blew a few scraps of litter into the center of the crossroads and spun them around for a moment before sweeping them away.
“Rachael?” Benny persisted.
A shabbily dressed derelict stood at the corner, only a few feet away. He was filthy, unshaven, and drunk. His nose was gnarled and hideous, half eaten away by melanoma. In his left hand he held a wine bottle imperfectly concealed in a paper bag. In his grubby right paw he gripped a broken alarm clock — no glass covering the face of it, the minute hand missing — as if he thought he possessed a great treasure. He stooped down, peered in at her. His eyes were fevered, blasted.
Ignoring the derelict, Benny said, “Don't withdraw from me, Rachael. What's wrong? Tell me. I can help.”
“I don't want to get you involved,” she said.
“I'm already involved.”
“No. Right now you don't know anything. And I really think that's best.”
“You promised—”
The traffic light changed, and she tramped the accelerator so suddenly that Benny was thrown against his seat belt and cut off in midsentence.
Behind them, the drunk with the clock shouted: “
Rachael said, “Listen, Benny, I'll take you back to my place so you can get your car.”
“Like hell.”
“Please let me handle this myself.”
“Handle
“Benny, don't interrogate me. Just please don't do that. I've got a lot to think about, a lot to do…”
“Sounds like you're going somewhere else tonight.”
“It doesn't concern you,” she said.
“Where are you going?”
“There're things I've got to… check out. Never mind.”
Getting angry now, he said, “You going to shoot someone?”
“Of course not.”
“Then why're you packing a gun?”
She didn't answer.
He said, “You got a permit for a concealed weapon?”
She shook her head. “A permit, but just for home use.”
He glanced behind to see if anyone was near them, then leaned over from his seat, grabbed the steering wheel, and jerked it hard to the right.
The car whipped around with a screech of tires, and she hit the brakes, and they slid sideways six or eight yards, and when she tried to straighten the wheel he grabbed it again, and she shouted at him to stop it, and he let go of the wheel, which spun through her hands for a moment, but then she was firmly in control once more, pulled to the curb, stopped, looked at him, said, “What are you — crazy?”
“Just angry.”
“Let it be,” she said, staring out at the street.
“I want to help you.”
“You can't.”
“Try me. Where do you have to go?”
She sighed. “Just to Eric's place.”
“His house? In Villa Park? Why?”
“I can't tell you.”
“After his house, where?”
“Geneplan. His office.”
“Why?”
“I can't tell you that, either.”
“Why not?”
“Benny, it's dangerous. It could get violent.”
“So what the fuck am I — porcelain? Crystal? Shit, woman, do you think I'm going to fly into a million goddamn pieces at the tap of a goddamn finger?”
She looked at him. The amber glow of the streetlamp came through only her half of the windshield, leaving him in darkness, but his eyes shone in the shadows. She said, “My God, you're furious. I've never heard you use that kind of language before.”
He said, “Rachael, do we have something or not? I think we have something. Special, I mean.”
“Yes.”
“You really think so?”
“You know I do.”
“Then you can't freeze me out of this. You can't keep me from helping you when you need help. Not if we're to go on from here.”
She looked at him, feeling very tender toward him, wanting more than anything to bring him into her confidence, to have him as her ally, but involving him would be a rotten thing to do. He was right now thinking what kind of trouble she might be in, his mind churning furiously, listing possibilities, but nothing he could imagine would be half as dangerous as the truth. If he knew the truth, he might not be so eager to help, but she dared not tell him.
He said, “I mean, you know I'm a pretty old-fashioned guy. Not very with it by most standards. Staid in some ways. Hell, half the guys in California real estate wear white cords and pastel blazers when they go to work on a summer day like this, but I don't feel comfortable in less than a three-piece suit and wing tips. I may be the last guy in a real-estate office who even knows what a goddamn vest
She said, “I never heard you make a speech before.”
“I never had to before.”
Both touched and frustrated by his ultimatum, Rachael closed her eyes and leaned back in the seat, unable to decide what to do. She kept her hands on the steering wheel, gripping it tightly, for if she let go, Benny would be sure to see how badly her hands were shaking.
He said, “Who are you afraid of, Rachael?”
She didn't answer.
He said, “You know what happened to his body, don't you?”
“Maybe.”
“You know who took it.”
“Maybe.”
“And you're afraid of them. Who are they, Rachael? For God's sake, who would do something like that — and why?”
She opened her eyes, put the car in gear, and pulled away from the curb. “Okay, you can come along with me.”
“To Eric's house, the office? What're we looking for?”
“That,” she said, “I'm not prepared to tell you.”
He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Okay. All right. One step at a time. I can live with that.”
She drove north on Main Street to Katella Avenue, east on Katella to the expensive community of Villa Park, into the hills toward her dead husband's estate. In the upper reaches of Villa Park, the big houses, many priced well over a million dollars, were less than half visible beyond screens of shrubbery and the gathered cloaks of night. Eric's house, looming beyond a row of enormous Indian laurels, seemed darker than any other, a cold place even on a June night, the many windows like sheets of some strange obsidian that would not permit the passage of light in
