Recoil (21 page)

“Sometimes I think we can.” She withdrew her hand and put her back to him, watching the boys on horseback. “Sometimes I don't even want to.”

“If I can settle this thing—get Pastor off our backs—”

“What's the sense talking about it? We don't know what's going to happen. You don't even know if you can do anything yet—you haven't got any idea how to approach it.”

“I'm beginning to see how it can be done.”

“Are you?” She didn't sound reassured. She looked around at him, wary as a fawn. “I'm afraid. Let's go back to the house?”

2

Vasquez opened the photo album on the dining table. Roger Gilfillan pulled his chair closer; Mathieson stood behind Vasquez's shoulder.

“This one?”

“Sandra Pastor. The older daughter. Fourteen.”

“Chubby kid,” Roger observed. “Too much of that there spaghetti.”

Vasquez turned the picture over and slid the next out of the folder. “Him?”

“Hard to say.” Mathieson leaned forward. “It's a lousy picture. It could be a rear-quarter profile of Ezio Martin.”

“It is. You're getting quite good. Either of you recognize these two men?”

Roger shook his head; Mathieson said, “No. Should we?”

“This one's name is Fritz Deffeldorf. The mug shots date back four years, the other two were taken by my people in the past few weeks. Now the other one. I'm afraid the pictures aren't as good—he's camera-shy. He's Arnold Tyrone.”

“Tyrone?”

“It's an Anglicization of something or other.”

Roger asked, “Where do these two hairpins fit in?”

“We believe they're the men who bombed the house.”

Mathieson leaned over the photographs and burned them into his memory. “Tell me about it.”

“What we have is mainly circumstantial. It wouldn't hold up in court.”

“Come on, come on.” He shifted the mug shot to get another angle on it.

“We managed to check the passenger lists on flights into Los Angeles International. They both arrived in Los Angeles the morning of the bombing—not together, they were on separate planes.”

“Using their real names?”

“Yes. It's not unusual. Deffeldorf came in on a nonstop from Newark airport. Tyrone came in from Oklahoma City airport. That's the airport that serves Norman, Oklahoma.”

“Then Tyrone may be the man who shot Walter Benson.”

“It seems a reasonable assumption. Tyrone flew back to Newark about ten days later. From Albuquerque.”

Mathieson looked up. “After they lost Glenn Bradleigh in Gallup.”

“That isn't a supportable conclusion yet. But it's an allowable surmise.”

“Go on.”

“Fritz Deffeldorf is a specialist for hire. His specialty is demolitions.”

“You've done a lot of digging.”

“I've had weeks to do it, Mr. Merle. But I must point out to you that your friend Bradleigh may have more information than I have about these two men. I haven't approached him—I assume you don't want my connection with you known. Now then. Arnold Tyrone. He owns and manages a sporting goods store in Trenton, New Jersey. Through his business front he procures weapons and hardware for those who need them. He's said to be one of the best marksmen in the country. He may be, as I said, the one who shot Walter Benson in Oklahoma. By the same chain of reasoning I suspect he's
not
the man who fired at you from the ridge above your house—the man with the motorcycle. That one missed.”

“Then who was that sniper? Deffeldorf?”

“I doubt it. Deffeldorfs expertise is in explosives, not rifles. You told me that Bradleigh was followed to Arizona by men in separate cars. That sort of operation usually entails at least three cars with two men in each car. Six men, then. Even if we assume two of them were Deffeldorf and Tyrone, there remain four men unaccounted for. There's also reason to believe that at least three men were involved in the attack on your house. I'd guess that Tyrone drove the car, Deffeldorf threw the bomb from it, and a third man with a motorcycle was stationed on top of the ridge to cover the house in case anyone came out of it after the bomb was thrown. We're still trying to identify him, as well as others who must have joined the team to shadow Mr. Bradleigh. We're also trying to identify the four men who are combing San Diego County for riding stables. We've had descriptions of them—sufficient to indicate that none of them is Deffeldorf or Tyrone or, for that matter, anyone familiar to our operatives. But that's not surprising. It's a menial sort of assignment and I'm sure the four men are local hoodlums, perhaps from San Diego itself.”

“Then where are Deffeldorf and Tyrone now?”

“At home managing their separate businesses.”

Roger said, “You mean they just cut out and head back home right in the middle of the job?”

“Their part of the job is probably concluded. Such men are free lances.”

Vasquez tapped a fingertip on Arnold Tyrone's grainy face. “When Pastor and Ezio Martin decided to employ assassins to seek out you and Walter Benson and the others, they shopped around to find out who'd be available for the work. They'd never use one of their own for this kind of assignment. It's
de rigueur
to hire outside talent, and to hire it through an anonymous chain of intermediaries. Then if the talent is apprehended and decides to confess, nothing can be traced back to the source.”

“Make your point.”

“Contain your impatience. You have an annoying tendency to try to reduce everything to straight-line simplicities. There are things in life that aren't subject to that kind of reduction. An organization like Pastor's is not going to dry up and blow away if its taproot is severed. Remove Frank Pastor and the organization will go on quite happily without him. By personalizing your vendetta you render it meaningless.”

“Are you suggesting I should go after the entire organization?”

“I suggest, Mr. Merle, that you decide once and for all which it is that you want—the removal of the threat against you and your family, or revenge against your enemies.”

“You're making an artificial distinction.”

“Not at all. If you're after revenge then by all means fill your hands with pistols and go roaring off in pursuit of Mr. Deffeldorf and Mr. Tyrone. I'm quite certain they're the men who assaulted your home and hired the sniper who shot at you. But if you're after the removal of the threat then you must forget Deffeldorf and Tyrone. Individually they constitute no threat to you. If Frank Pastor were removed from the scene you can be sure the hired hands would forget you instantly—they do only those jobs for which they can reasonably expect recompense, and there would be no profit in their continuing to harass you.”

Mathieson pushed the photographs away. He walked to the window and stared through it. Meuth's tractor pulled a mower across the skyline, making a distant racket. Roger cleared his throat.

Vasquez hammered home his point. “You've no need to deal with outsiders who have no personal stake in your living or dying. Forget Deffeldorf and Tyrone. Forget the sniper, whoever he may have been. Focus your attentions on those who have compelling reasons to threaten you.”

“Frank Pastor.”

“Not merely Pastor. Think about the kind of importance these people attach to revenge. It is a familial obligation—a duty of the blood. If Frank Pastor is harmed, his family is obliged to retaliate. Anna Pastor, his wife. George Ramiro, who must maintain his reputation as the family's enforcer. C. K. Gillespie, who has designs on the family's fortunes and is, I'm told, merely waiting for the eldest Pastor daughter to reach the age of consent so that he may marry her. Ezio Martin who is a second cousin of Pastor's, his closest friend and heir apparent. Alicia Ramiro, Martin's stepsister, the wife of George Ramiro and again a cousin of Pastor's. Sandra and Nora Pastor, the daughters.”

He turned away from the window and found Vasquez watching him with a peculiar narrowed eagerness. Mathieson said, “Teen-age girls?”

“They're your enemies. Make no mistake. Leave those two innocent little girls free to act and the time will come when they'll seek revenge on you. It's born in them—they have no choice. Therefore
you
have no choice.”

“My God. This is absurd.”

“Do you want to reconsider?”

“Why are you always after me to change my mind?”

“Answer my question, please.”

“No. I can't reconsider. I've got to get them off my back.”

Vasquez watched, unblinking.

Mathieson said, “You're testing me, aren't you.”

“Testing your resolve, yes.”

“Why?”

“Because you must realize the depth of your commitment. Once you start, there will be no turning back. Go after one of them and you must go after them all. You can't leave the job half done.” Vasquez gathered up the photographs, squared them neatly and slid them into the envelope. “Suppose your campaign achieves the intended results—the neutralization, somehow, of the threat posed by Frank Pastor. I can't conceive of your accomplishing that without incurring the rage of his family.” Vasquez paused significantly. “Suppose in achieving your first goal—Pastor—you find you've offended your own moral sensibilities. Suppose you find yourself filled with self-loathing. Suppose self-disgust tempts you to take to your heels. You must realize now—before we really begin—that such a train of events would leave you and your wife and son and your friends in a far worse predicament than the one they're in now.”

“How could it?”

“Your death has been a matter of sport to Frank Pastor. It's inconsequential. He's gone through the motions, he's honored the traditions to which he's obligated, but he hasn't yet devoted extraordinary energies to pursuing you. The attacks on you may have been engineered by a subordinate—perhaps Ezio Martin—and they were incidentals in Frank Pastor's life. Your demise is something he desires. But it's hardly a vital issue to him. Now if you should carry your attack directly to Pastor and do injury to him, then he and his family would drop absolutely everything in the rush to avenge themselves on you. Where a relatively insignificant proportion of their energies heretofore has been devoted to your harassment, now you would find that the entire force of their violent resources would be brought to bear in an intense concentration against you and your family.”

The tractor sputtered to a stop. In the abrupt silence he could hear the breath whistling through Roger's nostrils.

Vasquez said, “I doubt you'd stand one chance in a million. You and your wife and son would not merely be tracked, found and taken. You'd very likely be subjected to punishments of agonizing painfulness before you were eventually slaughtered. As for Mr. Gilfillan and his family, one can't be sure whether their hunger for vengeance would stretch that far but it's possible.”

Mathieson pulled out a chair and sat down slowly at the table. He laid both arms out flat along the tabletop and looked at the backs of his hands. Beside him Roger reached out; he felt the solid grip of Roger's fingers on his shoulder.

Vasquez was behind him and Mathieson did not look around. Eventually it forced Vasquez to walk around the table and stand on the far side looking at him. Mathieson raised his head.

In a kinder voice Vasquez said, “I have a responsibility to force you to think these things right through before you decide on a course of action. You resent it, of course—it would be unnatural if you didn't. I've thrown a few of your assumptions off the track. I've managed to depress you. I've made what already appeared difficult become all but impossible to conceive.”

Roger's hand fell away; his chair scraped and Mathieson heard him stand up. “Tell you what you've done to me, you've made me start wondering whether you're getting a case of cold feet.”

“I intend going all the way with this,” Vasquez said. “Make no mistake about that.”

“How do we know that? So far all I've seen is some athletics and some smoke screens.”

Mathieson looked up at Roger in surprise: the anger in Roger's voice was unmistakable.

“I signed on to
do
something—not just set around and look at pictures and listen to your long-winded flapdoodle and wait on our butts for these four fire inspectors to come find us hidin' in the hayloft. So far all's I've seen you do is spend a lot of Fred's money on man-hours for your own operatives compiling these here beautiful plastic-bound Xerox dossiers, and now you're trying to tell us we can ignore Deffeldorf and Tyrone, just throw all that money and time away. Hell, the way you go at it we could all set around here waitin' for inspiration until we got long white whiskers on us.”

Vasquez scowled. “We can't fight from ignorance. We'd get nowhere. Surely you can understand that. We need facts before we can move. We've got the facts now. We're sorting through them. In time we'll find facts we can use. It takes time—I'm sorry, I won't be held accountable for that, or for your impatience.”

“You make it sound right reasonable. But somebody else might take a look at all this and call it foot-draggin'.”

“In other words you don't trust me.”

“Why should I? Why should Fred, for that matter? Just because you say out loud that you aim to go all the way with this, we supposed to believe you? Vasquez, I been listening to producers and directors talk real sweet to me all my life, and the only thing I really learned out of all that was that ninety-nine times out of a hundred those old boys are just yakking to practice their lying.”

Vasquez looked at Mathieson. “Do you share your friend's distrust of me?”

“I'd like to know what your intentions are. I'd like to know your reasons—why you took this on in the first place, especially if you thought it was such a poor gamble.”