Deadline, page 5
‘Unfortunate’ was a word so timid as to be offhand, even callous, in the context of Emily Ford’s parents. ‘I’d have to check my appointment books from back then,’ I said. ‘This didn’t happen only yesterday, you know.’
‘A ballpark estimate will do.’
‘OK. It might have been a year after her parents were killed that she made her first appointment.’
Carrie Vasuu said, ‘Some people have suggested that the tragedy of her parents colored her views on law enforcement to a point beyond objectivity. That her views are rooted in a desire for personal vengeance. That her life is an obsessive vendetta.’
‘I’m not sure I agree with any of that.’
‘No? You don’t think the experience hardened her? She goes to visit with her parents. She finds them slain. A few weeks later, the cops arrest a known addict and felon called Billy Fear for the crime. Some people say she lost all her objectivity about crime and punishment when her parents were murdered by a junkie who needed ten bucks for a quick fix. Some say that event shaped her whole philosophy.’
Billy Fear. That name dragged me back into places I had no desire to go. I said, ‘She wasn’t exactly the soul of liberal thinking before the tragedy, was she? She was always tough on crime. Does the murder of her parents make her unworthy of the nomination?’
‘It makes her judgments suspect,’ Carrie Vasuu said. ‘They’re colored, they’re not detached.’
I remembered our sessions. I recalled how Emily Ford had described her parents’ ranch-style house and how hushed it had been that fall evening in 1994. The porch-light was burning, there was the scent of dead leaves smoking somewhere in the neighborhood, it had all seemed so ordinary. She’d entered by the front door; a desk-lamp lay upturned on the floor and sent light spilling weirdly across the carpet. And then she’d found her father, face down in the kitchen, surrounded by food that had fallen from the dog’s dish, little brown nuggets splattered with his blood. The mongrel was curled in the corner, also shot. She had walked in dazed terror through the rooms of the house until she found her mother on the second floor, shot through the back of the head, her purse open and upturned on the bed, credit cards and driver’s license spread all around, no sign of any money.
I remembered how difficult it had been to draw this out of her, and how deeply she’d buried the whole sequence of events. I recalled her rage, the resistance of her memory to my probing, the struggle it had been for her to accept hypnosis. And I remembered the breakthrough, even if I preferred to consign it to the dead-letter office of memory.
‘What kind of treatment did you give her?’ Brunton asked.
‘You know better than to ask that,’ I said.
Carrie Vasuu had the eyes of an interrogator; polar bears might have frolicked in her arctic inquisitor’s heart. ‘Drugs? Electrotherapy?’
‘I taught her the best way I knew to deal with shock. I taught her some relaxation techniques. That’s all I’m prepared to say.’ I saw it clearly: Carrie Vasuu wanted to believe Emily’s mental state was still fragile. She wanted this nomination to be withdrawn and forgotten. She was protecting the President.
‘Did she talk about how she behaved when Billy Fear was gunned down by some fellow junkie after he’d been acquitted on a technicality?’ Brunton asked.
‘I don’t remember. I don’t want to seem rude, but are we finished?’
‘Can you give us some assessment of her mental condition now?’ Carrie Vasuu said. ‘Or do your ethics prevent you?’
I didn’t like the snide emphasis she gave the word ethics. ‘I haven’t seen her professionally in several years.’
‘In your opinion, is she fit to hold high office?’
I hesitated. I wanted to say Without doubt, but I couldn’t hurry the words from brain to mouth.
Carrie Vasuu asked, ‘Well? Is she or isn’t she? I’m holding my breath.’
Before I could answer, the telephone on my desk rang. I picked up the handset, glad of the interruption.
The voice on the line wasn’t Jane’s. It was Sondra’s, and it was strident with panic. Her words ran together, a collision of sounds. I’d never heard her talk this way, and my heart lurched inside my chest like a great bird leaping suddenly upward. ‘I don’t know where I am, Jerry. Come get me. Can you come get me, please, oh please –’
‘Sondra, what’s the problem? What’s happened? Where are you? Take your time, go slow, talk slow. Has there been an accident? Are you hurt? Is it the baby?’
The line was dead.
I dropped the handset on my desk and hurried into the reception area, shutting my office door behind me.
Jane was staring at me. ‘She sounded in a bad way, Jerry. What’s wrong? Is she sick? Is there something I can do to help?’
‘Did she say where she was calling from?’
‘No –’
One of the telephones on Jane’s desk rang and she picked it up, then handed the receiver to me. The voice I heard was that of a man I didn’t recognize. ‘You want to see your wife again, go outside, take a right, walk three blocks. Go inside a bar called The Punch Bowl. Got that? You’ll be contacted at eleven-thirty.’
‘What is all this?’ I asked. ‘A joke –’
‘A joke? What kind of world do you live in, Lomax? Just do what I tell you and skip the dumb questions. And one other thing – keep this to yourself. Remember, we’ve got your wife.’
‘You’ve got my wife? What is that supposed to mean?’
‘What does it sound like to you, Lomax? You open your mouth in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I can’t guarantee her safety. Clear?’
‘Who the hell are you?’ The line was dead. I was railing at nothing, nobody.
Jane wadded a Kleenex nervously in her fist. ‘What’s going on, Jerry? Has something happened to Sondra?’
I looked at my watch. It was just after eleven. ‘Cancel my appointments for the day. Also my lunch with Harry Pushkas. Tell those White House goons I was called away. Emergency. I don’t care what.’
‘Where are you going?’
I didn’t answer. I moved out into the hallway, walked to the elevator, pressed the Call button. My mind was upside-down. It was a joke, it had to be, what else could it be? Old Harry Pushkas, practical joker, had dreamed it up: Let’s knock Jerry sideways, keep him from getting all smug and complacent and shrink-like. Play with his head a little. But I couldn’t see Sondra going along with a joke like this. It wasn’t her style.
And yet it had been Sondra on the phone, different-sounding, sure, but Sondra all the same. Panicky, scared: Please oh please come find me.
I tried to stay calm while I waited for the elevator, but then I realized from the light-panel that it was stuck way below on the second floor. I hurried to the stairs and took them two or three at a time, my feet clattering on stone; when I reached the foyer I was hyperventilating, and sick to the bottom of my heart with dread.
11.11 a.m.
The man who came across the foyer towards me was about six feet tall and wore his hair thickly gelled and flattened back against his skull, a style that had been popular in the late ’80s and early ’90s, usually accompanied by a double-breasted linen suit.
‘Dr Lomax?’ he asked, and introduced himself as Detective Petrosian of the LAPD, flashing his ID quickly in front of me. At first I imagined he must be here on account of Sondra, that he had some information to relay, that he was going to tell me she was safe.
But that wasn’t it at all.
‘You reported an incident last night,’ he said. He had very thin lips, almost like two lengths of purple twine. ‘An attack.’
‘Look, I’m really pressured for time right now,’ I said. ‘Can’t this wait?’
I was thinking about the voice on the phone and the cocktail bar where I’d been commanded to go, and I longed to be outside in the smoggy sunlight. Petrosian didn’t seem interested in what I said.
‘You left the scene before anyone could question you,’ he said. ‘The perpetrator managed to get away.’
‘I’m not a cop, it’s not my job to arrest people.’
‘It took the patrol car four minutes to reach you,’ he said. ‘Which I consider a fast response time. But you didn’t hang around, did you? You didn’t wait.’
I stepped past the detective, moved towards the doors. ‘Talk to me later. Call my office. Make an appointment.’
‘You always in a hurry, doc? I appreciate you’re a busy guy, but this is only going to take five minutes tops.’
‘I’m in … look, it’s an emergency,’ and I kept moving.
I thought of saying: It’s like this, Petrosian, a stranger’s voice on the phone tells me my wife has been kidnapped, get the picture? Please help me. But I said no such thing. I stepped outside, and he came after me.
‘You get a look at the assailant, doc?’
‘No, his face was concealed.’
‘How?’
‘He had a scarf wrapped round his mouth.’ I couldn’t keep the impatience out of my voice.
‘And he assaulted you in what way?’
‘This is going to have to wait, Petrosian. I mean that.’
‘How did he assault you?’
‘You don’t take no, do you? OK. He punched me here,’ and I pointed to the side of my neck. ‘Then he tried to knife me.’
‘You fought him off?’ Petrosian said.
‘There was a confrontation, sure.’ I moved along the sidewalk through the thick air. The details of an assault, for Christ’s sake – what did they matter? Petrosian kept coming after me; he had the persistence of a force of nature.
‘You’d say it was a straightforward attempted mugging,’ he said.
‘I can’t imagine what else it would be. Money. Drugs. That would be my best guess.’
Petrosian scribbled in a little brown notebook. ‘This knife. Did you disarm him? Or did he run off with it in his possession?’
‘I remember he dropped it.’ I looked across the parking-lot, trying to recall the precise spot where I’d had the encounter last night. ‘It fell under my car. Maybe it’s still lying in the same place.’ I pointed a little vaguely to one of the tall lampposts.
Petrosian held my elbow and said, ‘Show me the spot, doc.’
‘Jesus, I keep telling you, I don’t have time. Anyway, I’m not sure I remember.’
‘Try. One minute is all I ask. Support your local cops. Remember, we’re the only thing that stands between you and outright anarchy, doc.’ The lips extended into a smile.
I half-ran, half-walked to where I thought I’d parked last night. So many parking spaces, so many lamps – how could I be certain?
The knife was on the ground, lying at the center of an old oil stain that looked like a blackened map of Scandinavia. Taking a plastic baggie from his pocket to avoid direct contact with it, Petrosian picked up the knife and examined it. I noticed the weapon had a dark rubber handle.
Then Petrosian unexpectedly pressed the tip of the knife firmly with a finger; the blade disappeared inside the handle and there was the faint sound of a spring being compressed. He laughed. ‘A prop,’ he said, and looked at me. ‘A stage dagger. I’ll be damned.’
‘I was threatened by a toy knife?’
Petrosian said, ‘Hey, this is LA. You expect every mugger you see to carry a real weapon?’ He dropped the fake knife into the plastic baggie. ‘I’ll check it for prints, anyhow.’
A fake knife. A whiff of cologne. What was I supposed to make out of that? ‘Can I go now?’
‘Sure. If we need to talk again, I’ll be in touch.’
I walked away from him quickly. I was aware of him watching me. I turned once to look back and saw him examining the toy knife in the baggie; he had an odd little smile on his face. He may have been thinking: Hotshot LA shrink spooked by dummy knife.
When I was out of his sight, I broke into a trot, a run. The idea of Sondra in trouble was burning like a brush-fire inside my head, and I was impatient to get to the cocktail bar – where, God willing, I’d find that the kidnap was as authentic as the mugger’s weapon.
11.29 a.m.
The Punch Bowl was a dim, old-fashioned little cocktail bar, an anachronism I’d passed thousands of times without ever really noticing it. Red naugahyde booths lined the walls and signed photographs of old prizefighters hung everywhere: Marciano, Graziano, Sugar Ray Robinson. Hence The Punch Bowl, but I wasn’t in any mood for cute.
A couple of guys sat on stools at the bar; late morning drinkers, maybe two men having a hair of the dog, or just getting a buzz before lunch. They turned to register me when I came through the door, then went back to their conversation, which was low and mumbled. I caught a few words – she’s way too skinny … she’s been doing coke, you ask me – and I wondered, What am I here for? It must be a hoax, something dreamed up by Harry when he’d had too much cognac one night and his brain was churning out idly elaborate notions.
Why was I playing along with it?
Because it’s serious. You’re not treating it as a bad joke, are you, Jerry? You want to. But you can’t. Something tells you not to.
The barman appeared, a muscular young black guy wearing a navy-blue T-shirt with a sparkly logo that read The Punch Bowl on the chest. ‘Help you?’ he asked.
‘Scotch,’ I said.
‘Ice? Soda?’
‘Yes,’ I said. Ice, soda, it didn’t matter.
I watched him pour. I took a long drink, tried to still my hand. I looked around the bar, which was long and narrow and receded into impenetrable shadow at the rear. So far as I could see, there were no customers other than me and the two guys on the stools. I sat down in a booth facing the front door.
My hand still shook. Outside traffic rumbled past, all very ordinary – people making deliveries, going to offices, running errands, whatever it was the human race did in the mundane slipstream of life. I couldn’t see through the opaque glass panes of the door, I could only hear noise: wheels, the squeak of brakes suddenly applied, mechanical splutters, gears grinding. I sat inside a dark box listening to a world of noise. At the bar, one guy absently tapped a coin on the counter, his companion breathed with a slight whine through congested nostrils, the barman ran a finger round the rim of a glass.
The world roared at me. I was floating on a great ocean of noise.
I looked at my watch. It was eleven-thirty now. OK, I was here, I’d been punctual, what happened next? The door would open – light would penetrate the gloom, and Harry would come through with Sondra, and they’d be laughing. Oh, look at Mr Serious and ’ow long ’is face is, Harry would say in that European-accented English he’d never lost. Then, sounding like a Nazi in a low-budget war-movie: Vee have given de poor doktor somezing of a fright, my dear Mrs Lomax.
But the door didn’t open and the second-hand of my watch kept marking the time until eleven-thirty became eleven thirty-five, then forty. And still it kept moving. Heraclitus had got it all wrong. Time wasn’t a river. It was a torturer’s rack. The motion of the second-hand was like the old Chinese water-drip. The watch vibrated in my vision.
I’d been here for more than ten minutes. I took a couple of very deep breaths and tried to relax, but my muscles felt padlocked.
‘Willie, the same again,’ one of the guys at the bar said. He turned to look at me a moment, then lost interest.
The telephone rang. I heard Willie pick it up and say, ‘Punch Bowl. What can we do for you?’ He listened a moment, then looked in my direction. ‘Say, are you Jerry Lomax? Somebody here wants to speak with you.’
I got out of the booth, trying not to hurry. I took the cordless phone from Willie’s hand and walked away from the bar, turning my back on the three men. They were listening. They’d fallen silent, unintentionally or otherwise. Maybe they wanted to hear what I said. Maybe the guys on the stools were involved in this – but that was a crazy tapestry I didn’t want to start working on, a mad design with no end in sight.
‘This is Lomax,’ I said.
‘You keep good time.’ It was the same man who’d spoken to me in my office.
I said, ‘Put my wife on.’
‘That’s not possible at the moment.’
‘Put her on the line or I hang up.’
‘You hang up and I might not call you again. And then you’d never find your wife, would you? You’d look and you’d look. All the days of your life. And you’d never find her.’
He was goading me, cruelly correct. ‘What do you want?’
‘You leave The Punch Bowl. You head for home.’
‘Then what?’
‘Then I send you somewhere else. Call it Point B. You get to B and perhaps I’ll send you to C. That’s how it works, Lomax. You go here and there, and when I’m sure you’re following instructions, I decide it’s time to tell you exactly what I want.’
‘And what the fuck do you want? Spell it out, for Christ’s sake. I hate this cloak –’
‘Just do what you’re told and we’ll get along famously. Go home. Go back to your house. Wait there.’
‘I want to speak to my wife –’
‘Realize something, Lomax. You’re dealing with some serious people. And if you want to see your wife again, you better grasp that fact damn fast. Oh, one last thing, at the risk of repeating myself: You don’t talk to a soul. You got that? Not a living soul.’
Then the connection was severed abruptly, and the receiver in my hand became a purposeless lump of plastic. I passed it back to Willie, who hung it up and then asked, ‘You OK?’
‘I’m OK,’ I said.
‘You need another drink?’
I shook my head. He shrugged and wandered to the other end of the bar. I picked up the handset and gazed at the numerical pad.
Willie looked at me. ‘That a local call you’re planning to make?’
I said it was.
‘It’s just that we get assholes phoning Peru and New Zealand, sticking us with tabs.’
‘No Peru. No New Zealand. Just LA.’
