The Accident

by Chris Pavone

  “Okay.”

  Hayden slips off his socks, tucks them into his shoes. He rolls his pants up at the cuff, nearly to the knee. He can hear Tyler’s keyboard clicking.

  “Jon Sanderson. On Bluff Road.”

  “That’s walking distance?”

  “You’ve come about three-quarters of a mile.”

  “Got it. Now I’m going silent. If you don’t see me in twenty minutes, abandon the truck, and abort.”

  Hayden tugs the incriminating plastic out of his ear, the wire out of his shirt, and buries the thousands of dollars’ worth of tech in the sand. He heads down to the water, the Atlantic lapping and foaming, his shoes dangling in his hand. Just another guy taking a solo nighttime walk, sulking about something or other. He slows his pace, feels the hard cool sand under the soles of his feet. He hasn’t been on a wide sandy beach in years. Decades, maybe.

  Christ, what is he doing with his life? Isn’t this what he should be doing?

  He could retire somewhere near a beach, and go for long lonely walks at night. Get himself a big stupid Labrador, make it fetch sticks out of the surf. Buy a new set of golf clubs—his old woods are made of actual wood—and play every day that ends in y, as his grandfather used to say. Hayden had once been a six-handicap; maybe he could again find some satisfaction in swatting a small ball around a big park. Other people seem to.

  And maybe he could find himself a more permanent, more satisfying female companion, one who’s not married to someone else. As entertaining as it’s been, Hayden has now had more than a few lifetimes’ worth of other men’s wives; as with pocket squares and his career, another short-term temporary choice that turned out to be long-term. Married women tend to be easy, and grateful, and enthusiastic; they also have short shelf lives.

  Anke’s expiration date is nearing, may be past. He met her a year ago, when she took the adjoining plot of land—a meter wide, fifty meters long—at the communal garden he’d joined years ago out in suburban Wessling, a half-hour on the S-Bahn from his apartment. At first he’d been motivated by the idea of growing his own produce; he was carrying an extra ten kilos, and thought that eating his own green beans and such would help take off the weight. It did.

  And then Anke showed up, trying to tackle impossible delicacies like tomatoes and strawberries instead of the hard-to-kill crops—potatoes, cabbages, carrots, cauliflower—in which Hayden and other practical-minded Northern European farmers specialized. They went out for a drink around the corner from his flat. Anke had two, then invited herself up; she’s not shy.

  Year after year goes by, and Hayden keeps expecting his apparatus to stop functioning, but it never does. And over all these years of sexual activity, more than one man has mistaken Hayden for gay; at least a dozen men have come on to him. Women, on the other hand, always seem to know that he’s heterosexual.

  But these fleeting fantasies of carefree retirement are now dashed. Because Hayden has gotten trapped, protecting the secrets of that well-bred lowlife.

  “Excuse me, sir?”

  The patrolman hops out of the SUV, hand hovering near his holster.

  “Yes.” Hayden smiles at the man, squinting at the flashlight. “How can I help you, Officer?”

  “What are you doing out here?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I said, why are you on the beach?”

  “Taking a walk.”

  “Did you hear those gunshots?”

  “No, I don’t have a slingshot. That’s a strange—”

  “I said gunshots, sir. Did you hear them?”

  “Oh, sorry. No. I’m a bit hard of hearing.” An apologetic smile, then he widens his eyes. “Were those gunshots? I thought firecrackers. Kids.”

  The policeman stares at him. “May I see some ID, sir?”

  Hayden pats his back pocket. “Oh. I don’t seem to …”

  The cop frowns, looks up the beach nervously.

  “Where do you live?”

  “I live in the city. I’m staying with the Sandersons, up on Bluff Road.”

  The cop still stares, wondering how thorough he needs to be here, given the attempted burglary a quarter-mile away, and shots fired, and the suspect down, maybe an officer as well …

  On the other hand, chances are pretty high that a man Hayden’s age walking on the Amagansett beach is going to be a heavy hitter of some sort. The type of guy who puffs his chest and says, “Do you know who I am?” and “You’re going to be sorry for this” and “I’m going to have you fired, I can promise you that.” It must be a daily degradation to provide public services around here.

  “I’m sorry, sir, but I’m going to need you to come with me.”

  Hayden puts out his palms, give-me-a-break. “You’re serious? I’m just going for a walk.”

  “I apologize for the inconven—”

  That’s when Hayden hammers him in the throat, and snatches the man’s weapon out of his holster, and pistol-whips him on the back of the head. The cop crumples face-first into the sand.

  “Sorry,” Hayden says to the inert body. He pulls the handcuffs around the guy’s wrists, and leaves him there on the damp sand. Hayden takes the officer’s walkie-talkie, and climbs into the off-road-ready vehicle, puts it into gear, and starts to drive away.

  Then he changes his mind, turns back. He hops out onto the sand, and drags the policeman far away from the water. Who knows which way the tide is going? Hayden doesn’t want this poor guy to drown here, because of him. There may be innocent people who have to die in this operation, but this cop isn’t one of them.

  Hayden anticipated part of this debacle, but Christ, this is much worse.

  He turns off the headlights, and speeds up the beach. At the next road, he pulls onto the tarmac, feels the firmness under the wheels, hears the hum of rubber on a man-made surface. He pulls to a stop at the black truck that’s idling on the shoulder, rolls down the window.

  “Get the gear and the manuscript,” he says to Tyler. “We’ll take this instead.”

  Tyler doesn’t question the provenance of the vehicle, just loads the bags into the back, climbs into the passenger seat, laptop open in his lap, the car moving before he even pulls his door closed.

  “This geography is going to be a problem.” Tyler is examining a map. “We’re toward the end of the island, and there are a very finite number of roads out of here, and ferries at a couple spots, and I imagine road blocks will be up soon, everywhere.”

  “If they’re not already.”

  “Right. Anyway, what the hell happened?”

  “We were set up, that’s what.”

  “You mean she called the cops? Had them on alert?”

  “I mean she’s not there. The woman in that house is not the woman we’re looking for. In fact, the woman in that house is, I’m pretty sure, a movie star.”

  “What?”

  “I saw her through the window, just before the cops arrived.”

  “Did she see you?”

  “No. We must’ve tripped some motion-sensor alarm.”

  Hayden had expected that they’d be misled, sent on a wild goose chase. But the security-alarm setup was an unexpected twist. Hayden had already given Isabel Reed a lot of credit, but he now realizes that she deserves even more. Just as the author has turned out to be more cunning than expected, so has his agent. Which is, now that Hayden thinks about it, not surprising.

  “This is FUBAR, man,” says Tyler, shaking his head.

  Hayden can’t stand all the jargon these kids use. But this is, indeed, fucked-up beyond all recognition. Hayden stares at the road, the painted lines zooming underneath, the shoulder densely populated by excessively bright reflectors.

  “So what’s the play, boss? We making a mad dash for it?”

  Hayden nods. “But we need a different type of transportation.”

  Three days after meeting with Charlie in Paris, Hayden was in Washington, sitting in Trey Freeley’s office with its view of the Capitol, and his prepaid hour of cons
ultation coming to a close.

  “I’d guarantee that the agent would be a woman name-a Isabel Reed, at a outfit called Atlantic Talent Management. And Reed is thick as thieves with an editor who sees a conspiracy in absolutely everythin’. A real aficionado.”

  Freeley leaned back in his chair, a hugely self-satisfied smile spreading across his apple cheeks.

  “Plus, everyone—and I mean, everyone—knows that this editor has been in love with this agent for the better part of forever. You understand what I’m sayin’?”

  “You’re saying that if this agent were representing a manuscript like my hypothetical, you’d expect her to send it to this particular editor.”

  “No sir, I wouldn’t expect it.” The lawyer shook his head. “I’d guarantee it.” Hayden had always thought lawyers weren’t supposed to guarantee anything, ever. And here this guy was, throwing out gratuitous guarantees willy-nilly.

  “Thank you, Mr. Freeley.” Hayden looked at his watch, stood.

  “Don’t you wanna know why it’s gonna be this agent?”

  Hayden smiled, and reached his hand across the table for a shake. “Oh, I already know that, Mr. Freeley.”

  The marina is clean and well-organized, every slip occupied by an expensive-looking boat. Hayden walks down the wide planks, looking for evidence of sloppiness, of a hasty departure, of the type of sailor who’d leave an ignition key under a seat cushion.

  The stolen police jeep is now in a heavy copse around back of a dark house with a for-sale sign on the lawn, no car in the driveway. That’ll buy them some time, but not forever. They need to get the hell out of here.

  Hayden points to a Boston Whaler and Tyler hops in, starts looking around, pawing at fiberglass and canvas. Hayden pauses at a vintage little Glastron with a hundred-horsepower motor, a Coleman cooler sitting aft, a couple of life jackets lying on a vinyl-upholstered seat, all the right signs. He climbs into the boat, and sure enough, there’s the key, just sitting in the ignition.

  He checks the fuel tanks; three of four are full. He whistles, and Tyler trots over.

  Tyler fires the engine, which starts immediately, purrs softly. He turns on the running light, and pushes the throttle. The boat lunges away from the dock, off into the darkness.

  Hayden takes a seat in the hull, where a small bulb under the control panel provides illumination. Not much light, but enough. He retrieves the manuscript, and continues reading.

  CHAPTER 42

  Stan is no dope. He knows what his assistant Jessica must think when women like Camilla show up late in the day, with flimsy agendas and flimsier outfits, and he shuts the door and has her hold the calls, then emerges looking satisfied. And of course the girl is correct.

  He also knows that when Jessica asks the boy she refers to as George the Slave to make a copy for Stan, George makes two copies: the one for Stan, plus another for Jessica herself. Stan knows this because he gave—bribed—George a thousand dollars—ten crisp hundred-dollar bills—to rat on his assistant. Previously Stan had paid similar kids much less money for this type of subterfuge, but he’d noticed that George waits around like an adoring puppy for Jessica to pay any attention to him, which she rarely does, occasionally throwing him a perfunctory “You’re a doll” to keep him alert, but usually giving him nothing whatsoever, so he slinks away, head down, the overlong cuffs of his jeans scuffing the floor.

  So Stan had upped the ante for this pathetic little lovesick spy. Sometimes it’s inconvenient to have a hot assistant. This is a lesson that Stan has needed to learn more than once, and probably not for the last time. He can’t help himself.

  As he walked out of the office, he saw Jessica with her eyes in her lap, engrossed in something there that she didn’t want Stan to see, which was no doubt the contraband copy of Camilla’s manuscript.

  Stan understands the girl’s situation; he’d been in it, when he was her age. Picking up something, anything, at the end of the day—a nice long manuscript, or a succinct treatment, or a formulaic 120-page screenplay—and having absolutely no idea what it was: to just start reading blind. Like walking through the Theater District in New York, with the throngs streaming through wide-open double doors at seven-fifty p.m., and randomly walking in amid one of the crowds, the lights dimming, taking a seat in the back, watching the velvet curtain rise on …? On what? It could be a big-budget musical filled with intricately choreographed dances, pyrotechnic effects, and zoo animals. A tense drama with an ensemble cast of six. A one-woman monologue about the dissolution of her marriage. It could be anything. Just like the manuscript that Jessica is hiding in her lap, chosen for no reason other than it showed up here, to an office where decisions are made about such things.

  Stan knows Jessica’s life. He knows that she doesn’t date, at least not for pleasure, though every week she probably finds herself sitting poolside or loungeside sipping overly oaked chardonnay with some industry guy. She doesn’t go hiking in Griffith Park or surfing in Malibu or skiing at Mammoth. She doesn’t go to bars at ten or dance clubs at midnight. She doesn’t take vacations to Los Cabos or Hawaii or Paris.

  What Jessica does is watch television, always DVR’d to skip all the inane consumer-products ads, though she diligently watches all the previews and trailers, all the short spots for other television shows on sister networks, all the longer mini-films for features. And she goes to the movies, at least two per week, but sometimes as many as three films in a single weekend day, if she has fallen behind.

  And Jessica reads. She thinks that Stan doesn’t read, because he wants her—he wants everyone—to think that. But Jessica reads everything. Three thousand pages are deposited in Stan’s office every week, representing dozens, scores, sometimes hundreds of projects. Highly theoretical projects. No-chance projects. Sure-thing projects, even though there’s no such thing, in practicality. But whatever. Jessica reads bits and parts or all of every single one of them.

  “Good night Jessica,” Stan said. Then he climbed into the back of the chauffeured Range Rover, and started making his evening calls. Halfway to the airport, Juan the driver called Tim the pilot—“Wheels up in fifteen”—who got the engine started, and moved the blocks away from the wheels, and ran through his checks while Stan’s SUV was gliding through the unmarked parking lot and low-slung office buildings that surround the Santa Monica Airport. When the security gate swung open, the buggy was waiting to accompany the big black vehicle across the airfield. Juan carried Stan’s briefcase up the gangplank, and unpacked the bag onto the mahogany worktable that was already unfolded in front of Stan’s leather seat. Juan filled a highball with ice, poured in a can of Red Bull, and set the glass in the cup-holder. He opened Stan’s door and stood at attention.

  That’s when Stan climbed out. Just as he liked it—demanded it—the walk from the car to the gangplank was six steps. The plane started to taxi fifteen seconds after Stan sat down.

  “Lou,” he said into his phone, staring out the window, “we’re taxiing.”

  “Oh, hi,” his wife answered. “Good. I’ll tell Irene first course at eight-thirty?”

  He responded with something that sounded like “Ungh.”

  Stan decided to take Camilla’s manuscript after all. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard someone so confident and passionate about a project. And after all these years of string-free sex—quickies in his bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel, bj’s in the back of cars, and one uniquely memorable five minutes in the restroom at Spago—he owes Camilla. Not sure it’s an executive-producer credit that he owes, but it’s something. So he’ll read her project. Not the whole thing, for the love of God—books are always so long—but some of it. Enough of it.

  As the plane made its turn onto the runway, Stan started page 1. He doesn’t mention this often—in fact, ever, he never admits this—but he can speed-read. The summer between sophomore and junior year in college, living in his parents’ house in Scarsdale and commuting into the city for his internship at the law firm, he
took a speed-reading class. It was on the fourth floor of a building around the corner from Grand Central Station, three evenings a week, ninety minutes a class. He never told anyone—not his parents, not his friends—how he spent that hour and a half. He’d hatched all sorts of elaborate lies to explain the hole in his schedule, but it turned out that over the entire six-week course, no one ever asked.

  By the time the Cessna bumps down in Santa Ynez, Stan is on page 198. He unbuckles his seat belt absentmindedly, without removing his eyes from the manuscript. He tucks the pages under his arm, ducks under the door, onto the gangplank. With each passing minute, he adds another name to his short lists of directors and male leads, smiling to himself at the prospects. He’ll own the whole thing.

  Stan takes out his phone, and calls Camilla. One ring, two, three … He leaves a quick message—“Its Stan, this manuscript is fan-fucking-tastic, call me.”

  This, he thinks as he leaves his private jet, and settles into the supple seat of another chauffeured Range Rover, en route to his thousand-acre ranch, is the project that will finally, once and for all, make him rich.

  Lou scowls from across the table when Stan’s phone rings. He glances down at the screen, an unfamiliar number. Someone he doesn’t know has procured his contact information. How the fuck did that happen?

  “Stan Balzer,” he answers, somewhat belligerently. “Who’s this?”

  Lou rolls her eyes.

  “Good evening. My name is George Dryden, detective with the Beverly Hills Police Department.”

  “Okay. What can I do for you?”

  “Oh Sweet Jesus,” his wife says. “Will you please …?” She shoos him away from the table, and he glares at her, but then gets up. He’s in the wrong, as usual.

  “Mr. Balzer, do you know a woman named Camilla Browning? That is, Camilla Glyndon-Browning?”

  He briefly, ridiculously, considers denying it. But there’s so very much evidence to the contrary. “Yes.”