I drove in the front way, seeing nothing out of the ordinary. Would Ross’s friends put me back on their hit list now that I’d reneged on the agreement, or would they forget me now that I’d proved ineffective? I wouldn’t know for a while, would I?
The Volvo was gone. Max and Sugar Ray expressed their pleasure at the outing by racing madly off across the lawn, nipping at each other’s shoulders, and I went into the house to ask Robinson about the Volvo and if there was any other news.
There was. “Your friend Ross Ferguson telephoned.” It was just after five o’clock, and Robinson was seated in front of the television set in his little lounge in the el of the kitchen, watching the early news. “About five minutes ago,” he said.
“He did, did he?” I was both surprised and annoyed; no good could come of another conversation with Ross.
“He said not to attempt to reach him back; he would try here every fifteen minutes until he caught you.”
“Okay. Anything else?”
“Miss Quinn telephoned about an hour ago. She, too, will try again. Nothing else of moment.” He wanted to get back to the lead story on the news.
I said, “The Volvo’s gone.”
“Ah, yes. Just after you and the police officers departed” — he wouldn’t call them “deputies,” as sounding too much like a western movie — “an examiner arrived from the insurance company. I studied his credentials with a great deal of care, I assure you.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“And he was as claimed. He examined the auto inside and out, started the engine, drove it back and forth, and expressed astonishment that anyone inside the car at the moment of impact could still be alive.”
“Well, the impact was spread out over a period of time,” I said.
“In any event, he agreed that the vehicle’s useful life was at an end, and filled out several documents to that effect, one of which you will find on your desk. Before departure he informed me we need no longer keep the vehicle on the premises, and so I scanned the Yellow pages and found a person willing to take it away. A junk dealer, he’s called. He asked me how much money we wanted for the car, and I told him if it could be removed today, no money need change hands at all. Frankly, I had thought it would be up to us to pay for the removal.”
“So he came and no money changed hands.”
“Exactly. He, too, left a document, which you’ll find on your desk, and instructed me to inform the Department of Motor Vehicles by mail of the car’s final disposition. That I have not as yet done.”
Because his day’s work was finished, of course, except for dinner, and he wanted to be left alone with his TV set. “Thank you, Robinson,” I said. “I’ll be on the phone now for a while.” Not that he cared. With his remote control device he’d already turned the volume up. Various religious sects in Lebanon were killing one another.
The news is supposed to stay on the other side of the television screen, not break through into our private lives.
I left the kitchen and went through the house to my office, where the view out the windows over the lawn showed the late afternoon gathering itself for the rush of February’s twilight. The little clouds that had been roaming the sky all day like a strayed flock were now gathering together, massing into fat regiments, and the lawn and shrubbery looked colder than I knew them to be. Max and Sugar Ray galumphed by, without politics or religion. I sat at the desk and called Deputy Ken’s number.
He wasn’t there, so I left a message, and then took a chance that Oscar would still be in the office, and called him.
Still in the car, I meant; he was. “Oscar,” I said as the phone zizzed and brrrd in my ear, “do you live in that car?”
“What?”
“WHERE ARE YOU, OSCAR?”
“Wait a minute. Sunset Boulevard!”
“Where on Sunset?”
“Just passing the Beverly Hills Hotel.”
“Heading which way?”
“What?”
“East or west?”
“Uhhh...toward the ocean.”
Toward me, in other words. “Oscar,” I yelled, “stop by a minute on your way!”
“What?”
“Come by for a drink!”
“That I heard!”
“Good.” I broke the connection, dialed Robinson in-house, and when he answered I said, “Put some noshes together; Oscar Cooperman is stopping by for a drink.”
“With his chauffeur?”
“Maybe he won’t be hungry,” I said, and the regular phone rang, and I switched over to it, saying, “Hello?”
“Sam, I’m disappointed. I’m very disappointed.”
It was Ross, of course. I said, “Ross, I don’t want to start listing your mistakes because I wouldn’t have time for them all, but you shouldn’t have dragged Doreen back into it.”
“She came back of her own free will,” he said, “as she told those two Smokeys you brought around.”
“What are you calling for, Ross?”
“First, to tell you I’m disappointed in you.”
“Noted.”
“You’ve done your best to fuck up Fire Over Beverly Hills, but you failed, so although—”
“What was that?”
“The book. Oh, that’s right, I didn’t tell you before, that’s the working title. Fire Over Beverly Hills.”
“You have a working title.”
“Of course. You know that I always put some sort of title on every project right at the beginning so I can start a file, and if I’m discussing it with somebody, at least we have a name for what we’re talking about.”
Ross was dealing with murderers and terrorists and religious fanatics, he was in this thing several miles over his head, and I suppose it was a kind of instinctive defensive gesture to try to make it familiar and reasonable, to turn it into something he might be able to handle. So he’ll start a file, he’ll come up with a working title. He probably even had preliminary notes, in a folder.
In fact, come to think of it, the whole idea of turning this incident into a book might have been a defensive move, a way to survive the terror and uncertainty by having a plan, by having it all be aimed toward some purpose of his rather than theirs. He was a kind of kidnap victim himself, or hostage; in an equivalent position anyway, dependent on those people, coerced by them. It was very common for people in such a situation to work out complete though fanciful scenarios about their own plans, their reasons for going along, their relationship with their captors.
There was no point saying all this to Ross. He would almost certainly reject the idea, but if he accepted it, what good would it do? The moment for him to get out from under, I was beginning to realize, was gone. So I said, “All right, you’re disappointed in me because I put your project at risk. What was your other reason?”
“To tell you I talked to the other people here. About you. I’m still your friend, Sam, despite everything. I hope you realize that.”
“Of course I do.”
“Well, the people here, they were very irritated by you, I hope you understand why.”
“And?”
“You do understand why?”
“I’m fucking up their book too.”
“You sure tried,” he said, ignoring my irony. “But I told them, and it’s true, now they’re safer than ever. The cops have been here, I showed them how the American law works; a man’s home really is his castle in this part of the world, it’ll take a lot to make the law come back and risk humiliation all over again.”
That was true, unfortunately. I could only hope my discovery that the new controversial mosque was Ross’s next-door neighbor would be enough for Ken — and his superiors, and a judge — to take some action, but I had my doubts. I said, “All right, Ross, I tried to end it and I failed. Now what?”