Mortal Pursuit

26

Charles sat very still, absorbing the news with something like indifference, all emotional reaction on hold.

“Saw your face,” he echoed blankly.

“Yes, Mr. Kent.” Charles had always liked hearing his own name, but not the way Cain said it, as if a Kent were some species of flatworm. “My handsome face.”

Charles felt his mouth twitch in imitation of a smile. That was a little joke Cain had just told. Not a very funny joke, but then neither of them was laughing.

Cain might have been handsome once, with his arresting gray eyes and wolfish smile, his square chin and brush-cut blond hair-until the knife had done its work. Charles had never asked about the details, but the essence of the story was written in the jagged diagonal scar that ran from Cain’s right temple to the left corner of his mouth like a badly knitted seam.

And Ally had seen that face, that scar.

“How” Charles whispered. “How did she … see you”

“That doesn’t matter now.”

It was not like Cain to be evasive.

Charles leaned forward slowly. “What did you do to her”

“I didn’t hurt her.”

“Did you … did you try…”

“She would have been better off,” Cain said without expression, “if she’d let me.”

Delayed emotion finally kicked in. A spasm of anger propelled Charles half out of his chair, hands bunched into fists.

Perhaps the fact that Cain did not move, did not flinch or frown, did not even do him the small courtesy of making some conciliatory gesture or remark-perhaps that was the reason he hesitated, then sank back down, palms flat against his thighs.

When he spoke again, his voice was toneless and dull. “She can identify you.”

“Yes.”

“She’ll be interviewed by a police artist. There’ll be a sketch …”

“They won’t need a sketch.” Cain paced, big arms swinging. Charles had seen those arms uncovered-hairy, prison-buffed, laced with popped veins. “Just a description.”

He was right. The local police had modem access to data bases of known felons in several counties. A keyword search would cull the names and mug shots of all facially scarred white males of the appropriate age.

Cain would be on that list.

“They’ll I.D. me in a half hour,” Cain said as if tracking his thoughts. “Then they’ll look into my past. And find you.”

“Bakersfield,” Charles whispered.

“You.”

Two years ago Charles had read a brief write-up in the Santa Barbara News-Press on a brutal beating in Bakersfield, a matter of local interest only because the victim was a Santa Barbara man on a business trip.

The man had stumbled on a thief breaking into his rented Dodge in a parking garage, and had tried to be a hero. When paramedics reached him, he was nearly comatose from blood loss. His assailant most likely had left him for dead.

But he recovered, and having seen his assailant’s face-his scarred face-he identified a known felon named Cain.

Even then Charles had begun to fantasize about tonight’s operation. From his rap sheet Cain had sounded like precisely the sort of man he would need. And so Charles offered to relieve the overworked public defender of the case.

Barbara and Ally, passing the summer at a seaside retreat in Majorca, never knew about the week Charles spent in Bakersfield, holed up in a cheap motel where he wouldn’t be recognized, breathing smog and defending Cain.

Cain was guilty, of course, but Charles had no qualms about that. Nearly all the hotshot drunk-driving movie executives and wife-beating record producers he defended were guilty too. His challenge was to persuade the jury that Cain had been wrongly identified.

The scar was the only detail the battered victim recalled. In a day and a half of cross-examination Charles got the poor bandaged son of a bitch to admit that the scar might have run from right to left or from left to right, might have ended at the assailant’s mouth or continued down his chin, might have been straight or curved. The garage lighting had been poor, the encounter brief and violent, and the victim’s concussion might have altered his memory.

On the stand, Cain swore he’d gone straight. He’d been in Indio that night, two hundred fifty miles southeast of Bakersfield. A disinterested witness, a girlishly lisping young lady named Lilith, confirmed his alibi.

The jury set Cain free. Justice, American style.

Charles asked nothing for his services, merely requested that Cain keep in touch. If he could mail a card to a post office box in Ventura now and then, updating the phone number where he could be reached, Charles might make it worth his while someday.

Someday had arrived. And now everything was going wrong, spiraling out of control.

The cops would look into Cain’s past and learn that his attorney in the battery case had been Charles Kent. Charles could say it must be a coincidence or some sort of twisted revenge on Cain’s part, but the police wouldn’t buy it. Coincidences of that kind didn’t happen.

Anyway, why would Cain want revenge against a man who’d obtained his acquittal Why had Charles gone all the way to Bakersfield to take a pro bono case Why had he stayed in an obscure motel instead of his customary lavish accommodations Why hadn’t he deducted his traveling expenses as a charitable contribution on his 1040 form

And when investigators looked into his bank accounts, when they discovered the recent liquidation of a $100,000 certificate of deposit six months before maturity-when they learned of an account in Cain’s name in Carlsbad, New Mexico, which had been credited with a matching deposit the next day-then they would have more than questions for him.

They would have handcuffs.

Two dead cops. Automatic death penalty.

It was unfair. He hadn’t pulled the trigger, had never wanted them to die. Even so, he was an accomplice, and when Cain and his crew of thugs went down, Charles would go too.

“What are we going to do” he whispered. “There’s no way out.”

“Sure there is.” The cool authority of Cain’s tone prompted Charles to lift his head. “Your daughter is the problem. If she doesn’t talk, we’re in the clear.”

Charles didn’t understand. Cain was speaking nonsense.

Of course Ally would talk. Why wouldn’t she talk

Unless …

It struck him like a blow. He sank deeper into the chair, overstuffed cushions swallowing him. The ceiling fan spun slowly, and the den spun with it in dizzy circles.

“My God,” he croaked.

“She has to die, Mr. Kent.”

It was obvious, of course. He should have seen it instantly. There was a harsh, brutal logic to the idea, a mathematical inevitability.

“No,” he said in a quiet voice.

“I understand.” Cain spoke almost kindly, as if he were Charles’s old friend and not a hired assassin. “It’s one thing to set up your rich bitch of a wife … and something else to ice your own kid.”

“Something else. Yes.”

And it was. Killing Barbara was ugly and coarse and unpleasant, but not unthinkable. He had, in fact, contemplated the possibility for years, though he might never have acted had their marriage not deteriorated to the point where she was threatening divorce.

If she left him, she would take Ally with her-and, no less important, the Ashcroft fortune, twenty-five million dollars in real estate, securities, and assorted liquid assets, not to mention miscellaneous baubles of the sort littering the rosewood table.

He would be left with visitation rights and the earnings from his law practice, sizable earnings but trivial in comparison with what he would lose.

There was another way to end their marriage. At the wedding ceremony they had vowed, “Till death do us part.”

Should Barbara die under any remotely suspicious circumstances, her husband would be the obvious suspect. But suppose one evening a gang of armed men broke into the estate and took the Kents and their dinner guests hostage. Suppose the house was trashed, the prisoners terrorized. Suppose the night of terror climaxed in Barbara’s attempted rape-and when she resisted, she paid with her life.

Even in the unlikely event that the police became suspicious, they could prove nothing.

To protect Ally, Charles had wanted her out of the house for the evening. Lately, he’d argued to Barbara, their daughter had been too moody, too unpredictable. And there had been that incident at the Carltons’ Christmas party, when she had yelled and made a scene.

But Barbara, in misguided loyalty to her daughter, had insisted on having her present. And now Ally had seen Cain’s face, and she would have to be …

His mind censored the completion of that thought.

Head lolling, he stared at the floor. A black duffel bag lay alongside the chair, the flaps unzipped. Amid the confusion of gear inside, there was one recognizable object: the handle of a gun. One of those Austrian pistols Cain and his crew were toting. Glocks. This must be a spare.

A gun like that would end his daughter’s life as soon as he gave the word.

Would Cain put it in her mouth That was how he’d promised to do Barbara.

He remembered the big man talking, laughing, as they sat together in Charles’s BMW, parked at the Oxnard marina after dark.

Your wife’s gonna suck my pistol, Mr. Kent, he’d said with a crooked smile. Bet I can get off just watching her. And when I come-she goes.

Yes, Barbara could die that way. But not Ally. Not Ally.

“Not Ally,” he said aloud. “Not her. It’s … it’s out of the question. I refuse to permit it.”

“Permit” Cain laughed. “I don’t need your permission.”

“You work for me.”

“But I won’t die for you. I’m going to do this. I only wanted to get things straight between us so there wouldn’t be any misunderstanding later, when the rest of the money comes due.”

The rest of the money. Five million dollars to be parceled out to Cain and his associates over the next five years.

“You think I’ll pay you,” Charles asked incredulously, “for murdering my daughter”

“You’ll pay.” And suddenly Cain closed in fast and gripped Charles by the shoulders and shoved him hard against the headrest. “Or I’ll come after you next.”

The grip of his gloved hands tightened, and Charles felt the raw power of this man’s fingers, fingers that could dose over his throat in an instant and crush his windpipe like a paper straw.

A wild fantasy bloomed in his thoughts. Wait for Cain to release him, then snatch the Glock out of the duffel and shoot him, yes, just shoot the sociopathic son of a bitch.

But if he did, Cain’s accomplices in the next room would kill him for it.

Anyway, he couldn’t murder anybody. That is, not with his own hands. He could order it done, he could pay for it, but to do it himself … to do it personally … physically …

He groped for the delicate distinction that eluded him.

“You’ll pay,” Cain said again, a feral edge to his voice, and Charles understood that he was in the presence of a man who never made fine distinctions of conscience, a man who was more than his match in any violent contest.

That man was his contractual agent in name only.

Tonight, in every way that mattered, it was Cain who was in charge.

“Well, Mr. Kent”

Beaten, Charles nodded, retaining just enough dignity to do it slowly. “I’ll pay.”

“And Ally will die.”

He couldn’t answer that.

“I want to hear you say it. I want us to have a verbal agreement. It’s as good as a written contract in this kind of deal.”

“I … I can’t …”

“You can.” Cain shook him roughly. “Face reality. You’re not backing out now. You’re in for the duration. So here’s the new plan: I pop your wife and your kid. Two for the price of one. What do you care You’ll be dirty rich. You can buy yourself a brand-new baby girl to bounce on your goddamned knee.”

The words were too cruel, there couldn’t be this much malice in the world, and Charles couldn’t take it anymore, couldn’t endure the flood of memories the words released-his newborn daughter wailing in the doctor’s hands, a caul pasted to her red face-seven years old and flying higher, still higher, on the swing that once stood out back-thirteen and delivering the valedictory address at her eighth grade graduation, so proud in her cap and gown.

Replace her A new daughter He couldn’t do it, couldn’t stand it, and most of all he couldn’t stand knowing that he would let it happen, because he had no choice, and because he was afraid, deathly afraid of this man Cain, and afraid of himself for unleashing Cain on his family-stupid, so stupid-the money didn’t matter now, nothing mattered except Ally, and it was too late for her.

Shaking, Charles clutched his head in both hands and wept.