Recoil (4 page)

“Not on the phone. But you remember the place. Is it still there?”

“Far as I know.” Mathieson watched Ronny lug the duffel bag toward the back of the house. Jan was locking the front door. It was something she almost never did in the daytime.

“Meet me there in half an hour.”

“Look, it's an awkward time. My son just got home from summer camp and we …”

“It's important, Fred. Important, shit, it's vital. Make sure you're alone before you show up there. You get me?”

“I—Should I bring Jan and the boy along?”

“Does he know?”

“No.”

“Then don't bring him. I won't have time to explain things to him. You'll have to do that yourself, later on.”

“Why? There's no reason why he ever has to …”

“There is now.”

Mathieson gripped the phone hard. “Why?”

“Have you got neighbor friends Jan and Ronny could go visit for a few hours?”

“The Gilfillans. They've got a kid Ronny's age …”

“Send your wife and the boy over there.”

“But they just came home and …”

“I don't want them home alone right now. You get me? Hang up and get a move on.”

Click
.

She was still by the door; now she came toward him, anxiety on her face.

“Glenn Bradleigh. He wants me to meet him.”

“What is it?”

“He wouldn't explain on the phone. Those guys are all paranoids.”

“Something must have happened.”

He said, “Maybe it's a routine drill of some kind.”

“You don't need to tell me reassuring lies, you know.”

“I don't see what else it could be. But he wants me to send you both over to Roger and Amy's until I get back.”

“He'll be so disappointed—he's bursting with things to tell you about camp.”

“He can tell me when I come back. I won't be long.”

Ronny came through from the back of the house with a clumsily gift-wrapped package. “For both of you.”

Mathieson began to rip at the Scotch tape. Jan had the boy's face between her hands: “Oh Ronny, how sweet.” Ronny shied away and regained his composure at a wary distance. He eagerly watched the opening of the package.

They were belts, Indian style, beaded with multicolored patterns.

“I made them in shopcraft.”

“My God,” Mathieson said, “that's fantastic!” He wrapped the belt around his middle and laughed. “It's a foot too long. Trying to tell your fat old dad something?”

“We can cut it down. See, I wasn't sure so I figured I'd better make it too big, so I didn't punch holes for the buckle yet either …”

Jan's was a perfect fit and she wore it over her skirt and beamed at her son.

“We'd better go,” Mathieson said.

“Go? Hey, we just got home and I was going to …”

Jan said quickly, “Your father has an appointment, Ronny, and I know Billy Gilfillan's dying to hear about your summer. Why don't you and I go over to Roger and Amy's until Dad comes home?”

“We'll have a celebration dinner tonight, how's that sound?”

They'd said the right thing: The boy had adventures to mesmerize Billy Gilfillan; the prospect was enough to make him forget his disappointment.

Mathieson watched them stride down the curving pitch of the street, Ronny breaking into a run and racing on ahead. Mathieson locked up and got into the Porsche. He answered Jan's wave.

Downhill into Sherman Oaks and Culver City he had his eye on the rearview mirrors constantly; he saw no sign he was being followed but he put it up onto the freeway and went through a series of maneuvers designed to disclose pursuit. Eight years ago Bradleigh had taught him things he'd never expected to have to put to use but this was the sort of thing you didn't forget once you'd learned it. He went down an off-ramp and around under the cloverleaf and got right back up on the freeway. He went past Universal City, got off at Vine and got back on, northbound. He left the freeway in Burbank and drove completely around the same block twice. No car followed him. When he was positive about it he went up Hollywood Way and parked the Porsche on the concrete lot behind Berk's Bar.

His hands were sweating when he went inside.

6

It had no windows. The light was poor and each booth had a squat candle burning inside a red glass cup.

Mathieson searched the shadows but did not find Bradleigh. He slid into a corner booth at the rear and the barmaid took his order for a Bloody Mary. Mathieson wiped his palms on a napkin.

Bradleigh appeared and stood just inside the door acclimating his eyes to the darkness. When he began to search the room he found Mathieson. He came over, put his palms on the table and slid in across from Mathieson. “You didn't pick up any company, I hope.”

“No. What's this all …?”

The barmaid's approach silenced them. She set the Bloody Mary on the table and took out her order pad. “Yes, sir?”

“Just a ginger ale,” Bradleigh said.

Mathieson studied him. Bradleigh had put on ten pounds or so but it only made his ruddy face squarer. His brown hair was still in a 1950ish brush crew cut and he was still wearing a conservative suit with a white shirt and plain brown tie; it might have been a uniform. His gray eyes picked up a little reflected candlelight and seemed frosty, as if he'd been affronted by something.

The barmaid went away and Bradleigh took an envelope from his pocket. “You'd better take a look.”

It wasn't sealed. Mathieson reached inside—a folded newspaper clipping. STORE MANAGER SHOT BY SNIPER. He glanced down the paragraphs. One William Smithers had been gardening in his yard in Norman, Oklahoma, when a rifle bullet had struck him in the back. Apparently it had been fired from a passing car. Smithers had been taken to a hospital and was on the critical list: The bullet had broken a rib and done some internal damage.

He handed it back to Bradleigh. “So?”

“This was a last-minute squib in this morning's Oklahoma City paper. The later editions probably ran photographs of him. Smithers is Walter Benson.”

It hit him like a fist. “Oh boy. Oh boy.”

“It could be a coincidence.”

“You don't think it was, though.”

“If I did I wouldn't be here.”

“Is he going to pull through?”

“Nobody knows. We've transferred him to another hospital under wraps. We're guarding the place like the mint.”

Mathieson tried to compose himself. “What does it mean?”

“Obviously we think the mob found him.”

“I thought Frank Pastor was still in prison.”

“He is, but he's up for parole in a matter of days. And his organization's not in prison. Ezio Martin's still running things.”

“And if they found Benson they may find the rest of us.”

“Fred, they may already have found you.”

He reached for the Bloody Mary. It had too much Tabasco and pepper in it; his throat burned afterward.

Bradleigh said, “I sent people out this morning to cover Draper and John Fusco. Maybe Benson was a fluke, maybe they haven't got a line on the rest of you but we can't take the chance. Not until we know more. I came here myself because if they do have information on all four of you then you'd be the prime target. You were the one who put Pastor away—the others were corroboration but we could have done it without any of them. You were the key witness.”

“That's a comforting reminder.”

“I know.”

“How did they find Benson?”

“God knows. We're investigating everything. Including ourselves.”

“Yourselves?”

“It's always been our nightmare. The chance of a leak in our office. We don't think it happened. We don't see how it could. But we've got to check it out. Until we prove there was no leak we've got to assume all four of you may have been blown.”

“Terrific. That's terrific.”

“Look, the way it probably happened, some guy happens to be passing through Norman, Oklahoma. He just happens to spot Benson in the street. Maybe just some uninvolved guy who gets back to New York and goes out to dinner and says, ‘Say, you'll never guess who I saw on the street out in of-all-the-Godforsaken-places Norman, Oklahoma. It was old Walter Benson, you remember how he disappeared right after that sensational Pastor trial where he testified?' And somebody over at the next table with big ears passes the word back to somebody in Ezio Martin's crowd and they figure there's probably nothing to it but it can't hurt to send somebody out to Oklahoma just to check it out.”

The barmaid brought Bradleigh his ginger ale. He tasted it.

When the girl was gone Mathieson said, “It's been eight years. Nearly nine. Why should Pastor's mob give a damn any more? Benson wasn't doing them any harm in Oklahoma.”

“You still don't know those people, do you?”

“Nor want to.”

“They shot Benson for reasons that make perfect sense to them.”

Mathieson said, “What reasons? What reason justifies trying to murder somebody who's doing you no harm?”

“For one thing it's an object lesson. They want the world to know they'll catch up with their enemies no matter how far they run or how long they hide. It's a deterrent.”

Mathieson scowled at him. Bradleigh went right on:

“Then there's the matter of revenge. Those people are very primitive that way. Revenge is a religion with them. They carry it along from generation to generation. Vendetta. It amounts to their law.”

“What a grisly waste.”

“They're weaned on it.” Bradleigh lit a filter tip.

“You're saying we'll never be safe.”

“Who's safe? You could get hit by a truck. The chances are they stumbled on Benson by a fluke. The chances are you're in no danger at all.”

Mathieson said, “You fly out here on the first plane and you alarm the hell out of my wife and me. And we're in no danger at all. I see.”

“Look, Fred, it's my job. I'm not trying to be an alarmist. I'm just preparing for a contingency. A remote possibility.”

Mathieson burned his throat on another swallow. At the bar a fat TV character actor whom Mathieson knew by sight but couldn't name returned from the jukebox to a glass of something that looked like a potted plant. The jukebox bleated heartbrokenly.

Mathieson tried to compose his ragged emotions. “What do you think we should do?”

“Disappear. Take your family on vacation for a while. Don't leave a forwarding address. We'll send agents along for protection. And I'd like to set up surveillance on your house—see if anybody snoops around.”

“What if they do? You can't arrest them for snooping around.”

“But we'll know, won't we. If nobody snoops around then we can assume your cover's intact. If they do show up we'll be warned. We might have to do another identity switch.”

“No.”

“Fred …”

“I couldn't put Jan through it again.” The marriage was barely intact as it was. “And Ronny. I'd have to tell him what we were doing and why.”

“He's old enough to understand it.”

“He'd have to keep the secret for the rest of his life—or at least for the rest of mine. He's too young for a responsibility like that.”

“You may not have a choice.”

“There's always a choice,” he said with empty stubbornness.

“Like for instance?”

“Shouldn't we wait and see what happens?”

“I want you to be prepared, Fred. It's my job to protect you but I also kind of like you, you know. Most of the people we service are losers. Opportunists like Benson. Most of them are in the mob themselves. We nail them for something, then we offer them immunity if they'll finger the higher-ups. Once in a while a guy like Benson accepts our offer and we go to work for him. But we don't get too many good honest citizens who choose to testify because they see it as a moral duty. You were a breath of fresh air from the moment I met you. I don't want anything to happen to you. We'll send some good men to look after you. They'll be there if you need them, you know, but they won't get in your way. Where'd you like to go?”

Mathieson drummed his fingers on the table. “Hell. We've never been to Hawaii.”

“Sounds perfect, if you can swing the tab.”

“We've got high-priced clients nowadays. In fact we're doing so well my partner wants to buy me out.”

“Does he. Well I hope it doesn't come to that but you may have to accept his offer.”

“The hell. I just decided not to. This morning.”

“Did you tell your partner?”

“Not yet.”

“Then don't. Tell him you want to get away for a couple of weeks to think it over.”

“It's rough to get away right now, Glenn. I'm right in the middle of contract negotiations …”

“Nothing's as urgent as survival.”

“Maybe. But I think you may be——”

The bartender yelled across the room: “Hey, everybody listen here!”

He was turning up the volume of the radio behind the bar. It was a news announcer's voice:

“… promises to hold a news conference at nine tomorrow morning, Los Angeles time, at which time he expects to have been reunited with his son, Sam Stedman Junior. The star's sixteen-year-old son, who was kidnapped last Saturday, is being taken by helicopter from his place of rescue in Baja California to a hospital in Hermosillo, Mexico. Mr. Stedman stressed that his son appears to be unharmed, according to his reports from private investigator Diego Vasquez, who rescued the youth this afternoon. But he said his son had been drugged with sedatives by the kidnappers to prevent his escaping. The flight to Hermosillo hospital is purely precautionary, Mr. Stedman said, and his son will be flown home to Los Angeles tonight in a private chartered plane which Mr. Stedman, a licensed pilot, will fly himself. On his way to Los Angeles airport, Mr. Stedman spoke briefly with this reporter.”