Deadline (23 page)

Why?

Because Billy Fear is the killer and everybody knows it and Hartley is setting him free on account of evidence illegally gathered by the cops, no no nooooo way
–

Relax, Emily. Take a deep breath.

I want to scream, because everybody knows Billy Fear is guilty.

Relax, Emily. Please.

I remembered how she scratched the air with her hands bent into claws, as if she were tearing at Fear's face – or Hartley's, I wasn't sure which. I'd caught her wrists and held them and watched her head move from side to side on the pillow, a rigid gesture, her muscles locked. I worried about a possible seizure, because her skin darkened and a pulse throbbed visibly on the right side of her head and sweat covered her face. Her eyes were wide open. I kept saying,
Relax, relax, relax.
The trance imprisoned her. She didn't want to come back from it. She was frozen in the buried past by the sheer force of her feelings. She tried to rake my face and I twisted her hand to one side to defend myself. Only under hypnosis did she remember the trial. In her conscious state, the trial and the discovery of her dead parents were bolted inside a cabinet she couldn't or wouldn't open.

She became still.
Hartley's looking at me.

In what way, Emily?

He's sorry. He knows Fear's guilty, but he can't do anything. His hands are tied. The law's been broken. He can't break it again to send Fear to prison. Those incompetent detectives screwed up. They didn't get a warrant to search Fear's goddam trailer. There's even a suspicion they planted incriminating evidence. They broke the law. Now Hartley's staring at me with this look of pity.

What are you feeling?

I can't put a name to it, no one name: it's hatred and helplessness and terror and astonishment and I'm sick in my stomach because I want to do something, I don't know what. I don't hate Hartley, he's helpless, but I hate Fear. Hartley's standing up. It's finished. It's done. Fear's acquitted.

What is Fear doing?

He's smiling, oh, he's smiling, and he hugs his lawyer, then he punches the air with his fist, I can't watch him, but now he's turning his face and he's grinning at me.

The tape was silent, then another short period of hissing, followed by a click. I reached out to eject it, but instead I pressed the
Pause
button. I dialed Emily's number on my cellphone; she answered immediately.

‘Where are you, Jerry?'

‘On La Cienega,' I said. ‘It's time to meet up.'

‘Where do you suggest?'

I'd been giving this careful thought. My house was out of the question. It was certain that somebody would be watching it. Likewise Emily's home. I said, ‘You know the Pacifica Center on La Cienega?'

‘I know it.'

‘Meet me at the offices of LaBrea Records,' I said.

‘Now?'

‘Faster than now, Emily.'

‘I'm out the door,' she said.

‘One thing. Make absolutely sure you're not followed. Be devious. Be inventive. Use one of your guards as a decoy. Think of something. When you arrive at the Pacifica Center, go inside
Look & Listen.
Walk to the back of the store and get inside one of the elevators. Take it to the tenth floor. I'll be waiting.'

She hung up.

I pressed the
Play
button and heard myself say:
August eleventh, nineteen ninety-six. Subject is in a state of hypnosis.

How are you today, Emily?

OK.

Relaxed?

Yeah. Sure.

I want you to go back. Early April nineteen ninety-five. Let's say April fourth. Where are you?

In my parents' old house.

What are you doing?

I'm just walking through the rooms. They're empty now. All the furniture's been removed. Men are painting the walls. The house is going on the market.

What room are you in?

My parents' bedroom.

And what do you see?

I see
…
I see where fresh paint covers the wall, that place where there were bloodstains from before
…
my mother
…

What are you feeling, Emily?

Sorrow. Injustice. The world is all wrong.

And what do you want to do about that?

I can't make up my mind.

But you're thinking. You're working something out in your head, right?

I never stop trying to work it out. All the time. It haunts me. She was lying on the … bedroom floor with her face blown off.

You think about Judge Hartley, too?

Sometimes.

Do you fault him?

Silence.

I think he lacks courage. He's a prisoner of procedure.

And Billy Fear?

Yes. I think about Billy Fear.

What do you feel about him on April fourth, nineteen ninety-five?

Nothing has changed.

You hate him?

That's not the correct word.

I killed the tape and parked in a street behind the Pacifica Center, then walked to the entrance of
Look & Listen.
I strolled through the audio-visual assault-course; my mind was elsewhere, distanced. Frantic figures danced on TV monitors. A gorgeous chocolate-colored girl on screen licked an ice-cream cone with her long pink tongue; subtlety was dead in our world. Speakers boomed. Zombie sales clerks wandered around as if on castors.

I moved towards the elevators, pressed the
Call
button, then I rode to the tenth floor. The corridor was half-lit. The offices were mainly empty, although I noticed a couple of lights in the bright white studio where LaBrea's art department was located. They worked round the clock in that space, young men and women – graphic artists – filled with a sense of their own hip importance.

I looked at my watch, although I didn't want to: 9.47.

I stood by the elevator. I heard it fall in the shaft, a door open way below, then it was rising again. Emily stepped out. She clutched my hand in the manner of somebody who expects to find her companion's flesh stone-cold and in need of warmth. A tight grip.

She said, ‘Talk to me, Jerry. Tell me where you've been. What's happening.'

‘Let's go inside Sondra's office,' I said.

We moved down the corridor.

Sondra's room was big, cluttered with all kinds of promo materials – posters, glossies, life-sized cutouts – and stacks of CDs and stereo equipment. I felt her presence strongly in this place. I saw a half-smoked Camel Light in an ashtray on her desk; the butt was lipstick-stained. That might have been the last cigarette she'd smoked before Sweetzer told her she was pregnant. A coffee-mug with the logo of LaBrea Records sat on a pad of Post-It notes. All kinds of messages and schedules had been thumbtacked to a cork board on the wall – call this person, call that, a ragged assembly of numbers, dates, names. I was moved by her absence, by the traces of a life interrupted. I ached.

From the store ten floors below I could hear the thud-thud of music; how did Sondra put up with that all day? Maybe you reached a point where it was background noise. Emily Ford stood by the desk, one hand lightly touching the surface. She held a briefcase in the other.

I heard myself say, ‘Leo Gerson was Sondra's partner in crime. He came up with the pseudonym Timothy Dole. Nardini's man Resick apparently bribed the undercover cop, and Sondra and Gerson just strolled away. You didn't hear this from me, by the way.'

‘I couldn't do a thing about it, even if I wanted to. It's hearsay.' She sat down on the purple-velvet sofa; I remembered the day Sondra had chosen it from a furniture catalog,
I love purple velvet, it's so goddam regal, I'll feel like a queen in my office.
Emily's black overcoat parted. She stretched one long leg out and, reaching down, lightly massaged the muscle in her left calf.

‘Cramp,' she said. She worked the muscle a moment. ‘Well, I explored a few avenues looking for this guy Stam.'

‘Any luck?' I said.

‘Nothing.'

‘He's good,' I said.

‘He's got his act down, sure.'

And I'd been fooled by it.

She said, ‘You asked about Jane Steel before. Why? Do you think she's involved?'

‘It's a possibility.' I was conjuring up connections, stretching membranes to where they might just snap. Jane Steel and Stam in some kind of collusion. Was that conceivable? Anything was possible.

She took a blue cardboard folder from her briefcase and opened it. ‘Here's some background on Steel I didn't mention earlier. Born Harrow, Middlesex, July fourth, nineteen fifty-five. Independence Day, you'll notice … She entered the US in April nineteen ninety-six. Originally she came on a tourist visa. She somehow managed to change this to a one-year work-permit along the way. Apparently she's forgotten to renew it, or else she's worried that an extension might not be granted, which sometimes happens. You've got an illegal alien working for you, Jerry.'

‘Anything else?'

‘Only what I already told you. Gun-permit is out of date. A surprising oversight, given the fact you consider her Little Miss Efficiency. And now you think she might be implicated. How? She broke into your floor-safe? Is that what you mean?'

‘Maybe,' I said. ‘The contents of my goddam floor-safe were of interest to a few people … You included, Emily.'

She blinked. ‘Of course they were of interest to me, why wouldn't they be? I'm not denying it. We discussed all this.'

‘I didn't think you'd stoop to violence, though,' I said.

She gave me a baffled look.

‘Don't even think about bullshitting me, Emily. You've got a nice set-up inside the LAPD, haven't you? Very tidy. You get Sy Lancing to mug me – which was crude and, as it turned out, ineffective. I guess you figured he'd steal my briefcase, my wallet, car keys … plus the key to my office. Was that the idea, Emily? Armed with the key, you could dispatch one of your private guards to my office and he'd get the safe open somehow. Or maybe you'd use a pro.'

‘I wanted the records,' she said. She shrugged. I admired her for not even trying to deny the scheme.

I said, ‘Bad strategy, especially from somebody sworn to uphold the law. But I liked the toy knife, and how you used Petrosian to contain the situation. Tidy.'

‘I wanted the records, for Christ's sake,' she said again. ‘But I didn't want you to get hurt in the process.'

‘I am deeply touched, Emily,' I said. ‘Sy Lancing was the one that got hurt. You should have sent in more muscle.'

‘OK, I underestimated you, I didn't think you were such a hot-shot,' she said. ‘I'm sorry. I'm deeply apologetic. I knew those guys were coming down from Washington. I panicked, I guess. I wish I hadn't. It was a poor stunt, and it was bolted together at the last damn moment.'

‘Unfortunately, it's more than just the contents of the floor-safe that we need to worry about,' I said. I thought:
You don't need to tell her the truth. You can lie if you like.

But I couldn't. She deserved to know. It had been a secret too long. I'd carried it alone, and I was tired of it.

‘Worse? How?' she asked.

‘There's more material,' I said.

‘What kind of material?'

‘Of a confidential nature. I think that's the expression.'

‘Where?'

‘In a safe-deposit box.'

‘Was it also stolen?'

‘No. I have it. The point is, nobody else was supposed to know about it. But it hasn't worked out that way.'

‘And you think Jane Steel knew about this box?'

‘I guess she did. The rental bill for the box comes to my office. She couldn't have missed it. She opens all the mail.'

‘How did she know this box contained something confidential?'

‘I haven't figured that out yet.'

‘It's a leap, Jerry. You jump from her
knowing
about the box to knowing what it
contained.
How?'

‘I don't know how. Let's say she aided and abetted Stam in the matter of getting into the floor-safe. How they worked it, the practicalities of it, the mechanics … I don't know. Then somewhere down the line, when they decide the material from the floor-safe isn't powerful enough, she tells him about the safe-deposit box. She surmises there might be something juicy tucked away in a bank vault.'

‘Surmises, Jerry?'

‘What
ever
. Stam mentions this box to the guy who keeps calling me – the contact guy – and that puts the pressure on me.
Open the box. Get me the material you've got stashed, Jerry. We've got your wife.
'

‘Why don't you call Jane Steel? Tell her what's bugging you. Confront her.'

‘I don't think she's home,' I said.

I walked restlessly to the other side of the room, paused beside the stereo equipment and the stack of CDs that were mainly LaBrea freebies – demo CDs of rock bands, CDs that had never been released for one reason or another. Some were probably bad. Others might have been made by bands Gerson had axed. I ran a fingertip down the glossy spines.

I glanced at Emily and I thought:
She doesn't need to know.
Spare her this.
Why should you?

‘What kind of material are we talking about, anyway?' she asked.

I didn't answer.

‘It's connected to me,' she said. ‘Right?'

I thought how vulnerable she looked; how unaware of the blade about to fall. But I wasn't about to buy all the way into that look. A woman perfectly capable of orchestrating a mugging and sending one of her own private force to investigate wasn't exactly defenseless. A woman who'd spent much of her professional life in single-minded pursuit of criminals, and yet was prepared to use criminal means herself when she thought it necessary, wasn't lacking the capacity for duplicity.