“But they didn’t scare you, did they.”
“They scared me.”
Jan said, “Your father stood up and testified to the truth in open court. A lot of people told him he was crazy.”
At the time, he was thinking, it seemed the right thing to do.
Ronny said, “How come they didn’t arrest Pastor for killing the judge, then?”
“Nobody could prove he’d ordered it done.”
They talked on. It was hard to explain to the boy; he’d grown up on adventure shows that always wrapped the villains up neatly in the fourth quarter-hour.
There was a discreet knock at the door — three raps, an interval, three more. Mathieson admitted Glenn Bradleigh. There were two men with him, lugging suitcases. They set the cases down and left without a word. Mathieson said, “It’s still cold in here. You can leave the door open.”
Bradleigh crossed to the door. “No, we don’t want to talk to the world.” He shut it and locked it.
“Talk about what?”
Bradleigh tossed a large bulky manila envelope on the bed. “Morning, Jan. Ronny. You folks are looking a lot healthier today. Had breakfast?”
“Mr. Caruso brought it on a tray for us.”
“Caruso’s a treasure.” Bradleigh was snapping the latches of the suitcases. “We rescued as much of your clothes as we could from the house. One of the boys ran it through one of the dry cleaners yesterday. Had a lot of plaster dust but I think you’ll find most of them pretty clean now.”
Jan got up and rummaged through the suitcases. She beamed at Bradleigh. “We didn’t expect to see any of these again. Thanks so much...”
Bradleigh looked away. “Don’t thank me. Don’t ever thank me again for anything, all right?”
“Glenn, it wasn’t your fault.”
Bradleigh wouldn’t look at any of them. “We dug quite a bit of other stuff out of the house. Odds and ends, you’ll want to sort through it — we’ve taken it to the FBI office downtown, you can claim the stuff later. Amazing the kind of things we found intact. A balsa-wood model airplane, believe it or not.”
She smiled; a sidewise glance at Ronny. “He put that away in the closet last November. He’d probably forgotten he ever had it.”
“I did not.”
Mathieson was looking at the manila envelope on the bed. “Who are we?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Jason W. Greene.” Bradleigh emptied the envelope’s contents onto the rumpled bed: documents of various shades and sizes. “Best we could do on short notice — we’d been putting these together for another family but they can wait. I’m afraid it’ll make you both out to be older than you are but it’s the closest we could do. The birth certificate on the boy is a flat-out forgery but we’re slipping a copy of it into the Binghamton hall of records if anybody ever checks back that far.”
“Binghamton?”
“Right. Because you spent some summers there, didn’t you?”
“Long time ago. With my uncle and aunt.”
“Then you knew the town a little, at least. We couldn’t give you a background you knew nothing about at all. Jason W. Greene. Margaret Johnson Greene. Don’t forget it.”
“What do I do for a living?”
“Your wife used to be a librarian. You were an investment counselor. All right?”
“That’d be hard to put over on anybody who knows anything about stocks and bonds.”
“You won’t ever have to practice the profession. It’s just part of the background, like last time. You came out here with a phony background as an insurance executive, remember? Letters of reference, testimonials, the works. It’s all in that pile of papers. Read through it, familiarize yourselves with all of it. Memorize what you have to.”
“What’s our program?”
“Like last time. Whatever suits you — whatever you folks think you can handle. We’ll grease wheels to help you get started. After that it’s up to you. If you start a business and it goes bust that’s your own problem. We’ll help with the relocation costs but we can’t bankroll you beyond a few hundred a month for seed money. It’d be against policy and anyway we haven’t got the funds.”
Mathieson pawed through the documents on the bed. “Massachusetts driver’s license. I don’t know the first thing about Massachusetts.”
“Don’t have to. You apply for a new license, you turn in the Mass license. It’s just to get bona fides on your applications. You did all this before, Fred.”
“It’s been eight years. I’d forgotten a lot of this.”
“It’ll come back to you.” Bradleigh lit a cigarette. “Think about it, let me know what you both decide. And incidentally I think you both ought to change your appearance. Jan, try a short haircut. Fred, I’d do a crew cut for a while and get one of those compounds that cover gray. You might think about growing a moustache.”
2
They brought him a typewriter and he sent brief letters to each of his clients. After lunch Caruso, a man whose face Mathieson always had trouble remembering, drove him several miles to a shopping center in Santa Monica. Mathieson changed ten dollars into coins in a bank; he made his calls from an outdoor phone booth while Caruso sat in the car keeping watch.
His first call was to Phil Adler. “Do you still want to buy me out?”
“Well naturally I’ll do whatever you want, Fred, but I’m sure right now you don’t want to have to be thinking about—”
“Is the offer open or not?”
“Well, you know, of course it is.”
“Draw up the papers. I’ll take whatever you think’s fair. A man named Bradleigh will conclude the deal with you, he’s got my power of attorney, he’ll be in touch with you in a few days to clean out my office and take care of the details.”
He finally got off the line and made the rest of his calls — the lawyers, the bank, his good-bye calls. Most of them had seen the news on TV or in the papers; he tried to keep his answers short and fend off their sympathies.
Finally he called the Gilfillans. Amy answered the phone. “Wait, I’ll get the string bean and put him on the extension.”
In a minute they were both on the wire. Roger said, “How’re they hangin’, partner?”
“We’ve got to clear out, I’m afraid.”
“I know. No forwarding addresses, I reckon.”
Amy said, “Billy’s going to miss Ronny.”
“It’s worse on the kids than anybody else.”
“Like some kind of fuckin’ divorce,” Roger said. “Listen, there’s some clown hanging around up at your place. About your size and he’s wearing that red and yellow sport shirt of yours.”
“Must be one of the government people,” Mathieson said.
“I told him it was a dumb thing to do, making himself a target like that. Man said, ‘That’s my job, sir.’ Just like one of them brave heroes in the movies. Stupid fuckin’ idiot.”
Amy said, “Fred, you and Jan and that boy take real good care of yourselves, hear?” Her voice broke; he heard the click when she hung up her extension.
Roger said, “I hope all your trails keep downslope with the wind at your back, old-timer.”
“Maybe one of these days we’ll come back.”
“Yeah.”
“At least I’ll see you in the movies.”
“You do that.”
“Christ this is a pain in the ass.”
“Just look after that good family you got, Fred.”
“So long, Roger.” When he hung up he couldn’t stop the tears.
3
Bradleigh woke him up, banging on the motel room door. Mathieson crawled out of bed, glanced at Ronny on the cot and went to the door. When the three-and-three knock repeated itself he opened up.