Deep Cover (43 page)

Suffield was dubious to the extent of glancing at Forrester in the mirror at one point and saying, “I cite Mark Twain—‘Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.' End of citation. You've got a talent for finding absurd situations.”

Forrester made no reply and Top proceeded with his précis. Forrester sat uneasy in the corner and felt isolated, detached
in the sealed car as it hurtled through the morning on the straight highway that four-laned toward the mountains. Beer cans and half-buried bottles glinted along the desert roadside. Ronnie sat far over on her side of the back seat, her lips parted amd heavy in repose; she had covered her eyes with dark harlequin glasses. She was looking out her window, tense as if she were waiting for something. She seemed consumed by irrational fears; he had never seen her like that before. Perhaps she had been right: perhaps they had let it all come together too fast, perhaps they needed to back away and learn each other. He was beginning to realize the scope of his ignorance about her.

Suffield stopped by the gate and Jaime Spode got out. They all watched him open the mailbox. Catching Les Suffield's profile, Forrester saw the jaw hinge bunch up and something struggle fiercely behind Suffield's eyes. But the voice was very controlled. “It appears the postman dallieth.”

Spode slid into the car. “Not due yet anyhow—let's go up to the house and wait.”

The banality of the exchange made it all seem unreal. Ronnie bit a thumbnail. Forrester was vexatiously alert to the tension in the car. He felt responsible for it but he did not understand it because they all seemed disproportionately apprehensive. When they reached the house Ronnie went up to the door with her marvelous flowing walk—nothing would change that—but once inside she began to flutter, opening blinds and putting coffee on to boil and plumping up cushions, never alighting, never looking directly at Forrester. Finally it was too much for him: “Will all of you just sit down for one minute? You're all acting as if I've committed some unforgivable faux pas and you're making a belabored point of ignoring it.”

“Oh nonsense,” Ronnie said crossly. “But you've made me so nervous I'm waiting for spies to come crawling out of the woodwork with great gleaming knives between their teeth.”

Les Suffield was at the front window looking out and Spode said, “You can't see the mailbox from up here.”

“I know. I was looking at those clouds. We're going to get some rain—any chance of the road getting washed out?”

Forrester walked to the window to have a look. The unrolling clouds had heavy black bellies and the shadow streaks of grey rain slanted toward the peaks along a wide front beyond the western perimeter of the valley. Tall lances of cloud shot forward from the crest. “Sometimes the arroyos fill up with flash floods—you may get eight feet of water in some of the dips in the road but it always dries up after a few hours, half a day at the most. You learn to accommodate yourself to those things down here.”

“But if we don't beat that out of here we'll probably be stuck here overnight, won't we?”

“It's possible,” Forrester said indifferently. “There's plenty here to feed us. Don't worry about it, Les.”

Suffield shrugged his thick shoulders and turned, reaching around to adjust the hip-pocket gun under the tail of his jacket. “It's quite a story, Jaime. If I didn't know the source I'd take it for a fairy tale.”

“I wish it was.”

“How much do the Government agents know about this?”

Spode made a gesture. “Not much more than we know.”

“There's got to be an explanation for it.”

Forrester went back to the couch. “Maybe we'll find out when Ross Trumble's letter arrives. I think the coffee's boiling.”

Ronnie bounced out of her chair and Suffield turned. “I'll help with that.” He trailed her out toward the kitchen and the low run of their voices came back into the room but Forrester couldn't make out the words. It went on for some time until Spode said, “They seem to have gone into a huddle out there. I guess we did spring it on them kind of sudden.”

Ronnie came in with a tray and distributed cups; the coffee made a good strong smell. “I'll throw something together for lunch in a little while.” When she handed his coffee to Forrester the cup and saucer rattled in her hand.

Suffield came in, agitated, preceded by his voice: “I just tried the phone. It's dead.”

Forrester flapped his big hand toward the window. “The line goes across to the Santa Cruz—it's already raining over there and the wire may be down.”

“I don't like that.”

Spode said, spuriously mild, “Les may be right. It could be somebody cut the wire.” He carried his coffee to the window and took up a post there.

Suffield said, “Who else is around here?”

Forrester was still scowling at Spode; he turned to answer Suffield's question: “The crew will be out—with a storm coming in, they'll be bunching the herds.”

“Haven't you got a house man?”

“Just the housekeeper, Mrs. Gutiérrez. She's my manager's wife—when I arrive with guests she always fades out of sight and waits at home until she's called.”

“She live around here?”

“The white dobe down below. We passed it on the way. You've been here before, Les, what's the matter?”

“Just that we're pretty isolated here, aren't we? It could be an awkward time for friend Belsky to drop in.”

“I hardly think it's likely.”

Spode said, “I wouldn't exactly—” and then he stiffened at the window. “Dust out above the road. Your mailman drive a jeep down here?”

“Yes.” Forrester put his cup down before he stood up.

Suffield said, “I'll go down and get it.” His voice was taut with anxiety and he walked toward the door with very quick strides.

Forrester was closer to the door; he got there first and said mildly, “Then let's both go,” and went past into the foyer.

Suffield's voice, behind him, gripped him as if by the elbow and swung him around. “Hold it a minute, then.”

When Forrester turned he saw the revolver in Suffield's fist.

“We'll all go,” Suffield said.

Ronnie sat bolt upright. “No, Les.”

“Shut up.”

Forrester snapped, “What the devil is this?” And Spode's
voice overlapped his: “For Christ's sake, Les, what's the flap?”

“Everybody outside to the car. You drive, Jaime, and Alan sits in the front seat with you. Now move, everybody.”

“Will you all please just shut up. Jaime, pull over by the mailbox and don't move a God damned muscle. Ronnie, you collect the mail, that's a good girl.”

Spode eased the car in by the side of the road and they waited for Ronnie; but after she had opened the door and swung her legs out she stopped and said, “Les, for heaven's sake—”

“Move. Eyes front, you two.”

A few raindrops spattered the hood of the car and Forrester felt sweat in his armpits, along his chest, in his palms.

“I told you to sit still. I mean it, I'll kill both of you if you push me.”

Spode said in exasperated bewilderment, “Jesus H. Christ.”

The car swayed with Ronnie's weight and the back door chunked shut. Suffield said, “Never mind the rest of the junk. Is it in there?”

“This must be it,” she said.

“Give it to me. Jaime, drive us back up to the house.”

The gun was steady in the fist and Suffield leaned his back against the big door to close it. “Everybody sit down. Ronnie, you'd better open this and read it; I don't want to take my eyes off these two.”

Forrester said, “This has gone far enough. Put that gun—”

“Will you all just quit yapping for a minute? I need to think,”

“You don't need to think with that gun in your hand. What's come over you?”

Suffield's thumb curled over the hammer of the revolver. “I told you to sit down.”

Filled with disbelief Forrester backed up till his knees struck
the chair. He settled onto its edge. “All right, Les, I'm sitting down. Just take it easy now. What do you want of us?”

“Don't humor me, I'm not sick in the head.”

“Just take it easy then—there's no need to fill the air with bullets. Just tell us what it is you want.”

Spode folded his arms and squinted; he was by the front window. “And make it good, Les, because I can spot you the gun and thirty pounds and still take you apart—make it real good, hear?”

Suffield's red-brick lips peeled back from his teeth. “Don't you think I can handle a gun? Don't get notions, Jaime, just sit down on that windowsill and keep quiet.”

Forrester's head was lifted; he was listening to the run of Suffield's voice, trying to detect the note of madness that surely had to be there; but Suffield was not out of control and there was nothing in his attitude to confirm what had to be the case: that something in him had snapped.

Suffield said, “What about it, Ronnie?”

It was so heavy it had taken four first-class stamps on the envelope. “The handwriting's like a child's.”

“He was overwrought. What's in it?”

“Everything,” she said. “Everything he knew. Dangerfield, Craig, the whole thing.”

“I suspected as much. He must have been planning it for years. Planning to blow it all sky high if and when the man ever showed up from over there.”

“It's strange,” Ronnie said. “He didn't even know what it was for. He had no idea. He had to be in Phoenix with Alan and Senator Guest that morning.”

“I know about that. He sent Craig to tape the meeting but Craig fell through and Trumble was right back at square one. He never did find out.”

Forrester said, “Will you please—”

“Shut up.” Suffield's florid face was clamped up tight; a vein showed at his forehead. “Does he name names?”

“Half a dozen,” Ronnie said. “All he knew.”

“Burn it,” Suffield said. “In the fireplace over there. Do it one sheet at a time.”

Forrester gathered his legs. “Wait just a minute.”

Suffield cocked the revolver. “Sit still. Go ahead, Ronnie. Burn it.”

She burned the letter sheet by sheet and stirred the ashes with a poker. Suffield stood by, vigilant over the gun. Consumed with rage Forrester cleared his throat and spoke; his voice trembled: “I think you'd better explain this. Whatever it is—”

“It isn't,” Suffield barked. “It's nothing for you to know anything about.” He backed up toward the fireplace so as to keep both Forrester and Spode conveniently in his view. Ronnie circled behind him and reached the couch and Suffield spoke to her as if they were alone together in the room: “We'll have to make it look like an accident.”

“No!”

“Stop it. Don't get hysterical. We've got to think, you know that.”

“We're not going to kill anyone, Les.”

“Then tell me how else to do it. Just tell me that.”

“I don't know. But there must be something.”

“We haven't got time.”

Ronnie said with rueful despondency, “You fool, Les. We should have destroyed the letter without anyone knowing.”

“How? He wasn't about to let me go get it. Anyway they've got to be silenced now—they know too much, they can identify us, our cover's blown and the only way we can get it back is to kill them.”

“But it's not Alan's fault! You're the one who gave it away!”

“You're being irrational, Ronnie. It makes no difference whose fault it is, it's done. We've got to undo it. There's too much at stake.”

“I forget what they say,” she said. “… You can't make scrambled eggs without murdering people, isn't that it? I won't go through with it, Les. I won't be a part of murder—not again. You can keep on forever explaining to me why it's necessary but I'm all through listening to arguments that prove lies are true and murder is respectable and people are nothing.”

Suffield murmured, “You'd like to find a way out of it where nobody gets hurt. That's the same thing as trying to stick a pin in a balloon gradually. It can't be done, Ronnie.”

Forrester understood that as senseless as it all seemed, Suffield was going to kill him. Forrester's eyes swiveled quickly toward Top Spode, and Top nodded almost imperceptibly. Forrester turned toward Suffield and started talking, to draw Suffield's attention. “I don't know what this is all about but if you're going to kill us I think we deserve to know why. If you—”

“What comfort will it be when you're dead? It won't make the slightest difference,” Suffield said, but his florid frown had come around squarely to face Forrester. “Jesus, do you think I
like
this? But you and this God damned sleuth have stumbled into something and there are too many lives at stake; we just can't afford the slightest whisper of suspicion.”

Ronnie's mouth was curled. “You've always had that genius, Les, for doing something inexcusable and then dreaming up high-sounding justifications to fit it. Listen to me—all we need to do is lock them up and gag them, make sure they can't get loose before tomorrow night; we'll all be out of reach in a little over thirty hours—we only need to make sure Alan and Jaime don't raise the alarm before the thing is done. After that the whole world will know what happened and it won't matter what Alan knows about us. We'll be gone, disappeared.”

“No good,” Suffield said. “The world will know
what
happened but it can't be allowed to find out
how
it happened. If the truth came out you could have total global war on your hands.”

“My God, aren't we going to have that anyway?”

“You're talking too much, Ronnie. You're only nailing the lids on their coffins.”