Silence

by Thomas Perry

  Sylvie finished dressing, then did her makeup and hair, unable to stop thinking about her foolish miscalculation. She went out looking for Paul. She found him in the kitchen wearing a pair of surgical rubber gloves, dismantling the rifle he had used on Wendy Harper this afternoon. The scope, the ammunition and the magazine had been removed and put away, probably in the gun safe. He had the barrel off, the bolt and the receiver out, and he had dismantled the action so the trigger, sear and spring were on the table.

  She came up behind him and kissed the back of his neck. He didn’t move. “I’m sorry, Paul. I’m in love with you. I didn’t mean to be unfriendly.” She had her hands on his shoulders. She kept them there and leaned down to kiss his cheek. She could feel his jaw muscle working, and it frightened her. He was beyond feeling upset and unappreciated, he was angry. She walked around him, knelt on the kitchen floor in front of him and spoke softly, her hands on his knees and moving upward. “Don’t be hurt.” She looked up at him. “Oh. I just thought of something that might make you feel better.” She undid his belt.

  Later, when it was over, Paul seemed happy and relaxed again. She watched him take the pieces of the rifle and put them in a plastic trash bag so he could drop them in a Dumpster on the way to see Scott Schelling. Sylvie was feeling confident. She had been very foolish before, but at least she’d had the presence of mind to fix things. Letting Paul stay angry would have been a mistake.

  She walked around the house checking to be sure everything was locked or turned off. When she had verified that things were as she wanted them, she joined Paul in the garage, watched him engage the deadbolt, and got into the car.

  As Paul backed the car out of the garage, she said, “So we’re off. Do we know where we’re going?”

  “Yes. We’re going to his office first. If he isn’t there, he’ll be at home.”

  “Where is Crosswinds Records?”

  “Burbank, on Riverside. You know where all those other companies are—Warner Records, the Disney Channel and DIC and all that stuff? It’s right along there in one of those buildings.”

  He drove eastward on the Ventura Freeway to the 134 Freeway and got off on Buena Vista, then parked the car off Riverside in the lot beneath Dalt’s Restaurant. Instead of taking the elevator into the restaurant, they walked up the entrance ramp to the street. They kept going along Riverside until they came to one of the tall buildings of reflective glass that had sprouted oddly on the island between Alameda and Riverside, like a mirage in the midst of the old one-story stores and restaurants. “This is the one,” Paul said. “Let’s look around.”

  Sylvie understood. Looking around meant assessing the security. It was nearly dark, and the street lamps had come on, but it was easy to stay in the dimmer spaces away from them. The building was like the others, all glass and steel and hard corners, set right on the sidewalk a few feet from the curb. When they walked past the front door, she could see into the lobby, where two men sat behind a counter. Above them was a sign that said, “Please check in,” and the counter was situated so nobody could reach the elevators in the alcove beyond without being seen. Sylvie said, “This isn’t looking simple, is it?”

  “It’s not impossible. Let’s try the easy way first. Keep walking.” Paul took out his cell phone and a piece of paper, and dialed the number on it. “Hello,” he said. “I’d like to speak with Mr. Schelling, please.”

  The woman on the other end had a silky, calm voice of the sort that made people put up with more delay and neglect than they had believed they could. “May I ask what this refers to?”

  She had lost him. He said, “It’s a personal call, and he’s expecting it. I’m a friend of his, and my name is Paul.”

  “One moment, please.” There was a delay so long that he wondered if she had answered another line and forgotten about him. Just as he considered ending the call and starting over again, she was back. “I’m afraid he can’t speak with you right now, but he asked if you could meet him after he finishes his conference.”

  “Where does he want to meet?”

  “He suggested Harlan’s, just down the street from the Crosswinds offices. Do you know where that is?”

  “Yes. What time?”

  “Can you be there in thirty minutes?”

  “Tell him I’ll be there.”

  “He’ll meet you at the back entrance by the parking lot.”

  Paul disconnected and kept walking beside Sylvie. “His secretary says he wants to meet us at that restaurant down the street—Harlan’s. She says he’ll come in the back door in a half hour.”

  Sylvie shrugged. “It’s sort of a dark place inside. It’s got booths, and it’s probably not such a bad place to hand over some money.”

  “Maybe not. I don’t like letting him choose the place, though. Let’s go check it out before he gets there.”

  “Do you want to bring the car?”

  “No, let’s keep it out of sight.”

  They walked up Riverside past Bob’s Big Boy, a forties-era burger restaurant with a huge chubby-cheeked boy in front. On Friday nights the parking lot of Bob’s was full of people who had brought customized antique cars for other aficionados to admire. At the next block, they turned and began to walk along the alley behind the stores and restaurants on the north side of Riverside. To their left were the back entrances, and on the right were the parking lots.

  Harlan’s was a low wooden building that looked as though it belonged on a wharf. Paul said, “He’ll be here in about twenty-five minutes. What do you think of the place?”

  “I don’t know. There are a lot of people making a lot of noise down the street and in the front, but it’s pretty deserted back here. I don’t like it.”

  “Neither do I. What do you want to do?”

  “Anything. I’ll be perfectly happy to write off the money, get in the car, and head for the airport.”

  “We may have to do that yet. Let’s go across the street to Marie Callender’s and watch the parking-lot entrance from there. If he drives in, we’ll see him.”

  “All right.” They walked back along the alley a few steps, and a big beige Chevrolet sedan swung into the lot from the other end, its front end bobbing upward at the bump and then down, the headlights flashing in Sylvie’s eyes. The car stopped ahead of them, idling. When Sylvie shaded her eyes, she could see the driver was a tall man wearing a red tie and sport coat. A shorter, darker man sat in the passenger seat. The driver opened his door and got out. “Mr. and Mrs. Turner?”

  Sylvie whispered to Paul, “Get ready.”

  Paul called back to the man, “What can I do for you?”

  “Would you come with us, please? We’re here to take you to the meeting.”

  Paul and Sylvie had already begun sidestepping apart. “That’s not the arrangement.”

  “It’s a precaution. All you have to do is get in the car.”

  Sylvie had her gun in her hand inside the jacket pocket. She glanced at Paul, and she could see that his longer legs had carried him to the other side of the car. His right hand was at his belt, and his knees were slightly bent. Sylvie selected her targets. She would fire first at the man who had gotten out, then at the shorter, dark-haired man in the passenger seat, who seemed to have a bandaged head. Sylvie would have little time to react, so she moved her eyes from one to the other, practicing.

  Paul said, “I’m not comfortable with this. Call him and tell him.”

  The man who was standing beside the car said, “We’re police officers, and you’re going to have to come with us.” He opened his coat to reach for a gun, and Sylvie caught sight of a badge. The man in the passenger seat flung the door open on the other side of the car.

  Sylvie shot the man who was holding his coat open, then dropped to her knees and fired into the passenger seat at the dark-haired man while Paul fired into the windshield.

  The short, dark man was wounded, but he managed to slide into the driver’s seat and step on the gas pedal. The car lurched ahead at Paul,
but he jumped aside and fired three more rounds. The car coasted a few feet, then bumped into a fence made of steel cables strung between poles, and stopped at the edge of the parking lot.

  Paul yanked the driver’s door open, dragged the dead man out onto the ground, and took his place. Sylvie climbed into the back seat. Paul drove the car down the alley, up Riverside for a couple of blocks, and then turned to the side street and drove until they were back on the street behind Dalt’s. He pulled to the curb and wiped off the steering wheel and door handles. They climbed out and walked down the ramp to the parking lot beneath the building, and drove out in their black BMW.

  They raced along Riverside to Barham, then past the Warner Brothers studios over the hill to the freeway entrance. Paul muttered, “Jesus. Fake cops. I can’t believe I let him set us up like that.”

  “That’s really about all I can take,” Sylvie said. “This has been nothing but misery.”

  “Giving up?”

  “No. But I’m not sure what I’m after is going to be money.”

  38

  SCOTT SCHELLING felt his cell phone vibrate in his coat pocket. This was the third time tonight, and each time, he could feel his heartbeat quicken with excitement. The news was better and better each time. He glanced at the other end of the room. Ray Klein was about midway in his cocktail-party speech about the fully integrated electronics conglomerate, so there was plenty of time to answer the call.

  He made his way through the vast living room slowly, careful not to look as though he was in a hurry. Doing business at these parties was considered rude. But he was anxious to return Tiffany’s call. Her first call had been the most important one. She had conveyed the message from Paul that everything had gone as he had hoped. That meant that Wendy Harper was dead at last. Scott had been in a state of buoyant good spirits since that moment, which he recognized as a turning point in his life. For six years—the years when he had been working to build his reputation and gain power at Crosswinds Records—he had been afraid.

  He had tried to be cautious about having his picture taken or being on television, but he still had to do his job and live his life, and they were the same. Work was social. Scott Schelling had always taken women to parties and used his business relationships with musicians to impress them. He had talked to women in the way he had talked to the musicians. He told each of them she was the very best, the one he wanted above all the others. He implied as clearly as he could that he would give them everything they could ever want, just because they were special. He would give the woman of the moment a sample, a taste of what was to come. It would be a watch or a bracelet, usually, something that had cost enough to let her know he was not the same as her old boyfriends.

  Scott had been very generous about exposing the new woman to the talent right away, to demonstrate that he was an important man. He let her meet the stars, dance with them, drink with them, talk to them. But being with music celebrities was a mixed experience for a young woman. Many of the stars were wild and sloppy, drinking heavily, or disappearing for a few minutes and returning with a manic craziness and dilated pupils. Offstage, stars were often crude and boorish and even frightening. The woman could see the freak show, be dazzled and fascinated, but after a surprisingly short time, Scott would feel the woman clinging to his arm again, half-hiding herself behind his reassuring dark suit coat and his sobriety and reliability.

  Scott stopped to say hello to Bill Calder, the Entertainment Division Comptroller, then eased by Calder’s wife, confiding, “Excuse me, my phone is ringing,” and out the open arch into the cactus garden. He liked Klein’s Santa Fe house. It was adobe, with big timbers in the ceilings and every portal curved. When he was certain that nobody was near him, he took out his telephone, pressed Tiffany’s number, and said, “It’s me.”

  “Scotty, it’s both of us—Tiffany and Kimberly—on a conference line. We wanted to be positive you wouldn’t be needing us any more tonight.”

  “Did you have someone meet the gentleman who called earlier?”

  “Do you mean Paul?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “I called the number you left me.”

  “Good. If everything’s taken care of, there’s no reason to hang around. Just reconfirm the time of my flight tomorrow morning and turn out the lights. And make sure somebody remembers to feed my dog tomorrow.”

  “Thanks, Scotty,” Tiffany said. “See you Monday morning.”

  He hung up. He inhaled, and as his lungs expanded he felt even happier. He felt a crazy, impulsive wish to do something for those two, like give them both a huge raise. But he couldn’t do that every time he felt happy. And Bill Calder, who was no more than fifty feet away from him right now, would see the raise and want to know the justification. Maybe Scott would take them with him on a trip. There was one scheduled for later next month to France and Germany for some conference or other.

  He put away his phone and made his way back to the party. The people at this party were alien to Scott Schelling. The presidents of all the other subsidiaries were married, and they brought their wives—all blond and tall and twenty to thirty years younger than their husbands, but all showing face-lifts and teeth with the whiteness of a porcelain sink. He was never sure what to make of these women because there was no way to read their expressions.

  Their husbands were slightly easier for him, because he could recognize the hostility and suspicion when he talked to them. As he stepped inside from the desert garden, he saw that Taylor Gaines had been watching him. Gaines was the head of the finance subsidiary of the parent company, the one that used the profits from each of the divisions to make loans. Gaines said, “Hello, Scott. Got to keep on top of the trends even while you’re here, don’t you?”

  “That’s right, Taylor. If you’re not ahead, you’re behind.”

  Scott hurried down the hallway and noticed he was moving past framed antique drawings and maps from the Spanish era. His girls had done their job beautifully when they had bought an old map as a present for Jill Klein. As he had the thought, he remembered that they had not needed to strain much to accomplish it. Ray Klein had probably told them what to buy.

  Everything that happened seemed to be controlled by Ray Klein. Ray Klein wanted the girls to please Scott Schelling with their efficiency so Scott would keep them on his staff. That way they could keep feeding Ray Klein information. Klein wanted Scott to feel good about his relationship with him, to feel that he had done well and Klein appreciated and liked him. Klein wanted his wife, Jill, to have a nice addition to her collection so she could feel involved and admired, and not have as much brain space to observe her husband’s relations with Martha Rodall, vice president of the Public Relations Division. All this was what Ray Klein was famous for: managing his people.

  Scott slipped past white-shirted waiters serving tiny blue-corn tamales, ahi tuna on small beds of rice, and cocktails, and into the center of the party, just close enough to Ray Klein to be sure that Klein included him in any mental roll-call he was taking, but not close enough to be an obstruction or a distraction. Scott made sure he had been seen, and then smiled and shook hands with Sam Hardesty, the head of the Aerospace Electronics Division. “Hi, Sam. Scott Schelling, Crosswinds Records. How are you tonight?”

  “Fine. Yourself?” Hardesty was nearly seventy with white hair and the build of the retired general he was.

  “Great,” said Schelling. “It’s such a beautiful night, and I find getting out of Los Angeles this time of year a treat. Hell, just getting out of the office is a treat. How are your numbers going to come in this quarter?”

  Hardesty flinched at the directness of the question. “I’m afraid that’s not a number I can give out just yet.”

  “Oh? Classified?”

  “No. But it’s inside information. You work in a different company, even though we own it. It’s against SEC rules for me to tell you.”

  “Well, then, good luck with it,” Scott said. He moved deeper into the room tow
ard the next set of executives, a pair of computer-hardware nerds from Syn-Final Microsystems, when he felt something touch his arm. As he began to turn he saw the hand. On one of the fingers was a bean-sized emerald with diamonds around it. He lifted his eyes to see Jill Klein’s face close to his.

  “Scotty,” she said, her voice low and conspiratorial. “I just had to take you aside and tell you how much I love the map.” From this close, he could see that her face showed signs of surgical procedures. The skin above the cheekbones had been tightened from the sides so her oversized eyes looked permanently startled. She leaned close and kissed his cheek with pillowy lips. “It’s really gorgeous.” She smiled. “Sometimes a thank-you note just isn’t enough.”

  “I should thank you. I’d rather have a kiss than a note any day.”

  “Would you like to see where I’ve hung it?”

  “Sure.”

  She walked him out to the fringes of the party, along a wide hallway toward the back of the house. He could hear the sounds of caterers working in a restaurant-size kitchen beyond the big doors at the end of the hall. As he walked, he tried to remember the description that Kimberly and Tiffany had recited to him so he would recognize it when he saw it. He remembered something about California being an island. The kitchen sounds made him sure they were near the dining room. Maybe she had hung it there, where the other guests would have to look at it and envy his taste and thoughtfulness.

  But she turned in the other direction, up a narrow staircase that led to the second floor. She took a few steps and opened a door. “This is my personal suite.” There was a large sitting room decorated with kachina dolls and Navajo rugs, furnished with couches and a heavy antique desk of dark wood. Above it he could see several old documents framed, but not a map.

  “This is really a beautiful room,” he said.

  “Oh, yes. It’s quiet and private.” She opened a door beyond the desk, and led him into a bedroom. There was a maid in the room, busy arranging something in the drawers of a dresser. “Here it is.” She pointed to the inner wall of the room. The map was larger than Schelling had imagined, a folio-sized sheet in a thin black frame hung on the uneven faux-adobe surface.