Silence

44

SCOTT SCHELLING SLOUCHED in the back seat of the taxicab, watching the buildings, the cars, the streets sliding past his window. He was in a state deeper than weariness. When he had come off the plane, he had turned on his phone, heard the message indicator chirping, and turned it off again, something he rarely did. He liked to know the latest, liked to be alert, liked to be taking in information, gobbling it and then sending it back changed, a solution to each problem, an answer to each question.

But tonight was different.

Wendy Harper was dead. He had endured the long period of fear and used it in intense, concentrated work, the quiet building of his power and knowledge. He had let other people share in the credit to make them into allies. He had always chosen carefully and consciously who these people would be: whom he would push into positions of prominence, and which adversaries he wanted them to weaken and defeat. He had studied and planned, and now he had found his way to Jill Klein. She was going to be—already was—important to him. This morning—Saturday morning—when Ray Klein had flown to New York to get back to running the conglomerate, Jill had returned to Scott’s hotel room in Santa Fe, already full of ideas and plans for raising Scott’s status.

Early in the morning she had actually begun taking thank-you calls for the dinner party from her friends, members of the board of directors and their wives, major shareholders. She had used this chance to mention how impressed this person or that person had been with Scott Schelling. She was far too clever to say she’d even spoken with Scott alone: She was only repeating the impressions other people had conveyed to her as hostess. By now she had built the impression of a consensus. Anyone who had not made it his business to get to know Scott Schelling, well, you simply had to wonder about anybody like that. It was a small step, but it was the right step, and it could only have been taken on this particular day, when many of the guests had seen Scott for the first time, and he could still be a topic. Jill’s years as a corporate wife had given her a feel for what to do and when to do it, and Scott was her new beneficiary.

The houses were getting bigger and the cars newer and more expensive. The cab was entering his neighborhood now. The streets and sidewalks were clean, the trees tall and old, the lawns broad and green.

He would get a few hours’ sleep and then go to the office and begin making things happen. He would set up a Sunday meeting with the heads of publicity and fan relations and get them going on the new project. They had done it a hundred times before, and now they would do it for him. He envisioned the whole campaign. There would be an article in a magazine: an exclusive interview with the modest genius of pop music, Scott Schelling of Crosswinds. It would be a campaign that built slowly and subtly. The publicity people could feed the reporter statements from all of the current Crosswinds talent about how brilliant he was. It would work because it always worked.

After that, he would be offered television appearances. His PR people would let the cable networks know that he was available to serve as a talking head about music, popular trends, and celebrities. There was no reason to worry about high visibility anymore: Wendy Harper was dead. He would throw parties and invite the cream of the industry, then feed the fan magazines. Once photographs of stars taken “at Scott Schelling’s party” began to appear regularly, he would become familiar to the hard-core fan demographic.

Scott stopped himself from thinking too far ahead. This wasn’t the time, and it was not his job, anyway. Crosswinds had the best publicity people in the business, and they had actually improved since Aggregate had taken over. Scott had been able to get them more money to work with. Music was a business that was almost entirely a matter of creating stampedes, but his first bosses—the ones he had replaced—had been incredibly shortsighted and stingy about publicity. Ray Klein had a larger perspective, and he had not flinched at Scott’s budget requests.

For about the tenth time in the past two days, Scott realized that he actually respected Ray Klein. He was a good businessman, and he wasn’t really such a bad man to work for. Scott just didn’t like a boss—any boss. Ray Klein held power over him and made him afraid of losing what he had. Ray Klein stood in the way of his getting more.

There was the house. The gate was open, and in the space near the side of the house he could see Carl’s car. The cabdriver stopped outside the open gate, but Scott said, “Go on in. Let me off at the door.”

The driver backed up a few feet and then drove up the long cobbled driveway to the broad, flat space at the front. Scott got out and handed the driver a fifty-dollar bill, which was at least a twenty-dollar tip he didn’t deserve. “Keep it,” he said. When he was in the public eye in the next few months, he didn’t want cabdrivers giving interviews about how cheap he was. The driver lifted the suitcase out of his trunk, set it on the ground carefully, extended the handle for him, got into his car, and drove away.

Scott took a moment to look at his house. Carl had left the gate open for him, which meant that he must have called the hotel and found he’d checked out. Carl’s presence here meant that everything must have gone well. He took out his keys and unlocked the door, pushed it open and pulled his suitcase into the dimly lighted foyer.

The first thing Scott saw was the silhouette of a woman. Could Jill have flown here instead of New York to surprise him? The woman stepped toward him and he saw the gun. The woman’s voice was different from Jill’s. It was harsh, unfriendly. “You must be Scott.”

“That’s right. Who are you?”

“I’m Sylvie Turner. And right behind you is Paul.”

Paul was almost at Scott Schelling’s ear when he spoke. “Pleased to meet you, Scott. Welcome home. On Friday night your secretary said you were in a meeting. She didn’t say it was in another state.”

“Yes. I had some business in Santa Fe.”

“I guess you know what we’re here for.” Sylvie stepped closer. She was taller than Scott, and she looked down at him in an eager, predatory way that made Scott uncomfortable, but he didn’t dare to step back.

“I would guess you’re here to get paid,” he said. Carl’s car was parked outside. Where was Carl?

Paul spoke from behind him. “If you’re ready to handle that now, we can take our money and be on our way.”

Sylvie’s face leaned closer, like the face of an apparition in a fun house. “You do have the money, don’t you, Scotty?”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I do. It’s here at the house. I’ll go get it right now.” He began to turn and took a step.

“Stop!” Paul’s voice was like a whip-crack. He said more quietly, “Hold it right there, Scott. Where are you going?”

“The money is outside. In the garage. I was going to get the opener.”

Paul rested his left hand on Scott’s shoulder, and Scott could feel the gun pressed under his right shoulder blade. “You’ve got to be careful around us right now, Scotty. I know you’re used to having people trust you, but we don’t. You were very definite on Friday that you wanted to pay us a million dollars for this job. Then that night your secretary sent us to meet you, and two guys tried to kill us.”

“I’m sorry that happened,” Scott said. “It wasn’t anybody’s fault. Those two were supposed to take you here, and I was going to call and tell them how to find the money to give you. I guess I overestimated them. They must have wanted to rob me.”

Sylvie said, “There’s no need to go into all that now. We’re only interested in collecting our money and going away.”

“That’s exactly what I want. What I’m planning to do now is walk outside to the garage, go in, and get your money. It’s in a suitcase.”

“I hope you don’t mind our going with you,” Paul said. “If we see what you’re doing, neither one of us will be nervous and edgy.”

“All right. Can I go now?”

“Go.”

Scott resumed his walk into the hallway, picked up a remote-control unit, and pressed the button. They heard the hum and rattle of the garage door going up. He set the unit down, then said, “I’m reaching for my keys,” and put his hand in his pocket.

He could see the two of them now. They were both tall, so they seemed in proportion to one another, the woman six or eight inches shorter than the man, but their heads came up almost to the tops of doorways and the bottoms of light fixtures, adding to the impression that they didn’t belong here. Their presence was an invasion of his refuge, and their height seemed freakish. He was eager to be rid of them. “I’m going to walk out to the garage now. There’s nothing out there that you aren’t expecting. No guns or anything.”

“Good,” Paul said. “All we want is a clean deal.”

Scott moved to the front door, stepped out and walked across the cobbled pavement. He could see Carl’s car, and it occurred to him again to wonder about Carl. Maybe Carl had driven in, seen something odd, and decided not to go into the house. Maybe he had gone in, heard the Turners arrive, and hidden somewhere inside. Carl would not want to be stuck in the house with these two and not have the money to pay them.

As Scott thought about it, he realized that he had handled the whole matter badly. He should have made sure the Turners got their money as soon as Wendy Harper had died. In the end, that was what this was going to amount to, anyway, and he could have had Carl make the payoff quickly and efficiently on Friday and averted this mess: having people following him around aiming guns at his back. If one of them tripped on the stupid rustic, uneven cobblestones, Scott was likely to die.

That really had been an act of the old Scott, not the new one. The old Scott had been occupied with small, scuttling, ratlike maneuvers that would keep him safe and still preserve his million dollars. He’d had the film washed from his eyes since then. A million dollars had seemed like so much money a few days ago, but now he knew that it was a small investment that was already bringing him huge benefits. He had to think like a winner.

Scott Schelling went to the garage and stepped to the back of the blue antique Maserati. It was the only car he ever drove himself. Most of the time, he sat in the back of the Town Car and let Carl drive. He felt guilty now, but he had put the suitcase in the Maserati because he hadn’t quite been able to trust Carl.

It wasn’t that Carl had ever been disloyal or dishonest. But part of Carl’s reliability was that Carl was an unimaginative and unambitious man. He was too inert and inactive to form an alliance with Scott’s enemies or concoct some scheme to embezzle. But what if he had found the compact black Tumi suitcase and opened it up? Who knew what Carl’s reaction would be to all of those crisp hundred-dollar bills? Carl was a blue-collar guy. One bill was a dinner for Carl and his blond girlfriend. She worked for the city, so she probably made less than he did. Two bills was a big night out. It was a lot of money to Carl, and it would be staring up at him from the suitcase. He might walk off with it without even taking a moment to think. So Scott had saved him from himself. He had simply put the money in the trunk of the Maserati, where Carl wouldn’t stumble across it.

Scott found the key to the Maserati, inserted it, and unlocked the trunk. For a second, he felt a premonition, a sensation that things were not right. But there was the suitcase, in the middle of the trunk, exactly where he’d left it. He used his thumbs to slide the buttons to the side so the catches would snap open, then lifted the top of the suitcase to reveal neat stacks of hundreds.

He turned to give Paul and Sylvie a look of triumph.

Paul said, “Okay, close it.”

Scott closed the suitcase.

“Bring it into the house.”

Scott lifted the suitcase, closed the trunk and carried the suitcase across the parking area and through the front door into his house. He was disappointed in their reaction. Did they actually plan to sit in his living room counting all those banknotes?

He closed the front door and held out the suitcase so Paul would take it. There seemed to Scott to be a regal quality to a man who was paying anybody a million dollars for any purpose, a natural superiority. Paul took the suitcase, but set it down by his feet.

Scott said, “Look, I’m sure you know that I didn’t count every bill myself. If a bank teller gave you a few hundred extra, keep it. If it’s short, I’ll make it good. You can count it at home.”

“That seems reasonable,” Sylvie said. With relief, Scott Schelling watched her step away from him toward the door.

Once Sylvie was clear, Paul fired into Scott Schelling’s back where he thought the heart should be.