eyes and feel her appreciation, her admiration, her arousal.

They had begun to issue short, cold, sarcastic comments, sometimes not answered, like solitary blows. One night he came home from work expecting to take her out to dinner, and found her in the bedroom getting ready to go out with her friends. He kept himself from speaking because he did not want to blurt out some jealous, angry remark that he would instantly regret. She noticed his dark mood and said he was pouting. He knew that if he spoke, she would react only by tormenting him intentionally, and then he would lose his temper, so he went off to the pool to swim while Carl drove her to her meeting place.

While she was gone, he found himself consumed by loneliness and longing. He had always been very gentle and patient with her, but now the feeling was different. He began to pace. At two A.M., he was waiting for her at the door, let her in and locked it, stripped her clothes off in the foyer and took her. When it was done, she kissed him over and over for a long time without speaking, and they went to bed and fell asleep in each other’s arms.

From then on, whenever she went out without him, he would lie in wait for her, thinking about her until she appeared. He would make love to her on the carpeted bedroom floor, or on the couch in the media room, or the big overstuffed chair near the door.

She enjoyed the game—the fact that she aroused him so much that he couldn’t control himself, or the power she had to make him wait by the door for her, staring out the window and listening. He thought about her during the day, caught himself daydreaming about her during meetings or when he was listening to CD cuts, trying to make a decision about the fate of a performer.

One night was worse than before. She came home much later from one of her evenings with the girls. When she came into the bedroom, he undressed her roughly. She resisted, and he snatched up the silk necktie he had taken off and hung from a knob on a dresser, and used it to bind her arms behind her, then pushed her to the bed and forced her. From her movements and sounds, he could tell that she was more excited than she had ever been. After it was over, they lay still for a minute, and then she said, “Untie my wrists, Scott.”

He could tell from the stern, cold way she said it that she was serious now. He untied the knot, and she sat up and faced him. “That can never happen again.” At first he thought he had misunderstood her—that she had actually hated it and wanted him to stop—but he studied her face in the dim moonlight, and knew that he had not. She was not angry. She was frightened because she had begun to see what he had already seen: Each time they had sex, it had become rougher, more violent. Each time they came together like this, they had to go a little bit farther. She said, “This has gone too far.”

“Okay. We won’t do that again.”

“I don’t mean the necktie. It’s being rough. Hurting me.”

“You liked it.”

“I don’t think this is good for us. For me, or for you.”

“So we’ll do something else next time. We’ll be gentle and slow. We can take a long, hot bath and I’ll give you a massage.”

“I think I should leave.”

“It’s almost three. Where would you go?”

“Home. I have an apartment, remember? I want to go back to my own bed and sleep. I think we need to take a break from each other.”

“Come on, Kit. This wasn’t a big deal. It’s just a little game, and pretty tame by most people’s standards.”

“I need time to think.”

He lay back on the bed staring at the ceiling while she went through the closet and the bathroom, dressing. It took only a moment to realize that she was rushing, as though she couldn’t wait to get away from him. She wasn’t saying that she was breaking up with him, but Scott knew she was. As soon as she was dressed, she was going to hurry downstairs, get in her car, and drive away. Once she was out of his house, away from him and on the telephone where he could not reach her and she did not have to look into his eyes, her tone would change. Maybe she would not even answer his calls.

Scott tried to lie back calmly and get used to the idea that she was no longer his. He took deep breaths and concentrated on making his muscles lose their tension. She was dressed now. She came into the bedroom and stopped. “I’ll call you.”

He lay there, paralyzed with sadness. She was lying to him. She would never call him, never want to talk to him. He had been so kind to her, so generous. She had probably been trying to use him from the beginning, using his influence, his contacts, his access. He sat up as she was going past him. “Kit, wait!”

“I’m going. I don’t want to talk.”

Something in him shifted, some undiscovered switch turned on. He was out of the bed, still naked, and he was charging toward her. He half-tackled, half-threw her to the floor. He yanked the belt out of the pants he had left there, looped it around her neck and through the buckle, and held her there.

SUDDENLY HE HEARD Carl’s cell phone ring, and it jarred him back to the present. He lifted his eyes and squinted into the glaring sunshine. He was breathless, sweating in the air-conditioned car. Kit had actually died. He really had killed her.

“Yeah?” Carl said. After a moment, Carl said, “Scotty?”

“What?”

“They just found Densmore’s body. It was in a field up near Santa Clarita this morning.” He kept whoever had called on the line and waited, driving along in the slow traffic on Sunset toward the turn into the Canyon at Crescent Heights.

Scott Schelling sat in the back of the car, staring out the window. “Damn. That’s a problem. Who is watching the District Attorney’s office?”

“We can move Kaprilow and Stevens. Neither of them is really cut out for—”

“Do it. No. Just tell Stevens to watch the building entrance for the moment. He isn’t to do anything. We just want a phone call the second he sees Wendy.”

He listened as Carl repeated what he had said to the person on the telephone and ended the call. Then Scott said, “And the first two shooters. The Turners. Get in touch with them so they know that we’re still here and the contract is good. We don’t want them to panic just because Densmore isn’t around. We still want them out looking for Wendy Harper.”

Carl was feeling good. He was always amazed when Scott Schelling moved into action. Densmore’s body had barely hit the ground. Scott had heard about it when? Ten seconds ago? And he was taking steps to reestablish order and communications, get the new chain of command in place, and make everybody feel safe. For the fiftieth time, he wished he were younger and smarter—maybe just more ambitious—so he could be learning how to be successful from the master. These lessons must be worth all the business-school degrees in the world, but Carl knew he would never take advantage of them.

“And Carl?”

“Yes?”

“When you talk to them, keep in mind that what probably happened to Densmore was that they killed him. Don’t make them feel uncomfortable. We need to get this Wendy Harper thing done.”