Recoil. Part 44

He plugged money into the phone and beckoned to Caruso. Jan said, "When will you call again?"

"Make it Wednesday at six. I may have more to report by then. Here's Caruso."

He handed the receiver over. Caruso gave him an apologetic glance and Mathieson walked back around the station wagon and got in. Through the window he watched Caruso but the man's face told him very little. Caruso was patient and thorough, asking brief questions, listening carefully to the answers: probably listening more to the tone than to the content. It was obvious when Ronny took over the phone; Caruso began to smile broadly and became more animated talking to the boy. Mathieson saw him scoop up some of the coins he'd left on the shelf and put them in the phone. The conversation went on at length; evidently Caruso was talking with Jan again; finally he cradled the phone and got into the car.

Mathieson said, "All right?"

"Yes. n.o.body's holding a gun on them. You understand why we had to do this. We had to make sure."

"Pastor hasn't got a lever on me, you know. It's the other way around." Mathieson drove back out toward the plane.

"What kind of lever?"

"Take my word for it, you don't want to know that."

"If it works I'm in favor, whatever it is." He drew up at the foot of the stairs and Caruso got out and made a hand signal to Cuernavan. "OK, bring them out."

5.

They had changed as one expected men to change after an interval of more than eight years. Benson's shoulders had rounded, he'd lost a lot of hair on top, he'd developed a paunch and he squinted through his gla.s.ses. Draper had always been cadaverous and he'd put on no weight, but the years had engraved deep brackets around his mouth and had crosshatched his skin as if he'd been using a rabbit-wire screen for a pillow. John Fusco was still the same squat hard fireplug of a man but his kinky hair had gone gray and he had scars on his face that hadn't been there before.

They'd never had anything in common except their testimony against Frank Pastor. Benson had been a bookkeeper in one of Pastor's operations and had seen Pastor on the premises two or three times when illegal money had changed hands. Draper had been a gopher in Ezio Martin's office; he was the one who had gone to the bank that day and withdrawn the cash and delivered it to Pastor-the cash that Pastor had put into a white envelope and handed to the judge in the courthouse men's room. John Fusco had been an enforcer, George Ramiro's aide-de-camp; he'd been nailed in a truck hijacking and had testified against Pastor in return for immunity from prosecution on the hijacking charge. None of their evidence had been crucial to the case but it had contributed: Defense attorneys had tried to discredit the three men but the weight of their testimony, coupled with Mathieson's, had been enough to convince the jury.

Mathieson had no idea what Fusco or Draper had been doing since he'd last seen them in the courtroom. He knew that Benson had been managing a store in Oklahoma. They were four strangers thrown together by a common enemy.

Driving down narrow roads through the Pennsylvania mountains he briefed them to the extent that the situation required: "We're putting pressure on him. Part of the pressure consists of informing him that the odds against him are high. The more people we can show him on our side, the more impressive we look and the more convincing our operation becomes. We want him to think there are so many people in this thing that he couldn't possibly reach all of us before some of us strike back. I can't fill in too many details today.

"When we've had the films developed and edited we'll prepare copies of all the important materials and have a complete set delivered to each one of you through Glenn Bradleigh's office. I'd suggest you each make independent arrangements with someone you trust-maybe a lawyer-to put the tapes and films in safekeeping with a letter of instructions to be opened in the event anything happens to you. That part will be up to you, of course. That's how I'm handling it myself and it's always the most sensible method of protecting yourself against retaliation from people like Pastor. Now you'd better not ask me what it's in retaliation for. You'll be finding that out for yourselves.

"What we're going to do today is gather our group in front of a movie camera. There'll be the four of us and three other men who've been working with me. Two of the men you're going to meet will be wearing stocking masks at all times. You'll never find out who they are. That's to give us insurance against Pastor trying to put pressure on any of you to identify all the members of the group. Pastor himself will never find out who those two men are. Therefore he'll never know where the attack comes from, if he tries anything against the rest of us.

"That sums up the highlights. I'll try to answer questions if you've got them."

6.

When he drove the station wagon into the ghost town he saw the glint of the lens in the window of the shack at the top of the slope. He had a glimpse of Anna Pastor's dark hair framed in the window as well. Roger was up there, working the zoom lens, holding Anna Pastor in the foreground of the picture while in the background he focused on the station wagon as its four occupants emerged. Vasquez and Homer, unrecognizable in stocking masks, emerged from one of the tumbledown structures and joined Mathieson by the car.

"Two of my a.s.sociates. There's no need for names. These are Mr. Benson, Mr. Draper and Mr. Fusco." He turned and lifted an arm in signal to Roger; then he walked up the hill and entered the cabin, leaving the five men on the road below.

Roger picked up the camera on its tripod. "Now I go down and take group shots and two-shots while they mingle, right?"

"Right. I'll be down in a minute."

Roger carried the Arriflex out. Mathieson turned his attention to Anna Pastor.

Her arms were tied behind her and her legs were roped to the chair. Mathieson walked past her and pulled the improvised shutter across the window; he didn't want her to be seen or recognized by the visitors.

"We're ten miles from the nearest house," he said. "I'm not going to put a gag in your mouth because n.o.body would hear you if you screamed. n.o.body except my own people. We're having a little convention, as you may have gathered."

"To celebrate your funeral, I imagine."

"There's only one door and we'll be watching it from outside. I can give you another shot or leave you tied to the chair. Which do you prefer?"

"I've had enough drugs pumped into me to last ten years. If you're giving me a choice I'll stay like this."

"It'll be an hour or two. Then we head home."

"Home," she said. Even in the dimness her eyes burned.

"Take it easy, Mrs. Pastor. If those three men knew you were here you might not get out of this shack alive. After what your husband's done to them they'd probably be happy to take you apart bone by bone. You'd be well advised to keep absolutely quiet up here until they've gone."

She didn't speak to him again. After a moment he left the shack and walked down the hill. Roger was moving around with the camera, telling people where to stand and what to do. It was apparent that the newcomers were baffled: He was disguising his voice and they had not quite recognized him behind the beard but his presence, as always, was commanding.

As Mathieson approached he saw the camera swing toward him. He looked straight into the lens and felt atavistic rage; he hoped it showed.

Homer was distributing coffee in plastic containers. His face under the stocking mask looked weirdly distorted. Mathieson took a cup of coffee and sipped it; he looked up and found the tripod-mounted camera panning past him and he contrived a grim smile for it before it went past.

Roger locked the camera in position, left it running and stepped around in front of it, showing only his back to the camera but adding his bodily presence to the group's number. Then he backed out of range and returned to the camera and picked it up to carry it down the hill and take a group shot from another angle.

Benson said, "You mean this is all you want from us? Just some film of us standing around drinking coffee?"

"It'll do the job," Mathieson said.

John Fusco snorted. "You're a little crazy if you think Frank Pastor's going to get scared out of his shoes just by seeing some movies of the four of us together. He was never scared of us before. Why should he start now?"

"Because we never organized ourselves against him before. We were always solitary targets. I want to convince him we're unified against him."

He went across to the porch of one of the half-decomposed buildings and picked up the stack of placards. While he carried them back to the group he saw Roger setting up the camera above the road. It wasn't cranking.

He put the placards down. "I doubt any of you has much experience with cue cards but we've got a few lines for each of you to read. You'll be on camera while you talk but I want to rehea.r.s.e these performances before we put them on film. It'll have the best effect if it doesn't look like you're reading the lines. Try to be as natural as you can. If you can't get your mouth around the wording, put it in your own words. All right, let's start with Walter."

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE.

New Jersey: 1014 November

1.

HE SAT HUDDLED BY THE BOATHOUSE ON THE PIER, THE COLD wind shot sprays of foam off the lake into his face; he sat with his arms wrapped around his knees and did not move when he heard the car enter the driveway.

He heard the front door slam. Homer bringing in the groceries. Mathieson didn't stir.

The sun filtered weakly through a brittle haze. Pointed reflections ran along the surface of the water. All around the lake the trees were stark and bare. On the far sh.o.r.e a boy rode his bicycle along the road. There was no other sign of life.

It was a while before he was disturbed. He heard the gla.s.s doors slide open and someone's footsteps on the path.

"Time to feed Mrs. Pastor, I believe." Vasquez.

He didn't move.

Vasquez's hand fell on his shoulder. "Come on, get up. You'll catch pneumonia."

He shook the hand off.

"Don't be silly, Mr. Merle."

When he still didn't look up Vasquez sat down beside him. "Having second thoughts, are you?"

"Everybody's ent.i.tled to a mood now and then."

"You're a thousand miles past the point where you could have turned back, if that's what you're contemplating. Think of your own wife-what will happen to her if you don't carry it through. Your own child as well."

"I had no idea she'd be pregnant, Diego." His speech sounded rusty in his own ears: slow, painful, searching for words. "An innocent unborn child. It's harder to sink lower than that."

"I'm sure Genghis Khan was innocent in the womb."

"Don't patronize me with ad-lib aphorisms."

"Come on, Mr. Merle, it's time to take her supper to her before it gets cold. Or give me the key and I'll be waiter tonight."

"No. I'm the only one who goes in there."

"As you wish."

He got to his feet; suddenly he was very cold. He began to s.h.i.+ver.

2.

He rubbed his eyes and watched the mixture cook up on the stove. When it was heated he drew it up carefully into the syringe. He switched off the heat.

He felt the others' eyes on him when he carried the syringe through the hallway, holding it up ahead of him like a uniformed doctor. With his free hand he turned the keys in the locks; then he went into the room, careful not to brush anything with the needle.

She rolled over on the bed and stared at him. Her eyes were utterly blank.

3.

On his way into the living room he paused by the thermostat. It was on its highest setting. He rubbed his hands together and b.u.t.toned his sweater all the way up.

Vasquez looked up from his crossword puzzle. "Another day or two and you should be able to begin withholding the drug until she begins to need it. It shouldn't take very long before she's convinced beyond all doubt that she cannot survive without having the injection at regular intervals. You'll have to impress the mythology on her."

Roger said, "What mythology?"

"Drug addiction is in large part psychological, you know."

Roger looked at Homer across the checkerboard. "What's he talking about now?"

Vasquez said, "Those stories you've heard about addicts dying from cold-turkey withdrawal are largely hok.u.m. Of all the deaths attributed to heroin, virtually none has been caused by withdrawal. It's a painful process to be sure but rarely a deadly one. It isn't the physical need for the drug that controls the victim-it's the mind. The mind becomes convinced that survival is impossible without the drug. If she weren't aware it was heroin that was being injected into her veins, she'd realize only that she felt sick in the absence of injections. She'd feel terrible but she wouldn't know why. Given enough time, her sickness would pa.s.s. She'd return to normal health and never entertain the desire for another shot of heroin-because she'd never know it was what she'd been receiving in the first place. Do any of you understand what I'm saying?"

Mathieson said, "I always understood it was a physical addiction."

"To a great extent it is. But the mind needs to be aware of it. The human mind is the great betrayer."

Homer cleared his throat. "Can't we talk about something else?"

"No. We must be clear on this. We cannot flinch from it. This thing must be done in such a way that her knowledge of absolute need becomes the overriding factor in her life. We must continually reinforce her conviction that she has become a hopelessly addicted slave to whom the withholding of her regular injection would be unthinkably agonizing."

Mathieson sat down. Vasquez stared at him. "By letting her go a bit too long between shots you will let her feel the touch of withdrawal anguish. Merely a taste of it. You cannot make the final move until you've accomplished that."

Mathieson rubbed his face with both palms.

Vasquez's voice softened. "Actually I'd worry more if you weren't having such a strong reaction to these events. If you took them in stride I'd have to put you in the same category of subhuman existence to which verminous cretins like Frank Pastor belong."

Mathieson let his hands fall onto the arms of the chair and leaned his head back against the cus.h.i.+on. "Roger, we'll want to film some close-ups tomorrow of the scabs on her arms. The needle tracks."