cleaning rods, patches, gun oil, and rags, and began to set it for breakfast.
She broke one egg, then another into the pan, dropped the shells into the sink and looked back at him. “Before you answer the next question, I would like you to take a minute to think, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Do we really have to collect on Wendy Harper?”
He sat quietly for about five seconds, then said, “Yes. We pretty much do.”
“Pretty much?”
“That means yes. It’s a lot of money. We spend a lot, so we need to make a lot. And it’s a job for Michael Densmore. He’s been our best source of jobs for the past seven or eight years.”
“That’s true, but think about it a minute.” Her spatula lifted the eggs expertly and slid them onto a plate without breaking the yolks. “Do we actually need this money? We own this house free and clear. We paid cash for both cars. We each had savings from before we met. We have the money we’ve saved together, and we still have all of the money Darren left me about fifteen years ago, don’t we?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s got to add up.”
“Of course. We could quit now, and probably live a very comfortable life until we die.” He grinned. “Or until
“You’re so sweet.” His toast popped up, and she plucked it out of the toaster, dropped it on the plate, and set it in front of him.
“Seriously, we’re probably fine, as long as nobody gets sick, there’s no unforeseeable disaster, and all that. We have some investment income that we’ve been reinvesting for years. If you don’t like working, I’d be willing to stop after this job’s done.”
“Why not before? Why not today?”
“Because we took this job. Once we’ve met with the middleman and heard the whole story, we’re in. We’re obligated. We know too much to walk away.”
“Densmore knows us. He knows we won’t tell anybody anything. We killed that black girl, and the cop south of San Francisco, and the couple in the hotel. If we spilled everything, he might get ten years, but we’d get the death penalty. That’s his insurance.”
“His point of view would be, we’ve fucked up the job so far, and therefore we ought to clean up the mess.”
“Can we at least try to talk to Densmore?”
“Let’s think about it before we do that. What if he insists that we finish it? Is it possible we’ll alienate him and still have to finish the job? And don’t forget: He’s just a lawyer, a go-between. We don’t know anything about the actual client. Do we want to give the client the idea that we’re not reliable, and that maybe he has to worry about us?”
“Since we don’t know him, we can’t do him any harm,” she said. “And since he doesn’t know us,
“It would have to be somebody who could drop whatever he was doing, get here, and go right to work. He’d never have seen Wendy Harper or Jack Till. And it has to be done now—in the next day or two—while she’s in the open. All she’s got to do is see the DA, and she’s gone again forever.”
“Okay,” Sylvie said. “We’re not doing this because we care if she lives or dies, right? We’re in it for money. They hired us because we’re professionals.”
“Sure.”
“So let’s just say politely that we believe we’ve been spotted, and we’ve killed a few bystanders, so it’s our professional opinion that the client would be better off having somebody else finish up. If Densmore says we’re letting him down, we say we’re sorry, but we know best. If his client gets all pissed off, we say we’re sorry about that, too. But Densmore can’t do anything to us. And if the client could, he wouldn’t need to hire us in the first place. As soon as we hang up, we pack our bags and go to Spain. We can study flamenco. We’ve been talking about it for years. It’s the height of tourist season now, but in a few weeks the off-season begins, and September is hot as hell here. We can come back after somebody else gets Wendy Harper.”
“Spain sounds pretty appealing to me right now,” Paul said. “From the moment when we heard Jack Till was getting ready to leave L.A., the whole thing got to be a pain in the ass. I’m sick of it.”
“That’s exactly how I feel. I’ve been afraid to tell you how much I hated it. I’m so glad you do, too.”
“We agree on that, but it still doesn’t get us out of the job. We gave our word to a man we’ve been working with for eight years. Changing our minds and pulling out isn’t a small thing.”
“If the relationship is worth anything at all, then we should be able to tell him honestly what’s been going on and level with him about how we feel about it. He’s a smart man. He may see the sense of it and tell us it’s time to quit.”
“That’s true,” Paul said.
“Should I get Densmore on the phone?”
“Hold it. We’re still just thinking.”
“Oh.” She turned away and put the pan into the dishwasher. She had fooled herself, let herself believe he was taking her ideas seriously, but of course he wasn’t. He didn’t think of her as an equal. After all these years, she was still just somebody to fuck. If he had to keep her in a good mood by pretending to consider her stupid suggestions, he would do it.
He said, “I guess you’re right. I hate to give up on anything, but this just isn’t working out. Densmore likes to be consulted. Let’s call him and see what he thinks.”
She turned and studied his face. He was looking down into his coffee cup. Then he picked it up and stared at the rim from the side. He saw lipstick and realized he had picked her cup up by mistake, then stood to retrieve his from the counter. His posture indicated that he was completely unaware that she had been getting upset. He looked as guileless as a big animal. She said, “Do you want to do the talking?”
“I don’t care who does it. It’s up to you.”
“I’ll dial, you talk.”
“Done.”
She called Densmore’s law office. When the receptionist answered, she said, “Hello. I have Paul Turner on the line for Mr. Densmore.” She had such a professional assistant voice that she made the receptionist nervous. Paul smiled at her as she handed him the telephone.
Paul waited for a second, then said, “Michael, it’s Paul. Is this your secure line? Good. No, it’s not finished. Far from it, I’m afraid. What? No, the reason I called.” He paused. “You’re sure I can talk? All right. We’ve had some setbacks. In order to find out where she was living, we had to kill a friend of hers in Henderson, Nevada. After we found her and had her under surveillance, we got pulled over by a cop near the San Francisco airport. I was driving a car rented with a fake ID, so I had to shoot him, too.”
Paul paused to listen for a few seconds. “Then a couple of hours south of there, we were just getting ready to make our move. We had her and Jack Till in a restaurant, and Sylvie was going into the ladies’ room to pop her, when another cop spotted our car outside. I saw him radioing for help. We had to slip into the hotel next door, con our way into a guest room, and kill a couple for their car.” He stopped to listen for a few seconds, then winked at Sylvie. “No. That still didn’t stop us. We followed Till and Wendy and tried to pull their car over just north of King City. Know where that is? I pulled up behind and Sylvie emptied a whole clip into their car—blew the rear window out, and Till drove the car off the road into a field.”
Paul put his arm around Sylvie and held the telephone so she could hear Densmore saying, “Didn’t you follow him?”
“About a half a mile through weeds in the dark. Then he made it over a hill and into some woody country where he could see us coming. He was setting up for an ambush. The guy’s a retired cop. You can’t assume a man like that can’t defend himself.”
Paul stood and listened, his face beginning to have a flat, tired look. Then he began to pace. “We’re pretty sure we’ve used up our value, Michael. Somebody got our license number when we shot the cop. People saw us rent that car. There may even be security tape. Till had plenty of chances to see us when we made our move. He knows who to look for. We tried our damnedest, but from here on, anything we could do would be no surprise. We’ll
