He closed his eyes tightly, but when he did, he saw the son, the lone man at the third table, the one who had died first. As he surveyed the rest of the room in his memory, looking at each of the others, he felt the temptation growing but he clenched his teeth, just in case it became too strong. He knew what had given him the thought. It was “a man who is the equal of this monster.” The voice went on, and Millikan could not block out the pain in it. But he knew better than to let that sound convince him.
He considered the voice critically, reasonably. This was clearly a rich, powerful man. He had just offered roughly a million for his son’s killer. Not everybody could do that. The parents of the other dozen people couldn’t, so unless Millikan spoke, all the families would have to make do with what came for free. His memory wandered among the bodies again, most of them young and attractive people a couple of hours before he had seen them, all lying in pools of their own blood. He thought of the two children lying dead on the floor, both girls about ten years old, both taken with shots in the back. He knew a secret, and it was something that Cushner had already come to suspect: the Louisville police had already done everything they were able to do. Suddenly he heard himself saying, “There is a man . . .”
“What?”
Millikan was shocked at what he had done. He had to say the rest of it now. “There is a man. He’s not a nice man. If you are willing to give him what he charges, he might help you.”
“Who is he?” asked Cushner with eager impatience. “Where can I find him?”
Millikan hesitated. “Let me look him up.” Millikan didn’t have to look him up. His number was one of five printed in the last page of his address book, without names or addresses beside them, but this one he knew by heart. There had been times in his life when he had sat and stared at the number, repeated it to himself over and over, feeling the temptation to dial it. He would toy with the idea, imagining how the call would go: he would say his name, and Prescott would remember him, then take over his problem.
He had always resisted. As he remembered that, the enormity of what he was doing settled on him. He had decided to do it because the man was rich, and it would cost money. But the money was just numbers, not worth worrying about. What was important was the guilt. He was about to involve the old man in it, but only to share: he would not be able to shift it off his own conscience.
“Professor Millikan?”
The old man was waiting. Millikan closed his eyes again. “His name is Prescott. He’s . . . a kind of specialist, who takes a certain kind of case. What he does isn’t exactly illegal, or at least nobody’s proven that it is. But it’s—”
“Did you find his number?” The voice was strong and sure.
Millikan admitted, “Well, yes . . .”
“Then give it to me.”
Two days later, Cushner took the same early-morning flight that Millikan had taken. A few hours after he reached Los Angeles, he was in the restaurant at his hotel, waiting. It was a dim, old-fashioned room where waiters spoke in quiet voices and then disappeared. At precisely eight o’clock, as arranged, a tall, slim, athletic-looking man with light hair and gray eyes stepped up to the maître d’ and spoke quietly with him, then allowed himself to be ushered to the table. Cushner could see that he wore simple, conservative clothes—a navy blue summer-weight blazer and gray slacks. Not a dandy, at least. When the man came closer, Cushner was reassured to see that he was not a young man. He was at least forty-five and his face had the look common to men who had proven their worth through some kind of work that didn’t involve merely pleasing people.
“Mr. Prescott?” said Cushner, and began to get up, but Prescott only nodded and said, “Sit down.” Prescott sat down across from him, and said quietly, “I’ve taken the time to read some of the press reports in the Louisville papers. Are they mostly accurate?”
Robert Cushner answered, “Yes, as far as I know.” He stared across the table at Prescott, and suddenly understood. Millikan had not been taking all that time to search for a telephone number. He had been trying to give himself time to refuse, probably trying to get himself to lie and say he’d lost it. This Prescott was exactly the kind of man a vengeful father yearned for—a hard, violent, cold man—but Millikan had almost kept the phone number to himself.
Millikan need not have bothered to feel guilty for the sake of Robert Cushner, but apparently he did not know that. Maybe Millikan did not have children, and he certainly had not had a predator set his filthy eyes on one, or he would have understood. He was supposed to be a famous criminologist, so he should have known not to hesitate. He should have known about the purity of fire, the hot hatred that burned up all compunction that a normal good man would feel, a man who had been left undisturbed and intact. Revenge is not sweet, a luxury. It’s a necessary restoration of balance in the universe.
When Cushner looked at Prescott’s face, he had to raise his eyes a little because Prescott was tall. His height conveyed the impression that he was thin, but he wasn’t, exactly. He looked like a runner or a swimmer, with shoulders and arms that were hard, with long muscles. The face was unchanging, the features relaxed but never in motion, as though there were no such thing as surprise. His was the face of a man in a room by himself. The eyes were different—bright and alert, but without sympathy: they did not veil the fact that they were looking at you but not feeling what you felt.
Cushner said to Prescott, “My son’s name was Robert too. He was a very special person, not just to me, but to everybody who knew him. He left a wife and two children. The little one probably won’t even remember what he looked like. Right now, he cries every night. The older one thinks her father was killed because she talked her mother into taking them to a movie, and that made her father have to eat alone in a restaurant.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Cushner.” Prescott’s eyes were cold and piercing, but his voice was quiet and calm. “You want to tell me why you would pay me money to find his killer. That isn’t what I want to hear. I’m not just coming to this problem for the first time, the way you are. I don’t need to be convinced that you have a reason. I’m not interested in what you feel, or how you got to feeling it. I’m not interested in you at all. The one who matters is the one who killed him. That’s all I can help you with.”
Cushner looked at him for a long moment. “You’re right.” He started over. “What can I expect—written reports, or calls, or what?”
Prescott said, “If what you want is reports, the Louisville police will give you reports for nothing.”
Cushner was uncomfortable. He shifted in his seat, then admitted, “No. I guess that’s not what I want. I want you to find him and make sure he never does it again. But I’m talking about you and me, how we do business.”
“I get three hundred thousand to start,” said Prescott. “When I come back with proof that it’s over, you pay me three hundred more. Then I go away.”
“But how are you going to do it? How can you expect to find him if the police can’t?”
“I don’t expect to find him,” said Prescott. “I’ll wait for him in a place where he’s going to be.”
“How can you do that?”
“I get to know him.”
2
James Varney saw the end of the big hotel pool coming toward him for the last time, the lines between tiles resolving their blurriness into clean, straight edges. His right hand touched the wall with its last stroke. A mile. He reached up with both hands and pulled himself to the deck, then walked to the men’s shower and stood rinsing the chlorine off his skin. He savored the feeling in his muscles, mildly tired but stretched and comfortable: it was a good way to finish.