“We have our own car,” Dinely began. “The green Impala in the carport.”
“Yes.”
And Dinely went on to outline exactly what Mike had expected. The Coast Highway was also California State Highway 1, which south of here at Santa Monica went inland, along Lincoln Boulevard, down to Los Angeles International Airport; that was the route they would take, and the plane that was to be waiting for them should be equipped for flying over water. Davis would be released at the airport. Sure.
“It’ll take a while to set up,” Mike said.
“Not too long,” Dinely told him. “You don’t want us to get nervous here.”
“And we need assurance,” Mike said, now opening his eyes and looking at Lynsey again, “that Koo Davis is still alive. Let me speak to him.”
There was a brief uncomfortable silence, and then Dinely said, “That isn’t possible right now.” His voice sounded odd; Mike couldn’t quite figure out what was wrong. It wasn’t as though Dinely were lying about Davis still being alive, but almost as though Dinely were in some strange way embarrassed about something.
Apparently Mike’s reaction was showing in his face, because Lynsey suddenly looked alarmed, instinctively reaching out, not quite grasping him by the forearm. Speaking slowly into the phone, choosing his words carefully, Mike said, “Is there some sort of problem?”
“Davis is, uh, locked up,” Dinely said. “And it’s not—possible just this second to unlock him. Give me your phone number there.”
“Listen,” Mike said. “Is Koo Davis alive or isn’t he?” And now Lynsey did hold his arm, her fingers a tight bony pressure.
“Yes, he’s alive.” Dinely sounded exasperated. “Give me your phone number and I’ll call you back when he’s—available.”
“It’s four two six,” Mike said, “nine nine seven oh. But, listen.”
Too late. Dinely had hung up.
36
Peter hung up. He stood a moment, thinking, his fingertips resting lightly atop the telephone receiver. His teeth ground softly, absent-mindedly, almost tenderly, against his cheeks. Bright sunlight flattened the view of beach and ocean into a two-dimensional snapshot, simple in composition and overexposed. A few small boats bobbed far off, in the water. What would it be like to be a person on one of those boats? Peter concentrated, trying to push his mind, his particularity, out through his eyes and across the intervening space and inside the head of a person on one of those boats—that boat, right there. Feel the movement, taste the salt spray, grab the cold chrome rail, smile broadly with uncut cheeks and gaze toward shore with easy amused pity for those people mired there.
Liz said, “It won’t work.”
Peter looked at her with cold distaste. His army. Liz, standing near him, narrow and pinched and dead for years. And Larry over at the foot of the stairs, forehead deeply puckered with worry, mouth open like a victim of brain damage. Peter’s army. He said, “What won’t work?”
“All that car to the airport business. They’ll mousetrap us along the way.”
“We’ll have Davis.”
“We don’t have him now,” she pointed out. “Mark has him, and he won’t give him back.”
Peter’s fingertips left the telephone and moved up to touch his cheek, reassuringly. Perhaps it was only this pain that kept him going. “We’ll go talk to Mark,” he said. “Maybe he’ll listen to reason.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“We’ll shoot the lock out of the door.” In suddenly savagery, Peter said, “In any case, the first chance I get, the first chance I get, Mark dies.”
Lynsey watched Mike’s face while he talked with the man called Dinely, and the instant he hung up the phone she said, “What are you going to do?”
His face closed down when he looked at her. “I’m going to stop them,” he said.
“Please, Mi—Uh, may I call you Mike?”
He seemed surprised. There was an occasional unexpected boyishness in him that confused Lynsey. He said, “Sure. Mike. Why not?”
“Mike,” she said, knowing it was important that communication between them remain open, knowing she was likely to be the only effective restraining influence on him, “Mike, I hate it when I see you turn off that way. You look at me and I can almost hear you saying to yourself, ‘Bleeding heart liberal.’ ”
“Oh, well,” he said, moving his hands in awkward embarrassment, and the fact that he even blushed, faintly and briefly, confirmed that she’d been right.
“It’s true,” she said. “And we have to get past it. For instance, you know I don’t care more about the criminals than I do about the victim; certainly not in this case.”
His grin acknowledged the point. “Old habits die hard,” he said.
“Yours, or mine?”
“Both.” He nodded, heavy and thoughtful. “You’re right. I look at you and I see somebody who doesn’t want me to do the most effective job.”
Honesty deserves honesty. She said, “And I look at you and see somebody who’s dangerous because he thinks it’s a game.”
“But it is a game,” he said. “It’s all moves and counter-moves; dangerous, you play it for keeps, but it’s a game.”
“No,” she said. “It’s all right for the criminals to think it’s a game, they’re sick, that’s why they’re on the wrong side of the law. But if you think the same way, then the game becomes more important than the people. You’d sacrifice Koo to win the game.”
“I don’t know how to answer that,” he said. “I know you’re thinking about the mistake I made—”
“No, I wasn’t,” she said, surprised. “I mean, that’s part of it, but I wasn’t thinking about that. That didn’t give me my belief, it was just confirmation of what I already believed.”
“Which is?”
“All right,” she said. “Using your terms, that it’s a game. You think the point of the game is to capture or kill those people over there. And I think the point of the game is to get Koo back, alive and well.”
“We want to do both,” he said. “Naturally.”
“Naturally. But if you had to sacrifice one for the other, you’d kill Koo to capture the people, and I’d let the people go to save Koo. And that’s the difference between us.”
He looked bleak. “I won’t lie to you,” he said. “You’re absolutely right.”
Mark looked at the furniture piled up against the door. Both night-tables were there, upside down on the floor, with drawers from the built-in dressers stacked among the night-table legs. A wicker bathroom hamper, weighted with all the bottles and tubes from the medicine chest and bathroom storage shelves, lay on its side atop the drawers; beyond it, the mirror, cracked and splintered by Peter’s bullets fired through the door, reflected a crazy quilt pattern of white wicker. Above that were the reflection of Mark’s newly naked somber face and the image of Koo, frightened and exhausted, seated on the bed in the background. “The television set next,” Mark said, and moved across the room.
Koo said, “Mark? What’s going to happen?”
“They’re going to try and break in. We won’t let them.”