Deadline (22 page)

He was dead because he knew me.

I said, ‘
Viszonlatasra.
' Goodbye: the only word Harry had ever taught me in Hungarian. I wanted to mourn him somehow; later, when all this was finished, I'd think of him again, and there would be a wound in my heart.

I walked back to the Honda.

I punched the button for Directory Assistance. I gave the operator the name of the person I wanted and she patched me through.

I heard a man's voice say, ‘Bo Sonderheim speaking.'

‘I need your help, Bo,' I said.

‘Who is this?'

‘Jerry Lomax.'

Bo Sonderheim uttered his banker's cheerful little chuckle, the one reserved for clients with healthy balances and sound investments. ‘Ha, Jerry. Don't tell me you need access to overdraft facilities at this time of night?'

It was his idea of a joke. I figured bankers had their own humor magazine filled with inoffensive little jests.

‘I do need access to something, Bo,' I said. ‘Only it isn't money.'

9.04 p.m.

I drove the Santa Monica freeway at just under 100 m.p.h. When I reached the bank, Bo Sonderheim was already in the big parking-lot, the headlights of his Ultima burning. He got out when he saw me arrive and walked towards the Honda. His usual friendly appearance had lost some of its blandness; he seemed mildly irritated, yet laboring not to show it. I was a good customer: why alienate me?

‘This is kind of weird,' he said. ‘I guess there's a first time for everything.'

‘I guess there is,' I remarked.

‘A matter of life and death was what you said, Jerry.'

‘I mean it, too. You got a key that can unlock this place?'

‘It's not that easy, Jerry. This isn't like the old days when your friendly bank manager could come down and let one of his favorite customers inside the bank after hours. Life's not that simple, unfortunately. This is more involved.'

‘How involved?'

‘I have to have a senior representative of the bank's security personnel here,' he said. ‘Without him, I can't get inside my own damn bank at this time of day.'

‘Did you contact him?' I asked.

‘He's on his way,' Sonderheim replied.

‘How long will it take him?'

Sonderheim looked at his watch. ‘He should be here momentarily.'

I was burnt-up with impatience, fevered. I imagined some security officer grumbling as he left his home, maybe driving at a speed to please himself.
Stupid goddam customer wants something from the bank at nine at night.

I stuck my hands in my pockets. I watched traffic go past beyond the parking-lot. Again, I wondered if I'd been followed. Maybe. In truth, I couldn't tell. I felt like a yo-yo on the end of a string – sometimes the player spun me through the air or rolled me along the ground, other times, the player rested and left me alone. I was a toy, a piece in a board-game. Somewhere along the way I'd ceased to be human. I had no free will. My actions were all predetermined. The only destiny I had was one I hadn't crafted for myself.

‘What have you got in your safe-deposit box that's so urgent you need it at this time of night?' Sonderheim asked.

‘It's confidential,' I said. ‘Sorry, Bo.'

‘Something to do with a patient, I guess.'

I nodded.

Sonderheim peered across the parking-lot. I looked at my watch again.

A car came into the lot, a dark Land Rover. A man, stumpy and aggressive, emerged, slammed his door, walked to where I stood with Bo Sonderheim. He had a security-man's face, skin etched with lines of suspicion developed over the years. His eyelids were tiny hoods, half-moons. He looked at Sonderheim and then at me.

Sonderheim said, ‘This is Doctor Lomax.'

The security guy said his name was Parlance. He didn't shake hands. His voice was gravelly. ‘This couldn't wait, huh? This has to be done now? Rush rush rush.'

‘I'm afraid so,' I said.

‘You any idea what this entails, Lomax?' he said.

Sonderheim made a conciliatory noise, a soft throat-clearing. ‘Rick, Jerry's an old and valued customer.'

Parlance was unimpressed. He stared at me with raw belligerence. What did he care about customer relationships? His was a world of electronic security devices, circuits, codes. ‘I had to contact our central security office and ask for special access, which means they have to rouse a computer expert to make certain adjustments to the system, so that we can go inside this building without bringing half the goddam cops in this town screaming here in their wah-wah wagons. What I'm saying is, this is untidy, this is a nuisance, and not just for Sonderheim and me, but people you don't even know, people sitting behind consoles –'

‘A key would have been simpler,' I said.

Parlance looked at Sonderheim. ‘A key? Did he say key? Is he serious?'

Sonderheim tried a smile. ‘Jerry enjoys a little joke.'

‘A key, a key,' Parlance said, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘Life is complicated, Lomax. Life is way beyond Chubbs and nifty little Yales and dead-bolts.' He moved towards the bank building. ‘Let's go in, get this over with.'

We climbed the steps. Sonderheim punched numeric keys on a board attached to the wall. I listened to the bleep sound each key made. He must have punched fifteen or sixteen before a security light went on in the foyer and he was able to open the door. Inside, the place was hushed, weird, and had the ambiance of a museum after-hours.

‘Get the business over with,' Sonderheim said. He took a small cellphone from his coat pocket and spoke into it. ‘We're in.' He severed the line and looked at me. ‘The system reactivates in five minutes. You better move it, Lomax.'

I went downstairs with Bo Sonderheim to the vault where the safe-deposit boxes were stored. I accessed mine, opened it, looked at the white envelope. This time I didn't hesitate. I removed the envelope and stuck it in the inside pocket of my jacket. Then I shut the box and replaced it, thinking how like a tiny coffin it was, the whole vault a miniature morgue.

‘Through?' Bo Sonderheim asked.

I patted my pocket. ‘Through,' I said. I looked at my watch again.

We went back upstairs. Parlance was waiting close to the door. We all went outside. On the steps, Parlance said, ‘I suggest you try to keep regular hours in the future, Lomax.'

‘I'd like that,' I said.

I thanked them, and I turned and walked towards the Honda. I heard Parlance say, ‘That guy helps sick people? He needs some of his own medicine, you want my opinion.'

Droll.

That was when I saw the Pontiac slide into the parking-lot at about twenty miles an hour. It slowed to a crawl just in front of the bank entrance. I saw Parlance stare inquisitively at the sight of the car; he slipped a hand inside the pocket of his jacket. The Pontiac was still. Fumes pumped out of its exhaust. The air smelled of burning sewage. Parlance descended a step, his hand still in his pocket. I was about thirty yards away.

That was when the first shot was fired.

A crack, a burst of light, an assault on the ears. Instinctively I dropped to the ground behind the Honda, and heard a second shot. I raised my face to look. I saw Bo Sonderheim go down like an axed tree and my heart bucked in my chest. He lay on the steps, holding his leg and crying out in pain. The gunman had fired from the passenger seat of the Pontiac, and now Parlance, exposed, was firing at the car. More flares, gun blasts.

Parlance rushed down the steps and ducked behind his Land Rover. I heard glass break. The Pontiac wheeled past the Land Rover and more gunfire issued from the passenger window, and Parlance returned the fire; I imagined a war zone, riot squads, buildings burning. All around the lot commercial buildings, hives by day, were empty and silent.

Poor Sondheim, who'd come down to the bank at my request, a favor to me, lay screaming in pain, and I couldn't do a damn thing about it because if I moved I'd be caught in the crossfire between the Pontiac and the Land Rover. I reached up, opened the Honda's door a little, but now the Pontiac came in my direction, belching out great palls of rubbery exhaust fumes, muffler dragging on concrete and creating bright sparks.

Parlance must have busted the tailpipe with one of his shots.

I thought:
If I could get in the Honda and drive away I might escape.
But the Pontiac cruised towards me, clattering over speedbumps with dangerous indifference; the gunman fired from the window and his shot struck the back bumper of the Honda and I could feel the force of the bullet reverberate the length of the chassis and through my bones. I was kneeling, half in and half out of the car; I rolled over on my side and lay close to the car even as I pondered the idea of getting up and sprinting across the lot and running down a side street where I might lose myself.

Parlance fired two quick shots from the cover of the Land Rover. One struck the roof of the Pontiac, the other smashed the rear window. The big car spun, a complete shuddering circle, then came to a halt. The doors on both sides opened. I saw, from a tight ground-level angle, Big Skull step out, gun in hand; the other guy, the fair-haired one, emerged from the driver's side clutching his left arm. He must have been hit. The sleeve of his shirt dangled loose and his arm looked useless.

I heard him say, ‘Sonofabitch.'

Big Skull stared in the direction of the Honda. Seemingly indifferent to the gunman in the Land Rover about fifty yards away, he called to me, ‘Jerry, old pal, just give us what you got from the bank and I'll stick my gun safely back in its little holster and peace will return to Happy Valley. Whaddya say, Jerry?'

I lay pressed to the ground. I heard the pair approach the Honda. I could see their feet on the other side of the car. They were within five, six feet of where I lay. The Land Rover started across the lot and was collecting speed as it headed towards the Pontiac.

‘Aw, fuck,' Big Skull said, and gazed at the moving vehicle. ‘Some guys don't know when to quit.'

Parlance fired his gun from the window at the Pontiac and the two men flattened themselves on the ground and Parlance kept coming at them, firing as he drove, his aim wayward. I heard bullets bite asphalt. I heard the pock as concrete cracked. The Land Rover continued for about fifty yards, then turned back; Parlance, obviously enraged by the shooting of bank personnel on bank property, was driving towards the Pontiac again.

Big Skull fired into the Rover's windshield.

The four-wheel drive vehicle skidded, swerved, struck an electric pole, causing a live-wire to sag and create a wild blue and yellow sizzling effect, so that the Rover seemed to have been outlined in lethal neon.

I thought of Parlance inside, voltage killing him with the certainty of an electric chair.

Like a kid at a firework show, Big Skull said, ‘Wow.'

I rolled quietly away from the Honda, got to my feet and ran to where Bo Sonderheim's Ultima was parked. The keys, mercifully, were in the dash. I drove towards the street and when I glanced in the rearview mirror I saw Big Skull and his friend rush towards the Pontiac – but I had a better car and a headstart, and I was out of their range before they could even get their rusted, half-wrecked clunker out of the lot.

Behind my eyes the sparking image of the Land Rover still burned, but dimmer now, like the lights of a midway losing power. I thought of Parlance and Sonderheim, one dead, the other seriously wounded. And it was as if everything I touched, however lightly, however briefly, was destined to perish.

I was a curse; a carrier of violence.

9.30 p.m.

A knife, a razor-blade; I imagined sharp steel drawn across Sondra's throat. I could see blood rush from a severed artery: how long before she'd die? Dead thoughts. Morbid passages in the mind. Dark blue fugues. My hand trembled. My shirt was glued to my skin. The beat of my heart was arrhythmic. I was composed of loose fibers, strands I couldn't stitch together.

I called an emergency number on my cellphone as I drove. I told the sympathetic guy who answered that there had been a shooting, and a man may have been seriously wounded, and I gave the address of the bank. An ambulance would be despatched and Sonderheim rushed to an emergency room.

Then I removed the envelope from my jacket. I opened it and took out the cassette it contained. I thought of the voices trapped on magnetic tape, waiting to be freed. I thrust the tape towards the slot of the cassette-deck, missing the first and second times because my hand wouldn't be still. I finally inserted the cassette on the third attempt and there was an instant hiss from the speakers.

Then I heard myself say:
August fourth, nineteen ninety-six.

I thought:
I don't want to listen to this. It happened, and you remember it, you don't need to listen to it.
But you do. Refresh your memory. Reacquaint yourself with what you're giving away.

I heard my own voice again. I never liked the sound of it. It seemed nasal.
Subject is in a state of hypnosis. Can you hear me, Emily?

In the dreamy voice of someone in a trance-condition, Emily Ford said,
Yes, I can hear you.

Can you remember some things for me, Emily
?

Silence.

Go back to March nineteen ninety-five. Can you do that?

Yes.

March seventeenth specifically … Where are you?

I'm in a courthouse.

And what's happening?

Silence.

A man is standing at a table.

You've seen this man before?

Yes.

Is he Billy Fear?

Yes.

Is there a judge presiding
?

Justice Randolph Hartley.

What is he saying?

He's saying, he's saying …

What, Emily?

He's telling Billy Fear he's dismissing the case against him. That can't be true. That cannot be true.