The housekeeper knocked. "I thought you might be hungry, Mr. Tom," she said, wheeling in—what? A gurney? No. A cart with hot plates, sandwiches under a napkin, a pot of baked beans. "Your father's coming up to see you," she said as she retired. But she didn't have to. Tommy could hear the slow tiny elevator, and then the whine of his father's chair.
"You handled this very well, Tommy," he said.
Although Tommy was standing up at the dinner cart and his father sitting in the wheelchair, the old man dominated the scene. Not unusual; he always had. "Thanks, Dad," Tommy said gratefully.
"Has the woman got a family?"
"Myrna. Yes, there are some people back east. She had a husband, too, but they've been separated for a couple of years."
"I don't want trouble with her family," his father remarked.
"Her name is Myrna Licht, Dad. "
The old man studied him for a moment. "You've had a very difficult day," he announced, explaining to himself his son's small resistance. "We're going to have to clean all this up. All of it, Tommy. I've arranged an investigation of this Danny Deere's connection with those crackpots— privately. And I want a full report, complete with conclusions and recommendations, from those scientists of yours Monday morning."
Tommy had been filling a plate with baked beans and cole slaw; he put it down to express himself better. "I don't think that's possible, Dad!"
"Make it possible."
"You know how scientists are. They say they haven't completed their research yet. They don't have enough information—"
If his father had still had a foot, he would have stamped it. "Damn it, Tommy. For a million years people have been having to make decisions without knowing all the facts. That's the nature of the beast. That's what politics is all about. If they can't do it, we'll get somebody from the foundation to whip it together."
Tommy hesitated a moment, then resumed filling his plate. "I guess you're right, Dad."
"We'll talk about it in the morning." The old man spun his chair around to leave, then paused. "It's good to have you home for a night," he said.
"It was the weather, Dad. Half the canyon roads were closed because of the storm. "
His father nodded. "Thank God. The rain 11 be making the headlines, not you and your women."
Tommy ate half of what was on his plate, but he wasn't really hungry. He wasn't sleepy, either; the adrenaline was still charging his veins. He made himself a drink and went into the playroom.
The playroom was a good size, twelve feet by eighteen, or almost. One loop of the model train layout climbed up the side walls and completely circumnavigated the room; other loops were on folding shelves that completed the circle of track around the engineer's post. Tommy checked the controller to make sure everything was still connected, then let down the arms. The tracks still joined perfectly. From the marshalling yard he selected a Santa Fe hog pulling four Pullmans and a club car and sent it creeping across the bridge, then up the long grade to make the circuit of the room at molding level. Tommy had always enjoyed his toys. He had always owned a great many of them. Still did, although, as he had just discovered, some of his present toys bled on him when they were destroyed. He watched the string creep along the shelf of track absently, contemplating a thought he had been fleeing from. The bullet that broke the Myrna-toy, of course, had not been intended for her. It could have been himself, not Myrna, who was right now lying in the medical examiner's file drawer. By rights it should have been. By rights his life at this moment should be over.
On Mount Palomar an astronomer left the darkroom to peer out at the sky. His budget of observing time had been rained out for six consecutive nights. Now, shivering in the mile-high air, he saw Jupiter and Saturn glowing through a break in the clouds, and wondered if the cluster of galaxies he was concerned with would show up yet that night. It didn't much matter. He wasn't going anywhere. Down below the clouds, rain was still soaking the Pauna valley. Little creeks like Frey and Agua Tibia ran a quarter mile wide, and the roads were under water.
Sunday, December 27th. 1:30 PM.
Danny Deere didn't own a pair of boots, but Maria had insisted on lending him her husband's. Or nephew's, or son's; at any rate, he was dressed for the weather. Joel took no chances, however. He was out of the car and at the door, with an umbrella over Danny's head while he escorted him to the door. "You sure you want to do this, Danny?" he chattered. "It's no day for a drive in the country."
Danny didn't answer, except to tell him to get the umbrella out of his face. It wasn't doing any good; the wind was as bad as the rain, and the drops came horizontally into his eyes and down the collar of his trench coat. Danny jumped into the car and began removing as much as he could of the rain gear while Joel ran around and started down the driveway.
Joel was watching him in the mirror. "He didn't seem like that bad a kid, Danny," he offered. "Uptight, sure. Messed up. But I never figured him for a killer."
"Watch the road!" Danny ordered, drumming his fingers on the armrest. He glowered at the condo as they turned into the freeway. It didn't look any better in the rain. The great crane hung idly over the near side of the building, two loops of cables swinging beneath it in the wind. There were no windows in the building yet, and the scaffolding that ran up one side showed just how far the work had got. Too far. It wasn't going to go away.
"Would you like me to turn on a little heat?" Joel inquired.
"Will you shut up?" Danny demanded, but his heart wasn't in it. He leaned back and closed his eyes, hoping Joel would think he was asleep. He wished he were. He didn't want to listen to the radio, because the part that wasn't about the lousy weather was about the lousy fink, Buck. He especially didn't want to think, because everything he thought was even lousier.
The trouble with pretending to sleep was that you sometimes went ahead and did it. Danny roused slightly as the car turned off the Hollywood Freeway and began to move carefully through the drenched, almost empty city streets. But be didn't come fully awake till he felt Joel slam on the brakes and cry, "My God, Danny, look at that!"
"What? What?" Danny barked, but then he saw. They were slowing down as they approached the ashram, and it was a mess! Shards of glass spangled the sidewalk. The sign over it had been pulled down and swayed crazily in the wind. The black man, Robinson, was boarding up the shattered windows while a little girl in a poncho too big for her was handing him nails.
"Somebody really had himself a time," Joel marveled, pressing the button that rolled the side window down as he slid in toward the curb. Danny jumped up.
"Close that goddam window! Keep going. Don't stop! Right on by, you hear me?" He cowered down out of sight, but it wasn't necessary. The little girl looked at him with absent curiosity, but her father's attention was firmly focused on the boards he was nailing.
"You don't want to stop, Danny? I thought you said you wanted to talk to—" _
"Will you for God's sake keep going?" He lifted his head and peered back. From a distance the damage looked even worse than it had close up. He tried to tell himself that the storm had done it, but he knew better.
"Go where, Danny?"
"Just keep driving! Let me think a minute." God, how rotten everything had gotten, and how fast!
For the first time in years, Danny wished he had someone to talk to. Really talk. Joel wouldn't do, nor his lawyer, nor any of the women he scored in that big elevated bed when the mood moved him. None of the people he knew would do, because they were all wimps; what he needed was a friend, and he didn't have one.