Deadline (25 page)

She started tossing CDs through the air like Frisbees.

‘There. There. And there. And here's another one!'

They whizzed past me, struck walls, the desk-lamp. This was madness. Everything in the room had broken free of its moorings. Gravity was defunct.

I grabbed her arms and held them against her sides. She was breathing hard. The look in her eyes was poisonous.

‘Calm down, cool it,' I said. I thought of Sondra:
Come get me, please.
The dream had no ending. The nightmare was without limits.

‘Fuck calm,' she said.

‘Emily. Come on.
Calm.
'

‘Shove calm up your fucking ass,' she said.

She bent her head and opened her mouth, then plunged her teeth into the back of my hand. I moaned with the pain of it. I saw the deep impression left by her teeth in my skin.

‘Shove calm, Jerry …' And she slid slowly from my hold to the floor, where she kneeled, shoulders slumped, among the slick CD boxes. She was crying in a strangulated way, holding back each sob instead of releasing it.

She covered her face with her hands. Her body trembled. I touched her shoulder lightly.

I said, ‘I don't have any choice, Emily.'

Maybe she whispered through the spaces between her fingers. Maybe she said,
I know, I know.
I wasn't sure. Instead, my attention was drawn to the upturned CDs. I reached down and picked up one of the boxes that had fallen face down in the heap, and I looked at the photograph on the back.

A picture of a band called
Fibber McGee.

I'd never heard of them.

There were four faces in the photo, and I recognized one. He was holding a guitar. His face had slightly haunted eyes.

I knew him.

10.03 p.m.

The fire inside her suddenly flickered and died. Drained of energy, she slumped against me, and I helped her to the sofa. She was very light, delicate; she might have been composed of fragile materials, paper stretched over slender struts of balsa-wood. She lay down on her side and looked at me as if I were very far away.

‘I'm tired. I'm so damned
weary.
Just do what you think is right, Jerry.'

There was only one right.

I walked to the desk. I skipped over the heap of CDs on the floor. I opened the telephone directory. I found the name I wanted, wrote the address down in a small notebook, stuck the book in my pocket. I looked at the photograph of the band that called itself
Fibber McGee
, as if to make absolutely sure I wasn't mistaken.

I wasn't. It was a face I knew very well.

I said to Emily, ‘Rest. Stay where you are and try to rest.'

She looked at me, but her gaze was focused inward. Maybe she was sifting the wreckage of her life, wondering how it might be salvaged, how the torpedoed ship of her ambition might be raised up from the place where it had been sunk. I didn't know. I didn't stop to ask. I didn't have time.

I wondered whether some little spark of optimism remained inside me even now: some absurdly faint hope that I might somehow salvage something out of all this, maybe rescue Sondra, and at the same time save Emily Ford from
total
ruin. If I allowed myself to think like that, I was deluding myself. The world didn't work that way. Nothing was that neat. Everything was ragged round the edges, and impenetrable at the center.

I hurried from the office. I calculated it was going to take me five minutes to reach my destination. It was already past the deadline. Just. My cellphone would ring at any moment.
You're running late, Lomax.

I left the building, ran to where I'd parked Bo Sonderheim's Ultima. I stared into the dark as I drove, noticing how streetlights turned into shapeless gashes of light against the smudges on my glasses. It didn't matter. I could see where I was going, and that was all I needed. I passed the abandoned, fire-damaged shell of a warehouse a few blocks from Hollywood Boulevard. I saw boys and girls trawling the sidewalk for custom. Their faces, hard-bitten and sad, exploded in the lights of my car. City of Lost Angels. One hopeful boy, long-haired and slim, stepped forward and I almost collided with him. But I spun the wheel at the last possible moment, catching a glimpse of his face, whiter than any mime's, the eyes like a couple of tiny mirrors reflecting the beams of the car. An accident, I didn't need that, I didn't need anything that would slow my progress.

Fibber McGee. One in a multitude of bands that hadn't made it anywhere. Doomed to silence and neglect in half-price trays in record stores, or to those sad cardboard boxes in Salvation Army shops. Maybe the CD hadn't even been released by LaBrea, because the band had broken up. Maybe there had been acrimony and betrayal, or Gerson, the tastemaker, had decided the band's sound didn't quite belong in the Now, that it wasn't going to get bodies dancing and cash-registers ringing. So Gerson killed the album. He was the executioner of careers.

The cellphone rang. I picked up, said nothing.

‘It's past the deadline, Lomax. Are you trying to play games with me again? Running and running and hiding and hiding. When will you learn that there's no escape route, Lomax? No back staircase. No concealed doorways or hatches. Change cars, change your clothes, change your name, dye your hair and change your whole damned appearance, there's no hiding-place. I know what it is – you're stoned on adrenalin. You're buzzing. You need another blast. Just say the word and I'll put something together for you without any trouble. More fireworks for the good doctor.'

I wondered if he knew where I was, if his associates had tracked me. I said, ‘You think I get a kick out of people being killed? I figured you'd know me better than that.
You're
the one with a taste for blood. Violence gives you a hard-on. You're a sick shit.'

He laughed. ‘Sick shit? Doesn't sound like a professional diagnosis to me, Lomax. Say I hire you as my shrink and then I submit your bills to my health-insurance company – can I claim I need psychiatric treatment on the grounds that I'm, excuse the imprecise expression, a
sick shit?
We don't need to guess what the insurance company would say, do we? Let me tell you what I think, Lomax. You're too involved. You can't make detached judgments. You need to be aloof in your line of work, and you've lost it, doctor. You've let it slip away. I don't blame you. You're only human.'

I heard him light a cigarette, then inhale deeply. It was the first knowledge I had of any of his habits. I said, ‘Look, we had a deal. I got what you wanted from the safe-deposit box. As soon as I stepped out of the bank with the goods, your guys launched a goddam assault and tried to take it away from me. The way I see it, you made an attempt to renege on the deal. You planned to rip me off. There was never any bargain.'

‘I want the goods,' he said. ‘I just wasn't sure you'd play according to my script –'

‘Your script is the only one. You've got my wife, for Christ's sake! You think I was going to turn my back on her? Tell you to piss off, you're not getting the goods, you can do what you like with her?'

He was quiet for a moment. ‘I never intended to keep your wife. Believe me. I want the material. We're all under some kind of pressure in this situation, Lomax. It's not only you. I have to deal with certain parties who think my approach might have been more … let's say, direct. But that doesn't concern you. As for the deal, it's valid. It's always been valid. Regrettably, a little too much haste was shown at the bank, things got out of hand …'

Out of hand
, I thought.
Too much haste.
But I was interested in only one thing. ‘Tell me about my wife's condition.'

‘She's sleeping –'

‘Wake her. Do that for me.'

‘I really don't intend to wake her, Lomax. You see, I have this wonderfully sweet image. Call me romantic. She wakes up in her own bed with her husband lying beside her, and all's well in the world and God's up there looking wise and benign. And Emily Ford disappears from public life, and all my friends and associates, who do not like the idea of her candidacy because it runs counter to their business interests, can breath a collective sigh of relief. You're following me?'

‘She becomes a backwater lawyer somewhere,' I said. ‘She gives up chasing big-time criminals.'

‘Oh no, she gives up on law
entirely
, Lomax. Maybe she teaches in a Montessori someplace. Or we find her some work in a roadhouse, slinging eggs over easy and sausages on the side to fat truckers who'll pinch her little ass. We'll see. We may be charitable … I don't know. It's not my decision.'

‘Whose decision is it?'

‘A question I can't answer. You're talking about locked rooms and shuttered houses and plush, quiet offices that are totally off-limits to you, Lomax. They might as well be on another planet.'

‘I don't want Emily Ford subjected to any physical harm. No threats. Nothing like that. I want to hear you say that.'

‘Take it as said.'

‘Take your word, you mean?'

‘What else do you have in the end, Jerry?

Nothing
, I thought.
I have nothing else. No guarantees. No pledge in writing.
I was still dependent on his word. His promise. I said, ‘I still want to talk to my wife. Give me that much, at least.'

‘And I told you I don't want to wake her. Besides, you heard her voice about fifteen minutes ago. You know she's fine.'

‘I know she was fine fifteen minutes ago,' I said.

‘And she's still fine now.'

‘You say.'

‘I'm not going down this road with you again, Lomax. Are you ready to finalize? Are you ready to make the transfer?'

Yes, I was ready. I said, ‘No more gunmen, no more assaults?'

‘I promise you. I'll call you back in a few minutes with final details of where and how. Be good, Lomax, and all will end well in this city of angels and enchantment … oh, almost forgot. One last question. Is the Ultima a car you'd recommend?'

He hung up.

OK, so he knew I was driving Sonderheim's car. But did he know my location? I was weaving down sidestreets past rows of apartment buildings, most of them shabby. I pulled over to the side, braked, waited ten seconds, fifteen. The rearview mirror was dark. Nothing showed. No car behind me. No evidence of anyone. But I couldn't be sure. I could never be sure. I didn't know how many people were detailed to watch me. I didn't like uncertainty. Suddenly, I wanted a life in which all the important things were predictable.

I drove on, then slowed and checked the address I'd written in the notebook. 224 Pineon. It was a Sixties building. Each apartment had a tiny balcony overlooking the street, and each balcony had a bleached-out canvas canopy. I saw stained-glass discs hanging in a couple of windows, a crystal or two, a couple of bumper stickers with old Clinton jokes on them. I guessed there was a pool out back. The smell of chlorine floated through the neighborhood.

I parked the car and shut my eyes for a fraction of a second, feeling the weight of eyelids. The dead and injured appeared to drift through the dark spaces in my head – George Rocco gunned down, Harry in the passenger seat of my car, Bo Sonderheim lying motionless outside the bank he managed, Parlance electrocuted in his Land Rover, and even Billy Fear, killed with an open soup-can in his hand inside a wretched trailer in a place called Whipperwill Glades Trailer Park.

I shook myself from this morbid torpor. I got out of the car and walked to the front door; through a glass panel, I saw a row of mailboxes. The door wasn't locked. It opened into a kind of ante-chamber where another glass door – this one locked – gave me a view of a poorly-lit lobby, receding into shadows.

I was faced with a bunch of buzzers, each of which had a name attached. I couldn't get beyond this locked lobby unless an inhabitant of the building buzzed me inside. I checked the names. Apartment # 28. If I rang this buzzer and announced myself through the intercom system, there was no chance of getting in, I knew that.

Gaining entrance required ingenuity. Or brute force.

I hurried back to the Ultima, parked half a block away, and opened the trunk. I rummaged inside, found the tire-iron, smacked it once in the palm of my hand as if to test its heft. I returned to the building, stepped into the vestibule, whacked the glass panel once; the pane broke and a section fell away. I reached inside, half-expecting an alarm to sound, but none did; I turned the handle, opened the door, then walked quickly along the corridor. I climbed a flight of worn stone steps to the second floor; dull yellow paint peeled from walls.

I found Apartment 28 and rang the doorbell even though the door was open a few inches.

‘You the cab-driver?'

The man who asked the question was hauling a couple of suitcases towards the door with some difficulty, and had his back turned to me. But there was no mistaking the voice: I'd heard it dozens of times. I'd listened to it drone on about dreams, anxieties, the terror of supermarkets, cold sweats in the produce section, the angst that lurked beneath the watermelons and the mangoes; I'd listened to it describe what it was like to suffer the feeling that fluorescent lights were about to fall on you, or that the great sandy spaces of a beach concealed an unspeakable menace.

And there was no mistaking the ponytail that hung down the back of his neck.

‘Leaving?' I asked.

He turned. His expression was one of astonishment. He flicked his head, a nervous gesture I'd seen him make a hundred times before, and the ponytail swung away from his neck a moment. ‘I'm pushed for time, Jerry,' he said. ‘Plane to catch. You know how it is. They don't wait for you … is the iron just for show?'

‘I don't know yet.'

He shrugged. ‘I'm sorry I misled you. OK? I feel bad about it. I'm sorry I cancelled my appointment, too, but I had more pressing concerns. Pity. I was beginning to enjoy our sessions.'