'Your voice is too stressed. Do it again. Naturally.'
She did it again, and a third time, finally getting it right.
'Good. Now we're going to walk outside like two normal people, you first, me five feet behind. You won't forget, even for an instant, that I've got a gun. My car is parked in a grove of scrub oaks about a quarter mile up the road. You know where those trees are?'
She nodded.
'That's where we're going.'
As he pushed her across the living room, he became aware of a sensation of wetness on his thigh. He looked down. The plastic raincoat was torn and a tuft of material stood out from the pant leg. There was a dark patch of blood, not a lot, but still it was blood. Maddox was astonished because he had felt nothing, and still felt nothing. He scanned the rug but saw no evidence that any of the blood had dripped to the floor. He reached down with a hand, explored, feeling the sting of the wound for the first time.
Son of a bitch. The blond had winged him.
He marched her out of the house and across a brushy flat and alongside the creek, soon arriving at the hidden car. Once in the cover of the scrub oaks he took a pair of leg cuffs out of his rucksack and tossed them at her feet.
'Put them on.'
She bent over, fumbled with them for a while, snapped them on.
'Put your hands behind your back.'
She obeyed and he spun her around and snapped on a pair of handcuffs. Then he opened the front passenger door. 'Get in.'
She managed to sit and swing her feet in.
He took off his knapsack, took out the bottle of chloroform and the diaper, poured a good dose.
'No!' he heard her scream. 'No, don't!' She swung her feet up to kick him but she had little room to maneuver, and he had already lunged in on top of her, pinning her manacled arms and mashing the diaper into her face. She struggled, cried out, writhing and kicking, but in a few moments she went limp.
He made sure she had breathed in a good dose, then got in the driver's side and slid behind the wheel. She lay slumped on the seat in an unnatural position. He reached over, hefted her and propped her up against the door, put a pillow
behind her head and drew a blanket up around her, until she looked like she was peacefully asleep.
He powered down the windows to get the stench of chloroform out of the car, and then pulled off stocking, shower cap, booties, hair net, and raincoat, balling them up and stuffing them inside a garbage bag.
He started the car, eased out of the grove, and drove down the dirt road to the highway. From there he crossed the dam and drove north on Highway 84. Ten miles up the road, he eased onto the unmarked Forest Service road that ran up into the Carson national forest, to the CCC Camp at Perdiz Creek.
The woman lay against the door, eyes closed, blond hair all in a mess. He paused, looking at her. Damn, he thought, she was good-looking-a real honey-haired beauty.
13
'THEY SAY IT used to be a bordello,' Beezon said to Tom as they stood in the dirt turnaround in front of a shabby old Victorian mansion, which rose incongruously from a desert sprinkled with palo verde, teddy bear cholla, and ocotillo.
'Looks more like a haunted house than a whorehouse,' said Tom.
Beezon chuckled. 'I warn you-Harry Dearborn's kind of eccentric. His brusqueness is legendary.' He clomped up onto the porch and lifted the ring on the big bronze lion doorknocker. It fell once, with a hollow boom. A moment later a rotund voice inside said, 'Come in, the door is unlocked.'
They entered. The house was dark with most of the drapes drawn, and it smelled of mustiness and cats. It looked like a traffic jam of dark Victorian furniture. The floors were laid with overlapping Persian carpets, and the walls were lined with oak display cases of rippled glass, mineral specimens crowding their shadowy depths. Standing lamps with tasseled shades stood here and there, throwing pools of feeble yellow light.
'In here,' came the deep rumble of the voice. 'And don't touch anything.'
Beezon led the way into a sitting room. In the middle, a grossly fat man was imbedded in an oversized armchair of flowered chintz, antimacassars resting on the armrests. The light came from behind, leaving the man's face in shadow.
'Hello, Harry,' said Beezon, his voice a little nervous. 'Long time, eh? This is a friend of mine, Mr. Thomas Broadbent.'
A large hand emerged from the darkness of the chair, made a vague flicking motion toward a pair of wing chairs. They both sat down.
Tom studied the man a little closer. He looked remarkably like Sidney Green-street, dressed in a white suit with a dark shirt and yellow tie, his thinning hair
combed carefully back, a neat and tidy man despite his corpulence. His broad forehead was as smooth and white as a baby's and heavy gold rings winked on his
fingers.
'Well, well,' Dearborn said, 'if it isn't Robert Beezon, the ammonite man.
How's business?'
'Couldn't be better. Fossils are going mainstream as office decor.'
Another dismissive gesture, a raised hand and a barely perceptible movement of two fingers. 'What do you want with me?'
Beezon cleared his throat. 'Mr. Broadbent here-'
He stopped Beezon and turned to Tom. 'Broadbent? You aren't by chance related to Maxwell Broadbent, the collector?'
Tom was taken aback. 'He was my father.'
'Maxwell Broadbent.' He grunted. 'Interesting man. Ran into him a few times. Is he still alive?'
'He passed away last year.'
Another grunt. A hand came out holding a huge handkerchief, dabbed away at the fleshy, slabbed face. 'I'm sorry to hear that. The world could use a few more like him, larger than life. Everyone's become so ... normal. May I ask how he died? He couldn't have been more than sixty.'
Tom hesitated. 'He ... he died in Honduras.'
The eyebrows rose. 'Is there some mystery here?'
Tom was taken aback by the man's directness. 'He died doing what he loved doing,' he said with a certain crispness. 'He might have asked for better, but he accepted it with dignity. No mystery there.'
'I am truly shocked to hear it.' A pause. 'So, what can I do for you,
Thomas?'
'Mr. Broadbent here is interested in purchasing a dinosaur-' Beezon began.
'A dinosaur? What in the world makes you think I sell dinosaurs?'
'Well...' Beezon fell silent, a look of consternation on his face.
Dearborn extended a large hand to him. 'Robert, I want to thank you most sincerely for introducing Mr. Broadbent to me. Excuse me if I don't rise. It seems Mr. Broadbent and I have some business to discuss, which we should prefer to do in private.'
Beezon stood and hesitatingly turned to Broadbent, wanting to say something. Tom guessed what it was.
'About that agreement we made? You can count on it.'
'Thank you,' said Beezon.
Tom felt a pang of guilt. There wouldn't, of course, be any commission.
Beezon said his good-byes and a moment later they heard the thump of the door, the whine of the car engine starting.
Dearborn turned to Tom, his face creasing into the semblance of a smile. 'Now-did I hear the word dinosaur? What I said is true. I don't sell dinosaurs.'
'What exactly is it that you do, Harry?'
'I'm a dinosaur broker.' Dearborn leaned back into his chair with a smile, waiting.
