Deadline, page 21
Sondra wasn’t pregnant. Why did you tell me otherwise, my love? Why did you do that? I listened to the roar of the store’s air-conditioning unit, watched the kids work the payphones, saw two airplanes float out of the night sky as they drifted down towards LAX. For a second, I expected a collision. But none came.
Dreams were only dreams. Mine hadn’t been prophetic. I’d predicted nothing.
I’d been blind, even in sleep.
I returned to the car.
The interior smelled of metal and plastic and wet leather, and something that would turn foul eventually, like old meat or spilled milk, or the world we lived in, overflowing with the sorry treacheries we committed almost daily.
10.43 p.m.
I drove through the canyons with the windows of the car rolled down and warm night air circulating. The road behind me was empty. Dense foliage loomed up on either side: an illusion of rustic life. I needed the comfort of illusion. I longed for simplicity, no more elaboration.
My cellphone rang. I picked it up, listened.
‘I’m sorry about the unpleasant nature of the delivery.’
‘Fuck you to hell,’ I said. ‘Let’s just get this over with. I want to get on with my goddam life.’
‘I know, I know,’ and his voice was grave, considerate. ‘If it’s any consolation, your wife’s OK. She’s weak, sure, but she’ll be back on her feet soon enough. Nice to think she’ll recuperate at home with you. She’s going to need a lot of TLC, Lomax. It’s a tough break – losing a baby.’
‘It’s tough all right,’ I said.
So he didn’t know I’d contacted Marv Sweetzer. His intelligence system had let him down. He was under the impression that I believed Sondra had miscarried, which was what he wanted. All day long, he’d been building a little universe for me, and he’d directed the events that had taken place in it, but this one time his concentration had lapsed. He hadn’t taken into consideration the possibility that I’d call Sweetzer.
I wondered where they’d gone for the unborn child, how they’d acquired it. I guessed it wasn’t difficult if you had the cash or the brute force. And people like Resick and Gerson had plenty of both.
I thought of Sondra’s terrible perjury. The why of it. But I didn’t want to follow this line of inquiry through, because I didn’t like where it was leading. I remembered making love to her on the deck of our house, and how she’d said, I’m not glass, Jerry. I won’t break. How conscious I’d been of the baby inside her, and my fear of causing distress or damage.
It was the worst lie she could have invented. She knew how hard we’d tried to have a child, and I couldn’t believe she’d use that great yearning against me.
No, no, I didn’t want to think she’d lied.
I needed to believe she’d been forced into this situation.
I conjured connections, delicate as a pattern in old lace: Nardini bought Gerson and, incidentally, Sondra out of a cocaine bust; and then Gerson introduced Sondra to Nardini, because she was the wife of Emily Ford’s psychiatrist. And Nardini had to stop Emily’s ascent to power by whatever means, since she was a menace to the people whose interests he protected and represented: the corporate scam artists who made dirty money clean again, or who hid fortunes in unassailable bank-accounts in countries the size of Rhode Island and evaded taxation; the pushers of merchandise – whether useless swamp with allegedly great investment potential in Costa Rica, or cocaine from Medellin, there was always, always a buyer; smooth, hard men who rigged juries, bought judges, and lived where the law couldn’t touch them; and then down a few levels from the hushed boardrooms and private dining-rooms and fancy cufflinks and Hugo Boss suits were the gophers, the guys with dirty hands, swindlers, con-men, pimps, hookers, and killers – the tiny wheels that made the big wheels turn.
What the hell was the hold they had over Sondra? What obliged her to go along with them? It had to be more than just a cocaine bust. Surely Sondra would have told me about that, rather than participate in an elaborate charade, a cruelty involving a fake kidnapping, and dubious phone calls that required her to act as if she were in pain or drugged.
I preferred this kind of reasoning to the notion that she’d perpetrated an enormous falsehood. In my version, she was no liar: she was a victim. She hadn’t deceived me. She was the instrument of other people’s deceptions. I could live with this explanation, even if a shadow at the back of my mind troubled me. But I didn’t want to think about that. It wasn’t the time for doubt. Faith was what I required.
I loved Sondra. I wanted her.
‘Are you still there, Lomax?’
‘I’m here.’
‘Dole tell you anything of interest?’
‘We didn’t have time to talk before your people showed up.’
‘I heard about that,’ he said. ‘I’m impressed. You can take the boy out of Buffalo, but you can’t take Buffalo, et cetera.’
‘That’s right,’ I said.
Between trees, I had a view of the city way below; it filled the valley, a vast expanse of lights and lives. I checked a street sign. I was on Grierson Drive. I was looking for 3245.
‘So, Jerry, are you ready to play the last card? We’re well past the deadline, and my people are becoming impatient.’
‘I’m ready,’ I said.
‘I’m going to give you very specific instructions. Follow them to the letter. To the letter: let me underline that.’
‘What about Sondra?’
‘She’ll be returned to you, Jerry.’
‘Isn’t she bleeding?’ How easily I played this game of prevarication.
‘Not now.’
‘Did you call a physician?’
‘I told you. She isn’t bleeding any more.’
‘The blood just stopped on its own, is that it?’ I asked.
‘What is this, Jerry? All you need to know is that she’ll be given back to you when we make the switch.’
‘Just make sure you move her carefully.’
‘Wrapped in cotton, I assure you.’
‘Use plenty of it,’ I said.
‘There’s a payphone across the street from Book Soup on Sunset. You know the place?’
‘I’ve been there,’ I said.
‘Go to the payphone. Wait five minutes. Then call this number. 545 6098. You want to write that down?’
‘I’ll remember it,’ I said.
‘Say it back to me, Jerry.’
I did so.
‘A man will answer. He’ll give you an address in the neighborhood. You’ll go there. When you get to this destination, you’ll learn more.’
I looked from the window again. 3245. I drove straight past, and parked about a hundred yards down the street.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘The payphone first.’
‘Go easy, Jerry,’ he said.
I killed the ringer on my phone, stuck the phone in my pocket, got out of the car. There were no other pedestrians. I reached the driveway, which was about two hundred yards long and lined with soft lamps and eucalyptus trees, the leaves of which caught the light in such a way that they resembled misshapen antique coins. At the end of the drive, the house was perched, a little precariously, on a promontory that overlooked the city. It was one of those hyper-modern homes, a layered, angular affair on steel stilts. The windows were oval, and lit, creating an impression, in the dark, of cats’ eyes.
An unwelcoming place, and I didn’t want to go near it. I imagined tripping a sensor, setting off an alarm, bright lights, sirens. I had no way of knowing what security there might be here. Plenty of it, I was sure. Everybody in this city lived in fear of violence and home invasion. It was a mind-set: lock up your possessions, protect them with guns and alarms.
I stepped onto the driveway, noticing that the high, wrought-iron gates had been left open. I thought this an odd oversight, but I didn’t pause to analyze it. I took a few paces along the drive before I realized that I was exposed to anyone watching from the house.
I slipped into the trees and found myself moving across short grass.
The lights in the windows illuminated small purple flowers here and there and they reminded me of the image I’d had many hours ago when, in the full flight of despair, I’d tried to force myself to create a vision of Sondra. I’d stood at the window of my living-room and imagined I could project my mind over the city like a distress flare. The spectral impressions I’d received were of a purple field and a pale-green room. I wondered about this – was it just coincidence or had I experienced a weird excursion of my senses into a region beyond the normal –
My brain was at the races.
I looked at the house: the yellowish lights in the windows, the shiny stilts supporting the structure at the edge of a sheer cliff, the enormity of the city below, rushing to the horizon. No sign of life. No evidence, except for the lights, that anybody occupied the place.
I kept going, concealed by the trees. Overhanging leaves rustled as I brushed past them. I tore a leaf from a branch, held it between thumb and index finger and rubbed it nervously, releasing a scent of eucalyptus oil. I kneeled in the grass. I emptied my pockets at the base of a tree. I was about forty yards from the house. I listened to the night, the endless drone of the city that sounded like a great turbo in the distance.
The trees thinned out. Anybody behind one of those windows could see me. I ran towards the house, thinking I’d retreat into the shadows, conceal myself in the spaces under the stilts, which were ten or twelve feet high. The house seemed for a second to float unsupported in space, a travesty, a whim.
I made it as far as the stilts.
I heard footsteps on a wooden walkway above me. I drew back, making myself small in the dark. I was between two parked cars. Then the thought discharged inside me, like an accidental explosion: It’s the safe-deposit box that’s weighing on your mind.
I held my breath:
There were several people on the walkway overhead. Voices. I heard the flick of a lighter, then smelled smoke from a cigarette drift down through the dark.
‘We’re leaving at midnight,’ one of the voices said. It was a man’s voice, a little gruff, and I knew it immediately.
The next speaker was a woman – I knew her, too. ‘You’re way past your deadline,’ she said. ‘We can’t wait here for ever. Enough’s enough.’ She sounded angry. I could imagine her petulant little mouth hardening.
‘I’ll send the material over to your hotel,’ another voice said. ‘I’ll have it within twenty minutes.’
This was a voice I’d become all too familiar with in the last twelve hours. I heard him exhale smoke.
‘Then you get the file,’ the woman said.
‘Deal’s a deal,’ the first man said.
‘Between the file and the material you expect to get …’ The woman stopped. I listened to her footsteps on the stairs. She reached the bottom. I saw her through shadows. Her blond hair was bright in the dim underside of the house. Brunton was directly behind her. They were walking towards one of the cars. I stepped back, hidden.
Carrie Vasuu said, ‘She’s dead in the water.’
‘Dead and buried,’ Brunton said. ‘The file would have been enough –’
‘Overkill is always a better policy than underkill,’ Carrie Vasuu said. ‘Whatever. A copy of the file’s been e-mailed to DC.’
The Washington pair had Emily’s file.
I wanted to hear more. How they procured it. Who they sent it to. Eavesdroppers never hear enough. But they didn’t say any more. They got inside one of the cars, a Jaguar, and they drove away. I listened to the engine fade down the driveway. The butt of a half-smoked cigarette flashed past me, then the man who’d tossed it away turned and went back up the stairs. I listened to him climb.
I heard a door close way above me.
I moved through the space underneath the house, passing between the steel stilts that held the structure upright. A crazy house to build in an earthquake zone. Somebody with a death wish. I came to the stairs that led to the wooden walkway where I’d heard Brunton say We’re leaving at midnight.
I climbed quietly, light from a window above falling over me as I moved. I reached the walkway. I saw other walkways overhead, an elaborate arrangement of them.
The view of the city was bewilderingly complete. A billion lights out there, and a billion black spaces. Everything in motion, like atoms, sub-atoms. Darkness and light, on and off, off and on.
The safe-deposit box was the only secret I’d kept from her in our marriage. Correct?
Yes. What am I worrying about?
I went quietly along the walkway. I waited for a board to creak, but it didn’t. The house was well-made. Solid and sound. I was breathless, and the dazzle of the city made me vertiginous. I saw a door a few feet ahead. An oval glass pane was set into the door, matching the windows. I backed against the wall and slid towards the glass. I peered inside the room.
A white leather sofa. Two chairs that matched it. Logs burning in a fireplace, although the night wasn’t cold. A couple of paintings, vivid streaks of red and yellow oil applied to canvas. I smelled tobacco, and saw a very thin curl of smoke drift over my shoulder. I swung round quickly.
‘Lomax,’ he said.
He wore gray sweatpants and a black T-shirt with a nautical logo: a yacht, wavy lines suggestive of a sea. He was tall and he’d shaved his head. He was suntanned. He clearly lived much of the time outdoors. He carried an air of sailboats and long days on the ocean. He wasn’t how I’d imagined him to be – and yet I couldn’t recollect ever having conjured up a detailed picture of him.
‘We haven’t met formally,’ he said.
‘You don’t seem surprised to see me.’
He shrugged. ‘You were asking enough questions and getting enough answers to reach some conclusion. So, no, I’m not altogether surprised to find you here. Welcome to my home,’ and he reached past me, opened the door, ushered me inside the room.
I entered. He was working at being casual, relaxed. ‘Drink?’
I shook my head.
He smiled and looked at his watch. It was a thick metal disc with a confusing number of mini-dials. I imagined it functioning on ocean floors or inside a lunar capsule.
‘I was in the neighborhood,’ I said.
‘Indeed you were. You want to sit?’
‘All I want is my wife,’ I said.
‘Won’t drink, won’t sit,’ he said.
‘I told you what I want,’ I said.
‘You’ve got a stubborn streak, Jerry. Sometimes good. Sometimes not so.’ He sat on the white sofa, crossed his legs, looked at me in a friendly way. ‘You shouldn’t have come here.’
‘I know that.’
‘In your shoes, I would have followed the instructions and gone to the payphone on Sunset. Sometimes the trespasser sees too much. Or hears too much.’
‘It happens,’ I said.
‘You saw my guests leave?’
I nodded.
‘And what did you hear?’
‘Nothing. I wasn’t listening.’
‘I don’t believe you, Jerry.’
‘Let’s get to the business,’ I said. ‘Sondra.’
‘First tell me what you heard,’ he said.
‘Are you stalling me? Is my wife here or not?’
‘I wish you’d sit. You’re making me uncomfortable.’
‘I don’t want to sit,’ I said. Out of nowhere, it bothered me again, it erupted and troubled me. I thought: No, I’ve never told her. I was certain. I trusted my memory.
I said, ‘I just want to get out of this place. With Sondra. Is she here? Why can’t you answer a simple question?’
‘First, tell me what you heard.’
‘Will I get my wife back quicker if I do?’
He said nothing. He looked at me inscrutably.
I said, ‘All I caught was a couple of garbled sentences. Did they mean anything to me? Maybe. If I believed in unholy alliances and unlikely clandestine liaisons. If I was a conspiracy freak.’
‘Are you, Jerry?’
‘I have good days and bad ones,’ I said. ‘Sometimes I think we’re ruled by a sick confederation of Mensa members and NRA devotees who have a secret base in Montana. Other days, I just think we’re governed by dolts and deadheads in Washington.’
‘I expected a serious reply.’
‘Fine. I get the sense of standing at a fork in the road where government and crime converge. Where they have mutually beneficial arrangements.’
‘Far-fetched,’ he said.
‘You asked, Resick. It suits certain vested interests in Washington to make sure Emily Ford doesn’t become Attorney-General. She’s made enemies out of too many people: the Civil Liberties Union; the warm fuzzy center of the Democratic Party; a potent caucus of far-right-wing types who think her programs don’t go the whole way, because she doesn’t advocate the chopping off of hands for petty theft. She represents a potential embarrassment to a President who’s trying his best to be liberal, even as he knows he has to please extreme law-and-order sorts …’
He leaned forward, opened a silver cigarette-case, lit a cigarette. ‘Go on,’ he said.
‘The rest is obvious, Resick. Organized crime – call it any name you like – doesn’t want her in the hot-seat either. Absolutely no way. She’s going to be too tough on them, even if she keeps only half of her promises. They don’t want to squirm. They hate that feeling. They enjoy the status quo. They have exactly the same goal as our friends Brunton and Vasuu: send Emily Ford into total oblivion.’
Resick rose from the sofa. ‘Intriguing theory,’ he said. ‘The trouble with conspiracies is how damn difficult it is to prove they exist. You can dig in all the wrong places. Evidence turns out to be misleading. Or, like JFK’s brain, it vanishes entirely. I wonder why people adore the idea of conspiracies.’
‘That’s not my field of expertise,’ I said, ‘Now I want my wife.’
‘And you have what I want?’ he asked.
‘I have it.’
‘Show me,’ he said.
