Night Relics (21 page)

“That’s gotta be bullshit,” Klein said. “We can get number two for twenty, max. Fifteen. Number two’s nearly a teardown. I
can’t believe you’re letting these people hose you like this. You’re a goddamn
car
salesman, Barney. How about twenty-eight? That’s a good item.”

“Forty K.”

Klein thought about it. Cabin twenty-eight was an easy thousand square feet, with solar equipment and a detached shed. There
were leaded windows, a river-rock fireplace, and a thousand-gallon water tank. Propane tank owned, not rented. It was a good,
solid cabin, unlike number two, which was a termite-eaten pile of crap. “Name and number?”

Pomeroy pulled a slip of paper out of his shirt pocket and handed it to Klein. There was an address and phone number on it.
“Name’s Newman,” Pomeroy said. “Ocean-side couple. She’s in and out of the hospital with some kind of heart trouble.”

“That’s perfect. We’ll take them down. How about number five?”

“Thirty-eight. And that’s firm.”

“And you said cash?”

“Of course I said cash.”

“Then they’re not serious. Give them a week to think about it. They’ll come around. And, Barney,” Klein said, talking evenly,
trying to put an almost humorous edge on his voice, “for Pete’s sake quit talking about
leaning
on people, will you? I don’t run a business that
leans
on people. That kind of thing isn’t in my book. And if it was, then we
sure
as hell wouldn’t want to talk about it.”

Pomeroy waited, smiling faintly, and Klein had to force himself to keep his temper.

“You know what I’m talking about?” Klein asked. “All you’ve got to do is make it clear that you’ve got cash and that you want
to spend it. If they don’t make a buck off you, then the guy next door will. That ought to be enough to get them thinking.
Let the money do the talking, Barn.”

Pomeroy tilted his chair against the fence, still saying nothing, still smiling. Klein decided to wait him out. If he went
on explaining himself he would start to sound frantic, and that was no good.

Finally, nodding heavily, Pomeroy changed the subject: “Hell of a nice place you’ve got here.”

“It’s a good investment,” Klein said.

“No, I mean it’s more than that. Nice pool. Sweet little neighborhood. Neighborhood looks like something off a Christmas card.”

“Well,” Klein said. “Lorna likes it pretty well.” Immediately he wished he hadn’t mentioned Lorna. Pomeroy seemed to light
up at the sound of her name. He nodded as if that were just what he was driving at.

“What I mean is that it would be a dirty damned shame to pour this all down a rat hole.” Pomeroy waved his hand around to
take in all of it—the house, the pool, the view. He straightened his chair up and looked steadily at Klein. “Bad management
could threaten it. We’ve both seen that happen.”

“Yeah,” Klein said. “I guess we have.” This was it. Pomeroy was going to spring it.

“Poor old Larry Collier.” He shook his head. “Still, a heart attack isn’t a bad way to go. And they’d have screwed him, too.
There was plenty there to convict him. Those fake perc tests and core samples. If that fire hadn’t got the evidence …” He
shook his head again, as if it were a hell of a shame.

Klein was silent. Finally Pomeroy had gotten around to the inevitable. What would it be, extortion?

“Does your wife … what’s her name again?”

“Just leave her out of it,” Klein said. “I told you that once. Don’t make me say it again.”

“Hey,” Pomeroy said, holding up his hands in a gesture of innocence. “I was just wondering if she knew about those cheap-shit
houses you built that slid into the ravine, that’s all. Wasn’t someone hurt? Man, I can hardly remember. A kid, wasn’t it?
It’s a hell of a sad thing when a kid gets hurt. Paralyzed, I seem to recall.”

Klein forced himself to sit still.

“I don’t know if there’s any statute of limitations on that kind of thing. It’s worth looking into, though. You can’t be too
safe nowadays. World’s full of people that would take you straight to the cleaners if they got their hands on all that burned-up
evidence. And there’s even worse things than
that
.”

“I bet there are,” Klein said. “Am I going to guess, or are you going to tell me about them?”

“Well,” Pomeroy said, “it’s a hell of a thing for a good woman to find out that kind of thing about her husband. That was
what happened to poor old Larry. You knew that part, didn’t you?”

Klein watched his face.

“It took old Larry apart a piece at a time. He tried to hold it all together, but it was like the tide coming in. There wasn’t
a damned thing he could do. Information leaked out—Lord knows how. Then the lawsuits. He tried paying
people off, and that didn’t work. Next thing you know, his wife found out about all of it—all of Larry’s little secrets. Just
between me and you, Lance, old Larry had a thing for girls. And I do mean girls.”

“Barney, shut the hell up,” Klein said. “That was years ago. Larry’s dead. If you’ve got something to say, say it.”

“No,” Pomeroy said. “Wait. This is a great story. You won’t believe this, but there was a call girl service in Anaheim back
in the early seventies, probably going on since who knows when. Girls nine, ten years old. The whole thing blew up back in—hell,
when was it? My memory’s gone. August twenty-fourth, 1974. Story broke the next day in the
Bulletin.
Maybe you read about it.

“Anyway, poor old Larry Collier got arrested along with a bunch of other businessmen—city-father types. Paid a hell of a fine,
which he could afford, believe me. I really think that what finally killed him was his wife hearing about it. All the details.
He really hustled to hush it up. No one knows how it happened, his family finding out like that. I’m certain that’s what killed
him, though, more than the bankruptcy. He’d had a bypass, too. Ate heart medicine like candy. I’m surprised it didn’t explode
when he was diddling one of those ten-year-old …”

Klein hit him in the face, a wild punch that caught Pomeroy’s cheek and knocked him over backward. His chair hit the fence,
skidded sideways, and dumped him onto the concrete. Klein stood up and grabbed a handful of Pomeroy’s shirt, pulling him halfway
to his feet. He threw his fist back to hit him again, but Pomeroy jerked loose, tripped over the fallen chair, and scrambled
like a crab toward the pool. He stood up and held both hands in front of himself, backpedaling toward the poolhouse.

“Settle down, Lance,” Pomeroy said. “Think about the consequences.”

“You’re dead,” Klein told him. “I swear to God I’ll kill you. You don’t come here again. You don’t phone. You’re
through. Do you understand me now? Or do you need another fist in the face?”

“Uh-uh,” Pomeroy said. He shook his head slowly, a grin twisting his mouth. “
You’re
the one who better get the picture straight, Lance. When you work outside the law, there’s a
whole
new set of rules. One of them is this. We’re partners. You don’t let your partner down, or maybe he lets you down, hard.
The second one is that you learn to accept things. Keep the consequences in mind.”

Klein sat back down in his chair, suddenly tired. A gust of wind blew more leaves through the fence just then, scattering
them across the surface of the pool.

“That’s life, isn’t it?” Pomeroy asked, patting his hair down and nodding at the leaves. “The wind blows and there’s not a
damned thing you can do about it except bend.”

Then his face changed suddenly. He crouched down and looked hard at the fence, as if he’d seen something through the slats.
He picked up his overturned chair and climbed up onto the seat, balancing himself on the bars on either side and holding on
like Kilroy to the top of the fence in order to peek over the top.

Smiling broadly now, he looked back down at Klein and winked, as if this beat all, as if he’d never before been quite so pleasantly
surprised.

S
UDDENLY CURIOUS,
B
ETH WALKED OUT ONTO THE SERVICE
porch and looked down through the blinds into the Kleins’ backyard. What’s his name—Adams—came out through the back door
and he and Klein sat down out of the wind.

Carefully, she reached through the blinds and unlatched the window, sliding it open an inch. Their voices rose and fell, nothing
but murmurs.

Strange that Klein would have lied about knowing the man. Well, he hadn’t really lied; he had just played things down. Beth
hadn’t given much thought to what Adams might have been up to out at Mr. Ackroyd’s yesterday, but suddenly she suspected that
it wasn’t anything good. It wasn’t surprising that the cat had torn him up….

She pictured the face at the window again—wrapped in what? Gauze bandage? She looked closely at his hand now—some kind of
wide Band-Aid on it.

God,
could
it be him? Did Klein suspect it, and that’s why he was being so solicitous with the locks and the phone and all?

She closed the window now, opened the back door, and stepped out onto the porch, careful that the wind wouldn’t slam the door.
Across the lawn, an enormous green plastic turtle sat near the fence, full of sand and leaves and scraps of eucalyptus bark
and with a scattering of toys stuck in it.

The slats of the redwood fence had shrunk over the years as the wood dried out, and through it she could see the
forms of the two men who sat with their backs to it. They would see her pretty easily too, if they turned to look. She moved
as silently as she could. Half-hidden by the avocado tree next to the sandbox, she watched them through the fence.

Adams was talking, and it was clear from his tone that there was nothing friendly about their conversation. “I was just wondering,”
he said, “if she knew about those cheap-shit houses you built that slid into the ravine, that’s all. Wasn’t someone hurt?
Man, I can hardly remember. A kid, wasn’t it? It’s a hell of a sad thing when a kid gets hurt. Paralyzed, I seem to recall.”

The tone of the man’s voice filled Beth with rage; it was so smarmy, so clearly false.

Klein didn’t say anything, and Adams droned on, mixing up jocularity with threats, telling a story about some mutual Mend.
Obviously Klein was in trouble. Adams wasn’t just talking to hear his head rattle; he was clarifying Klein’s position.

Then, abruptly, there was the sound of a chair scraping, followed by a grunt and Adams’s chair slamming back against the fence.
For a moment there was nothing but hoarse breathing and someone scrabbling around on the concrete. Beth leaned toward the
fence, trying to see more clearly.

“Settle down, Lance.” It was Adams’s voice, husky, but trying to sound controlled. “Think about the consequences.”

“You’re dead,” Klein told him, sounding flat and final. Beth found herself suddenly wondering what to do. Was he serious?

She almost ran for the house, but the sound of Adams’s voice stopped her. There wasn’t any fear in it, just the voice of a
man speaking the matter-of-fact truth. “When you work outside the law,” he said, “there’s a whole new set of rules….”

She had the wild urge to cough or speak or somehow
shut them up before they said something that she shouldn’t hear. There was the scraping of chairs again, and Beth stepped
out from behind the eucalyptus tree, heading for the house while they were busy putting things back together. Then Adams’s
face appeared over the top of the fence. He looked down at Klein, smiling like an idiot. It was all she could do not to run.

“Why, hello, Beth,” he said. “I’ve been anxious to talk to you. What? You live here, next to the Kleins?”

“Yes,” she said. “Small world. I’d love to chat, but I’m really pretty busy right now.” She backed away toward the house,
trying to keep her fear from being obvious.

“Maybe a little later, then? I’d like to get to know you a little better.”

“That’s
it
!” Klein shouted, and Beth could see him stand up, strobelike, through the fence boards. There was the sound of
Adams’s lawn chair spinning away, and then Adams abruptly slammed downward, his chin banging against the top of the fence.
He grunted, then disappeared. Breathlessly, someone shouted, “Wait!” and then there was scuffling and the sound of someone
getting hit.

Beth ran for the house and in through the back door, which she shut behind her and locked. She stood there until her heart
quit slamming, and then went to the window again, looking out through the slats, ready to call the police if she had to.

Lorna stood by the pool, clutching her bathrobe shut even though it was already tied. Adams’s hair was a mess, as if Klein
had been yanking at it, and he stood at the edge of the pool, angrily straightening his clothes. They were talking plenty
loudly enough now for Beth to hear them.

“Get the hell out of here!” Klein shouted at him. “Lorna! Get the gun out of the nightstand. Now!”

“Now, Lance …” Lorna started to say, but Klein shouted, “Now!” again, and then shouted, “Dirty son of a bitch!” and brushed
past Lorna toward the doors, disappearing into the house. Beth could still hear him yelling
incoherently. Adams headed up the side of the house toward the front, breaking into a run and going out through the gate.

A moment later Klein appeared by the pool again, carrying a pistol, but by then the blue Isuzu was backing out of the driveway,
and in a moment Adams was gone.

“What was all that?”

Beth jumped, jerking her hand away from the blinds, which clattered against the window.

“You spying on the Kleins again?” Bobby asked.

“I’ m not
spying.
There was some kind of trouble, but I guess they worked it out.” The sound of wild voices rose again from next door.

“I guess so,” Bobby said. “Sounds like it. Did you find the alien?”

“No.”

“It’s not out back?”

“I don’t know.”

“Didn’t you look? You went out there.”

“I
looked.
I didn’t find it.” Suddenly she wanted to get moving, to talk to Peter, maybe to Mr. Ackroyd. She wondered if Klein was wild
enough to hurt Lorna, but the idea of calling the police now didn’t seem to be a good one.