Cutter and Bone (24 page)

YANKEE GO HOME!

Below it, an arrow pointed to the top of the dresser, where Cutter had continued his message on a sheet of hotel stationery:

Dear Chickenshit,

During the night it comes to me like a hot flash—I need you like I need more glass eyes. Who’s to say
I
wasn’t on Alvarez Street that night? Who’s to say
I
didn’t see old J.J. dump the bod same as you did? Not J.J. hisself—that I guarantee.

So what it comes down to, dear heart, is this—me and V. hereby include you out. In a word, you are fired—free to return to the sands of S.B. and contemplate the utter perfection of your ding-dong.

Meanwhile, J.J. is ours.
Mine
. Today we don’t send a boy out on a man’s job. Today I go. And tomorrow—well, someday y’all come visit us on Ibiza, hear?

But for the nonce—get lost.

Yrs. in Jesus,

Alexander IV

All in all, Bone considered it pretty good advice, if not actually to get lost at least to put as much distance as he could between himself and them, and the sooner the better. Even handled expertly—that is, the way Bone himself would have tried to handle it—the operation would have been a long shot at best. It required a negotiator who knew something of the corporate labyrinth, because unless one reached Wolfe with the product intact—not picked over by underlings, ripped open, light-exposed—then one really had nothing to sell. Wolfe would have no alternative except to call in the gendarmes and bluff it out, play his power game to the full, which would probably mean jail—and not for Wolfe. Considering all that. Bone simply could not imagine Cutter bringing the thing off. Somewhere along the line, probably within minutes after he entered Wolfe’s domain, he would run up against one variety or other of bureaucratic lunacy and his response would naturally be both swift and outrageous, the kind of act that would bring everything crashing down upon him. A mad lame bull in a plastic shop, that would about describe him. And it was a description Bone could not see leading to anything but failure. So he was glad to be out of it, anxious to be on his way.

There was still his hangover to deal with, however, his need for oxygen and food and movement. Getting out of bed, he decided that if room service was good enough for Cutter and Valerie it was also good enough for him, and he phoned down an order for French toast, scrambled eggs, bacon, coffee, and a pint of freshly squeezed orange juice, this last a specification that threw the order-taker into such a panic Bone wondered if he had been connected with the Sheraton-Iceland kitchen by mistake. He then smoked a cigarette, defecated splendidly, and spent the next fifteen minutes in the shower, grateful that the world’s reputedly impending water crisis was still a few years distant.

The breakfast proved to be almost as cold as it was expensive, though this last he solved à la Cutter, scrawling his version of Valerie’s signature across the room service check. By twelve-thirty he was ready to go, fed and dressed, with the few things he had brought with him, extra shirt, socks, toilet articles, all stuffed into his venerable attaché case. Downstairs he strode across the hotel lobby and out through the bustling entrance like any other successful young executive. Only where they all seemed to be hailing taxis, he walked casually across the parking lot, shortcutted through some bushes, and headed down the hill to Lankersham. Another block and he was on the freeway entrance ramp, thumbing with his usual touch of calculated restraint and even embarrassment, hoping to make clear to that Great American Majority thundering past that his customary place was right there with them
on
the road, not next to it as now, for it was his experience that people were more likely to pick up their own kind. And normally it was the women who came through for him, usually young ones, two or three of them riding together and thus able to combine a sense of adventure with some measure of security. But this day it was a man who did the honors, a heavy middle-aged sales type with a bright red face and a whiskey voice. He drove one-handed and very fast, chainsmoking Camels as he cruised along the freeway, tailgating, changing lanes, slipping through openings that would have given a Hell’s Angel pause. But as Bone quickly learned, the man was not really being cavalier with anyone’s life except his own, for the simple reason that he did not seem to realize that there were any others out there. Bone in fact believed that if he had been an armed Black Panther or a Hari Krishna monk or a bull dyke fondling a bicycle chain, it would have been the same—the man would not have noticed. All he wanted, all he had stopped for, was a pair of ears, a hitchhiker confessor, a surrogate shrink.

In the less than ninety minutes it took to reach Santa Barbara, Bone learned in crushing detail the history of the man’s three rottenfuckin’ marriages. He learned all about the ingratitude and stupidity of the man’s rottenfuckin’ daughters and pansy-ass sons and in the bargain got a straight-from-the-shoulder analysis of the housewares business, starting with the manufacturers and moving down through the jobbers and salesmen (the best of the goddamn lot, the backbone of the whole economy) to the rottenfuckin’ retailers themselves, who never discounted anything unless it was simple old-fashioned honesty, an honest product for an honest buck. Like most businesses, housewares was simply no place for an honest man, a good man, and especially not an honest good man who was also a crackerjack salesman. Him they just didn’t know what to do with. They cheated him and lied to him and stabbed him in the back. They shaved his commissions and pirated his accounts and failed to recognize his considerable achievements. All of which convinced Bone that he had more than earned his way back to Santa Barbara, and in fact had a little something extra due him. So as they reached the downtown area and the man started to pull off the freeway to let him out, Bone told him to go on to the next corner and hang a right.

“There’s something you’ve got to see,” he explained. “It’s just a couple of blocks.”

Murdock’s Bar actually was six blocks from the freeway, but the housewares tycoon did not complain. As Bone got out, though, the man asked for an explanation.

“Well, what is it I got to see?”

Bone frowned, smiled. It should have been obvious. “My destination,” he said.

Unfortunately Murdock’s turned out not to be much in the way of a destination, for Murdock himself was gone, which meant Bone would not be able to drink on his tab or borrow the man’s car for a run uptown to see Mo and the baby. Nevertheless Bone did settle in long enough to have one vodka tonic, to sit there in the pleasant darkness working on the drink and picking at his decision to come here, all the way downtown, instead of getting out on 101 as it passed through Montecito, not even a half mile from Mrs. Little’s, which after all was his new home, his place of bed and board for now. But as he thought about it, he had to admit no decision was involved, that he simply had come straight here like a homing pigeon following the radar beam of its nature. The fact that Cutter would not be there did not really enter in. Bone had been alone with her before, dozens of times, and nothing had happened. So why should he expect anything to happen this time? Oh, he could hope, all right. And he could even try, make the old half-hearted try. There couldn’t be any harm in that, he told himself. There was never any harm in that.

On the way out he ran into Sergeant Verdugo, one of the detectives who had rousted him the night of the murder. Verdugo said he was still assigned to the case, but was getting nowhere fast. He asked Bone if his memory had improved any and Bone said he was on his way uptown, that maybe the sergeant would give him a lift and they could talk about it. Verdugo had the look of a man who knew he was being suckered, but he went along anyway, driving Bone the few miles to Cutter’s place. And all he did was nod wearily when Bone said he had nothing to add to his original statement. For his part, the sergeant did not have much more to offer. Every lead so far in the case had reached a dead end. The department was nowhere. Lieutenant Ross was back on warm milk and baby food. And to top it all, the victim’s sister seemed to have disappeared. Her mother didn’t know where she was, and neither did her employer.

“Ross thinks we’ll find her dead too,” Verdugo finished.

Bone said nothing.

They were at Cutter’s now. “Still staying here, huh?” the sergeant observed. “On the floor?”

Getting out, Bone smiled. “Home is where the heart is.”

There was no answer to his knock, so he went on into the house, expecting that he would find her asleep in bed with the baby. Instead he found her out on the deck dozing topless in the sun on one of the webbed folding chairs Swanson had given Cutter. Alex Five was at her feet, asleep in a pile of blankets on the deck floor. For a short time Bone just stood there in the doorway saying nothing, not moving, as if he feared the slightest sound would bring it all crashing down, this tableau that looked almost contrived by a French impressionist—the half-nude madonna and child asleep in the gold pool of the sun, with the mountains and the sea and the red-roofed city beyond. He thought of bending down and touching his lips to her breasts, but he knew that would probably gain him nothing except a punched nose, so he lightly rapped on the doorjamb instead. And Mo reacted about as he had expected she would, with her eyes mostly, a look of bland surprise. Not bothering to cover her breasts, she raised her finger to her mouth to silence him—she did not want him waking the baby. Getting up, she followed him back into the house and closed the French deck doors behind her.

“What the hell are you now, a cat burglar?” she asked, slipping into a sweatshirt.

“I knocked.”

“Not very loud.”

Bone smiled. “Just loud enough. For my purposes.”

Flopping back on the davenport, she lit a cigarette. “Well, I hope you enjoyed yourself.”

“Immensely.”

“Yeah, they’re pretty great,” she admitted. “All thirty-four inches.”

“I’m not a tits man.”

“What then? Elbows? Ankles?”

“Eyes, Mo. I have this thing about certain kinds of eyes.”

“Bloodshot, no doubt.”

“Usually, yes.”

She said nothing for a few moments, evidently having temporarily run out of sarcasm. “You’re alone?” she asked finally.

“I came back alone, yes.”

“He’s still there, then?”

“Still there. Still on the job.”

She sat looking at him, smiling slightly. “Are you going to tell me why?”

“Sure. I chickened out. Once I hit Wolfe’s place, I found I couldn’t go through with the thing. But I pretended to anyway. Went through the motions. You know.”

“Why?”

“Why couldn’t I go through with it?”

“Yes. Why the sudden bout of sanity?”

“That about says it.”

“Why pretend you went through with it though?”

“I figured when nothing happened—when Wolfe never got in touch—the whole thing would just peter out. Alex would lose interest, give it up.”

“I take it he didn’t.”

“No. Today he’s carrying the ball.”

“And will he drop it too?”

“Not if he can help it.”

“Is there any chance he could bring it off?”

“Let’s hope so. For your sake anyway.”

“You figure I might benefit somehow?”

Bone shrugged.

“Sort of share-the-wealth thing?”

“I can’t see why not.”

“Can’t you now?”

“No, I can’t.”

Mo’s smile seemed to appreciate the effort he made, but she still was not buying. “And the girl? I take it she didn’t chicken out either.”

“No. She’s still hanging in there.”

“Plucky little thing.”

“Yeah, she’s a plucky little thing.”

“And with you gone, that sort of throws them together, doesn’t it?”

“In a business sort of way.”

“Kind of colleagues, you might say.”

Bone did not pick it up.

“Or partners,” she went on.

“Whatever.”

“Bedmates?”

“Not while I was there.”

“Of course not. Not with old blue-eyes on the Scene. I mean one couldn’t very well expect Alex to beat that kind of competition, could one?”

Bone went along. “Now that you mention it.”

“Except with me, of course.”

“Of course.”

“But now if he
were
screwing her—you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”

“Would it matter?”

“Which. Their screwing, or your telling me?”

“Take your pick.”

The smile came again. “You’re right, Rich. I guess it doesn’t really matter, does it.”

“No.”

The baby was awake now. Through the French doors Bone could hear him jabbering, see him on his hands and knees at the deck railing, trying to squeeze his head through.

“It’s all right—you can go get him,” Mo said. “You can do your little domestic thing.”

Bone gave her a despairing look. But he went out onto the deck and got the baby anyway.

“You want to change him?” she asked.

“No.”

“Feed him?”

“I’ll watch.”

While Mo took the baby into the bedroom, Bone went back onto the deck and stretched out in the sun, whose brilliance and warmth did nothing to diminish his feeling of rising spirits. Just yesterday he had had one foot in the abyss, yet here he was today back on solid ground, safe and sane if not solvent. And as for any uneasiness he might have felt about coming here alone, Mo herself had quickly dispelled that, Mo in the flesh, the ever astringent flesh. He stood about as good a chance of abusing her as he did a bulldozer. More likely, she would end up rolling right over him. But even that prospect held no terror for him. He was content in the knowledge that he just might find out something this day, maybe get her out of his system for good—or help her set the hook even deeper. Either way, it would be a kind of release, one less point for anxiety.

While he was on the deck the phone rang in the living room, in fact rang seven or eight times before Mo finally answered it. And even then she did not say much except for an occasional “Yes, I heard you,” or “Yes, I’m still here.” Finally she said, “Why don’t you tell him yourself? He’s here.”