“I love you, too,” Paul said. “Just one more thing, and we’ll be on our vacation.”
They got out and Sylvie went to unlock the kitchen door. Paul brought the rifle and ammunition in. He said, “All we really have to do is go pick up our million bucks.”
“You don’t mean now, tonight?”
“Sure I do. We did the job, and he said he’d collect the money and have it waiting. That was the arrangement.”
“But we don’t need to have a million dollars in cash tonight. It’s silly. I wouldn’t even know where to put it all. We’ve already got so much cash for the trip that I’m worried about it.”
“It’s not important where we put it,” Paul said. “We’ll shove it under the bed, or in the oven or something until we can put it into safe-deposit boxes. That isn’t the point. We go to pick it up tonight because we don’t want to give Scott Schelling a few days to dream up a way to keep us from collecting. We don’t have to be rude about it, or anything—just cool and businesslike. We show up and say, ‘We did what you asked, and here we are. Time to pay. Bye-bye.’”
Sylvie nodded. “Okay. Give me a chance to change.”
“I’ve got to get this rifle ready to dump before we go see Schelling.”
“Okay.” Sylvie went off to take another shower and dress. She knew that they were going to be out late tonight, so she selected a pair of black pants and a black pullover and black shoes. Black was always right in these ambiguous evening situations, and she looked good in black.
When she came out of the shower, Paul was in the bedroom already dressed in a pair of nicely pressed gray pants, a dark blue shirt, and a black jacket.
“You don’t need to get dressed. You look incredible.” He plucked the towel off her, then put his arms around her and held her there.
“I’m cold. Cut it out. I want to get dressed. This isn’t the time.” She held herself rigid, her back hunched over.
He kept his arms around her for two more seconds, as though she might relent, then let her go. “I suppose it’s not.” He turned and walked out of the bedroom. She felt relieved for a few seconds because he intended to leave her in peace. She knew she had hurt his feelings, and knew that she shouldn’t have been quite so insensitive to his mood. He was still feeling manic about their difficult victory, their sudden freedom from that awful job.
She should have been flirtatious and teasing, and made him go away feeling good about her. Instead she had fended him off clumsily, so she had looked unattractive, and actually stood there like a statue, like a symbol of frigidity. As she dressed, she cursed herself for being so slow to think. It was just that she had been forcing herself to face her tension about Scott Schelling, and fear was not an aphrodisiac.
Sylvie finished dressing, then did her makeup and hair, unable to stop thinking about her foolish miscalculation. She went out looking for Paul. She found him in the kitchen wearing a pair of surgical rubber gloves, dismantling the rifle he had used on Wendy Harper this afternoon. The scope, the ammunition and the magazine had been removed and put away, probably in the gun safe. He had the barrel off, the bolt and the receiver out, and he had dismantled the action so the trigger, sear and spring were on the table.
She came up behind him and kissed the back of his neck. He didn’t move. “I’m sorry, Paul. I’m in love with you. I didn’t mean to be unfriendly.” She had her hands on his shoulders. She kept them there and leaned down to kiss his cheek. She could feel his jaw muscle working, and it frightened her. He was beyond feeling upset and unappreciated, he was angry. She walked around him, knelt on the kitchen floor in front of him and spoke softly, her hands on his knees and moving upward. “Don’t be hurt.” She looked up at him. “Oh. I just thought of something that might make you feel better.” She undid his belt.
Later, when it was over, Paul seemed happy and relaxed again. She watched him take the pieces of the rifle and put them in a plastic trash bag so he could drop them in a Dumpster on the way to see Scott Schelling. Sylvie was feeling confident. She had been very foolish before, but at least she’d had the presence of mind to fix things. Letting Paul stay angry would have been a mistake.
She walked around the house checking to be sure everything was locked or turned off. When she had verified that things were as she wanted them, she joined Paul in the garage, watched him engage the deadbolt, and got into the car.
As Paul backed the car out of the garage, she said, “So we’re off. Do we know where we’re going?”
“Yes. We’re going to his office first. If he isn’t there, he’ll be at home.”
“Where is Crosswinds Records?”
“Burbank, on Riverside. You know where all those other companies are—Warner Records, the Disney Channel and DIC and all that stuff? It’s right along there in one of those buildings.”
He drove eastward on the Ventura Freeway to the 134 Freeway and got off on Buena Vista, then parked the car off Riverside in the lot beneath Dalt’s Restaurant. Instead of taking the elevator into the restaurant, they walked up the entrance ramp to the street. They kept going along Riverside until they came to one of the tall buildings of reflective glass that had sprouted oddly on the island between Alameda and Riverside, like a mirage in the midst of the old one-story stores and restaurants. “This is the one,” Paul said. “Let’s look around.”
Sylvie understood. Looking around meant assessing the security. It was nearly dark, and the street lamps had come on, but it was easy to stay in the dimmer spaces away from them. The building was like the others, all glass and steel and hard corners, set right on the sidewalk a few feet from the curb. When they walked past the front door, she could see into the lobby, where two men sat behind a counter. Above them was a sign that said, “Please check in,” and the counter was situated so nobody could reach the elevators in the alcove beyond without being seen. Sylvie said, “This isn’t looking simple, is it?”
“It’s not impossible. Let’s try the easy way first. Keep walking.” Paul took out his cell phone and a piece of paper, and dialed the number on it. “Hello,” he said. “I’d like to speak with Mr. Schelling, please.”
The woman on the other end had a silky, calm voice of the sort that made people put up with more delay and neglect than they had believed they could. “May I ask what this refers to?”
She had lost him. He said, “It’s a personal call, and he’s expecting it. I’m a friend of his, and my name is Paul.”
“One moment, please.” There was a delay so long that he wondered if she had answered another line and forgotten about him. Just as he considered ending the call and starting over again, she was back. “I’m afraid he can’t speak with you right now, but he asked if you could meet him after he finishes his conference.”
“Where does he want to meet?”
“He suggested Harlan’s, just down the street from the Crosswinds offices. Do you know where that is?”
“Yes. What time?”
“Can you be there in thirty minutes?”
“Tell him I’ll be there.”
“He’ll meet you at the back entrance by the parking lot.”
Paul disconnected and kept walking beside Sylvie. “His secretary says he wants to meet us at that restaurant down the street—Harlan’s. She says he’ll come in the back door in a half hour.”
Sylvie shrugged. “It’s sort of a dark place inside. It’s got booths, and it’s probably not such a bad place to hand over some money.”
“Maybe not. I don’t like letting him choose the place, though. Let’s go check it out before he gets there.”
“Do you want to bring the car?”
“No, let’s keep it out of sight.”
They walked up Riverside past Bob’s Big Boy, a forties-era burger restaurant with a huge chubby-cheeked boy in front. On Friday nights the parking lot of Bob’s was full of people who had brought customized antique cars for other aficionados to admire. At the next block, they turned and began to walk along the alley behind the stores and restaurants on the north side of Riverside. To their left were the back entrances, and on the right were the parking lots.