foot of water, if she fell face down and panicked. If her Dad didn't watch over her all the time…
The guy might have his hands on her, right now.
To keep from screaming, Garner began a marathon of talking earnestly to God, praying for everything, everyone, as well as for Constance; for himself, he begged for strength and guidance and patience.
It took him another twenty minutes to get around that fucking truck.
Culver City, Los Angeles
'Where the hell did you get that?' Jeff asked, sitting at his breakfast bar next to Prentice. 'Isn't it illegal for you to have that shit?'
'Maybe,' Prentice said, distractedly, running his finger down the scribbled doctors' evaluations on the photocopies he'd fanned out on the table, 'but I was married to her, right?'
'You bribe somebody?'
'Desk nurse. Gave him a hundred bucks which probably went to crack cocaine, from the look of him. It's pretty scary, what I hear about people in hospitals, nurses and doctors and orderlies, using hard drugs. They're gonna be pulling out your organs and selling them on the blackmarket to get drug money or something… Anyway, yeah, the guy photocopied Amy's files…' He tapped his finger on one copy-faded line. 'Check it out.'
Instead, Jeff got up to make capuccino. He had an espresso machine and a milk-steamer. He was going to be buying a house soon. Prentice felt resentment and jealousy chasing tails through him, and he stuffed it away, concentrated on the admissions form, reading aloud to Jeff. 'Patient repeats certain phrases at intervals, eg: The Morman won't let me come home… patient is frequently labile…' Blah blah blah, the usual psychoguff… But check that out: 'The Morman'.'
'The Morman?' Jeff said, over the hissing of the steamer. 'Like… The More Man, you mean?'
'It says 'the Morman'. But yeah. She probably was saying, The More Man. Like Lonny said.' Prentice waited for Jeff to react.
Bingo. Jeff turned, stared at him. 'Come on. Mitch and Amy hooked up with the same guy? Bullshit.'
'Hey – they both mutilated themselves, right? More or less the same way.' Prentice smiled in quiet triumph. 'I went to the Pinkertons, I was thinking of hiring them to investigate the whole shebang, but they're too fucking expensive. But – they do traces on credit cards and stuff for a pretty reasonable fee. So I had 'em trace the account she had that Gold Card on – it came from Sam Denver.'
'You're shitting me!'
'You know, that's a revolting expression. No, I'm not 'shitting you'.'
'Who are you, Miss Manners? Listen, bro – let's go out to the Ranch. No more talking about it, let's do it. Denver's ranch. See if we can find Mitch. I mean, right fucking now. Just look into it. If it doesn't pan out, we go to the cops.'
'Just go out there? Just us?'
'Hey – chances are the Denvers are like my old man used to say about spiders: 'They're more scared of you than you are of them.' They won't want any trouble.' He sipped his capuccino. Sprinkled more chocolate on the foam. 'And I got a gun, bro. I got a bunch a guns. I got a fuckin. 357, they want to play games – '
'You been playing paintball too often, man. Spend too much time writing action pictures. Dirty Harry 's a fantasy, Jeff. But yeah. Let's go check it out. Only I want my capuccino first, with extra chocolate.'
Near Malibu
Jeff was driving like a fucking lunatic, Prentice thought. There was a slate of thin cloud over the sky, but it was hot, the light suffused with an eerie sameness over the dry hills, the manzanita and stunted pine and purplish underbrush, the punky stands of yucca spears – all of it sometimes broken up by improbable squares of lushly green, manicured lawn where an irrigated estate or gated cluster of luxury condos wedged in between hills.
The Cabriolet made a razzing sound as it attacked the curves, fishtailing from time to time. Maybe Jeff's way of working up his nerve for the confrontation…
They had directions from Jeff's agent, who used to come out here, years earlier. But Jeff almost missed the dirt road. They were supposed to look for a redwood mailbox on a big, four sided post made of smooth quartz river stones. They saw the post at the last moment – Prentice spotted it and stamped an imaginary brake, yelling, 'Shit – there it is!'
Jeff hit the brake and the tyres made crooked marks on the cracked white highway, Prentice grabbing the dashboard to keep from slamming his head into the windshield. 'Coulda told me sooner,' Jeff muttered.
'Not at those speeds, A.J. Foyt.'
They backed up, turned onto the dirt road. There was a little gravel left in its deeper ruts. Jeff paused to look at the stone post. It was almost hidden in high fiddlehead ferns and sage. The wooden mailbox was gone. On the concrete post, the rounded quartz stones glowed faintly in the sunlight.
'Gotta be it,' Jeff said. 'They really let it go to seed.' The car made a noise like a trumpeting baby elephant as he changed gears. They gunned up the road, pluming dust, tailbones banging on the seat springs as the car jounced in the ruts. The trees got higher nearer the top of the hill; there were hoary palm trees, here, transplanted long ago, looking over the shoulders of mistletoe-darkened oaks. Another curve and they came to a high, dust- coated hurricane fence, with a heavily padlocked gate made of the same stuff. Ten yards beyond it was a stone fence and a black, wrought iron gate figured with rusting cherubims holding a bullet-pocked sign that had once said, Welcome. Over the cherubims was a wrought-iron figure of two crossed skeleton keys. The Doublekey Ranch.
Jeff pulled up in the shade of an overhanging bower of roses. Big roses, so red they were almost black. Looking closer, as the dust cloud parted around them, Prentice saw that the roses were overgrown up a dead oak tree; its trunk and lower branches a black, warped skeleton for the fleshy roses.
From the midst of the rose bush came a wet, throaty snarling. No. It wasn't from the bush – why had he thought it was? It was coming from beyond the hurricane fence. Two Dobermans with spiked collars were running alongside the fence, snarling, teeth bared. They jumped at the fence, making it ring like chain mail, throwing their full bodies against it; shaking dust loose with each clank and making both Prentice and Jeff twitch back in their seats.
Rose petals filtered down from above, pattering softly into the car.
The dogs threw themselves at the fence again. Rose petals rained once more. Prentice looked up and saw that vines of another rosebush clung to the top of the fence.
A black man, well over six feet and three hundred pounds, wearing a generic security guard's uniform, stepped from a small guardhouse at the iron gates and shouted at the dogs. They cringed back, wincing as if afraid of being whipped. The guard came striding up toward the fence, a shotgun aslant across his tubby middle, his eggplant pate shiny with sweat, dark glasses strobing. 'Ya'll got an appointment?' he bellowed.
Jeff looked at the glove compartment, where his gun was hidden.
Prentice said softly, 'Way too soon to even think about it, Jeff.'
Jeff nodded. Prentice could see him gather his courage. He took a deep breath and got out of the Cabriolet, ''Hi, how ya doin'!' he called, as the two men approached each other from opposite sides of the metal fence.
'Ya'll got an appointment?' the black man repeated.
Jeff shook his head. 'I… I'm Jeff Teiltelbaum. I had word that my brother is here and I need to see him. I'm his legal guardian. His name's Mitch Teitelbaum.'
'Mitch Tuttle…?'
'Teitelbaum.'
'Lemme call up. I'm sorry about these damn dogs.' He turned on his heel, slapping his thigh. 'Come on, hounds, up wid me. Lesgo.' The dogs trotted after him. Prentice could see a metal rod strapped into the man's belt that might be a cattle prod. He walked laboriously over to the guardhouse and reached in to a wallphone.
Prentice said, 'This place is a paranoid's delight.' Jeff nodded.
The guard came back three minutes later shaking his head. 'Got no Mitch Teitelbaum here – hasn't been here neither. You maybe on the wrong road.'
Prentice called, 'This is the Denver place, right?'
The guard turned his mirror-glassed eyes toward him. 'Surely. But your boy, he ain't here.' He turned and walked away with an air of dismissal.
'Could we talk to someone from the house, the Denvers,' Jeff began, 'or – '
The guard turned back to them but kept walking, backwards. 'No sir, not today. Mrs. Denver not feeling good. Can't have visitors. She's just not up to it. I already asked.' He turned his back on them again.
