happened since, and asked:
'When do you want to do it?'
'Tonight.'
They removed Antrim from his cell that evening. Bathed him, fed him, and fetched him coffee. Exchanged his prison jump suit for a full set of livery. Drove him to the cabin in the woods. And when the call had come, he'd handled it with surprising aplomb considering the ring of big, angry men surrounding him. Surprising until you realised that he was a killing machine whose twisted circuitry lacked a conduit for worry or self-doubt. With one exception: an unfathomable vulnerability when it came to a fat, hairless woman.
A police officer had actually driven the Rolls. A tall, thin, moustachioed man who, in the dark, looked enough like Antrim to be his twin. But two blocks from our destination, he'd turned into a Hancock Park cul-de-sac, parked, and stepped out. Within seconds the chauffeur had materialised from behind the trunk of a big maple, in the grip of two plainclothesmen. Uncuffed and unbound. They walked him right up to the open car door, blocking any escape. Let go of him and watched as he slid behind the wheel.
'Drive carefully,' said Milo, lying on the floor of the passenger compartment, the nose of his .38 pressed against the back of the driver's seat. 'One fuck-up, and Ms. Skull does very hard time.'
'Yo,' said the chauffeur casually. He wheeled the big car toward Wilshire, made a quick left turn, cruised for a hundred feet, and turned again, floating smoothly into the circular driveway. A silver Mercedes 380 was already there.
'Okay?' he asked. 'Should I get out?'
'Yeah,' said Milo. 'Remember, all eyes are on you.'
Antrim turned off the engine, got out, and held the door open for me, ever the faithful retainer. I exited, and we walked together toward the building. He seemed relaxed. I watched his hands, his feet, the dark eyes that moved like dung beetles scurrying across sandstone.
We approached the front steps. The door opened, and
Antrim's moustache curved upward in a smile. My throat tightened: Was the cobra coiling?
A man stepped out and stood on the top step, with one hand wedged in the door to keep it open.
Until then, despite Milo's rationale, the whole thing had seemed an unnecessary bit of production for a walk- on scene. But when I saw Souza, I knew there could have been no other way.
'Good evening, Doctor,' he said testily. He wore evening clothes that made him look like a well-fed penguin: black silk tuxedo; starched white evening shirt perforated with tiny gold studs: plum-coloured bow tie and cummerbund; patent leather pumps as shiny as molten tar.
'Good evening.' I smiled.
'I hope this is as urgent as you made it sound. The Cadmuses and I have an important social function this evening.'
'It is,' I said, with one eye still on Antrim, wondering if he'd recite his lines or try a last-minute improvisation.
The silence couldn't have lasted longer than a second, but it seemed eternal. Antrim had stepped back. Behind me, I wanted to turn, to see his face, gauge his intentions. But I couldn't risk cuing Souza to anything out of the ordinary. So, instead, I looked at the attorney, searched his eyes for absorption of a silent message. Saw only flat brown. But where was the cobra -
'Uh, Mr. Souza.'
My body tightened.
'What is it, Tully?'
'The car's low on gas. Want me to fill it?'
Bravo.
'Go ahead,' said Souza. 'Be back in half an hour to take us to the Biltmore.'
Antrim touched the visor of his cap, pivoted, and walked toward the Rolls. Souza used his fingers to push the door open.
'Come,' he said impatiently.
Inside the law building was shadowy and cold, the marble floor amplifying every clack of Souza's glossy shoes.
He walked under the winding staircase, toward the back of the mansion, moving briskly for someone of his age and build. I followed him past the law library and the photocopy room and waited as he swung open carved double doors.
The panelled walls of the dining room seemed fleshlike in the soft light, each knot a spiralling black eye. The stone mantel housed a spitting tangerine fire that, from the look of the logs, had been burning for a while. A portable Chinese rosewood bar had been wheeled next to the oval Victorian table, which had been set with cut- crystal decanters and silver-jacketed tumblers. Icy facets picked up the firelight and winked it back prismatically. The tabletop gave off a burnished glow, like a lagoon at sunset. The silk rug glimmered like iridescent moss. Very elegant. Deathly quiet.
The Cadmuses were seated next to each other, on one side of the table. Souza took his place at the head and motioned me across from them.
'Good evening,' I said.
They looked up long enough to utter frozen greetings, then pretended to be fascinated by their drinks. The room was sweet with burning cedar, heavy with the echoes of attenuated conversation. Souza offered me a drink that I declined. While he poured himself a bourbon, I gazed across the table.
Dwight looked bad, diminished by stress. In the two weeks since I'd seen him, he'd lost weight. His tuxedo bloused, and his shoulders rounded under some invisible burden. He'd removed his glasses and placed them on the table; the skin under his eyes was loose, dull, smudged with fatigue. Next to the spectacles was an empty tumbler. The film coating its sides said it hadn't been empty for long. One of the decanters was within reach. Between it and the tumbler was a hyphen of wet blisters: droplets of spilled booze.
Heather still looked girlish. Her hair had been piled high, revealing a long, porcelain neck circled by a diamond choker. Her ears were small, thin, elfin. A carat of blue-white diamond graced each lobe. She wore a gown of midnight blue chiffon. Her arms were white tendrils filmed by see-through sleeves. Between choker and decolletage was a milky triangle of chest, faintly freckled by the merest hint of cleavage. Wind streaks of rouge above her cheekbones gave her lady-in-waiting features a vaguely feverish cast. Above her wedding band was a ring set with a pear-shaped sapphire the colour of a newborn baby's eyes. Her tumbler looked untouched, filled with something rosy and sparkling.
'This had better be important,' said Dwight, words thickened by alcohol.
'Darling,' said Heather, in her little-girl voice, touching his arm gently.
'No,' he said angrily. 'Haven't we been through enough?'
She smiled at me, apologetically, and removed her fingers from his sleeve. He reached for the decanter and poured himself a double. She turned away, embarrassed, as he drained his glass.
Souza had seemed to ignore the exchange. Now he drew closer, cleared his throat, and said:
'Doctor, just what are these medical developments you were so insistent upon discussing?'
'They're more than developments,' I said enthusiastically. 'I think I've solved all your problems for you. Proved that Jamey was innocent - at least in a legal sense.'
'Really?' A millimeter of smile, a mile of scorn.
'Yes. I've asked the doctors at County General to run some lab tests to verify this, but I believe he was poisoned with a class of drugs called anticholinergics. They disrupt nervous transmission and cause exactly the type of psychotic symptoms he displayed. If I'm correct, he'd be no more responsible for his actions than a somnambulist. Certainly you could use that to get him off.'
'Poisoned?' said Dwight. He stared at me with sick fascination, the kind of pained look the respectable reserve for carny freaks and comics dying onstage. Then he raised his drink to his lips and snorted disgustedly.
His wife shushed him with a finger to her lips.
'Go on please, Doctor,' said Souza. 'How did you arrive at this intriguing hypothesis?'
'Too many things didn't fit. The slashings weren't the work of a psychotic. And Jamey's psychiatric history was puzzling, even for a schizophrenic. He'd present symptoms that were typical for chronic psychosis one day, atypical the next, shift abruptly between lucidity and delirium. The night he called me he was able to converse,
