“What instrument does he play?”
“Saxophone.”
“Is he good?”
“Put it this way. He’s enthusiastic.”
She pictures the kid—tall now and hulking like his dad. Honking into a saxophone, trying to sound lyrical. Probably has girls hanging all over him.
She says, “What did you do in the Air Force?”
“Flew fighters.”
“Vietnam?”
“I did a couple tours. You want us to talk about my war crimes now?”
“Did you commit any?”
“I made a deal with myself not to wear sackcloth and ashes the rest of my life. You get tired of examining the philosophy of what constitutes being a Good German and what constitutes being a normal human critter. You get tired of trying to define what’s a crime in those kinds of circumstances. It’s about as useful as counting angels on the head of a pin.”
Then he adds: “I never was much on moral introspection. I don’t feel warped about it. I don’t think it turned me into a hero or a maniac. I went there, flew airplanes, did what I was told most of the time. Tried to keep my self-respect, stayed alive, came home.”
“You retired as a light colonel.”
He gives her a quick look and she realizes her mistake. No one must ever know she’s an Air Force brat. She’s not supposed to know the jargon.
She’s relieved when he lets it pass. He says, “I was a major. Deputy squadron CO. They wanted to promote me to a desk. Said I was getting too old to keep flying. So then I took my retirement—I was thirty-eight. Maybe that is too old to fly jets. I like piston planes better anyway. They’re for fun, you know?”
She points to the old map on the wall. “Were you a mercenary?”
“I flew in Africa a few times. You like asking questions, don’t you.”
“I’m curious about you.”
He says, “I’m kind of curious too. I don’t even know what you do for a living.”
“I own part of a bookstore.” She’s pleased to be able to say it with such ingenuousness.
“You sure in hell don’t look it.” He’s drinking coffee; his eyes over the rim of the cup are examining her body frankly. When he puts the cup down his eyes droop with amusement and his mouth opens and he actually begins to laugh.
“What’s funny?”
“Thinking about the first time you walked in here. Soaked to the skin.”
She stands up. She remembers his lewd leer at the time. To cover her abrupt self-consciousness she says, “Why didn’t you get an airline job?”
“I’m not rated for multiengine jets.”
“You could learn.”
“I doubt I’d like it much.”
“You were born too late. You should have been a barnstormer.”
“Sleeping out under the wing of my Jenny. You think I never dreamt of that?”
Then he says: “Let me recommend Chez Charlie Reid. One and a half stars in the Michelin guide. It’s a dump but the cook does a pretty good patio barbecue. You like rib steak?”
24 It is about half an hour’s drive from the airfield to Doyle and Marian’s bookshop in Burbank. She has made a discovery about the Valley: wherever you start from, you’re half an hour from your destination.
That half hour conveniently is the running time of one side of a standard audio tape cassette. The car has a built-in player. (Apparently every car in California has one.) For camouflage she has tuned all the buttons of the car radio to innocuous mood music stations but the player overrides the radio as soon as you insert a tape.
Now she carries in her handbag several cassettes—baroque music mainly, and Mozart—and she knows it’s cheating but she can’t bear the thought of giving up good music for the rest of her life. She’s made a pact to listen to it only when she’s alone.
In the East a car was transportation. Here it is a cocoon: Californians spend half their lives in their cars; they drive everywhere with windows rolled up and air conditioners blasting even in mild weather—you see them jammed up on the freeways alone in their cars, sealed in, shouting soundlessly, gesticulating to the beat of the programs they’ve turned up to top volume. When you glimpse them it’s always startling: they’re like mime characters in an absurdist fragment of silent film, the plot of which hasn’t been revealed to you.
At the interchange she’s looking in the mirror while she negotiates the exit ramp from the San Diego Freeway to the Ventura Freeway. Two cars behind her take the same turns.
When she merges into the eastbound traffic she uses side mirror and indicator to ease over into the far right lane. The two cars are still back there: a rust red one and a boxy black sedan. They seem to hover in the mirror.
The traffic is clotted here, moving fitfully, backed up behind the exit for Van Nuys Boulevard, and it is only out in the far left lane that things move smoothly.
She watches the two cars go by in the fast lane. One of them has four teenage Valley Girls in it; the black sedan is driven by an old man with a scowl. He’s gesticulating with one hand and talking to himself. It looks like a violent argument.
That’s all right then.
She moves back into the faster lanes, listening to the Magic Flute overture, thinking wryly of a stale joke: help—the paranoids are after me.
Sometimes it seems so silly. Is it all only a melodramatic fantasy?
Maybe—maybe.
But suppose you choose to behave on the basis of that hypothesis—and suppose the hypothesis is incorrect.
It’ll be a little late to change your mind when they’ve dragged you back to him and he’s killed you.
She thinks about stopping at the apartment on Lankershim for the mail. Too hot. Do it later.
Poking along on the freeway she’s remembering her visit to Ray Seale last winter. That was the day when anxiety finally drove her beyond speculation into decision.
For the umptieth time she rehearses it in her mind: has she forgotten anything he told her? Done anything wrong?
She tries to review the details of the meeting.
25 It must have been not long after New Year’s Day. She remembers how she contrived it to look like a coincidental encounter.
She drove to Newark early that morning and went into the building where Ray Seale had his office, examined the building directory, and chose from it Dennis Nobles, D.C., P.C., and made a mental note of the suite number: 1127.
She got the number from Information and made an appointment from a pay phone in the lobby and then she took the elevator down two flights to the garage level and got in her car and locked the doors.
She waited more than an hour and had started to decide he wasn’t coming to the office today when she saw him drive in and park the Eldorado in the slot with his name on it. He waved to the garage attendant and walked toward the elevator.
It was ten after ten. She got out of her white Mercedes and went after him.
He was wearing a narrow steel-colored suit. His hard heels—Italian leather—struck the concrete floor with a crisp echoing that made her think of dice. He pushed a finger into the depressed plastic square and it lit up and he waited for the doors to open.
She came up beside him and gave the button an unnecessary push. She didn’t look at him; better to let him make the discovery for himself.
At first he gave her a surreptitious sidewise glance. Then a more direct look: surprise and recognition. Then hesitation—he’d be thinking about whether to speak or hold his tongue.