Long ago, Frye had abdicated success to Bennett, to whom it came more easily, upon whom it sat with a certain grace that Chuck could never muster. After a point, it was expected.
Turning onto the Newport Peninsula, Frye mused on his latest sin against the family name: an alfresco sexual event that took place at his own Halloween party and was found so shocking by neighbors that they called the police. The foreplay was duly photographed by one Donovan Swirk, a photojournalist of the lowest order. The picture, which ran front page of Swirk’s Avenger, showed Frye in an ape costume — without the head — chasing a woman dressed as a maid toward a hedge of blooming hibiscus. Frye was leering wildly. The maid’s minidress danced up to reveal her naked buns, which caught the strobe flash just so. But her face was turned from the camera. The caption read: HALLOWEEN DREAM — LAGUNATIC CHUCK FRYE GOES APE OVER MYSTERY MAID! What actually transpired behind the hedge was hinted at. Swirk had made an offer of one hundred dollars for the maid’s name, which was to be announced in his next issue. Edison and Linda’s father — Laguna Mayor Ned Stowe — had run Swirk out of business with dispatch. Frye punched Swirk in a restaurant one night, but the damage was done. He wouldn’t give up the name of the Mystery Maid, and that was that. He was released on his own recognizance, charges pending — disturbing the peace and indecent exposure.
Frye remembered the angry visit from Ned, demanding to know how Frye could pull such a shit stunt while married to his daughter. Every few weeks since then, the Laguna cops had called him in to say that Mayor Stowe would press charges unless the Mystery Maid was identified. Frye sensed a bluff here: Everybody feared they knew the girl. This civic interest was, to Frye’s thinking, prurient beyond belief. On some primitive level, he had cuckolded the entire city.
As he drove over the peninsula bridge and watched the yachts bobbing at their moorings, he realized with a sharp sadness that Swirk’s photograph had doomed his marriage long before he even knew it was doomed, an invisible turning point, an imperceptible pivot. How had he been so deaf then, he wondered, only to hear it now, like the report of some distant pistol? The beginning of the end with Linda, he thought: and I was too dumb to know it.
The Cyclone eased off of Balboa Boulevard, then through a series of short side streets. He crossed a narrow bridge, regarding the canals and homes crowded onto the precious sand-spit peninsula. The road shrunk to one lane and took him over another bridge that left him facing a black iron gate with a brass plate that said FRYE ISLAND. He got out and called on the intercom. A moment later the gate swung open on silent, well-oiled hinges.
Home.
The driveway leading to the main house was wide and lined with stiff, pungent junipers. Edison preferred masculine flora. Frye guided the car around a curve, bringing into view the big antebellum house, sprawling lawn, a sliver of swimming pool, the helipad and copter at the far west end, the servants’ house, and his father’s cottage. Two new Mercedes and a red Jeep sparkled in front of the white colonnade of the house. Bennett’s van was there, with two more cars Frye didn’t recognize. Beyond the orange trees that surrounded the entire island, ocean glimmered on pale sand. Motor yachts heaved slowly at the dock — Edison’s Absolute looking like a skyscraper turned on its side.
Hyla met him at the door. She hugged him and he pressed gently back, feeling the stiffness of her aging body, smelling her hair, thinking that she seemed a skosh shorter than the last time he’d seen her. Mom. Straight shoulders. Strong face. Eyes blue and clear as bottled water. Her hair was cut short, in New Wave fashion. She stepped back and looked at him. “All I can do is thank God you two are alive,” she said. “And all I can tell you is that Li will be all right. We’ll get her back. I know it.”
Frye nodded. Then Hyla was crying, but her face never lost its composure, just big tears rolling down her cheeks. “I keep thinking about her, about what I could have done...”
Frye held her close, saying what he could about not worrying, thinking positive, faith, and a dozen other ideas that seemed pitifully outgunned by actuality. It was the first time since she learned about Benny that Frye had seen her cry.
She took a deep, quivering breath and stepped away again. “They’re in the cottage. Breakfast is ready when you are. And happy birthday, Chuck. We’ll have a proper dinner on Thursday, okay?”
He walked across the lawn to his father’s cottage, a squat, one-level affair on the far north end of the island. A kennel built onto it teemed with springer spaniels, who bounced and yapped as Frye ran his hand along the chain link. It’s useless to try for names anymore, he thought: There must be a dozen dogs now, maybe more.
As usual, the cottage was locked. He knocked, and a moment later Edison swung open the door: gray hair slicked back over his big patrician head, shirt-sleeves rolled up, eyes hard, his face heavy and lined. “Well,” he said. “Look what the tide washed in.”
Bennett was sitting behind the desk. Donnell Crawley leaned against one wall, arms crossed. A man that Frye recognized as Pat Arbuckle, head of Frye Company Security, stood beside the fireplace, smoking a cigarette. Two of his men were with him, at semi-attention. A bulky man in a pale suit sat on the sofa, with the telephone to his ear, concentrating.
“You stash that box I gave you?” Bennett asked.
“Stashed.”
Edison reintroduced Chuck to Arbuckle.
The man with the telephone stood up and gave it to Edison with a frustrated shrug. Edison listened a moment, then barked into the mouthpiece. “I don’t give a damn what any lame-ass senate committee thinks it’s doing this morning. Get me Lansdale out of that meeting and do it now.” His bushy eyebrows raised and lowered. “Of course I can wait, but not for very goddamned long I can’t!” He slammed down the receiver and wiped his forehead. “Politicians. Okay, Bennett, we’ve got Nguyen and his Vietnamese out on the pavement, digging for a witness who doesn’t have lockjaw. We’ve got Minh and the Westminster cops looking for this Eddie Vo. I’ll get Lansdale to light a fire under the FBI. What in hell are you doodling there, anyway?”
Bennett looked up at Edison, then back down at the graph pad before him. Frye looked over his shoulder. A simple schematic of Saigon Plaza, the parking lot and shops, the place where they’d found the blue Celica marked by a square with an X in it. “Somebody at the plaza saw her.”
“Maybe they’ll talk to Nguyen.”
Arbuckle stepped forward, flicking his cigarette into the fireplace. “Apply pressure.”
“Pat’s good at that,” said Edison.
Arbuckle’s men nodded gravely.
Bennett leaned back in the chair. “Apply lots of it. That fat Dream Reader sat there and watched the car pull up. I know she saw them. Cops searched her place but they found the same thing we did. Nothing. Bring me that phone, Chuck. Maybe Minh’s got something on Vo.”
Edison took Arbuckle by the arm and aimed him toward the door. “You’re wasting time and oxygen, Pat. Go apply pressure to the fat madam.”
Bennett finished dialing, looked up. “Money talks with her. And get one of Hy’s people to interpret.”
Arbuckle was still nodding when Edison pushed him out the door, his assistants in tow.
Frye looked at the heavy man in the suit. “Chuck Frye,” he said.
“I know,” said the man. “Phil Barnum. I’m the congressman for the Westminster district. Friend of Bennett’s.”
Edison glanced at Chuck, then to Bennett, who was still waiting for his call to go through. “You’ll get a ransom demand today. And you ought to be home where those bastards can find you. Fucking Lansdale. Where’s the FBI anyway, those goddamned blue-suit Boy Scouts?”