Silence

38

SCOTT SCHELLING felt his cell phone vibrate in his coat pocket. This was the third time tonight, and each time, he could feel his heartbeat quicken with excitement. The news was better and better each time. He glanced at the other end of the room. Ray Klein was about midway in his cocktail-party speech about the fully integrated electronics conglomerate, so there was plenty of time to answer the call.

He made his way through the vast living room slowly, careful not to look as though he was in a hurry. Doing business at these parties was considered rude. But he was anxious to return Tiffany’s call. Her first call had been the most important one. She had conveyed the message from Paul that everything had gone as he had hoped. That meant that Wendy Harper was dead at last. Scott had been in a state of buoyant good spirits since that moment, which he recognized as a turning point in his life. For six years—the years when he had been working to build his reputation and gain power at Crosswinds Records—he had been afraid.

He had tried to be cautious about having his picture taken or being on television, but he still had to do his job and live his life, and they were the same. Work was social. Scott Schelling had always taken women to parties and used his business relationships with musicians to impress them. He had talked to women in the way he had talked to the musicians. He told each of them she was the very best, the one he wanted above all the others. He implied as clearly as he could that he would give them everything they could ever want, just because they were special. He would give the woman of the moment a sample, a taste of what was to come. It would be a watch or a bracelet, usually, something that had cost enough to let her know he was not the same as her old boyfriends.

Scott had been very generous about exposing the new woman to the talent right away, to demonstrate that he was an important man. He let her meet the stars, dance with them, drink with them, talk to them. But being with music celebrities was a mixed experience for a young woman. Many of the stars were wild and sloppy, drinking heavily, or disappearing for a few minutes and returning with a manic craziness and dilated pupils. Offstage, stars were often crude and boorish and even frightening. The woman could see the freak show, be dazzled and fascinated, but after a surprisingly short time, Scott would feel the woman clinging to his arm again, half-hiding herself behind his reassuring dark suit coat and his sobriety and reliability.

Scott stopped to say hello to Bill Calder, the Entertainment Division Comptroller, then eased by Calder’s wife, confiding, “Excuse me, my phone is ringing,” and out the open arch into the cactus garden. He liked Klein’s Santa Fe house. It was adobe, with big timbers in the ceilings and every portal curved. When he was certain that nobody was near him, he took out his telephone, pressed Tiffany’s number, and said, “It’s me.”

“Scotty, it’s both of us—Tiffany and Kimberly—on a conference line. We wanted to be positive you wouldn’t be needing us any more tonight.”

“Did you have someone meet the gentleman who called earlier?”

“Do you mean Paul?”

“Yes,” he said.

“I called the number you left me.”

“Good. If everything’s taken care of, there’s no reason to hang around. Just reconfirm the time of my flight tomorrow morning and turn out the lights. And make sure somebody remembers to feed my dog tomorrow.”

“Thanks, Scotty,” Tiffany said. “See you Monday morning.”

He hung up. He inhaled, and as his lungs expanded he felt even happier. He felt a crazy, impulsive wish to do something for those two, like give them both a huge raise. But he couldn’t do that every time he felt happy. And Bill Calder, who was no more than fifty feet away from him right now, would see the raise and want to know the justification. Maybe Scott would take them with him on a trip. There was one scheduled for later next month to France and Germany for some conference or other.

He put away his phone and made his way back to the party. The people at this party were alien to Scott Schelling. The presidents of all the other subsidiaries were married, and they brought their wives—all blond and tall and twenty to thirty years younger than their husbands, but all showing face-lifts and teeth with the whiteness of a porcelain sink. He was never sure what to make of these women because there was no way to read their expressions.

Their husbands were slightly easier for him, because he could recognize the hostility and suspicion when he talked to them. As he stepped inside from the desert garden, he saw that Taylor Gaines had been watching him. Gaines was the head of the finance subsidiary of the parent company, the one that used the profits from each of the divisions to make loans. Gaines said, “Hello, Scott. Got to keep on top of the trends even while you’re here, don’t you?”

“That’s right, Taylor. If you’re not ahead, you’re behind.”

Scott hurried down the hallway and noticed he was moving past framed antique drawings and maps from the Spanish era. His girls had done their job beautifully when they had bought an old map as a present for Jill Klein. As he had the thought, he remembered that they had not needed to strain much to accomplish it. Ray Klein had probably told them what to buy.

Everything that happened seemed to be controlled by Ray Klein. Ray Klein wanted the girls to please Scott Schelling with their efficiency so Scott would keep them on his staff. That way they could keep feeding Ray Klein information. Klein wanted Scott to feel good about his relationship with him, to feel that he had done well and Klein appreciated and liked him. Klein wanted his wife, Jill, to have a nice addition to her collection so she could feel involved and admired, and not have as much brain space to observe her husband’s relations with Martha Rodall, vice president of the Public Relations Division. All this was what Ray Klein was famous for: managing his people.

Scott slipped past white-shirted waiters serving tiny blue-corn tamales, ahi tuna on small beds of rice, and cocktails, and into the center of the party, just close enough to Ray Klein to be sure that Klein included him in any mental roll-call he was taking, but not close enough to be an obstruction or a distraction. Scott made sure he had been seen, and then smiled and shook hands with Sam Hardesty, the head of the Aerospace Electronics Division. “Hi, Sam. Scott Schelling, Crosswinds Records. How are you tonight?”

“Fine. Yourself?” Hardesty was nearly seventy with white hair and the build of the retired general he was.

“Great,” said Schelling. “It’s such a beautiful night, and I find getting out of Los Angeles this time of year a treat. Hell, just getting out of the office is a treat. How are your numbers going to come in this quarter?”

Hardesty flinched at the directness of the question. “I’m afraid that’s not a number I can give out just yet.”

“Oh? Classified?”

“No. But it’s inside information. You work in a different company, even though we own it. It’s against SEC rules for me to tell you.”

“Well, then, good luck with it,” Scott said. He moved deeper into the room toward the next set of executives, a pair of computer-hardware nerds from Syn-Final Microsystems, when he felt something touch his arm. As he began to turn he saw the hand. On one of the fingers was a bean-sized emerald with diamonds around it. He lifted his eyes to see Jill Klein’s face close to his.

“Scotty,” she said, her voice low and conspiratorial. “I just had to take you aside and tell you how much I love the map.” From this close, he could see that her face showed signs of surgical procedures. The skin above the cheekbones had been tightened from the sides so her oversized eyes looked permanently startled. She leaned close and kissed his cheek with pillowy lips. “It’s really gorgeous.” She smiled. “Sometimes a thank-you note just isn’t enough.”

“I should thank you. I’d rather have a kiss than a note any day.”

“Would you like to see where I’ve hung it?”

“Sure.”

She walked him out to the fringes of the party, along a wide hallway toward the back of the house. He could hear the sounds of caterers working in a restaurant-size kitchen beyond the big doors at the end of the hall. As he walked, he tried to remember the description that Kimberly and Tiffany had recited to him so he would recognize it when he saw it. He remembered something about California being an island. The kitchen sounds made him sure they were near the dining room. Maybe she had hung it there, where the other guests would have to look at it and envy his taste and thoughtfulness.

But she turned in the other direction, up a narrow staircase that led to the second floor. She took a few steps and opened a door. “This is my personal suite.” There was a large sitting room decorated with kachina dolls and Navajo rugs, furnished with couches and a heavy antique desk of dark wood. Above it he could see several old documents framed, but not a map.

“This is really a beautiful room,” he said.

“Oh, yes. It’s quiet and private.” She opened a door beyond the desk, and led him into a bedroom. There was a maid in the room, busy arranging something in the drawers of a dresser. “Here it is.” She pointed to the inner wall of the room. The map was larger than Schelling had imagined, a folio-sized sheet in a thin black frame hung on the uneven faux-adobe surface.

“It looks very authentic there,” he said. He was relieved that he didn’t have to pick it out of a whole row of nearly identical maps.

Jill Klein turned to the maid. “Consuelo, make sure we’re not disturbed.”

Consuelo scuttled out of the room. He heard the sound of a lock clicking, then, a few seconds later, another.

She said, “When I’m thanking someone, I think the old ways are best, don’t you?” She put her arms around his neck and kissed him on the lips.

Schelling was shocked, alarmed. He had no response ready. “I don’t think this is smart,” he said. “Your husband is—”

“Downstairs at the party with his mistress.” She took his hands and put them around her waist. “Just be quick, so nobody gets embarrassed.”

The telephone in Scott’s coat began to vibrate again. In the silence it gave an audible buzz, and he jumped as though they had been caught.

“Turn that thing off.”

He dug the phone out and flipped it open. “Yes?”

It was Tiffany’s voice. “Scotty, I’m sorry to call again, but I’m in my car, and the news is saying that the two men you were asking about have been shot to death.”

“Are you sure?”

“The description is the same. And it’s the parking lot behind Harlan’s, where I told them to meet Paul.”

“All right. Thanks.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Go home. Do nothing. Say nothing. I’ll see you Monday morning.” He disconnected.

Jill Klein had turned away from him, and now she was walking toward the door. He said, “Jill. Please wait.”

She stopped and looked over her shoulder as she reached for the doorknob. “Jill? To you I’m Mrs. Klein. I’ll always be Mrs. Klein.” She opened the door. He could see that in the office Consuelo had been sitting on the couch in near-darkness, probably so nobody would see light under the door. She stood up quickly, turned on the light, and unbolted the door so Jill Klein did not have to break her stride on the way out.

Schelling walked through the sitting room past Consuelo, but she did not meet his gaze. As far as he could tell, her eyes had never moved to his face. She was obviously paid never to see or hear.

As Schelling walked to the back stairwell, he saw Jill Klein far ahead of him near the front of the building, turning to go down a different staircase. She looked in his direction, but it was only for a second, and her face was utterly blank. She was timing her descent to coincide with his so it was not possible for anyone downstairs to see them both.

Schelling went downstairs, skirted the group in the living room, went outside to the garden again, and dialed his phone. He heard the voice of Dale, his personal trainer. “Dale here.”

“Hi. It’s Scotty. Are you alone? Can you talk?”

“Sure. I’m at home doing my own workout. What’s wrong, Scotty?”

“I’m in Santa Fe, and I’ve only got a minute or two to talk. You really were a marine, right?”

“Yes.”

“You were trained to kill people?”

“Well, yeah, I guess so. I mean, that’s what it boils down to. That’s what war is. It’s for your country, for the rest of the people, but they train you to fight.”

“Have you ever killed anybody?”

“Me? No. When I was in Desert Storm, they kept me in Kuwait, making newly arrived National Guardsmen do push-ups and squat-thrusts while they got used to the heat. I was sent to Haiti and Liberia, and I didn’t get even that close. Most of that time I was on a ship outside the harbor.”

“But you knew how. And you were ready, right?”

“Sure, but I don’t get why you’re asking.”

“I need a huge favor.”

“Wait a minute.”

“I’ll make it worthwhile.”

“Scotty—”

“Look, I’m in terrible trouble. I’m in Santa Fe tonight on business, but tomorrow I have to get on a plane and go back home. These people have already killed some people who work for me. I’m in danger. It’s a self-defense situation. It’s self-defense.”

“Have you talked to the police about this?”

“Dale, this is way beyond that stage, and I don’t have time to explain it all.”

He heard a deep sigh. “Scotty, I can’t help you on something like this.”

“Please.”

“What?”

“I said please. If you can’t do it, then give me a name. I can take it from there. If you don’t want to have me use your name, I won’t.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t do that kind of work, and I don’t know people who do.”

Scott laughed. He decided the sound was no more false than any other laugh he had given. There was silence on the other end, so he said, “Got you! It was just a joke, Dale. I was just yanking your chain. You fell for it, though. Admit it.”

“Scotty, if you’re in some kind of trouble, I think you’ve got to go to the authorities. If you’re not, and this really is a joke, then your sense of humor is really sick.”

“I’m sorry, buddy. I was just calling to tell you I won’t be back in time for our workout session tomorrow, and the idea came to me, so I went with it. If it wasn’t funny, I apologize. It seemed funny at the time.”

“Are you sure you’re telling me the truth now?”

“Of course I am. Look, I’m in a hurry right now, but I’ll give you a call when I’m free to slip a workout into my schedule. Take care, Dale.”

“All right. Call me.”

Scott Schelling stood motionless for a moment with the dead phone in his hand, every muscle rigid with fear and regret and humiliation. What if he hadn’t convinced Dale that he’d been joking? No, he decided. He had to stop that train of thought now. He couldn’t spend any time worrying about Dale. What was he going to do—hire somebody else to kill Dale? He had to keep from getting crazy.

As he let his brain concentrate on the problem of the Turners, he fought his fear and anxiety and forced himself to think about what he was going to do. He had hired the Turners, promised them a million dollars in cash to kill Wendy Harper. When they had succeeded, he had tried to have them killed, but the Turners had survived. The only person he had left that he could trust was Carl, and Carl couldn’t fix this alone. But Scott still had one other asset—the million dollars. It was in a suitcase in the trunk of his car in Los Angeles.

He heard music, and looked back through the French doors into the hallway and the living room. There was a group of mariachis at the edge of the cocktail party, strumming instruments and singing. There were no signs the guests were going in to dinner yet. He punched Carl’s number into his cell phone.

“Hello?”

“Carl. It’s me. The two jerks who met with the Turners got killed.”

“Holy shit! When?”

“A little while ago, but Tiffany says it’s already on the radio. I want you to talk to the Turners. Tell them I want to pay them what I owe them, but I’m out of town until tomorrow. Tell them those two were trying to turn on me, kill the Turners, and keep the money for themselves. Got it?”

“Yes. I’ll try to reach them.”

“Carl, this isn’t a time when you give it a try and see what you can do. You have to succeed. I’m trusting you with my life here.”

“Okay, Scotty, okay. I didn’t mean it like that. You know I’ll do whatever it takes.”

“Thanks, Carl. I’ve got to go now.” He hung up and looked inside again. He was ashamed that he had panicked and tried to hire Dale to kill the Turners. Carl would use money to succeed with the Turners. Nobody wanted a half-second of revenge more than they wanted a million dollars. Once Carl paid them off, then he would be safer than he had been at any time in the last six years.

But there was one more problem that was nagging at him: the terrible mistake he’d made upstairs. He couldn’t have Jill Klein as an enemy. She was his boss’s wife, even if his boss slept with somebody else now and then. She could sour Scott’s reputation with the board of directors of Aggregate, who were virtually all presidents of other big companies. She could squash somebody like Scott Schelling in a week.

He slipped indoors and began to search for her. He moved through the crowd, looking in every direction until he spotted her. She was at the far end of the big living room, standing with another lady and laughing at something the woman had said, her head back and her too-perfect teeth on display. Her eyes were always rolling to see how people around her were looking at her, but when she saw Scott Schelling, her laugh lost its energy and died.

He stood patiently a few feet off until she had to notice him or risk causing a scene. She nodded and stepped away, and he moved to intercept her. “Hello, Mrs. Klein.” He held out his hand to her. “I don’t know if you remember, but I’m Scott Schelling, Crosswinds Records. We met at the party a few months ago when Aggregate bought us up.”

She stared at him with narrowed eyes. “Schelling? Yes, I believe I do remember. Nice to see you.” She took a step to his right, to move past him.

“I sent you a small present, and I wondered if you had opened it.”

Her eyes moved from side to side to be sure nobody was listening. She whispered, “What are you trying to do?”

“I’m trying to start over. I want to apologize for answering my telephone. It’s a line I use only for emergencies. My mother has been hospitalized for over a week with a stroke, and the hospital wouldn’t connect me with her room earlier. My secretary was calling to tell me she got through and my mother’s doing better.”

“Oh,” she said. “I’m very sorry she’s been ill.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Klein.”

“Jill. Please call me Jill.”

“Jill, then. I wondered if you would be willing to show me where you’ve hung the map.”

She looked around with the alertness of a deer. “There’s not enough time now. I told the caterers to call everyone in to dinner in five minutes. Where are you staying?”

“The Eldorado. Room 362.”

“Expect me at one.” She turned and disappeared into the crowd, then reemerged on the other side of the room near her husband and Martha Rodall.

Schelling used up a few minutes trying to have conversations with the wives of two executives in the Legal Division. They were well trained in talking to men, but they seemed to be under the impression that all men wanted to talk about golf.

When dinner was announced, he filed into the dining room with the others and took his seat near the foot of the table among the executives from other minor subsidiaries of the parent company. It was like being one of the youngest children in a big, complicated family.

But tonight he didn’t mind. He had just saved himself from destruction. Maybe he had even found the secret back stairway to the next level of success.