It wasn’t until many hours later, after Seaver had told the police the whole story and walked out of the police station, that his euphoria began to wane. He had only gotten himself out of one small scrape. He had been sent out by the three partners to handle a problem, and he had not handled it yet. He had gotten himself arrested instead. While he had been in jail, it was possible that things might even have gotten worse. There had been photographers on the jailhouse lawn, and men with video cameras that had the call letters of television stations on them.
If Earl Bliss had seen those reports, he would also see the reports that Seaver was free. He might decide that failing to frame Seaver meant he had to kill him. If Pete Hatcher was alive, even he could figure out that the reason Seaver was in Montana was to find him. It might be enough to drive him into the arms of the F.B.I. And if the Italians in New York had seen the reports, they might start asking questions too. He might have to think of a whole new story just for them. He was going to have to check with Foley, Buckley, and Salateri as soon as possible to find out where he stood.
As soon as he was out of Kalispell and down the road to Missoula, he checked into another hotel and walked down the street to a convenience store where there was a pay telephone. He called the private number of the partners’ offices in the Pleasure Island casino, but nobody answered. He tried calling their houses but got nothing except the voices of servants who told him politely they were writing down his name. Then he tried the operator at the hotel.
“This is Calvin Seaver,” he said. “I need to have you reach Mr. Foley, Mr. Salateri, or Mr. Buckley for me. Any one of them.”
“I’m sorry, sir. The resort owners can only be reached through their assistants during normal business hours.”
“I know better than that. They can be reached any time of any day of the year. If you don’t know me, call up the emergency notification list. I’m at the top.”
“Your name, sir?”
“I just told you. Calvin Seaver.”
“I’m sorry, sir. I’ve been instructed to inform any callers that there is no Calvin Seaver connected with the hotel. All inquiries regarding a Calvin Seaver are to be immediately referred to Mr. Bennis in hotel security.”
“So refer me. Get him on the line.”
There was a silence, and Seaver could tell from the duration that the operator was talking to Bennis’s office. No, damn it, that was Seaver’s office. Bennis was a flunky, a man Seaver had picked out of the ranks because of his canine loyalty and his ability to keep his mouth shut.
“Bennis,” said the voice.
“This is Seaver. I’m at a pay phone, so there’s no tap at this end. You might want to check your bug detector.”
“I already did,” said Bennis. “It’s clear.”
“I’m in Missoula, Montana. The police got convinced they had the wrong man and let me out. I wanted the big guys to know. I’m coming home.”
“Cal—” There was an unpleasant sound to Bennis’s voice that Seaver had not noticed before, almost a whine.
“What?”
“You’ve been good to me, so I’m paying off the favor. Don’t come here.”
Seaver felt as though he’d had the wind knocked out of him. “What does that mean?”
“They hired some people.”
“They were going to kill me in jail? Without even hearing what happened or giving me a chance to fix it?”
“Look, I don’t know any more.”
Seaver’s field of vision had a red aura at the edges, and his heart beat so hard he could feel it. “They didn’t hire them. They don’t know who to hire, and they wouldn’t let themselves get within a mile of anybody like that. You hired them. They called you into the office and told you I was a problem, a serious liability. Did you even tell them I wasn’t? That I would never talk?”
Bennis’s voice was calm. He sounded as though he were on the other side of a huge chasm, watching a disaster that had nothing to do with him. “You know them, Cal. They make a decision, and that’s their decision. You don’t talk them out of something like that.”
“You’re right,” said Seaver. “I’m glad you told me. And you know what else? I’m glad you’re the one they picked to replace me. You deserve it.”
Seaver hung up and took two steps back toward his hotel. He was tired, and had to sleep. No, there was no way he could go back up there and sit around all night. He had told Bennis he was in Missoula. He had to get on a plane.
He looked at his watch. It was three in the morning. What was the date? September 16—no, 17. It was a date that he would always remember. As he walked toward the hotel, he shook his head, and was surprised that the violent movement traveled to his shoulders and spine. He probably looked like an old dog shaking water off his back.
Seaver gave a quiet snort of a laugh at the thought. That was about right. For eleven years, since the day he had gone to work for Pleasure, Inc., he had been moving a third of his salary into accounts in the Caribbean under the name Luther Olmstead. How could men as smart as Buckley, Salateri, and Foley not have guessed that? When they had met him, he had just finished fifteen years as a cop, where there had been no opportunity to put away a dime. Then he had landed a job that paid over two hundred thousand a year with virtually no expenses. The taxes alone would have been more than his old salary.
He would stop in Los Angeles just long enough to pick up traveling money and his passport. That was the main thing—getting out. After that, he would consider what else he wanted to do. The three big guys probably thought that, given his history, his impulse would be to call the police. They would be busy in a few hours getting rid of evidence. But his experience as a policeman had not given him an interest in calling the police. And that was not his only option. He might not know the names of the old men in New York that the three partners were afraid of, but he did know the names of some similar men in Los Angeles, and he just might decide to give them a call. They would appreciate the opportunity to give their friends in New York a timely warning. He had always heard that the Mafia worked on reciprocity and favors, and this was a time of his life when it would not hurt to have them think of him with gratitude.
34
Jane found Earl Bliss’s address in the early afternoon. She drove past it slowly, looking for signs of danger, then continued up the road to study the next few houses. Out here on the northern rim of the San Fernando Valley, the stretches of pavement could hardly be called neighborhoods, because the houses were set at the ends of long winding gravel driveways on weedy parcels that seemed to her to be five acres or more. Some of the places consisted of old, rundown frame houses surrounded by the bodies of half-assembled cars, while others were like Earl Bliss’s, little fenced-in compounds with sprawling suburban houses in the middle. Two miles down the road she turned around and came past the house in the opposite direction. The house remained as she had first seen it: no curtains had moved, no cars had suddenly appeared in the driveway.
She had no evidence of how many people had been engaged in the hunt for Pete Hatcher. Committing murder for money was not a business that lent itself to large teams. But she did know that at least one person was not accounted for: the one who had trapped Hatcher in Denver had been a woman.
Jane did not return until after midnight. She turned off the lights of her rented car, pulled far enough up the drive to keep a passing cop from getting curious, and walked toward the house. The chain-link fence was topped with barbed wire, but there were no insulators for electricity, so she pried off ten feet of it with the tire iron from her rented car, climbed it, and dropped to the lawn.