Part Two Turnabout

Chapter Nine Los Angeles: 22 August

1

The receptionist had abundant dark red hair and frosty eye makeup; she had the look of a cocktail hostess in a pricey lounge. “Yes, sir?”

“My name’s Edward Merle. I phoned yesterday.”

“Yes, sir. Your appointment was for ten-thirty.”

“I know, I’m early. I took a chance...”

“Please have a seat? I’ll see if he’s free.”

The reception office was old-fashioned like the lobby of a rail-depot hotel.

The red-haired woman put her headphone down and pulled a cord. “Would you come this way, Mr. Merle?” She gave him a quick smile.

He followed her down a short paneled corridor. She showed him through a door into the corner office.

Diego Vasquez came to his feet.

Shirt-sleeved, tie at half-mast, long sidewise shock of glossy black hair. Vasquez had the incongruous face of an intellectual gone to seed.

The redhead vanished silently. Vasquez sized up his visitor with sad dark eyes. “Mr. Merle.”

The handshake was perfunctory as if Vasquez disliked the touch of flesh. He was thin and not very tall; he looked fragile. How old was he? Fifty?

Vasquez circled his desk and got into the high-backed leather swivel chair, seating himself as if he were a pilot settling at the controls. “How may I be of service?” Courtly, low-voiced — as contrivedly old-fashioned as his surroundings. But the redhead was a giveaway: This was Hollywood country and Image was rarely truthful.

On the wall in a glassed frame was the headline from the Times. FOUR EX–CONVICTS REVEALED DEAD IN VASQUEZ RESCUE OF ACTOR’S KIDNAPPED SON.

Vasquez pinned him with a speculative scrutiny. He prompted: “Sir?”

“It’s rather a confidential matter.” A lame beginning; he wished he hadn’t said it.

“They usually are.” A quick smile that vanished abruptly.

“I want to contract for your services.”

“So I gathered.” Patient, polite; but the eyes became harder.

Spit it out. Get on with it.

But it was the point of no return. Beyond this moment he would be committed.

“My family and I are being — harassed. By gangsters. Members of organized crime.”

“Indeed.”

“I testified against one of them. Some years ago.”

“You’re seeking protection? There are federal agencies that—”

“I’m not seeking protection, Mr. Vasquez.”

“I see.” The brown eyes narrowed. “Wear your hair longer, and take off that recently grown moustache, and yes. The photograph in the Examiner. It’s Mathieson, isn’t it? Fredric Mathieson?”

It jolted him. “Are you always that quick?”

“I read the newspapers, Mr. Mathieson. It’s not every day that a house is blown up in Los Angeles. Why did you come here under a false name?”

“Edward Merle is my real name.”

“Have you got any identification?”

“I’ve got papers in the name of Paul Baxter.”

“Yet a third name. It must be rather confusing for you.”

“Until a few days ago I was Jason W. Greene.” He managed a sliver of a smile.

“I once knew a writer who used nine pen names. Sometimes he forgot his real name.”

“My name is Edward Merle. That’s my real name, it’s the name the mobsters know me under.”

“Then Mathieson is an alias, but you used it for rather a long time, didn’t you.”

“Until a few weeks ago, yes. More than eight years.”

“I see. Let’s see if I can reconstruct this. Your house is bombed by contract killers, presumably. Now it turns out the intended victim has been living under an assumed name and reveals that he testified against a criminal some years ago. You’re not a Valachi type — you don’t have the earmarks of a gangster gone rogue. You’re not a defector from the syndicate, so I must assume you were an innocent witness to some criminal act. Correct?”

“Yes.”

“The whimsies of fate allowed you and your family to survive; but you’ve lost your house and you’ve had to go into hiding again. You’ve had to give up your job and your name for the second time. And apparently the law can’t do a thing to prevent this situation. So you’ve come to Vasquez. Is that a fair summation?”

“Close enough, yes.”

Vasquez searched his face. “What you’ve got in mind takes more than resolve, Mr. Merle.”

“I’ve got more than resolve.”

“What have you got?”

“Time. A great deal of hate.” He reached into his pocket. “And money.” He laid the check on the desk.

Vasquez picked up a pencil and used its eraser to pull the check across the desk to him. He glanced at it. “Twenty thousand dollars. Rather impressive.” He left the check where it was and tapped the pencil against his teeth. “Hate can wear off.”

Mathieson said nothing to that.

“You’re what, an agent for screenwriters?”

“I was, yes.”

“And what was your profession before? When you were Edward Merle.”

“I was a lawyer in New York.”

“Criminal practice?”

“The firm I worked for had mainly business clients.”

“But you did practice criminal law to some extent at least?”

“Now and then. Trivial matters. Sometimes a client would be arrested for assault in a bar, that kind of thing. Once or twice a year we’d take on a felony case for the Legal Aid Society.”

“You had a fairly good practice?”

“I was a junior staff member. Not a very brilliant lawyer, I guess. But yes, I kept busy.”

“Making, say, fifteen or sixteen thousand a year?”

“In that area. Why?”

“I’m trying to hold up a mirror for you. You witnessed some sort of offense perpetrated by an organized crime figure, I take it, and you stepped forward to testify to what you’d seen. Was your life threatened at that time?”

“Yes.”

“Anonymous calls or letters?”

“Yes.”

“Did you seek police protection?”

“Yes.”

“And this led to your being provided by the Justice Department with a new identity. You moved three thousand miles and went into a new profession. Putting it another way, you decided your testimony was important enough to justify sacrificing your law practice and profession, your home, even your name.”

Vasquez leaned back and crossed his legs. “Look in the mirror then, Mr. Merle. A man who distinguishes between right and wrong. A man who believes in the difference between good and evil. A man who believes in justice and law so deeply that he’s willing to make extraordinary sacrifices for the sake of moral principle. Is that a fair picture?”

“Distorted. I never aspired to sainthood.”

“Right now you’re angry. Anger saps the reason. For a while it can neutralize inhibitions. It can even cancel out a man’s deepest sense of moral rectitude — for a while. An angry man can make terrible mistakes. But anger wears off. If yours wears off after you’ve achieved your vengeance, how will you live with yourself?”

“I’ll manage.”

“Sarcasm would appear to be out of place just now. And if your anger wears off before you’ve exacted your revenge, what then? Suppose you find you’ve started something that can’t be recalled?”

“I won’t quit.”

“Naturally you feel that way now. But you may begin to question yourself in time. You’re a grown man whose life has conditioned you to accept certain values. You’ll never escape that conditioning — not for very long.”

Vasquez twirled the pencil in his fingers. “You’ll question things. It may lead to one of two results. Either you’ll become uncertain and your uncertainty will cause hesitation, or you’ll be so corroded and corrupted by your own acts of vengeance that you’ll have destroyed yourself along with your enemies. If the latter, the entire exercise is pointless. If the former then clearly a man who hesitates is more likely to be killed than to kill. I mean that both literally and figuratively. We are talking about killing, aren’t we?”

“No.”

For the first time he saw Vasquez taken aback. “No?”

“I’m not a killer. That’s their style, not mine.”

“Then what did you come to me for?”

“I want training. I want you to teach me how to get them off my back. How to neutralize them so that they never threaten me again.”

“I don’t quite understand.”

“It’s not a job I could hire anybody to do for me. I want you to teach me how to do it myself. Without murdering them.” He felt the unconvincing tautness in his own smile. “The cliché happens to fit. Killing would be too good for them.”

2

Vasquez did not smile. “Tall order, Mr. Merle.”

“I know.”

“Expensive, I should think.”

“Naturally.”

“Time-consuming. Do you have any experience of violence?”

“Infantry, in Korea. I was at Inch̆n.”

“Combat officer?”

“Just a trooper. Private first class.”

“Hardly a decision-making position.” Vasquez looked to one side. “I’ve never attempted anything remotely like what you’re proposing. This isn’t a training academy. And you don’t want them killed. Just what is it that you do want done with them?”

“If I knew the whole answer to that I wouldn’t have had to come to you.”

“I see. Then you don’t really have a plan of action.”

“No.”

“As I said before, it takes more than resolve.” Now the brown eyes came back to him. “How old are you?”

“Forty-four.”

“After twenty years’ office work. Do you smoke?”

“No.”

“Drink?”

“Yes.”

“To excess?”

“Sometimes.”

“How often is sometimes?”

“Too often,” he conceded. “But I’ll go on the wagon.”

“How’s your heart? General physical condition?”

“Good.”

“When was your last physical?”

“About eighteen months ago.”

“Better have a thorough checkup.” Vasquez pulled a yellow legal pad out of a shallow drawer and wrote something at the top of the page, underlining it with a flourish. Then he hesitated. “What do you prefer to be called? Mathieson or Merle?”

“I’ve got used to Mathieson but it was Merle who testified against them. It’s Merle they’re trying to kill and it’s Merle who’s going to stop them.”

Vasquez wrote with his pencil — a swift crabbed hand. He looked up. “Who’s the man you testified against?”

“Frank Pastor.”

Vasquez’s entire face changed when he smiled. He looked boyish. He wrote quickly on the pad. “Just Pastor alone? He’s the one you want?”

“I want Pastor and Ezio Martin and a Washington lawyer named C. K. Gillespie. There may be others. Certainly I want to know who threw the bomb into my house.”

“Enormous job.”

“Of course.”

“It’s a huge organization,” Vasquez said. “You must have seen the news two or three weeks ago — apparently they bought an entire parole board. Pastor walked out of prison, I suppose you knew that.”

“Yes.”

“Do you know anything about these men? Where they live, where their offices are, the patterns of their movements?”

“Not really. The New York area of course. I’m sure they’re insulated by guard dogs and bodyguards and electronic gadgets and God knows what else.”

“Those devices aren’t as formidable as you may think. A man can always be reached. You need only to study the movements until you find patterns. They don’t spend their entire time locked up behind walls and electric fences. They’re active men. They manage a vast industry. They’re always on the move. You can reach them. The hard part is to know exactly what to do when you’ve made contact.” He laid the pencil down. “Normally I wouldn’t touch this with a rake.”

“But?”

Vasquez flipped to a fresh page in the pad and applied his pencil. “I’m going to draw up a contract. I’d advise you give it careful consideration before you sign it.”

“Let’s discuss it first.”

“Discuss what?”

“The terms. Our separate obligations.”

“Nothing to discuss. Either you put yourself in my hands or you don’t. We’ll hold that check of yours in abeyance but I’d like a small retainer from you. I’m licensed to practice law in California and a retainer entitles us to the protections of the privileged-communications statutes. You’re employing me as an attorney and an investigator.”

“Why so cut and dried?”

“It’s the way I work. I’m arbitrary.” Vasquez smiled again, off center. “Take it or leave it.”

Chapter Ten Long Island-Manhattan: 24–25 August

1

Anna made a word on the scrabble board and watched him enter the score. “You look beautiful with hair.”

“I was about to take it off.”

“Please don’t.”

“All this humidity, you sweat. The thing gets hot.”

“You’ll get used to it. You look like a movie star.”

He brooded at his rack of tiles. “I’ve got a seven-letter word here and no place to put it on that stinking board.”

A gust came off the Sound and shook the windows; she heard the rain on the flagstones outside. It ran down the panes in rivulets.

She said, “Time.”

“The hell. I’m going to sit here until I find a place to put it. It’s a lousy board.” He propped his chin in his hands and scowled. “One thing you learn inside. Patience.”

“You can’t take all night. It’s not fair.”

“Nothing’s fair.”

“What’s the matter, Frank? You came home tonight like something with a lit fuse.”

“All right, OK, I’m sorry. Look, I’m calm, everything’s fine. What did you want to talk about?”

“First tell me what’s the matter. Maybe you’ll feel better.”

He took his elbows off the table and leaned back in the chair. The fingers of his right hand slid back and rested against the rim of the table. His index finger tapped two or three times. “What do you think about C.K.?”

“I think he’s got a lot of charm and he’s in a hurry.”

“Maybe too much of a hurry?”

“I don’t know. You were ambitious too, I imagine, when you were his age.”

“He’s not a kid. He’s older than he looks. He ever make a pass at you?”

“He wouldn’t have the nerve.”

“He’s pretty — brash.”

“No, Frank.”

“But he butters you up a lot. I’ve seen him turn on the charm.”

“He’s only making points with the boss’s wife, Frank. Are you jealous?”

“Sure I am.”

“Not of C. K. Gillespie.”

“Well I guess I’m jealous of anything in pants that looks at you twice. You mind?”

“No, I don’t mind. I like that. You haven’t been sitting here working up a rage about me and C.K., have you? Because it’s absolutely—”

“No. It was something else. Forget I said that.”

“It’s Ezio. He’s been putting things in your ear.”

“He might have dropped a remark.”

“Ezio hates C.K. He’d say anything to put a wedge between you and C.K.”

“I know that. What I don’t know is why. The kid ever do anything to him?”

“Not that I know of. But C.K.’s ambitious. He’s young, he’s very button-down, he doesn’t want to spend his life as someone else’s mouthpiece in Washington.”

“That’s what Ezio said. Ezio thinks he wants to carve himself out a piece of the organization.”

“He probably does. Maybe he deserves it.”

“You taking his side now?”

“I’m taking your side. I think C.K.’s useful to you. He’s done good work. He uses his imagination — he’s bright.”

“He takes chances.”

“So do you.”

“I don’t know. He bugs me.”

“He bugs everybody — that’s the way he is. But if you don’t trust him that’s something else, of course.”

“You think I should trust him?”

“I don’t know. But if you’re suspicious of him I think it’s just because of Ezio.”

“Ezio’s one of my closest friends. Christ, he’s a cousin of mine.”

“And how much do you trust him?”

“Well he got in the habit of running the company while I was inside. He didn’t want to give that up, OK, he wouldn’t be human otherwise. Ezio’s a very old-fashioned guy. He was born in Palermo. He’s an important man in the organization, with me or without me — I don’t kid myself about that. You can see how he’d get nervous when he sees a sharp young dude trying to muscle in. Now you and Ezio, you never liked each other at all. I need to keep that in mind too, you know.”

“I’ve never tried to get between you and Ezio.”

“Damn right you haven’t.”

“Frank, what’s bothering you?”

“I guess it’s that Janowicz woman. You know, the secretary in that office. The one C.K.’s been getting this information from.”

“What about her?”

“She’s disappeared. He had a meeting set up with her yesterday she didn’t come. He checked around. She’s gone.”

“On vacation?”

“No. Just gone. Her husband’s gone too. They closed up the house four days ago. Now maybe that means the feds got onto her. If they did they’d have her under cover somewhere and they’d be squeezing her like a lemon. And they’d pack up the husband and put him in a hotel someplace just to keep him out of our reach. Now the thing is, C.K. says she can’t finger him. He says he always wore dark glasses, never met her on his own turf, never gave her his real name. He says there’s no way they could trace him through her. Question is, can I trust him to know what he’s talking about?”

“She’s been missing four days. They haven’t arrested C.K., have they?”

“Of course not.”

“Does he think he’s being watched?”

“No. He said he was looking for that but there’s nobody shadowing him.”

“Then he’s telling the truth, isn’t he? If they knew who he was, they’d have come after him by now.”

“Would they? Sometimes those people try stunts. But either way it doesn’t change the other thing. The other thing is, they squeeze that woman and they find out what she peddled, and it won’t matter who she says she peddled it to — they’ll know it was bought for me. So we start getting federals on the backs of our necks and I really don’t need that kind of horse shit right now.”

“We can live with that. We’ve lived with it before.”

“Maybe. Hell, Benson got shot, Merle’s house got blown up — they had to know that was us. But they’ll never prove any connection and they know it.” His hand dropped off the edge of the table. He scowled at the Scrabble board. “Eight years I had no privacy at all — that’s enough shit for anybody.”

“You could retire. We could move to Switzerland.”

“Sure.” The shade of a smile crossed his face. “You know it makes a difference having you to talk to. A lot of guys — you see Ezio discussing anything with that dame? She hasn’t got two brain cells to rub together. You’re something else, you know, I can talk with you. You’ve got it up here. I got a good bargain.”

2

In the bedroom she watched him peel off the toupee. She laughed at him.

He was feigning ferocity: He stabbed a finger toward her. “I knew I was going to get ridiculed in my own bedroom, I wouldn’t have let you con me into buying this thing.”

She only laughed again. Frank slammed into the bathroom and she heard the buzz of the shaver. She began to undress; she looked at herself in the mirror.

When he came out of the bathroom she was sitting on the bed setting the alarm: He had a morning conference in the city.

He stopped in his tracks and she looked up in alarm. He was staring at her.

“My God, Frank, what’s the matter?”

“Sometimes I look at you, I just get choked up.” The startled look in his eyes gave way to silent laughter. “You’re the damnedest beautiful thing I ever saw.”

It was slow and he was gentle this time; she said, “That was delicious.”

He didn’t reply and for a while she thought he was asleep. Then he said, “You wanted to talk to me. You said you had something you wanted to talk about. So talk.”

“Turn on the light, then.”

“I don’t need lights to hear you talk.”

“I want to see your face.”

“The hell for?” But he switched it on. He was up on one elbow and his face was somewhere between puzzlement and impatience. “What’s this you want to see my face? You going to lay something tough on me?”

“Sure. I’m leaving you for another man.”

When he began to react she burst into laughter. “I’m running away with Ezio.”

He lay back and made a face. “Come off it. Sometimes you pull too many jokes.”

She brought her laughter under control. “I can’t help it. The look on your face.”

“The whole thing, getting me to turn on the light and everything — just for a lousy joke?”

“The thing I wanted to talk to you about. What if we started a family of our own?”

He hiked himself up on his elbow. “You want to get pregnant?”

“I want to make a son for you.”

She couldn’t make out his expression. “Christ sake I’m almost fifty years old.”

“Don’t you want a son, Frank?”

She watched anxiously. He was scowling at the ceiling. “I got to think about that. I’m getting old, you know.”

“The hell you are.”

He turned the light off. In the dark she listened to his breathing.

And then finally he said, “Hell yes.”

He gathered her against him. She couldn’t help it: She cried.

3

The kid bustled around the office like a termite inspector and Ezio stood out of his way by the window looking down into the traffic. He saw it when Cestone double-parked the limousine in front of the building entrance and went around the car to open the door for Frank Pastor. Frank was wearing a light-gray suit and a yellow shirt and looked boyish and foreshortened from this high angle. Ezio watched him disappear into the building.

You could tell a good deal about Frank’s mood by his choice of clothes in the morning. He was wearing something light and colorful today. The meeting was going to be tricky enough; if Frank had been in a bad mood it might have gone awry.

The elevator must have been right there waiting because Frank arrived very quickly. Down in the street Cestone was still waiting for the light to change so he could pull the limousine out into the traffic. Ezio turned away from the window and Frank was in the doorway watching the kid work on a lamp.

“How’s the electronic genius this morning?”

“Morning, Mr. Pastor. Doing just fine, thank you. Nothing to report, I’m happy to say. I’m just about finished up — just want to check out the door hinges before I go.”

“You take your time and do your job,” Frank told the kid. “We’re paying for thoroughness, not speed.”

Frank settled into the leather couch. Ezio said, “That rain last night sure cleaned out the air. You can see clear to Jersey.”

“Beautiful day,” Frank agreed.

The kid picked up his little electronic gizmos and fitted them back into his kit; he closed the case and went toward the door. “See you next week, Mr. Martin. Nice to see you, Mr. Pastor.”

“So long, kid. Thanks.”

The door closed behind him. Frank said, “These kids today, they’re born with printed circuits and transistors in place of skin and bones.”

“You look happy this morning.”

“Well it’s a nice day, you know how it is. Hell, I’m a free man, I got a good business, I got a great wife. I should be unhappy?”

“Sure as hell not.”

Frank said, “What time the others getting here?”

“Ten-thirty. That gives us half an hour. I wanted to talk to you first.”

“What about?”

“Well you know we’ve got a whole octopus out there trying to pin down Merle and those others.” Ezio pulled the big glass ashtray toward him and leaned back in the swivel chair. “There’s something curious that’s come up.”

“You got the jammer running, Ezio?”

“Sure. The kid checked it out and turned it back on.”

“All right. Go ahead.”

Ezio said, “We’re blowing a great deal of money and man-hours on finding those four guys.”

“You want to stop looking for them?” Frank’s voice was soft and dangerous.

“No. I’m just stating a fact.”

“Ezio, we need to nail those four gentlemen. For a lot of very good reasons, as you know.”

“Sure. I’m just saying we’ve got a board of directors to answer to and some of them aren’t — well they maybe don’t understand some of these things. One or two of them may bring it up at the meeting. I’ve already heard a couple of beefs. I mean nobody’s going to make a dime off this deal whether we nail those four guys or not.”

“If we don’t nail them we could lose a lot of dimes in the future. People get the idea they can spit in our faces and get away with it, pretty soon we lose respect.”

“You don’t have to argue it with me, Frank.”

“Who’s been beefing?”

“A couple of the guys. Malone for one.”

“Stupid Mick. Who else?”

“Lorricone.”

“Mittens? He’s beefing? All the shylock skips he’s gone after and maimed?”

“Well he was making some remark about how you cut your losses after you reach a certain point. You figure you’ve driven him out of town, you’ve got him on the run, that’s lesson enough.”

“These four gentlemen spit in my face, Ezio.”

“I know that. But I’d soft-pedal that argument with the board if I were you.”

“You’re not me.”

“It’s likely to come up in the meeting, that’s all. I wanted you to be ready for it.”

“I appreciate that.” Frank crossed his legs. “Now you said there was something curious that came up.”

“It’s about Merle.”

“Go ahead.”

Ezio snapped the gold lighter open and fiddled with it. He felt unnerved by the abrupt coldness of Frank’s voice. “Well I’m not sure about this. It’s all kind of vague. What happened, we sent photographs of Merle and the other three out to a lot of contacts, particularly out on the West Coast.”

“I know all that.”

“Sam Ordway out in Los Angeles, you remember him?”

“Sure.”

“Ordway started up a new racket out there a few years ago. It was while you were away. He’s running a big executive-car operation. You know, they heist cars to order, they deliver them to South Americans and false-front movie producers and some of those fly-by-night livery and leasing outfits. The way it’s set up, they mainly lift the cars from doctors, people like that, and they’ve got a whole chain of body and paint shops scattered around the Southwest and the Coast. They boost a car, it goes straight into the shop. It’s a very smooth operation. Each item is a custom heist — they don’t boost a car until they get an order for that particular kind of car — but it’s pretty big business. All right, it’s just a sideline to Ordway, he’s got a lot of big irons in the fire, but I imagine this one clears something up in six figures every month.”

“What’s this got to do with Merle?”

“Just background, Frank. Ordway runs this executive-car business, he’s involved in interstate car laws, right? It’s FBI jurisdiction. He’s got one or two FBI agents in his pocket. Not big-timers but if orders ever come down to move against his operation he’ll get the word from them in time to move out. These FBI agents also pass on information to him from time to time. They sell it to him for a little extra money.”

“So an FBI agent passed Ordway some information that’s connected with Edward Merle. What was it?”

“Well it seems they’re looking for him.”

“Who’s looking for who?”

“According to Ordway the FBI put out an all-points on Edward Merle, or at least on a guy who looks like him. It looks like Merle but the name is Baxter. Paul Baxter. Now the last name he was running under was Jason Greene. He was using that name up there in Arizona when George Ramiro almost ran him down.”

“You’re sure it’s Merle? Why would the FBI put out an APB on him?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. Evidently it’s not an urgent bulletin. It’s just one of those ordinary daily assignment-sheet items. You know, keep an eye out for this guy and if you spot him report him to headquarters. Now maybe it isn’t Merle at all, but Ordway swears it is.”

Frank reached up to scratch his head and sat up irritably when he touched it; apparently he’d forgotten he was wearing the rug. “Let’s take this through slowly. It’s all assumptions. Assume the government gives Merle another new identity, this Paul Baxter name. Then they put out an all-points for the guy. If we assume Baxter and Merle are the same man, why do they provide him with a new name and then go looking for him? It only makes sense one way. It means Merle walked out on them.”

“Refused their protection, you mean.”

“It sounds that way. And if it’s true it means Merle’s out there in the open. Walking around loose.”

“That’s about the way I had it sized up but I’d like to know whether this guy really is Merle.”

“You get on the horn to Ordway. You tell him to bring his FBI man back in and get that photograph away from him long enough to make a copy of it. I’ve got to see that picture.”

“I’ll get right on that.”

“If they put him on the all-points sheet they must have given a reason.”

“Well it’s just a routine ‘wanted to locate’ bulletin. Agents aren’t even supposed to stop and question him. They’ve been told this Baxter is some guy who’s involved in something to do with film piracy.”

“With what?”

“Film piracy. You know, guys rip off prints of movies, then they sell them to grade-B distribution chains down South or something. It’s one of the petty rackets but the FBI’s in it because it’s interstate. The reason this FBI agent brought it to Ordway, Ordway’s involved in that racket. The word on this Baxter guy is he’s a contact man of some kind and they want to follow him to his sources.”

“It’s a cute story. Maybe it’s true — maybe Baxter’s just Baxter. I need that photograph, Ezio.”

“We’ll get it. I’ll call Ordway right after the meeting.”

Frank uncrossed his legs and put his elbows on his knees. “If it’s Merle, it means he got disgusted with the way they were protecting him. He decided he’d have a better chance on his own. Which is stupid, of course. He hasn’t got that nursemaid any more — what was his name?”

“Bradleigh.”

“He hasn’t got anybody to keep him out of trouble. He’ll make a stupid mistake. Now our problem is to be there when he makes it.”

“How?”

“On his own he’d probably do things Bradleigh would never let him do. For openers he’d probably make contact with his friends. Not anybody here in New York, that goes back too long ago, but friends he made in Los Angeles. Have you got that list?”

“Right here in the drawer.” Ezio opened it and took out the Merle file.

“Find out who his closest friends were.”

“All right.”

“Then put people on them. Bug their phones too.”

“My God, Frank, that could be an enormous operation. Cost us a fortune.”

“It’s eight of my years we’re talking about.”

“I’ll do it, Frank, but it’s up to you to convince the board. It’s their money too.”

Frank’s eyes went from point to point and suddenly shifted toward him and he felt pinned against the chair.

“Frank, all I’m saying is, if it was me I don’t think I could talk them into it. But you’re better than I am at convincing people.”

“I wish you’d put your mind on your job and find me Edward Merle.”

“We found him before. We can do it again.”

“I know you can, Ezio. I have every confidence in you.” Frank’s smile filled him with gloom.

Chapter Eleven California: 27 August-5 September

1

When the brown Cadillac crunched to a stop Mathieson went down from the cabin to meet it. Jan went with him; Roger and Amy waited by the cabin. The two boys were inside manufacturing something out of Billy’s Erector Set.

Diego Vasquez stepped out of the car. He smiled when Mathieson introduced him to Jan. “A great pleasure indeed.” Vasquez bowed over her hand.

Jan was bemused. There was a chilly precision in Vasquez’s deep voice that was out of kilter with the elegance of his attitudes. He still made Mathieson uneasy.

They went up toward the cabin. Walking behind them, Mathieson was surprised to realize Vasquez was no taller than Jan.

There was a round of introductions. Amy was captivated at once. The boys came out to meet Vasquez and they were impressed; they were inured to celebrities but Vasquez had an odd anachronistic flamboyance. After a while Mathieson knew what it reminded him of: radio voices from the age of fustian — Murrow, Alex Dreier, Kaltenborn, Westbrook Van Voorhis. It was with transparent reluctance that Roger gathered Amy and the boys and bundled them off on the pretext of casting a pool. The four of them went down the trail into the pines, fishing poles bobbing, lugging their picnic.

“I’ve enjoyed some of his films,” Vasquez said. “I’ve never decided whether he’s a competent actor but I rather doubt that matters. He cuts an impressive figure on the screen.”

Mathieson said, “You know he was a rodeo champion before he came to Hollywood.”

“It’s more than horsemanship, I’m sure.” Vasquez settled into one of the weathered rockers and glanced up at Jan. She stood with her hands in the pockets of her sheepskin coat, one shoulder tipped against the log pillar that supported the porch overhang. She watched Vasquez with tight expectant eyes. Vasquez put his whole attention on Jan. “May I assume you concur in your husband’s decision?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“You said that a bit casually, Mrs. — what name should I use?”

“I don’t care. Suit yourself.”

“You’re tense. I’m sorry — I’m sure my presence only exacerbates that.”

She didn’t reply; she took her hands out of her pockets and folded her arms, hugging herself against the mountain chill.

Vasquez said gently, “I really ought to know how to address you.”

She glanced at her husband. “Jan Mathieson.”

“Thank you.” Vasquez tipped the rocker back, crossed his legs and folded his hands in his lap. He looked comfortable — in command, fully assured. “You’ve had nasty experiences. It’s natural that you should be troubled by great anxieties. We hope to allay those.”

“I hope you can.”

“My staff is already at work. My organization is rather unusual as you may know. You may have been misled by publicity. The news media pay attention only to climaxes. To the public I’m sure some of our operations appear reckless. I’d like to assure you that isn’t the case. It may appear otherwise but we’ve never jeopardized innocent people. The Stedman kidnapping was a case in point. The media made it appear that the boy only escaped by great good luck. This wasn’t the case. At no time was there any risk of the boy’s coming under fire. Our movements were coordinated and prepared down to the inch. We had the camp under visual and electronic surveillance for sixteen hours before the moment came when we knew the boy had been left alone, temporarily, in his hut. That was when we made our move, and our first objective was the hut itself — to make sure the boy was protected. Corralling the kidnappers was only the secondary objective. Do you follow my drift?”

“Yes.”

“The primary objective in your case is to insure the safety of you and your son. I won’t expose you or the boy to risk, and I won’t permit you to expose yourselves to it. As for your husband, he must make up his own mind as to the limits of risk; we’ll conform to his decision in the matter. You’ve decided to counterattack those who have attacked you. This ambition is laudable only if it has a reasonable chance of success. There’d be no point in approaching it as a kamikaze mission. Does this coincide with your view?”

“I suppose so.”

“You have reservations.”

“It’s a last resort, isn’t it. This whole madness. I’d be a fool if I held out much hope.”

“I understand your depression. But the forecast isn’t as bleak as you may believe.”

The wisp of a polite smile fled across Jan’s mouth. Mathieson looked away in distress.

Vasquez said, “It’s an oversimplification to state that every man has a weakness that can be exploited. What is true is that criminals like Frank Pastor are particularly vulnerable to pressure. They appear formidable but in some ways they can be reached much more easily than can honest citizens.”

“Honest citizens don’t retaliate by blowing up houses.”

“To be sure. But we’ve got to push your enemies back to the corner of the chessboard and achieve, if not checkmate, at least stalemate. At the moment it’s you who are in check.”

“That much I understand.”

“The tactics remain to be defined. The strategy, however, is quite clear — to make it so costly for Pastor to persevere in harassing you that he will withdraw his threat and leave you in peace.”

Jan smiled wryly. “Even the federal government hasn’t been able to do a thing about it with its thousands of agents and billions of dollars.”

“Offhand I can point out three specific advantages we have over the police and the federal government. One, we don’t need to secure ironclad evidence before we can move against them. Two, our actions can’t be deflected or frustrated by their efforts to subvert the judicial and enforcement machinery by corrupting officials. Three, we don’t need to obey the law.”

“That’s very glib.” Jan was watching Vasquez, holding his glance too long; it became a challenge. “Suppose we put ourselves in your hands. Suppose Frank Pastor approaches you and offers to outbid us. How do we know you won’t sell yourself?”

“I’m an attorney,” Vasquez murmured. “You and your husband are my clients. It would be an obvious conflict of interests.”

“But you consider yourself above the law. That’s what you’ve just said.”

“Unhappily there’s a distinction between statutory law and moral law. I flout the one with unfortunate regularity. I am bound by the other with absolute rigidity.”

“It doesn’t cost you anything to say that, does it.”

Vasquez turned his hands apart, palms out. “Then we’re at an impasse. The only way you can determine whether you can trust a man is to trust him and see what happens.”

She only brooded at him. Vasquez said at last, “I’ve taken you on and I won’t sell you out. It would be fruitless to offer further assurances than that. Either you believe it or you don’t.”

“The moral law you’re so concerned with — in your case it seems to include cold-blooded murder.”

“Don’t believe everything you read.”

“That’s an evasion.”

“Mrs. Mathieson, I might be able to influence you by proffering slick rationalizations about the differences between murder and execution, or justifiable homicide — self-defense — that is to say, by pointing out that the Commandment against homicide is hedged with innumerable exceptions. I’ve killed human beings, yes. I haven’t killed many.” He lowered his head. “It’s fair to say only that I can’t answer to your conscience — I can answer only to my own. It is clear.”

In the same subdued voice and without lifting his head Vasquez said, “You’ve got to make a decision, you know. If you decide not to trust me there’s no point going on with this.”

Mathieson waited for Jan to turn and look at him. Finally she did.

He couldn’t decode her expression. “I don’t have a choice,” she said. She turned back to Vasquez. “Neither of us does.”

“Then I’m to proceed?”

“You’ll have to forgive me. I don’t give this much of a chance.”

“Mrs. Mathieson, a sentence of death has been passed upon you by Frank Pastor’s kangaroo court. You have three options. Give up and succumb. Run and hide. Or fight and hope. No human being in sound mental health would consider the first. You’ve already tried the second and found it wanting. Therefore, regardless how poor the chances appear, you’re pretty well stuck with fight and hope.”

The nervous smile, meaningless, sped across her lips again.

Vasquez seemed to take it for assent. “We’ll have to arrange a program, the object of which will be to formulate our plans down to the last detail. We’ll need to do a great deal of work. It will take time — time that must be unencumbered by distracting pressures of the kind Frank Pastor has been inflicting on you. This requires seclusion. I have in mind a place where we should be able to make things as comfortable for you as might reasonably be expected. There’ll be no companions the boy’s age but the place of which I’m thinking does have stables and horses. I understand he’s a self-sufficient child.”

“No child that age is self-sufficient.”

“He’ll have his parents with him,” Vasquez said. “He’ll miss school of course. The school terms are just now beginning.”

“I’m aware of that.” She was still cool with him. “Why can’t we stay right here? There’s a country school in the village — it’s fourteen miles.”

“We don’t want to involve your friends any more than they’re already involved, Mrs. Mathieson.”

Vasquez let that sink in. Then he said: “I don’t merely want you and the boy to be where you’re safe. I want you to be where your husband knows you’re safe and where I know you’re safe. The only way we can avoid being distracted by concern over your safety is to have you and Ronny with us at all times. I’m afraid both of you may find it tedious but I’m sure you’ll agree boredom is preferable to anxiety.”

An expression tightened the skin around her mouth: It might have been an effort to choke off anger. Abruptly she went across the porch. “I suppose I’d better get packed again.” Without further talk and without a glance at Mathieson she went inside the cabin.

Vasquez tipped forward in the rocker and got to his feet. He lifted an eyebrow in Mathieson’s direction and stepped off the porch and walked away toward the trees. Mathieson followed him past the Cadillac to the far side of the clearing where Vasquez stopped and thrust his hands into his pockets. “I wasn’t sure how soundproof those walls might be.”

“Why?”

“When I undertake a commission it’s not my habit to cavil over details. Don’t misunderstand this, but I wish you had told me you were having marital difficulties. It may make a substantial difference.”

“What makes you think—”

“I’m not an imbecile. I’ve got eyes.”

“Things are tough on Jan right now. Tougher than they are on me.”

“It’s nothing that recent.”

“Aren’t you getting a little out of line?”

Vasquez said, “Whatever program we settle on, you can be sure it will demand your full attention. If you’re going to be distracted by emotional turbulence it will undermine your efficiency. How long have you been estranged?”

“Estranged? We’ve never been separated.”

“Don’t quibble over definitions.”

“We’ve got an understanding.”

“You’re still splitting hairs. I’m not prying out of seedy curiosity, you know.”

He regarded Vasquez dismally over a stretching interval. The undulating rasp of a light plane somewhere above the mountains distracted him briefly; finally he said: “It goes back to the first time. When we had to pick up and leave New York. Things started going sour then.”

“How old was your son?”

“Four. I suppose we both kept hoping the sores would heal. I think they still can. I want us to be the Mathiesons again, at least — we had a chance to get somewhere from that point. Things were better the last few years, much better than they’d been before. Now it’s collapsed — she can’t take any more of this pressure. It isn’t her fault. She never asked for any of this.”

“She supported you in your initial resolve to testify against Pastor.”

“Yes. Maybe she didn’t realize what it would cost. I know I didn’t. They told me but I didn’t listen. Not really — not in the gut. My own parents were dead, I was an only child — I had no one terribly close. I had to give up a number of friends. With Jan it was a lot worse. Her mother, her brother and two sisters, there was a young niece she adored. She hasn’t communicated with any of them in eight years. Can you imagine what that’s done to her? Her father died three years ago — we couldn’t even go to the funeral. Bradleigh told us it was watched by one of Ezio Martin’s goons.”

“Do you blame yourself?”

“I blame Frank Pastor.”

“Good. This would have no chance of success at all if you were overburdened with self-pity.”

“Self-pity doesn’t come into it.”

Vasquez said, “Do you love your wife?”

“Of course I do.”

“You said that rather quickly.”

He drew a breath and closed his eyes. “You’re a pill. Yes, I love her. Would I have stuck it out otherwise?”

“You might. Habit, addiction, fear of loneliness, consideration for the child. I’m sure there are men who stay with their wives even though the only feeling they have for them is hatred.”

Mathieson wheeled, angry clear through; he walked away several paces. To his back Vasquez said, “In any case things are threadbare.”

“You could put it that way.” He snapped it out viciously; he turned to face Vasquez. “Haven’t you wormed enough data out of me yet for your computer? What’s the readout?”

“I have only one further question. Do you believe that solving your difficulties with Pastor will restore your marriage, or at least give you an opportunity to salvage it? Or have things gone too far for that?”

“I think we can put it back together. But you’re missing an important point. Whether my wife and I love each other or detest each other, it’s all the same — she’s stuck with me until this is finished. What else can she do? Go out on her own? Take Ronny with her? Pastor could find them. He’d find them and he’d use them to reach me. If you were thinking of forcing things to a head and putting some kind of ultimatum to us then you’d better forget it. She stays with me until this is finished.”

“I wasn’t unaware of that factor.” Vasquez tipped his head to one side. “But it wasn’t clear whether you were.”

“Then why did you bring it up?”

“You and your wife may not have a choice in the matter but I do. If she’s going to be an irritant I’ll put her and the boy in a safe place away from you until you’ve concluded your business. But if, on balance, she and the boy will render you more support and solidity than anxiety, then I’d prefer to keep you together. It’s not a vital decision, perhaps, but it could prove important. And I assure you it’s a decision best left to me. You’re not sufficiently detached to make it sensibly. And since it must be my decision, it was necessary for me to pry.”

“And what’s the decision?”

“They stay with you. We go together.”

“Where?”

“It’s a bit of a drive. Beyond Los Angeles — not too far north of the border. We’ll drive down in the morning.”

2

It was in the mountains forty miles northeast of San Diego — a stand of trees along a stream, a little valley rising on all sides toward moonscape summits.

A gravel drive carried them in from the state highway. It threaded a notch in the hills and bent its way through canyons, switchbacking over a pass between peaks that were littered with gray boulders the size of great houses. On a farther slope he could see an eerie stretch of mountainside tufted with the seedlings and charcoaled stumps of an old forest fire.

The gravel road brought them up from the boxed lower end of the valley past a large pond: It was almost a lake. It didn’t look stagnant and therefore there had to be some kind of earth-fault outlet that must carry its overflow under the surrounding mountains to the inland watershed beyond. Past the lake the driveway skirted along the long stand of cotton-woods and sycamores along the stream; a white three-rail fence ran along both sides of the drive. There were green paddocks and neatly maintained corrals, a huge brown barn, a variety of outbuildings. At the end there was a great lawn landscaped with stone-border flower beds and isolated evergreens trimmed into cones and balls. The driveway looped up through this rich greenery to the porte cochere of a big Victorian house — a graceful anachronism of gables and bay window and rambling wings.

“Good Lord,” Jan murmured.

“Vasquez certainly has a sense of the dramatic.”

Ronny said, “He owns all this?”

“It’s not his,” Mathieson said. “He’s borrowing it. He told me that much.”

Vasquez appeared on the veranda, emerging through a pair of French doors. He walked along to the porte cochere as Mathieson parked under it. He gave them the benediction of his welcoming smile.

They all got out. “What an extraordinary place,” Jan said.

Vasquez said, “If it looks familiar you must be an old movie buff.”

“I had a feeling I’d seen it before,” Mathieson said.

“The studios used it for location work on at least a hundred pictures. All those movies about the racing gentry in Maryland and Virginia — they filmed them here. It doesn’t take a terribly keen imagination to picture Joseph Cotten crossing this veranda in jodhpurs.”

Vasquez came down around the car and reached inside to tap the horn: He honked it twice and the blasts startled Mathieson.

Ronny said, “Who owns all this?”

“It was the property of a man named Philip Breed — a Texas oil heir. He had several homes. At one time he produced a few motion pictures and he built this in the 1920s as his California headquarters — his company filmed a number of Tom Mix Westerns here. Breed maintained a stable of racing quarterhorses — he was one of the pioneers who built the sport up from nothing to its present level. This estate became a sort of retirement home for Breed’s quarterhorses after their racing careers were ended. Some of those horses are still here. Breed died four years ago and the will is still being contested by a bewildering assortment of claimants. A trust organization maintains the property — occasionally the organization lets it out to film companies.”

Mathieson said, “I’m making an effort not to think about what this is going to cost us.”

“Virtually nothing, really.”

“Oh?”

“The principal trustee is a former client of mine. He feels obliged to do me an occasional favor. Of course you’ll pay for your food, drink, laundry and incidentals. And I intend to bill you for Homer Seidell’s salary while he’s here putting you in shape.” Vasquez took the keys from him and opened the trunk of the car.

“Putting me in shape?”

Vasquez straightened. He turned a circle on his heels. “Where do you suppose he’s hidden himself?” He looked at his watch. “By ‘putting you in shape’ I mean subjecting you to a training program designed to teach you competence and confidence.”

Jan was listening quizzically. “What does that mean?”

“If you walk into a room with your enemy and you have absolute confidence you can beat him at any game he chooses to play, it’s going to make a decided difference in the way you handle the situation.”

“I see,” Mathieson said.

“I’m not sure you do; but never mind, you’ll find out soon enough. You could sum it up by saying we’re going to war and you need to be taught some of the warrior’s arts.”

“That’s not exactly what I had in mind when I came to you.”

“You put yourself in my hands, didn’t you. You’re paying for my judgment.” Vasquez’s abrupt expression of amusement took him by surprise. “Never mind — I enjoy melodrama.” Vasquez went back around the car but before he could reach the horn Mathieson saw a man appear at the corner of the house carrying a golf club.

“Ah. Homer.”

The man walked forward with a sailor’s gait, shoulders rolling and head rocking, legs bowed, moving on the balls of his feet. He was no taller or wider than Vasquez but he had the chest and biceps of a weight lifter. He had the pitted narrow face of a street thug.

Vasquez made introductions. Homer Seidell wasn’t a knuckle-crusher but his grip was authoritative. He had an odd brief smile — as if the skin around his mouth was stretched too tight.

He lifted the suitcases out of the trunk. “We’re putting you in the Ronald Colman suite. It’s the best digs in the house.” It was the voice of a much bigger man — husky but powerful.

Vasquez held the door for them. Ronny dashed inside fearlessly. The vast center-hall foyer was hung with oil landscapes but they might as well have been Gainsborough portraits; the space was darkly paneled and dominated by an enormous pewter chandelier and a sweeping rosewood staircase.

Homer Seidell said, with amusement, “Welcome to boot camp, Mr. Merle.”

3

The suite had two huge rooms connected by a bathroom whose marble decor and gold-plated plumbing reminded him of the Sherry-Netherland Hotel.

Homer Seidell deposited the luggage on ottomans and Vasquez stood in the door with a proprietary air identifying the amenities and facilities: There was a Mrs. Meuth who would look after their housekeeping needs; there was a Mr. Meuth, the groundskeeper; there was Perkins who looked after the place’s mechanical needs and had charge of the livestock.

“Perkins can help you pick out a steed for your adventures. It would be wise if you confined your riding to the valley. It should give you enough elbow room — there’s an area of some thirty square miles to explore. Perkins prefers that the horses not be taken into the foothills. You’ll understand that — it’s very rocky terrain.”

Ronny gulped. “Yes, sir, I understand.”

Vasquez turned to Jan. “It’s an ideal topography for us. This house sits on the highest spot in the valley. On horseback the boy will be able to see the house from any point, and be seen from it.”

She took his meaning. Vasquez told her, “This will be your home for a while. Settle in, make yourselves comfortable. Incidentally you’ll find quite a good film collection in the library — prints of several hundred excellent motion pictures. Mrs. Meuth can help you with the projectors. There’s also television throughout the house, of course. Meuth does the shopping, usually twice a week, and he always returns with newspapers and magazines. The swimming pool is immediately behind the house. There’s an indoor pool as well, in the north basement, but it isn’t kept heated this time of year. If you prefer golf there are three holes laid out on the west lawn. Mrs. Meuth is employed to provide cooking for whatever guests are present but she doesn’t take offense if you care to do your own from time to time. If you’d like to choose your own menus you may give Mr. Meuth a shopping list — his next scheduled trip is tomorrow morning.”

“Are we confined to the estate?”

“You’re not prisoners here, Mrs. Mathieson, but if you elect to go off on excursions I should appreciate your giving me twenty-four hours’ notice so that I may bring down a few members of my staff to escort you.” He glanced at Mathieson: “Naturally such services will be billed to you. But you understand the necessity.”

“Yes.”

“We’ll take your husband off now. I’m afraid you and the young man will have to fend for yourselves most of the time.”

“We’ll manage. Thank you.” Her face came around toward Mathieson. “Good luck.” She was smiling but he couldn’t fathom what might be behind the smile. Unnerved he followed Vasquez down the corridor with Homer Seidell; they went downstairs and Vasquez strode right out the front door. “May I have the keys to your car?”

He passed them over and Vasquez handed them to Homer. When Homer pulled the car away Vasquez said, “If you want the car it will be in the garage beside the main barn. The keys will be in it — we don’t have thieves up here.”

“Are you trying to reassure me?”

“You’ll begin to feel like a prisoner of war here after a bit. It will be important that you realize that escape is dead easy. That knowledge, I think, will encourage you to stay and stick it out.”

“Stick what out? You still haven’t really explained the program.”

“Homer facetiously described it as boot camp but it was quite apt. We’re going to be rough on you. You’ve got to be conditioned out of some of your most comfortable habits. It will be modeled to some extent on the army’s basic-training techniques, although there’s one significant difference — we’re not concerned with inculcating obedience; quite the contrary. What needs development is your initiative. Essentially I want to see you become comfortable with a variety of methods and techniques that will strike you at first as unfamiliar and perhaps unpleasant. We’ll present you with challenges that you’ll be forced to meet with a combination of trained responses and imagination. Bear in mind you’re going to be fighting formidable antagonists who regard violence as an acceptable and even commonplace solution to nearly any sort of problem. I’m not forgetting your prejudices — you may not wish to initiate violence but you’ve got to know how to deal with it when you’re faced with it.”

“Sounds ominous.”

“I assure you it is. But you know the seriousness of it better than I do.”

“How long does all this take?”

“You’re impatient.”

“Of course I’m impatient, damn it.”

“It shouldn’t take terribly long. We can’t expect to make you over. A few basics — and we do need to restore you to first-rate physical condition. Fortunately you seem to have the remains of a good constitution, according to Doctor Wylie. But that sort of training is peripheral at most. Mainly we’ll be acquiring information and improvising our schemes based on that information. My organization is already casting its lines and in a very short time I expect to have dossiers on each of your enemies.”

At the edge of the trees Homer Seidell came in sight. He walked up the driveway with his rolling determined gait.

Vasquez said, “Homer has instructions to be rough with you. Try to remember who your real enemies are. Homer’s a very good man.”

Vasquez turned away, disappearing back into the house. He left Mathieson feeling uneasy.

4

He jogged in tennis shoes and a gray sweat suit with a towel flopping around his neck. Homer Seidell paced him effortlessly and Mathieson was embarrassed by his own puffing and the streaming sweat.

They came around the corner of the fence. It was still a quarter of a mile up to the house and he didn’t think he was going to make it but he was determined to try, if only because of the half-concealed contempt with which Homer had treated him all day.

Momentum and the slight downslope of the driveway were all that kept him from collapse. When he reached the porte cochere he sat on the steps of the porch panting for breath. There was a roaring in his ears.

Homer went bouncing into the house without breaking the rhythm of his stride — up the steps three at a time... Mathieson was still gulping for air when Homer appeared with a bottle of mineral water and two tumblers. He set them down and handed two chalky tablets to Mathieson. They looked like oversized aspirin.

“Salt,” Homer explained. “Take them with the water. But wait till you’ve got your breath.”

It was a while before he could speak. “How far... did we run?”

“About a mile. That’s not running. Man your age doesn’t start out running the first day. We’ll get your legs stretched out first — legs and chest. You need to learn how to control your wind first.”

“I’ll try it.”

“For a desk man you’re in better-than-average shape. For an athlete — forget it.”

“I didn’t expect to have to learn to be a decathlon contender.”

Homer said, “Think of yourself as Eliza Doolittle.”

“Are you an actor?”

“I have been. Found it a little dull.”

“How’d you get associated with Diego Vasquez?”

“He’s got a small staff. Eleven of us, not counting the office help. We’re all ex-cops and ex-federals. I spent six years in foreign service before the technocrats got to me. I could take working with dummies but when your superiors are imbeciles it begins to dawn on you that you’re in the wrong game.”

“Is ‘foreign service’ a euphemism for the CIA?”

“No, but it was something like that. The Defense Intelligence Agency. We didn’t drag down the kind of headlines the CIA gets but then we didn’t have a public relations staff.”

“Tell me about Vasquez.”

“He’s a fine man to work for.” That was all Homer had to say on the subject: It was a measure of Homer’s loyalty to his employer and it also said something about Vasquez that he could command that kind of loyalty from a man who clearly did not bestow his respect easily.

Homer wore a scuba-diver’s wristwatch with a complexity of dials and buttons. He turned his wrist over to consult it. “You’ve got four more minutes.”

“Then what?”

“Ever done any boxing?”

“No.”

“I won’t make a prizefighter out of you but I’ll teach you a bit of footwork. Half an hour ought to do it for today. Then you’ll have a shower and a swim. You do swim?”

“I know the strokes.”

“We’ll have you doing forty laps. All right, after the swim you can relax a little while. Then lunch, then the handgun range, then rifles. Later on we’ll do another jog around the fence. You won’t feel like it but if we don’t keep doing it your muscles will knot up. Tomorrow morning you’ll feel like a cripple.”

5

Vasquez flipped open the photo album on the dining table. His slender finger tapped a photograph of a sharp-faced young man in a metallic suit. “Him?”

“C. K. Gillespie.”

The pages turned. “Him?”

“Sam Urban.”

“What does he do? What’s his connection?”

Mathieson studied the photograph. “He’s the manager of a restaurant. He’s the collection point for numbers slips—”

“What restaurant, Mr. Merle?”

“It’s slipped my mind.”

“The Cheshire Cat, Route Nine-W, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.”

“I did remember it was New Jersey.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s safer for them to collect New York numbers slips in another state.”

“Will you forget it again?”

“The Cheshire Cat, Englewood Cliffs. I’ll remember it now.” Vasquez flipped the page over. “Him?”

“George Ramiro.”

“Function? Connection?”

“I’m not quite clear on the relationship. I know what he does.”

“His wife is a cousin of Frank Pastor’s. She’s Ezio Martin’s half sister. Ramiro is an immigrant, from the Azores. He eloped fifteen years ago with the girl, who was an ugly duckling destined to be the family wallflower. Pastor and Martin either had to kill him or hire him. They hired him, and Ramiro turned out to be useful and completely ruthless. You know his function?”

“Essentially he’s in charge of security around Pastor and Martin — he runs the security system and staffs around their houses and offices and cars.”

“If you go in after them by stealth or force, he’s the one you’ll be contending with.”

“I may not do it that way.”

“That’s up to you, of course. But study the backgroundings on Ramiro. You may spot a weak point here and there.”

“Have you spotted any?”

“He plays around with whores sometimes. I realize that’s not much of a lever but it’s all, we’ve found.”

Another page. “Her?”

“Anna Pastor. Pastor’s wife.”

“Good-looking woman,” Vasquez remarked, and turned another page. “Him?”

“Cestone. Gregory Cestorie.”

There was a knock; it was Homer Seidell. “Just about time for the afternoon workout.”

Vasquez pushed the photos aside. “Come in a moment.”

Homer shut the door and approached the table. Vasquez inclined his head toward a chair; Homer pulled it out and sat. Vasquez said, “I’m going to have to return to the office for two days to try to catch up on the most urgent tasks on my desk. You’ll have to take Mr. Merle through a number of things.”

“Such as?”

“Procedures. Methods. Practices. He’s going to have to learn how to recognize a hundred different kinds of locks and know how to get into them with picks. How to field-strip a wall safe or hot-wire a car. How to plant explosives on an engine block—”

Mathieson stiffened. “I’m not blowing anybody up.”

“Granted. But you want to know what to look for. Suppose someone tries to do it to you?” Vasquez went back, matter-of-factly, to Homer: “He’ll have to learn the rudiments of burglar alarm systems — how to spot them and how to get through them. Bugs, wiretaps, infrared camera techniques.”

Mathieson said gloomily, “There’s a lot to it, then.”

6

“He’s got me lifting weights,” he complained. Gingerly he stretched his legs out across the bed and arched his head back into the pillow but there was no comfortable position.

“This was your idea,” she said.

“I could use a little sympathy.”

“It’s the best thing that’s happened to you in years, I imagine. You’re going to end up with the physique of Muhammad Ali.”

He scowled at her. “I’ve always detested cheerful types who make fun of somebody else’s agony.”

“Yes, dear.”

He grumbled. “They can’t really expect to turn me into Charles Atlas in a matter of weeks, can they?”

“Vasquez seems to think that’s up to you. How long do you think it will take?”

“I have no idea; this is just phase one. I don’t have too many illusions about this — even if we can bring something off, it won’t be done overnight.”

He rolled over on his side but that was just as painful.

She said, “What?” and glanced at him in the mirror.

“Nothing. That was a grunt of anguish.”

“Lift dem weights, tote dat barge. Hadn’t you better start getting dressed?”

“Whose idea was it to dress for dinner around here, anyway?”

“Mine.”

“I suppose you had your reasons.”

“It suits the surroundings.” She drew her mouth into a puckered O to apply lipstick.

He left the bed painfully and climbed into his slacks. “How are the kid’s bruises?”

“Healing. He seems to be ignoring them.”

“Teach him to try to ride the wildest horse in the place.”

“He gets that from his old man.”

“Christ I haven’t even seen him in two days.”

“Whose fault is that? But we ought to be thankful he’s occupying himself.”

“And he’s not even coming down to dinner tonight?”

“He made a deal with Mrs. Meuth. There’s a TV movie he’s desperate to see. He promised to put the dishes in the dishwasher afterward.”

Mathieson turned up his shirt collar and wrapped the necktie around it. She put the eye-shadow brush down and turned to look at him. “You’ve got that all askew. Come over here and use the mirror.”

He had to get down on one knee behind her ottoman to see himself in the mirror. “Paying court to the queen,” he observed.

“Very gallant.”

He got the knot centered. Her face hovered discomfitingly near. She had gone bolt still.

“What’s the matter?”

“I’m jittery,” she said. “I keep feeling as if I’m on the verge of a crisis. Every little disturbance feels like a major calamity.”

He reached for her hand but she was turning away; she stood up and walked swiftly to the wardrobe. He got to his feet and watched her step into the dress. “Zip me up?”

He crossed the room and pulled the zipper up and dropped both hands on her shoulders. “How long are we going to go on being polite to each other in cool voices?”

She leaned back against him. “I wish I knew the answer to that. I’m just too neurotic to think.”

He slid his hands around her waist but she pushed them away. “Let’s go down to dinner. I’m famished.”

7

Mathieson dragged himself to the dinner table and tried to ignore what he was sure was Homer’s smirk. The chandelier threw a yellow glow along the immense dining table. Vasquez remarked, “I know. It feels rather like a set for a 1946 Warner Brothers film — something with Sydney Greenstreet.” Vasquez among his oddities had a penchant for old movies and an apparent total recall concerning their stories, casts, directors and writers.

Unceremoniously Mrs. Meuth laid their plates before them and retired. Something in the kitchen began to grind and clatter. Mathieson looked at the thick red steak, the buttered zucchini, the salad, the glass of ice water. He was not hungry.

“I know,” Homer said, “but eat it anyway. You need the protein.”

“Been running my tail off for a week, you’d think I’d be famished.”

“It doesn’t work that way unless you’re conditioned to it,” Vasquez told him. “Unaccustomed exercise mutes a sedentary man’s appetite. I’m not sure why.”

Homer said, “Go ahead, eat up. It won’t put weight on you — that’s diet margarine, not butter.”

Mrs. Meuth bustled in with a pitcher of iced tea. She slammed it on to the table and left, her feet falling like bowling pins. She was overweight but not a huge woman by any means; nevertheless everything she did seemed to require the accompaniment of loud noises.

Vasquez remarked, “These are surroundings to which one wouldn’t mind becoming accustomed.”

Jan said, “Is everything you touch this glamorous?”

“Hardly. Most often our work is sheer boredom. Homer can confirm that, I’m sure.”

Mathieson said, “Not excepting present company. It drives Homer up the wall, being coach and trainer to an inept middle-aged idiot.”

Homer squinted at him. “Do I look bored? This is the best vacation I’ve had in four years working for Vasquez Inc. A lot better than repossessing cars and skip-tracing.”

Jan said, “Is that your bread and butter?”

“Sometimes. Actually most of our work is company spying.”

“Industrial counterespionage,” Vasquez said. “I do spend a good part of my time training business executives in security techniques.”

Jan poured iced tea into the four glasses. When she set the pitcher down she said, “I’d like to call some friends.” She looked directly at Vasquez. “Would that be all right?”

“Certainly. But I’d prefer you didn’t call them from here. And it would be better if you didn’t tell them exactly where we are. Mr. Meuth will be driving into town in the morning — you and I could ride with him.”

“Thank you. I only want to find out if Roger and Amy are all right.”

“Any reason why they shouldn’t be, Mrs. Mathieson?”

She made a gesture and almost overturned the glass; she caught it in time. “I feel — stranded up here. I need some thread of contact with the world.”

“Perfectly understandable.” Vasquez’s glance lifted from the rescued iced tea to Jan’s face. “I’m sure you’re thoroughly annoyed with the obsessive lengths to which my paranoia has taken us. But in the interest of your safety I’ve tried to cut off every conceivable lead to your whereabouts. It’s unlikely that your friends would be under surveillance or that their telephones would be tapped. But possible. You understand?”

“I suppose so.”

Homer jabbed his fork toward Mathieson’s plate again. “Come on, you’re stalling.”

“They always told me it was healthy to eat slowly.”

“Sure it is.” Homer’s smile was belligerent. “Eat.”

Chapter Twelve New York: 8 September

1

Ezio blew Cuban smoke toward the ceiling and beamed expansively when Frank walked into the office. “Man you were right, Frank, son of a bitch paid off.”

“You were mysterious as hell on the phone.”

“You want me to spell anything out on a Goddamned telephone?”

“Of course not. But you’re getting a little fancy with that million-seller hit record nonsense. What’s it supposed to mean? Since when am I in the record business?”

Ezio opened the drawer and pushed the rewind switch on the tape deck. “We’ve got Merle’s wife on tape. Is that a hit record, or isn’t it?”

Frank walked around the desk and looked down at the recorder. “You don’t say.”

“Here.” Ezio handed him the typescript from the desk. “I typed up a transcript while I was waiting for you.”

Frank glanced down the first page. “Who are these people?”

“The first voice is Merle’s wife. The one they call Jan. The second woman is Roger Gilfillan’s wife, name of Amy—”

“Roger Gilfillan the movie star?”

“You remember, he’s on that list of Merle’s friends.”

“Right, OK. So the ‘Roger’ here, that’s Gilfillan.”

“Just the three of them. There’s some damn interesting stuff. So anyhow I just identified the speakers with initials — J for Merle’s wife, A for Gilfillan’s wife, R for Gilfillan.”

“The tap is on Gilfillan’s phone, right?”

“We’ve had two shifts watching him come and go. He’s shooting a TV special on one of the lots in Burbank; he goes to work every morning at seven. The phone call came in two days ago, Saturday morning; he was home.”

He watched Frank page through the transcript. Frank said, “We’ll listen to it in a minute. What’s the bottom line here?”

“She tells them she’s with her husband and kid hiding out someplace down around San Diego. She’s not supposed to tell them where — she’s calling from a pay phone. You get the operator coming in a couple of times there, telling her to deposit more change. From the phone rates we worked it out it’s somewhere in San Diego county all right but we couldn’t pin it down too close, except its north or northeast of San Diego because the charges are a dime less than they’d be all the way to the city.”

“So?”

“At least we know they’re in Southern California, Frank. That’s a lot more than we knew before.”

“Only a few million people in that part of the country, Ezio. What’s this here about ‘turning Fred into Tarzan’?”

“I don’t know, I admit there’s some of it that didn’t make much sense to me. I figured you could listen to it, maybe you’d come up with something.”

“Fred — that’s Edward Merle?”

“The name he went under the last eight years in Los Angeles. Fred Mathieson.” Something sour leaked out of the cigar onto his tongue and Ezio picked it off with his fingers. “You maybe haven’t noticed the part where she talks about the kid and all the horses he gets to ride from the stables. Not that many places down there with private stables full of quarterhorses, Frank. I’ve already got people looking.”

2

After they listened to the tape Ezio pushed the “off” button. “You want to hear it again?”

“No. Everything’s on paper here. I didn’t know you could type that fast.”

“I just didn’t want anybody else to hear this tape until you decided how you want to handle it.”

“The riding-stable angle’s a good one. You keep on that. And there’s another thing we could try.”

“Name it.”

Frank said, “She said she’d call them back again next Saturday.”

“Yeah, I caught that part.”

“See if you can get to somebody on the cops out there. Use Ordway if you have to. See if they can set up a trace next time she phones.”

“It’s a pay phone, Frank. Maybe she won’t use the same one twice.”

“At least it would tell us what town to look in.”

“Sure, I get you. I’ll give it a try. It might not work — you can’t do a phone trace without a bunch of people knowing about it. Some of those people would have to be straights.”

Frank nodded. Ezio glanced at him again. He was getting used to seeing the toupee but there was something else different about Frank. He looked a lot healthier; he’d turned brown and smooth.

“I’ve got another idea,” Frank said. “She’s going to call them Saturday. All right. Friday you have a couple of our people crowd them a little.”

“Crowd Gilfillan?”

“Nothing big. Don’t rough them up. But tell them to put a clumsy tail on them.”

“I don’t get it.”

Frank smiled. “Who’s running it out there?”

“Still Deffeldorf. Fritz Deffeldorf.”

“Using what, a bunch of Ordway’s people?”

“A few. Some free lances.”

Frank’s mind was working. “Ezio, you didn’t tell me, is the FBI still looking for Merle?”

“No. They canceled the bulletin.”

“They didn’t just let it dry up — they made a point of canceling it?”

“Yes. Why?”

“I wonder why they did that.”

“At the time I figured it meant they must have found Merle. But they didn’t. At least Ordway says they didn’t. It was canceled on orders from Washington.”

“He’s all by himself out there and the FBI isn’t interested anymore. That makes things easier.”

“What’s this idea you had? Crowding Gilfillan, I mean.”

“Put three or four guys on him. Say they tail him home from the TV studio Friday night. Say they crowd him so tight he can’t help but notice he’s being shadowed.”

“So?”

“So Saturday morning Merle’s wife phones and Gilfillan tells her he’s being followed around by this bunch of tough-looking guys.”

“I still don’t get it, Frank.”

Frank got out of the chair. He folded the transcript and put it in his pocket. “Sometimes when you’re up against a stone wall the best thing is to do something unexpected. Random, whatever, doesn’t matter what it is, just so it stirs things up, gets things moving again. We’ve been stalled on this thing long enough. I want to prod Merle, that’s all. Maybe this riding-stable idea works, maybe not. But we get his buddy Gilfillan all nervous and jittery, he’s going to tell Merle’s wife about it, and then maybe something will bust loose.”

Chapter Thirteen California: 12–13 September

1

Now it felt good to run. He stretched his long legs out and left Homer behind and went up the last stretch of driveway feeling winged. When he stopped at the porte cochere his breathing was deep but without urgency and he gave Homer an arch look when he came up.

Homer dragged the back of his hand across his mouth. “Your legs are a foot longer than mine, wiseass. You want to prove something I’ll take you on for a ten-mile run, we’ll see who comes in first.”

“No bet.”

“I hate cocky bastards.” But Homer’s tight quick smile showed pleasure: He was proud of his handiwork.

“Tell me something. Were you in on the Stedman rescue?”

“I was there.”

“Not talking about it, is that it?”

“It’s not classified. I’m not crazy about the way that one worked out.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know if I can exactly explain it. Why are you asking?”

“I’m trying to sort a few things out. Humor me.” He was still trying to get a handle on Diego Vasquez, that was what it came down to; he didn’t want to put it to Homer that way.

“It left a sour taste, you know, that whole mess. They were freaked-out junkies. The ones who snatched the Stedman kid.”

“Some kind of radicals, weren’t they?”

Homer shook his head, not in denial but in disgust. “Look, you turn on the TV, the radio, you look in the newspapers, all you see day after day is hijacks and terrorists. All over the world. These little bastards — the Stedman case — calling themselves revolutionaries. The truth is they’re just crazies. A pack of hophead jerk-offs. Any cheap psycho with a gun can call himself a revolutionary but what the fuck does that mean?”

“What happened down there that’s got you so worked up?”

“I don’t know. Vasquez and I went in there alone first. The kids started blazing away. We dumped Stedman on the floor under his cot and we held the front door — it was the only way in, there weren’t any windows. There were seven of those junkies with enough guns between them to fight World War Three and they decided to charge us. I suppose they expected to grab Stedman and use him for a shield. They saw we were only two guys, so they came at us. It just wasn’t any contest at all. It never is when the pros go up against the amateurs. We had all seven of them dead or shot up or handcuffed inside of thirty seconds. But it’s the dead ones that get to you. We killed two of them on the spot and a couple of others died in the hospital later on. It leaves a bad taste. I never thought so much of myself that I believed I had God’s right to decide who lives and who dies.”

“I take it the boss doesn’t think the same way.”

It was a while before Homer replied. “Diego Vasquez has his own way of looking at things. And his own reasons. You’d need to know something about him. His background and all.”

“Such as?”

“I’d rather you asked him. Come on — time to put the gloves on.”

2

When he saw Ronny trot past the gate he walked over to the barn to meet him. The boy brought the horse into the corral at an easy single-foot, knowing better than to run it; its coat was a little damp but obviously he’d walked it most of the way home from the lake to cool it down.

Mathieson helped him strip the saddle off; he lugged it to its peg in the barn and watched Ronny rub the horse down and take out the currycomb. They talked about inconsequentials and the boy seemed to be enjoying his company but when he stripped the bridle off and drove the horse out into the paddock he turned suddenly after closing the gate and said, “How long are we going to be stuck here?”

“I thought you liked it.”

“I like it fine. I like living like a king. I like having my pick of a bunch of great horses. I like everything about it. But there’s nobody around.”

“No kids your own age, you mean.”

“Dad, I can’t exactly have a ball with old Perkins or Mr. Meuth, can I. I mean you can only spend so much time on a horse.”

“It’s not as if there wasn’t plenty to do, Ronny. Besides ride.”

“I’ve read a dozen books in the library. I’ve looked at movies until I’ve started seeing everything in Technicolor. But I can’t spend the whole day like that. You know what I mean, Dad?”

“I know what you mean.” He heard the car before he saw it; he looked down the long driveway. “Here comes your mother.”

“I wish I’d changed my mind and gone to town with them. At least it would have been a change.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I didn’t feel like it,” Ronny said obscurely. They went up to the house and got there by the time Meuth parked it by the kitchen delivery entrance. Mrs. Meuth came out to help unload. Vasquez and Jan came up to the steps. There was stress in Jan’s face.

“Anything wrong?”

“Some trouble at the Gilfillans.”

“Trouble?”

“Your friends are being watched,” Vasquez said. “By a group of improbably clumsy goons.”

“Goons? Pastor’s people?”

Vasquez’s glance slid across Ronny and back to Mathieson. “I shouldn’t be alarmed. It’s almost textbook, really. Probably they’re hoping to reach you through your friends — hoping their harassment of Roger Gilfillan will bring you out of hiding. I find it encouraging, actually — it indicates they’re clutching at straws.”

That wasn’t all it indicated to Mathieson but he held his tongue until Jan and Ronny had gone inside the house. Vasquez returned to the car with the evident intent of putting it away. Mathieson walked around it and got into the passenger seat. “You’re taking it too casually.”

“I didn’t want to alarm your wife unnecessarily. She’s high-strung enough as it is.”

“You see what it means, don’t you? They’ve found out I’m not under federal protection. Otherwise they’d never bother trying to locate us through our friends.”

“That’s true. But it doesn’t really put them any closer to you, does it.”

“It suggests the leak in Washington was never really plugged. And that means Pastor may know we’re going under the name of Baxter.”

“What of it? You haven’t used any names at all in this area.” Vasquez shook his head. “That’s not what troubles me.”

“Then what does?”

As usual Vasquez provided an answer in his own roundabout way; his apparent non sequiturs always led to the point eventually but Mathieson’s patience was goaded. Vasquez said, “Your friend Glenn Bradleigh and his colleagues are professionals. A great many of their regulations are the results of experience. One of their most steadfast rules in the relocation and protection of their charges is the complete break of all past associations — family and friends. Undoubtedly this is the most difficult thing their clients must adjust to. Undoubtedly the government has spent years trying to find alternatives. They have discovered none. Therefore they maintain the rule as an absolute.”

He saw what Vasquez was getting at.

Vasquez said, “When you came to me you were already in touch with the Gilfillans. There was nothing I could do to undo that thread of contact; therefore I wasted no effort in the attempt. But you must recognize now that it was exceedingly unwise.”

“Maybe it was. I had no one else to turn to.”

“You could have turned to me. Directly, without involving your friends.”

“If it hadn’t been for Roger I’m not sure I ever would have made the decision to come to you.”

Vasquez reached for the key and started the car. “All right. It’s useless recriminating.”

He drove it sedately around the loop and up past the paddock toward the barn, talking steadily.

“I suspect Pastor’s men have tapped the Gilfillan phone. Pastor would have no reason to disturb Gilfillan if he didn’t know you were in communication with him. Now if we can assume that Pastor knows you are in contact with Gilfillan, then you are vulnerable.”

Perkins’s tractor was on the far slope dragging a block of rock salt toward the water trough. Vasquez said, “For the moment Pastor may be satisfied to stir things up and wait to see whether the stirring brings you to the surface. When it doesn’t he may decide to use one of the Gilfillans as hostage for the acquisition of Edward Merle. It would not require kidnapping. It would require merely a threat, delivered anonymously and easily to Roger Gilfillan, stating that if Edward Merle were not produced then an unfortunate accident might deprive young Billy Gilfillan of his eyes, or his legs, or his life. The nature of the threat isn’t important; the pattern is clear enough. If Pastor made such a threat and Gilfillan passed it on to you, what would you do?”

Vasquez racked the station wagon beside the other cars in the barn. He switched it off. In the dead silence he inspected Mathieson’s face.

“Don’t be too dismayed. There’s a countermove available to us — the only course of action I’d recommend.” Vasquez opened the door. As he was getting out he said, “We’ll have to persuade the Gilfillans to join us here.”

3

He needed something to do; he insisted on doing the driving. Vasquez rode with him and on the way they rehearsed the scheme.

“We’re assuming their phone is tapped,” Vasquez said. “What does that suggest to you?”

“We’ve got to get them to another phone.”

“Very good. How?”

“Just tell him to go down to the shopping center and use a pay phone. They can’t tap it that fast.”

“That’s fine, Mr. Merle, but how do we tell him what number to call? Or do you happen to know the number of the pay phone offhand?”

“No. I could call him at a friend’s house...”

“And involve another friend in this? Think again.”

“Suppose I ask him to drive over to the studio. I could call him there.”

“It’s a bit clumsy — and you’d be talking through the studio’s switchboard. No, I think the simplest method is to give him a phone number where he can reach us. And do it in such a way that eavesdroppers won’t understand it.”

“How?”

“Do you know anything of the rudiments of codes and ciphers? All it requires is a key.”

Mathieson made the turn into the county road. A hot wind sawed in through the windows. Piercing reflections of sunlight shot back from mica particles in the rocks. Mirages wavered in the road surface, retreating before them.

Vasquez took out a notebook and his pencil. “There must be a fairly close friend the two of you had in common. Pick one whose phone number you remember. Someone whom you can identify to Gilfillan without mentioning a name.”

“All right.”

“What is the friend’s phone number.”

“Well say it’s Charlie Dern. It’s two-seven-five five-three-oh-three.”

“That’s fine. Now all we need do is copy down the number of the public phone in town and do a bit of subtraction.

4

In the booth he wrote down the number of the pay phone immediately above Charlie Dern’s number. Then he made the computation:


 714-895-8214

213-275-5303

 501-620-2911

He dialed Roger’s home and got Billy on the line. “Get your dad on the phone, will you, Billy?”

“Sure, Mr. Mathieson. Just a minute.”

He glanced through the glass doors. Vasquez was standing beside the car alertly watching everything at once.

“Hey, old horse, how’re they hanging?”

“Roger, I want you to do something for me. It’s important and it’s urgent. Get a pencil and paper.”

“What? Hell, hang on a sec... OK, shoot.”

“I want you to write down a number at the top of the sheet. Ready?”

“Go ahead.”

“Five-oh-one, six-two-oh, two-nine-one-one.”

“Got it.”

“Read it back to me, will you?”

“Five-zero-one, six-two-zero, two-nine-one-one. Area code and phone number, right?”

“In a way. Now here’s what you do. Don’t mention a name but we have a friend who has ulcers. You know who I mean.”

“Sure. What about him.”

“Write down his phone number. Including area code. Right beneath the number I just gave you. Don’t repeat the number on this phone.”

“You think I’m being bugged for Christ’s sake?”

“I’m pretty sure you are.”

“Jesus... Hold on, I’m writin’ it down.”

“Now add up the two numbers. Don’t do it out loud.”

“I get you... OK. Now what?”

“Get to a pay phone and call me. You’ve got my number there.”

“Hey that’s damn smart, old horse. OK, take me five, ten minutes to get down there.”

“I’ll be waiting.”

He stepped out of the stifling booth and left its door open; he crossed the curb to the car. Vasquez said, “All right?”

“He’ll call back in a few minutes.”

“When he does, don’t soft-pedal it.”

“It’s hard knowing how to break it to him.”

“Tell him the complete truth.”

“He’ll have every right to tear me limb from limb.”

“It can’t be helped.”

“He’s probably in the middle of shooting that special. He can’t just walk out on it.”

“He’ll have to.”

“How? He’s under contract.”

“It doesn’t matter. He’ll have to do it — you’ll have to convince him.”

“Roger can be a stubborn guy.”

“So can you, Mr. Merle. Just bear in mind that several lives may depend on it.”

Chapter Fourteen Long Island Sound: 14 September

1

Out on the sound a flotilla of sailboats made butterfly patterns. Anna sat lotioned and lazy in her bikini on the transom of the Sandora, her face thrown back to the sun. She watched Sandy on the flying bridge guiding the cruiser under Frank’s watchful instruction. In the sport-fishing chair Nora was pretending she had a whale on her line.

The twin diesels made a guttural mutter in the water beneath the stern. Sandora curled slowly toward the forested banks of the inlet they’d chosen.

Frank shouted something and Nora bounded out of the fishing chair. Smiling, Anna watched her drop the anchor. The engines were throttled right down; she felt it when the cable brought her up; then Sandy switched everything off and there was no sound except the lapping of the water against the hull.

Frank came down the ladder. “You girls want to eat first or swim first?”

Sandy was still up top. She was shading her eyes, looking out toward the Sound. “Isn’t that our outboard?”

Frank went halfway up the ladder and squinted into the dazzle. “Jesus God. Can’t a man have a little privacy with his own family even on a Sunday afternoon?”

Anna stood up. “What is it?”

“The pest. Ezio.”

She made a face. Frank came back down onto the deck. “You kids better have your swim first.”

Nora pouted. “Is he going to stay for the picnic, Daddy?”

“Not if I can help it.”

The motor boat came slapping into the inlet leaving a shallow white vee of a wake; Ezio throttled back and brought it smoothly alongside.

Ezio was in a mood. “Why the hell don’t you ever turn on your ship-to-shore? I been trying to reach you for an hour.”

“I go on this boat to get away from telephones, Ezio.”

“You can’t just do that, Frank. What if something important comes up?”

“Then you’ll get in the outboard and come after me the way you just did. I left word where we’d be, didn’t I?”

“Took me half the afternoon to find this place. Suppose it was really urgent?”

Frank showed his exasperation. “You kids go for a swim, OK?”

Nora said, “I’m hungry. You make it short.”

“Damn right I will.”

Anna watched the two of them go off into the water like dolphins. They went cleaving toward shore, racing each other. It wasn’t much of a contest. Sandy’s crawl was smooth enough for an Olympic; Nora splashed great thuds and geysers.

Ezio said, “Maybe Mrs. Pastor wants a swim too.”

“What’s it about, Ezio? This Merle business?”

“Yeah.”

“Then she stays if she wants to.”

She nodded and stayed where she was. Ezio showed his resentment in a brief pinching of his lips. Then he sat down and retied the laces of his plimsolls. “Gilfillan took off.”

“Took off?”

“The whole family. Right into thin air.”

2

“We had two cars and a phone tap on those people, Ezio. Now what do you mean telling me they ‘took off’?”

“They had help, Frank.”

“Whose help? This Bradleigh?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Suppose you tell it from the top. And try not to blow my whole Sunday afternoon, all right?”

“I know you’re sore being disturbed like this, Frank, but we’ve got to decide how to handle this and the trail’s already getting colder while we sit here talking.”

“Then hurry up.”

“Well yesterday morning — Saturday — Mrs. Merle called the Gilfillans again the way she said she would last week. We had a tap on it. The call came in from a pay phone in San Diego county. No telling if it was the same pay phone she used last time. We’d played it the way you figured, we let Gilfillan know he had a tail Friday afternoon, so they told Mrs. Merle.”

“How’d she react?”

“I guess you’d say baffled, Frank. But it seems like she must have gone straight to where they’re hiding out and told Merle about it because a couple hours later Merle calls Gilfillan.”

Frank smiled. “I knew it. I knew it would bring the son of a bitch out in the open.”

“Well anyhow Merle calls and he just gives Gilfillan this code of some kind, a bunch of numbers that Gilfillan can figure out a phone number from. There was no way we could get that number, the way he did it. You want me to spell it out?”

“No. Just let’s have the meat.”

“Our guys follow Gilfillan down to a shopping center in Culver City, right? He goes to a phone booth, he makes a call. Then Gilfillan goes back home. Now it takes a little time for things to get relayed, Frank, you know how it is. A couple of hours later I get a call from Deffeldorf out there. I tell him to put a couple extra guys on Gilfillan and watch him like a hawk, right? So now we got three cars, six guys, watching Gilfillan’s place, and we got two more guys in the panel truck up the street manning the phone tap. Eight men on him. Four vehicles. Now that ought to be enough. I figured we had him sewed up.”

“So what happened?”

“So about four o’clock Los Angeles time Gilfillan backs his car out of his garage. It’s a Chrysler wagon. Him, his wife and his kid. Some luggage in the back, right? Our guys figure this is it, he’s heading for a meet with Merle. They’re on him like glue.”

“This is yesterday?”

“Yeah, it’s yesterday. They drive out to Riverside on the freeways. Maybe they know they’re tailed, I don’t know, but they don’t pull anything, they just drive out to Riverside, right? No trouble following them.”

“Ezio...”

“I’m getting there. So these Gilfillans pull in at this classy type restaurant out there. It’s maybe five-thirty. They park the wagon, the three of them walk into this restaurant. Our guys park their cars the right way — one goes around behind the place, the other two bracket the Chrysler. What happens, they hardly get time to settle down and the Gilfillan people come trooping back out of the restaurant. They’ve been in there ten minutes tops.”

“Making phone calls, probably.”

“All we know is they get back in the car and they lead our guys a merry goose chase over half of Southern California. They head out to El Centro, they cut back toward Santa Ana, they go all over the damn place. They stop for gas, our guys stop for gas. Our guys check in by phone when they get a chance but what the hell can I tell them?”

“Bottom line, Ezio.”

“Bottom line, yeah. They’re out in one of those boondock areas — little farm towns, secondary roads, citrus farms. You know, it gets to be maybe eleven o’clock at night. They stop at some café, one of those drive-in things, they get hamburgers, they kill some time. Midnight, they’re still driving around. Like they’re sightseeing, you know, only it’s the middle of the night. They turn down this farm road — dirt road — they go out of sight of our guys for a minute around a bend. Our guys hit the bend and there’s this U-Haul truck skewed right across the road. No way to get past it. Irrigation ditches on both sides of the road and it’s just one of those narrow little farm dirt-tracks, you know. One-lane wide. This truck right across the road.”

“I have the picture, Ezio. Who was in the truck?”

“Nobody.”

“So it was a setup. The guy in the truck waits there, they arranged it by phone. He waits, the Gilfillans come along. He puts the truck across the road behind their car, then he gets in their car and they all drive away.”

“That’s the size of it, Frank.”

“This happened at midnight?”

“Naturally the guys screwed around for a while out there, they busted into the truck; finally they got it knocked apart enough to get things moving and they shoved it off the road. But by the time they got all that done, the Gilfillan car was long gone. There are two freeways and a dozen fairly major highways in the area. No way to trace them fast. Right now Deffeldorf’s got people swarming all over the area trying to find out if anybody saw the Chrysler wagon but hell, it was one o’clock in the morning by then, most places were shut up tight and they’d just filled the tank. Not much chance we’ll find anybody who spotted the car.”

Frank toyed with the game-fishing rig in its socket by the swivel chair. He said mildly, “Who rented the U-Haul?”

“Papers in the glove compartment said it was hired out by a guy with a name and an address. There’s no such name at that address in Los Angeles.”

“But it’s a Los Angeles truck?”

“Right.”

“Then probably it wasn’t Merle.”

“What does that tell us?”

“Tells us he’s got help, doesn’t it.”

“I don’t see where that helps us much, Frank.”

“It’s got to be somebody professional. Your ordinary citizen isn’t equipped to walk into a U-Haul agency and plunk down the driver’s license and the credit cards you’ve got to show them to rent a truck...”

“Maybe the feds got Merle back under their wing.”

“I get a feeling it’s not federals. This whole elaborate business — it doesn’t sound like federals to me. It sounds like some bright free-lance operation.”

“That’s kind of farfetched. What’s he going to do with mercenaries?”

“Make war,” Frank said calmly. “You send out feelers, Ezio, find out if there is any word about anybody getting hired for a job like that.”

“All right. It probably won’t get us anything. Those guys mainly work through mail drops. Like Deffeldorf and Arnie Tyrone.”

“What about the riding stables?”

“We’ve checked out a lot of them. Nothing yet. There’s a lot of ranches and farms down there, Frank. It could take months and we still might not find anything.”

Frank turned; his face indicated his interest in the grass bank of the inlet under the trees. The girls were sliding into the water, swimming out from shore. Frank said, “I handled the son of a bitch with kid gloves because he’s a movie star, I figured we couldn’t afford to fuck around with a big movie star like that, get all the newspapers on it and everything. I was wrong, Ezio.”

“Crying over spilt milk, Frank.”

“Well it’s a mistake I won’t make again if I get the chance...”

Chapter Fifteen Southern California: 14–17 September

1

Mathieson walked down the paddock at an easy pace, arms swinging. Watching the fence and the barn and the trees: alert but trying to keep relaxed. Homer’s voice boomed behind him:

“Now!”

He swiveled, saw the bull’s-eye target on the tree, drove his hand inside his jacket and dropped to one knee while he raised the Police Special, cocked the hammer with his thumb, brought up left forearm with elbow on knee...

The movements were coming with synchronized automatic precision now: left hand locking up under the right wrist, target sights leveling.

Squeeze the trigger but squeeze it fast: The .38 charge exploded with an earsplitting boom. The revolver rocked in his fist and drove his shoulder back into the socket.

He forced it down, aimed instantaneously and fired the second one.

It kicked high and he brought it down ready to fire again.

“Maggie’s drawers,” Homer said disgustedly.

He heard hoofbeats — a fast rataplan — and when he turned he saw the horseman rush the fence like a charging cavalry general; a whoop, a flap of winglike elbows and the horse came soaring over the paddock rails. Mathieson wheeled back in terror.

The horse came down from its steeplechase leap with beautiful balance and Roger Gilfillan wheeled it on the spot, came unglued from his easy seat, lighted on both boots and spun away toward the paper target — the picture of the movie gunslinger. The single-action roared, five steady unhurried blasts, and went spinning back into its holster while Roger turned toward him with his high whinnying laugh and swept off his hat, bowing over it like Buffalo Bill to the crowd.

Homer stared at him. “Sweet jumping Jesus Christ.”

Roger was still laughing. He took out the big revolver and started plugging the empties out. “Would’ve been a mite fancier if you boys had the foresight to set up a half-dozen whiskey bottles on the fenceposts. That’s the way they usually shoot that scene.”

Mathieson reloaded the Police Special. “You crazy buffoon. Damn near gave me cardiac arrest.”

“That’s what you’re here for, ain’t it? Learn to grapple with the unexpected, like?”

Homer came back. He looked stunned. “You put all five of them in the black.”

“Did I now. Well how about that.”

Homer shook his head in awe, still staring at Roger. “Sweet jumping Jesus Christ. And I always thought they had stunt experts with rifles behind the camera doing all that stuff for the actors.”

“That’s me, old son. How’d you think I started in this bin-ness? Stunt ridin’ and stunt shootin’. I wasn’t always an actress, you know.” He turned to Mathieson. “Now you didn’t do too good, did you.”

“I’ve never been much of a hand with guns.” His ears were ringing and whistling.

Homer said, “I’ve tried all the usual tricks. Hard to tell what he’s doing wrong. I’ve about run out of ideas.”

“Probably not bringin’ the focus down,” Roger said offhandedly. He took Mathieson’s revolver and sighted experimentally at the target. “Good square sights on this piece. Shouldn’t be no trouble. You sighted this, Homer?”

“Benchrest at a hundred yards. I ran a box of shells through it. Good tight group. Nothing wrong with the sights.”

Roger cocked the hammer and the racket startled Mathieson when Roger began firing like a gunslinger. The bullets chewed splinters visibly out of the mangled center of the target.

In the sudden uneasy silence that followed the shooting Roger snapped the cylinder open and punched the hot cases out onto the little brass pile by Mathieson’s feet.

“Here. Load it up and let’s see if we can’t clear up this little problem.”

Mathieson fumbled cartridges into the cylinder and began to lift it toward the target; he heard Roger’s steady talk: “Now gentle down, take it easy. You want the front sight level with the rear notch. A straight line across the top. OK? Now you want the target on top of the front sight. Good so far?”

“Fine.”

“Take in some air and hold your breath where it’s comfortable. Squeeze easy.”

He had his eye on the target and the sights wavered a little and he relaxed the pressure until they steadied. When it went off it surprised him, as it was supposed to.

“Low and left,” Homer remarked.

Roger moved around him to his left side. “Try it again, old horse.”

He lifted it, cocked it, dropped his right wrist into his left hand...

“Oh for Christ’s sake.”

“’S the matter?”

Roger was turning toward Homer. “He always shoot like that with one eye shut?”

“I don’t—”

“No wonder.” Roger threw up his hands. “Both eyes, you dumb dude.”

“But you can only use one eye to—”

“Both eyes, old horse. Focus on that front sight. Not the target — the front sight. You can still see the target back there but it’s the gun you’re aiming, not the damn target. Focus on the sights and that way you know where the gun is. Homer, who taught you how to shoot?”

Homer’s mouth was pinched resentfully. “Army.”

“That figures.”

The essence of magic is simplicity: This was magic — he emptied the revolver and each of them went home dead center; he lowered the gun slowly in disbelief. Roger shot a crafty sidewise glance in Homer’s direction. “I think he’s gettin’ the idea. Old horse, load up and try it again.”

He emptied the cartridge cases onto the pile and bounced the unfamiliar weight of the revolver in his open hand. “I don’t think so.”

Homer pivoted toward him. “Say again?”

The thought formed in his mind as he expressed it; it took him by surprise: “It’s something I can do if I have to. That’s all I need to know.”

Homer’s puzzlement turned into accusation. He addressed himself to Roger: “What’s the matter with him?”

“Better ask him.”

Mathieson put the empty revolver in Homer’s hand. Before he walked away he said, “Nobody’s making a killer out of me.”

2

They were eight at dinner and Vasquez presided with a movie monologue filled with Byzantine digressions: He was encyclopedic, wistful, opinionated and almost sycophantic when he spoke names like Cooper and Welles.

Roger refused to be baited and Vasquez’s frustration led him into outrageous overstatements. Roger stirred in his chair. “Movies are my living, not my life. I don’t go to the things unless I have to.”

Vasquez scowled belligerently at him. “Amazing.”

Roger stood up, detesting straight chairs. “You younkers take off. We’ve got grown-up talking to do. Only bore the hell out of you.”

Ronny and Billy glanced at each other like French underground conspirators and sped from the room. Amy said, “Those two together go like a match and a stick of dynamite. Don’t be surprised if this house gets demolished.”

Jan laughed — to Mathieson it sounded brittle. Homer stood up. “You going to want me?”

Vasquez said, “An extra viewpoint never hurts.”

In the big front room Roger slumped into a Queen Anne chair. Amy sat down on the floor and leaned her head back against his knee. Homer perched on a small chair by the wall as though expecting to bolt the room. Mathieson took a place beside Jan on the couch; she gave him a glance and, hesitantly after a moment, her hand. It was cold.

There was a bench seat built into the bay window and covered with velvet upholstery. Vasquez sat straight up, centered on it. Casually he had positioned himself precisely at the focus of intersecting attentions, giving himself command of the scene.

In the corner of his vision Mathieson picked up the quick amused smile that fled briefly across Homer’s tight cheeks; probably he was accustomed to Vasquez’s seances and expected pyrotechnics tonight. But Mathieson couldn’t imagine Vasquez producing anything spectacular this time; the situation was too glum.

Vasquez began politely: “I commend your efficiency. I’m sure it wasn’t easy to break away on such short notice.”

“You had it all set up — Homer with that U-Haul truck. All we did was follow the script.”

“Nevertheless. You must have had difficulty breaking your commitment to the producers. The program you were filming.”

“Taping, not filming. Television horse shit.”

“How did you manage it?”

“It’s one of those documentary things. The life of the working cowhand. You know the kind of crap. All I was there for was the narration. Hell, I just called this kid up in Vegas that does nightclub impressions? You know, Cagney and all. Kid’s pretty good, does me better than I do me. Then I told my manager to clear it with the producers. Amos got a tongue like old-fashioned snake oil, he’ll sell it to them. That kid’s real good. It’d take a voice-print graph to tell it wasn’t me talking. Nobody’ll ever know.”

“Ingenious,” Vasquez said. “The fact remains, your lives have been egregiously disrupted. It’s an error for which I share blame. Among other things I’d like to try and ascertain what the appropriate redress might be.”

Roger said, “You and me, we share the same bad habit — puttin’ on airs. Mine’s harmless — I’m a professional Texan and I talk like one. But we’d get along a little faster if you’d come down off the Oxford Dictionary and talk plain English.” He glanced at Mathieson. “As far as blame goes, I’d just as soon not waste half the night arguing about who among us ought to put on sackcloth and ashes. Let’s us get down to the business at hand.”

Vasquez’s long jaw crept forward, pugnacious in quarter profile; he jabbed a finger toward Roger. “You’re about as rustic and unsophisticated as an Apollo moon rocket.”

“Son, just because I talk like a country boy don’t make me nobody’s fool. My daddy didn’t raise no stupid children.”

Vasquez’s finger lowered. In the corner Homer shoved his nose into his cup of coffee.

Vasquez said, “The fact remains, you came into this inadvertently, as a bystander.”

“Bystander hell. They put their men on us. Tapped our phone. Next thing you know they’d start shooting at us. Don’t be so damn exclusive — it’s our fight too.”

“If you choose to make it so.”

Mathieson said, “It’s not your fight. I’m sorry you’re involved — it was my stupid fault — but it’s not your fight, Roger.”

“Old horse.” Roger leaned back until he was almost supine. His eyes slid shut. After a moment without opening them he said, “Like the man says, we choose to make it ours. You want to try and keep us out of it? You want that kind of trouble with me?”

Amy said wistfully, “Roger surely does love a good fight, Fred, don’t you go denying him his pleasures.”

Vasquez said, “Very well. You’re in.”

“Thank you kindly.” Roger’s drawl was complacent.

Amy said, “Did any of you folks know what I used to be when I was a liberated woman before I met this here macho chauvinist pig? Happens I used to teach seventh grade in Del Rio, Texas.”

With his eyes comfortably shut Roger said, “Don’t mind her. She’s had a couple of drinks.”

“I’m making perfect sense, curmudgeon. We got two boys in this house and ain’t neither one of them likely to see the inside of a classroom for a spell. Nobody wants them to grow up like ignorant slobs like you.”

Roger opened one eye. “To whom would you be referrin’, my deah?”

“It’ll give me something useful to do. Next time anybody goes into town we pick up a few schoolbooks and we put these spoiled younkers to work.”

Jan said, “That’s a fine idea.” To Mathieson’s ear it sounded hollow: wholly without enthusiasm. He realized why. It would only isolate Jan more than ever.

Roger closed his eye. “That fresh pond down the valley — any fish in that thing?”

“A few,” Homer said.

“Trout?”

“No. Carp, I think. Meuth claims there’s a catfish or two.”

“Reckon I’ll find out for myself. While old Fred’s puffin’ around the track, I mean. Personally I got no use for exercise for its own sake.” Suddenly he got up on his elbow and peered at Vasquez. “But I’d be obliged to sit in on your strategy sessions.”

Mathieson said, “You will.”

“Certainly,” Vasquez agreed.

“That’s all right then. I always did want a crack at a passel of real live bad guys.”

3

He came out of the pool after the fortieth lap and dried himself in the sun. A sudden gnashing noise startled him: He peered over his shoulder. A door stood open and beyond it Mrs. Meuth was in the corridor swinging her electric buffer from side to side, leaving arcs of shined wax on the floor.

He took his towel around to the far side of the pool and rested a hip against the filter-pump housing. In a rack beside it were the cleaning tools — the long-handled net, the sections of vacuum hose, all of it half concealed in shrubbery. Beyond the pool’s apron the garden sloped away from the house. The pale sky seemed vast.

A cardinal took flight from the stone birdbath. Instinct startled him and intelligence informed him: Something had frightened the bird.

He wheeled just in time.

A looming figure rushed him from the sun. Mathieson caught the fragmented glitter reflecting off the knife blade.

There was no time to adjust to it. Before he realized what he was doing he had the aluminum net-pole in both hands, swinging toward the assailant...

Homer stopped, lowered the knife, stepped to one side out of the glare, smiling. “Pretty good.”

“All right.” Mathieson put the pole back in its clips. “But how often am I going to be carrying one of these around?”

“You made use of what you had at hand. That’s the thing. At least you didn’t stand there paralyzed. If you hadn’t had the pipe you’d have tried to drop-kick me or you’d have made a run for it, right? You’d find the nearest available weapon and you’d head for it. He could be a genius with a knife but you can still beat him if you can hit him from outside the radius of his reach.”

“It wouldn’t help against a gun, Homer.”

“You’d do the right thing.”

“What’s the right thing?”

“Depends, doesn’t it. What you’ve got at hand — what cover you’ve got. Sometimes you can’t do a damn thing. Sometimes the best thing’s simple. Off the cuff. Do the unexpected. At least it may throw their aim off.”

“Comforting.”

“There’s no magic anyplace. But at least you’ll know your options — that’s the best I can do for you. You’re as ready as anybody could possibly be with a few weeks of intensive training. There’s a point of diminishing returns. Some field experience and another eight, ten months of training you could become a professional. You’ve got most of the instincts. But—”

“A professional what?”

“That’d be up to you, wouldn’t it.”

It was five o’clock and it had been a long day. He moved past the corner of the apron to one of the granite benches; he sat on it and watched butterflies jazz around the garden. Down below he saw Meuth come along with his tractor and pull out winch cable to remove a dispirited palm tree.

Homer put one foot up against the end of the bench and rested his elbow on his knee. He blinked in the sunshine. “Your buddy caught some kind of a bass down there. I didn’t know there were any.”

“Maybe he—”

“Mr. Merle.” It was Vasquez. He had come out on to the end of the apron; now he turned away toward the corner of the house, beckoning over his shoulder. Mathieson followed him around the house and by the time he crossed the driveway Vasquez had hiked himself onto the top rail of the paddock fence to watch the two boys far down the hillside chasing each other at full gallop. The rataplan of hoofbeats came faintly to Mathieson’s ears.

“I’ve just received more information on Pastor and his associates.”

Mathieson climbed onto the top rail. “And?”

“We’re still about thirty bricks short of a full load. But we’re approaching the point at which I think we’ll have all the useful information we can expect to obtain. After a while one begins to suck up more muck than treasure. Besides, our time here appears to be drawing short.”

“Why?”

Vasquez launched himself outward and landed delicately on both feet. He looked up at Mathieson, squinting. “I can’t see you against that sun. Come along.” He walked away briskly down the drive. Mathieson followed irritably.

At the edge of the trees Vasquez turned and waited for him in the shadows. Vasquez looked at him — as if he were a curiosity in a zoo cage: Vasquez stood still for such a long time that his very motionlessness became menacing and Mathieson was reminded of those truly vicious dogs — the sort that do not bark.

Finally Vasquez spoke. “Glenn Bradleigh’s superiors overruled him. They felt as a matter of policy that you should be found and returned to the fold. They distributed your photograph and the Paul Baxter identity to the FBI. The FBI put out a bulletin on you and we assume a copy of it fell into the hands of someone associated with Pastor. One may surmise that the existence of the bulletin suggested to Pastor that you were on the loose. Subsequently Mr. Bradleigh has been able to persuade his superiors to revoke their first decision. Accordingly the FBI bulletin has been withdrawn; but the damage has been done.”

The sun hung well over westward. In his bathing trunks Mathieson felt the wind. He wrapped the damp towel about his shoulders.

Vasquez said, “For freedoms such as those you are trying to regain, men have always been ready to kill.”

“We’re not getting into that again, are we?”

“The net is drawing up around us, Mr. Merle. Thus far the best we’ve produced is the lackluster idea of trying to goad them into ill-considered actions — a program I might suggest as a last resort but certainly not as a first one. In my judgment you may find yourself locked into a situation in which you’ve no choice other than to kill or to back away. The only alternative to running may be to bully them into taking the first shot, and then kill them in self-defense. It’s a time-honored tactic of course, but it’s effective.”

“I won’t do it that way. I won’t be dragged down to their level.”

“The difference may exist only in your imagination. You’re after revenge and so are they. I believe you’re being unrealistic — you insist on hunting big game with an unloaded gun.”

“You knew my position.”

“I thought your experiences here might change your mind.”

“They haven’t.”

“I suppose I should admire your resolution.” Vasquez hooked a finger inside the turtleneck collar and pulled it away from his throat. “Do you know why we walked down into these trees?”

“No.”

“To put solid objects between us and any possibility of a parabolic microphone.”

“Here?”

“The habit of paranoia is a key to survival. Take nothing for granted.”

Vasquez began to dismantle a pine cone piece by piece with his thumbnail.

Mathieson said, “Something’s got you on edge.”

“Yes.”

“You said the net was drawing tight. What net?”

“Did you expect your enemies to be idle? They’re systematically combing Southern California for riding stables.”

“Stables?”

“One must assume your wife mentioned Ronny’s horsemanship to the Gilfillans the first time she spoke with them. Pastor’s men would have picked it up on their phone taps. They’ve begun to filter into this part of the county. They’ve an enormous area to cover and a great many clues to trace but they’ll come, probably in the guise of fire inspectors or something of that kind.”

A sinking feeling overwhelmed him. He clutched the towel around his neck. “How long do you think?”

“Two days? A week? No telling.”

In the shifting light he couldn’t be sure of Vasquez’s expression.

“Shit.”

“I’d say we have three options. One, find a new hiding place. Personally I’d vote against it if only because we’d be hard put to find a more ideal spot than the one we’ve got right now. Two, stand our ground, fight them, trap them if possible — take them and squeeze them, learn what we can. But that leads to bitter consequences. What to do with them afterward? Neither of those is acceptable. It leaves one other choice — risky but worth the risk, I think.”

“Yes?”

“Remain here. Hide. Attic, basement, lofts. Remove all traces of our presence. Allow them to enter the estate and search it at will. They’ll see the Meuths and Mr. Perkins. They’ll ask questions and get answers. They’ll find no trace of our having been here. To them this will be merely one of scores of places they’ll have been inspecting.”

“Why not just check into a motel until they’ve come through here?”

“We could but we don’t know when they’ll come — it may be a week or more; we’d waste that time. Simpler to post Perkins on the roof of the house. He’ll see them coming up the valley and we’ll have ample warning to get into concealment. In the meantime we can proceed without interruption. Once they’ve entered the valley there’s no way we can get out of it unseen — that’s to our advantage of course.”

“Ours?”

“Certainly. It should convince them the place is innocent.”

“It’s dangerous. Suppose we forgot some tiny detail? It wouldn’t take much to make them suspicious.”

“I’m rather professional at that sort of thing.”

“So was Glenn Bradleigh.”

“Bradleigh’s well-meaning but he’s a bureaucrat. Inevitably his mind’s been stultified by manuals of procedure.”

Mathieson clenched his fists around the damp ends of the towel. “It’ll put a strain on our group.”

“On your wife, you mean. Do you want me to tell her?”

“No. I’ll do it.” Feeling as if things had gone altogether out of his control he walked back up toward the house, treading gingerly in his bare feet.

Chapter Sixteen Southern California: 18–22 September

1

He came awake sluggishly with the memory of a frightening dream. He reached for her in the darkness and she slid down against him, throwing the sheet back. She accepted him; it was enough. His fears dwindled away in the heat of love-making. Afterward he was overcome by a debilitating melancholy but he did not sleep.

In the darkness she spoke drowsily: “I’m sorry I took it so hard last night. That wasn’t fair to any of you.”

“You didn’t bring any of this on yourself. I brought it on you. You’ve got a right to—”

“I haven’t got a right to go to pieces like that in front of everyone. Dear God. I’m scared to death all the time, I’m wretchedly depressed — I’ve turned into a useless neurotic; I feel like Blanche DuBois.”

He thought, And that’s something else Frank Pastor can pay for.

In the morning after breakfast he took her down past the copse of trees; he took her hand and they watched Roger chase the two boys around the paddock on horseback, twirling a rope. They were keeping close to the barn.

A flight of geese went overhead in formation. Sunlight dappled the creek that fed down into the pond a mile away. The water flashed white where it birled over the stones. The smell of early autumn was strong — pine resin on dry dawn-chilled air.

Mathieson ran a hand over his brush-cut hair. The bristle still took him by surprise; it was the first short haircut he’d had since he’d been in the army.

He spoke gently. “What do you think? Can we make it?”

“Sometimes I think we can.” She withdrew her hand and put her back to him, watching the boys on horseback. “Sometimes I don’t even want to.”

“If I can settle this thing — get Pastor off our backs—”

“What’s the sense talking about it? We don’t know what’s going to happen. You don’t even know if you can do anything yet — you haven’t got any idea how to approach it.”

“I’m beginning to see how it can be done.”

“Are you?” She didn’t sound reassured. She looked around at him, wary as a fawn. “I’m afraid. Let’s go back to the house?”

2

Vasquez opened the photo album on the dining table. Roger Gilfillan pulled his chair closer; Mathieson stood behind Vasquez’s shoulder.

“This one?”

“Sandra Pastor. The older daughter. Fourteen.”

“Chubby kid,” Roger observed. “Too much of that there spaghetti.”

Vasquez turned the picture over and slid the next out of the folder. “Him?”

“Hard to say.” Mathieson leaned forward. “It’s a lousy picture. It could be a rear-quarter profile of Ezio Martin.”

“It is. You’re getting quite good. Either of you recognize these two men?”

Roger shook his head; Mathieson said, “No. Should we?”

“This one’s name is Fritz Deffeldorf. The mug shots date back four years, the other two were taken by my people in the past few weeks. Now the other one. I’m afraid the pictures aren’t as good — he’s camera-shy. He’s Arnold Tyrone.”

“Tyrone?”

“It’s an Anglicization of something or other.”

Roger asked, “Where do these two hairpins fit in?”

“We believe they’re the men who bombed the house.”

Mathieson leaned over the photographs and burned them into his memory. “Tell me about it.”

“What we have is mainly circumstantial. It wouldn’t hold up in court.”

“Come on, come on.” He shifted the mug shot to get another angle on it.

“We managed to check the passenger lists on flights into Los Angeles International. They both arrived in Los Angeles the morning of the bombing — not together, they were on separate planes.”

“Using their real names?”

“Yes. It’s not unusual. Deffeldorf came in on a nonstop from Newark airport. Tyrone came in from Oklahoma City airport. That’s the airport that serves Norman, Oklahoma.”

“Then Tyrone may be the man who shot Walter Benson.”

“It seems a reasonable assumption. Tyrone flew back to Newark about ten days later. From Albuquerque.”

Mathieson looked up. “After they lost Glenn Bradleigh in Gallup.”

“That isn’t a supportable conclusion yet. But it’s an allowable surmise.”

“Go on.”

“Fritz Deffeldorf is a specialist for hire. His specialty is demolitions.”

“You’ve done a lot of digging.”

“I’ve had weeks to do it, Mr. Merle. But I must point out to you that your friend Bradleigh may have more information than I have about these two men. I haven’t approached him — I assume you don’t want my connection with you known. Now then. Arnold Tyrone. He owns and manages a sporting goods store in Trenton, New Jersey. Through his business front he procures weapons and hardware for those who need them. He’s said to be one of the best marksmen in the country. He may be, as I said, the one who shot Walter Benson in Oklahoma. By the same chain of reasoning I suspect he’s not the man who fired at you from the ridge above your house — the man with the motorcycle. That one missed.”

“Then who was that sniper? Deffeldorf?”

“I doubt it. Deffeldorfs expertise is in explosives, not rifles. You told me that Bradleigh was followed to Arizona by men in separate cars. That sort of operation usually entails at least three cars with two men in each car. Six men, then. Even if we assume two of them were Deffeldorf and Tyrone, there remain four men unaccounted for. There’s also reason to believe that at least three men were involved in the attack on your house. I’d guess that Tyrone drove the car, Deffeldorf threw the bomb from it, and a third man with a motorcycle was stationed on top of the ridge to cover the house in case anyone came out of it after the bomb was thrown. We’re still trying to identify him, as well as others who must have joined the team to shadow Mr. Bradleigh. We’re also trying to identify the four men who are combing San Diego County for riding stables. We’ve had descriptions of them — sufficient to indicate that none of them is Deffeldorf or Tyrone or, for that matter, anyone familiar to our operatives. But that’s not surprising. It’s a menial sort of assignment and I’m sure the four men are local hoodlums, perhaps from San Diego itself.”

“Then where are Deffeldorf and Tyrone now?”

“At home managing their separate businesses.”

Roger said, “You mean they just cut out and head back home right in the middle of the job?”

“Their part of the job is probably concluded. Such men are free lances.”

Vasquez tapped a fingertip on Arnold Tyrone’s grainy face. “When Pastor and Ezio Martin decided to employ assassins to seek out you and Walter Benson and the others, they shopped around to find out who’d be available for the work. They’d never use one of their own for this kind of assignment. It’s de rigueur to hire outside talent, and to hire it through an anonymous chain of intermediaries. Then if the talent is apprehended and decides to confess, nothing can be traced back to the source.”

“Make your point.”

“Contain your impatience. You have an annoying tendency to try to reduce everything to straight-line simplicities. There are things in life that aren’t subject to that kind of reduction. An organization like Pastor’s is not going to dry up and blow away if its taproot is severed. Remove Frank Pastor and the organization will go on quite happily without him. By personalizing your vendetta you render it meaningless.”

“Are you suggesting I should go after the entire organization?”

“I suggest, Mr. Merle, that you decide once and for all which it is that you want — the removal of the threat against you and your family, or revenge against your enemies.”

“You’re making an artificial distinction.”

“Not at all. If you’re after revenge then by all means fill your hands with pistols and go roaring off in pursuit of Mr. Deffeldorf and Mr. Tyrone. I’m quite certain they’re the men who assaulted your home and hired the sniper who shot at you. But if you’re after the removal of the threat then you must forget Deffeldorf and Tyrone. Individually they constitute no threat to you. If Frank Pastor were removed from the scene you can be sure the hired hands would forget you instantly — they do only those jobs for which they can reasonably expect recompense, and there would be no profit in their continuing to harass you.”

Mathieson pushed the photographs away. He walked to the window and stared through it. Meuth’s tractor pulled a mower across the skyline, making a distant racket. Roger cleared his throat.

Vasquez hammered home his point. “You’ve no need to deal with outsiders who have no personal stake in your living or dying. Forget Deffeldorf and Tyrone. Forget the sniper, whoever he may have been. Focus your attentions on those who have compelling reasons to threaten you.”

“Frank Pastor.”

“Not merely Pastor. Think about the kind of importance these people attach to revenge. It is a familial obligation — a duty of the blood. If Frank Pastor is harmed, his family is obliged to retaliate. Anna Pastor, his wife. George Ramiro, who must maintain his reputation as the family’s enforcer. C. K. Gillespie, who has designs on the family’s fortunes and is, I’m told, merely waiting for the eldest Pastor daughter to reach the age of consent so that he may marry her. Ezio Martin who is a second cousin of Pastor’s, his closest friend and heir apparent. Alicia Ramiro, Martin’s stepsister, the wife of George Ramiro and again a cousin of Pastor’s. Sandra and Nora Pastor, the daughters.”

He turned away from the window and found Vasquez watching him with a peculiar narrowed eagerness. Mathieson said, “Teen-age girls?”

“They’re your enemies. Make no mistake. Leave those two innocent little girls free to act and the time will come when they’ll seek revenge on you. It’s born in them — they have no choice. Therefore you have no choice.”

“My God. This is absurd.”

“Do you want to reconsider?”

“Why are you always after me to change my mind?”

“Answer my question, please.”

“No. I can’t reconsider. I’ve got to get them off my back.”

Vasquez watched, unblinking.

Mathieson said, “You’re testing me, aren’t you.”

“Testing your resolve, yes.”

“Why?”

“Because you must realize the depth of your commitment. Once you start, there will be no turning back. Go after one of them and you must go after them all. You can’t leave the job half done.” Vasquez gathered up the photographs, squared them neatly and slid them into the envelope. “Suppose your campaign achieves the intended results — the neutralization, somehow, of the threat posed by Frank Pastor. I can’t conceive of your accomplishing that without incurring the rage of his family.” Vasquez paused significantly. “Suppose in achieving your first goal — Pastor — you find you’ve offended your own moral sensibilities. Suppose you find yourself filled with self-loathing. Suppose self-disgust tempts you to take to your heels. You must realize now — before we really begin — that such a train of events would leave you and your wife and son and your friends in a far worse predicament than the one they’re in now.”

“How could it?”

“Your death has been a matter of sport to Frank Pastor. It’s inconsequential. He’s gone through the motions, he’s honored the traditions to which he’s obligated, but he hasn’t yet devoted extraordinary energies to pursuing you. The attacks on you may have been engineered by a subordinate — perhaps Ezio Martin — and they were incidentals in Frank Pastor’s life. Your demise is something he desires. But it’s hardly a vital issue to him. Now if you should carry your attack directly to Pastor and do injury to him, then he and his family would drop absolutely everything in the rush to avenge themselves on you. Where a relatively insignificant proportion of their energies heretofore has been devoted to your harassment, now you would find that the entire force of their violent resources would be brought to bear in an intense concentration against you and your family.”

The tractor sputtered to a stop. In the abrupt silence he could hear the breath whistling through Roger’s nostrils.

Vasquez said, “I doubt you’d stand one chance in a million. You and your wife and son would not merely be tracked, found and taken. You’d very likely be subjected to punishments of agonizing painfulness before you were eventually slaughtered. As for Mr. Gilfillan and his family, one can’t be sure whether their hunger for vengeance would stretch that far but it’s possible.”

Mathieson pulled out a chair and sat down slowly at the table. He laid both arms out flat along the tabletop and looked at the backs of his hands. Beside him Roger reached out; he felt the solid grip of Roger’s fingers on his shoulder.

Vasquez was behind him and Mathieson did not look around. Eventually it forced Vasquez to walk around the table and stand on the far side looking at him. Mathieson raised his head.

In a kinder voice Vasquez said, “I have a responsibility to force you to think these things right through before you decide on a course of action. You resent it, of course — it would be unnatural if you didn’t. I’ve thrown a few of your assumptions off the track. I’ve managed to depress you. I’ve made what already appeared difficult become all but impossible to conceive.”

Roger’s hand fell away; his chair scraped and Mathieson heard him stand up. “Tell you what you’ve done to me, you’ve made me start wondering whether you’re getting a case of cold feet.”

“I intend going all the way with this,” Vasquez said. “Make no mistake about that.”

“How do we know that? So far all I’ve seen is some athletics and some smoke screens.”

Mathieson looked up at Roger in surprise: the anger in Roger’s voice was unmistakable.

“I signed on to do something — not just set around and look at pictures and listen to your long-winded flapdoodle and wait on our butts for these four fire inspectors to come find us hidin’ in the hayloft. So far all’s I’ve seen you do is spend a lot of Fred’s money on man-hours for your own operatives compiling these here beautiful plastic-bound Xerox dossiers, and now you’re trying to tell us we can ignore Deffeldorf and Tyrone, just throw all that money and time away. Hell, the way you go at it we could all set around here waitin’ for inspiration until we got long white whiskers on us.”

Vasquez scowled. “We can’t fight from ignorance. We’d get nowhere. Surely you can understand that. We need facts before we can move. We’ve got the facts now. We’re sorting through them. In time we’ll find facts we can use. It takes time — I’m sorry, I won’t be held accountable for that, or for your impatience.”

“You make it sound right reasonable. But somebody else might take a look at all this and call it foot-draggin’.”

“In other words you don’t trust me.”

“Why should I? Why should Fred, for that matter? Just because you say out loud that you aim to go all the way with this, we supposed to believe you? Vasquez, I been listening to producers and directors talk real sweet to me all my life, and the only thing I really learned out of all that was that ninety-nine times out of a hundred those old boys are just yakking to practice their lying.”

Vasquez looked at Mathieson. “Do you share your friend’s distrust of me?”

“I’d like to know what your intentions are. I’d like to know your reasons — why you took this on in the first place, especially if you thought it was such a poor gamble.”

“My reasons are personal.”

“Something between you and Frank Pastor?”

“No. I’ve never had dealings with the man.”

“Then what is it?” Mathieson sat up straight. “I realize it’s an impertinent question.”

“Impertinent? It’s personal. But then the only things that matter are.” Vasquez thrust his hands into his pockets. His face drew back defensively, chin tucked toward the plaid collar of his open shirt. “Call them my private demons. Matters of vanity and eccentric conviction. I’d prefer to leave it at that.”

“Ain’t enough,” Roger said.

Mathieson said, “I agree with Roger. I’m sorry to pry but we’ve got a right to be satisfied on this. I don’t want to be crude — but it’s my money you’re spending.”

“And my time you’re wasting,” Roger said. “All of us, our time.”

“An extraordinary amount of my own time as well,” Vasquez said. “Do you know how many other cases I’ve had to turn away or set on the back burner?”

Mathieson’s fist hit the table: “Why? You’ve got to tell us why.”

Vasquez blinked. His shoulders rolled around and settled; his chin poked forward until he looked querulous. “Are you religious, Mr. Merle?”

It took him aback. “What? No — not particularly.”

“You?”

Roger shook his head.

Vasquez said, “People who believe in God can leave the ultimate sortings-out to Him. Rewards and punishments. Heaven and Hell. When one has no faith in that, one must pay some attention to justice here and now. Otherwise it’s all meaningless chaos.”

Roger snapped at him: “We didn’t ask for a course in philosophy.”

“You’re going to get one. You asked a question. I’m answering it.” Vasquez’s eyes swiveled bleakly toward Mathieson. “My reasons have to do with the fact that I lost my faith in God a long time ago. Do you understand at all? I’m a Chicano, Mr. Merle, I have experience of injustice.”

Roger said, “You don’t talk like no ignorant barrio slum.”

“Nevertheless I was born in one. I was born on the south side of Tucson, Arizona. An adobe slum.”

“So now we get into ethnic stuff?”

Vasquez shook his head. “I believe with Edmund Burke that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. You see I may have lost faith but I still carry the burden of absolutism — I was raised in the Church. I believe in absolute distinctions between good and evil. It would have been easier if I’d been able to adapt myself to the current fashions in flexible morality. But I can’t — I won’t be corrupted, it would make my existence so complicated it would be impossible.”

Mathieson stared at him. Was it possible Vasquez’s reluctance had been caused solely by a fear of ridicule?

Vasquez said, “One meets decent people but most of them are decent largely because their lives have contained little hardship, little pain and little temptation. Mr. Merle is all but unique — he has faced those challenges and has not been ground down by them. He’s made his choices from principle rather than expediency. I can’t tell you how much I admire that.”

Roger watched, skepticism undiminished. Vasquez pulled out a chair and arranged himself in it. His voice dropped; it took on the dense foggy bass tones of a church organ. “My son was drafted into the army in 1969. He submitted to the draft but petitioned to be treated as a conscientious objector. We had long arguments. He insisted he would not kill. He said that was his credo. He’s a Catholic and as you know that’s a congregation not noted for its pacifism, but I had no doubt of his sincerity. I put a hypothesis to him. If someone were to point a gun at his mother with the unmistakable intention of killing her, what would he do?”

Mathieson said, “What did he say?”

“The question at this juncture is what do you say?”

“I don’t know what I might do. I’d try not to kill him. I’d stop him, or maybe get shot trying. But no, I wouldn’t deliberately kill him.”

“Those might have been my son’s exact words.”

Roger said, “What happened to him?”

“He was classified I-A-o. Assigned as a noncombatant, a medical attendant. Near Hue, in 1970, he disappeared. He’s still listed as missing.”

Mathieson said, “I’m very sorry.”

“Your sorrow isn’t of much use.”

It angered him. “I’m not a surrogate for your son. Don’t work out your penances on me.”

“Don’t be idiotic. Or at least don’t proclaim your idiocy. I’m not confusing you with my son. I’m trying to explain why I’ve had occasion to think these issues out.”

Mathieson felt exhausted. “Do you want to argue metaphysics all day?”

Vasquez disregarded him. “A man does the sort of thing you’re doing only after a great deal of considered analysis. To face such dangers requires a unique devotion to moral principle.”

“If you say so. Seems to me I’d face more danger if I did anything else.”

“Don’t be disingenuous. It’s not worthy of you. As we both know, you could always run.”

Roger came toward the table. “To where?”

“Anywhere.”

“Reckon that’s the same as nowhere.”

“We’ve tried it,” Mathieson said.

Vasquez glanced from one to the other. “In any case you asked what my motives were. Are you satisfied?”

Roger gripped the edge of the table and leaned on his arms. For a long time he studied Vasquez. “I believe it. Don’t ask me why.”

“Very few men would believe it,” Vasquez said. “It’s a cynical age.”

Mathieson was about to speak when he heard the door. Mrs. Meuth appeared. “Mr. Vasquez—”

“What is it?”

“Perkins says those men are coming up the road, sir.”

Mathieson was out of his chair before she completed the sentence.

Chapter Seventeen Southern California: 22 September

1

They dispersed on the run. Mathieson found the boys in the stable unsaddling. Perkins and Meuth came striding into the runway and Mathieson surprised himself by how calmly he spoke: “Leave that. Let’s get up to the house.”

Perkins said, “We’ll take the horses, boys.” Meuth reached for the trailing reins.

Ronny balked. “But they’ll—”

Meuth had a tart New England nasality. “They see two sweaty horses, they’ll want to know who was riding them. It’ll have to be me and Perkins. You boys git, now.”

Perkins’s thatch of white hair seemed to glow in the dim stable. He looked at Mathieson: “You’ve got maybe four minutes.”

“Come on... come on.” He took the boys across the driveway at full steam, leading the way with his long legs.

They caromed inside. Ronny was anxious: Mathieson saw him reach for Billy’s arm. “Wait a minute. What I was trying to say — the stirrups. What if they notice your stirrups?”

“Dudes,” Billy said with an echo of his father’s prairie twang. “Never notice it in a million years. Come on.”

Mathieson stopped halfway to the stairs. “Ronny may have a point. Get on upstairs — I’ll be right there.” He swiveled and ran back outside: went off the porch in a single flying leap, skidded on the gravel under the porte cochere and sprinted full-tilt across the lawn. He spared a glance to his right. There was nothing in sight — the trees masked the lower valley beyond the farther bend in the driveway.

Meuth and Perkins were leading the two geldings out into the paddock. Mathieson stopped in the stable door; if he went outside he’d be visible from below. “Meuth!”

He saw the man’s cap-bill turn.

“Lengthen those stirrups!”

Meuth shook his head; he looked away toward the end of the paddock fence. “No time. Run for it, man!”

Mathieson made his dash. If the car came around the bend before he got inside the house...

But it didn’t. He took the main stairs three at a time and pounded down the upstairs corridor.

Homer was waiting by the open door to the utility closet. “Where the hell you been? Never mind — here, I’ll give you a boost.”

He pulled himself up through the trapdoor onto the rafters. They’d rehearsed it twice several days ago: He knew enough to move with care, balancing his weight on the beams — there was nothing between them but the light wire framing of the plaster ceilings covered by six inches of foam insulation and if you put a foot down on that it might go straight through.

He laid himself painfully belly-flat across the rafters and reached down the trapdoor. Beneath him Homer was stacking soapboxes back on the shelves they’d used for ladder-holds. Homer tipped the ironing board back into place and then there were no footholds. He made his jump from a crouch; Mathieson caught his arm and manhandled him up far enough. Homer’s fingers gripped the box of rafters around the traphole and Mathieson slid back to give him room to chin himself up through the opening.

Homer rolled away from the hole and Mathieson slid the painted sheet of three-quarter plywood down into it, closing the door. He turned, barking a knee on a two-by-eight, picking up the faint guide of illumination falling through the angled louver-slats of the attic vent up near the peak of the wall at the far end of the crawl space. It was enough to steer by; he followed Homer awkwardly along the rafters on hands and knees, using the beams like railway tracks until they reached the central crawl-planking. It was two feet wide and ran the length of the attic — a service platform for access to the air-conditioning ductwork.

Even under the roofbeam the space was only three feet high and they had to scull the plank on hands and knees. A breeze hit him in the face, drawn through by the throbbing exhaust fan down the length of the house behind him.

Two heads blocked some of the light from the shutter-slits of the vent — Vasquez and Roger, peering down through the openings. The long attic was architecturally a nave; at the end to either side garbled dormers made symmetrical wings. Back in those narrow triangular spaces the side-vents threw enough light for him to make out the rumpled shapes of human figures and the crowded stacks of luggage, piled like bricks, neatly fitted into the corners. Everything they possessed was up here.

His eyes were dilating in the dimness and when he moved forward he distinguished Amy Gilfillan’s silhouette; the dark figure before her was Jan. He looked the other way and found Ronny and Billy crowded up against the side-vent of the left wing, trying to see down through the slats. That one overlooked the swimming pool and the back slope of garden.

Behind him Homer brushed his ankle, climbing across the beams into the wing by the two boys. Mathieson put one foot on a rafter and reached out for Jan’s shoulder. Her hand found his and squeezed it. He moved ahead down the planking; Vasquez and Roger made room for him.

The vent was about a foot square. Its wooden louvers were tilted down against the rain. The fan sucked a powerful wind through the screening. He moved close to it and the changing focus of his eyes blurred the mesh of the wire screen. The view was restricted by the four-inch depth of the louvers: He could see a piece of the driveway, grass on either side of it, one end of the stable and a patch of paddock beyond it.

The car squatted in the gravel drive and by squinting and moving his head from side to side against the screen he was able to piece out the lettering in the gold decal on the front door of the pale blue car: County of San Diego — Utilities Board.

Vasquez moved his lips close to Mathieson’s ear. “Electrical inspectors. It’s an excellent ploy — gives them the excuse to pry into nooks and crannies.” The sibilants of his whisper hissed in the wind.

Roger said, “They over in the paddock talkin’ to Meuth and Perkins right now. Over to the right a bit — you can’t see them right now.”

Mathieson said, “Well at least we didn’t go to all this trouble on a false alarm. While I was banging my knees on those rafters I was thinking how sore I’d be if it turned out to be Meuth’s sister-in-law or some Sunday driver who lost his way.”

“He’d have to be real good and lost,” Roger remarked. “Today’s Monday.”

“Is it?” He’d lost track. Nothing stirred in the quadrangle of his view. His knees began to ache; he gingerly shifted position on the sharp-edged beams. “They’re taking a long time out there.”

“Establishing their credentials,” Vasquez guessed.

“Maybe. But there could be a problem. Meuth and Perkins still have the horses with them?”

“Yes.”

Roger said, “Meuth’s probably stalling them, give us more time to get settled down.”

“I hope that’s it. We didn’t have time to lengthen Billy’s stirrups.”

He felt Roger stiffen beside him. Billy was a head shorter than Ronny; the stirrups on his saddle had been hiked up several notches to accommodate his short legs. An alert observer would notice it.

Roger said, “Perkins knows?”

“Yes.”

“Then I reckon it’s all right. They get curious, he’ll just allow he shortened the stirrups to ride knee-high race form. He was Breed’s trainer, you know. Sometimes they ride quarterhorses short-stirrup, get ’em used to pancake saddles.”

But his heart kept pounding. He didn’t know Perkins at all: Did the man have brains enough?

Then they moved into sight. He nudged Roger. The three of them pressed their faces to the screen.

Meuth trudged across the driveway, moving with an elderly foot-dragging slowness that wasn’t typical of him. Stalling them, Mathieson judged. Meuth was talking rapid fire, waving his arms about — probably extolling the glories of the estate, putting on an act and evidently doing a good job of it.

The two electrical inspectors wore casual outfits — open sport shirts, khakis, sneakers. One of them was a big man with a veined bald skull; the back of his head was flat. His companion had crew-cut gray hair and a beer belly. They didn’t look sinister. They looked like weary civil servants.

On the lawn the three men paused, Meuth still talking expansively. The bald man nodded to acknowledge something Meuth said. The gray-haired man peered around, turning on his heels, taking in everything. His face lifted and his eyes seemed to focus directly on the grilled vent. Mathieson had the impulse to jerk back away from the opening. Vasquez’s hand gripped his arm: “Steady. He can’t see us. But don’t move — he might see the shadows shift.” The whispered words were carried away behind them by the thrumming fan.

The bald man had a well-used metal tool kit box. He led the other two out of sight toward the porte cochere.

Vasquez pulled back away from the vent. “Pick a comfortable spot and settle down. They’ll be here a while. Don’t move around — they might hear creaking.”

He saw Perkins lead the two saddled horses into the stable. Faintly he heard the bang of the house’s front door. Probably Meuth — slamming it to warn them in the attic.

Vasquez was climbing into the side wing with Homer and the two boys. Mathieson made his way over the rafters, palm and knee, brushing past the stacked suitcases and into the little false cave behind them where Jan and Amy were hunched under the low dormer roof. The space was tight, most of it taken up by the luggage. Jan was watching him but in the dimness her expression had the false serenity of withdrawal. He guessed she had simply thrown all the gears into neutral. He fitted himself down onto a beam beside her and captured her cool hand; he rubbed it gently between his palms but she only gave him a distracted wisp of a smile.

Roger eased in opposite him and Amy flashed her teeth, squeezing to the side to make room. Mathieson saw the mischievous grin pass between them — a game of hide-and-seek: Amy, who lived a life of splendid carelessness, was enjoying this. Her pixie face was faintly aglow with wide-eyed excitement.

Then they waited.

Disquieted by uneasy imaginings he ran his mind back over the preparations they had made, trying to discern whether they’d overlooked anything. They’d picked this hiding place because it was big enough to accommodate eight people and their possessions; they’d studied it by flashlight from the top of the trapdoor and they’d placed the luggage back far enough from the nave so that it wouldn’t be seen by anyone who didn’t actually crawl most of the length of the attic. There’d been a bigger, more comfortable and more obvious pair of dormer wings at the opposite end of the house but that was right by the big attic fan and they’d ruled it out when Vasquez pointed out that the noise of the fan would prevent them from hearing anyone’s approach. Homer, Vasquez and Roger were armed with revolvers and if they were discovered the plan was to try and get the drop on the hoodlums; after that they’d have no choice but to keep the prisoners incommunicado for an indefinite period. But if that happened it would be a costly risk: When the two electrical inspectors disappeared their colleagues would trace their movements.

Somewhere in the house there was a faint thud — probably another door slamming.

Mathieson’s shoulder was jammed up against an overhead rafter and he had to keep his head bent below the sloping roof; his muscles began to ache. Across the way he could only just make out the huddled shadows of Ronny, Billy, Vasquez and Homer. The three vents threw just enough light to distinguish outlines but not colors. He remembered the rehearsals up here last week — Vasquez urging him to keep a gun in his pocket, growing angry over Mathieson’s repeated refusals. If it comes to shooting it’ll make no difference whether you’re armed or not — you’re still part of it.

He kept looking at the luminous dial of his watch. Beside him Jan shifted her position slightly. He tensed; but there was no sound. The beam on which he sat was pinching a groove into his rump. He wanted, of all things, a cigarette — he hadn’t smoked in years.

Thirty-five minutes had passed. It was almost noon. Despite the exhaust fan’s powerful circulation the corner was close with musty heat; he was sweating heavily.

The faintest of clicks — his eyes flashed toward Roger and he saw a pale flash ripple along the blued gun barrel as it lifted. The cords stood out in Roger’s neck.

Mathieson turned his face a bit and then he caught it on the flats of his eardrums: the scrape of wood on wood.

There was light — dim irregular reflections that moved the shadows under the center roofbeam. In alarm he watched the shadows dance, faint as ghosts. He knew what it was: Someone had come up through the trapdoor and was playing a flashlight around; what he was seeing was secondary and tertiary reflections of the light beam.

Beads of sweat stood out on Roger’s forehead. His knuckles went pale on the grip of the revolver. Its muzzle stirred, pushing toward the central runway where, if the searchers advanced this far, they would appear.

Across the way Mathieson could see subtle movements — Homer and Vasquez preparing themselves; he caught, once, a glint of light on steel.

Cramp put a stitch in Mathieson’s neck. He opened his mouth and drew a shallow breath. Jan sat absolutely still except for her eyelids: She was blinking very fast, staring sightlessly and fixedly at an indeterminate shadow amid the suitcases. A pale movement — it drew his eye: Amy, lifting her hand to chew on a fingernail.

The vague dappling of lights grew dimmer. He guessed they were prowling toward the far end — toward the attraction of noise and movement: the exhaust fan.

Then a voice. It startled him by its very faintness; the fan, drawing air, sent the sound away and made it seem to reach him from a great distance downwind:

“It’s just a fan.”

An ordinary voice — no menace in it — but the skin of his back crawled.

His nerves were so keyed up that the tiniest movement in the corner of his vision drew his alarmed attention. It was Roger: his thumb curling over the hammer of the revolver.

A creaking of planks. The lights came lancing down the attic — the flashlights pointing this way now. Two of them: the beams crisscrossed, bobbing around the rafters, throwing the shadows into sharp relief. Against the sudden light Jan’s profile in silhouette was preternaturally still like something carved out of stone. Then he heard something catch in her throat: She dipped her face, stifling it, With great care he slid his arm around her shoulders. She was rigid.

“This insulation’s making me all itchy. Come on, there’s nothing up here.”

The lights receded. He heard the scrape of the trapdoor. Darkness returned.

He let the breath out of him; he sagged back against the roof.

Jan stirred. His grip clenched her shoulder. “No.” He mouthed the whisper against her ear. “Wait till they’ve gone — wait till we hear the car.”

“God— God...”

“Take it easy. It’s all over.”

2

His back ached and his arms were getting weak; he took a break and set the ax beside the stacked logs. In the night the cool breeze brushed his cheeks. Lamplight from the windows of the house made little pools on the lawn above him. He filled his lungs and dragged another limb to the sawhorses: Meuth had pruned the maples during the week and dragged the limbs around behind the barn with his tractor and they’d been waiting for the ax. Mathieson had volunteered for it because he needed to be alone and because he needed to work hard with his hands and body, exhaust himself to the extreme so that there wouldn’t be any strength left for feeling and thinking.

In the end his muscles rebelled and he had to quit. He put the ax away and left the barn, walking stiffly in slow weariness, guiding on the porch lights.

He stopped under the porte cochere, reluctant to go inside. The scene still reverberated in his skull. They had fought many times but never quite like this. God, the things I said. At its climax she had burst into screaming tears. They were real tears — it was real emotion — but her histrionics had been so theatrical he’d found himself unmoved; and that had frightened him more than the rest. He’d rushed outside.

On the porch steps he sat down with his elbows on his knees, face in his hands.

An insubstantial cloud drifted across the moon; he forced himself to his feet and stumbled inside and up the stairs.

He looked in on Ronny. The boy lay asleep on the bed, covers thrown back, positioned as if he’d tripped while running in sand. Mathieson pulled the door silently shut and went on along the hall.

She was at the dressing table prospecting for pins in her hair. She had a headache again: He could see the pain across her eyes. She looked up, locking glances with him in the mirror, and he saw her breathe in through her nose, slowly and expressively, pinching her lips together. Her hair, still fresh from washing, shimmered in the lamplight; the portable dryer was in the open suitcase; now she was taking her hair down. She twisted half around to look at him directly and his glance traveled the long column of her back — even in anger she still had the capacity to arouse him deeply.

She swung her legs around and crossed them and leaned forward as though she had a severe pain in her stomach: She held that attitude, watching him, anxiety behind the surface anger in her eyes. Her arms hugged her upraised knee.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Are you?”

“I’ll make it up to you.”

“How?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“I’m going to pieces, Fred.”

“You can’t. Not yet.”

“Easy to say. Easy for you to say.”

“When I put Ronny to bed he said something to me. He said, ‘I want to be a rodeo rider if I grow up.’”

She only looked at him blankly.

“‘If I grow up.’”

Comprehension changed her face.

“That’s why you’ve got to hang on.”

She turned away from him and her hands plucked blindly at things on the dressing table. She picked up the hair brush and put it down, prodded a lipstick without lifting it, found a pin left in her hair but didn’t take it out — merely touching things as if there were communication in the act.

He said, “You’ve got to try.”

“I feel like Humpty Dumpty — a lot of little pieces nobody will ever put back together.”

“I know.”

“I’m learning to hate you.”

“I’m learning to hate myself.”

She took the pin out and put it down very gently in the little box. Then with growing ferocity she began to brush out her hair.

He stripped off his sweat-sodden clothes and went into the shower. When he came out of the bathroom the lights were turned off in the bedroom; before he switched off the bathroom light he saw her in the bed, lying on her side, facing away from him, crowded as far over as she could get without falling off.

He turned it off and felt his way to the bed and got in. He was careful not to touch her.

Too charged to sleep, he just lay there. Something Homer had taught him kept coming back: A man comes at you hand-to-hand, there’s one way to put him out and it works every time if he doesn’t know to look for it. Doesn’t take much of a blow. Hit him with the heel of your palm — bring it up, short and hard, right up into his nose. Drive the nasal cartilage right up into the head. You hit a man hard enough that way, just once, it’ll drive the splinters right up into his brain and kill him instantly.

The thought had sickened him at the time and he’d changed the subject immediately. But now in fevered visions he saw himself slamming his palm up with vicious rage into face after face — Gillespie, George Ramiro, Deffeldorf, Tyrone, Ezio Martin, Frank Pastor...

And then all at once he had it, the structure of the plan. It brought him bolt upright in bed.

He got up and left the room, striding down the hall barefoot, belting his robe. At Vasquez’s door he banged impatiently and when he heard a grunt he pushed inside.

Vasquez lay across the bed, reaching for the lamp. When it came on he flinched from the light and sat up squinting. He was wearing satin pajamas — bright green. “What the devil?”

“I’ve got to talk to you.”

“Evidently.” Vasquez reached for the clock and turned it toward him. “At half past two it had better be utterly fascinating.”

“I’ve figured it out.”

“Have you?” Vasquez threw the sheet back and slid his feet into a pair of moccasins. “I can’t really see you. You’ll have to wait a moment.” He padded to the bathroom.

Mathieson was too keyed up to sit; he walked to the door and back. Vasquez hadn’t shut the bathroom door and when Mathieson passed the foot of the bed he saw Vasquez bending over the sink, running water, prying his eyelids open one at a time.

Contact lenses, he thought. I’ll be damned.

From a hook Vasquez took down a green-lapeled dressing gown; he folded it around his trim shape and crossed to the straight chair at the writing desk. He sat down before he spoke. “Proceed.”

“We’ve been making a mistake in our whole approach to this thing. I just figured it out.”

“Indeed.”

“We’ve been trying to contrive some cockeyed scheme to nail them all together — simultaneously.”

“It’s hardly cockeyed. We can’t attack one or two at a time and leave the rest free to retaliate.”

“Sure we can. That’s been our mistake. You ever go bowling?”

“Not for a good many years.”

“Neither have I. But that was the image. We’ve been trying to bowl a strike — figure out how to hit all ten pins with one ball. But if you bowl a strike into the pocket — you know the term?”

“Yes.”

“Then think about what really happens. The ball doesn’t actually hit all ten pins. At most it hits three of them. Those three pins take care of the rest. They knock the other pins down.”

“That’s attractive,” Vasquez said, “but I’ve never put much trust in analogies. We’re not dealing with bowling pins. Suppose you bowl a spare instead of a strike? You’ve got one pin left standing. But this one would be a bowling pin that can shoot you to death.”

“All right, it’s a sloppy metaphor. But it got me to thinking. There’s no reason why we have to go after them all at the same time. If we can peel them off one at a time—”

“We’ve gone over all that. While we’re peeling them off one at a time, what do you suppose the others are doing?”

“They’d have to know who to come after and where to find us. If we start taking them out individually, and if we do it in such a way that nobody else knows what’s really happening...”

“Starting where? At the bottom? We’ve discussed that before. We can’t hope to disrupt their operations by stinging individual enterprises. You might annoy them a bit by hitting a few front operations but that sort of campaign would be like trying to kill an elephant with sandpaper. In any case it would be stupid to disperse our attacks — we haven’t the manpower. Save up your punch and when you use it, use all of it in intense concentration. Mr. Merle, none of this is new. Sometimes an idea coined at two in the morning seems brilliant but loses its luster in the light of day. We’ve already demonstrated that you can’t injure Frank Pastor by hitting his subsidiaries. There are too many of them and in any case those operations are protected by the police...”

“You’re getting off the track.”

“Am I? You’re talking about taking them out individually. I suggested that at the outset. But the only effective method of achieving that is to kill them. I still suggest your preclusion of murder is an artificial stricture — because the methods you’ll be forced to use are bound to be as reprehensible as murder or more so.”

“I can think of very few things as reprehensible as murder.”

“You’re wrong. Whatever method you choose, it must lead to the same end — the willful destruction of your enemies. Nothing less than that will suffice. You may leave them alive and breathing but you must destroy something vital — if only their freedom to make choices. Ultimately you’ll be forced to assume absolute power over their decisions and their lives. You must see that much. I’m not as certain that you also see the inevitable consequence. Such power will corrode your soul.”

“It can be done without killing,” Mathieson said.

“Very well. How?”

He pulled the chair closer to Vasquez and sat down. “We start with C. K. Gillespie.”

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