Stillman gave me an elaborate shrug. 'Oh, well,' he said, 'you can't expect me. .'
I looked at Dixie. 'I can't?' I said.
Dixie met Stillman's gaze. 'Under the circumstances,' he said. He still had an obstruction in his throat.
Stillman pursed his lips. It made him look like a little old lady. 'Seems pretty stiff,' he said.
Neither Dixie nor I said anything, although Dixie swallowed twice.
'Still,' Stillman said unconvincingly, 'if it's the right thing to do.' Then, slowly enough to preserve his dignity, he slid open the drawer in front of him and pulled out his gold Mont Blanc pen and a checkbook. He filled in a check and tore it loose. 'I do this out of the goodness of my heart, not because of any threat,' he said. Placing a hand protectively over the check, he pulled a sheet of typewritten paper out of the drawer and slid it over the polished wood toward me. 'Just sign this,' he said. 'It's only a formality.'
'What kind of formality?'
'Nothing,' he and Dixie said at the same time. Stillman gave Dixie a glare, and Dixie subsided. Whatever resentment had flared inside him seemed to have burned itself out, probably smothered by the damp mass of his paycheck. Stillman provided an unnecessary coup de grace in the form of a barely audible sniff.
'As I was saying,' he continued. 'It's nothing. It's like a contract, I suppose. Nothing you wouldn't do anyway. You're a man of honor, we all know that. You wouldn't violate it even if you didn't sign it.' He gave me the smile again.
I gave it back. 'Then why sign it?' I said.
'For peace of mind.'
'Whose?'
'Everyone's. It's just a promise that you won't tell anyone what really happened.' He spread his polished hands in a gesture of pure reason.
'For how long?'
'Forever,' he said in a firmer tone. 'For always.'
'Or what?' I'd stopped smiling.
Stillman leaned forward and crossed his hands. 'Or it gets sent to the cops,' he said. 'It's. .' He leaned back ruminatively. 'It's an account of the facts in the case. What really happened in the last week or so. Nothing that isn't true. I'm sure you won't object to signing it.'
'If it became public,' I said, 'I'd lose my license.'
'Faster than instant coffee dissolves,' Stillman agreed. 'Still. .' He picked up the check and gave it a little wave.
I pulled the document closer to me and looked at it. 'It's all true?' I said.
He nodded.
'And all I have to do is sign it and I get the thirteen thousand?'
Stillman put the check down again and said, 'Yes.'
'Dixie,' I said, 'have you read this?'
'Sure,' he said. 'Sure I have. I wrote it, with some help from the lawyers.'
'Everything in it is true? I mean, man to man, it's all accurate?'
'Truer than the history books,' Stillman said.
I looked at the piece of paper again. The language was direct enough. The facts seemed straight. I put out a hand.
After a momentary hesitation, Stillman handed me the Mont Blanc.
'I'm just a country boy,' I said. 'I sure hope I'm doing the right thing.'
I snapped the Mont Blanc in two. Stillman gasped, and ink flooded over my hands and the desk.
'Gosh, I'm sorry,' I said. I picked up the contract and wiped my hands with it. Then I used it to wipe up the pool of ink on the desk, crumpled the blackened paper into a ball, and flipped it at Stillman. It caught him right on his embroidered anchor and bounced into his lap. He looked at me, his face dark and still.
'I
I went to the door. 'Don't worry,' I said. 'You won't hear anything about this unless you do something truly stupid, like stopping payment. You poor dumb soul, do you really think I'd talk about this? Don't you know I'm ashamed of myself for having had anything to do with it? Or with you, for that matter?'
He just glared at me. Dixie had his fists in his pockets again.
'Jesus,' I said. 'Producers.'
I had to let more than a week go by before I could finish. Wounds take time to heal, and at least some of them had to heal by the time I could wrap things up.
The eight thousand went to the hospital. It was short, so that took care of another thousand of the bonus. I paid Kareema and Alma a thousand for their part in what I had planned, although they offered to do it for free.
A hundred and fifty went to rent a van with a ramp. It had to have a ramp. Twenty-five hundred took the form of a donation, in Toby's name, to a West Hollywood institution. Toby would get the tax break, not I, but he was welcome to it.
That left me with three hundred and fifty bucks from my bonus on Sunday morning when I stepped into ABC Discount Premiums on Beverly Boulevard. When I came out I had less than two hundred left, but I also had a paper bag in my hand.
It was a beautiful day.
I took the freeway through the Valley to avoid the beach traffic and then drove through Malibu Canyon to the coast. It was still early, but the PCH was full of cars carrying surfers and sun-crazy high school kids to the sea. Here and there was a family in a station wagon packed to the roof with coolers, towels, inflatable rafts, meals big enough for Henry the Eighth and all six of his wives. In the twentieth century families take as much to go from the Valley to the beach as their great-great-grandparents carried on the long trek across the plains toward paradise.
Toby's red Maserati was in the driveway, parked next to a car I'd never seen before. Next to that was the van. As I climbed out of Alice and trekked toward the house, the van's occupants waved at me. I lifted the bag above my head and waved it back at them. Tinny applause sounded from inside.
Heading for the house, I heard the van's ramp drop into position.
The front door was open, as it was supposed to be. I took everything out of the bag and went into the living room.
Toby had acquired a new piece of furniture. It was made of bright and shiny aluminum, and it still looked like a cross between a sawhorse and a medieval torture rack. Toby was strapped to it, as naked as the day he was born.
'Simeon!' he shouted, trying to twist free. Then he saw the expression on my face, and he stopped shouting.
'He can't get loose,' Alma lisped. She was wearing a red corset with black stockings and a Victorian garter belt. Above the neck she looked like a Sunday-school teacher. 'Look. His wrists and ankles are cuffed, and there's this cute little loop around his neck that tightens if he tries to turn his head. Not to mention the silk cord around his teensie little wienie. Here, watch.'
She reached down and tickled Toby's ribs. Toby arched and twisted his neck, and then his face went red and he had to stop.
'Kootchy kootchy koo,' Alma said sweetly.
'That's enough, Alma,' Kareema said, coming out of the kitchen, a glass of water in her hand. 'Don't wear him out.' She was wearing an outfit that could be best described as Nazi nightmare nurse: low and strapless, cut high above the thighs, all in black leather with a cute little black leather nurse's cap to match. 'You're late,' she said in her usual commanding voice. She handed the water to Alma.
'Sunday drivers,' I said. I was exactly four minutes late. I got down on my knees and studied Toby. He avoided my eyes. 'How's the face, Bobby?'
He started at the name and looked up at me briefly and then down at the floor. Most of the swelling had gone down. His lower lip was puffy-again-and one eye was partly closed, but the girls had put makeup over the worst of the bruises, and there was no question that it was Toby's face.
'I'll get you,' he said in a low voice.
