Harlan’s was a low wooden building that looked as though it belonged on a wharf. Paul said, “He’ll be here in about twenty-five minutes. What do you think of the place?”
“I don’t know. There are a lot of people making a lot of noise down the street and in the front, but it’s pretty deserted back here. I don’t like it.”
“Neither do I. What do you want to do?”
“Anything. I’ll be perfectly happy to write off the money, get in the car, and head for the airport.”
“We may have to do that yet. Let’s go across the street to Marie Callender’s and watch the parking-lot entrance from there. If he drives in, we’ll see him.”
“All right.” They walked back along the alley a few steps, and a big beige Chevrolet sedan swung into the lot from the other end, its front end bobbing upward at the bump and then down, the headlights flashing in Sylvie’s eyes. The car stopped ahead of them, idling. When Sylvie shaded her eyes, she could see the driver was a tall man wearing a red tie and sport coat. A shorter, darker man sat in the passenger seat. The driver opened his door and got out. “Mr. and Mrs. Turner?”
Sylvie whispered to Paul, “Get ready.”
Paul called back to the man, “What can I do for you?”
“Would you come with us, please? We’re here to take you to the meeting.”
Paul and Sylvie had already begun sidestepping apart. “That’s not the arrangement.”
“It’s a precaution. All you have to do is get in the car.”
Sylvie had her gun in her hand inside the jacket pocket. She glanced at Paul, and she could see that his longer legs had carried him to the other side of the car. His right hand was at his belt, and his knees were slightly bent. Sylvie selected her targets. She would fire first at the man who had gotten out, then at the shorter, dark-haired man in the passenger seat, who seemed to have a bandaged head. Sylvie would have little time to react, so she moved her eyes from one to the other, practicing.
Paul said, “I’m not comfortable with this. Call him and tell him.”
The man who was standing beside the car said, “We’re police officers, and you’re going to have to come with us.” He opened his coat to reach for a gun, and Sylvie caught sight of a badge. The man in the passenger seat flung the door open on the other side of the car.
Sylvie shot the man who was holding his coat open, then dropped to her knees and fired into the passenger seat at the dark-haired man while Paul fired into the windshield.
The short, dark man was wounded, but he managed to slide into the driver’s seat and step on the gas pedal. The car lurched ahead at Paul, but he jumped aside and fired three more rounds. The car coasted a few feet, then bumped into a fence made of steel cables strung between poles, and stopped at the edge of the parking lot.
Paul yanked the driver’s door open, dragged the dead man out onto the ground, and took his place. Sylvie climbed into the back seat. Paul drove the car down the alley, up Riverside for a couple of blocks, and then turned to the side street and drove until they were back on the street behind Dalt’s. He pulled to the curb and wiped off the steering wheel and door handles. They climbed out and walked down the ramp to the parking lot beneath the building, and drove out in their black BMW.
They raced along Riverside to Barham, then past the Warner Brothers studios over the hill to the freeway entrance. Paul muttered, “Jesus. Fake cops. I can’t believe I let him set us up like that.”
“That’s really about all I can take,” Sylvie said. “This has been nothing but misery.”
“Giving up?”
“No. But I’m not sure what I’m after is going to be money.”
38
SCOTT SCHELLING felt his cell phone vibrate in his coat pocket. This was the third time tonight, and each time, he could feel his heartbeat quicken with excitement. The news was better and better each time. He glanced at the other end of the room. Ray Klein was about midway in his cocktail-party speech about the fully integrated electronics conglomerate, so there was plenty of time to answer the call.
He made his way through the vast living room slowly, careful not to look as though he was in a hurry. Doing business at these parties was considered rude. But he was anxious to return Tiffany’s call. Her first call had been the most important one. She had conveyed the message from Paul that everything had gone as he had hoped. That meant that Wendy Harper was dead at last. Scott had been in a state of buoyant good spirits since that moment, which he recognized as a turning point in his life. For six years—the years when he had been working to build his reputation and gain power at Crosswinds Records—he had been afraid.
He had tried to be cautious about having his picture taken or being on television, but he still had to do his job and live his life, and they were the same. Work was social. Scott Schelling had always taken women to parties and used his business relationships with musicians to impress them. He had talked to women in the way he had talked to the musicians. He told each of them she was the very best, the one he wanted above all the others. He implied as clearly as he could that he would give them everything they could ever want, just because they were special. He would give the woman of the moment a sample, a taste of what was to come. It would be a watch or a bracelet, usually, something that had cost enough to let her know he was not the same as her old boyfriends.
Scott had been very generous about exposing the new woman to the talent right away, to demonstrate that he was an important man. He let her meet the stars, dance with them, drink with them, talk to them. But being with music celebrities was a mixed experience for a young woman. Many of the stars were wild and sloppy, drinking heavily, or disappearing for a few minutes and returning with a manic craziness and dilated pupils. Offstage, stars were often crude and boorish and even frightening. The woman could see the freak show, be dazzled and fascinated, but after a surprisingly short time, Scott would feel the woman clinging to his arm again, half-hiding herself behind his reassuring dark suit coat and his sobriety and reliability.
Scott stopped to say hello to Bill Calder, the Entertainment Division Comptroller, then eased by Calder’s wife, confiding, “Excuse me, my phone is ringing,” and out the open arch into the cactus garden. He liked Klein’s Santa Fe house. It was adobe, with big timbers in the ceilings and every portal curved. When he was certain that nobody was near him, he took out his telephone, pressed Tiffany’s number, and said, “It’s me.”
“Scotty, it’s both of us—Tiffany and Kimberly—on a conference line. We wanted to be positive you wouldn’t be needing us any more tonight.”
“Did you have someone meet the gentleman who called earlier?”
“Do you mean Paul?”
“Yes,” he said.
“I called the number you left me.”
“Good. If everything’s taken care of, there’s no reason to hang around. Just reconfirm the time of my flight tomorrow morning and turn out the lights. And make sure somebody remembers to feed my dog tomorrow.”
“Thanks, Scotty,” Tiffany said. “See you Monday morning.”
He hung up. He inhaled, and as his lungs expanded he felt even happier. He felt a crazy, impulsive wish to do something for those two, like give them both a huge raise. But he couldn’t do that every time he felt happy. And Bill Calder, who was no more than fifty feet away from him right now, would see the raise and want to know the justification. Maybe Scott would take them with him on a trip. There was one scheduled for later next month to France and Germany for some conference or other.