Gable kept staring, his wrinkled features reminding Pittman of a crust of mud that was cracking.
“Molested?” Gable asked. “You honestly think I’d go to all this trouble to hide the fact that we were molested as students at Grollier? Which we were, by the way.” Gable raised his face to the beamed ceiling and burst out laughing, his feeble Adam’s apple bobbing, his bony throat sounding as if gravel were stuck in it. At once he seemed to strangle on his laughter. In pain, he lowered his face, tugged out his handkerchief, and coughed repeatedly into it. His pale face turned red from effort. The spasms slowly subsided. “Of course we were molested.” He swallowed and put away his handkerchief. “If you revealed that information, I could easily turn it to my advantage, eliciting sympathy from the media. In America today, there is no such thing as shame, only prurience and pity. You know nothing that threatens me, Mr. Pittman. You’re wasting my time.”
“You didn’t let me finish.”
“Oh? Are you suggesting that you have information of more substance to share with us?”
Pittman’s chest ached, swollen with pressure. His heart pumped faster. He had hoped that Gable would take for granted that Pittman had discovered his secret. An open discussion, in which Gable revealed details that he assumed were shared knowledge, had been part of Pittman’s strategy. What he hadn’t counted on was that Gable, the lifelong negotiator, wasn’t about to acknowledge any information unless Pittman volunteered it first.
8
Sweat rolled down Pittman’s back. Paradoxically cold, the sweat stuck his clothes to his skin, making him shiver, although he fought not to show it. Okay, he told himself nervously, you came here because you felt your best weapon was your ability to interview somebody. Well, it’s time to prove how good you are. Let’s see you interview a world-class negotiator.
He turned toward the wall-length window, straining to concentrate, composing his thoughts. Sunlight gleamed into the room, making him squint. Nonetheless, he was able to focus on the fir trees beyond the window, amazingly green and clear, preciously beautiful, given his proximity to death. At the bottom of the wooded slope beyond the house, distant golfers took advantage of the pleasant April day. A man in a golf cart drove past a sand trap, toward where his ball had landed near the wall that separated Gable’s estate from the golf course.
Pittman stared at the sand trap, and again he couldn’t help being aware of the bitter irony that a week ago his nightmare had begun near a golf course and now was about to end near another one.
“Mr. Pittman,” Gable said, “if you have substantive information to share with us, do so. Otherwise, I’m afraid that Mr. Webley will have to ensure that you never share anything with anyone again.”
Continuing to squint, Pittman turned to Gable.
“You’re sweating,” the grand counselor said. “Look at your forehead. It’s pouring off you. Surely you’re not nervous. In a negotiation, you should never allow your emotions to show. Certainly I never do.”
“It’s the temperature in this room. It’s too hot in here.” Pittman wiped his forehead.
“My doctor has given me instructions that the temperature must be kept at eighty. To remedy a mild health problem of mine. Take off your sport coat if the temperature is making you uncomfortable. You’re wearing a sweater also.”
“I’m fine.” Pittman refocused his attention, concentrating on the view through the window. The man in the golf cart had disappeared behind the wall at the bottom of the slope. “That fax, the one that arrived a few minutes ago.”
“What about it?” Gable asked.
Pittman looked directly into Gable’s steel gray eyes. “It was for me.”
Gable didn’t respond immediately. “For you?”
“What does he mean?” Winston Sloane asked.
Ignoring his colleague, Gable told Pittman, “That’s absurd. Why would anyone send a fax to you here? How could anyone do that? The fax number is confidential.”
“The same as your telephone number is confidential,” Pittman said. “But I arranged for your daughter to phone you last night. And for Jill to phone your confidential number, Winston. And then we phoned Victor Standish’s confidential number. Too late in that case. He’d already blown his brains out. Because he couldn’t stand hiding the secret you shared. But if I had no trouble using my contacts to learn those numbers, I assure you it was just as easy for me to find out your fax number. The message is Duncan Kline’s obituary. I’m sure we’ll all find it interesting.”
Gable frowned with suspicion. “Mr. Webley, see that my visitor remains exactly where he is while I get the fax message from my office.”
Webley raised Pittman’s.45. “Don’t worry. He isn’t going anywhere.”
Pittman watched Gable stand with difficulty and proceed from the room. His back as regally straight as he could make it, Gable disappeared down a corridor.
9
Pittman was uncomfortably aware of more sweat slicking his brow. His anxiety, combined with the heat in the room, made him nauseous. Avoiding Webley’s intense gaze and Sloane’s nervous expression, Pittman turned again toward the wall-length window. It took him a moment to adjust his vision to the painful glare of the sun. The fir trees were even more beautiful. The green of the spring grass was made exquisite by his terror. In the distance, golfers passed trees near a pond.
Abruptly a motion caught Pittman’s attention. At the bottom of the slope on Gable’s estate. Close to the wall. This side of the wall. The man who’d driven the golf cart toward the opposite side of the wall was now in view, climbing the slope toward Gable’s mansion. Pittman didn’t know how he had gotten over the wall, but it was the same man, Pittman could tell, because the man in the golf cart had worn a white cap and a red windbreaker, the same as this man. Despite the sheltering cap, it was now possible to see that the man was elderly. But he moved with slow determination, climbing, holding something in his right hand. And as he trudged higher, beginning to show the physical cost of his effort, just before pine trees obscured him, Pittman realized with hastily subdued shock that he recognized the grimacing elderly man. Pittman had bought a drink for him last night. He’d followed him to Mrs. Page’s mansion. He’d taken him to a hospital when the elderly man collapsed. Bradford Denning. This morning, Denning had snuck from the hospital’s cardiac ward, and now he looked totally deranged as he stumbled into view again, leaving the fir trees, struggling higher toward the house. With equal shock, Pittman distinguished the object in Denning’s right hand-a pistol held rigidly to his side.
No! Pittman thought. If Gable sees him, if Webley notices, they’ll decide that I’ve tricked them, that I can’t be trusted, that everything’s out of control. The moment they realize Denning’s armed, they’ll shoot him. And then they’ll finish me.
10
The echo of faltering footsteps on a stone floor alerted Pittman. He straightened, turned from the window, hoped that no one else had seen what he had, and directed his full attention to Eustace Gable, who entered the room, looking considerably frailer and older than when he had left. Ashen, the grand counselor regarded the single sheet of fax paper that he had brought from his office.
“How did you obtain this?” the old man asked.
Pittman didn’t answer.
Gable assumed as imperious a stance as he could manage. “Answer me. How did you obtain this?”
Not knowing the substance of the message, knowing only that it was what he had asked Mrs. Page, using her contacts at the Washington Post, to send to him, Pittman hoped that he sounded convincingly casual. “Surely you haven’t forgotten that lately my assignment has been obituaries.” Pittman stood, approached Gable, and attempted to take the fax from Gable’s rigid grip.