Vasquez said, “It’s an oversimplification to state that every man has a weakness that can be exploited. What is true is that criminals like Frank Pastor are particularly vulnerable to pressure. They appear formidable but in some ways they can be reached much more easily than can honest citizens.”
“Honest citizens don’t retaliate by blowing up houses.”
“To be sure. But we’ve got to push your enemies back to the corner of the chessboard and achieve, if not checkmate, at least stalemate. At the moment it’s you who are in check.”
“That much I understand.”
“The tactics remain to be defined. The strategy, however, is quite clear — to make it so costly for Pastor to persevere in harassing you that he will withdraw his threat and leave you in peace.”
Jan smiled wryly. “Even the federal government hasn’t been able to do a thing about it with its thousands of agents and billions of dollars.”
“Offhand I can point out three specific advantages we have over the police and the federal government. One, we don’t need to secure ironclad evidence before we can move against them. Two, our actions can’t be deflected or frustrated by their efforts to subvert the judicial and enforcement machinery by corrupting officials. Three, we don’t need to obey the law.”
“That’s very glib.” Jan was watching Vasquez, holding his glance too long; it became a challenge. “Suppose we put ourselves in your hands. Suppose Frank Pastor approaches you and offers to outbid us. How do we know you won’t sell yourself?”
“I’m an attorney,” Vasquez murmured. “You and your husband are my clients. It would be an obvious conflict of interests.”
“But you consider yourself above the law. That’s what you’ve just said.”
“Unhappily there’s a distinction between statutory law and moral law. I flout the one with unfortunate regularity. I am bound by the other with absolute rigidity.”
“It doesn’t cost you anything to say that, does it.”
Vasquez turned his hands apart, palms out. “Then we’re at an impasse. The only way you can determine whether you can trust a man is to trust him and see what happens.”
She only brooded at him. Vasquez said at last, “I’ve taken you on and I won’t sell you out. It would be fruitless to offer further assurances than that. Either you believe it or you don’t.”
“The moral law you’re so concerned with — in your case it seems to include cold-blooded murder.”
“Don’t believe everything you read.”
“That’s an evasion.”
“Mrs. Mathieson, I might be able to influence you by proffering slick rationalizations about the differences between murder and execution, or justifiable homicide — self-defense — that is to say, by pointing out that the Commandment against homicide is hedged with innumerable exceptions. I’ve killed human beings, yes. I haven’t killed many.” He lowered his head. “It’s fair to say only that I can’t answer to your conscience — I can answer only to my own. It is clear.”
In the same subdued voice and without lifting his head Vasquez said, “You’ve got to make a decision, you know. If you decide not to trust me there’s no point going on with this.”
Mathieson waited for Jan to turn and look at him. Finally she did.
He couldn’t decode her expression. “I don’t have a choice,” she said. She turned back to Vasquez. “Neither of us does.”
“Then I’m to proceed?”
“You’ll have to forgive me. I don’t give this much of a chance.”
“Mrs. Mathieson, a sentence of death has been passed upon you by Frank Pastor’s kangaroo court. You have three options. Give up and succumb. Run and hide. Or fight and hope. No human being in sound mental health would consider the first. You’ve already tried the second and found it wanting. Therefore, regardless how poor the chances appear, you’re pretty well stuck with fight and hope.”
The nervous smile, meaningless, sped across her lips again.
Vasquez seemed to take it for assent. “We’ll have to arrange a program, the object of which will be to formulate our plans down to the last detail. We’ll need to do a great deal of work. It will take time — time that must be unencumbered by distracting pressures of the kind Frank Pastor has been inflicting on you. This requires seclusion. I have in mind a place where we should be able to make things as comfortable for you as might reasonably be expected. There’ll be no companions the boy’s age but the place of which I’m thinking does have stables and horses. I understand he’s a self-sufficient child.”
“No child that age is self-sufficient.”
“He’ll have his parents with him,” Vasquez said. “He’ll miss school of course. The school terms are just now beginning.”
“I’m aware of that.” She was still cool with him. “Why can’t we stay right here? There’s a country school in the village — it’s fourteen miles.”
“We don’t want to involve your friends any more than they’re already involved, Mrs. Mathieson.”
Vasquez let that sink in. Then he said: “I don’t merely want you and the boy to be where you’re safe. I want you to be where your husband knows you’re safe and where I know you’re safe. The only way we can avoid being distracted by concern over your safety is to have you and Ronny with us at all times. I’m afraid both of you may find it tedious but I’m sure you’ll agree boredom is preferable to anxiety.”
An expression tightened the skin around her mouth: It might have been an effort to choke off anger. Abruptly she went across the porch. “I suppose I’d better get packed again.” Without further talk and without a glance at Mathieson she went inside the cabin.
Vasquez tipped forward in the rocker and got to his feet. He lifted an eyebrow in Mathieson’s direction and stepped off the porch and walked away toward the trees. Mathieson followed him past the Cadillac to the far side of the clearing where Vasquez stopped and thrust his hands into his pockets. “I wasn’t sure how soundproof those walls might be.”
“Why?”
“When I undertake a commission it’s not my habit to cavil over details. Don’t misunderstand this, but I wish you had told me you were having marital difficulties. It may make a substantial difference.”
“What makes you think—”
“I’m not an imbecile. I’ve got eyes.”
“Things are tough on Jan right now. Tougher than they are on me.”
“It’s nothing that recent.”
“Aren’t you getting a little out of line?”
Vasquez said, “Whatever program we settle on, you can be sure it will demand your full attention. If you’re going to be distracted by emotional turbulence it will undermine your efficiency. How long have you been estranged?”
“Estranged? We’ve never been separated.”
“Don’t quibble over definitions.”
“We’ve got an understanding.”
“You’re still splitting hairs. I’m not prying out of seedy curiosity, you know.”
He regarded Vasquez dismally over a stretching interval. The undulating rasp of a light plane somewhere above the mountains distracted him briefly; finally he said: “It goes back to the first time. When we had to pick up and leave New York. Things started going sour then.”
“How old was your son?”
“Four. I suppose we both kept hoping the sores would heal. I think they still can. I want us to be the Mathiesons again, at least — we had a chance to get somewhere from that point. Things were better the last few years, much better than they’d been before. Now it’s collapsed — she can’t take any more of this pressure. It isn’t her fault. She never asked for any of this.”
“She supported you in your initial resolve to testify against Pastor.”