“Where are the bonds?”
“Last I heard, in a bus depot coin locker.”
“I have a man at the bus depot.”
Dain gave a short, harsh laugh. “He won’t stop her.” Sudden anger entered his eyes. “A man at the bus depot, huh? You killed Zimmer, made it look like a suicide!” He stood up so abruptly that Nicky’s arm jerked up the gun. “You asshole! You had to come sucking around. Who tipped you off anyway? I’d have had your goddam bonds for you this afternoon, with nobody dead.”
“I don’t believe you,” said Maxton. “Zimmer told me that you and Vangie—”
Dain scooped up the leather-covered Tibetan Book of the Dead from the bedside table and tossed it at Maxton. Maxton caught it, leafed through it, nonplussed.
“There’s nothing in here. What—”
“Exactly.”
Dain was throwing back the covers to show the empty bed. He lifted the mattress to show nothing was under it. Jerked the slips off the pillows to show only pillows were inside. Ran his fingers around the pillow stitching to show they were untouched. Maxton was spluttering.
“What are you...”
But Dain was undressing with the same maniacal speed, throwing each item of clothing in the direction of Nicky. When he was nude, he jumped into the bed and pulled up the sheet.
“I’m going to sleep,” he said. “You do what you want.”
Maxton’s face had suffused with rage. There was also anticipation in his gaze. “Nicky, teach him some manners.”
Dain sat up abruptly under the sheet when Nicky started forward. Dain’s eyes were very cold and very steady.
“Not unless you want one of us dead.”
Their eyes locked, Maxton suddenly realized that Dain’s bone-deep despair was more dangerous than any bluster by men trying to mask their fears. He spoke in a strangled voice.
“That’s all right, Nicky. Just search the room.”
Dain lay back down, turned his back, pulled up the sheet. Maxton moved up between the beds and sat down heavily on the one still made. He had already realized the search was going to turn up nothing.
“You should have told me you were so close.”
“I knew if I did, you’d come busting down and fuck it up. Which you did anyway. How did you know where they were?”
The second bug on Farnsworth’s phone? Dain wanted to lay that question to rest. But Maxton ignored it again.
“My goddamned wife isn’t going to wait much longer, you know!” he said aggrievedly.
“Kill her, you’re good at that.”
“She left a letter with her lawyer.”
A half hour after Maxton had departed, empty-handed, Dain sat up again.
“Fuck!” he exclaimed aloud.
Vangie was in trouble. He was leaving her hanging out there, slowing twisting in the wind. If Maxton found her, he’d kill her. Kill her because nobody stole from Theodore Maxton, by God, and got away with it. And after doing Jimmy earlier tonight, it would be easier for him to kill again.
Or to have his goons do it, same thing.
Marie was dead because he’d been a fool, and now Vangie was popping up in Marie’s place in Dain’s nightmares. If he deliberately walked away from her, and she was killed...
He was scared, he realized. Hadn’t been when Maxton and Nicky had been in the room, but he was scared of them now, sort of in retrospect. A week ago he would have said he didn’t care if he lived or died. Now...
Maybe he still didn’t, but something was changing in him. He was involved in life somehow. Maybe just in Vangie’s life? Maybe he just wanted to see what was going to happen next? No, it was stronger than that. If only he was the man they thought he was, the stainless-steel image he projected, it would all be a hell of a lot easier.
Maybe he would have to be that image somehow.
He sighed, and got out of bed, and started to get dressed.
IV
Mr. Death
Cajun Country
THE DAWNING OF THE PEACEFUL DEITIES
O nobly-born, thou hast been in a swoon during the last three and one-half days. As soon as thou art recovered from this swoon, thou wilt see the radiances and deities. The whole heavens will appear deep blue.
20
The darkness was beginning to lighten, dawn would soon be staining the sky to the east. In deserted Chartres Street, Dain tossed his bag into his rental car, drove to Canal and Interstate 10 that would take him west toward the vast Atchafalaya Swamp that was Cajun country.
On the system of raised interchanges by which traffic avoided Baton Rouge, Dain stayed on the I-10 freeway west. The sun, rising behind the car, made incredible colors and shapes of the massed horizon clouds. Industrial smoke rising from the plants lining the Mississippi had taken on dawn tints also.
Why was he here? What did he think he was doing? He should be on his way to San Francisco; it was not his fault Maxton had showed up to vitiate his bargain with Vangie. Vangie, who had taken Marie’s place in his recurring nightmare — and from what bizarre corner of his subconscious had that image come?
Who had told Maxton where Dain was? Or, perhaps, where Vangie was? Or Zimmer? Whose bug had been on Farnsworth’s phone? Who had put Inverness on Dain’s trail?
Dain kept telling himself he was looking for strands that somehow stretched back to the Point Reyes cabin five years earlier, but he knew in his secret heart that the idea was nonsense. This morning he had faced the fact that he had to come here because he otherwise would feel guilty about Vangie’s very real danger: because whoever had led Maxton to Vangie in New Orleans might now lead him to Vangie in Cajun country.
The phone rang. Maxton was sitting on the edge of his bed in robe and slippers, yawning, but he made no move to pick it up. When it kept on ringing, a cheap busty blonde wearing a very sheer expensive lace negligee came out of the bathroom. The fresh bruises on her full, soft breasts and rounded belly looked a soft gray through the sheer material. She picked up the phone. There was another bruise on her cheek, ugly and dark.
“This is Mr. Maxton’s room,” she said in a soft southern voice with a secretarial inflection. She listened, handed the phone to him.
“Yes, this is Maxton...” He suddenly leaned forward tensely on the bed. His face, voice, eyes were very hard, his jaw set. “What the fuck do you mean, Dain and the girl together? That isn’t possible. He’s right in the next...” He broke off, said, “Hang on a second...”
Maxton dropped the receiver on the floor and erupted through the balcony door to the terrace. He threw the door to the next room wide. It was empty, Dain’s suitcase was gone. Maxton whirled away, stormed back to his own room and the phone.
“You’re right. He’s gone. Do you know where...” He listened. “Vangie’s parents, huh? Yeah. Give me a second.”
He snapped his fingers, the blonde opened the drawer of the bedside table, gave him ballpoint pen and paper. He sat down on the bed to write the directions.
“Lafayette... Breaux Bridge... Henderson... Follow the levee to...” The blonde was on her knees in front of him, busy fingers undoing the sash of his robe. “Right turn or... I see. Over the pontoon bridge. Gravel road... mmm-hmm... All right... crossroads store. Road ends. Yes, I’ve got all that.”
He broke the connection, dialed three digits. The blonde’s hands were inside his pajama pants, stroking him erect. He said to the phone, “Trask? We’re going after that bitch, you and Nicky be ready to roll in ten minutes...” Trask must have said something, because he listened for a moment, then snapped, “No, I want to be there to watch her die. Before she does, I’m going to...” He caught his breath and his threats against Vangie died as the blonde took him in her mouth. He told the phone, “Make that twenty minutes,” and tossed it aside.