Dorothy Wheeler blinked. At that moment her husband appeared cheerfully in the doorway, holding the scotch bottle. He poured another large slug into Carl’s glass.
“I shouldn’t,” he said.
“Nonsense, young man. It’s a cold night.”
“We’re almost finished, dear,” Dorothy said. Deming took the hint, winked, and strode affably back toward his other guests. Carl threw back his drink in one.
“Go find her, Carl,” Dorothy said, when her husband was back out of earshot. “Sam Morse enjoys a long meal, so I’m sure she’ll be in Carmel a while yet. If not, she always drives home by Watsonville road. Go now.”
Carl felt his chest tightening. “And?”
“What you speak of cannot be allowed to come to pass. I’m empowered to instruct you to tell Marion whatever it takes to convince her not to proceed.”
“Empowered by . . .”
She looked him in the eye and finally confirmed what had been unspoken between them for six months. “Nathan Brady.”
He hadn’t been anticipating anything like this long a drive tonight, and so stopped for gas at the top of Pacific Avenue. While the attendant filled the tank, Carl considered going via the apartment to warn Michelle. It was almost nine o’clock now, however, after the time Carl Jr. went to bed, and he knew he’d get no thanks for waking him. Michelle would know that Carl would be back when he could, and that if he was late, it was unavoidable. Not for the first time—he seemed prey tonight to revisiting well-worn trains of thought—he realized how lucky he was to have found her: a woman who could accept that she was not allowed to know the details of his profession, but would love and support him in it anyway. He remained in the Buick and, when the tank was full, drove quickly out of town.
The road was dark and empty and long. Carl sped through the wide flat arc of the Pajaro Valley toward Monterey, his car small and lonely under a vast sky.
This time at least he was saved having to go inside. When he pulled into the lot of the Pebble Beach golf club a little over an hour later, he saw Sam Morse—the man people were starting to call “the Duke of del Monte”— standing bullishly with a cigar outside the entrance, gazing up at the stars. Carl parked and walked quickly over to him.
“Carl Unger, as I live and breath,” Morse bellowed. “Hell are you doing here?”
“Looking for Marion,” Carl said, for what felt like the hundredth time.
“Well you’ve come to the right place. She’s saying goodbye to our friends. Then driving home. You’ve just caught her.”
“Excellent,” Carl said, with relief.
“Nothing wrong, I hope?”
Carl knew an outright untruth wouldn’t work. He was a long way from home on a cold December night, and Morse was smart. Though built like a bull and bluffly hail-fellow-well-met, his developments across the peninsula were well-conceived and profitable, despite the unfashionable efforts he went to in protecting the environment. A further testament to his character was the fact that though Marion had formerly been his employee, leaving to found a golf course that now rivaled his in fame— and attracted a greater number of celebrity guests—he’d remained both unfailingly supportive of her, and her friend.
“Nothing dramatic,” Carl said, therefore. “But urgent enough that it’s best I speak with her right away.”
“Of course, of course.” Morse stubbed the remains of his cigar in the ashtray by the door. “I’ll let her know you’re here. Come—wait in the bar.”
Morse led him there, and firmly instructed the nearest waiter that Carl was not allowed to pay for anything. The waiter appeared to take this as an instruction that he was not allowed to not let Carl have something to drink. A large scotch arrived quickly. Carl was most of the way through it when he saw Marion, thankfully alone, striding along the hallway. She saw him and bustled into the bar.
“Carl. It’s lovely to see you, naturally. But what on earth is it that can’t wait until tomorrow?”
“Could we speak outside?”
“Of course not, Carl. It’s freezing.”
Carl moved so that his body was between Marion and the rest of the bar, and pitched his voice low. “You can’t sell the lower meadow.”
“What? Why ever not? And how do you even know that I’m planning to?” Carl didn’t answer. “I’m sorry—but this is really none of your business. I’m selling the land and that’s the end of it.”
“You can’t. It isn’t safe.”
“Isn’t safe? What on earth are you talking about?”
“The people who made the offer. What do they say they want it for?”
“Oh, a facility of some kind. A cemetery, was it? I didn’t really listen. They’re prepared to pay well over the odds and that’s the only thing I care about right now.”
“You cannot sell it to them.”
Marion seemed caught between amusement and irritation. “Carl, it’s going to happen. It has to. And soon. I need the money, and we’re meeting over it tomorrow morning, bright and early.”
“At least delay the meeting.”
“I can’t. Their person is coming from the other side of the country.”
“From where?”
“Oh, I can’t remember that, Carl! Why should I care? Ended in ‘mouth,’ I think. What matters is that he’s the only person who can authorize the payment quickly.”
Carl took a deep breath. “Marion, listen to me. These people. They call themselves the Olde Fellowes, yes?”
“How on earth do you know that?”
“I just do. Do you understand who they are?”
“Of course. Like the Rotary. They’ve had a presence in town for years. Good works, business networking, that manner of thing. Dull but worthy.”
“Yes. But no. That’s what they appear to be. In fact they . . . they’re something else. Something very different. They’re extremely old and go under many names. They have a hidden purpose. It is a very dark one. I work for a covert organization whose task it is to stand between them and the completion of their agenda.”
“What are you talking about Carl?”
“Marion—when you stand outside at night in the dark at Pasatiempo, do you not sometimes feel something? A lack? A sense that the world is thinner than it should be?”
“Carl—how drunk are you?”
“The fabric of reality cannot be taken for granted, Marion. It can be worn away. It can be torn. That is what these people are seeking to do, and they want to buy your land because it is close by something that would enable them to cause extraordinary havoc—damaging the world in a way from which it might never recover. The portion they’re after stands directly over a subdivision of the San Andreas Fault. It is imperative that they be kept away from it. Not just the world, but the entire universe may be in danger.”
“Universe? Danger? From what?”
“The endless void. The Crawling Chaos.”
Marion stared at him for a long moment. And then, suddenly, began to laugh. Her laugh was famous. Loud, unbridled, and infectious.
“Oh Carl,” she said. “You are priceless. And kind. It’s a long way to come to gift me with a good laugh the night before my birthday, but that’s you all over. Thank you. But now I’m going home, and you should too.”
She patted him on the cheek and strode out of the bar before he had time to realize what was happening.
He dropped his glass onto a table and hurried after her, but there was no sign. She seemed to have totally vanished.
He trotted up and down the lines of the lot, looking for her Duesenberg J. He was right down the far side when he heard the sound of one leaving at the other end.
Of course. She’d parked right near the exit, as always, regardless of whether it was allowed.
Carl swore and ran back to his own vehicle. By the time he’d turned out onto the road Marion’s car was out of sight. He paused a moment. The last scotch had been a mistake. His head didn’t feel clear. He wondered—did he even have to do this tonight? He
now knew for sure that the meeting was happening tomorrow. Marion rarely interacted with people before ten, however, and so “bright and early” didn’t have to be taken literally. He could go home, eat, sleep. Get to Pasatiempo before eight. Talk to her then. Tell her more about the League, if necessary. Tell her whatever it took.
No.
It wouldn’t work. He’d seen it in her eyes and in the offhand way she’d dismissed what he’d said and hurried off. She wasn’t listening, and she wasn’t going to. The club was her life. She’d put everything into it. Heart, soul, all her not-inconsiderable financial resources, now gone. And she was proud. She’d evade him in the morning just as she’d evaded her many creditors this year, using every tactic from charm to simply making herself scarce for a while. The meeting would take place and the land would be sold.
That couldn’t happen.
It simply couldn’t.
Carl sat, hands gripping the steering wheel, cursing himself for not being quicker when she’d walked out—and feeling the stirring of real panic in his guts.
Then he remembered something Dorothy had said.
She always takes Watsonville road.
He’d lost only five minutes, ten at the most. Though Marion was well-known to enjoy pushing her Model J to the limits, Carl was confident he’d be able to catch up. His car was smaller, lighter. He knew what he had to do. He’d never driven Watsonville road himself, but had a good idea where it went: veering somewhat inland, cutting off the angle toward the north side of Santa Cruz. The only question was how you accessed it out of Carmel.
He found it quickly, and pushed his foot down on the pedal. Pretty soon he had a suspicion why Marion favored this highway, over and above the minor time-saving opportunity (she was a woman who always wanted to get where she was going as fast as possible, if not a little faster). Once you left town and got out into the countryside, it became clear that the county had decided there were more important roads upon which to spend scarce tax dollars. It was uneven, and pitted, the camber wonky even to the naked eye. Driving fast along it was exactly the sort of adventure Marion Hollins would enjoy.
It was empty for the time being, too, so Carl steered for the centerline and hammered along up the middle of the road. The Buick bumped and clattered frantically, occasionally bouncing hard enough to raise him out of his seat. The effects of the last drink kept settling deeper—he knew that he should slow down, but also that he couldn’t.
He flashed past some two-horse agricultural town, a battered hut by the side of the road shaped like an artichoke, a nest of old, tilting farm buildings. None made the scene look any more occupied. If anything, they accentuated how much of the landscape was empty. The flat valley. The low mountains either side. The wide sky above, eerie with moonlight. There were parts of this country that made you realize how late an addition to the picture humankind had been, and this was most definitely one of them. This was land biding its time and waiting until everything had passed. It could not be trusted. It was no friend to him, or to anyone.
He slowed a little to take the narrow bridge over the river, site of the incident from which the area had got its name. Hundreds of years ago a band of exhausted Spanish soldiers, forging their slow way north to establish missions up through what had then been a province of Spain, had come across an abandoned village. It had been burned to the ground. A huge black condor, ten feet across its wingspan, had been nailed to the side of one of the buildings. Some kind of warning, the soldiers realized—but they didn’t know what of. Carl did. He’d even spoken to a few surviving members of the Ohlone tribe and heard what they knew about areas of nothingness up in the mountains, places where the gaps between trees in the forest were not what they seemed: areas where appalling dread seeped up from the rock, as giant things stirred far below. Things like—
There she was.
As he finally rounded a long bend, Carl saw Marion’s convertible a quarter of a mile ahead.
He pressed harder on the gas pedal, streaking along the bumpy road, feeling his teeth vibrate. Marion knew his car. She’d see him in the rearview and pull over. He ran over what he’d say, what, if necessary, he could promise her. He might not be able to carry through on it without agreement from Washington, but if it were enough to stop her taking the meeting tomorrow, that would be all they needed for the time being. Now that the veil of silence between him and Dorothy Wheeler had been twitched aside, perhaps they could work together, meticulously plan what happened next, how to close down this particular incursion forever.
He was close now, close enough that Marion must be able to see his headlamps bearing down upon her.
She didn’t slow, however. Perhaps her mind was on other things. Carl was sure she would have taken freely of Morse’s doubtless well-stocked wine cellar too.
He sounded his horn.
She noticed that, certainly. He was close enough to see both the slight swerve it provoked, and then her eyes in the rearview mirror.
To see, also, the look of irritation and determination in them, as she accelerated away.
She knew who was following her well enough, but she didn’t wish to enter into further conversation, and had no intention of stopping.
Carl maintained the distance and tried to work out what to do. They were traveling at his car’s maximum speed now, or close to it. Far too quickly for this road, in the dark. His front left wheel caught a bump and for a moment the Buick was in danger of slewing badly, but he managed to bring it back under control.
Marion’s car inched a little farther ahead.
This is dumb, Carl thought. Dangerous and dumb. Yes, it remained imperative that he talk to her tonight, but he knew where she was going, after all. He should slow down, follow her back to Pasatiempo. Do whatever it took to gain and hold her attention there. Chasing her across the country like a lunatic was the product of panic and half a pint of expensive whiskey that he hadn’t paid for.
Slow down, Carl: slow down.
It took a physical effort to ease his foot back off the pedal. A gathering of will. Judgment too. He couldn’t afford to fall too far behind. She and Mary Pickford were thick as thieves. Their joint ingenuity would be considerable, and if Marion told Mary they were playing a jape on Carl— her fondness for practical jokes was legendary—the actress would play along and Carl wouldn’t stand a chance of being able to find Marion tonight.
So he gently pressed on the accelerator again. Marion had evidently been monitoring his actions, however, and did the same—her Duesenberg surging forward, leaving him for dead.
Carl swore. As they flashed past a sign warning of a junction ahead, he increased speed again, more subtly this time, hoping at least to be able to keep the car in sight. He didn’t need to be right on her tail.
But Marion kept increasing her speed, faster and faster. Perhaps to try to leave him behind—perhaps only because she liked to play the game, to live life at maximum volume. Carl increased his speed also.
Suddenly there were lights ahead.
A terrible screeching noise.
Carl dropped his foot on the brake hurriedly—hard, but not too heavily. He still nearly lost control.
As he was wrestling the vehicle back onto a straight course, he heard a loud crunching sound ahead, and another, not as loud.
He pulled over onto the shoulder, kicking up a hail of gravel, and got out and sprinted up the road toward the crash. One car lay diagonally across the road.
Another had rear-ended it, the front half-concertinaed. Marion’s convertible was off the road, lying on its side.
As Carl ran up to it her saw her face, staring up through the windshield into the black sky.
Half an hour later he stood next to the cop as Marion was loaded into the ambulance.
“Concussion. Pretty bad, the doctor said, but she should be fine in a couple of days.”
Carl breathed out heavily. “Where are they taking her?”
“Monterey. It’s nearest.”
“And they�
�ll keep her overnight?”
“Twenty-four hours minimum. That was a heck of a bump on her head. You’re a friend, right?”
“Well, colleague. But a friend, too, I hope.”
“Anybody I need to notify right away?”
“No,” Carl said. It would be better if the people who turned up at the club tomorrow morning—assuming that’s even where the meeting was taking place—were faced with incomprehension. If they were told the situation, he wouldn’t put it past them to seek Marion out in her hospital bed and do the deal there. Far better to deliver the news tomorrow afternoon, when it was too late. “She has no family here. And she’s going to be okay. But I’ll let the relevant people know tomorrow.”
The two other parties involved in the accident were standing together smoking cigarettes. The accident hadn’t even been Carl’s fault, or not completely. One driver—who’d spent not only the evening but the afternoon in a bar in Salinas—had entered the junction and swerved onto the highway at too high a speed and with nothing like due care and attention. A second driver had been forced to veer into the other lane to avoid running into the back of him.
Marion hadn’t seen any of this coming until suddenly the second car’s headlamps were bearing down upon her. She pulled hard to the right, and nearly made it. The front of her vehicle was clipped, however, hard enough to spin her into the ditch and crack her head into the windscreen.
The meeting with the Olde Fellowes wasn’t going to happen.
“You okay?” the cop said. He sounded suspicious.
“Fine. Why?”
“Just that you smiled. As if there’s something going on that I don’t know about?”
“Just glad she’s going to be okay, that’s all.”
By the time he turned up the road that would lead him to the top of Beach Hill and the McCray, Carl felt he had his ducks in a row. Tomorrow would disappear into holding the fort at the club, and driving down to check on Marion. She’d be angry as hell that the meeting hadn’t happened, but he’d reassure her that Pasatiempo’s looming financial problems could be sorted out in some other way. Perhaps they even could. The League’s field operations were still chronically underfunded, but this represented a clear and present danger. Perhaps he’d be able to get it passed up the ladder, maybe even with Dorothy Wheeler’s help.
Waiting Page 17
