'I'll never forget this,' Mitch said.
'Damn right. You owe me forever.'
Mitch laughed again, less shakily. 'Free gardening for life.'
'Hey, bro?'
'Yeah?'
'Are you gonna drip snot on the gearshift?'
'No,' Mitch promised.
'Good. I like a clean car. You ready to drive?'
'Yeah.'
'You sure?'
'Yeah.'
'Then let's roll.'
Chapter 22
Only the thinnest wound of the fallen day bled along the far horizon, and otherwise the sky was dark, and the
sea dark; and the moon had not yet risen to silver the deserted beaches.
Anson said he needed to think, and he thought clearly and well aboard a car in motion, because it was akin to a boat under sail. He suggested Mitch drive south.
At that hour, light traffic plied the Pacific Coast Highway, and Mitch stayed in the right-hand lane, in no hurry.
'They'll call the house tomorrow at noon,' Anson said, 'to see what progress I've made with the financials.'
'I don't like this wire transfer to the Cayman Islands.'
'Neither do I. Then they have the money and Holly.'
'Better we have a face-to-face,' Mitch said. 'They bring Holly, we bring a couple suitcases of cash.'
'That's also iffy. They take the money, shoot all of us.'
'Not if we make it a condition that we can be armed.'
Anson was dubious. 'That would intimidate them? They're really gonna believe we know guns?'
'Probably not. So we take weapons that don't require us to be great shooters. Like shotguns.'
'Where do we get shotguns?' Anson asked.
'We buy them at a gun shop, at Wal-Mart, wherever.'
'Isn't there a waiting period?'
'I don't think so. Only with handguns.'
'We'd need to practice with them.'
'Not much,' Mitch said, 'just to get comfortable.'
'Maybe we could go out Ortega Highway. Once we had the guns, I mean. There's still some desert they haven't slammed full of houses. We could find a lonely place, fire some rounds.'
Mitch drove in silence, and Anson rode in silence, the eastern hills speckled with the lights of expensive houses, the black sea to the west, and the sky black, with no horizon line visible anymore, sea and sky merging into one great black void.
Then Mitch said, 'It doesn't feel real to me. The shotguns.'
'It feels movie,' Anson agreed.
'I'm a gardener. You're a linguistics expert.'
'Anyway,' Anson said, 'I don't see kidnappers letting us set conditions. Whoever has the power makes the rules.'
They worried southward. The graceful highway curved, rose, and descended into downtown Laguna Beach.
In mid-May the tourist season had begun. People strolled the sidewalks, going to and from dinner, peering in the windows of the closed shops and galleries.
When his brother suggested that they grab something to eat, Mitch said he wasn't hungry. ''&u have to eat,' Anson pressed.
Resisting, Mitch said, 'What're we going to talk about over dinner? Sports? We don't want to be overheard talking about this.'
'So we'll eat in the car.'
Mitch parked in front of a Chinese restaurant. Painted on the windows, a dragon rampant tossed its mane of scaly flagella.
While Anson waited in the SUV, Mitch went inside. The girl at the takeout counter promised to have his order in ten minutes.
The animated conversation of the diners at the tables grated on him. He resented their carefree laughter.
Aromas of coconut rice, sweet-chili rice, deep-fried corn balls, cilantro, garlic, sizzling cashews raised an appetite. But soon the fragrant air grew oppressive, oily; his mouth turned dry and sour.
Holly remained in the hands of murderers.
They had hit her.
They had made her scream for him, and for Anson.
Ordering Chinese takeout, eating dinner, attending to any tasks of ordinary life seemed like betrayals of Holly, seemed to diminish the desperation of her situation.
If she had heard the threats made to Mitch on the phone — that her fingers would be sawn off, her tongue cut out — then her fear must be unbearable, desolating.
When he imagined her unrelenting fear, thought of her bound in darkness, the humility arising from his helplessness began at last to make way for greater anger, for rage. His face was hot, his eyes stinging, his throat so swollen with fury he could not swallow.
Irrationally, he envied the happy diners with an intensity that made him want to knock them out of their chairs, smash their faces.
The orderly decor offended him. His life had fallen into chaos, and he burned with the desire to spend his misery in a violent spree.
Some secret savage splinter of his nature, long festering, now flamed to full infection, filling him with the urge to tear down the colorful paper lanterns, shred the rice-paper screens, rip from the walls the red-enameled wooden letters of the Chinese language and spin them, as if they were martial-arts throwing stars, to slash and gouge everything in their path, to shatter windows.
Presenting two white bags containing his order, the counter girl sensed the pending storm in him. Her eyes widened, and she tensed.
Only a week ago, a deranged customer in a pizzeria had shot and killed a cashier and two waiters before another customer, an off-duty cop, had brought him down with two shots. This girl probably replayed in her mind the TV reports of that slaughter.
The realization that he might be frightening her was a lifeline that reeled Mitch back from fury to anger, then to a passive misery that dropped his blood pressure and quieted his thundering heart.
Leaving the restaurant, stepping into the mild spring night, he saw that his brother, in the Expedition, was on his cell phone.
As Mitch got behind the steering wheel, Anson concluded the call, and Mitch said, 'Was it them?'
'No. There's this guy I think we should talk to.'
Giving Anson the larger bag of takeout, Mitch said, 'What guy?'
'We're in deep water with sharks. We're no match for them. We need advice from someone who can keep us from being eaten like chum.'
Although earlier he had given his brother the option of going to the authorities, Mitch said, 'They'll kill her if
