“Maybe I’m not,” he said, although the word maybe issued from him without conscious intention, “but my level of ambition is about I hat of an old basset hound on a hot summer afternoon.”
“Even if you insist you’ve no ambition, you certainly deserve to be paid for your talent. May I see that final bill you mentioned?”
He retrieved the invoice from the Neiman Marcus tote, and with it the airsickness bag still packed full of hundred-dollar bills.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“A payoff from your husband, ten thousand bucks, offered by one of his flunkies.”
“Payoff for what?”
“Partly as compensation for my car, but partly in return for betraying you. Along with the videotapes, I’ve included a notarized affidavit describing the man who gave me the money and recounting our conversation in detail.”
“I’ve got more than enough to destroy Jonathan without this. Keep his bribe as a bonus. There’s a nice irony in that.”
“I wouldn’t feel clean with his money in my pocket. I’ll be satisfied with payment of that invoice.”
Her pen paused on the downswing of the l in Farrel, and when she raised her head to look at Noah, her smile was as subtly expressive as an underlining flourish by a master of restrained calligraphy. “Mr. Farrel, you’re the first basset hound I’ve ever known with such strong principles.”
“Well, maybe I’ve padded your bill to make up for not keeping that ten thousand,” he said, though he had done nothing of the sort, and though he knew that she was not for an instant disposed to take seriously his suggestion of dishonesty.
He was dismayed by his inability to accept her compliment with grace, and he wondered — though not with any analytic passion— why he felt obliged to slander himself.
Shaking her head, gentle amusement still written on her face, she returned her attention to the checkbook.
From the woman’s demeanor and a quality of mystery in her smile, Noah suspected that she understood him better than he knew himself. This suspicion didn’t inspire contemplation, and he busied himself switching off the TV and closing the doors on the entertainment center while she finished writing the check.
While Noah watched her from the doorway, Constance Tavenall left the presidential suite, carrying the congressman’s doom in the Neiman Marcus bag. The weight of her husband’s betrayals didn’t pull the lady’s plumb-bob spine even one millimeter out of true. Like a sylph she had come; and after she turned the corner at the far end of the hallway, disappearing into the elevator alcove, the path that she had followed seemed to be charged with some supernatural energy, as the aura of an elemental spirit might linger after its visitation.
While the red and then the purple dust of twilight settled, Noah remained in the three-bedroom suite, roaming room to room, gazing out a series of windows at the millions of points of light that blossomed across the peopled plains and hills, the shimmering dazzle of an electric garden. Although some loved this place as though it were Eden re-created, everything here was inferior to the original Garden in all ways but one: If you counted snakes an asset, then not merely a single serpent lurked within this foliage, but a wealth of vipers, all schooled in the knowledge of darkness, well practiced in deception.
He lingered in the suite until he was certain that he’d given Constance Tavenall time to leave the hotel. In case one of the congressman’s minions coiled in a car outside, waiting to follow the woman, Noah must avoid being seen.
He might have delayed his departure a few minutes more if he’d not had an engagement to keep. Visiting hours at the Haven of the Lonesome and the Long Forgotten were drawing toward a close, and a damaged angel waited there for him.
Chapter 7
So her brother was on Mars, her hapless mother was on dope, and her stepfather was on a murderous rampage. Leilani’s eccentric tales were acceptable conversation over dinner in an asylum; but in spite of how looney life could sometimes be here in Casa Geneva, and though the relentless August heat withered common sense and wilted reason, Micky decided that they were setting a new standard for irrationality in this trailer where genteel daffiness and screwball self-delusion had heretofore been the closest they had come to madness.
“So who did your stepfather kill?” she asked nevertheless, playing Leilani’s curious game if for no reason other than it was more amusing than talking about a miserable day of job-hunting.
“Yes, dear, who did he whack?” Aunt Gen asked with bright-eyed interest. Perhaps her occasional confusion of real-life experiences with the fantasies of the cinema had prepared her to relate to the girl’s Hitchcockian- Spielbergian biography with less skepticism than the narrative aroused in Micky.
Without hesitation, Leilani said, “Four elderly women, three elderly men, a thirty-year-old mother of two, a rich gay-nightclub owner in San Francisco, a seventeen-year-old high-school football star in Iowa — and a six-year- old boy in a wheelchair not far from here, in a town called Tustin.”
The specificity of the answer was disconcerting. Leilani’s words struck a bell in Micky’s mind, and she recognized the sound as the ring of truth.
Yesterday in the backyard, when Micky admonished the girl not to invent unkind stories about her mother, Leilani had said, couldn’t make up anything as weird as what is.
But a stepfather who had committed eleven murders? Who killed elderly women? And a little boy in a wheelchair?
Even as instinct argued that she was hearing the clear ring of truth, reason insisted it was the reverberant gong of sheer fantasy.
“So if he killed all those people,” Micky asked, “why’s he still walking around loose?”
“It’s a wonderment, isn’t it?” the girl said. “More than a wonderment. It’s impossible.”
“Dr. Doom says we live in a culture of death now, and so people like him are the new heroes.” “What does that mean?”
“I don’t explain the doctor,” Leilani said. “I just quote him.” “He sounds like a perfectly dreadful man,” Aunt Gen said, as though Leilani had accused Maddoc of nothing worse than habitually breaking wind and being rude to nuns.
“If I were you, I wouldn’t invite him to dinner. By the way, he doesn’t know I’m here. He wouldn’t allow this. But he’s out tonight.” “I’d rather invite Satan than him,” said Geneva. “You’re welcome here anytime, Leilani, but he better stay on his side of the fence.”
“He will. He doesn’t like people much, unless they’re dead. He isn’t likely to chat you up across the backyard fence. But if you do run into him, don’t call him Preston or Maddoc. These days he looks a lot different, and he travels under the name Jordan—’call me Jorry’—Banks. If you use his real name, he’ll know I’ve ratted on him.”
“I won’t be talking to him,” said Geneva. “After what I’ve just heard, I’d as soon smack him as look at him.”
Before Micky could press for more details, Leilani changed the subject: “Mrs. D, did the cops catch the guy who robbed your store?”
Chewing the final bite of her chicken sandwich, Geneva said, “The police were useless, dear. I had to track him down myself.” “That’s so completely radical!” In the gathering shadows that darkened but didn’t cool tin- kitchen, in the scarlet light of the retiring sun, Leilani’s lace shone as much with enchantment as with a patina of perspiration. In spite of her genius IQ, her street smarts, and her well-polished wise-ass attitude, the girl retained some of the gullibility of a child. “But how’d you do what the cops couldn’t?”
As Micky struck a match to light the three candles in the center of the table, Aunt Gen said, “Trained detectives can’t compete with a wronged woman if she’s determined, spunky, and has a hard edge.”
“Spunky though you are,” Micky said as the second candle cloned the flame on her match, “I suspect you’re thinking about Ashley Judd or Sharon Stone, or maybe Pam Grier.”
Leaning across the dinette table, whispering dramatically to Leilani, Geneva said, “I located the bastard in
