Deadline (28 page)

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.

‘I want to see my wife first.'

‘You think I'll go back on our deal at this stage, Jerry?'

‘I can't give you what you want if I don't get Sondra. Is this a stand-off?'

‘I don't believe in stand-offs,' he said. He stood up, cracked his knuckles. ‘Tell me this much about the material. Is it worth your wife's life?'

‘It's what you want,' I said. ‘It fulfills your every dream, Resick. And I feel like shit giving it to you. Now give me back my wife.'

‘Do you have the stuff on you?'

I gave him a look:
Do-you-think-I-just-flew-in-by-paper-airplane?

‘OK. Is it near by?' he asked.

I said, ‘I can get it. Are you stalling for some reason, Resick?'

‘No.' He appeared nervous suddenly. He tossed his cigarette into the fireplace.

‘We had a deal. I want it finalized,' I said.

‘Just be patient, Jerry.'

‘Patient? Look, we're way past the deadline. Which you imposed.
Your
idea.
Your
timetable. Now you ask me to be patient. What are we waiting for, Resick?'

He moved to the fireplace, picked up a poker, stabbed the logs. They caved in, sending a weak flame up into the chimney. I watched him – what was he worried about? Why was he so obviously procrastinating? Or did I only imagine this? The way I was imagining Sondra once asking:
What do you keep in that box at the bank anyway, Jer? Letters from old girlfriends?
I had a bad feeling. I couldn't entirely pin it down. It was a queasiness of sorts.

‘You're fucking
stalling
,' I said. ‘I don't believe it. Has something happened to her?'

He shook his head. ‘She's fine.'

‘Did you harm her with those drugs?'

‘Drugs?' he said.

‘That was all play-acting, right?'

‘Pure theater,' he said.

‘How did you get her to agree to do it? What kind of goddam spell is she under?'

‘I didn't do anything, Lomax,' he said.

‘I don't believe that. I want to see her, and I want to see her now. She's here, isn't she? She's in this house?'

I walked to the door. ‘I'll find her if she's here.'

‘Wait,' he said.

‘I'll find her,' I said again.

‘No, wait,' he said.

I was tired of the obfuscation, the maze I'd been funneled through. I was weary of deception and anxiety. I felt like I'd been on a rack all day, stretched by a sadist who loved his work.

‘Lomax,' he called after me.

I moved along a corridor. I had no idea where I was going. The house was another mystery. More and more levels. I opened doors all the way down the hallway. Rooms, rooms. One with a big piano, lacquered red and shining like a waxed apple. Another with a single bed and a floor-mat, a monastic little cell. Another with a dining-table and chairs and unlit candles in silver sticks. Rooms and more rooms. Empty spaces. What if she wasn't here at all and this conviction I had was just a repeat of the brainstorm that had happened at Gerson's?

‘Wait, Lomax!' Resick called out again.

I was hurrying away from him. He came after me. Then I was rushing, storming through the house, climbing stairs, searching the levels for my wife. Still Resick pursued me, only now he'd quit calling out to me because he knew it was a waste of time.

Rooms, more rooms: one filled with plants and humidifiers spraying the air, one stuffed with packing-crates, one with a desk and a PC whose monitor displayed a series of ethereal shapes revolving in cyberspace. I kept going – another flight of stairs – how many levels did this weird house have, how many rooms? I saw an empty sauna, a shower, a big bathroom tiled black and white … rooms collapsed into other rooms … Where was Sondra? Where was she if she wasn't here?

I heard Resick behind me. He reached out and grabbed my shoulder, trying to slow me, but I slipped his grasp and kept moving. Even when he went down on his knees, and tried to tackle me from the back like an ungainly football-player, I sidestepped him easily and heard him clatter into the wall.