Boldt (26 page)

“You know me,” I tell him. “Take a closer look. And when you realize who I am, don't say the name or you're dead.”

Hoffman looks at me. Then it falls on him and he almost says my name. But not quite. The fear in him is now too great for him to speak at all.

“Yeah,” I say to him.

He begins to shake his head but I wave the gun at the bed.

“Over there,” I tell him.

He manages to make it.

“Now,” I tell him, “I want you to take the tights off your other lady friend and tie her hands the same way.”

Hoffman kneels on the edge of the bed and tries to push up the other girl's tight, long skirt but he begins to crap himself because he's not doing it right. He can't push it up, so he panics and in his panic, he resorts to solving his problem by ripping the skirt from hem to waist. And when he scrambles her tights off, he's in so much of a fucking hurry he pulls her panties off with them; then he panics even more trying to separate them from the tights and in the end, he gives up and the panties are still interwoven with the tights when he ties the knot on the girl's wrists. When he's finished I say to him, “Now take a piece of cord and tie it tight around the nearest girl's neck and when you've done that, carry it onto the other girl's neck just the same.”

When Hoffman's done that I speak again.

“Run the rest of the cord under the bed and bring it up the other side then join it to where it goes around the first girl's neck. And I want it tight. You got that?”

He's got that and he does it. Then I tell him to take another piece of cord and tie it around the ankles of the girl on the left and again pass the cord under the bed and join it to the ankles of the girl on the right. When he's done that I say to him, “Now take me to a room where there's a phone.”

I stand to one side and let him pass and as he's passing by, he takes his life in his hands by stopping and turning to face me and launching into an appeal; but I say to him, “All you have to do if you want to stay alive is what I tell you to do.”

The resolve breaks up; the muscles of his face go slack and he seems to lose three inches in height. Then he turns away and I follow him out of the bedroom and back along the landing, down the stairs and when we're in the hallway, Hoffman turns to the door on his right but he's very careful not to open it without me telling him to. He stands there and looks at me like a dog asking its master if it can go out and take a leak.

“Go ahead,” I tell him.

He opens the door and goes through and I follow him in. This time we're in a broad room with a low circular hooded fireplace set dead center and around it, echoing the fireplace's circle, is a corduroy kind of divan going almost all the way around, broken only by the gap through which you get in to actually sit down. Again the lighting in this room is like the lighting in the rest of the place, and again there's the thinking man's pornography hanging on the room's dark walls.

The phone is on a long cord so I pick it up and I tell Hoffman to sit down on the semicircular divan. When he's done that, I go through the gap and sit down next to him and put the phone in his lap. His hands fall onto the phone and he sits perched on the edge of the divan like a girl who's suddenly realized her skirt is too short for comfort.

“This is going fine so far,” I tell Hoffman. “Now if it continues to go fine, you stay alive. You understand that?”

Hoffman shakes his head.

“I'm dead,” he says. “There's no way you walk out of here, otherwise. I stay alive and you're going to be found and you know that. So I'm dead.”

It's my turn to shake my head.

“Believe it,” I tell him. “Your living or dying makes no difference to me. All I need is twelve hours. Now I can get those hours with you like the broads upstairs or with you dead. Like I say, it makes no difference to me, but I feel it maybe makes a lot of difference to you.” Hoffman tries to believe me for a moment or two then he says, “What do you want me to do?”

I tell him and for a while, his fear is overcome by his disbelief.

“You're crazy,” he says.

I don't answer.

“You've got to be crazy,” Hoffman repeats.

Again I don't answer.

“I mean,” Hoffman says, “just supposing I do that. Just supposing I make that call. And it works out the way you want it to. I'm still dead. I do that and I'm dead. No way. So why should I do it? Why should I do the thing that means my own death?”

I shrug.

“If you don't do it, you're dead in a few minutes,” I tell him. “If you do, you've time to make arrangements.”

“Yeah,” he says. “For my funeral.”

I don't say anything.

“Listen,” he says. “You're crazy. Okay, so I make the call. How can you guarantee he won't check it out? How can you even guarantee he can be there when you say? I mean, it's crazy.”

“Could he be there?”

Hoffman doesn't say anything.

“And your other point,” I say to him. “The guarantee he won't check it out. You know he won't. Because you're making the call. No question.”

Hoffman doesn't say anything to that either.

“So then we have nothing to talk over,” I say to him. “And now all you have to do is make the call and say what I've told you to say, and after you've done that, we can go upstairs again and you can lie down with your sweethearts.” Hoffman is silent for a minute or two then he picks up the receiver and sticks his finger in the dial. He starts to move it and then he stops, letting the dial spin back, and he turns to me and says, “You're crazy. I mean, you know that?”

“You could always prove that another way if that's your taste.”

Hoffman dials and he doesn't have to wait long before the receiver is lifted at the other end. Then he says what I've told him to say and I have to hand it to him, he does it well; he sounds the way he's supposed to sound. It doesn't take long which makes it even better, makes it seem right.

Hoffman puts the receiver back on its cradle and shakes his head and then with one sudden movement he sweeps the whole phone into my face and jumps up, hurling himself over the back of the divan. Before I can loose anything off at him, he's over to the door and through it. He's not stupid so he doesn't try and unlock the door to get out that way. Instead I hear another door open and slam and by the time I'm out in the hall, I hear the opposite door being locked from the inside so I start kicking away at it. It doesn't take long for me to loosen the inside fixings and the door flies inward; there's a bathroom, not big, all black tiled even on the ceiling except for one wall which echoes the wall in the bedroom above, just all one mirror. Hoffman's standing on the toilet seat trying to unlatch the bathroom cabinet door and when he hears the bathroom door crash inward, he screeches like a white owl and turns the gun he's grabbed from the cabinet in my direction. Then he hauls off a couple of wild shots and jumps down off the toilet seat, rushes toward his own reflection in the mirror wall clawing at the glass as though he's somehow going to make it through to Wonderland, screaming and gibbering at his own screaming and gibbering reflection. Then I get the gun on me again, and for all his insanity a part of his mind is still capable of taking in my double-handed movement as I home in the silencer on him; then I have to adjust my aim as he slides down the glass and onto his knees imploring to Christ and his own image for it not to be, waving the gun around. I pull the trigger twice and the bullets follow each other in at the base of his skull and part of his face mingles with his reflection on the glass and both slide slowly down toward the floor.

Somehow, the early morning air around Florian's has an expensive feel about it as if he's had it specially flown in. From my vantage point slightly farther up the hillside, the still blue oblong of Florian's pool looks flat as plastic and the layout around it, the patio and all that stuff, looks as though it never knew a thing like dust existed. Everything's sweet, everything's still, everything's perfect, just poised for the daily routine which I guess has already started inside the house and will very soon be moved out into the clear sharp sunshine.

I don't have to wait long.

The sliding glass slides open and Earl Connors walks out carrying a towel and surveys the morning scene. Then he stands aside and out comes Florian almost Roman in his white tow-eling robe. He breathes in some of his air and does a few limbering-up exercises and then he unties his belt and Earl helps the robe off his shoulders and lays it neatly on one of the poolside chairs. Florian makes a nice neat dive and breaks up the surface of the pool. That's Earl's cue to sit down and light up a cigarette and enjoy doing nothing for five minutes or so. It's also my cue to move.

I crouch my way down the hillside, doubled lower than the height of the bushes, until I get to the wall that's parallel to the oblong of Florian's swimming pool. Then I turn west and go in the shadow of the wall until I get to the corner and go down the next piece of wall that runs along the blind side of the house and I go along this until I get to a point where there's a hillock of earth. I stand on it and bend my legs jumping up to hold a couple of the spiked railings that decorate the top of Florian's wall and I pull myself up and take a little look. There's nobody walking around the grounds since I moved down the hillside and nobody can see me because there's no windows on this side of the building. The only evidence of life is the sound of Florian splashing up and down in his pool. So I heave myself up to the top of the wall and gently let myself down the other side and make it silently through the foliage to the blind side of the house and then to the corner beyond which is the pool. I wait until the sounds of Florian's aqua show are going away from me and then I turn around the corner and there's Earl, his back to me, and Florian swimming to the far end of his pool. I stick close to the wall until I'm about four feet away from Earl and then I say, “It's Boldt, Earl. And there's nothing you can do. You know that.”

Earl is suddenly like marble. Nothing moves at all.

“So knowing that, take your gun out and put it down by your chair and when Mr. Florian touches the far end, you get up and you go and stand at the edge of the pool and tell Mr. Florian who's here to see him. And explain how I want Mr. Florian to get out of the pool and how I want you both to go back in the house.”

Still nothing. But when Florian does a flip and starts heading his backstroke this way, Earl gets up and goes and stands by the edge of the pool and does just as I tell him to. Florian stops swimming when he hears the sound of Earl's voice and so as to catch what Earl's saying, he floats on his back on the pool's surface. Then when he's taken in Earl's words, he paddles his hands slightly and drifts around so he's in a position to verify what he's just been told. He looks at me and I look at him. Then a moment or two later, Florian says, “Okay, Earl.”

Then he twists over in the water, swims slowly over to the side and climbs out of the pool.

He pauses at the edge for a moment and looks at me.

“Is it all right if I put on my robe?” Florian says.

“I'll bring it in for you,” I tell him.

Florian nods and begins to walk toward the glass doors and Earl follows after him. I move very quickly and pick up the robe which is no heavier than it should be, and then I pick up Earl's gun and go in after them.

They're both standing in the broad low room, three or four feet apart, watching me as I come in out of the sunlight. They're both wise enough not to make any move, at least, just yet.

The room we're in is Florian's gym-cum-den-cum-games room. There's a lot of pine and some keep-fit gear and a pool table and a bar and some nice self-consciously masculine furniture and sheepskin scatter rugs all over the floor; on the pool table is Florian's morning gear all neatly laid out.

“Where's Hammett?” I ask Florian.

“He gets here at nine,” Florian says.

He's also wise enough not to chance any wrong answers.

“Who else is here?”

“The cook. She'll be fixing my breakfast around now.”

“How many on the gate?”

“Only one.”

“The one that's been there since midnight?”

“Yeah.”

“When's the changeover. Eight?”

Florian nods.

“That's fine. That's just about great.”

I smile at them both.

“Well, Earl,” I say to him, “I'd like you to lie down on the floor and face the rug.”

Earl looks at Florian as if he's expecting some kind of answer. The only answer he gets is a nod from Florian and so Earl goes down on his knees, turns around and prostrates himself.

“Now,” I say to Florian, “you flip a switch on your little box there and you tell your cook you changed your mind; you don't feel like your breakfast. You tell her that the guy on the gate's going to come in a little early for his. And then you flip another switch and tell the guy on the gate that you're expecting Mr. Draper and when Mr. Draper comes through the gate, your guy can come in a little early and have his breakfast where he usually does. And in both cases you emphasize you want no interruptions.”

Florian looks at me and there's no expression at all on his face. Then he says, “Draper.”

“Oh, yeah,” I tell him. “I almost forgot. I want you to call Draper. Tell him you've got news on me. Tell him he's got to get over fast but tell him nothing else. You understand?”

Florian understands all right but at the same time he doesn't understand. All he knows is that for the moment he has to go along with anything I say because if he understands anything at all, it's what would happen if he were to do the slightest thing any different. So he does the first two things and when it gets to phoning Draper, he pauses for a moment to compose himself. Then he lifts the receiver and dials the number and two minutes pass before there is any response at the other end of the line. Then Florian says, “It's Florian.” A couple of seconds then he speaks again.