Recoil

“Are you all right?”

“Yes. I’m not hit. But they—”

Bradleigh’s relief took the form of a surge of anger: “Get back in there and get the fuck away from here.”

“That’s my house.”

“The hell. It’s the insurance company’s now. You damn fool.”

He stared at the ruins. Half the house was gone: just debris. The back walls were intact and part of the roof sagged inward; the rest was junk.

Roger had his arms around Ro

“My kid—my wife …” He twisted around, watching Jan step forward on the lawn with one hand lifted.

Bradleigh batted him across the back of the head, “Get down. Quit making a target out of yourself.”

“What?” But he slid down in the seat, knees against the dash.

“You fell for it like a rube buying the Brooklyn Bridge. Why do you think they posted the sniper up there? The bastard was there to pick you off when you showed up to rubberneck the wreckage. You dumb bastard. God knows why you’re alive.”

CHAPTER THREE

Los Angeles: 1 August

1

ROGER’S STATION WAGON SLID TO A STOP ON THE GRAVEL AND Jan came out into Mathieson’s arms; Ro

They were inside the Gilfillans’ house but he didn’t remember getting there. Bradleigh was on the phone. Two ambulance doctors were filling syringes. Ro

Mathieson refused sedation and the white-uniformed doctor moved away. Mathieson sat on Roger’s cowhide ottoman right back in the corner of the room with his shoulders wedged against the intersecting walls. Words flew past and he tried to catch them.

The nurse with Amy glanced at him. He felt her stare and dragged his eyes around. The nurse was young and pretty and had one of those meaningless professional smiles that clicked on whenever anyone looked at her. She was pretending to listen to Amy’s drugged babblings: Amy was flat on the divan, struggling to communicate something.

A cop lifted back an end of the drape to look outside. Mathieson saw past his arm through the window. He had no reckoning of time: It was after dark but the Gilfillans’ lawn glared with a blaze of television lights. He saw a TV-remote panel truck and a reporter on the lawn talking into a camera.

The cop dropped the drape back in place and turned toward Mathieson. “Anything I can get you, sir?”

“No.”

Bradleigh cupped the phone in his palm and spoke to the cop: “Get him a drink. Straight booze and an ice cube.”

“Yes, sir.” The cop moved briskly. Mathieson watched everything; it all swayed around him and never seemed to touch him—he felt weightless.

Uniformed cops shifted in the room like organisms under a microscope.

There was a drink in his hand and someone was forcing his arm up toward his mouth. “Come on, drink it.” Bradleigh.

He took a swallow. He couldn’t taste it. “Gle

“Shock. Go on, drink up. You want a coat or a blanket or anything?”

“No.”

“Chug-a-lug. Come on, attaboy.”

The nurse put a blanket over Amy Gilfillan. Mathieson had never seen Amy so pale—like a death mask. She was muttering, scowling with a little-girl frown of concentration.

Bradleigh was back on the phone. “The hell with that. I want both of them tucked away out of circulation, right now this minute. Arrest them if you have to; I don’t care what they want. Pass it on, all right? … Right. Switch me over to the DAC, will you? … Dan, me again. Did you ask the police to cover L.A. International? All right, let’s try to cover the rest of the area airports too—everything from Burbank and Santa Barbara to San Diego. And get teams out to the New York airports.… What? … Hell, because we know who set this up and they’re from New York.… Maybe not but we’ve got to cover it. … No. No positive make on it. Couple people saw a dark sedan going like hell—one makes it green, the other blue. You know how those are. No make on the motorcycle but what the hell, how many people can tell one motorcycle from another? … No, the car was probably boosted an hour before the hit anyway. We’ll find it abandoned five miles from here. They must have switched cars four times on the way in and out, these guys aren’t tyros. See if you can run a make on Vietnam combat veterans in the New York mobs. They used plastique, they must have learned how somewhere … Frank Pastor what? Jesus H. Christ, doesn’t that just figure. … All right, you’ve got the number here.”

The alcohol was getting to Mathieson. Jan was sitting on the edge of the ottoman holding his hands. “Darling?”

She looked up at Bradleigh. “He’s coming out of it.”

“I’m freezing to death. Look at me—goose bumps.”

“Get him a blanket.” Bradleigh sent the cop away. “You with us now, Fred?”

“I think so. Fu

The cop brought a blanket and Bradleigh swapped the empty glass for it. “Refill.”

His teeth were chattering. He clutched the blanket around him like a Sioux. “Been a long time since I got shot at. But I wouldn’t have thought I’d have gone all to pieces like this.”

“You want a cigarette?” Bradleigh shook out his pack.

“I quit six years ago.”

“That was six years ago.”

“I’d only burn holes in this blanket.”

The cop gave him the refilled glass and he drank it straight down. It burned. Bourbon, he realized.

Bradleigh took the empty glass. “That’s probably enough. You don’t want to get schnockered.”

“All right, I’m mostly here. Tell me what the hell happened.”

Jan looked up at Bradleigh and caught his nod. She said, “We were all here in Roger and Amy’s house. We heard the blast. Then a lot of sirens, and somebody phoned Roger and told him our house had exploded. We all went up there.”

Bradleigh said, “A few people heard the car going away fast but only a couple of people saw it. There haven’t been any descriptions we could use. One of your neighbors had phoned the police and they got up there fast, if it matters. The way we’ve reconstructed it, the car came down from the top of the canyon, at least two men in it—a driver and the guy who threw the bomb. Are you all right?”

“I’m just peachy. For God’s sake.”

“Look, at least nobody got hurt.”

“Go on, then.”

“I don’t know what else to tell you. Frank Pastor was awarded parole today. He’ll be out in a day or two. How does that grab you, Goddamnit?”

Jan burst into abrupt laughter. Mathieson reached out and she sagged against him, burying her face against his chest, the laughter going into sobs.

“You’re alive,” Bradleigh said in his stern monotone.

“Are we supposed to be grateful about that?”

“You will be when you’ve had time to think about it.”

“What about right now? How are we supposed to feel right now?”

“They don’t make rules about it.”

“I just want this to be a bad dream.”

2

By midnight Amy Gilfillan was in bed, drugged to sleep, and the house had emptied out but there were still cops outside standing guard. The TV trucks and lights were gone. Ro