“Okay. We won’t do that again.”
“I don’t mean the necktie. It’s being rough. Hurting me.”
“You liked it.”
“I don’t think this is good for us. For me, or for you.”
“So we’ll do something else next time. We’ll be gentle and slow. We can take a long, hot bath and I’ll give you a massage.”
“I think I should leave.”
“It’s almost three. Where would you go?”
“Home. I have an apartment, remember? I want to go back to my own bed and sleep. I think we need to take a break from each other.”
“Come on, Kit. This wasn’t a big deal. It’s just a little game, and pretty tame by most people’s standards.”
“I need time to think.”
He lay back on the bed staring at the ceiling while she went through the closet and the bathroom, dressing. It took only a moment to realize that she was rushing, as though she couldn’t wait to get away from him. She wasn’t saying that she was breaking up with him, but Scott knew she was. As soon as she was dressed, she was going to hurry downstairs, get in her car, and drive away. Once she was out of his house, away from him and on the telephone where he could not reach her and she did not have to look into his eyes, her tone would change. Maybe she would not even answer his calls.
Scott tried to lie back calmly and get used to the idea that she was no longer his. He took deep breaths and concentrated on making his muscles lose their tension. She was dressed now. She came into the bedroom and stopped. “I’ll call you.”
He lay there, paralyzed with sadness. She was lying to him. She would never call him, never want to talk to him. He had been so kind to her, so generous. She had probably been trying to use him from the beginning, using his influence, his contacts, his access. He sat up as she was going past him. “Kit, wait!”
“I’m going. I don’t want to talk.”
Something in him shifted, some undiscovered switch turned on. He was out of the bed, still naked, and he was charging toward her. He half-tackled, half-threw her to the floor. He yanked the belt out of the pants he had left there, looped it around her neck and through the buckle, and held her there.
SUDDENLY HE HEARD Carl’s cell phone ring, and it jarred him back to the present. He lifted his eyes and squinted into the glaring sunshine. He was breathless, sweating in the air-conditioned car. Kit had actually died. He really had killed her.
“Yeah?” Carl said. After a moment, Carl said, “Scotty?”
“What?”
“They just found Densmore’s body. It was in a field up near Santa Clarita this morning.” He kept whoever had called on the line and waited, driving along in the slow traffic on Sunset toward the turn into the Canyon at Crescent Heights.
Scott Schelling sat in the back of the car, staring out the window. “Damn. That’s a problem. Who is watching the District Attorney’s office?”
“We can move Kaprilow and Stevens. Neither of them is really cut out for—”
“Do it. No. Just tell Stevens to watch the building entrance for the moment. He isn’t to do anything. We just want a phone call the second he sees Wendy.”
He listened as Carl repeated what he had said to the person on the telephone and ended the call. Then Scott said, “And the first two shooters. The Turners. Get in touch with them so they know that we’re still here and the contract is good. We don’t want them to panic just because Densmore isn’t around. We still want them out looking for Wendy Harper.”
Carl was feeling good. He was always amazed when Scott Schelling moved into action. Densmore’s body had barely hit the ground. Scott had heard about it when? Ten seconds ago? And he was taking steps to reestablish order and communications, get the new chain of command in place, and make everybody feel safe. For the fiftieth time, he wished he were younger and smarter—maybe just more ambitious—so he could be learning how to be successful from the master. These lessons must be worth all the business-school degrees in the world, but Carl knew he would never take advantage of them.
“And Carl?”
“Yes?”
“When you talk to them, keep in mind that what probably happened to Densmore was that they killed him. Don’t make them feel uncomfortable. We need to get this Wendy Harper thing done.”
35
WHILE SYLVIE PACKED their suitcases in the bedroom, she could hear Paul in the kitchen and the living room and the office collecting things. Paul was good at picking out his own clothes, as men who were narcissists all seemed to be. Paul chose clothes that emphasized how tall and slim he was: pants with pronounced waistbands and narrow legs, tight pullover casual shirts, dress shirts with vertical stripes, sport coats that he wore buttoned to show off his thin waist.
She could tell from the sounds that Paul was collecting money from the various places where he had hidden cash. It was foolish to use credit cards when it wasn’t necessary, so as soon as they landed, they would use false names and start changing small numbers of dollars into euros as they needed them. There was no way to be completely anonymous, but there was no sense making yourself accessible to amateurs and incompetents. Paul had also called the bank this morning to let them know that sometime over the next few months, they might order an electronic transfer to a foreign bank. It was always best to smooth the way and know the latest procedures before you were on the other side of the earth and talking to a banker long-distance.
Sylvie had fretted while she was trying to decide what to pack for such a long and unpredictable trip, but Paul had said, “There are two suitcases, thirty by twenty-four inches. If something doesn’t fit in there, it’s not going. We’ll shop there and dress like locals.” She loved Paul’s ability to settle her. He spoke with a quiet, untroubled voice and rested his strong, gentle hands on her shoulders and held her still, grounding her, the way an expert rider calmed a skittish horse. Afterward, she didn’t know what had made her feel so anxious. Of course they didn’t need to bring everything in their closets. They could shop for anything they needed after they were out of the country.
It was ridiculous to be frantic and agitated: Densmore was dead. That had ended that stupid job they should never have taken in the first place. They would take a nice vacation, make it last a few months, and then come home long after everyone had forgotten about Wendy Harper and Eric Fuller.
She had known for a long time that Densmore was dangerous because he took so much trouble to be the sort of person nobody thought was dangerous. He’d had that smooth, soft way of speaking that could only be false. She had suspected that if he gained too much power over them, he would show a different side.
She went over in her mind the items she had put in the suitcases to be sure she had done her best with the time and space she had been allowed. Then she closed the suitcases and lifted hers tentatively off the bed, then Paul’s. They were both heavy, but she could carry either one if she had to, and Paul could carry them both. She looked inside again, and verified that she had put in the right variety of garments for late summer in Europe. Then she sat on the bed to think of anything else she needed.
She heard Paul moving along the hallway from the living room, and a slight feeling of worry crept into her mind. Last night, Michael Densmore had said, “I paid you four times—” and right then Paul had pulled the trigger and killed him. It had sounded as though Densmore might have been about to say, “I paid you four times the original price.” Paul had told her two days earlier that Densmore had offered to double the price, not quadruple it. She replayed the conversation in her memory, trying to intuit from the tone of Densmore’s voice what the rest of the sentence would have been. As she ran it through her mind again, she realized that she had the phrase wrong. What Densmore had said was “I offered to pay you four times—” That was important: offered, not paid.