Paul when he had said, “We ought to get him in a quiet place, ask him a few searching questions, and see what we think of his answers.” Sylvie had been afraid of Densmore. Paul did not seem to have noticed, but Densmore had been too attentive to her in the wrong way: opened doors for her, but didn’t leave enough space for her to get past without brushing against him; leaned over her too close when he had pulled out her chair. He had appeared overly polite and respectful when they had all been together talking about business, and had deferred to her as though he accepted her as Paul’s equal. But as soon as Paul stepped out of the room, or even looked away for a few seconds, Densmore’s eyes had changed. He had stared frankly and openly at her body, or looked into her eyes with a smirk. But he had never done anything that would give her a chance to say to Paul, “Look. See what he’s doing?”
She had not been completely sure what Paul’s reaction would have been if she had said something to Paul. She knew Paul would say, “Did he touch you? What exactly did he say? What did he do?” If she tried to explain, she was afraid he might say, “Sylvie, you’re suddenly shy about the way men look at you? The star of
She had been cautious, but she had known that the last thing she wanted was to find herself in Michael Densmore’s power. Last night she had actually wanted to kill Densmore, but the way Paul had done it, in such a hurry as though he had intended to shut him up, made her wonder.
Suppose Densmore had actually offered more money on the phone a few days ago than Paul had said. That might not matter, either. Paul might have been saving the real figure to surprise her later. In either case, the money was only hypothetical: They had not killed Wendy Harper, and so they had not received payment.
Still, Sylvie was not satisfied. Maybe Paul had received an advance and kept it from her. Maybe Paul had demanded more after their failure up north. Maybe Paul had been hiding money from her for a long time, and Densmore had known and played along. That would provide an entirely different—but not necessarily better— meaning to the way he had looked at her all those times in his office. She shifted, and the sound of the floor creaking under her foot startled her. She caught her reflection in the mirror over her dresser.
To her horror, she saw a woman who had become middle-aged. She had wrinkles, breasts that were beginning to sag even though she had worked tirelessly to maintain her muscle tone. Of course Paul was hiding money from her, using it to pay for affairs with younger women. Good hotels were expensive, even if he used them for only three hours in the middle of the day.
Sylvie felt angry at herself, humiliated. She had to get through the next few minutes, to avoid Paul. She looked around, saw the bathroom door, hurried through it into the bathroom and turned on the water in the big tub. She wasn’t sure why she was doing it, except that this was a familiar, simple act, she was alone, and the sound of the water was a kind of privacy, too.
The doorbell. How could there be anybody at the door? She turned off the water, rushed back into the bedroom, and looked through the window to see if there were cops moving through the yard. No. She could see the pool, the trees, the wall at the back of the property. She opened the cabinet and snatched a stack of clean towels, took her pistol out of the nightstand, stuck it between the top two, and carried them toward the living room.
When she came into the living room, she saw Paul on the opposite side of it, hurrying in from the kitchen, putting a pistol into the back of his pants, and covering it with his shirttail. He waved his hand toward the door and pantomimed turning a knob. She nodded and went to the front door just as the bell rang again. She looked through the peephole and saw a man standing on the front steps.
“Who is it?” she called.
“My name is Carl Zacca, Mrs. Turner. I represent the man who’s been dealing with you through Mr. Densmore.”
Sylvie turned to Paul. “Shit!” she whispered.
“We’ve got to let him in,” Paul said. “He knows we’re home.”
She glared at him and shook her head, but Paul brushed past her, opened the door, and stepped back.
The man who stood in the doorway was handsome, with thick black hair and a genuine-looking smile. He held out his hand. “Carl Zacca, Mr. Turner. I’m really sorry to bother you, but would you mind if I came in?”
Paul stepped back. “Come in.” When Carl Zacca was past the threshold, Paul swung the door shut. He had his hand behind him, on the gun in the back of his belt. “Sit down over here on the couch.”
Carl Zacca sat on the white couch in the conversation area facing the front of the room. Sylvie kept her hand on the gun under the towels and planned the shots she would take through the back of the couch so she could kill him quickly.
As though he’d had the same thought, Zacca turned his head and looked over his shoulder at her. She said, “Hello, Mr. Zacca.”
“Carl. Please call me Carl. And the guns aren’t really necessary. I’m a friend.”
“Fine,” Paul said. “Tell me again. Who do you work for? What’s his name?”
He answered without hesitation, “Scott Schelling.” He smiled and watched Paul and Sylvie exchange a glance. “The reason I came was—I don’t know, you may have heard already—that Michael Densmore has died. Did you know?”
“No,” said Paul. “How did that happen?”
The expression on Paul Turner’s face answered that question, thought Carl. They had killed him. “I don’t know. Somebody shot him, I heard. As soon as we knew, Mr. Schelling sent me here to establish contact with you. Densmore said that you prefer not to work directly with customers, but we didn’t know what else to do. We don’t have a go-between anymore, and we’re in the middle of a crisis. I hope you don’t mind.”
He looked at Sylvie, but she said nothing. She didn’t remove her hand from the stack of towels. He looked at Paul.
“No,” Paul said.
“Good, because every minute counts now. We’re only going to have a brief period when Wendy Harper is in sight. She’s like a rabbit. We’ve seen her pop out of her hiding place, but she’s running, and what she’s running for is the next rabbit hole. If she makes it, we’re through.”
Paul said, “We appreciate your coming all the way over here, and we respect you for being straight about who you work for and not trying to lie about it. But you guys already exercised your right to choice when you hired a pair of amateurs to take over for us. We watched those two die while we were staring through rifle sights, waiting for our shot.”
“We didn’t hire them; that was Densmore.”
Paul glanced at Sylvie again. She was watchful, her face conveying nothing of what she might be thinking or feeling. Paul said, “When we got replaced, we came home. We’re out. We haven’t been paid anything, so we don’t owe you anything.”
“I can understand why you thought that, but I’m here to tell you everything’s okay. You can go finish the contact.”
“We’re out.”
“Then we’d like you to come back in.”
“What are you offering?”
“Paul.” It was Sylvie’s voice, and he could see in his peripheral vision that she was shaking her head, but he ignored her.
“We’ll pay in full what Densmore promised you.”
“Densmore’s dead.”
Carl studied Paul for a moment. He saw that Paul was not returning his gaze as a man might who was bluffing. Carl said, “I get the feeling that we started out wrong. I’m just trying to build an easy, open relationship so we can handle this situation efficiently. Mr. Schelling didn’t want you to worry when you heard Densmore was dead. We’re still around, and we’re still interested. You’ll get paid. We’ll live up to our end of the agreement.”
“The only agreement we had was with Densmore,” said Paul. “He’s dead, so there is no agreement.”
Carl wondered what strange thing he had done in some earlier lifetime to put him in a house in Van Nuys between two professional killers, each of them with one hand hidden so it could hold a gun. “I’ll tell you what. You give me a figure that will bring you back in, and I’ll call Mr. Schelling and see if it’s acceptable to him.”
“A million dollars.” It was Sylvie’s voice—a number called out in urgency, like an auction bid.
The two men turned to look at Sylvie. She stared back at them defiantly, letting the words hang in the room.
Carl spoke. “I don’t understand. You’re joking?”
