Silence

32

MICHAEL DENSMORE stepped out of his office carrying his briefcase. It was late—after ten o’clock—but he wore his suit coat with the middle button closed and his tie straight. He was disciplined about the way he presented himself, even when he was only taking the elevator down to the parking level where his car waited in its reserved space. Over the years, he had found that even if the only person he met on the way was a young secretary working late or a janitor on the night cleaning crew, his appearance gave him an advantage. His look made it clear that he was the boss, not just because he had good clothes, but because his standards were not a facade that he let down at five o’clock. When he was in his private office making telephone calls or reading legal files, he always hung his coat on a proper wooden hanger behind the door—or at least a chair—so it would not wrinkle, but he put it on before he gave his secretary permission to admit anyone he didn’t know well. There was a padded hanger downstairs in the Mercedes that matched the interior of the car. He would use it to hang the coat behind him in the back seat while he drove.

He was a successful, wealthy man, and he wanted to look like one. He had been prosperous since he had become a partner in Dolan, Nyquist and Berne. He had saved money, and also, by degrees, broadened his offering of services, so his income had continued to grow. He had begun as a straight criminal-defense attorney specializing in white-collar crime. Then clients began to pay him for acting as negotiator or consultant in a few delicate business deals that needed legal adjustments to remain viable. A few times, it had meant drawing up papers for a limited partnership that did not list one of the partners because his name might attract the wrong kind of attention. There were a few deals in which getting the necessary permits and licenses had been expedited by his personal assurances and a few envelopes full of hundred-dollar bills. After that, he’d begun to arrange introductions, putting together people who had projects with people who had money to invest. Soon he was forming pools of investors who couldn’t explain where their dollars had come from, and wanted profits without having their names written down. Now he earned more money making these arrangements for clients than defending them in court.

Densmore was largely satisfied with his public self, but there were still certain parts of his private life that shocked and disappointed him. He was approaching the end of his fourth marriage, and that period was always a depressing and dispiriting time. Lawyers learned a great deal about unpleasant corners of the human psyche, but there was nothing like divorce to complete their education.

Being divorce-prone was like having a bee-sting allergy. The first couple of breakups had hurt a little. The third had been severely painful because he’d had so much more to lose, and he had gone into shock. He didn’t know how he was going to get through the fourth.

Densmore had met his current wife, Grace, five years ago, just as his third marriage had entered its guerrilla-warfare phase. His third wife, Chris, had begun sneaking around, looking at receipts and financial records. She had begun paying attorneys and private detectives to look into the size and shape of his fortune in preparation for her all-out attack.

Grace appeared in front of his eyes when he arrived at a charity event for arthritis at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and suddenly the divorce became urgent. Within a month, he had begun trying to expedite his divorce from Chris. He agreed to give in to some of her ridiculous demands just so he could get the process over, but appeasement was a foolish strategy. Chris and her lawyers became more greedy and inquisitive about what he was hiding. After a few months, their prying and spying alarmed a couple of Densmore’s most difficult clients.

Densmore went to the house to meet with Chris, who had by then learned he was spending every night at the Peninsula Hotel with Grace and had stopped speaking to him. When he arrived, he listened tolerantly to a long, irrelevant diatribe about what a bad husband he had been. Then he approached his problem carefully and delicately. “As you know, I am an attorney specializing in the defense of people who are charged with criminal infractions. Many of these clients are innocent. Others have, at some point or other, made serious mistakes, and I must guide them in their dealings with the legal system. My arrangements with them are, by law, privileged and confidential. Your snooping into my professional affairs in search of hidden money is upsetting some very important clients.”

“You know what, Michael? I find that I no longer give a shit about your problems. My detectives have already found four or five accounts that you absentmindedly forgot to mention in your settlement papers. My lawyers tell me I could get you in big trouble.”

“If your people think they’ve found anything like that, they’re mistaken,” he retorted. “Accounts that don’t belong to me sometimes have my name on them because I have power of attorney, or I’m holding funds in escrow. I don’t own them.”

“Bullshit!”

“Look, Chris. I’ve never talked to you about the details of my law practice, so you’ll have to trust me. If I lose these clients, it will cut into the value of my practice and the value of my personal assets. That means I will lose half and you will lose half.”

“Trust you?” Her expression was unspeakable, a mixture of revulsion and ugliness. “I trusted you not to humiliate me.”

When he saw that expression, he almost lost hope, but he didn’t dare to give up. “I haven’t humiliated you, Chris. If it takes a goddamned detective to find out about it, then I’m being discreet.”

“Not discreet enough, I can tell you.”

“Chris, the reason I came here is that several clients in question are upset. In addition, any one of them is capable of being paranoid, angry and defensive about being investigated. Any one of them could react in very scary ways.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Are you threatening me?”

“No, I’m not, Chris, they are. I’m trying to stave off a fucking disaster, and you don’t seem to be capable of listening to reason.”

“This discussion is over.” She stood up, turned, and stomped off into the bedroom. When he followed her, he discovered that it had been fitted with a deadbolt.

Two days later, Chris’s lawyer, Alvin Holstein, was found dead. His office had been gutted. Files, computers, disks, tapes, and even scratch pads had been loaded into a truck during the night and carted away. Pieces of the private detective Chris had hired were found over the course of a week along Interstate 15 between Barstow and Baker.

Chris became hysterical. She threatened to tell the police that Densmore had arranged for one of his clients to kill her lawyer and detective, but he pointed out to her that his legal defense would likely cost most of their joint assets.

He got out of the elevator on level B-1 and walked toward his reserved parking space. He was thinking about Grace now. She was his present wife, and she would be more difficult than Chris had been. Her smoldering hostility had not reached the explosive stage, but he could see that the time was coming. He had much more money now, and she knew it.

He felt the hands on him before he saw anything. He tried to turn to face the man, but the grip prevented him. Then Sylvie Turner stepped from behind a tall SUV parked in front of him and pulled her right hand out of her jacket pocket just far enough to show him the gun.

He smiled at her in relief, even though the grip on his arm was painful. “Sylvie. How are you?”

“You need to come with us.”

“I’ve been trying to get in touch with you two.”

“Get in the car.” This time it was Paul. He was already pushing Densmore toward the rear of the SUV.

Densmore said, “Good idea,” but he was sweating and his eyes were darting around above his smile because he couldn’t keep them on any one object. He could see that the windows were tinted and the license plate had a plastic cover that was nearly opaque. People like the Turners used covers like that to make the plates unreadable on surveillance tapes. He had to keep talking, keep it friendly. “I like to be inside a car and moving when I have a personal discussion.”

He heard the lock button pop up and he opened the door behind the driver’s seat. Paul didn’t move away. He stayed right behind Densmore as he stepped up and sat on the back seat, then climbed in after him.

Sylvie got in the front and drove. The vehicle was moving before Densmore noticed the empty place on the door panel where the handle had been. They had made sure he couldn’t open the door from the inside. He said, “It’s a pleasure to work with professionals who understand that it’s dangerous to be overheard. Now, the reason I’ve been trying so hard to get in touch with you is that I heard something that worried me.”

“What was that?” Sylvie’s voice was flat and uninterested. It was like listening to Grace.

“Well, as I warned you on the phone a few days ago, the client has been getting more and more impatient and eager for results. Now I understand he’s gone around us.” Densmore was pleased with that locution because if he “understood,” it implied he had only heard a hint from someone without knowing anything directly.

But Paul had caught the word, too, and didn’t like it. “You understand that, do you?”

“Yes. This is the kind of thing that I advise clients against doing. If you want help, I’ll give you help, but you have to put yourself in my hands. That’s what I say to them. And if it’s necessary to hire specialists, consultants, or experts, then I’ll be the one to find them, hire them, and communicate with them. That’s the way it has to be. If you want to handle your problem yourself, you’re welcome to go off and do it, and I wish you Godspeed. But if you want me to take you on, I’m in charge.” He was sure he had managed to get them past their irritation at him by now. He had learned from speaking to juries that enough words would slide people past an unpleasant discovery. The main thing was to keep talking and be sure they didn’t fix all of their attention on one small bit of information and cling to it.

“You’re off the subject,” Sylvie said. “We want to hear what you were so anxious to tell us, not the client.”

“What I wanted to tell you is that he went around me. He hired a couple of people of his own to go after Wendy Harper. Now, that’s bad enough. But it gets worse. The two men he hired were told that Till would have to bring Wendy Harper to the DA’s office to get the charges dropped. So they stationed themselves outside the building and lay in wait. Last night they managed to open fire on an unmarked police vehicle, and the outcome was pretty much what you might expect. They both got shot down on the street. I’m so glad to see you. I was really afraid that you might have been nearby and gotten scooped up in a sweep of the district.”

“And what did you do to get in touch with us to warn us?”

“I called your house. I called about twenty times over the past day or two. You were never home.”

“Did you even try to leave a message?”

“Of course I didn’t. If the police ever found a message like that on your phone, then you’d have problems. Those men were after Wendy Harper, and you were after Wendy Harper. All the police would need is a phone call to prove you were part of a conspiracy. Since the cops killed those two in the attempted commission of your common crime, you would be charged with felony murder in their deaths. As your attorney, I don’t see how we could beat the charge.”

“Did you consider just leaving a message for us to call you?”

Tonight Densmore’s professional skill at fast talk and obfuscation seemed to be failing him. Paul and Sylvie seemed to accept nothing he said. “That would have been even worse. It would give you absolutely no information, but it would make you keep calling me. I was in court for the past two days, so you would have had to wait for hours. In the process you might leave a message that could incriminate you. And all I wanted to say was what I just told you: that there might be another team around to get in your way. Might be. And in the end, it didn’t happen, anyway.”

“Didn’t it?” Paul said.

“You mean something happened?” Densmore was sweating. His body didn’t seem to be able to take in enough oxygen, and he felt dizzy. He looked at Paul’s eyes, remembering an article he had read. The amygdala, an almond-shaped part of the brain, had evolved to detect the signs of fear in another human being. Paul’s amygdala must be overdeveloped and trained to do that—probably what made him love killing. For him the sensation wasn’t like feeling the other person’s fear, it was like tasting it. Paul certainly knew Densmore was afraid, and that had made him stop listening to what Densmore said.

“Something happened,” Paul said. “We were all set up in a room with windows overlooking the DA’s office building. We spotted those two guys five minutes after we got there, and we watched them all night. We thought they were cops.”

“Well, then, if you saw them so easily, what’s the problem?”

Paul reached for his gun so quickly that it looked to Densmore as though it had been under his hand all along. He tugged the slide back to allow a round into the chamber, and moved his wrist slightly to aim at Densmore’s belly.

Densmore’s imagination became godlike. He could see the way the bullet would burst through his skin, through the wall of muscle and plow into the tissues of organs, the shock turning them into blood-soaked pulp, and then out again. He could actually feel a premonition of the pain: the blow, the bullet mushrooming and tearing a path that became an arc through his body, the burning. “If you’re wondering whether that scares me, it does.”

Sylvie gave a pitiless laugh. “You have a lot to be scared of.”

Densmore discovered a surprising reservoir of hatred for Sylvie. Until now he had thought he had a weakness for her.

Paul said, “You told your client who we are. You betrayed us, didn’t you?”

“I—”

“Before you answer that, think. If you open your mouth again and an avalanche of bullshit pours out, you won’t make it.”

“You would do that to me? After eight years?”

“Especially after eight years,” Sylvie said. “Answer him.”

“I had to tell this client who you were. I didn’t intend to make you feel more vulnerable. It was a special situation—a unique predicament. He said he wanted me to hire a team to kill Wendy Harper. It had to be the best people, the very best. He offered a high price, but he said he had to be sure of you before the deal was struck. He had to know I wasn’t taking a huge fee and giving a couple of bikers a thousand each. So I complied. It was a considered business decision. This client was not some dry cleaner in the Valley who was pissed off at the guy who owned the mini-mall. He had been a client for years, he was a substantial man, and he had a way to lure Wendy Harper back to Los Angeles. So I made a onetime exception to our policy about how much information we share with clients. Should I have talked to you first and explained what I was going to do and why? In retrospect, I suppose I should have done that. But I knew that if I did, there would be a lot of discussion and soul-searching, and you would eventually come to the conclusion that I had. I knew it was the right decision for everyone—for the client, for you, and for me.”

Sylvie laughed. “Mostly for you, though, huh?”

Densmore was beginning to focus on Sylvie now, and his hatred was consuming a huge part of his consciousness. Paul Turner was pointing a gun at his stomach, and he should be paying attention to him—to preventing his index finger from tightening on the trigger to exert a two-pound pressure. But Sylvie’s contemptuous tone was infuriating. “For all of us,” he said. “I’ve been your advocate in this from the start. I received a very generous offer and selected you for the job instead of someone else. I improved the offer by telling the client about your abilities and accomplishments. Later, when you didn’t finish the job on the first try, it reflected on me and put me in potential danger. Did I blame you or sell you out to the client? No. I made excuses for you and raised the ante, offered you even more money to finish the job.”

Sylvie said, “I’m still stuck thinking about why you thought telling your client about us was the right decision for you. It could get you killed.”

Densmore recognized in her voice the kind of grim amusement that he had heard only in the voices of killers talking about their victims. He was terrified. How could his fate have fallen into the hands of this violence-addicted whore? How could Michael Densmore, the consummate attorney, be failing so miserably to manipulate a woman who had let herself be penetrated every imaginable way by hundreds of men on the theory that it would make her a movie star? He turned his eyes away from her. “Paul, be reasonable. I’ve worked with you for eight years. No client I’ve brought you has ever known a thing about you, or ever been able to utter an incriminating word. I admit I’ve made a mistake. Now what can I do to make this right?”

Paul looked a bit uncertain. “To start, you could make us even. You told the client about us. Who is the client?”

Densmore would not have considered answering the question only a few hours ago, and he might not have done it now if he had been talking only to Paul. But he had heard Sylvie, and he knew that things were worse than he had suspected. If Paul hesitated, Sylvie would goad him into pulling the trigger.

In the instant required to draw in a breath to reply, he formulated a plan for the next few months. He would separate Paul from Sylvie. It would require some care because she had an animal cunning that he had not noticed before, but his strategy was obvious. He would find another woman for Paul. And Paul would never risk stepping into a divorce court with Sylvie. She was too crazy, too likely to say something that would incriminate both of them. She might even try to kill him if he replaced her. So Paul would kill her.

Densmore could hardly wait.

Densmore had to talk quickly now. “Of course, Paul. The client is Scott Schelling.”

“What is he?” It was Sylvie again.

He wanted to ignore her, to speak only to Paul, but he couldn’t let one of her questions hang in the air for fear it would seem to be a refusal to answer. He also couldn’t let her suspect that he hated her. “He’s the president of Crosswinds Records.”

“A music executive?” Sylvie exclaimed. “You sold us out to some little record salesman?”

“I don’t feel that I sold you out, and he isn’t a little record salesman. He’s barely forty now, and he’s already being talked about as a possible contender for CEO of Aggregate Electronics Industries when Ray Klein retires. That’s movies, television, cable companies, and God knows what else. Scott Schelling is a powerful man, and he’s getting more important every day.”

“Well, I never heard of him.”

Densmore had to grit his teeth to keep from making a sarcastic retort. “Scott has always had an understated style, and that’s contributed to his success. The entertainment industry is made up of lunatics and bureaucrats. If you’re smart, you want to be on the side of the people without talent, the bureaucrats. Singers and actors come and go, but executives are forever. He knows that. He’s stayed in the office and out of the spotlight. I think the reason he’s so concerned about Wendy Harper now is that he knows he’s reaching the point where he can’t be invisible anymore. Power and money create celebrity.”

“Why would a man like that be stupid enough to kill his girlfriend?”

“I don’t know. He’s never told me what happened. Six years ago nobody knew or cared about him. He was a third-rank talent manager in a fourth-rate company. Since then Aggregate Electronics bought Crosswinds and fired the president. Then the second in command got a face-saving offer from another company, and here’s young Scott Schelling, the meek inheriting the earth. Only he wasn’t meek. He had great influence with certain elements of the music business. I’m referring to the talent that came out of street gangs and jails. Crosswinds is hugely profitable.”

Paul said, “Scott Schelling.”

“Yes. What we’re doing is erasing the last evidence of a youthful indiscretion for a rich man who will only get richer. He’s into having power over people. Maybe six years ago he overdid it with some girl. Wendy Harper is the only one left who knows it, and he’s willing to pay big to end the threat. And I guarantee he will have problems of the same sort in the future. Men like him always do. Then you can be sure I’ll get a call to have you come and solve his problem.”

“Interesting,” said Paul.

“Yes, interesting,” Sylvie echoed. “It’s interesting that you gave our names to a man who loves having power over people, and surrounds himself with thugs. Thanks.”

Densmore’s breath caught for a second. While he had been talking she had driven up the Golden State Freeway almost to the foothills. They passed under a big green sign that said “14—Antelope Valley Freeway.” Densmore had made so many mistakes. He hadn’t needed to stay in his office this late. He just had not wanted to go home and face Grace’s resentment. The whole office had cleared out long ago. For that matter, he could have paid for bodyguards—the thugs that Sylvie seemed to be so afraid of. She was driving him up into the mountains. He hated her. He felt such contempt for her that it was making him stupid.

He had to appeal to Paul. “Paul, think about this. You and I have had a good working relationship. We’ve made money. We’ve lived well.”

“Pretty well.”

“And this time, when things got tough, did I question your competence or insult you? No. I offered to pay four times—” Densmore saw the expression on Paul’s face too late. Paul must have been keeping this from her. He closed his mouth, but too many words had already come out.

The gun roared in the confined space of the car, fulfilling Densmore’s premonition: The bullet burned through his belly. He bent double, not even in reaction to the pain, but as though the bullet had forced the muscles to spasm. Then he felt the hot muzzle of Paul’s gun against the back of his head.

Darkness came.