Recoil (3 page)

“Yes, I'll think about it.” He left the office uncertain whether to be angry or only sad.

2

The traffic on Sunset Boulevard had thinned out and he made good time up over the top of the canyon and down the turns to his house on Beverly Glen. He recognized the Gilfillans' Chrysler wagon parked in the oval driveway: They lived only five hundred yards away but they had become true Californians. He navigated the Porsche into the garage beside Jan's convertible and went inside.

Roger and Amy Gilfillan were down in the Pit looking at television news. They rattled their highball glasses at him. Jan came out of the kitchen, cross with him but she put on her company smile. It changed the patterns of her freckles. They kissed with dry lips.

“It's late, you're sore and I'm contrite.”

“All right.” She glanced at the clock. “You may as well go and pacify our lonely guests. I'll have it on the table in fifteen minutes.”

He went down into the room. An aspiring television star had built the house in the era of the Conversation Pit and this one looked like an indoor Olympic pool that had been emptied for the winter. It dwarfed even Roger Gilfillan, who had made a career out of being big enough to stand up to Duke Wayne in Republic prairie operas before he'd won a Supporting Actor Oscar as a genial drunken Texas millionaire in a soapy MGM titillation. Forty-six and still bemused, he seldom made anything but mindless action movies but he stood well up in the box-office top ten.

Amy was tiny and blonde and cherubic. “You look like you just got trampled in a thousand-cow stampede. Come and set and let Roger mix your drink.”

Mathieson settled into black leather cushions. Roger was uncoiling his grasshopper legs. “Bourbon?”

“God no. See if you can find Bloody Mary mix in there.”

“Rough lunch?” Roger pawed through the bar refrigerator.

“You could say that. Like a combat mission.”

Roger had a high whinnying laugh. “We ought to take Amy and Jan on patrol some time, let them find out how their warriors earn combat pay. Who was it?”

“McQueen's people. Business manager and two lawyers.” Mathieson stretched his legs out and bent his head back until something cracked in his neck.

Roger said, “Everybody trying to get you drunk enough to come down to their price. Who's the writer?”

“Bill Block.”

Roger clawed at ice cubes and Mathieson grinned at him: Block had written Roger's Oscar part. Roger said, “Could I do it?”

“You and McQueen could do it together if somebody wanted to come up with enough to pay for both of you. It's a two-star script. But you'd have to talk to McQueen's people.”

“They bought the script?”

“They bought it. It's a bank caper story, set in Oregon. Outdoor pursuit. The bank robber and the state trooper. Nice characters.”

“Block always gives his actors something to do—which makes the bastard unique in this business.” Roger stirred with his index finger. “I'll call them in the morning before they've had time to hire Barbra Streisand for the part instead of me. Here y'go.”

Mathieson took the drink out of Roger's gnarled hand. “How's Billy doing?”

“Back on his feet. Busted ankle never slowed no Gilfillan down. He'll make the track team in September—that's all he cares about. Kid ever grows up and gets married, his wife'll be a decathlon widow.” Roger sat down. Amy sprawled sideways on the cushions, cheek propped on her palm; Roger tickled her foot and she kicked him absentmindedly. She was looking at the TV screen—the anchorman talking, behind him a black-and-white still photo of Sam Stedman looking grave. The sound was off; Roger said, “Turn that up, honey, let's hear about it.”

She reached for the control but the screen went to a commercial. Roger said, “Shit.”

Amy sat up. “Probably a hoax anyway. Old Sam, he'd do
anything
to get on the front page.” She pronounced it
innythang
without affectation.

Mathieson tasted the drink. “I don't think Stedman's that kind of a phony.”

“That pious el creepo?” Amy lifted an eyebrow.

Roger said, “Sugar baby, look at it this way. Twenty years Sam Stedman's stayed on top of the box office because he's the only one of us who won't play the bad guy. Number-one public image, your God-fearing Bible-belt hero. Can you see him risk the image by settin' up a phony stunt to have his boy kidnapped?”

Mathieson shook his head. “I talked to his agent yesterday. The man's going through genuine anguish. It's no publicity stunt.”

After the commercial the weatherman came on. Amy switched the set off. “What about that announcement he made there last night? About hiring Diego Vasquez to find the boy?”

Roger said, “I could've done all right without Sam's pious preamble but I kind of admired the rest of it. Man, he's right, you can't just lay down and let these fuckin' terrorists walk on you.”

“He's taking too much of a risk,” Mathieson said. “I wouldn't have done it if it were our kid. I might have hired an investigator like Vasquez but I certainly wouldn't have called a press conference to tell the world what I was doing.”

Roger said, “If you think about it, it makes sense. He's threatening to spend every last penny he's got to find those bastards. He's siccin' Vasquez on them in public to emphasize the message—if they don't turn Sam Junior loose unharmed, they ain't no way on earth for them to get away alive. That's the message, clear enough.”

Mathieson said, “Is Diego Vasquez all that terrifying? What makes him more of a threat than the FBI and the police?”

“The FBI and the police need courtroom evidence and they ain't too likely just to shoot the bastards on sight.”

“And Vasquez will?”

“He's done it before,” Roger said. “You remember that case two years ago, that Denver millionaire that hired Vasquez to find out who pushed poison heroin on his daughter after she died from shooting up pure uncut?”

“I think so …”

Amy said, “You couldn't hardly forget it. Diego Vasquez seems to make damn sure he's on the front page every time he wipes somebody out.”

Roger went to the refrigerator. “I got time for another one, don't I? No, he got all the way to the top that time. Not just the street pusher but the one the cops don't never reach—the one that was financing it. Some real estate honcho up there.”

Amy made a baby-faced smile. “Just like in the movies. Self-defense. Vasquez left that old boy in Denver dead on the living-room carpet with three forty-five Colt bullets inside of him.”

“They dug a couple of thirty-eight slugs out of the ceiling plaster,” Roger said. “And there was this thirty-eight automatic in the dead fella's hand. Fired twice. Everybody knows Vasquez just planted it that way after he killed that old boy. See, they never could have convicted the fella in court. That's the way Vasquez earns those five-figure fees.”

Mathieson said, “Whatever happened to the days when there was a difference between the good guys and the bad guys? That's what tastes sour to me—how could a religious man like Sam Stedman hire a cold-blooded killer?”

“Didn't you ever see none of them Westerns where the sanctimonious town dads hire the gunslinger to clean up the town for them? Same fuckin' thing, ain't it?”

“Oh, hell, Roger.”

“You're an old-fashioned moralist, Fred.”

Jan emerged from the dining room. “It's on the table. Move it or lose it.”

3

The Gilfillans left at midnight and there was the customary flurry of clearing up because Jan couldn't stand to face messes in the morning and the cleaning lady wasn't due again until Monday. Mathieson cleared the table while Jan loaded the dishwasher and then it was half past twelve and they slouched into the Pit for their nightcaps.

“Cointreau?”

“Yes, fine.”

He poured himself a Remy Martin and carried the drinks to the couch. “I'm already a little squiffed. Ought to go on the wagon.” He stood sipping the cognac. “You know I really should sign up with a health club. The old pot's growing. I need to get rid of fifteen pounds of this flab and get some decent exercise.”

“You don't look so bad for an old-timer.” She gave him a distracted glance.

“Well you get past forty, you need to start looking after yourself. I see myself five years from now gone to pot and gone to seed. I get nightmares about turning into a slob like Phil Adler.”

“You won't. You'll always be long and lean. You're like Roger—lanky bones.”

He slapped his paunch dubiously. Then he said, “He wants to buy me out.”

“
Roger
does?”

“Phil Adler.”

She carried her drink around the room, shifting little things, testing for dust with a fingertip. Mathieson sat down.

“He sprang it on me this afternoon. He wants to dissolve the partnership.”

“Whatever for?”

“I think he's restless. He's been bitten by the big-shot bug. A lot of agents have become producers. Phil always hates to be left out.”

She sat down across the room, the drink in both hands. “Are you going to sell out to him?”

“He only sprang it on me tonight. That's why I was late. I haven't had time to think about it.”

“What was your first reaction?”

“You can't always go by that.”

“Sometimes you can.”

“We did that once. You remember what happened.”

Her fingers crept under the neckline of her dress to pluck at something awry. “In the long run it worked out. You enjoy what you're doing now—more than you did when you were practicing law.”

“We don't talk about that, remember?”

She uttered a short bark of unamused laughter. “I suppose Frank Pastor has microphones all over this house.”

“It's better to stay in the habit of never talking about it.”

“Doesn't it make you feel foolish? Melodramatic?”

“I like it here. I don't want us to take stupid risks.”

His eyes followed the lines of her body as she stood up and walked aimlessly around the room. She was tennis-slim and her fine long hair was sunbleached. She seemed unaware that she was in a chronic state of irritation. “Ronny's coming home Friday. I hope you haven't forgotten.”

“I haven't but I've got a lunch on with a client from Seattle. It's the only day he's here—I tried to change it but I couldn't. Can you meet the plane?”

“We both ought to be there.”

“I'll see how early I can get away.”

“It lands at half past two.”

“I'll try.”

“Please do.” She took his glass and carried both empties out to the kitchen. When she reappeared she looked drowsy—the drinks were catching up. “Well take me to bed, then.”

It took him by surprise but he walked her to the bedroom with his hand on the small of her back; he felt through the thin fabric the warmth of her skin. They undressed in silence, peeled back the covers neatly and got into bed. He reached up for the light switch; they made love in darkness and she did not kiss him.

4

By the time he reached the airport Jan had already collected Ronny. Mathieson saw them coming along the concourse together, the boy maintaining a stiff distance from his mother: Ronny was eleven and painfully determined that no one mistake him for a momma's boy. He seemed to have grown at least another two inches since June.

Ronny held out his hand gravely and Mathieson shook it. “How you doin', son?”

“Fine, Dad. How're you?” Very grown up.

They walked toward the baggage-claim turntable. “You look damn near bowlegged, boy. Didn't they ever get you off a horse in the past ten weeks?”

“Oh sure. We had all kinds of activities. Man, you wouldn't believe it, that's a
bad
place.”

Jan said, “When ‘bad' comes to mean the spectacularly good, I wonder what that tells us about ourselves?”

“Oh, Mom, sheesh.”

The boy stood straight up and flashed his white California smile and Mathieson was proud of him. Ronny rattled on about his adventures while they waited for, and collected, his duffel bag. They walked out into the thick heat of the parking lot. The boy got in the narrow bench that passed for a back seat in the Porsche and Mathieson gave him a critical look. “You're growing too long to scrunch up back there.”

Ronny was alarmed. “You wouldn't sell it!”

“No. But I might have to hang a U-Haul trailer on behind for those mile-long legs of yours.” Mathieson flipped the bucket seat up for Jan; but she was looking back toward the terminal and she'd gone bolt still.

He peered back that way. A man was standing on the curb by a taxi, looking at them. Then the man stooped to enter the taxi.

Jan said, “Isn't that …?”

“Bradleigh.”

“But I thought …”

“If he wants to see us he knows where to find us.”

Ronny leaned forward. “Who's that?”

“Just an old acquaintance.” But sensations of alarm rubbed against Mathieson. He fitted the key into the ignition. Jan's eyes had gone wide. He gave her hand a quick squeeze.

5

When they walked into the house the phone was ringing. He put down Ronny's duffel bag and went to the receiver.

“Hello, Fred?”

“Yes.” He recognized the voice. Jan was in the doorway watching him and he contrived an indifferent shrug to reassure her.

“You were right, that was me at the airport. I'm glad you didn't try to approach me. I'm in a phone booth right now—I've got to talk to you.”

“Go ahead, talk.”

“Not on the phone. You remember where we had that drink together the first time we came to Los Angeles?”

“Wasn't that at the——”