Recoil (22 page)

“My reasons are personal.”

“Something between you and Frank Pastor?”

“No. I've never had dealings with the man.”

“Then what is it?” Mathieson sat up straight. “I realize it's an impertinent question.”

“Impertinent? It's personal. But then the only things that matter are.” Vasquez thrust his hands into his pockets. His face drew back defensively, chin tucked toward the plaid collar of his open shirt. “Call them my private demons. Matters of vanity and eccentric conviction. I'd prefer to leave it at that.”

“Ain't enough,” Roger said.

Mathieson said, “I agree with Roger. I'm sorry to pry but we've got a right to be satisfied on this. I don't want to be crude—but it's my money you're spending.”

“And my time you're wasting,” Roger said. “All of us, our time.”

“An extraordinary amount of my own time as well,” Vasquez said. “Do you know how many other cases I've had to turn away or set on the back burner?”

Mathieson's fist hit the table: “Why? You've got to tell us why.”

Vasquez blinked. His shoulders rolled around and settled; his chin poked forward until he looked querulous. “Are you religious, Mr. Merle?”

It took him aback. “What? No—not particularly.”

“You?”

Roger shook his head.

Vasquez said, “People who believe in God can leave the ultimate sortings-out to Him. Rewards and punishments. Heaven and Hell. When one has no faith in that, one must pay some attention to justice here and now. Otherwise it's all meaningless chaos.”

Roger snapped at him: “We didn't ask for a course in philosophy.”

“You're going to get one. You asked a question. I'm answering it.” Vasquez's eyes swiveled bleakly toward Mathieson. “My reasons have to do with the fact that I lost my faith in God a long time ago. Do you understand at all? I'm a Chicano, Mr. Merle, I have experience of injustice.”

Roger said, “You don't talk like no ignorant
barrio
slum.”

“Nevertheless I was born in one. I was born on the south side of Tucson, Arizona. An adobe slum.”

“So now we get into ethnic stuff?”

Vasquez shook his head. “I believe with Edmund Burke that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. You see I may have lost faith but I still carry the burden of absolutism—I was raised in the Church. I believe in absolute distinctions between good and evil. It would have been easier if I'd been able to adapt myself to the current fashions in flexible morality. But I can't—I won't be corrupted, it would make my existence so complicated it would be impossible.”

Mathieson stared at him. Was it possible Vasquez's reluctance had been caused solely by a fear of ridicule?

Vasquez said, “One meets decent people but most of them are decent largely because their lives have contained little hardship, little pain and little temptation. Mr. Merle is all but unique—he has faced those challenges and has not been ground down by them. He's made his choices from principle rather than expediency. I can't tell you how much I admire that.”

Roger watched, skepticism undiminished. Vasquez pulled out a chair and arranged himself in it. His voice dropped; it took on the dense foggy bass tones of a church organ. “My son was drafted into the army in 1969. He submitted to the draft but petitioned to be treated as a conscientious objector. We had long arguments. He insisted he would not kill. He said that was his credo. He's a Catholic and as you know that's a congregation not noted for its pacifism, but I had no doubt of his sincerity. I put a hypothesis to him. If someone were to point a gun at his mother with the unmistakable intention of killing her, what would he do?”

Mathieson said, “What did he say?”

“The question at this juncture is what do
you
say?”

“I don't know what I might do. I'd try not to kill him. I'd stop him, or maybe get shot trying. But no, I wouldn't deliberately kill him.”

“Those might have been my son's exact words.”

Roger said, “What happened to him?”

“He was classified I-A-o. Assigned as a noncombatant, a medical attendant. Near Hue, in 1970, he disappeared. He's still listed as missing.”

Mathieson said, “I'm very sorry.”

“Your sorrow isn't of much use.”

It angered him. “I'm not a surrogate for your son. Don't work out your penances on me.”

“Don't be idiotic. Or at least don't proclaim your idiocy. I'm not confusing you with my son. I'm trying to explain why I've had occasion to think these issues out.”

Mathieson felt exhausted. “Do you want to argue metaphysics all day?”

Vasquez disregarded him. “A man does the sort of thing you're doing only after a great deal of considered analysis. To face such dangers requires a unique devotion to moral principle.”

“If you say so. Seems to me I'd face more danger if I did anything else.”

“Don't be disingenuous. It's not worthy of you. As we both know, you could always run.”

Roger came toward the table. “To where?”

“Anywhere.”

“Reckon that's the same as nowhere.”

“We've tried it,” Mathieson said.

Vasquez glanced from one to the other. “In any case you asked what my motives were. Are you satisfied?”

Roger gripped the edge of the table and leaned on his arms. For a long time he studied Vasquez. “I believe it. Don't ask me why.”

“Very few men would believe it,” Vasquez said. “It's a cynical age.”

Mathieson was about to speak when he heard the door. Mrs. Meuth appeared. “Mr. Vasquez——”

“What is it?”

“Perkins says those men are coming up the road, sir.”

Mathieson was out of his chair before she completed the sentence.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Southern California: 22 September

1

T
HEY DISPERSED ON THE RUN. MATHIESON FOUND THE BOYS
in the stable unsaddling. Perkins and Meuth came striding into the runway and Mathieson surprised himself by how calmly he spoke: “Leave that. Let's get up to the house.”

Perkins said, “We'll take the horses, boys.” Meuth reached for the trailing reins.

Ronny balked. “But they'll——”

Meuth had a tart New England nasality. “They see two sweaty horses, they'll want to know who was riding them. It'll have to be me and Perkins. You boys git, now.”

Perkins's thatch of white hair seemed to glow in the dim stable. He looked at Mathieson: “You've got maybe four minutes.”

“Come on—come on.” He took the boys across the driveway at full steam, leading the way with his long legs.

They caromed inside. Ronny was anxious: Mathieson saw him reach for Billy's arm. “Wait a minute. What I was trying to say—the stirrups. What if they notice your stirrups?”

“Dudes,” Billy said with an echo of his father's prairie twang. “Never notice it in a million years. Come on.”

Mathieson stopped halfway to the stairs. “Ronny may have a point. Get on upstairs—I'll be right there.” He swiveled and ran back outside: went off the porch in a single flying leap, skidded on the gravel under the porte cochere and sprinted full-tilt across the lawn. He spared a glance to his right. There was nothing in sight—the trees masked the lower valley beyond the farther bend in the driveway.

Meuth and Perkins were leading the two geldings out into the paddock. Mathieson stopped in the stable door; if he went outside he'd be visible from below. “Meuth!”

He saw the man's cap-bill turn.

“Lengthen those stirrups!”

Meuth shook his head; he looked away toward the end of the paddock fence. “No time. Run for it, man!”

Mathieson made his dash. If the car came around the bend before he got inside the house …

But it didn't. He took the main stairs three at a time and pounded down the upstairs corridor.

Homer was waiting by the open door to the utility closet. “Where the hell you been? Never mind—here, I'll give you a boost.”

He pulled himself up through the trapdoor onto the rafters. They'd rehearsed it twice several days ago: He knew enough to move with care, balancing his weight on the beams—there was nothing between them but the light wire framing of the plaster ceilings covered by six inches of foam insulation and if you put a foot down on that it might go straight through.

He laid himself painfully belly-flat across the rafters and reached down the trapdoor. Beneath him Homer was stacking soapboxes back on the shelves they'd used for ladder-holds. Homer tipped the ironing board back into place and then there were no footholds. He made his jump from a crouch; Mathieson caught his arm and manhandled him up far enough. Homer's fingers gripped the box of rafters around the traphole and Mathieson slid back to give him room to chin himself up through the opening.

Homer rolled away from the hole and Mathieson slid the painted sheet of three-quarter plywood down into it, closing the door. He turned, barking a knee on a two-by-eight, picking up the faint guide of illumination falling through the angled louver-slats of the attic vent up near the peak of the wall at the far end of the crawl space. It was enough to steer by; he followed Homer awkwardly along the rafters on hands and knees, using the beams like railway tracks until they reached the central crawl-planking. It was two feet wide and ran the length of the attic—a service platform for access to the air-conditioning ductwork.

Even under the roofbeam the space was only three feet high and they had to scull the plank on hands and knees. A breeze hit him in the face, drawn through by the throbbing exhaust fan down the length of the house behind him.

Two heads blocked some of the light from the shutter-slits of the vent—Vasquez and Roger, peering down through the openings. The long attic was architecturally a nave; at the end to either side garbled dormers made symmetrical wings. Back in those narrow triangular spaces the side-vents threw enough light for him to make out the rumpled shapes of human figures and the crowded stacks of luggage, piled like bricks, neatly fitted into the corners. Everything they possessed was up here.

His eyes were dilating in the dimness and when he moved forward he distinguished Amy Gilfillan's silhouette; the dark figure before her was Jan. He looked the other way and found Ronny and Billy crowded up against the side-vent of the left wing, trying to see down through the slats. That one overlooked the swimming pool and the back slope of garden.

Behind him Homer brushed his ankle, climbing across the beams into the wing by the two boys. Mathieson put one foot on a rafter and reached out for Jan's shoulder. Her hand found his and squeezed it. He moved ahead down the planking; Vasquez and Roger made room for him.

The vent was about a foot square. Its wooden louvers were tilted down against the rain. The fan sucked a powerful wind through the screening. He moved close to it and the changing focus of his eyes blurred the mesh of the wire screen. The view was restricted by the four-inch depth of the louvers: He could see a piece of the driveway, grass on either side of it, one end of the stable and a patch of paddock beyond it.

The car squatted in the gravel drive and by squinting and moving his head from side to side against the screen he was able to piece out the lettering in the gold decal on the front door of the pale blue car:
County of San Diego
—
Utilities Board
.

Vasquez moved his lips close to Mathieson's ear. “Electrical inspectors. It's an excellent ploy—gives them the excuse to pry into nooks and crannies.” The sibilants of his whisper hissed in the wind.

Roger said, “They over in the paddock talkin' to Meuth and Perkins right now. Over to the right a bit—you can't see them right now.”

Mathieson said, “Well at least we didn't go to all this trouble on a false alarm. While I was banging my knees on those rafters I was thinking how sore I'd be if it turned out to be Meuth's sister-in-law or some Sunday driver who lost his way.”

“He'd have to be real good and lost,” Roger remarked. “Today's Monday.”

“Is it?” He'd lost track. Nothing stirred in the quadrangle of his view. His knees began to ache; he gingerly shifted position on the sharp-edged beams. “They're taking a long time out there.”

“Establishing their credentials,” Vasquez guessed.

“Maybe. But there could be a problem. Meuth and Perkins still have the horses with them?”

“Yes.”

Roger said, “Meuth's probably stalling them, give us more time to get settled down.”

“I hope that's it. We didn't have time to lengthen Billy's stirrups.”

He felt Roger stiffen beside him. Billy was a head shorter than Ronny; the stirrups on his saddle had been hiked up several notches to accommodate his short legs. An alert observer would notice it.

Roger said, “Perkins knows?”

“Yes.”

“Then I reckon it's all right. They get curious, he'll just allow he shortened the stirrups to ride knee-high race form. He was Breed's trainer, you know. Sometimes they ride quarterhorses short-stirrup, get 'em used to pancake saddles.”

But his heart kept pounding. He didn't know Perkins at all: Did the man have brains enough?

Then they moved into sight. He nudged Roger. The three of them pressed their faces to the screen.

Meuth trudged across the driveway, moving with an elderly foot-dragging slowness that wasn't typical of him. Stalling them, Mathieson judged. Meuth was talking rapid fire, waving his arms about—probably extolling the glories of the estate, putting on an act and evidently doing a good job of it.

The two electrical inspectors wore casual outfits—open sport shirts, khakis, sneakers. One of them was a big man with a veined bald skull; the back of his head was flat. His companion had crew-cut gray hair and a beer belly. They didn't look sinister. They looked like weary civil servants.