“Brian, darling!” she cried. “You naughty boy!”
“Stephanie,” he said.
Standing with Terry, Eve watched as the two of them embraced.
Once Charley was back on the interstate, he turned on the truck’s hazard lights and drove well over the speed limit, hoping to attract the attention of any police cars lying in wait along the road. But none appeared. At Golden, a Denver suburb, he turned off and soon found a police station, where he wasted over twenty minutes trying to penetrate the thick head of a burly policewoman whose only concern seemed to be in demonstrating that she had bigger balls and a fouler mouth than any man in the place. Fortunately, a detective overheard what Charley was telling her, and things began to happen. Middle-aged and professorial, the detective whisked Charley away from the Amazon and into the captain’s office. Within minutes, calls had gone out to the FBI, the state police, and the police in Colorado Springs. Also, in private, Charley was able to phone the lawyer he had hired to represent him. After explaining why he hadn’t shown up at the courthouse, he told the man not to bother to drive up to Denver, that with the FBI now involved in the case, he saw no alternative except to tell them everything in exact detail. The lawyer advised him against such a course of action but said he would comply with Charley’s wishes, if for no other reason than that he was already so busy he didn’t know if he was coming or going.
A short time later Charley found himself in a squad car with the detective and the chief, leading a caravan of state police cars back to the turnout where he had thrown Chester down the mountain. When they got there, however, there was no sign of the little cowboy, and the state troopers were unable to decide whether he had climbed back up and hitched a ride or set out across the rugged, piney terrain on foot. Farther up the road there was a more gentle slope down the mountain, and a half-dozen troopers descended it and fanned out, looking for some sign of the fugitive. Others drove on ahead, hoping to find him standing by the side of the road, thumbing his way. The officer in charge radioed in for bloodhounds, but was told that it would be at least two hours before the dogs could be on the job.
Meanwhile seven FBI agents in three cars arrived on the scene and quietly took charge of both cases: the manhunt for Brian as well as for Chester. Charley overheard one of the agents telling the Golden detective that Brian and his girlfriend had flown to Santa Barbara, which made Brian’s case a federal one now, having crossed state lines to avoid prosecution.
Two of the FBI agents introduced themselves to Charley and said that they would be taking him back to Denver, for debriefing. Their names were Dickinson and Ramos, and they were nothing at all like Hollywood stereotypes of federal agents: humorless Anglos with blond hair and all the charm of Gestapo agents. These two were, respectively, black and Latino, tall and short, lean and fat, but comfortably alike in their attitude of weary cynicism. If they were excited at the prospect of working on the Brian Poole case, with its showbiz cachet, neither man showed it. Rather, they picked at each other like a biracial Laurel and Hardy, almost as if it were their duty to keep Charley amused all the way back to Denver.
Once there, however, seated around a cheap table in an ugly room of the federal building, the two got down to business. While Ramos took notes, Dickinson operated the tape recorder, telling it the time and date, the case they were working on, and who was present in the room. Then he spoke to Charley.
“Okay, Mr. Poole, why don’t you just lay it out for us, from start to finish. Then we’ll ask a few questions, okay?”
“Fair enough.”
Charley took his time, not wanting to overlook anything. Starting with Eve’s phone call the previous Sunday morning, he took the agents through the two days since then almost hour by hour. And in the telling he found it difficult to believe that it was in fact only two days that had passed, and not a week. He recounted everything exactly as he remembered it, shaving the truth slightly only when it came to Belinda’s accident, knowing that was where he and Eve were most vulnerable, for having left the scene of an accident.
“Eve wanted to get to the girl just as much as I did. But it didn’t occur to her to cross the median strip—“It’s against the law,” she told me later. So she drove on to the next exit, which was just up ahead. We crossed over the freeway and tried to take the entrance ramp heading north, toward the accident. But a police car was already on the scene—both lanes were blocked—and cars were stopped on the ramp too. We couldn’t get to the girl. So Eve decided to drive back to the motel and get Brian, and I thought the three of us would then drive to the hospital and contact the police. But Brian said no. He said the girl was his responsibility, that he had been with her when she overdosed or whatever it was, and that he and Eve would go to the hospital alone. He said there was no reason for me to get involved. With that, I went back to my own room and crashed. You’ll remember that I’d had quite a lot to drink, certainly more than I’m used to. I was wasted.”
That was the tone of much of his statement, presenting himself warts-and-all for the agents, not wanting to come across as some sort of fraternal white knight on a mission of mercy to his no-good brother, only to find himself dragged into the mud with him.
Ramos was keenly interested in the fact that Charley not only had put up Brian’s bail but also had given him almost forty-five thousand dollars besides. Charley explained it a second time.
“As for the bail, I never even thought about losing it. I mean, I thought that Brian wanted his day in court. I thought that was what the bulldozing was all about, to give him a forum to present his case against the movie. And I figured he’d repay the bondsman’s commission out of the forty-five thousand I’d given him, which, as I explained, was simply the final payment on my buyout of his half of my parents’ estate: the family business, the family home.”
Ramos wagged his head. “I dunno, that’s still a real lot of bread, you know? I got a brother who’s a priest, and I wouldn’t loan him a dime.”
“What dime is that, I wonder,” Dickinson said, smiling crookedly, turning to Charley. “Man’s got six kids—you believe that? Only Catholic in America who still uses the rhythm method.”
Ramos grinned. “Pelvic rhythm, that’s my problem. I got too much.”
“Well, you may think so, but everyone knows it’s us African American people of color who’ve got all the rhythm.”
Charley gathered from their patter that they did not consider him much in the way of competition for the Ten Most Wanted list, which came as a relief. Finally the agents wanted him to go over again what he’d told them about Chester and where he might be headed. And this time Charley stressed even more the unlikelihood of there being a Seagull in Seattle. He told them that the boat and the name were merely scraps of memory he had from a letter and photograph he’d received from Brian back in the seventies: Brian and a couple of his hippy buddies standing and sitting on the stern of a yacht with the name painted below. And it might not even have been the Seagull, Charley said now. It could have been something entirely different, and the boat itself might even have been moored in Vancouver, not Seattle. He said he had just tossed the idea out to Chester, like throwing him a bone, hoping he would take it and run—and leave Charley behind.
“Anyway, I can’t believe he’s still on the way to Seattle, with so little to go on, just the name of a boat. I figure he’s doubled back by now. I figure he’s headed for home.”
Dickinson concurred. “Yeah, you’re probably right. He’s probably planning to hide out in his barn or a shed, something like that. Anyway, revenge is a dish best served cold—heard that on TV the other night.”
Ramos snorted. “Who wants a cold dish anyway? I like ’em hot, man.”
Dickinson looked at Charley and shook his head, as if in sad acknowledgment that there was no hope for his partner.
Later, after getting a room at the downtown Marriott hotel, Charley phoned Donna and reluctantly told her about his latest Brian-related adventure, being kidnapped by Chester.
And when he told her that he still wasn’t quite ready to fly home, she lost her temper before he could explain.
“I can’t believe you, Charley! What in God’s name is wrong with you? Are you totally crazy? Do you want to get yourself killed? Don’t you like it here anymore? Don’t you love me at all?”
And she became even angrier when he told her about Brian’s bail, that it was he who had put up the forty thousand as a first mortgage on the Sumter place, which she knew he had recently purchased.
“And you lost it?” she cried. “He cuts out and leaves you forty thousand in the hole? You actually trusted that maniac to—”
“Donna,” he broke in, “that’s why I’m not coming home yet. If I can find him before the authorities do, and if I can get him to return voluntarily, we might be able to get the money back. And if not, then I’ll just take back the contract payment. We’ll come out okay.”
Donna was not convinced. “My God, what a hopeless dreamer you are! You actually think you can find your asshole brother before the FBI does? Just what have you been smoking? This new girl of Brian’s, what is she, a drug dealer too? Is that what’s happened? Did they get you onto crack or something?”
Charley groaned. “Oh come on, get real. With your help, I might just be able to find Brian.”
“My help?”
“You know the Brian file we’ve got at home, all those old cards and letters from way back, the stuff my mother and I saved? I want you to get it out and fax it to me here at the hotel.”
“And what good will that do?”
“The FBI already knows he and his girl flew to Santa Barbara, but I don’t think he’ll stay there. I figure he’ll drive down to L.A. and impose on one of his old friends to take him in, some one he’s stayed with in the past, like one of his old stuntman buddies, someone like that. When he wrote home, he sometimes included a return address. So fax the envelopes too, all right?”
She didn’t answer. “Have you talked to Jason?”
“I tried Sunday, I think it was. But he wasn’t in.”
“If he asked you to come home, I bet you’d do it.”
“Don’t talk like that, okay? It’s stupid. Tell me, if someone just stiffed the agency for forty grand, wouldn’t you try to get it back?”
“Not if I might get shot doing it.”
“Chester, you mean? Donna, he’s not after me—he’s after Brian.”
“Well, I hope he finds him.”
“I know you don’t mean that.”
“Don’t I?”
“No, you don’t.”
Before she could argue the point, he went on and gave her the hotel guests’ fax number and explained that she would have to phone him before sending, so he could clear the time with the desk.
“Yes, yes, I know all that,” she said. “I’ll fax you a lot of ancient cards and envelopes, addresses of people who are probably dead now or who move every six months. And then you’ll go out to L.A. and look them up and say, ‘Hey, you wouldn’t have happened to see my wacko little brother lately, would you? And if not, then how about a needle in the old haystack? Maybe you’ve seen one of those.”
“I’ll wait for your call,” Charley said. Then he hung up.
In the evening, after going over the faxes a third time, Charley had to admit that Donna’s sarcasm had been on target. Trying to find his brother this way, with these few faded names and addresses, would indeed be like hunting for a needle in a haystack. The one fax that intrigued him was of the photo of Brian and two of hippy buddies lounging on the stern of an old wooden yacht with its name painted below in black and gold: Seagal. It surprised him that he had come so close to remembering the name, not that it amounted to anything, a twenty-year-old photo taken on a boat that long since had probably rotted away and sunk. If anything, the photo underscored the futility of his plan. Still, he knew that he was going ahead with it. And he was afraid he knew why—because he had to do everything he could to see her again soon, so he could stand her right in front of him and make her look him in the eye and explain just how a person got to the point where other people became so casually disposable, mere things you could use and toss, like a pen or a Kleenex.
She had phoned him, and he had come. She had asked for money, and he had brought it. He had freed her lover and entertained her, comforted her, while that lover cheated on her. And there had been something more between them too, not love perhaps, but something special, something beyond a budding friendship. He had seen it in her eyes. Or at least he thought he had.
Yet here he was, a fool with empty pockets and empty dreams. As for the money, he wasn’t about to let them get away with that either, toss it away like something else they no longer needed. Forty thousand dollars was almost as much as he took out of his little construction company in salary every six months. So it was not negligible, not to him anyway. But from long experience he knew how his brother’s mind worked. And he had no doubt that Brian, seeing how prosperous Charley and Donna had become, had naturally concluded that they had screwed him out of his just inheritance somewhere along the line. Not for a second would it occur to him that their prosperity was due to twenty years of hard work, building up the agency and expanding into a second business. As far as Brian was concerned, the forty-thousand bail was probably his by right, to do with as he saw fit.
But Eve had to know better. And that was what rankled in Charley’s mind, that she had gone along with Brian so easily, apparently fully content to be his willing cohort in thievery. And in doing so, she had totally violated Charley’s high opinion of her, which angered him probably more than anything else.
It was after nine o’clock, and he was standing at his hotel window, looking out at the mountains. Having seen front range sunsets before, he was not greatly surprised at the beauty of this one, though he suspected that the Denver smog had added to its luster, intensifying the broad sea of indigo flowing above the mountain peaks, its far shore shot with streaks of vermilion and gold. He wondered if Eve and Brian were still out there in the sunshine, searching, or whether they already had found refuge, some other sucker to use and throw away.
At ten o’clock he realized that he was still much too exhausted and addled to sleep, so he went up to the restaurant bar on the hotel’s top floor, a comfortably dark room with tall windows looking to the west and north. He took a corner booth and ordered garlic-sautéed prawns and cheese toast, along with an Absolut martini that in time was followed by two more, the last a double. Feeling better with each one, he went back to his room and phoned Donna, even though it was after midnight in Flossmoor.
“Did I wake you?” he asked.
“What do you think? With a business to run and a husband who’s off somewhere playing cops and robbers with psychos?”
“Donna, I’m safe and snug here in Denver.”
“But you’re still going out to L.A.?”
“For forty thousand bucks—you bet. And remember—the psycho cowboy’s out of the picture. I sent him to Seattle.”
“So now you’ve just got your psycho brother to worry about.”
Charley sighed. “Donna, I didn’t call to fight. I just wanted to tell you—remind you—that I do care about my home—and you—and I do want to get back there as soon as I can.”
“You called to say you ‘care’ about me?” She made it sound like an insult.
“Oh, come on, Donna, I love you. You know that.”
“Do I?”
“You should.”
“All right, then, you love me,” she said. “So can I get back to trying to fall asleep now?”
“Sure. Have at it.”
“Goodnight, then.”
“Yeah, goodnight.”
After he’d hung up, Charley lay there in bed thinking about the conversation he’d just had and how dispiriting it was, how dispiriting they all seemed to be lately, even with three martinis humming in his blood. He didn’t know what the answer was: whether he should never phone Donna late, never phone her after
drinking, or simply never phone her at all.
He slept poorly that night, anxious for morning, when he would check out of the hotel and get on his way to California.
Chapter Seven
Eve could not believe she was standing still for such treatment, accepting it almost as her due. It was late afternoon and she was alone in the twins’ room upstairs, supposedly lying down and resting before dinner. Instead she found herself pacing and smoking in front of the doors to the balcony, which looked down not only on the pool and patio but a good part of Los Angeles as well.
At the moment Brian was in the pool doing his passable impression of Mark Spitz, zipping from one end to the other, turning and pushing off underwater, taking a breath about once every lap. The Hodges, mother and daughter, were his audience. Terry, still in jeans and a sweatshirt, was standing back in the shadows, her pale eyes unblinking and her mouth slightly parted in an expression of almost reverential awe as she watched Brian stroking smoothly through the water. Stephanie meanwhile looked both proprietary and pleased, as if a horse she’d bought was having a good afternoon workout. She was once again sitting in the shade of an umbrella table, still wearing lounging pajamas and holding a lit Marlboro in one hand and a glass of champagne in the other, like the dual components of her life-support system.
Disgusted, Eve turned away from the doors only to face the walls of the room, which were festooned with Playboy centerfolds, school pennants, and posters of Metallica and other rock bands. The twins, as Brian had explained, were Stephanie’s by her second husband, a studio lawyer to whom she had granted custody in exchange for clear title to the house. The boys were now at Stanford Law, and though they hadn’t visited their mother in years, she still kept their room exactly as it had been a decade earlier, a place for teenage boys—and now for Eve.
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