Deadline (21 page)

‘Let them look,' I said. I stared at her face – rounded, cheeks a little plump, lips full, dark hair immaculately brushed – and I thought of picnics and green meadows, and a rainy cloud forming around an English summer sun, and sudden umbrellas. It seemed to me that Jane Steel had a certain innocence she couldn't keep from appearing on her face. She didn't know what had happened to Sondra; she hadn't a clue. I could see this in her eyes. Her concern was all for me, and it was genuine.

But I'd been fooled by appearances before. Too easily.

She said, ‘I know I probably shouldn't accept invitations from patients, Jerry. I just felt sorry for Joe. And when he asked me to this party, I accepted. He looked so … sad. It's as simple as that. If I broke a rule, I'm sorry. This is strictly a one-off. It won't happen again.'

I had a sense of collapse. My energies disintegrated. Pain cut through me; my ribcage felt as if it had been hacked by a butcher's cleaver. I needed to get out of this place. My head was overloaded with a cast of characters whose roles were elusive: Joe Allardyce and Jane, Leo Gerson, Tod Resick, Nardini, Emily Ford and her two hacks, the mysterious Stam. Their names were shards shifting inside the tunnel of a busted kaleidoscope.

I stepped away from Jane and back to Gerson, and I told him I wanted fresh air.

‘Great idea,' he said.

I glanced at Jane, who'd returned to her position beside Joe Allardyce; they gazed at me with worried expressions. I wondered if it was their first date. Or if it had happened before, if intimacy had taken place. Had Jane been carrying on this liaison right under my nose? Was this yet another instance when my instinct had abandoned me? Still, what the hell did it matter to me if she dated the clients? She wasn't going to give away trade secrets to Joe Allardyce. She wasn't the kind to discuss private cases, individual patients, personal details.

I walked out into the foyer and towards the front door; and Gerson came behind me, making solicitous noises. ‘You want somebody to drive you home?' he asked.

‘I'm fine, I'm fine.'

‘Sure?'

‘Yes, yes, sure.'

Then I was outside and Gerson was saying, ‘Go home, Jerry. Rest. Do yourself a favor.'

Yes, yes. I walked down the driveway and along the block.

Halfway to the car I thought about trust, and how worried I'd been about trusting Emily Ford – but now a sharper dilemma had arisen, a more demanding problem: how could I trust
myself
and my own deteriorating senses, for Christ's sake? How could I put any faith in my own radar when it was receiving faulty signals? I'd been so goddam
sure
Sondra had been at the party. So
certain
–

And I'd been wrong.

I was spaced. There was a prairie in my head.

I needed to be strong. I couldn't afford to be victimized by my own imagination. I didn't need cerebral terrorism, to be bushwhacked by my own demons.

What I needed was my wife.

When I reached Jane's Honda, I noticed somebody in the passenger seat.

8.27 p.m.

The figure was motionless. I couldn't make out any features. Man or woman, I couldn't tell. Light fell across the Honda from a streetlamp, but didn't illuminate the inside of the car. I opened the door on the driver's side and the interior light kicked on. The stench of brandy was overpowering. It filled the warm space of the interior like a toxic nerve gas. The figure's head was slumped forward.

I touched it tentatively and it rolled a little to one side. I saw it was Harry Pushkas – eyes shut, mouth open. Blood ran from just above his scalp-line and down his right cheek. I looked for the source of the wound as I shook Harry's arm and urged, ‘Wake up, wake up!' He wasn't responding. I felt his blood on my fingers and the palm of my hand. I said it again, ‘Harry, Harry, wake up!' and I gripped the shoulders of his jacket – that old navy-blue shapeless double-breasted garment he wore every day of his life – and shook him vigorously.

Nothing, nothing. I placed a fingertip to his left eyelid and pushed it up.

The eye that looked back was mournful.

And dead. Very dead. I searched for a pulse, found none.

I sat down behind the wheel. Then I felt sick. I pushed the door open and hung my head from the car and a thin substance that had the taste of sour peaches came up from my throat. Eyes watering, I gazed along the street. I half-expected Harry to stir suddenly.
I think I haff had a little too much brandy, dear boy.
No such thing happened. I felt weird and flat, like a seltzer left too long exposed to the air. No bubbles. Just still and stale. I shut the door, sat back in my seat.

Then, without thinking where I was going, I started the car and I drove a few blocks. Then I reached another leafy street, and found I couldn't drive any further. I parked outside a half-built house surrounded by a security fence and
Keep Out
notices. Scaffolding clung to brickwork. I saw the skeleton of a roof.

When the phone rang I answered it as if I were on auto-pilot.
Harry's dead. Harry's dead in this car
, I thought.

‘He was a sorry old drunk,' the voice said. The tone was unctuous. ‘Don't feel bad.'

I didn't respond. It took me a moment to make links and connections. Where I was. What I was doing here. I'd been looking for Sondra five minutes ago. I'd been certain she was at Gerson's party. I'd had an experience either psychic or psychotic, sensing her presence when she was nowhere near.

‘He was a sad old alkie who quit living the day his wife died, Lomax. He's no loss. Don't waste time on grief. You don't have time to waste, anyway.'

‘You didn't know him,' I said.

‘What is there to know? One alcoholic's story is much the same as another's. Hard times on a steep slope. Broken hearts and splintered families. Rock bottom. Ho-hum. But you brought this on yourself, Lomax. It was never my intention to dispose of your dear old friend. And it wouldn't have happened if you'd been straight with me, instead of trading cars and trying to slip away. We'll always find you in the end.'

‘You're a bastard,' I said. ‘Life means nothing to you. You wipe people off the face of the earth and it doesn't touch you, does it?'

‘You underestimate me, Lomax. I'm not a beast. But sometimes you need to be hard. You develop a shell and it's waterproof, it's a place under which you feel no emotions.'

‘And the end justifies the means in your book,' I said.

‘Oh, Christ, let's not turn this into a high-school debate. The truth is, you fucked up. You tried to cheat me. You were supposed to be straight with me. But no, you couldn't do it that way, you had to pretend you were some kind of goddam prince on a charger, running here and there looking for clues to the location of the high tower where your princess is imprisoned. I understand your actions, Lomax. Believe me. In your position, I might well have behaved in the same way. I'm not heartless. But you must see how totally pointless it is for you to even
think
about getting the upper hand. It can't be done.'

‘So you punish me by killing an old man,' I said.

‘In a phrase.'

I wanted to reach down the phone and strangle the owner of the voice. I wanted to look in his eyes and see all life go out of him. ‘Let me speak to Sondra.'

‘She's out cold. She's sleeping off her mind-altering intake.'

‘Wake her,' I said.

‘You're droll at times, Lomax, the way you think you can issue commands and have me obey them. I worry about your relationship with reality. The situation here isn't conducive to you giving orders. Have you got that? Is that coming through to you loud and clear and static-free?
Dr Lomax does not give orders. He takes them.
Try saying that to yourself.'

‘Fuck you,' I said. I was pounding my face against a concrete wall, and getting nowhere.

‘I understand finding old Harry in your car is something of a blow, but let's have a little decorum, shall we? You're supposed to be locating something for me. Remember? My question is – have you got it?'

‘I want to talk to my wife,' I said.

‘You're a broken record, Jerry. In the words of the immortal bard, M. Jagger, “you can't always get what you want.”'

‘Put her on the goddam
phone
,' I said.

‘You're not getting the hang of this, are you? Take a look at the old guy sitting in your car. Now I want you to picture your wife in his place. You got that? OK. Think back. The cleaning lady in the bath-tub. Remember? The lock of hair. OK? Remember that also? The drugs we gave her? Following the script, Jerry? Listen close, listen hard. We could have killed your wife a hundred times over. Think about that. We could have tortured her. We could have used a red hot poker and stuck it in her eyes. We could have given her an OD and dumped her in a canyon somewhere like a junkie hooker who had a sorry encounter with some low-grade serial-killer type. We could have mutilated her or tied her to a bed and gang-banged her. Anything we liked, we could have done. You are getting all this, I trust? What I'm saying is – don't develop a bad attitude, don't make it any harder than it already is. I've been kind to you. I've allowed you a certain latitude. Other men might have acted with less charity. Correction. Other men would have acted with absolutely
no
charity.'

I stared along the street. The lamps. The soft yellow glow. I tried to pretend Harry wasn't in the passenger seat and the air didn't smell of the booze he'd drunk before he'd been killed. I figured a small-caliber gun. One shot into the brain. Very little mess. Painful? Maybe for an instant. I had no idea.

I had a question I needed to ask. It hung in my head like a huge icicle. I dreaded having to utter it. ‘How do I know she's alive?'

‘Take my word for it.'

‘Sure. Absolutely –'

‘You have any other choice, Lomax?'

I said, ‘All you have to do is wake my wife and let me speak to her and you get what you want.'

‘Ah, but have you
got
what I want, friend?'

I glanced at Harry; I was still half-expecting a practical joke. Once, he'd gone to great lengths to write a research paper about the effects of aspirin on the pineal gland of baboons, and he'd published it in a respectable medical journal. All fake, every word of it, every statistic. He loathed the establishment, any establishment – medical, psychiatric, political. They were all bastions of pomposity to him. He was a lapsed Communist who'd learned the hard way in the streets of Budapest that his ideals were no match for Stalinism. He'd survived the street battles, the tanks and the guns – now he lay dead in a car parked on a street in Beverly Hills, where a faint mist created by pollution was forming between the streetlamps.

‘Lomax? Are you listening to me? You know what I'm talking about. I want the stuff you locked away. Have you got it for me?'

The stuff locked away.
‘What stuff?' I asked.

‘You're pushing me, Lomax. Don't. Be warned. I bend only so far.'

‘What stuff?' I asked again.

‘You're not thinking. I only have to nod my head, a very simple gesture, and somebody will slit your wife's throat and hang her upside down on a meat-hook and she'll bleed to death like a pig. Or I can have her taken out into the desert and shot and buried where bodies are never found. So let's quit being coy. I want the stuff you keep in a safe-deposit box at a certain bank.'

I lost the connection suddenly.

There was static crackle on the line, a break in transmission. His voice became a series of disconnected words and sounds.
Sten … got … get
…
placent.
I turned the ignition key and drove down the street. Thoughts rushed me like hordes of wild birds – how did he know about the safe-deposit box? Who had that information? I hadn't told anyone.

So how had he found out?

Jane Steel – maybe she knew, maybe she'd seen a bill from my bank for the rental of the box, maybe it had come in the office mail and she'd opened it the way she opened everything.

Jane Steel. But why? Because she was afraid? Had she been threatened? I couldn't imagine her selling the information like a mercenary, but what did I know? I'd been surprised to learn about her interest in guns, and Emily had mentioned something about how Jane's gun permit and visa had expired. Maybe there were even more hidden surprises, levels of Jane I hadn't begun to divine beyond the love of guns, the lack of a work permit, and the assignation with Joe Allardyce.

I pressed the Off button and killed the static. The phone rang again immediately.

Emily Ford said, ‘Where are you?'

‘Meet me,' I said.

‘Where?'

‘I'll call you back in a few and let you know. And bring me whatever you've got on Jane Steel.'

I drove until I found myself in a side street near Laurel Canyon. Was I being followed? I wasn't sure. I thought it likely. But they were good at it, they had a magic touch, access to invisibility; I saw nothing in the rearview mirror.

I parked outside Harry's house. I pulled his body as gently as I could from the car and dragged him on his back across dry grass. Then I propped him against me and staggered up the steps to the porch of his small wood-frame home. His cats sat on the porch-roof, purring. They were called Palota and Fortuna, after streets in Budapest. They were all glistening black fur and silent grace.

I took the doorkey from Harry's pocket and I got him inside the living-room; gasping under his weight, I lowered him to the sofa. The room was cluttered with books, thousands of them. The air smelled of moldering cat food and mildew.
You're home, Harry. You're home.
I saw a photograph of Harry on a bookshelf, a black-and-white shot taken around the time of the Russian invasion of Budapest; he wore a beret and had a rifle strapped to his back. Young and tough, vital and filled with hope – and now this: killed, not by the Stalinists he hated, but by an accident of friendship.