“Thanks,” Danny said glumly. Then he brightened a little. Twenty years of dealing with construction people had given him a small, private list of useful names for an emergency. “Say, I bet we have a lot of friends in common, now that I think of it. You know Angie Collucci? He’s from San Pedro, and Angie and I—”
“Deere,” the man said, getting up—as soon as he started to move all three of the others were up ahead of him—“from now on, I’m your friend, isn’t that right?”
“Oh, sure!”
Boyma nodded. “You only need one friend,” he said wisely. “Of course, you got to make sure he stays friendly. We’ll keep in touch.”
Danny jumped to the window and watched them get in the car. He pushed the remote button that opened the gate for them, and when they disappeared around the bend in the driveway and the light indicated they had passed the gate he discovered he was sweating. “You want me to get you a Seven-Up or something, Danny?” Joel asked.
“No! Go put the car away. And tell the Mexes they can come out of the bushes now,” he added, heading for the bathroom. He had never needed to go so badly.
The invasion of the gangsters into his private home had bothered Danny more than he could handle. It was an act of rape. It was entering into his most private parts. Plenty of tough people came around the office on Sunset Boulevard, some through the front door, most up the back stairs; and all that was the normal course of doing business and Danny Deere dealt with them head to head and never raised a sweat.
But this was his home. It was private. It was safe. He didn’t even get mail here!
It was not just the property itself that had charmed Danny Deere. It was the marvelous isolation, and the way it was situated. Danny had a lifetime’s experience of Los Angeles, with its mud slides and brush fires. The place was exempt from both. The county had taken a slice through one edge of the property, after he subdivided it, for a cemented spillway. If there was flooding above, it would come down the spillway, not down Danny’s avocado grove. Behind and above the house was a forty-foot rise, a hummock on the side of the hills; but if there was a mud slide higher it would stop on the far side of that hill, and the hill itself would not slide as long as the avocado grove tied it down with its roots. Fire was always a problem. But there were irrigation sprays for the avocados, and that upper swimming pool was now repaired and always full of water. Power? After his accountant explained the tax advantages of solar, Danny invested in ten thousand square feet of photovoltaics on the roof. There would be power for the pumps.
And all that was part of the total security, the womblike environment, that was Danny’s home, that had now been breached.
It was not all psychological. There were very good reasons why Danny wanted the safest, securest, privatest place in the world, and they had to do with money.
When the profits began to get embarrassing Danny had to figure out what to do with them. He could put just so much into the house itself. By the time you had two Jacuzzis you didn’t really want a third. He missed the boat on gold and was afraid to take a chance on diamonds. Silver was too bulky. Bearer bonds paid off not much more than inflation, so your money wasn’t working for you. Swiss bank accounts paid nominal interest or none at all.
Then he discovered art.
The house had come with a huge wine cellar, a lot bigger than Danny ever needed for wine. But he enlarged it and walled it off with concrete; and there, under his house, air-conditioned and humidity controlled, row on row, there were ashcan moderns and smuggled Russian ikons, kinetic light sculptures by somebody in Ohio, and crude wood carvings from some somebodies in Africa. Danny bought with a lavish hand, and always for cash. At first he hired a UCLA graduate student for expert advice, but she didn’t seem to pay off, in more than one way she refused to pay off, and expert advice didn’t seem necessary. The art was all getting more valuable anyway. The graduate student had left a legacy of subscriptions to art magazines and, month by month, Danny delighted to see the auction prices going up.
It was a hundred per cent guaranteed investment. The Feds didn’t know it existed. No one did. When he decided to sell, he could sell the same way he bought. For cash. Off the books, no records. Until then there was very little that could go wrong. If the artists lived and continued to produce, they often continued to get recognition, and the prices went up. If they died it was even better. Every time an artist died Danny felt a tingle of pleasure: there would be n
Or almost always…. But if anyone less heavy and well connected than the day’s visitors tried anything, the Mexicans would have the sense to call the police, and the black-and-whites would be there before the burglars got past the TV sets and the Tiffany lamps.
There really was only one thing that Danny could imagine damaging his collection, and that was if California really and truly should actually slide to the bottom of the sea.
Well, two things. The other was if he made some really bad enemies.
Wednesday, December 23d. 8:00 PM.
The tens of thousands of volcanos in the world are classified in three categories: active, dormant, and extinct. It is not clear how real the distinctions are. Mt. St. Helens was a “dormant” volcano until the spring of 1980. Even “extinct” volcanos hold surprises. In Papua, Mt. Lamington was classified as extinct until 1956. Then it erupted and killed three thousand people.
Because he still had a job to do, Tib had to fly up to Marin County for two days with the mobile seismological stations monitoring the Hayward and San Andreas faults; it was not a special trip, it was one of his functions to keep them in line. Because it was two days before Christmas, he had to go directly from the airport to the lecture by this “Doctor” Lautermilch. Rainy had some sort of relative in town; Meredith Bradison simply refused to get involved in anything that was not family; Tib was the only one left, if anyone was to hear this probable quack.
The lecture was in an old church not far from Pershing Square, and to Tib’s horror it was packed. This madness was spreading! He sat at the back of the room, hoping no one would recognize him. The church hall was incongruously decorated, a great green tree in one corner and flights of gold paper angels across the windows, but there was nothing Christmasy about Dr. Lautermilch’s message. He drew on every “psychic” and “seer” from Nostradamus to himself—no, even before Nostradamus, because he actually pulled out a set of measurements of the Great Pyramid at Gizeh to prove that Western civilization was on its last legs.
Duty or no duty, it was more than Tib Sonderman could stand. He left long before Lautermilch was finished and took a taxi to his home. Everyone had gone insane! The Jupes were all over the airport, more of them than of Santa Clauses and a dozen times as visible. In the plane he had been forced to endure fifty minutes’ conversation with a young high-school teacher from Oakland, on her way to spend Christmas with her parents in Van Nuys. As soon as she found out he was a geologist, she wanted to be reassured that Los Angeles would last at least until the first of the year, when she would be flying back. And she was a teacher! Presumably an educated woman! Presumably sane!
Tib’s mood was not Christmasy as he paid off the cab at the street entrance to his house, and started up the steps to the front door he almost never used.
The lights were on inside the house. Something was wrong.
As soon as he let himself in he was certain. Someone had been there. Bare stretches appeared in the living room bookshelves, where once they had been tightly packed; someone had removed about a quarter of the books. The coffee table with the Moorea shells under its glass top was gone, and two paintings were missing from the walls. Tib didn’t think of burglars. His first thought was “ex-wife”, and when he entered the kitchen he was not surprised to find the row of copper-bottomed skillets gone f
rom the rack on the wall. He heard voices outside, and knew before he turned to the window what he would see. Wendy was there, Wendy and her new husband, or next husband, or let’s-try-it-on lover, or whatever he was at the moment; he could see the shape of his pale green VW van, and then he saw them at the door.
His former wife stopped cold at the door. “Oh, my God, Tib, you scared me. I thought you were off in Puerto Rico or Iceland or something. ”
“Just San Jose, Wendy. Hello, Don.” The young pale man who Wendy had preferred to him was carrying empty cardboard cartons, looking as though he wished he could make them disappear. “I didn’t expect to see you here, is all.”
Wendy grinned. “Thought we were three thousand safe miles away? Sorry, Tibber. We got to missing California, so we just hopped in the van. We’ve got a little place in Venice—my God, what they want for rent—but there’s nothing in it. So we’re just taking some of the stuff I left…?”
“Yes, of course, fine, ” said Tib, glowering. It was not in any way fine.
Wendy’s pale young man cleared his throat. “I hope we’re not making a mistake,” he offered.
“What kind of mistake?”
“Well, all those Jupiter people in the shopping centers, you know.” Wendy was looking at him with bright interest, waiting for academic authority to settle the matter.
Oh, God, Tib thought, you too! He said shortly, “I do not think there is anything specific to fear.” And then, driven to be polite, “Please, go right on, I’ll stay out of your way. Would you like some coffee?”
Wendy glanced humorously at her young man. “Not your tap-water special, Tibber, but thanks. I’ve been keeping a list for you of everything we take.”
“That’s all right. Uh, I didn’t know you still had a key—”
“I’ll leave it for you when we go. I think this’ll be about the last load. We took all the heavy stuff yesterday.”
“Fine,” he said, although he didn’t really think it was fine. When Wendy had taken off for Soho she had left a note saying she didn’t want any of her possessions, and over the three years since the end of their marriage Tib had got used to thinking of the coffee table as his own. Not to mention the books. Not to mention—“Yes, that’s fine,” he said heartily. “Look, I’m going to make some real coffee, so why don’t you have a cup?”
He got out of their way and carefully did not watch over his shoulder to see what else was going. They had been divorced for a year and three months now, and separated for nearly two years before that; he had almost forgotten what she looked like, he thought. But not really. He had just forgotten what the two of them looked like as a portrait pair, Tib and Wendy, Wendy and Tib. She was wearing her hair in some way different now, smoother and more severe. The bangs were gone, and it was all pulled back. She had put on some weight, too, he noticed. And wondered what she was noticing about him—pulling in his gut, standing up a little straighter over the stove.
Wendy was twenty-eight years old, nine years less than Tib; perhaps it had been a mistake for him to marry one of his graduate students. Anyway, she seemed to be going in the other direction now. This Don person was surely younger than she. As near as Tib knew, Don Fingle was a wholesale druggist, or pharmaceutical salesman, or something of the sort. Wendy had been a little evasive about that part of it, when she first appeared with Don in tow—when, out of burning curiosity disguised as polite conversation, Tib had asked. But what Don did for a living he did in one place. Wendy had made it clear that that was important. He was not going to be off to Tokyo or Tierra del Fuego to measure earth movements for weeks at a time, leaving her to sit at home.
“Coffee’s ready,” he called, pulling cups out of the cabinet and discovering that the company set of china was gone. Don and Wendy politely washed their hands after they had moved the last load into the van, and all three sat down for a polite ordeal. It was not easy for any of them, and for Tib, suddenly conscious of the way Wendy smelled, it was more than disconcerting. The scent was arousing. Wendy had always poured on the cologne with a liberal hand, and he had established that as the modality for all women. They covered the weather, agreeing that it was fine that the Santa Ana had stopped; the old mutual acquaintances Tib and Wendy had run into recently; what Tib was doing with the Jupiter Effect; and they managed to deal with them all, as well as finish their coffee, in well under ten minutes.
And then they were out the door. Tib turned away from the door and picked up the cups to put them in the sink, just as Wendy poked her head back in the door. “Oh, Tibber? Somebody put this under our windshield wiper. Thought you might be interested. And Merry Christmas!” She handed him a sheet of pink, printed paper, kissed him quickly and was gone again.
Tib sat down, very conscious of the aura of cologne that hung on his cheek and opened the paper. Its headline was:
SCIENTIFIC PROOF!
Scientists now agree ancient laws of astrology ARE FACT!
At the bottom was the address of a storefront “reader” in Malibu. So the astrologers were getting into the act! It was only what one could have expected, but it did not decrease Tib’s growing mood of depression. He crumpled up Madame Lucy’s flyer and threw it into the kitchen wastebasket—or threw it in that direction, but tardily discovered the wastebasket was gone, so it landed on the floor next to the sink.
He swore and got up. Might as well see what the looters had carried away! He prowled the upper floor of the house, a task which took very few minutes because there was so little of it. But there was even less than there had been. The bedroom looked quite bare without Wendy’s family hand-down dresser and vanity. The soft, fluffy mats were gone from the bathroom floor. The record shelves were nearly empty. All of the schmaltzy nineteenth-century romantics that Wendy doted on were gone, along with the rock albums and the little bit of dance music they had bought for parties they never gave. All that was left was his own few records of Vivaldi and Correlli and Bach, and some of the twentieth century electronic stuff he had tried to interest himself in. But, he saw, it didn’t matter much, because the stereo was gone too.
In the middle of their large double bed (count your blessings, he thought—that was a present from her mother; she could have taken the bed, too) was a neatly hand printed list of the items she and Don had removed, and on it the keys to the door.
And that was all that was left of Wendy Sonderman.
Tib went back to the kitchen and looked at the refrigerator without opening it. It had been his intention to take something out of the freezer for dinner, but he discovered that his appetite was gone—his appetite for eating alone, at least. It was getting late, too. He shrugged and went down to the lower level.
He did not bother to take a census of what was gone. Nearly everything in the basement was unarguably his own, anyway, and if Wendy had found a few pieces to remove their absence was not at once evident. He entered his private room and sat down in front of the computer; might as well do some work.
But that wasn’t going to be easy. For some reason the nets were busy and he had to wait for computer time. Twice a minute the little golfball zipped across the page to say LOGON PROCEEDING, but after fifteen minutes of sitting there he had not yet been able to log on, much less get anything done.
And it was getting less interesting all the time.
He wondered what Rainy Keating was doing. Probably there had been some developments in their committee while he was away. He really ought to call her. He picked up the phone and dialed her number, and got a busy signal. He tried again, rehearsing the things he would say to her—“Hello, Rainy, listen, I’ve been thinking we ought to get together” or, “Hey, Rainy, is anything new?” Or just, “Hello,” and see where the conversation led from there.
But an hour later—it was past ten o’clock and the little golfball was still zipping out a LOGON PROCEEDING every thirty seconds—her telephone at last did ring and she was on the phone; and what he said was, “I’m lonesome.”
Wednesday, December 2
3d. 6:05 PM.
In a typical year the United States eases its balance of payment by exporting about one hundred million tons of grain, for which it receives tens of billions of dollars. It is its largest export item in dollars, though not in volume.
For each ton of grain it exports it also exports two or three tons of topsoil, through erosion, to the Gulf of Mexico.
When the door closed behind the latest pair of Feds, Rainy looked at her watch and moaned softly. Where had the day gone? For two weeks her time had been fully taken. If it wasn’t interviews for jobs that she was not going to get it was interviews with these opaque-faced people from various branches of government whom she didn’t want to see in the first place. And still, now and then, news reporters. Those she could shut off, sometimes, but the Feds were not under her control. What the Russian cosmonaut had said had come up close enough to true. Perhaps you could not call these men in gray suits with American-flag pins in their lapels “secret police”, but they were as close as she wanted to come to the real thing. CIA, F.B.I., Military Intelligence, ONI—she had seen them all. It was getting so she hated to answer the telephone, and for Rainy Keating that was nearly a terminal condition. The questions became more sophisticated as the agents grew more practiced. Still, they always came to the same thing: What had she done wrong? And she had no answer!
And, between times, there was the work of the commission.
It had seemed simple enough when she took it on. A few meetings. The development of a protocol. A literature search, and then a simple program to map correlations: under similar conditions in the past: had the predicted events actually occurred? That was the sort of thing you could turn over to a computer, or at least to an assistant.
Syzygy Page 14
