Recoil. Part 4

"It's rough to get away right now, Glenn. I'm right in the middle of contract negotiations ..."

"Nothing's as urgent as survival."

"Maybe. But I think you may be--"

The bartender yelled across the room: "Hey, everybody listen here!"

He was turning up the volume of the radio behind the bar. It was a news announcer's voice: "... promises to hold a news conference at nine tomorrow morning, Los Angeles time, at which time he expects to have been reunited with his son, Sam Stedman Junior. The star's sixteen-year-old son, who was kidnapped last Sat.u.r.day, is being taken by helicopter from his place of rescue in Baja California to a hospital in Hermosillo, Mexico. Mr. Stedman stressed that his son appears to be unharmed, according to his reports from private investigator Diego Vasquez, who rescued the youth this afternoon. But he said his son had been drugged with sedatives by the kidnappers to prevent his escaping. The flight to Hermosillo hospital is purely precautionary, Mr. Stedman said, and his son will be flown home to Los Angeles tonight in a private chartered plane which Mr. Stedman, a licensed pilot, will fly himself. On his way to Los Angeles airport, Mr. Stedman spoke briefly with this reporter."

There was no mistaking the deep heartland tw.a.n.g of Sam Stedman's voice. "Through the grace of G.o.d and the mercy of Jesus Christ my son has been set free. I'm clasping my hands in a prayer of profound thanks to Almighty G.o.d."

"Mr. Stedman, is it true that your son was rescued by an armed a.s.sault on the kidnappers' camp by Mr. Vasquez?"

"Yes, sir, it was Diego Vasquez's show, pure and simple. My son and I owe a great deal to that fine man-more than we can ever repay. I pray to G.o.d to bestow His blessing on Mr. Vasquez and his fine family."

"We've heard reports that three or four of the kidnappers may have been shot during the rescue operation. Can you confirm that, sir?"

"No, I can't. I think we'd just better wait and find out the truth from the people who are actually down there. You have to excuse me now. Bless you."

The bartender turned the radio down and beamed at everyone in the room. "Well now how about that, folks?"

The fat actor lurched to the door. He looked around owlishly. "Hallelujah," he muttered, and went.

Conversations picked up again. The waitress plugged the jukebox back in. Bradleigh seemed annoyed: "Vasquez. I'm sick of hearing Vasquez, Vasquez, Vasquez. You'd think he was Emiliano Zapata. f.u.c.king gunslinger. He's found a way to commit legal murder and the press loves the son of a b.i.t.c.h. In a sane society he'd be locked up in a rubber room."

Bradleigh lit another cigarette and inhaled ferociously. "They say he gets the job done. Well the b.a.s.t.a.r.d that tried to murder Benson in Oklahoma-he almost got the job done too. Where's the difference? Come on, let's get out of here." He signaled for the check.

Mathieson said, "Where can I reach you?"

"Right behind you. I'll tag along in my car and hang around until we've got you packed and on the plane."

7.

Going up toward the top of the canyon drive he heard sirens somewhere nearby. There were always sirens in the valley; the sound carried up the gorges.

He saw the blue Plymouth in the rearview mirror, Bradleigh's left hand propping up the frame of the open window.

By habit he had the car radio tuned to KGEB, the all-news station; a fraction of his attention absorbed the Stedman-Vasquez story and the hour's catalog of disasters while he stopped and waited for a Datsun to back out of a driveway. He was starting to move again when his ear picked up the name Mathieson; he shot his hand to the radio k.n.o.b to turn it up.

"... explosion evidently was caused by a powerful bomb that was thrown from a pa.s.sing car. The bomb was hurled into the house through a front window, shattering the gla.s.s and exploding violently inside the living room. Jim Schott reported from the scene of the explosion a few minutes ago that police and rescue workers still are not certain whether the Mathieson residence was occupied at the time of the blast. Firemen and police are sifting the wreckage ..."

He was jammed up behind the lackadaisical Datsun with traffic flicking past in the opposite lane; he held the horn down and hooted the Datsun right off the road and went up to the crest ramming the gears.h.i.+ft around, swinging the Porsche fast through the bends, squealing. In the mirror Bradleigh's Plymouth was lodged behind the Datsun, dwindling.

At the top he squirted recklessly across the stop-sign intersection; down the turns on the north slope he rode the brake, teetering around the sharp curves, hunched forward over the wheel.

He heard the grind of a siren starting up. One last bend and then he swerved through it, nearly banging nose to winds.h.i.+eld as he tried to see ahead.

Maddeningly his view was blocked by a great red fire truck that was beginning to pull away. He slewed toward the curb behind it.

A cop ran forward, gesturing at him angrily. The lawn was aswarm with men in uniform. Three patrol cruisers were drawn up at haphazard angles, askew on the road. He saw the Gilfillans and Jan, standing in a rigid little knot like mannequins: Jan was pale, she had both fists clenched at her sides, she wasn't looking at the man in the business suit who was talking to her with a notebook in his hand.

"Get back in that car and move along out of here, buddy."

He was searching for Ronny; he still had his hand on the car door and he felt the Porsche begin to roll-he hadn't pulled the brake. He dived back into the seat, stabbing for the pedal. That was when something made a loud sharp crack over his shoulder.

He hadn't heard that sound in twenty-three years but his instincts knew it: the crack of a high-velocity bullet pa.s.sing near-a tiny sonic boom.

He threw himself flat across the seats and heard the distant cough of the rifle, delayed by range. He jackknifed his legs inside the car and the bra.s.s of fear coated his tongue with sudden bitterness. The next shot clanged against metal and sighed away whistling: again the distant bark of the rifle.

The Porsche was rolling slowly. The third bullet starred the winds.h.i.+eld and then his ears thudded with the shockingly close-by boom of a handgun shot. Another explosion, and he realized it was the cop shooting back.

The car whacked the curb. It threw him against the dash and wedged him down toward the floor; his knee cracked the s.h.i.+ft k.n.o.b and sharp pain shot up his leg. The curb chocked the wheel and the car didn't move again; he heard the cop empty his revolver methodically. Other guns opened up and the racket was intense, like a battlefield. Someone kept yelling-he couldn't make out the words. Heedlessly he lifted himself off the floor and searched the lawn. The plainclothesman must have knocked Jan down; the man was down on one knee, hiding her behind his own bulk, sighting his revolver up across the street at the high canyon slope beyond. Roger had his arm across Amy's shoulders and was running her toward cover, the hedge on the property line. Then he saw Ronny and Billy, both of them diving into the ruins of the house.

Bradleigh's blue Plymouth came lurching downhill. The cop just outside the Porsche was belly-flat with his revolver extended in both hands toward the slope.

He heard the distant cough and sputter of a kicked-over motorcycle engine and he spun his eyes toward the far slope. The cycle roared and abruptly appeared in flitting bursts, ramming through the trees on the ridge line above the houses. It drew police gunfire from the lawn but the motorcyclist dropped off the skyline, disappearing beyond the crest.

Bradleigh was running forward, bellowing: "Get that mother!" A cruiser plunged away, siren unwinding from a growl. Cops swarmed past Mathieson and slammed into their cars.

Mathieson backed out of the Porsche, dimly aware that his body was doing the necessary things: pulling the hand brake, ducking to clear the opening with his head, turning to face Bradleigh. "Jesus Christ, Glenn-"

"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 f.u.c.k away from here."

"That's my house."

"The h.e.l.l. It's the insurance company's now. You d.a.m.n 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 Ronny's shoulders. Mathieson couldn't see Jan in the wheeling crowd. Bradleigh thrust him into the car. "Shove over, d.a.m.n you." Then Bradleigh was at the wheel, finding the gears, making a tight U-turn, squalling away.

"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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d was there to pick you off when you showed up to rubberneck the wreckage. You dumb b.a.s.t.a.r.d. G.o.d 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; Ronny dived out of the car. There was a confusion of embraces: He couldn't stop touching them, he had to keep rea.s.suring himself that they were alive.

They were inside the Gilfillans' house but he didn't remember getting there. Bradleigh was on the phone. Two ambulance doctors were filling syringes. Ronny sat subdued on the couch with his hands in his lap, holding Jan's hand. Billy and Roger stood around like funeral mourners, uncertain what to do with their hands. Cops flowed in and out of the house endlessly. A plainclothes sergeant with a notebook and pencil was talking to Roger.

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 s.h.i.+fted 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. "Glenn-what's the matter with me?"

"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 h.e.l.l 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. Pa.s.s 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? ... h.e.l.l, 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 h.e.l.l-one makes it green, the other blue. You know how those are. No make on the motorcycle but what the h.e.l.l, 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 b.u.mps."

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

"I think so. Funny, it's like Inchn. Artillery flashes-it's lit up here and there but I can't make the picture stand still. Give me another shot of that stuff."

The cop brought a blanket and Bradleigh swapped the empty gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s and he drank it straight down. It burned. Bourbon, he realized.

Bradleigh took the empty gla.s.s. "That's probably enough. You don't want to get schnockered."

"All right, I'm mostly here. Tell me what the h.e.l.l 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 G.o.d's sake."

"Look, at least n.o.body 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, G.o.dd.a.m.nit?"

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."