Private Screening

by Richard North Patterson

  “That was nine years ago.” Shading her eyes, she found the caller. “Were you there?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know,” Stacy said slowly, “I’m really flattered you remember.”

  She looked back to Leon, and began.

  Her version gave the lyrics an upbeat, comic lilt. Tensely searching the audience, Lord realized that Johnny Moore was watching him.

  As Stacy continued, he saw, a benign feeling seemed to spread over the Arena. It was only at the end that her voice lost a little.

  She touched her throat. “I’d better make this one the last,” she said with a quick smile. “’cause I never promised I wouldn’t cut a record.”

  The crowd laughed in response, and then her smile vanished.

  “A while ago,” she went on, “someone signaled that we’ve done what we set out to do. I can’t thank you enough for that, for me and for John Damone.” She looked at the camera. “Really, I’d like to thank everyone.”

  Pausing, her voice became cooler. “It’s time now,” she said, “for John and Alexis to come back.”

  There was total silence.

  She looked back at the crowd. “Okay,” she said, “I used to do slow, sad songs to close, ’cause they seemed to work better. But I don’t want to finish tonight with one. So I’ve come up with a familiar song that isn’t, and maybe you can sing it with me.”

  There was a drum riff, and then Stacy launched into a jaunty version of “That’ll Be the Day”:

  “That’ll be the day

  When you make me cry

  You say you’re gonna leave me

  You know it’s a lie

  ’Cause that’ll be the da-a-ay

  When I die.…”

  Stacy grinned.

  There was laughter and applause, and then the whole place was moving. The band tore loose, cymbals crashing and drum pounding as the crowd sang with her to the final line:

  “That’ll be the da-a-ay

  When I die.”

  When the audience began calling her name, she didn’t move.

  It went on for minutes. When it ended, Stacy was still standing there.

  “I love you,” she said, and it was over.

  If only she had not left him so off-balance, Phoenix thought.

  When the picture changed, he saw Alexis’s face change with it.

  On the screen, Parnell sat like a wax dummy between five tense supplicants, three men and two women. Alexis seemed transfixed.

  Her husband’s voice was halting. “The choice you’ve given me—it’s too hard.” His eyes fell to a notecard. “Too hard—”

  Phoenix began to smile at his confusion.

  “Ah, this is Valencia Cruz of Taos, New Mexico.” Belatedly, Parnell’s head twitched toward the wiry, olive-skinned woman closest to him. “She’s the mother of six children,” he read on, “whose husband has lost his job and health insurance. Now she needs a costly bone marrow transplant in order to live—”

  As the woman stared at him, Alexis reddened.

  “Beside her is the Reverend Howell—” Stopping, Parnell squinted at the card; a black man in a dashiki leaned closer to correct him. “Harlell Cleveland,” Parnell amended, “of Washington, DC. Mr.… the Reverend Cleveland runs a successful drug rehabilitation program for teenagers which has lost its federal funding.”

  For a moment, Parnell spoke faster. “To my left is Theresa Licavoli of Saint Louis, Missouri. Ah—Theresa has the problem of trying to house elderly people without families—” Interrupting, an intense, sharp-featured woman said something in his ear. Giving her a cornered look, Parnell murmured, “Uh—Ms. Licavoli tells me this problem affects thousands across the country.…”

  So far, Phoenix thought, SNI had chosen beautifully.

  “To my right,” Parnell struggled on, “is David Feldstein of here—San Francisco. David is director of a food program for low-income families which was recently defunded.” Parnell stopped at something in the card. “Mr. Feldstein would like to make a statement.…”

  “It’s shocking,” the bearded man said over him, “when we can spend billions on some so-called Russian threat and starve our own people.”

  Parnell nodded dumbly, to indicate sympathy or perhaps to cut him off. When there was silence, he looked back at the card.

  He stared at it for several seconds.

  “Last,” he read haltingly, “is Jon Gustafson of Bemidji, Minnesota.…”

  His mouth kept moving, speechless, then murmuring, “Head of ‘Parents without Children.’…”

  Distractedly, he wiped his forehead. In her husband’s silence, Phoenix realized that Alexis’s face was pinched.

  “Ah, this is composed of parents whose children were abducted.…”

  Phoenix began laughing.

  The sound made Alexis start. She turned to him, tears welling.

  “Three years ago,” Parnell said woodenly, “Mr. Gustafson’s four-year-old son was … kidnapped by his former wife. So far he has spent $110,000 in an effort to find Matthew.…”

  Suddenly and completely, his voice broke. Tears ran down Alexis’s face.

  Someone at SNI, Phoenix knew, was a genius.

  “So,” Parnell went on abruptly, “he founded—ah, PWC to computerize all information which might assist recovery of kidnapped children.…”

  The stolid, brown-haired man bent forward. “Marie,” he said to the camera, “if you’re watching, please, bring Matt home and I won’t do anything. I just want to see him again.…”

  Parnell gaped at him, then turned as if at a voice in the studio, gripping the card in front of him. “Ah—I’ve been deeply moved by meeting these four—five fine people.” He glanced at Gustafson. “It’s hard to choose—”

  Turning, he pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “I’ve decided … to give them each two hundred thousand dollars.…”

  Alexis had stopped crying; suddenly, Phoenix felt the explosive mix of her captivity with what she saw and heard.

  “I also would like to do something—ah, personal.” Belatedly, Parnell remembered to face Gustafson. “Jon, I’d like to pledge an additional two hundred thousand in the name of my own lost son, Robert.…”

  She was pale, Phoenix realized, trembling.

  Abruptly, Alexis stood, mouth tight with anger and emotion. It twisted as she turned to him, struggling to form the word “Please.…”

  Instinctively, he put the microphone around her neck, and stepped behind the camera, to let her speak.

  Something about the first kidnapping, he sensed with rising excitement, had divided her from Parnell. Something he might open like a wound.

  Lord knew to stay on the catwalk.

  Below him, Stacy looked back at the empty hall, the stage where Kilcannon had fallen. Then she walked toward the dressing room without glancing up.

  The band waited near the corridor. As she hugged them, it became a collective embrace. Then she put an arm around Leon and Greg Loughery, and they all went to the tuning room.

  Only then did the crew start loading boxes. From the back wall, Moore watched them.

  When the band reappeared, Lord climbed down the catwalk. They filed past him, talking among themselves. Catching Lord’s eye, Leon Brennis smiled.

  There was no one in the tuning room except a guard.

  When Lord knocked, there was a muffled, “Come in.”

  Stacy sat facing the door.

  He closed it behind him. “Two of you,” he finally said, “would make a dozen.”

  There was the hint of a smile at the corner of her eyes, and then it passed. “I hope it was what John needs.”

  He nodded. “Still hungry?”

  “I don’t know. Really, I think I’m too wired to eat.”

  “Sure,” he said automatically, then felt his disappointment.

  She watched him, hesitant. “Can you drive me somewhere, Tony? I’m kind of up to here with limousines and hotels.”

  He tilted his head. “Where
, exactly?”

  “I own a place no one knows about.” She paused. “At Sea Ranch, three hours up the coast.”

  He gazed at her. “That’s a fairly long drive at night.”

  “There’s plenty of room.” She flicked back her bangs. “You can stay over.”

  He sat on the edge of the dressing table. “A late dinner’s one thing,” he ventured. “But there’s some pretty fair evidence that I’m bad news for you.”

  “Nothing happened.” She smiled faintly. “Nothing’s going to happen.”

  They watched each other. “Then you’d better tell Johnny where it is,” Lord said finally. “He likes to know when we’re out past eleven.”

  Her smile lingered. “Okay,” she said, and picked up her bag.

  They walked together to the stage. Lord stopped there, looking out at the Arena, as Stacy talked to Moore. Then she headed toward the loading dock.

  Moore’s gaze as it moved from Stacy to Lord was curious, almost pitying. He stepped forward as Lord passed.

  “On the other hand,” he murmured, “he could have waltzed it out before Kilcannon was shot.”

  When she finished speaking to her husband, for Phoenix’s camera, Alexis seemed defenseless to him.

  He watched the anger she had spoken drain from her. In its place, arising from the shock of her own outburst, was an embarrassed sense of their new intimacy.

  Was this his imagination, Phoenix wondered, some fantasy of his aloneness? Or suppressed emotion, running between them like a wire?

  Her hand moved slightly. Just a fraction, as if she wished to reach out in her confusion, for comfort or for warmth. As if what was happening brought her closer to him than to Parnell.

  He stayed behind the camera, fighting panic and desire. He did not know if this was self-projection; if he reached for her, he did not know how it would end.

  For a moment, he fiercely wished that she could see his face, see him as he really was.

  She must not.

  His own hand moved.

  With an effort of will, he raised it, pointing toward the door.

  Her eyes shut. For that instant, she seemed not to breathe; Phoenix felt her solitude as his.

  He could not permit himself to learn if what he saw was the numbness of a captive, or desire, or simple self-disgust.

  She turned—almost brokenly, it seemed to him—and walked to where he pointed.

  Locking the door, he leaned his back against it, feeling her behind him.

  At first, watching SNI was only a distraction.

  “Whatever the outcome,” their woman reporter said outside the Arena, “this concert was in at least one sense a personal triumph for Stacy Tarrant. But it appears unlikely that her own feelings will soon be known.…”

  On film, two police began running Stacy toward a white Datsun.

  “After the concert, Miss Tarrant left with attorney Anthony Lord for an unknown destination.” The newswoman skipped a beat before adding, “As a result, she is unavailable for comment.…”

  Phoenix mashed the off button, a slow, deep anger building within him. And then from his hatred and self-division, an alternative climax to his drama started forming.

  If he did not kill Alexis for them, perhaps there could be someone else.

  Day Five: Friday

  DAWN jarred Lord awake.

  Throwing back the quilt, he heard beams creaking, remembered he was upstairs. The house surrounding him was redwood, with lofts and skylights over spaces which opened to the first floor, where Stacy slept. The breeze through his window screen smelled of salt.

  It looked across a hundred yards of sea grass to the ocean. The first ribbon of sunlight, brightening the water, revealed jagged, blue-gray rocks. Waves pounding against low cliffs sent jets of spray rising to a graceful peak above his line of vision, then falling back again. The muffled roar came seconds later.

  Leaning out, he looked along the coast. Here, ninety miles above San Francisco, the seascape turned rugged through Humboldt County and beyond. Even to the south, battered cypresses grew sideways in the wind, and the Coast Range overlooked the water. The waves of sea grass were like heather.

  It was six-thirty, and he had managed three hours’ sleep.

  They had driven from his apartment in relative quiet, talking little. What Moore had said about the robbery kept turning in Lord’s mind.

  He walked to the telephone beside his bed and dialed.

  “Tony?” Cass sounded drowsy. “Where are you, anyhow?”

  “I drove Stacy up to Sea Ranch.” He kept his voice low. “I want you to call Atascadero. Tell them I need to see Harry after the broadcast tonight, or as early tomorrow morning as possible.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “I’m not sure.” Lord gave her the telephone number. “Just call me back with a time.”

  Waking came to her slowly, from a deep, dreamless sleep. It took a moment to recall where she was, and how she had gotten there; suddenly the thought of seeing Lord out of context made her edgy.

  She found him in the L-shaped window seat at one corner of the living room, wearing jeans and a green wool turtleneck and drinking coffee. The ocean seemed to absorb him.

  “Hypnotized?” she asked.

  It took Lord a second to turn, as if part of him were elsewhere. So much like Jamie that the thought startled her.

  “It does that to me,” he told her. “Actually, I was thinking that it would be impossible to look at the ocean for any length of time and still be impressed with yourself.”

  As he sipped some coffee, she leaned her shoulder against a beam. “God,” she said finally, “I am so relieved I feel guilty.”

  He tilted his head. “You’ve done everything you can. Except drink this coffee I made.”

  She poured some and sat against the corner where the windows joined. “How long have you been watching?”

  “A couple of hours.” His look of curious interest told her he had followed the thread. “Does the ocean affect you like that?”

  “Sometimes, but not in a bad way.” She sipped coffee, looking out. “It’s just that when I feel smaller, I start looking at what’s closest to me, if that makes any sense.”

  “Sure.” He glanced around him. “This is a terrific place. For contemplating, and otherwise.”

  “I’ve always loved it here. My father used to say he didn’t want to know anyone who didn’t.”

  “Is this your family’s?”

  “Not exactly—my parents used to rent it for vacations. I’d sleep in the loft upstairs, listening to the sounds, and pretend it was ours. I couldn’t believe we weren’t special to the house.” Talking, she felt the relaxation of memory. “I used to personify things—trees, cars, houses—and this one has such nice associations. So five years ago I hired a real estate agent to tell me if it ever came up for sale. Two days after that happened, I bought it.”

  “Instant gratification.”

  “Longest two days of my life …” Stacy responded automatically, then cut herself off.

  Lord watched her over the rim of his mug. “This waiting for eight o’clock gets so hard,” she said at last. “I just want to see them both.”

  He nodded, turning back to the ocean. “Think you can take me for a walk?” he asked after a while. “You must know everything about this place.”

  Staring at the locked door, Phoenix took a deep drag off the joint.

  He began to imagine her on the other side, waiting for him. He had not slept.

  Was she thinking, he wondered, of what she had said last night?

  He knew that prisoners, out of helplessness, need to identify with their captors and, in the end, to please them. But he had not known how much this knowledge would divide him: millions watched him, and yet Alexis was the only audience he saw. They shared this, alone.

  Smoking, he tried to distract himself with Stacy’s picture. But the image she brought to him was Lord’s.

  He turned toward Alexis’s room aga
in.

  For moments he was still, postponing his decision. But his own need to know her feelings was too strong.

  Slowly, he walked to the door and opened it.

  Alexis was awake.

  She watched him from the bed, not knowing that what she had said to the camera had changed things, or that what she did a few moments from now would help decide who would live and who would die. He felt their silence as a delicate thread, their stillness as two figures on a frieze, one not knowing the choice he would give her, the other waiting for her answer.

  He turned away, leaving the door open behind him.

  Stepping outside, Phoenix took off his hood, and dropped it on the porch.

  He stopped there, considering. There was little chance she could escape him, although she might not know this. But what he did from here on out would depend on whether she tried, or stayed behind, to live.

  Phoenix got in the van and drove off, to begin the act whose ending she would write for him.

  They walked along the promontory, water glistening beneath them. Stacy stopped to look at some wildflowers.

  “Dad and I started taking this walk when I was nine or so,” she told him. “He loved nature, even the smallest things, and he had this absolute patience—it wasn’t what he said so much as how he watched. I guess all the time I was learning from him.”

  She needed to talk, Lord knew, perhaps to anyone. “Parents and children are interesting,” he remarked. “The pieces of myself I see in Christopher are often pieces of my father. Except that sometimes Christopher’s a wiseass.”

  “Is that genetic, or environmental?”

  “Environmental. Dad’s a very nice man.”

  “Then he’s not a lawyer.”

  “No, but he’s been very sporting about that. Speaking of which, where are the seals you promised?”

  She led him to a finger of rock where the surf pounded at both sides. When they reached the end, she said, “Down there.”

  Seals covered the rocks below, and more gray-brown heads surfaced from the water, looking for space. Stacy raised the binoculars. Surprisingly, she smiled, then handed them to Lord.

  He focused on two seals sliding from the water. Wet and glimmery, they collapsed on the rock with forepaws and flippers sprawling, sunning themselves. Every so often they looked up, inquisitive yet lazy, the supreme pacifists. “I wonder what they think about,” Lord remarked.