“Sure.”
“So let’s just say politely that we believe we’ve been spotted, and we’ve killed a few bystanders, so it’s our professional opinion that the client would be better off having somebody else finish up. If Densmore says we’re letting him down, we say we’re sorry, but we know best. If his client gets all pissed off, we say we’re sorry about that, too. But Densmore can’t do anything to us. And if the client could, he wouldn’t need to hire us in the first place. As soon as we hang up, we pack our bags and go to Spain. We can study flamenco. We’ve been talking about it for years. It’s the height of tourist season now, but in a few weeks the off-season begins, and September is hot as hell here. We can come back after somebody else gets Wendy Harper.”
“Spain sounds pretty appealing to me right now,” Paul said. “From the moment when we heard Jack Till was getting ready to leave L.A., the whole thing got to be a pain in the ass. I’m sick of it.”
“That’s exactly how I feel. I’ve been afraid to tell you how much I hated it. I’m so glad you do, too.”
“We agree on that, but it still doesn’t get us out of the job. We gave our word to a man we’ve been working with for eight years. Changing our minds and pulling out isn’t a small thing.”
“If the relationship is worth anything at all, then we should be able to tell him honestly what’s been going on and level with him about how we feel about it. He’s a smart man. He may see the sense of it and tell us it’s time to quit.”
“That’s true,” Paul said.
“Should I get Densmore on the phone?”
“Hold it. We’re still just thinking.”
“Oh.” She turned away and put the pan into the dishwasher. She had fooled herself, let herself believe he was taking her ideas seriously, but of course he wasn’t. He didn’t think of her as an equal. After all these years, she was still just somebody to fuck. If he had to keep her in a good mood by pretending to consider her stupid suggestions, he would do it.
He said, “I guess you’re right. I hate to give up on anything, but this just isn’t working out. Densmore likes to be consulted. Let’s call him and see what he thinks.”
She turned and studied his face. He was looking down into his coffee cup. Then he picked it up and stared at the rim from the side. He saw lipstick and realized he had picked her cup up by mistake, then stood to retrieve his from the counter. His posture indicated that he was completely unaware that she had been getting upset. He looked as guileless as a big animal. She said, “Do you want to do the talking?”
“I don’t care who does it. It’s up to you.”
“I’ll dial, you talk.”
“Done.”
She called Densmore’s law office. When the receptionist answered, she said, “Hello. I have Paul Turner on the line for Mr. Densmore.” She had such a professional assistant voice that she made the receptionist nervous. Paul smiled at her as she handed him the telephone.
Paul waited for a second, then said, “Michael, it’s Paul. Is this your secure line? Good. No, it’s not finished. Far from it, I’m afraid. What? No, the reason I called.” He paused. “You’re sure I can talk? All right. We’ve had some setbacks. In order to find out where she was living, we had to kill a friend of hers in Henderson, Nevada. After we found her and had her under surveillance, we got pulled over by a cop near the San Francisco airport. I was driving a car rented with a fake ID, so I had to shoot him, too.”
Paul paused to listen for a few seconds. “Then a couple of hours south of there, we were just getting ready to make our move. We had her and Jack Till in a restaurant, and Sylvie was going into the ladies’ room to pop her, when another cop spotted our car outside. I saw him radioing for help. We had to slip into the hotel next door, con our way into a guest room, and kill a couple for their car.” He stopped to listen for a few seconds, then winked at Sylvie. “No. That still didn’t stop us. We followed Till and Wendy and tried to pull their car over just north of King City. Know where that is? I pulled up behind and Sylvie emptied a whole clip into their car—blew the rear window out, and Till drove the car off the road into a field.”
Paul put his arm around Sylvie and held the telephone so she could hear Densmore saying, “Didn’t you follow him?”
“About a half a mile through weeds in the dark. Then he made it over a hill and into some woody country where he could see us coming. He was setting up for an ambush. The guy’s a retired cop. You can’t assume a man like that can’t defend himself.”
Paul stood and listened, his face beginning to have a flat, tired look. Then he began to pace. “We’re pretty sure we’ve used up our value, Michael. Somebody got our license number when we shot the cop. People saw us rent that car. There may even be security tape. Till had plenty of chances to see us when we made our move. He knows who to look for. We tried our damnedest, but from here on, anything we could do would be no surprise. We’ll charge you zero for the effort and call it even.” He stopped talking and pacing, and listened.
Paul looked at Sylvie and she knew. The look was only a glance, a flick of the eye to her face and away from it, but it told her. It was the sort of look someone gave involuntarily when he wished the other person wasn’t close enough to hear the phone conversation.
She knew that Michael Densmore was saying something that Paul was not prepared to refute. Paul had charged all the way to the top of the hill, but he was being slowly pushed back down to where he had started. She could see that the heavy weight of Densmore’s argument was growing. Paul was straining to resist. “More money isn’t the issue, Michael. It’s that the risk for us has become worse than the risk for someone—anyone—who hasn’t been seen.” He had to listen for a moment. “The price doesn’t matter. We want out. Today. There’s not much point in hanging around if we can’t get close enough to do the job.”
He listened again, and it seemed to Sylvie that he was being flattered. “Thanks, Michael. It’s good to hear that. But—” Densmore interrupted him, and he waited, then tried to cut off the pitch. “We’ve liked working with you, too.” He was talking more loudly, trying to talk over Densmore, but Sylvie knew it would not be possible. “I’ve just told you that the risk—to us, to everyone in this—is huge now, and growing the longer we’re involved.”
Paul paced back and forth for a long time, and Sylvie saw the glance again. She decided not to watch his humiliation. She turned and walked from the kitchen through the living room to the other wing of the house. There was no reason to stay. She knew.
From the bed she could barely hear Paul’s voice coming from the kitchen, just a faint male droning without any of the words. After the call was over, she heard his heavy feet as he wandered through the house searching for her. She knew when he had found her because the footsteps stopped for a few seconds in the hallway outside the bedroom, then receded again. She got off the bed and walked to the guest bedroom.
He was taking two suitcases down from the closet shelf. She could see that the gun safe was open again, and he had returned the two Remington Model 7s to the rack.
She said, “Are we going somewhere?”
“Yes.”
She considered acting as though she thought he was going to take her to Spain, so he would have to admit his defeat. But she kept herself from being cruel. “He wouldn’t let us out of it, huh?”
“No. He used the stick and carrot on us.”
“What’s the carrot?”
“Our price for getting Wendy Harper just doubled.”
“What’s the stick?”
“Well, the client knows our names.”
“So Densmore lied. He said he never told any client who we are.”