Bernhardt's Edge (27 page)

She nodded. “Right.”

“Okay. So the first thing we've got to discover is whether it's true—whether someone's here. Right here. Right now. Agreed?”

“I suppose so.”

“Okay. Now, here's my idea—see what you think of it.” To compel her attention, he let a beat pass, waiting until she raised her eyes to meet his. “Let's suppose,” he said, “that there
is
someone. Let's say he's been in town for a whole day, watching you. Okay?” Encouraging her to join in the game of Let's Pretend, he smiled: a director now, trying to put the novice at her ease, trying to loosen her up, get her smiling, get her mind off herself, off the lines she might fluff, the mistakes she might make. Grimly repeating: “Okay, Betty?”

And, yes, the corners of her mouth had twitched. And, yes, a pale animation had kindled, far back in her dark, somber eyes.

Finally, she nodded. “Yes. Okay.”

“All right, then. Now; if he'd been watching you today, he'd've seen you go into town, a little after noon. He might've seen me in town, too, seen us both at the store—you shopping, me parked outside. Of course, actually, I was following you, but he didn't know that.

“So then, he'd've seen us come back here—separately. He'd've seen us hanging around the pool, me writing, you reading, swimming, whatever. Then he'd've seen me making a move on you—introducing myself, smiling, trying to ingratiate myself to you, gain your confidence. The mating game, in other words.”

Hesitantly, she nodded.

“He could be watching us right now. If he is, he's probably trying to decide about us, trying to decide what we're doing in here. Let's say he's a hit man, sent by DuBois to kill you.” As he said it, he looked carefully at her face, calculating the effect of what he'd just said. There was no visible reaction, no sign of anxiety. Was it the numbness of loss, grief for a dead mate? Was it a death wish, an indifference to death? Or was it simple exhaustion, compounded by loneliness?

Probing, he said, “It's possible you know, that someone's out there. We'd be foolish not to consider the possibility. You must think it could happen. Otherwise, you wouldn't be here—running.”

“I guess I was running when I left Santa Rosa. But I wasn't running when I came here. I was looking for—” Searching for the word, she hesitated. Then: “I was looking for peace. That's what I get from the desert. Peacefulness.”

“But what happens next, after you leave here?”

“I'm not sure,” she said. “San Francisco, maybe—Mother. She's all I've got, really. But wherever I go, I won't be running. That's over.”

“What you should do is go back to Los Angeles. You should write a longhand account of what you just told me. You should date it, and get someone to witness it—me, for instance. You should put it in a safe deposit box, and you should give your mother one key. You should tell her to open the box in the event of your death. Copies of your statement should be addressed to the police in Santa Rosa, and the D.A. in Los Angeles—plus a copy to me, maybe all of them in the box. Then you should tell DuBois what you did. And then you should get yourself a job in a museum, or whatever. You should get on with your life.”

“You're probably right.” Predictably, she spoke without conviction, without interest.

Compensating, he spoke briskly, with forceful animation: “In the meantime, though, I want to make sure that you're safe, at least for tonight. Tomorrow, if you want to, we can work on that written statement. Then we can leave. Or, at least, I plan to leave. But now, tonight, we've got to take out some insurance. Okay?”

“I—” She frowned. “I don't understand.”

“I want to try and find out whether there's anyone out there. I figure it's maybe twenty-five percent that there is someone there. And I don't think four-to-one odds are good enough.”

As he'd spoken, her eyes had sharpened, her mouth had tightened. But there was no fear visible in her face. Only a kind of resigned curiosity.

“Twenty-five percent?” she repeated.

“According to a witness, Nick was killed by a black man. Call that a fifty-fifty certainty. That's about what witnesses average, especially when they're describing a street crime that took place at night. However, when I was tailing you and Nick, I saw a black man following you in Santa Rosa. It could've been a coincidence, of course. But it changes that fifty-fifty probability, I think, makes it more like, say, seventy-five percent, that a black man killed Nick. Plus—” He hesitated, reluctant to alarm her. But her calm, stolid expression hadn't changed, hadn't faltered. “Plus, this afternoon, while you were shopping, I saw a black man driving a black Camaro. He wasn't following you, but in a situation like this, in a town this size, in the middle of the desert, he wouldn't have to stay on your tail. He wouldn't have to—”

“Was it the same man you saw in Santa Rosa?” Now, perceptibly, she'd grown anxious, apprehensive.

Ruefully, he smiled, shook his head. “I don't know. I hate to say it—because, literally, one of my best friends is black. But the truth is, in a surveillance situation, when you're talking about seeing someone passing in a car, I have trouble identifying a particular black man, distinguishing one from the other.”

“‘They all look alike.' Is that what you're saying?”

“I'm afraid that's what I'm saying.”

As if to excuse his lapse, she nodded. Then: “How're you going to find out whether—” As her eyes shifted involuntarily to the door, she let it go unfinished.
Whether there's someone out there who might kill me,
was the sentence she was finishing in her thoughts.

“It's simple—” Involuntarily, he lowered his voice, leaned forward in his chair. “It'll just take a few minutes.”

I
N HIS OWN CABIN,
Bernhardt walked to the window and carefully checked the overlap of the floor-to-ceiling draperies. Satisfied that no one could see inside the room, he took one of his two suitcases from the small closet. He lifted the suitcase to the bed, dug in his pocket for a key ring, and opened the suitcase. From under a miscellaneous collection of clothing he lifted out a bundle that had been wrapped in an oil-stained sweatshirt and secured with three strips of green cloth, each tied with a bow knot. He untied the knots, spread the sweatshirt on the bed, and took the shotgun in both hands. He'd bought the gun on impulse, for twenty-five dollars, at a garage sale. It was a double-barreled Browning, originally an expensive gun that had obviously been neglected over the years. He'd taken the gun to Jack Finney's mountain cabin. With some trepidation, at first using a large square of thick steel to shield his face, he'd test fired both barrels. Satisfied that the breech was tight, he and Jack had shot up a whole box of twelve-gauge shells, firing at tin cans weighed with rocks that one man threw into the air while the other man fired. Afterward, they'd calculated that their hits were less than twenty-five percent. And, yes, both their shoulders had turned black and blue the next day.

He'd taken the gun home, cleaned it, sprayed it with WD 40 and put it in his closet. The next day he'd bought a hacksaw. Feeling like a criminal, he'd disassembled the gun. Using a kitchen chair as an improvised sawhorse, holding down the barrels with his foot, he'd spent more than an hour sawing eighteen inches off the barrels. Then he'd sawed six inches off the stock, and two inches off the forestock. In two hours he'd fashioned an illegal weapon that, loaded with buckshot, could literally blow a man apart at close range. Broken down into its three parts, it could easily be carried in a grocery bag. Assembled, it could be concealed under a jacket, or even inside a pants leg. In two years, this was only the second time he'd ventured to take the gun outside his apartment.

Rummaging again, he found the plastic bag containing six rounds of twelve-gauge buckshot. He broke open the gun, slipped two shells into the chambers, and snapped the gun closed, carefully setting the safety, and testing it. As he slipped the four extra shells into his pocket, he glanced at his watch. The time was exactly nine o'clock. In five minutes, Betty would leave her cabin.

A
S HE ALWAYS DID
, Justin Powers had committed the route to memory: Interstate 5 to Oceanside, Route 78 across the mountains to S-3, which he would follow until it dead-ended at Borrego Springs. Years ago, when he'd been a student at Stanford, during the spring break, four fraternity brothers had made this trip. But at Borrego Springs they'd turned east, toward the Salton Sea, then on to Palm Springs, where they'd rented a motel room and proceeded to get drunk. Rick Foster, who'd been profiled in last Friday's edition of the
Wall Street Journal
, had proposed that they find two whores, and take turns. Bravely drinking, they'd all vowed to chip in, then screw their brains out. But when Rick had gotten sick and then passed out, the idea had died aborning.

Ahead, he saw the signs marking the junction of Route 78 and S-3, the two-lane highway that led out of the mountains and down to the desert floor. It had been fifteen minutes, at least, since he'd met a car; the dashboard clock read 10:15
P.M
. As he'd calculated, he would arrive in Borrego Springs about eleven.

But to what purpose?

Following orders, always the good soldier, he'd done as DuBois had commanded: hurried home, changed into casual clothes, packed an overnight bag, and taken the twenty-five thousand dollars from his bedroom safe.

In less than an hour after leaving DuBois, he'd been on the freeway, driving south. At first he'd been eager to obey DuBois' order. If he could find Fisher, call him off, then that was an end to it. Even if the worst happened, and Betty made good on her threat to talk to the police, her target would be DuBois, not him. So it had seemed, at first, that he had everything to gain, making this trip. There would be no more murders, no further danger, if he could find Fisher.

But then, as the miles passed, the doubts began to surface—and then began to compound.

Arriving late at night, a stranger in a dark, strange town, how could he ever hope to find Fisher? He didn't know which motel Fisher had chosen, or what kind of a car he was driving. His only hope, therefore, was to actually see Fisher, a slim chance even in the daytime hours. And to make inquiries would connect them, he and the hired hit man. Inquiries would call attention to both of them, therefore endanger them.

As the junction came closer, he checked his mirrors, eased off on the accelerator, swung the big Mercedes into the left turn. This highway, S-3, was more difficult than Route 78: two narrow lanes clinging to the side of a small mountain, spiraling gently down. Calculating the curves ahead, sensitive to the sway of the car, he cautiously slowed to forty.

Time: 10:27.

Already, it could have happened.

Fisher could have arrived at Borrego in the late afternoon. He could have driven to the Ram's Head, where Betty Giles was staying. He would have familiarized himself with the town, with the roads in and out, possibly with the habits of the local police. Then, under cover of darkness, he could have killed her, then escaped into the mountains that, according to the map, surrounded the town on three sides.

At that moment, police could be puzzling over the body, searching for clues, interrogating witnesses.

Enter Justin Powers, the ultimate errand boy. Salary: a quarter of a million a year—plus bonuses, plus stock options, plus all the other perks: the club memberships, the travel cards, the corporate gifts. Year to year, he earned more than any of his friends.

Friends
?

Did he have any, really?

Earned
?

Was that the word, the legitimate word?

No, not earned. Rather, he collected his lackey's reward, his payment for services well and faithfully rendered, his five-figure tips.

Even when he made his own money in the market, separate from DuBois' money, he did it by buying whatever DuBois bought, selling whatever DuBois sold. Ten years ago, his dependency on DuBois sometimes secretly shamed him. Once, drunk, having just concluded an insider trading deal for DuBois, having dutifully offered the great man his craven gratitude for a ten-thousand-dollar tip, he'd considered blackmail. He'd been in bed with a party girl, a high-class hooker, an amenity provided by the third party in the three-cornered insider deal. Sylvia had been in Philadelphia visiting her parents, and the hooker had been hired for the whole night. After they'd done it—after he'd finally come, helped along by her knowing fingers and busy tongue—she'd gone to sleep beside him, gently snoring. Strangely, even though he was drunk, he hadn't been able to sleep. Instead, lying on his back, staring at the ceiling, listening to the hooker snore, he'd begun to fantasize. In the fantasy he began by selling his stocks and bonds, all of them. The proceeds, of course, would go to Switzerland, into his numbered account, leaving only a hundred thousand in Los Angeles, for Sylvia. Carrying another hundred thousand in cash and traveler's checks, he would fly to Brazil, secretly. He would allow a month to pass, perhaps two months. Then he would begin writing the letters to DuBois—extortion letters. Each letter would detail a crooked stock deal, or a currency violation, or a land swindle. And each letter would reap a golden harvest.

It was a fantasy that was to regularly recur over the next several years, whenever he'd had too much to drink. Until, finally, his doctor had provided the resolution. If he didn't quit drinking, his doctor said, his liver could fail. And when he'd done it, managed to finally quit drinking, the fantasies had faded, leaving him with the realization that he would never—ever—get the best of Daniel DuBois.

But Betty Giles had done it. Somehow, she'd done it—she and her boyfriend. A forty-thousand-dollar-a-year assistant and her ne'er-do-well boyfriend with the cowboy boots and the greasy hair had actually done it, actually shaken the throne.