Booked to die

are, just ask for me. Be formal… cool and distant. Call me Mr. Neff. He’ll think I’m coming over on a buy, and we’ll spend the afternoon together.

But he never came. Millie sat by the phone and it rang an hour later.

Sorry, hon, it’s not gonna work… not feeling well… think I’ve got the flu. Going home to lie down…no, don’t come up, you’ll just get what I’ve got. I’ll make it up to you…

An illusion, like one of his old magic tricks. Now you see him, now you don’t.

Like that illusion of death he had performed for me alone: two cold capsules popped into his mouth, and you were ready-to believe anything.

So simple, so easy, once you knew how it was done.

I tried to call Rita, without much hope. There had been no answer up there for weeks, and there was none now.

Then 1 remembered that other number. Bobby Westfall had written it down and dropped the paper when he’d been in talking to Harkness. It took me a few minutes to find it, and another few minutes to figure it out.

An out-of-state exchange.

I tried it with a Los Angeles area code and got the intercept operator.

San Francisco.

Intercept.

It rang through to New York. A woman answered.

“Greenpeace Action.”

“Is this Greenpeace… International?”

“We’re part of it.”

“Uh…is Rita McKinley there?”

“She was here yesterday.”

Now what the hell was this about? What had Bobby been doing with a number for Greenpeace?

“Do you know if she’s coming back?”

“I don’t know, sir. I believe she was going to Europe.”

He had been trying to reach Rita, just before he was killed. About the time she was off saving whales.

She had been on NBC. Was it not possible that he had seen her Brokaw interview?

Which would mean… what?

Could it be Bobby’s Christian conscience at work? He and Neff had just pulled off the literary heist of the decade, and you could bet that something was at work.

The woman on the phone was talking.

“Is there a message, sir…in case we do hear from her?”

“Just tell her Janeway called.”

And please, please call back.

55

Now I sit with old Mr. Greenwald and I know the end is coming. I think I may even know what it is. Satori is working overtime, and my enlightenment is both sudden and overwhelming. It comes in waves, like a tide pushed up by a hurricane.

“So the house is finally yours—the deal, as they say these days, is truly finished.”

“It’s truly finished, Mr. Greenwald.”

“Have some more coffee.”

This is how it is in Greenwald’s world: civilized society comes first and business is done in its own good time.

Being among the newly enlightened, I don’t push him.