Movement
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Jeff checked out of the Brook Green Motel shortly after eight that morning and dropped the car off in Bridgeport within the hour. He returned the second car to the agency at La Guardia and then bought a seat on a noon flight to Los Angeles. By the end of the afternoon, local time, he was sitting on his balcony with a cigarette and an enormous glass of Scotch and ice. He was naked beneath the black robe wrapped loosely around his body. Only then, finally, did he allow himself the luxury of considering what had taken place at the Gorge.
He had to admit it was brilliant. He had treated the whole thing like a problem at work. You don't solve anything by talking about it off the top of your head. You let it simmer in the depths of your brain, and sooner or later the answer will come to the surface. It was, he reckoned, an essentially creative process. The world was full of people with stunted imaginations, poor souls who were incapable of something like this. He belonged to the select handful of individuals who had the courage, imagination, and sheer will to create their own destinies.
It had all come together so well! He felt like an architect who, seeing for the first time a construction he had designed, is overwhelmed by his own genius. The phony driver's license. The two cars. The cut cocaine, which undoubtedly would make the police think Sean had been involved in a deal that went wrong. And, best of all, the sudden inspiration that had come to Jeff only at the last moment: the tight triangle of bullet holes in Sean's skull. Didn't the Mafia go in for that sort of thing, symbolic, ritual executions? It couldn't be perfect, he knew, because nothing ever is; all the same, he thought it was pretty damn close to perfect.
There were still things to do, weak points to be covered. The Philip Headley license would be easy enough to destroy. Too many people knew that Jeff was not a jogger, so the new running suit and shoes had to go. They were brand-name products, and he had kept them in plastic bags to minimize the risk of fiber contamination, but there were brownish pinprick blood spots on the right sleeve. He had intended simply to dump the clothes in a Goodwill box, but the more he thought about it, the less he liked that idea. Expensive new duds ... hardly used at all ... blood spots ... probably some of Jeff's body hairs on them. The chances that the clothes would ever be connected with a killing three thousand miles away were very slight, but why take the chance? Then there was the gun. Funny, Jeff thought, how the most trivial things can suddenly become so important. He had often regretted buying the .22. He had never needed it, and over the years had come to regard it as more of a nuisance than anything else. But he had kept it, if only because he couldn't be bothered to sell it. Now it was much more than just another cheap handgun. Jeff had made it the instrument of Georgianne's liberation. And if that were not enough to convict him, the gun was also legally registered in his name with the police. No question, he had to get rid of it quickly. Not to forget the plastic bag that had held the cocaine and flour. Things to do, important things, but no real problems. Jeff sat happily on the balcony, sipping Scotch and marveling at his accomplishment.
That evening he burned the plastic bag and the false driver's license, and washed the ashes down the kitchen sink with Liquid Drano.
The next day he packed the jogging clothes in the middle of a trash bag full of garbage and drove around until he spotted a dumpster containing similar trash bags outside a Valley mall. He added his to the collection.
On Monday, at lunchtime, he went to a hardware store and bought several small screwdrivers and a hacksaw. That night he patiently spent almost three hours dismantling the gun and cutting it into smaller pieces. On Tuesday, at lunchtime, he completed the disposal of the gun by scattering the pieces over a ra dius of several square miles. He threw them into ponds, reservoirs, and streams. He dropped them through sewer grates. He even put a few in various litter baskets. That evening he called the police to report the gun missing. He said he thought he'd lost it the previous weekend while hiking, alone, in Los Padres.
Jeff bought the New York Times every day for a week. The murder was reported in the Metro section. Sean's body had been discovered late in the morning, and the police were said to have no clues to the person or persons responsible. But it did appear to be a drug-related crime, according to an unidentified source. Family, friends, and colleagues of the dead man were shocked ... etc. By the third day, the story had disappeared. Jeff was pleased, confident that events were taking precisely the course he'd intended.
It would be hard on Georgianne and Bonnie, but that couldn't be avoided. They would simply have to suffer through it. They were strong enough, Jeff reasoned, they'd make it. No one could blame them for Sean's transgressions. Later, they would find it easier to move away from Foxrock. A clean, fresh start somewhere else ... like Santa Susana.
Jeff regretted the necessary cruelty to Georgianne and Bonnie, but he felt nothing for Sean. Why should he? You either experienced a sense of guilt and wrongdoing over something or you didn't, and he did not. He was enough of a scientist to know that the universe was random, arbitrary, and remorseless. It was a romantic exaggeration to call Sean's death a crime. He could just as easily have had a fatal heart attack while jogging, or been run down by a drunk teenager. Those things happened every day. And people killed other people every day, probably by the thousands world-wide. You might not like it, but there it was. Jeff would not indulge in any theatrical, hypocritical guilt. He was happy. From now on everything would be easier.
He slashed his work hours to about forty-five a week, and at the end of the first week he was startled to find that he hadn't fallen behind on anything, as he had expected to. It made him wonder how much of his life he had squandered, obsessively making work for himself. Every minute spent getting the company off the ground and keeping it alive was justified, certainly, but a few years ago some big contracts had come their way. The company had become an established fact, safe, solid, successful. Even so Jeff had continued putting in long hours, compulsively, and unnecessarily. It was a bitter thought, but he didn't linger over it. When you do gain your freedom, pain and a sense of loss tend to fade away. And he had no doubt that this was what Georgianne would experience in due course.
He spent more time socializing with his colleagues now. He ate, drank, and even took in a couple of Dodger games with them, and enjoyed all of it. He stayed away from Diane though. She was a whore, and he no longer liked the idea of having his dreams serviced by a whore. It seemed wrong, now that the way to Georgianne was clear. Diane was good at her job, one of the best, but he didn't need her any more.
All this time, too, he waited. He watched the days go by, one after another, a week, two, a month. He was patient, and sure of himself. He found that it was even possible to savor the slow but relentless passage of time, the exquisite delay, the smoldering anticipation. It was a kind of mental foreplay.
He waited until the third week of September. That was time enough, he judged, for Georgianne and Bonnie to recover. Georgianne would be getting back to the business of coping with everyday life. Bonnie would be at Harvard, most likely trying to lose herself in her studies. That was as it should be. Jeff held back a few days more and then, on a Tuesday evening, picked up the telephone to call Georgianne. He had a large drink and a fresh pack of cigarettes at hand. It would be nine-thirty at night back in Connecticut.
Third ring. "Hello." Voice subdued.
"Hi, Georgianne." Cheerful, carefree. "This is Jeff." Pause, no response. Nearly five months since he'd last spoken with her. The shock. Understandable. "Jeff Lisker."