“Why, thank you, kind sir. Sarah, be still, you can talk to him in a minute, okay?”
“Anything else? Sarah need anything?”
“She’s fine. Mostly we’ve been playing Fish and Crazy Eights. And eating cold hot dogs.”
“Listen, Astrid, this line is getting worse. Can you still hear me?”
“Perfectly.”
“What? I can hardly hear you. Look, I’ll get in touch with Ted. You guys take it easy, and I’ll try to call again tomorrow. Give Sarah a kiss for me and tell her I’ll have a long talk with her next time.”
“And give Shauna Dawn a kiss for me,” Astrid said. She hung up abruptly. More slowly, Allison did also.
By a quarter to eleven the next morning, all of Allison’s guests were sitting together in a corner of the big living room of his house on Encantada Drive. Rain pattered steadily on the long-unused sun deck outside; across the room, logs burned in the fireplace. The air was pleasant with the smell of coffee.
The conversation, as people had arrived, had centred on everyone’s difficulties since the waves: power outages, shortages of food and gas, looting in local stores, businesses collapsing. Allison let them talk for some time, pleased but not surprised that each family’s problems had alarmed them without panicking them.
“Well,” he said at last, “it sounds as if we all agree that L.A. is a bad place to live just now.”
“What do you mean, ‘just now’?” grinned Dave Marston. He was a solidly muscled man in his late thirties, a professional stunt man who had worked on two of Allison’s films.
“Your point is well taken,” Allison smiled through the laughter. “But I think it’s gotten a little past the stage of putting up with smog and no garbage pickups. In catastrophe theory, we’re at what’s called a cusp, the point where everything breaks down.”
Bert D’Annunzio shook his head. He was a small, dark man, an ex-marine who was now doing well as a technical adviser on war films like Gunship. “This isn’t theory, Bob — this is reality.”
“You’re right as usual, Bert. So for us the question is, how do we tough out the next few weeks or months? Los Angeles is a dangerous place now. We’re going to see riots, serious food shortages, maybe epidemics, and probably a complete economic breakdown.”
“That’s already happened,” said Bert. “The New York Stock Exchange is closed for the rest of the week, at least. My broker says if it ever does open again, everything’s going to crash. He told me to forget about anything we own except gold and silver and food.” He hugged his wife Aline. “I sure hope you love me for my good looks, honey, ’cause there ain’t anything else left to love.” Aline, a quiet, pretty blonde, smiled at him — a little nervously, Allison thought.
“So you’re suggesting we all move up to your ranch in Escondido Canyon,” led Loeffler said. Good, thought Allison, Ted always keeps us moving along.
“Right. Ted and Suzi have been there before, and Bert and Aline.” He focussed on Dave and Diana Marston. “It’s hundreds of acres of rolling hills, stuck up a canyon out of sight. It’s got a compound of buildings, a good water supply and limited access. It’s right near Fort Ord, and I’m a friend of the commanding officer there — Ernie Miles. So it’s well protected, about as secure as any place in the country. And it’s got a smart, loyal staff, a Chicano couple.
“What it doesn’t have,” Allison went on, “is enough people to keep it going on a self-sufficient basis. That’s why I thought of you people. Ted’s a super organizer, a guy who gets things done. Suzi has crafts ability, pottery, leatherwork. Dave’s a jack-of-all-trades and a good shot, but I’m really after Diana.” More laughter: Diana Marston was a local celebrity thanks to her gourmet cooking show on the Los Angeles PBS station. She smiled and blushed.
“Bert’s a weapons expert and a hell of an outdoorsman. Aline is another good organizer, a born quartermaster.”
“You keep talking about weapons and military stuff,” Suzi Loeffler said. “Do you think we’ll all have to, have to fight people?”
“I hope to God not,” Allison smiled. “But if we get in a bind, it might help to know something about fighting.”
“If we accept,” asked Suzi Loeffler, “can we bring other people too? Relatives, you know, or friends?”
“Immediate family only. Your kids, but that’s it.” Allison shrugged. If we get into nephews and nieces and cousins and neighbours—”
“I understand,” Suzi nodded. “Just getting it straight.”
“Okay,” said Bert. “And when do we go?”
“Tonight, about seven o’clock.”
It had the effect he’d expected: hands to faces, widened eyes, a long moment of silence.
“All right,” Dave said. “Makes sense. What do we bring?”
The planning went on for hours. At two in the afternoon, the phone rang. Alison answered it, then took Bert aside for a moment.
“Have you got a gun with you?”
“In the car.”
“Some people are coming over in about an hour with a lot of stuff I’ve ordered. They’re getting paid in gold. I just want to make sure no one gets ripped off, least of all us.”
Promptly at three, a new Range Rover and Dodge van pulled into the driveway, while a Volvo diesel sedan parked across the street. The drivers of the Range Rover and the van got out and stood in the shelter of the garage, where Allison was waiting for them. They were young, tough-looking men in rain parkas, jeans and hiking boots. One of them handed Allison a neatly typed invoice. Allison scanned it briefly, then went out in the rain to check the trucks’ contents against the list. Canned and dehydrated food, drugs and medical supplies, tools, jerrycans of gasoline.
“Okay,” Allison said. “I’ll be right back.”
When he returned from the house, he was holding a leather shoulder bag. It thumped when he put it on the trunk lid of his Nissan. Opening it, Allison began counting out Krugerrands. At a thousand dollars an ounce, half a million dollars in gold weighed just under thirty-two pounds.
“Awright” smiled the invoice man. “All present and accounted for.”
“Now,” said Allison, “I’m going to carry it to the Volvo. You two stay about fifteen feet behind me. Once I hand it over, you get in and leave at once. No funny stuff.”
“Hey, don’t you trust us?”
“I trust you a lot. I just believe in consumer protection. So a friend of mine will be watching you, and he’s very well armed.”
The two men glanced at each other. “Okay, it’s cool,” said the invoice man. “We got some backup too, you know? Nobody gets burned.”
“Great.” Allison picked up the bag. Hatless, but wearing sunglasses, he strode out into the rain, across the driveway, and into the street. Both windows on his side of the Volvo rolled down. A man in the rear seat took the bag. The driver grinned and waggled a .38 revolver in his lap, where Allison could see it.
“A pleasure doing business with you,” Allison said to the man in back.
“Likewise,” said the man. “Nowadays you can’t be too careful.”
The invoice man and his companion got into the Volvo; the driver backed downhill into the next driveway, then accelerated towards Sunset Boulevard.
Bert, holding a revolver, stood up behind a laurel hedge.
“Nicely done,” he said. “That took balls. Everything okay?”
“Sure. A little tense there for a minute, but I knew you were watching. Thanks.”
Bert cleared his throat. “Uh, Bob — did you really pay those suckers half a million in gold?”
“That’s right. And if they can figure out a way to eat it, or shoot it, or live in it, they’re smarter than I am.”