Bone suggested that he quiet down, and Cutter asked why he should.
“It’s like you just said—because.”
“I said no such thing.”
“My mistake.”
But Cutter would not be mollified. “Will you please get the goddamn hell off my back, both of you. And let me try to deal with this thing in my own way. Try to remember, kiddies—this morning we were just a few hours away from payday, hotels on Park Place and Boardwalk. And what’ve we got now?—not even an outhouse on Baltic Avenue. So let me laugh, okay? Let me weep.”
“Whatever turns you on,” Bone said.
“Killing him, that would turn me on,” he said, so loud a number of people in the bar turned to look at him again, though not with alarm so much as condescension and amusement.
“What’s more logical?” he went on. “What’s more human than to kill the killer, huh? Execute the executioner? Is there any better gauge of a society’s moral fiber than its willingness to take an eye for an eye and a crushed trachea for a crushed trachea? So why not aim high, huh? Why not kill the motherfucker?”
Bone casually lit a cigarette, trying to communicate a sense of calm. But his words went the other way. “Alex, for Christ sake, can’t you just talk? Do you have to shout?”
“Who’s shouting? You just don’t like the idea, that’s all. Because you’re chicken. A tit for a tat, that’s your style. Or possibly two tits. So how about this—why don’t we auction it off? Why don’t we sell it right here? These creeps look like they ain’t hurting for bread, right? So why not sell it to them?”
“Sell what?” Bone asked.
“Our knowledge, man. That special bit of info we got about J. J. Wolfe. Why, hell, there’s bound to be a buyer here.”
“Come on, Alex. Please. Knock it off.”
“Why, huh? Why not sell it? What else we got, huh? Silver ingots? Thousand shares of IBM? Like hell we have. All we got is J. J. Wolfe—but by the balls, my friend! By the old lemon drops!”
Even the patrons across the room had turned to look at Cutter now, and Bone was getting desperate. Slowly, patiently, as if he were talking to a raging child, he again asked him to quiet down, to knock it off. And suddenly in Alex’s eye Bone saw the whole thing shrinking to the distance between them, becoming personal, charged. Cutter’s mouth curled with malice.
“Sure, man!” he said. “Of course—the second you tell me why I should, the second you give me one good reason to.” Then he pushed back his chair, evidently preparing to get up and begin the “auction.”
Bone felt the muscles in his own legs leap tight, he was that close to walking out, leaving the two of them to whatever fate Cutter’s demons might bring down on them. Instead Bone found himself reaching inside his coat and pulling out the envelope, the personal note he was supposed to have delivered to J. J. Wolfe. Now he delivered it to Cutter.
And for long seconds Cutter did not understand. He stared down at it in confusion and then looked up at Bone and finally over at Valerie, where he must have found the answer, read it loud and clear in the contempt her weary eyes had focused on Bone.
“Why?” Cutter asked him. “Why, Rich? In God’s name, why?”
Bone shrugged. “You just said it, Alex. I’m chicken.”
8
Somehow Bone managed to get them back to the hotel, probably by driving twenty miles an hour all the way though he could not have sworn to it, since he remembered almost nothing of the journey except a vague feeling of personal heroism, as if he were a half-dead Saint Bernard dog dragging his poor lost charges to safety. In the hotel parking lot Cutter showed his gratitude by throwing a punch at him, but he missed and hit a parked Cadillac instead. Yelling in pain, Alex then dented the car’s hood with his cane and finished it off by urinating on two of its whitewalls. In time, however, the three of them managed to reach the right floor of the hotel and even their very own room. Once inside, Bone submitted meekly to the booze and with two exceptions did not stir from his oblivion until almost eleven the next morning. The first exception was when he rolled over once at a hammering sound counterpointed by heavy panting and he had the distinct impression he saw Cutter performing calisthenics out on the balcony. Another time he seemed to recall seeing Cutter, naked and shower-drenched, opening the door for room service, a stooped old man who pushed a breakfast cart into the room as if he had no real expectation of ever getting out alive. But Bone could not have cared less. Sleep was what he needed, sore hangover’s bath, and he drifted contentedly in it until a chambermaid came clattering into the room at eleven and, not seeing him zonked out on the floor between the beds, began to tidy up the bathroom, all the while singing a soft Spanish dirge. Bone thought of rolling under a bed and letting her complete her work in peace, but there was not enough room, so he did the next best thing—he slipped up onto one of the beds and began to yawn loudly. The maid came out of the bathroom in a crouch, her eyes round with terror.
“I no see!” she cried.
Bone shrugged. “De nada. You come back, si?”
“I no see!”
“Right. I understand. You come back, okay?”
“Hokay!” She backed out of the room carefully, knowing a brujo when she saw one.
Alone, Bone wondered what time Cutter and Valerie had left. Remembering the calisthenics and room service during the night, the coffee and the showers, he assumed Cutter had tried to work his hangover off instead of sleeping it off, that he had been that anxious to pick up where Bone had left off yesterday. And Bone did not have to look far for confirmation. On the dresser mirror across the room was a lipstick-scrawled message:
YANKEE GO HOME!
Below it, an arrow pointed to the top of the dresser, where Cutter had continued his message on a sheet of hotel stationery:
Dear Chickenshit,
During the night it comes to me like a hot flash—I need you like I need more glass eyes. Who’s to say I wasn’t on Alvarez Street that night? Who’s to say I didn’t see old J.J. dump the bod same as you did? Not J.J. hisself—that I guarantee.
So what it comes down to, dear heart, is this—me and V. hereby include you out. In a word, you are fired—free to return to the sands of S.B. and contemplate the utter perfection of your ding-dong.
Meanwhile, J.J. is ours. Mine. Today we don’t send a boy out on a man’s job. Today I go. And tomorrow—well, someday y’all come visit us on Ibiza, hear?
But for the nonce—get lost.
Yrs. in Jesus,
Alexander IV
All in all, Bone considered it pretty good advice, if not actually to get lost at least to put as much distance as he could between himself and them, and the sooner the better. Even handled expertly—that is, the way Bone himself would have tried to handle it—the operation would have been a long shot at best. It required a negotiator who knew something of the corporate labyrinth, because unless one reached Wolfe with the product intact—not picked over by underlings, ripped open, light-exposed—then one really had nothing to sell. Wolfe would have no alternative except to call in the gendarmes and bluff it out, play his power game to the full, which would probably mean jail—and not for Wolfe. Considering all that. Bone simply could not imagine Cutter bringing the thing off. Somewhere along the line, probably within minutes after he entered Wolfe’s domain, he would run up against one variety or other of bureaucratic lunacy and his response would naturally be both swift and outrageous, the kind of act that would bring everything crashing down upon him. A mad lame bull in a plastic shop, that would about describe him. And it was a description Bone could not see leading to anything but failure. So he was glad to be out of it, anxious to be on his way.
There was still his hangover to deal with, however, his need for oxygen and food and movement. Getting out of bed, he decided that if room service was good enough for Cutter and Valerie it was also good enough for him, and he phoned down an order for French toast, scrambled eggs, bacon, coffee, and a pint of freshly squeezed orange juice, this l
ast a specification that threw the order-taker into such a panic Bone wondered if he had been connected with the Sheraton-Iceland kitchen by mistake. He then smoked a cigarette, defecated splendidly, and spent the next fifteen minutes in the shower, grateful that the world’s reputedly impending water crisis was still a few years distant.
The breakfast proved to be almost as cold as it was expensive, though this last he solved à la Cutter, scrawling his version of Valerie’s signature across the room service check. By twelve-thirty he was ready to go, fed and dressed, with the few things he had brought with him, extra shirt, socks, toilet articles, all stuffed into his venerable attaché case. Downstairs he strode across the hotel lobby and out through the bustling entrance like any other successful young executive. Only where they all seemed to be hailing taxis, he walked casually across the parking lot, shortcutted through some bushes, and headed down the hill to Lankersham. Another block and he was on the freeway entrance ramp, thumbing with his usual touch of calculated restraint and even embarrassment, hoping to make clear to that Great American Majority thundering past that his customary place was right there with them on the road, not next to it as now, for it was his experience that people were more likely to pick up their own kind. And normally it was the women who came through for him, usually young ones, two or three of them riding together and thus able to combine a sense of adventure with some measure of security. But this day it was a man who did the honors, a heavy middle-aged sales type with a bright red face and a whiskey voice. He drove one-handed and very fast, chainsmoking Camels as he cruised along the freeway, tailgating, changing lanes, slipping through openings that would have given a Hell’s Angel pause. But as Bone quickly learned, the man was not really being cavalier with anyone’s life except his own, for the simple reason that he did not seem to realize that there were any others out there. Bone in fact believed that if he had been an armed Black Panther or a Hari Krishna monk or a bull dyke fondling a bicycle chain, it would have been the same—the man would not have noticed. All he wanted, all he had stopped for, was a pair of ears, a hitchhiker confessor, a surrogate shrink.
In the less than ninety minutes it took to reach Santa Barbara, Bone learned in crushing detail the history of the man’s three rottenfuckin’ marriages. He learned all about the ingratitude and stupidity of the man’s rottenfuckin’ daughters and pansy-ass sons and in the bargain got a straight-from-the-shoulder analysis of the housewares business, starting with the manufacturers and moving down through the jobbers and salesmen (the best of the goddamn lot, the backbone of the whole economy) to the rottenfuckin’ retailers themselves, who never discounted anything unless it was simple old-fashioned honesty, an honest product for an honest buck. Like most businesses, housewares was simply no place for an honest man, a good man, and especially not an honest good man who was also a crackerjack salesman. Him they just didn’t know what to do with. They cheated him and lied to him and stabbed him in the back. They shaved his commissions and pirated his accounts and failed to recognize his considerable achievements. All of which convinced Bone that he had more than earned his way back to Santa Barbara, and in fact had a little something extra due him. So as they reached the downtown area and the man started to pull off the freeway to let him out, Bone told him to go on to the next corner and hang a right.
“There’s something you’ve got to see,” he explained. “It’s just a couple of blocks.”
Murdock’s Bar actually was six blocks from the freeway, but the housewares tycoon did not complain. As Bone got out, though, the man asked for an explanation.
“Well, what is it I got to see?”
Bone frowned, smiled. It should have been obvious. “My destination,” he said.
Unfortunately Murdock’s turned out not to be much in the way of a destination, for Murdock himself was gone, which meant Bone would not be able to drink on his tab or borrow the man’s car for a run uptown to see Mo and the baby. Nevertheless Bone did settle in long enough to have one vodka tonic, to sit there in the pleasant darkness working on the drink and picking at his decision to come here, all the way downtown, instead of getting out on 101 as it passed through Montecito, not even a half mile from Mrs. Little’s, which after all was his new home, his place of bed and board for now. But as he thought about it, he had to admit no decision was involved, that he simply had come straight here like a homing pigeon following the radar beam of its nature. The fact that Cutter would not be there did not really enter in. Bone had been alone with her before, dozens of times, and nothing had happened. So why should he expect anything to happen this time? Oh, he could hope, all right. And he could even try, make the old half-hearted try. There couldn’t be any harm in that, he told himself. There was never any harm in that.
On the way out he ran into Sergeant Verdugo, one of the detectives who had rousted him the night of the murder. Verdugo said he was still assigned to the case, but was getting nowhere fast. He asked Bone if his memory had improved any and Bone said he was on his way uptown, that maybe the sergeant would give him a lift and they could talk about it. Verdugo had the look of a man who knew he was being suckered, but he went along anyway, driving Bone the few miles to Cutter’s place. And all he did was nod wearily when Bone said he had nothing to add to his original statement. For his part, the sergeant did not have much more to offer. Every lead so far in the case had reached a dead end. The department was nowhere. Lieutenant Ross was back on warm milk and baby food. And to top it all, the victim’s sister seemed to have disappeared. Her mother didn’t know where she was, and neither did her employer.
“Ross thinks we’ll find her dead too,” Verdugo finished.
Bone said nothing.
They were at Cutter’s now. “Still staying here, huh?” the sergeant observed. “On the floor?”
Getting out, Bone smiled. “Home is where the heart is.”
There was no answer to his knock, so he went on into the house, expecting that he would find her asleep in bed with the baby. Instead he found her out on the deck dozing topless in the sun on one of the webbed folding chairs Swanson had given Cutter. Alex Five was at her feet, asleep in a pile of blankets on the deck floor. For a short time Bone just stood there in the doorway saying nothing, not moving, as if he feared the slightest sound would bring it all crashing down, this tableau that looked almost contrived by a French impressionist—the half-nude madonna and child asleep in the gold pool of the sun, with the mountains and the sea and the red-roofed city beyond. He thought of bending down and touching his lips to her breasts, but he knew that would probably gain him nothing except a punched nose, so he lightly rapped on the doorjamb instead. And Mo reacted about as he had expected she would, with her eyes mostly, a look of bland surprise. Not bothering to cover her breasts, she raised her finger to her mouth to silence him—she did not want him waking the baby. Getting up, she followed him back into the house and closed the French deck doors behind her.
“What the hell are you now, a cat burglar?” she asked, slipping into a sweatshirt.
“I knocked.”
“Not very loud.”
Bone smiled. “Just loud enough. For my purposes.”
Flopping back on the davenport, she lit a cigarette. “Well, I hope you enjoyed yourself.”
“Immensely.”
“Yeah, they’re pretty great,” she admitted. “All thirty-four inches.”
“I’m not a tits man.”
“What then? Elbows? Ankles?”
“Eyes, Mo. I have this thing about certain kinds of eyes.”
“Bloodshot, no doubt.”
“Usually, yes.”
She said nothing for a few moments, evidently having temporarily run out of sarcasm. “You’re alone?” she asked finally.
“I came back alone, yes.”
“He’s still there, then?”
“Still there. Still on the job.”
She sat looking at him, smiling slightly. “Are you going to tell me why?”
“Sure. I chickened o
ut. Once I hit Wolfe’s place, I found I couldn’t go through with the thing. But I pretended to anyway. Went through the motions. You know.”
“Why?”
“Why couldn’t I go through with it?”
“Yes. Why the sudden bout of sanity?”
“That about says it.”
“Why pretend you went through with it though?”
“I figured when nothing happened—when Wolfe never got in touch—the whole thing would just peter out. Alex would lose interest, give it up.”
“I take it he didn’t.”
“No. Today he’s carrying the ball.”
“And will he drop it too?”
“Not if he can help it.”
“Is there any chance he could bring it off?”
“Let’s hope so. For your sake anyway.”
“You figure I might benefit somehow?”
Bone shrugged.
“Sort of share-the-wealth thing?”
“I can’t see why not.”
“Can’t you now?”
“No, I can’t.”
Mo’s smile seemed to appreciate the effort he made, but she still was not buying. “And the girl? I take it she didn’t chicken out either.”
“No. She’s still hanging in there.”
“Plucky little thing.”
“Yeah, she’s a plucky little thing.”
“And with you gone, that sort of throws them together, doesn’t it?”
“In a business sort of way.”
“Kind of colleagues, you might say.”
Bone did not pick it up.
“Or partners,” she went on.
“Whatever.”
“Bedmates?”
“Not while I was there.”
“Of course not. Not with old blue-eyes on the Scene. I mean one couldn’t very well expect Alex to beat that kind of competition, could one?”
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