Silence

37

PAUL TURNER RAN down the hill with long strides that his momentum lengthened into jumps and landings, and then he was off the hill and into the car. “Got her,” he said. “High on the left side, maybe the heart.”

Sylvie looked into the rearview mirror and pulled the car away from the curb, then continued up Valley Vista. “You’re sure it was fatal?”

“I can’t give you a firm medical prognosis through a rifle scope,” he said. “All I can do is hit her with a .308 and clear my calendar in case there’s a funeral.”

“I suppose,” she said. The road skirted the low hills in winding curves toward the west. She couldn’t drive as fast as she wanted to because this was a suburban residential area, with stop signs and streets coming in on the right every two hundred feet or so. A few of the curves were blind, and this was not a time when they could afford to risk an accident. Paul opened his window. She said, “Can you close your window?”

“Why?”

“It’s creating a vacuum or something and it’s hurting my ears.”

“I’m listening for sirens.”

“We won’t have any trouble hearing them. If you drive with your window open, people think you’re drunk or smoking pot.”

He sighed, pressed the button, and watched the window slide up. “I can’t believe how great this feels.”

“I guess I’m still a little bit behind you,” she said. “Everything about this job has been hard until two minutes ago. I need to get used to the idea that Wendy Harper is finally dead, and we can take a vacation.”

Paul was grinning. “It’s great. I knew the thing to do was follow Eric Fuller. I knew damned well that wherever she was, he would turn up.”

“You get full credit.” At the time when they had been planning, Sylvie had been about to suggest the same thing, but she had wisely decided to let his idea be the one they chose. She had seen nothing objectionable in it, and she had known that if it turned out to be a mistake, she would rather blame him than be blamed. She had also decided that it was a good strategy to accept his idea without a murmur because her acquiescence would give him confidence. Killing was mostly psychology. Paul had followed Eric Fuller to the safe house easily and bagged Wendy Harper with a single shot from two hundred yards out, so obviously Sylvie had been right. She congratulated herself silently. “You’re the best,” she said.

He said, “I knew that no matter what else she did, as soon as she hit town, they would see each other. He could hardly have her come all the way down here after six years to save his ass and not even thank her. It just wouldn’t be natural. And from our point of view, I knew he was going to be perfect. The one you want to shadow isn’t some cop who follows people for a living, and is perfectly capable of noticing you and getting you arrested. It’s the sorry bastard who spends his time in a restaurant chopping onions.”

Sylvie kept herself from speaking. At times she felt amazement at how egocentric men were. It had not yet occurred to him that he owed her a share in the congratulations. Killing Wendy Harper had not been a matter of following a lovesick chef from La Cienega to Greenbelt Street and sitting behind a bush waiting for a chance to pop an unsuspecting woman. There had been plenty of effort and frustration for Sylvie, too.

Paul seemed to notice that she wasn’t seconding everything he said anymore. “But I can’t take all the credit. You did a great job on this, too, Sylvie. Really.”

She detected in herself a perverse urge to bait him, to say, “Oh? What did I do?” She knew by now that he would say something patronizing: “What? Oh, a lot. You were with me all the way.” She forced herself to forgo the opportunity to make herself irritated and miserable. That was another skill she had picked up during a long marriage. She could see quarrels coming from a great distance, could play them out in her mind to confirm that there was nothing for her to gain, and then decline them. “You’re sweet, Paul.”

She swerved into the turn at Beverly Glen, crossed the intersection at the Cadillac dealership onto Tyrone, and kept going north toward home. She moved up the back streets until she came to Vanowen, and then followed it west nearly to their house. She was thinking ahead. In less than a day, they could be on their way to Madrid.

She drove up to the house and pulled into the driveway. It was late afternoon now, and other people in the neighborhood would be getting home soon. That felt good. She loved living a secret life while appearing to be doing exactly what other people did. She pushed the button on the opener and watched the garage door roll up. She drove in, turned off the engine, and closed the door behind them. “We finally killed the bitch, and now we’re home free. I love it, and I love you.” She leaned over and kissed Paul’s cheek.

“I love you, too,” Paul said. “Just one more thing, and we’ll be on our vacation.”

They got out and Sylvie went to unlock the kitchen door. Paul brought the rifle and ammunition in. He said, “All we really have to do is go pick up our million bucks.”

“You don’t mean now, tonight?”

“Sure I do. We did the job, and he said he’d collect the money and have it waiting. That was the arrangement.”

“But we don’t need to have a million dollars in cash tonight. It’s silly. I wouldn’t even know where to put it all. We’ve already got so much cash for the trip that I’m worried about it.”

“It’s not important where we put it,” Paul said. “We’ll shove it under the bed, or in the oven or something until we can put it into safe-deposit boxes. That isn’t the point. We go to pick it up tonight because we don’t want to give Scott Schelling a few days to dream up a way to keep us from collecting. We don’t have to be rude about it, or anything—just cool and businesslike. We show up and say, ‘We did what you asked, and here we are. Time to pay. Bye-bye.’”

Sylvie nodded. “Okay. Give me a chance to change.”

“I’ve got to get this rifle ready to dump before we go see Schelling.”

“Okay.” Sylvie went off to take another shower and dress. She knew that they were going to be out late tonight, so she selected a pair of black pants and a black pullover and black shoes. Black was always right in these ambiguous evening situations, and she looked good in black.

When she came out of the shower, Paul was in the bedroom already dressed in a pair of nicely pressed gray pants, a dark blue shirt, and a black jacket.

“You don’t need to get dressed. You look incredible.” He plucked the towel off her, then put his arms around her and held her there.

“I’m cold. Cut it out. I want to get dressed. This isn’t the time.” She held herself rigid, her back hunched over.

He kept his arms around her for two more seconds, as though she might relent, then let her go. “I suppose it’s not.” He turned and walked out of the bedroom. She felt relieved for a few seconds because he intended to leave her in peace. She knew she had hurt his feelings, and knew that she shouldn’t have been quite so insensitive to his mood. He was still feeling manic about their difficult victory, their sudden freedom from that awful job.

She should have been flirtatious and teasing, and made him go away feeling good about her. Instead she had fended him off clumsily, so she had looked unattractive, and actually stood there like a statue, like a symbol of frigidity. As she dressed, she cursed herself for being so slow to think. It was just that she had been forcing herself to face her tension about Scott Schelling, and fear was not an aphrodisiac.

Sylvie finished dressing, then did her makeup and hair, unable to stop thinking about her foolish miscalculation. She went out looking for Paul. She found him in the kitchen wearing a pair of surgical rubber gloves, dismantling the rifle he had used on Wendy Harper this afternoon. The scope, the ammunition and the magazine had been removed and put away, probably in the gun safe. He had the barrel off, the bolt and the receiver out, and he had dismantled the action so the trigger, sear and spring were on the table.

She came up behind him and kissed the back of his neck. He didn’t move. “I’m sorry, Paul. I’m in love with you. I didn’t mean to be unfriendly.” She had her hands on his shoulders. She kept them there and leaned down to kiss his cheek. She could feel his jaw muscle working, and it frightened her. He was beyond feeling upset and unappreciated, he was angry. She walked around him, knelt on the kitchen floor in front of him and spoke softly, her hands on his knees and moving upward. “Don’t be hurt.” She looked up at him. “Oh. I just thought of something that might make you feel better.” She undid his belt.

Later, when it was over, Paul seemed happy and relaxed again. She watched him take the pieces of the rifle and put them in a plastic trash bag so he could drop them in a Dumpster on the way to see Scott Schelling. Sylvie was feeling confident. She had been very foolish before, but at least she’d had the presence of mind to fix things. Letting Paul stay angry would have been a mistake.

She walked around the house checking to be sure everything was locked or turned off. When she had verified that things were as she wanted them, she joined Paul in the garage, watched him engage the deadbolt, and got into the car.

As Paul backed the car out of the garage, she said, “So we’re off. Do we know where we’re going?”

“Yes. We’re going to his office first. If he isn’t there, he’ll be at home.”

“Where is Crosswinds Records?”

“Burbank, on Riverside. You know where all those other companies are—Warner Records, the Disney Channel and DIC and all that stuff? It’s right along there in one of those buildings.”

He drove eastward on the Ventura Freeway to the 134 Freeway and got off on Buena Vista, then parked the car off Riverside in the lot beneath Dalt’s Restaurant. Instead of taking the elevator into the restaurant, they walked up the entrance ramp to the street. They kept going along Riverside until they came to one of the tall buildings of reflective glass that had sprouted oddly on the island between Alameda and Riverside, like a mirage in the midst of the old one-story stores and restaurants. “This is the one,” Paul said. “Let’s look around.”

Sylvie understood. Looking around meant assessing the security. It was nearly dark, and the street lamps had come on, but it was easy to stay in the dimmer spaces away from them. The building was like the others, all glass and steel and hard corners, set right on the sidewalk a few feet from the curb. When they walked past the front door, she could see into the lobby, where two men sat behind a counter. Above them was a sign that said, “Please check in,” and the counter was situated so nobody could reach the elevators in the alcove beyond without being seen. Sylvie said, “This isn’t looking simple, is it?”

“It’s not impossible. Let’s try the easy way first. Keep walking.” Paul took out his cell phone and a piece of paper, and dialed the number on it. “Hello,” he said. “I’d like to speak with Mr. Schelling, please.”

The woman on the other end had a silky, calm voice of the sort that made people put up with more delay and neglect than they had believed they could. “May I ask what this refers to?”

She had lost him. He said, “It’s a personal call, and he’s expecting it. I’m a friend of his, and my name is Paul.”

“One moment, please.” There was a delay so long that he wondered if she had answered another line and forgotten about him. Just as he considered ending the call and starting over again, she was back. “I’m afraid he can’t speak with you right now, but he asked if you could meet him after he finishes his conference.”

“Where does he want to meet?”

“He suggested Harlan’s, just down the street from the Crosswinds offices. Do you know where that is?”

“Yes. What time?”

“Can you be there in thirty minutes?”

“Tell him I’ll be there.”

“He’ll meet you at the back entrance by the parking lot.”

Paul disconnected and kept walking beside Sylvie. “His secretary says he wants to meet us at that restaurant down the street—Harlan’s. She says he’ll come in the back door in a half hour.”

Sylvie shrugged. “It’s sort of a dark place inside. It’s got booths, and it’s probably not such a bad place to hand over some money.”

“Maybe not. I don’t like letting him choose the place, though. Let’s go check it out before he gets there.”

“Do you want to bring the car?”

“No, let’s keep it out of sight.”

They walked up Riverside past Bob’s Big Boy, a forties-era burger restaurant with a huge chubby-cheeked boy in front. On Friday nights the parking lot of Bob’s was full of people who had brought customized antique cars for other aficionados to admire. At the next block, they turned and began to walk along the alley behind the stores and restaurants on the north side of Riverside. To their left were the back entrances, and on the right were the parking lots.

Harlan’s was a low wooden building that looked as though it belonged on a wharf. Paul said, “He’ll be here in about twenty-five minutes. What do you think of the place?”

“I don’t know. There are a lot of people making a lot of noise down the street and in the front, but it’s pretty deserted back here. I don’t like it.”

“Neither do I. What do you want to do?”

“Anything. I’ll be perfectly happy to write off the money, get in the car, and head for the airport.”

“We may have to do that yet. Let’s go across the street to Marie Callender’s and watch the parking-lot entrance from there. If he drives in, we’ll see him.”

“All right.” They walked back along the alley a few steps, and a big beige Chevrolet sedan swung into the lot from the other end, its front end bobbing upward at the bump and then down, the headlights flashing in Sylvie’s eyes. The car stopped ahead of them, idling. When Sylvie shaded her eyes, she could see the driver was a tall man wearing a red tie and sport coat. A shorter, darker man sat in the passenger seat. The driver opened his door and got out. “Mr. and Mrs. Turner?”

Sylvie whispered to Paul, “Get ready.”

Paul called back to the man, “What can I do for you?”

“Would you come with us, please? We’re here to take you to the meeting.”

Paul and Sylvie had already begun sidestepping apart. “That’s not the arrangement.”

“It’s a precaution. All you have to do is get in the car.”

Sylvie had her gun in her hand inside the jacket pocket. She glanced at Paul, and she could see that his longer legs had carried him to the other side of the car. His right hand was at his belt, and his knees were slightly bent. Sylvie selected her targets. She would fire first at the man who had gotten out, then at the shorter, dark-haired man in the passenger seat, who seemed to have a bandaged head. Sylvie would have little time to react, so she moved her eyes from one to the other, practicing.

Paul said, “I’m not comfortable with this. Call him and tell him.”

The man who was standing beside the car said, “We’re police officers, and you’re going to have to come with us.” He opened his coat to reach for a gun, and Sylvie caught sight of a badge. The man in the passenger seat flung the door open on the other side of the car.

Sylvie shot the man who was holding his coat open, then dropped to her knees and fired into the passenger seat at the dark-haired man while Paul fired into the windshield.

The short, dark man was wounded, but he managed to slide into the driver’s seat and step on the gas pedal. The car lurched ahead at Paul, but he jumped aside and fired three more rounds. The car coasted a few feet, then bumped into a fence made of steel cables strung between poles, and stopped at the edge of the parking lot.

Paul yanked the driver’s door open, dragged the dead man out onto the ground, and took his place. Sylvie climbed into the back seat. Paul drove the car down the alley, up Riverside for a couple of blocks, and then turned to the side street and drove until they were back on the street behind Dalt’s. He pulled to the curb and wiped off the steering wheel and door handles. They climbed out and walked down the ramp to the parking lot beneath the building, and drove out in their black BMW.

They raced along Riverside to Barham, then past the Warner Brothers studios over the hill to the freeway entrance. Paul muttered, “Jesus. Fake cops. I can’t believe I let him set us up like that.”

“That’s really about all I can take,” Sylvie said. “This has been nothing but misery.”

“Giving up?”

“No. But I’m not sure what I’m after is going to be money.”