Recoil. Part 17

Vasquez pushed the photos aside. "Come in a moment."

Homer shut the door and approached the table. Vasquez inclined his head toward a chair; Homer pulled it out and sat. Vasquez said, "I'm going to have to return to the office for two days to try to catch up on the most urgent tasks on my desk. You'll have to take Mr. Merle through a number of things."

"Such as?"

"Procedures. Methods. Practices. He's going to have to learn how to recognize a hundred different kinds of locks and know how to get into them with picks. How to field-strip a wall safe or hot-wire a car. How to plant explosives on an engine block--"

Mathieson stiffened. "I'm not blowing anybody up."

"Granted. But you want to know what to look for. Suppose someone tries to do it to you?" Vasquez went back, matter-of-factly, to Homer: "He'll have to learn the rudiments of burglar alarm systems-how to spot them and how to get through them. Bugs, wiretaps, infrared camera techniques."

Mathieson said gloomily, "There's a lot to it, then."

6.

"He's got me lifting weights," he complained. Gingerly he stretched his legs out across the bed and arched his head back into the pillow but there was no comfortable position.

"This was your idea," she said.

"I could use a little sympathy."

"It's the best thing that's happened to you in years, I imagine. You're going to end up with the physique of Muhammad Ali."

He scowled at her. "I've always detested cheerful types who make fun of somebody else's agony."

"Yes, dear."

He grumbled. "They can't really expect to turn me into Charles Atlas in a matter of weeks, can they?"

"Vasquez seems to think that's up to you. How long do you think it will take?"

"I have no idea; this is just phase one. I don't have too many illusions about this-even if we can bring something off, it won't be done overnight."

He rolled over on his side but that was just as painful.

She said, "What?" and glanced at him in the mirror.

"Nothing. That was a grunt of anguish."

"Lift dem weights, tote dat barge. Hadn't you better start getting dressed?"

"Whose idea was it to dress for dinner around here, anyway?"

"Mine."

"I suppose you had your reasons."

"It suits the surroundings." She drew her mouth into a puckered O to apply lipstick.

He left the bed painfully and climbed into his slacks. "How are the kid's bruises?"

"Healing. He seems to be ignoring them."

"Teach him to try to ride the wildest horse in the place."

"He gets that from his old man."

"Christ I haven't even seen him in two days."

"Whose fault is that? But we ought to be thankful he's occupying himself."

"And he's not even coming down to dinner tonight?"

"He made a deal with Mrs. Meuth. There's a TV movie he's desperate to see. He promised to put the dishes in the dishwasher afterward."

Mathieson turned up his s.h.i.+rt collar and wrapped the necktie around it. She put the eye-shadow brush down and turned to look at him. "You've got that all askew. Come over here and use the mirror."

He had to get down on one knee behind her ottoman to see himself in the mirror. "Paying court to the queen," he observed.

"Very gallant."

He got the knot centered. Her face hovered discomfitingly near. She had gone bolt still.

"What's the matter?"

"I'm jittery," she said. "I keep feeling as if I'm on the verge of a crisis. Every little disturbance feels like a major calamity."

He reached for her hand but she was turning away; she stood up and walked swiftly to the wardrobe. He got to his feet and watched her step into the dress. "Zip me up?"

He crossed the room and pulled the zipper up and dropped both hands on her shoulders. "How long are we going to go on being polite to each other in cool voices?"

She leaned back against him. "I wish I knew the answer to that. I'm just too neurotic to think."

He slid his hands around her waist but she pushed them away. "Let's go down to dinner. I'm famished."

7.

Mathieson dragged himself to the dinner table and tried to ignore what he was sure was Homer's smirk. The chandelier threw a yellow glow along the immense dining table. Vasquez remarked, "I know. It feels rather like a set for a 1946 Warner Brothers film-something with Sydney Greenstreet." Vasquez among his oddities had a penchant for old movies and an apparent total recall concerning their stories, casts, directors and writers.

Unceremoniously Mrs. Meuth laid their plates before them and retired. Something in the kitchen began to grind and clatter. Mathieson looked at the thick red steak, the b.u.t.tered zucchini, the salad, the gla.s.s of ice water. He was not hungry.

"I know," Homer said, "but eat it anyway. You need the protein."

"Been running my tail off for a week, you'd think I'd be famished."

"It doesn't work that way unless you're conditioned to it," Vasquez told him. "Unaccustomed exercise mutes a sedentary man's appet.i.te. I'm not sure why."

Homer said, "Go ahead, eat up. It won't put weight on you-that's diet margarine, not b.u.t.ter."

Mrs. Meuth bustled in with a pitcher of iced tea. She slammed it on to the table and left, her feet falling like bowling pins. She was overweight but not a huge woman by any means; nevertheless everything she did seemed to require the accompaniment of loud noises.

Vasquez remarked, "These are surroundings to which one wouldn't mind becoming accustomed."

Jan said, "Is everything you touch this glamorous?"

"Hardly. Most often our work is sheer boredom. Homer can confirm that, I'm sure."

Mathieson said, "Not excepting present company. It drives Homer up the wall, being coach and trainer to an inept middle-aged idiot."

Homer squinted at him. "Do I look bored? This is the best vacation I've had in four years working for Vasquez Inc. A lot better than repossessing cars and skip-tracing."

Jan said, "Is that your bread and b.u.t.ter?"

"Sometimes. Actually most of our work is company spying."

"Industrial counterespionage," Vasquez said. "I do spend a good part of my time training business executives in security techniques."

Jan poured iced tea into the four gla.s.ses. When she set the pitcher down she said, "I'd like to call some friends." She looked directly at Vasquez. "Would that be all right?"

"Certainly. But I'd prefer you didn't call them from here. And it would be better if you didn't tell them exactly where we are. Mr. Meuth will be driving into town in the morning-you and I could ride with him."

"Thank you. I only want to find out if Roger and Amy are all right."

"Any reason why they shouldn't be, Mrs. Mathieson?"

She made a gesture and almost overturned the gla.s.s; she caught it in time. "I feel-stranded up here. I need some thread of contact with the world."

"Perfectly understandable." Vasquez's glance lifted from the rescued iced tea to Jan's face. "I'm sure you're thoroughly annoyed with the obsessive lengths to which my paranoia has taken us. But in the interest of your safety I've tried to cut off every conceivable lead to your whereabouts. It's unlikely that your friends would be under surveillance or that their telephones would be tapped. But possible. You understand?"

"I suppose so."

Homer jabbed his fork toward Mathieson's plate again. "Come on, you're stalling."

"They always told me it was healthy to eat slowly."

"Sure it is." Homer's smile was belligerent. "Eat."

CHAPTER TWELVE.

New York: 8 September

1.

EZIO BLEW CUBAN SMOKE TOWARD THE CEILING AND BEAMED expansively when Frank walked into the office. "Man you were right, Frank, son of a b.i.t.c.h paid off."

"You were mysterious as h.e.l.l on the phone."

"You want me to spell anything out on a G.o.dd.a.m.ned telephone?"

"Of course not. But you're getting a little fancy with that million-seller hit record nonsense. What's it supposed to mean? Since when am I in the record business?"

Ezio opened the drawer and pushed the rewind switch on the tape deck. "We've got Merle's wife on tape. Is that a hit record, or isn't it?"

Frank walked around the desk and looked down at the recorder. "You don't say."

"Here." Ezio handed him the typescript from the desk. "I typed up a transcript while I was waiting for you."

Frank glanced down the first page. "Who are these people?"

"The first voice is Merle's wife. The one they call Jan. The second woman is Roger Gilfillan's wife, name of Amy-"

"Roger Gilfillan the movie star?"

"You remember, he's on that list of Merle's friends."

"Right, OK. So the 'Roger' here, that's Gilfillan."

"Just the three of them. There's some d.a.m.n interesting stuff. So anyhow I just identified the speakers with initials-J for Merle's wife, A for Gilfillan's wife, R for Gilfillan."

"The tap is on Gilfillan's phone, right?"

"We've had two s.h.i.+fts watching him come and go. He's shooting a TV special on one of the lots in Burbank; he goes to work every morning at seven. The phone call came in two days ago, Sat.u.r.day morning; he was home."

He watched Frank page through the transcript. Frank said, "We'll listen to it in a minute. What's the bottom line here?"