Private Screening

by Richard North Patterson

  Stopping, Phoenix stared at the pile where Lord had hidden.

  He took a few steps toward it. As the beeping grew louder, he seemed to gaze beyond.

  Lord pressed his face to the sand, body curled on itself.

  Phoenix watched the pile, waiting for some sound or movement.

  There was only beeping. He adjusted something on his rifle; Lord waited for him to shoot the quarry he thought hidden there.

  There was no shot. The beeping seemed shriller than before.

  Phoenix stood over the pile.

  He bent to it, and then held the scrap of Lord’s running shorts to the moonlight.

  He began tearing them apart.

  Finding something, he placed it on top of the log, just beneath his rifle barrel. Lord quivered at the gunshot. The scanner stopped beeping.

  Lord’s face was wet. Maybe Phoenix would turn, he thought, and leave. Perhaps he only wished to stop the signal; Lord had not seen his face, could not identify him.

  The figure began moving again, slowly and carefully, a little to his left. Perhaps twenty feet.

  Phoenix was still hunting him.

  The trunk was angled between them. Lord slithered toward its far end, trying to hide.

  One step at a time, Phoenix drew even with him, looking from side to side. Staring in Lord’s direction.

  Lord lay like a second log.

  One more step, then another, and Phoenix was a few feet past.

  He stopped, raising his left wrist to his face, to read his watch.

  A hunter with a deadline.

  Lord got to his knees.

  Phoenix’s stare swung to the ocean. Head cocked toward him, Lord began to circle. Cramps made him limp.

  When Phoenix’s gaze swung back, Lord was just beyond it, moving softly.

  Phoenix’s head kept swinging; Lord kept circling, at his back. Stopping straight behind him.

  Between them was a log shaped like a club.

  Lord hobbled forward, grasping it. The wind and ocean howling covered his steps.

  Clamping his teeth, Lord rose again.

  Phoenix stepped forward, broad-shouldered, graceful. Lord’s legs were so stiff that the distance narrowed too slowly.

  Eight feet more.

  Lord started moving in a crouch. Soon Phoenix must look back.

  Six feet.

  Raising the club, Lord’s eyes sought the back of his neck.

  Four feet.

  Phoenix’s shoulders tensed. As he stopped, Lord drew back the club.

  Phoenix spun on him.

  In the split second he could not decide to kill him on the beach, Lord swung at his skull.

  There was a thud, shock running through Lord’s arm, the rifle firing. Then Phoenix was toppling in its echo, dropping his weapon.

  Lord lunged at him.

  His head cracked against the terrorist’s rib cage, changing the direction of his fall. Backward, Lord on top of him, screaming, unable to see his face.

  Phoenix chopped at his windpipe.

  The scream became gagging. As Lord’s throat constricted, an elbow smashed into his jaw, knocking him to the sand. Feeling ripped tissue in his mouth, tasting blood.

  Phoenix crawled toward the rifle.

  Pushing to his knees, Lord dove to grab the terrorist’s feet, then pull himself up over his back as Phoenix grasped the rifle.

  Lord clutched his throat with both hands.

  Muscles straining, Phoenix twisted under him, trying to turn and fire. Lord pushed for the back of his throat.

  With primal strength, Phoenix turned beneath him, grasping the rifle in one hand, finger reaching the trigger, as his other hand flailed at Lord. The only sound was the wind and roar of the ocean.

  Lord’s fingers dug for his larynx.

  The rifle stopped moving. Then, slowly, it slid from Phoenix’s hand.

  In a final spasm, his fingernails scraped the back of Lord’s wrists. A gurgling sound came from the darkness.

  Choking with his last ounce of force, Lord bent his face to the terrorist’s.

  His eyes were John Damone’s.

  They were stretched open, like the mouth gaping for air. As Damone gazed up at him, Lord could feel the pulse in his throat, his own convulsive swallowing. Damone could no longer breathe.

  Grasping the rifle, Lord held its barrel to his temple.

  Damone shuddered beneath him as air rushed to his lungs. It came back as ragged panting in Lord’s face, two inches away.

  “Where is she?” Lord whispered.

  Damone’s eyes shut.

  In the silent seconds while Lord waited for his answer, he felt their heartbeats link them like two animals.

  Slowly, Damone’s head moved from side to side, once.

  For an instant, Lord was only aware of the trigger he still touched, his free hand clutching Damone’s throat.

  “Why …”

  Damone opened his eyes to stare back at him. In a voice so low it became a curse, he answered, “Because she saw my face.”

  Parnell put down the telephone.

  His father’s standing clock showed five minutes until nine. Somehow, it was important that he remember the time.

  Through their curtains he saw police holding back onlookers, TV lights, the black-haired woman who had badgered him for interviews, facing a camera. She spoke behind him from the television: “Within minutes, we should know the fate of John Damone and Alexis Parnell.…”

  Turning off her voice, he heard instead what Moore had told him.

  They had found Lord on a deserted beach, naked, a rifle jammed to the back of Damone’s throat. Damone, the enemy he did not know.

  His footsteps had come from a rope ladder on the sheer cliff beyond the beach. At its top, hidden by a stand of pines, was a cabin.

  Inside was a single chair, spotlit by photographer’s lights, waiting in front of a camera. But Alexis lay in a shallow grave, overlooking the water.

  They would bring her body, and Damone, to San Francisco.

  Parnell was still, imagining her final moments.

  For once, he did not cry.

  His hand was steady as he dialed. He felt disembodied, more mind than heart.

  “Hello?” Danziger said.

  “This is Colby,” he began, then realized how foolish this was. “She’s dead, John.”

  His voice surprised him with its flatness. Only Danziger’s silence made him feel pain.

  “Colby, I’ll be right there.…”

  “Just keep them away. Please.” Pausing, a vision of the night to come formed in Parnell’s mind. “I’m leaving the telephone off the hook. To have some privacy with this.”

  Danziger paused. With a quiet that underscored his meaning, he asked, “Will you be all right, alone?”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  “Then I understand,” Danziger murmured. “I’m so very sorry—”

  “I know you are,” Parnell answered softly, and pressed the receiver down.

  He placed the telephone on the blotter, next to his revolver.

  Picking it up, his eyes closed.

  He had loaded it this morning, he remembered, after calling Danziger. To protect her once Lord returned.

  She would be changed, of course. But he had asked Danziger to find psychiatrists who specialized in such cases, rather than wait here with him. Tomorrow had not seemed too soon to start.

  His grip tightened on the revolver.

  Alexis had died before him, in agony and fear. This was the first hour of knowing that for as long as he lived.

  With the same clarity, he knew he could not bear it.

  He placed the revolver to his temple.

  It remained there, until Parnell was satisfied.

  When he stood again, two hours had passed.

  Walking to his window, he saw more police, the crowd of press growing, the dark-haired woman still talking to a camera. On the screen, her lips moved silently; Parnell could sense her confusion. It made him feel more cer
tain.

  There were precautions to be taken first, he thought. Ways he must prepare.

  He went back to his desk.

  From the telephone directory, he wrote down the address for the Hall of Justice, then dialed a second number.

  “Thank you for calling MUNI,” the tape began. “If you are requesting route information, please tell the operator where you are located, and where you wish to go.…”

  The tape reminded him of Phoenix.

  “MUNI information,” a man’s voice broke in.

  “Pardon me,” Parnell answered politely. “I wonder if you might tell me the route from Broderick, near Broadway, to 850 Bryant Street.”

  “At what time, sir?”

  “Night.” Parnell glanced at the clock. “After midnight.”

  Hesitance. “Will this be daily?”

  “No. Just this once.”

  “Weekdays, or weekend?”

  “Weekend.”

  Hearing pages flip, Parnell tensed.

  “Yeah, okay … you’ll walk to Jackson at Divisadero. Take the three Jackson to Van Ness, and then transfer to the forty-two bus going south. It’ll take you right along Bryant.…”

  Parnell wrote this down. “Three Jackson,” he repeated. “Forty-two south on Van Ness.…”

  “That’s right,” the man said, and hung up.

  Parnell stuffed the paper in his shirt pocket, and unhooked the telephone again.

  Climbing the stairs to their room, he selected a tie and his oldest sportcoat, found a hat he seldom wore. Then he opened their coat closet.

  Her furs and wool coats stopped him.

  Sudden tears began welling. He pulled out his raincoat and closed the door.

  When he hurried downstairs, the crowd outside had swollen. The woman was still waiting there.

  Opening his desk, Parnell took the press pass his staff had given him at the annual party, and put it in one pocket of his coat. The other sagged with the weight of his revolver.

  Pausing, he saw the woman on his screen, and turned up her voice.

  It sounded strained. “We are still waiting for the final broadcast, or some word about the hostages. All we can promise is to maintain live coverage until this terrible drama comes to an end.…”

  He slipped out their pantry, entering the rear grounds.

  The wind was cool on his face. There were stars above the bay, and the lights of boats were like more stars. But the home separating theirs and Broderick was not lit. Only a stucco wall between them, with the cherry tree she’d planted next to it.

  Grasping its branches, he put one foot in the crotch of the tree and pulled himself up. The street shoe nearly slipped; Parnell’s arms shook as the tree buckled beneath his weight. Pushing with one leg, he hooked the other over the wall, pulling his body up. Lying on top now, already panting.

  A dog barked inside his neighbor’s home.

  Pulse racing, Parnell dropped into their yard, falling on his hands and knees as the revolver slid from his pocket. Desperately, he began to pat the grass around him.

  Floodlights bathed the yard.

  Three feet in front of him, Parnell saw the revolver.

  He shoved it in his pocket, running from floodlight to floodlight, a shadow holding its hat. Turning sideways to see the curtain open as he reached the steps to Broderick Street.

  As he disappeared, the dog stopped barking.

  Broderick Street was quiet. Its sidewalk ran along one curving private drive, heading downward toward the bay, away from Broadway.

  He skittered down, knees straining, getting no traction from the flat soles of his shoes until he reached the bottom.

  Pull yourself together, he thought. Don’t look suspicious.

  He wiped his forehead; suddenly he was a neatly dressed eccentric, calmly taking his late-night walk. A block right to Divisadero, a second steep one back up toward Broadway, looking for squad cars as his breathing became a wheeze. His glasses were steamed.

  She had told him to exercise.

  Cleaning his glasses, he looked one block down Broadway, at their home. Lights and sound trucks lined both sides of the street; the crowd filled their entire block and half the next. Above them was the steel web of an SNI satellite truck.

  He turned away.

  One more flat block, another downhill, still expecting the police. Then a bus was coming toward him with its sign illuminated. Three Jackson.

  They would recognize him.

  Quickly, Parnell took off his glasses. His palms were damp.

  When the bus stopped, opening its door, he could not see the driver’s face. Fumbling through his wallet, he found a bill.

  “That’s a five, sir.”

  “I know.”

  “We don’t make change. Sixty cents, please.”

  “That’s all right. Please, just take this.”

  As he took the bill, Parnell felt the man appraising him. He looked down.

  A hand appeared, holding something.

  “It’s a transfer.”

  “Oh, yes.” Belatedly, Parnell took it. “Thank you.”

  A few vague shapes stirred to look at him. Hastily, he sat next to a black woman in a straight red wig.

  The bus headed down Fillmore Street, past empty windows and blinking liquor signs Parnell could not read, then toward Van Ness or a street he did not recognize. Dark forms drifted from the liquor stores, aimless.

  Parnell turned to the woman, holding out his transfer. “Pardon me,” he asked, “but how does one use this?”

  The woman stared at him, suspicious. Finally, she said, “Just give it to the driver on the next bus.”

  “Are we near Van Ness yet?”

  “Is that where you’re going?”

  “Yes, to start.” He hesitated. “I suppose I should tell our driver.”

  Glancing out, she pulled a strap above the window. There was a sound not unlike a department store chime, and then the bus was stopping.

  “You’re here,” she told him.

  Parnell stood, stuffing the transfer in with his revolver.

  “Thank you,” he said, reached for a pole beside the door, and stumbled from the bus.

  Putting on his glasses, he oriented himself.

  Alone again and colder, he watched waves of car lights pass. Without a bus, feeling outwitted by a city he had never known.

  It was already half past one.

  As more minutes crept by, Parnell waited, lonely and irresolute. The shock he could not think of turned to numbness.

  Another sign, moving above the cars. Number forty-two.

  He took off his glasses just before it stopped. Uncertainly, he offered up the transfer.

  The driver took it.

  Parnell slumped in the seat behind him, alone.

  The bus crept forward, block by block, picking up drunks and strays who boarded in its bleak yellow light. Face to the window, Parnell knew with fleeting triumph that they would not recognize him, for he had come where he did not belong. Down through a district of warehouses, street after street without trees or people or any change at all, the image as alien and cold to him as the future John Damone had willed that he live out.

  Damone would face him first.

  The bus turned onto Bryant Street.

  It was silent, barren as the others. Turning to the front, Parnell was suddenly sure they had taken Damone elsewhere, that he was performing one last feckless act. Then he put on his glasses.

  Two blocks distant, the Hall of Justice was surrounded by the red flash of squad cars. For an instant, Parnell remembered films of the night they’d brought in Carson, and then he wondered if Moore had already arrived there with Damone.

  Reaching for the cord, he could not bring himself to pull it.

  The bus kept moving.

  One block, then entering the second, Parnell’s face pressed to the glass. Passing newsmen, handheld cameras, another satellite truck with the SNI logo.

  It froze him.

  When the bus s
topped, he saw the dark-haired woman, standing across the street.

  She was talking to her cameraman, Parnell saw. The man was facing the main doors of the building; as if agitated, she pointed toward a side street, to the exit of its underground garage.

  Parnell jerked the cord.

  It was 2:00 A.M. before Stacy saw Lord’s headlights.

  Since his call, she had tended the fire, unable to absorb what he had said. Her television remained on SNI; their films of Alexis, used as filler until they learned what had happened to her, made what Stacy knew but could not accept more eerie. And yet to turn off her living image seemed an act of disrespect; it was only John Damone she could not watch.

  When she opened the door, Lord’s mouth was swollen, and he seemed to look through her. He was white, as if he had been cold for hours.

  Slowly, Stacy put her head against his chest.

  His arms came tight around her.

  For a moment, they stayed like that. Then she led him to the fire and brought a snifter of brandy. Next to them, Rachel reappeared on screen.

  “There will be no televised execution,” she said in a higher, rapid voice. “We now have confirmation that Phoenix has been captured, and is being brought to San Francisco. But the FBI has not revealed his identity, or the fate of Alexis Parnell, John Damone, or Anthony Lord.…”

  Lord took a long swallow, staring at the flame.

  “After you,” he said at length, “I called my son.

  “He thought I was in San Francisco. Were we still going to the beach, he asked me. I said yes, and that I had to get off now. I was just standing there in the phone booth. My voice hadn’t changed at all, and I was crying. I didn’t even know why.”

  She said nothing.

  “I’m sorry, Stacy.”

  The words unloosed her horror and anger. “It’s ten years of my life,” she answered in a low voice, “and all I know is that I can’t ever look back at that or him and feel the same. God, he must have hated me.”

  “It’s more the opposite.” Lord drank more brandy. “I think he wanted to know if you’d go through all this for him.”

  “But Alexis …”

  “Something went wrong.” His voice was flat. “I’m not sure what.”

  “Wrong,” she repeated.

  Lord still watched the fire dance. Almost as if he could not look away.

  “He could have shot me right there,” he said. “But he needed to do it on television.”