Silence

a pleasure to work with professionals who understand that it’s dangerous to be overheard. Now, the reason I’ve been trying so hard to get in touch with you is that I heard something that worried me.”

“What was that?” Sylvie’s voice was flat and uninterested. It was like listening to Grace.

“Well, as I warned you on the phone a few days ago, the client has been getting more and more impatient and eager for results. Now I understand he’s gone around us.” Densmore was pleased with that locution because if he “understood,” it implied he had only heard a hint from someone without knowing anything directly.

But Paul had caught the word, too, and didn’t like it. “You understand that, do you?”

“Yes. This is the kind of thing that I advise clients against doing. If you want help, I’ll give you help, but you have to put yourself in my hands. That’s what I say to them. And if it’s necessary to hire specialists, consultants, or experts, then I’ll be the one to find them, hire them, and communicate with them. That’s the way it has to be. If you want to handle your problem yourself, you’re welcome to go off and do it, and I wish you Godspeed. But if you want me to take you on, I’m in charge.” He was sure he had managed to get them past their irritation at him by now. He had learned from speaking to juries that enough words would slide people past an unpleasant discovery. The main thing was to keep talking and be sure they didn’t fix all of their attention on one small bit of information and cling to it.

“You’re off the subject,” Sylvie said. “We want to hear what you were so anxious to tell us, not the client.”

“What I wanted to tell you is that he went around me. He hired a couple of people of his own to go after Wendy Harper. Now, that’s bad enough. But it gets worse. The two men he hired were told that Till would have to bring Wendy Harper to the DA’s office to get the charges dropped. So they stationed themselves outside the building and lay in wait. Last night they managed to open fire on an unmarked police vehicle, and the outcome was pretty much what you might expect. They both got shot down on the street. I’m so glad to see you. I was really afraid that you might have been nearby and gotten scooped up in a sweep of the district.”

“And what did you do to get in touch with us to warn us?”

“I called your house. I called about twenty times over the past day or two. You were never home.”

“Did you even try to leave a message?”

“Of course I didn’t. If the police ever found a message like that on your phone, then you’d have problems. Those men were after Wendy Harper, and you were after Wendy Harper. All the police would need is a phone call to prove you were part of a conspiracy. Since the cops killed those two in the attempted commission of your common crime, you would be charged with felony murder in their deaths. As your attorney, I don’t see how we could beat the charge.”

“Did you consider just leaving a message for us to call you?”

Tonight Densmore’s professional skill at fast talk and obfuscation seemed to be failing him. Paul and Sylvie seemed to accept nothing he said. “That would have been even worse. It would give you absolutely no information, but it would make you keep calling me. I was in court for the past two days, so you would have had to wait for hours. In the process you might leave a message that could incriminate you. And all I wanted to say was what I just told you: that there might be another team around to get in your way. Might be. And in the end, it didn’t happen, anyway.”

“Didn’t it?” Paul said.

“You mean something happened?” Densmore was sweating. His body didn’t seem to be able to take in enough oxygen, and he felt dizzy. He looked at Paul’s eyes, remembering an article he had read. The amygdala, an almond-shaped part of the brain, had evolved to detect the signs of fear in another human being. Paul’s amygdala must be overdeveloped and trained to do that—probably what made him love killing. For him the sensation wasn’t like feeling the other person’s fear, it was like tasting it. Paul certainly knew Densmore was afraid, and that had made him stop listening to what Densmore said.

“Something happened,” Paul said. “We were all set up in a room with windows overlooking the DA’s office building. We spotted those two guys five minutes after we got there, and we watched them all night. We thought they were cops.”

“Well, then, if you saw them so easily, what’s the problem?”

Paul reached for his gun so quickly that it looked to Densmore as though it had been under his hand all along. He tugged the slide back to allow a round into the chamber, and moved his wrist slightly to aim at Densmore’s belly.

Densmore’s imagination became godlike. He could see the way the bullet would burst through his skin, through the wall of muscle and plow into the tissues of organs, the shock turning them into blood-soaked pulp, and then out again. He could actually feel a premonition of the pain: the blow, the bullet mushrooming and tearing a path that became an arc through his body, the burning. “If you’re wondering whether that scares me, it does.”

Sylvie gave a pitiless laugh. “You have a lot to be scared of.”

Densmore discovered a surprising reservoir of hatred for Sylvie. Until now he had thought he had a weakness for her.

Paul said, “You told your client who we are. You betrayed us, didn’t you?”

“I—”

“Before you answer that, think. If you open your mouth again and an avalanche of bullshit pours out, you won’t make it.”

“You would do that to me? After eight years?”

“Especially after eight years,” Sylvie said. “Answer him.”

“I had to tell this client who you were. I didn’t intend to make you feel more vulnerable. It was a special situation—a unique predicament. He said he wanted me to hire a team to kill Wendy Harper. It had to be the best people, the very best. He offered a high price, but he said he had to be sure of you before the deal was struck. He had to know I wasn’t taking a huge fee and giving a couple of bikers a thousand each. So I complied. It was a considered business decision. This client was not some dry cleaner in the Valley who was pissed off at the guy who owned the mini-mall. He had been a client for years, he was a substantial man, and he had a way to lure Wendy Harper back to Los Angeles. So I made a onetime exception to our policy about how much information we share with clients. Should I have talked to you first and explained what I was going to do and why? In retrospect, I suppose I should have done that. But I knew that if I did, there would be a lot of discussion and soul-searching, and you would eventually come to the conclusion that I had. I knew it was the right decision for everyone—for the client, for you, and for me.”

Sylvie laughed. “Mostly for you, though, huh?”

Densmore was beginning to focus on Sylvie now, and his hatred was consuming a huge part of his consciousness. Paul Turner was pointing a gun at his stomach, and he should be paying attention to him—to preventing his index finger from tightening on the trigger to exert a two-pound pressure. But Sylvie’s contemptuous tone was infuriating. “For all of us,” he said. “I’ve been your advocate in this from the start. I received a very generous offer and selected you for the job instead of someone else. I improved the offer by telling the client about your abilities and accomplishments. Later, when you didn’t finish the job on the first try, it reflected on me and put me in potential danger. Did I blame you or sell you out to the client? No. I made excuses for you and raised the ante, offered you even more money to finish the job.”

Sylvie said, “I’m still stuck thinking about why you thought telling your client about us was the right decision for you. It could get you killed.”

Densmore recognized in her voice the kind of grim amusement that he had heard only in the voices of killers talking about their victims. He was terrified. How could his fate have fallen into the hands of this violence-addicted whore? How could Michael Densmore, the consummate attorney, be failing so miserably to manipulate a woman who had let herself be penetrated every imaginable way by hundreds of men on the theory that it would make her a movie star? He turned his eyes away from her. “Paul, be reasonable. I’ve worked with you for eight years. No client I’ve brought you has ever known a thing about you, or ever been able to utter an incriminating word. I admit I’ve made a mistake. Now what can I do to make this right?”

Paul looked a bit uncertain. “To start, you could make us even. You told the client about us. Who is the client?”

Densmore would not have considered answering the question only a few hours ago, and he might not have