House of Smoke (41 page)

“We’ll drive down tomorrow.”

“No!” Immediately she regrets her tone—too strong, trying to hide something. “I look worse than I am,” she lies. “I don’t want the girls to see me black and blue. It would only scare them.”

“Well …” Julie hesitates.

“Trust me. I am okay, but I don’t look good. In a couple weeks, when the swelling goes down …”

“On your face?” Julie interrupts.

More of her face is under bandages than is showing.

“Yes. A little.”

“Oh, shit, baby.” Julie starts to cry, over the phone.

Kate lies back deeper into her pillow. “It sounds worse than it is. Really.”

She’s got to get off the phone. She has more problems of her own than she can handle, she can’t be worrying about her sister, too.

“Don’t come down,” she says again. The girls can’t see her in this condition, that’s the most important thing in her life at this moment—to protect them from this.

“If that’s what you want,” Julie says reluctantly.

She tries to force good cheer into her voice. “Just for a little while. Till I’m my old beautiful self again.”

“The girls will be disappointed.”

“Have them call me when they get home from school. I’ll explain.” She gives Julie the phone number in her room.

“There’s a detective out there who wants to see you,” the nurse tells her.

It’s the fourth day—the first day she hasn’t been completely out of it from medication. She’s propped up in bed a little, enough to look at the TV if she wanted to, which she doesn’t.

“I don’t want to see anyone,” she says. Except Cecil.

The nurse goes out and closes the door. In a moment Juan Herrera comes in, closing the door behind him. He looks down at her, shaking his head in disbelief.

“Jesus,” he says quietly. “They really did a number on you.”

“How bad do I look?” she manages to mumble.

“You don’t know?”

“I haven’t seen myself. I’m afraid to look.”

“Probably a good idea, until the swelling and discoloration goes down.”

She nods, her eyes slowly closing. Everything feels like slow motion, except the pain. She doesn’t want him seeing her looking like this, and she doesn’t want to talk to him about it.

“We need to get your statement,” he tells her without preamble, pulling up a chair to the side of the bed. “It has to be done, you know that, you were on my side of the line yourself.”

“I can’t,” she fends him off. “I can’t think straight. I’m too tired, they’re pumping me full of painkillers.”

“Did you recognize any of them?” he presses.

“No.”

“I think one or more of them might have been in that jail cell with Frank Bascomb,” he continues. “One of the ones who was killed by your boyfriend. Does that sound right? We think the prints match up, but since his face was blown off we can’t be certain, and besides there were so many brought in that night the procedures were kind of sloppy. Can you ID them?”

“It was too dark.” She shakes her head, the gesture sending a dagger of pain up the back of her neck into her head. She cries out.

The nurse rushes in. “You can’t be with her now,” she admonishes Herrera. “I told you that. You have to go out.”

Courteous but firm, he says, “I’ll be as quick and easy as I can.”

“Come back later,” Kate asks, feeling the pain throughout her body. “I can’t do this now.”

“Get out,” the nurse tells Herrera brusquely. “Police or no police. We’ll call you when she’s ready to be questioned.”

He stands up. “Are you sure?” he asks Kate one more time.

“I can’t remember anything clearly now,” she says. “Come back later, when I don’t feel so terrible, or look it.”

“You look beat up,” he corrects her, touching her hand. “Not terrible.” He walks to the door, pauses, turns back. “I’m going to get the bastards who did this to you,” he says in anger. More softly: “I’ll check in tomorrow.” The door closes behind him.

The nurse adjusts the flow of the sedative. “You’ll go to sleep right away now. I’ll see to it nobody comes in until the doctor feels you can, and you’re willing.”

“Thank you.” Her eyes are closed. The pain is subsiding.

She isn’t going to tell him. Not now, nor when she’s feeling better and the pain is tolerable.

They were there, those men: yes. Like when they were in the same jail cell with Frank Bascomb. But she can’t work with the police on this now, and she can’t let them know that she knows anything.

Herrera does know—at the least he’s damn suspicious. He’s a good cop, he’s going to push her. She’ll have to keep him off her, which won’t be easy. Not because he has a job to do, but because of their own personal backstory. He’s taking this too personally—that implies obligation, and she doesn’t want to be obligated to him.

As she’s drifting off to sleep the thought that’s been going through her mind once again rises: was Laura the target, as the attackers had intimated? Or was that bullshit?

The men who killed Frank Bascomb—because yes, it was a murder, she is sure of that now, beyond any shadow of a doubt—tried to kill Laura and almost did kill her. They knew who she was: they had to, she showed their pictures to every whore and bum in town, she was summoned to a meeting with leaders of the Mexican Mafia over it, that’s how heavy this is. It was not a coincidence and it was not an accident. It was deliberate and premeditated. It had to be. They wanted her dead.

Her mind is too numb to think further. Within seconds the drugs take hold and she falls into a deep and dreamless sleep.

MacAllister Browne, the board chairman of Rainier Oil, the sixth-largest corporation in the world, sits in a back booth at Stars with Blake Hopkins, who works for him. Mac Browne is having his usual Stars drink, a perfect Rob Roy up. One of the reasons he likes Stars, besides the fact that it’s far enough away from Montgomery St. that he doesn’t feel like it’s an adjunct to his office, is that they make a good drink. A man’s drink like the old places make, Sam’s and Jack’s and Tadich’s. Mac’ll have two or three drinks before dinner, wine with, maybe cognac after. Won’t lay a glove on him.

Hopkins is drinking a cranberry juice cocktail. He knows better than to try and keep up with the boss. Especially tonight; he wants a clear head. This project in Santa Barbara is a big step up for Hopkins: it’s the largest project he’s run on his own without a senior executive looking over his shoulder. When he pulls it off—he will, he has no doubts on that score—he’ll be a vice-president, have his own division. That’s what it’s all about. This is his baby, his ticket to ride.

He looks around the spacious restaurant. Stars. An appropriate name for the place to be having this meal.

They’ve been making small talk, man talk: the Giants, Bill Walsh, graphite shafts versus metal. A waiter puts a plate of tiny Olympia oysters in front of Browne, a full dozen nestling on a bed of shaved ice. Hopkins, who isn’t partial to raw seafood, digs into his romaine salad.

Browne forks in the first oyster, savors the small mouthful. Getting to the meat of the evening: “How is it going down south?”

“Fine,” Hopkins replies. “Smooth, no problems.”

“They had a clip of the ceremony on TV for that new oceanography school,” Browne says.

“It was the lead story for two days—in the newspaper, too.”

“John Wilkerson certainly got exposure,” Browne continues. “Did you know we went to school together? College and prep school both.”

“No, I didn’t,” Hopkins answers in surprise.

It’s a funny coincidence, as Browne relates it to him: MacAllister Browne has known John Wilkerson since adolescence. Wilkerson was a class ahead at Choate and then Princeton; they even wound up joining the same prestigious eating club. But there was a fundamental difference between them: Wilkerson was born rich, from an old family. Browne, despite his highfalutin name, was working-class. He went to those places and excelled at them because he was smart as hell and because his mother, who bestowed the name “MacAllister” on him in hopes he would grow into it, had been ambitious and pushy.

They’ve kept in loose touch over the years, he and Wilkerson, but they’re not friends; they were never more than acquaintances, bound by those old school ties. Wilkerson, although an investment banker by trade, is passionate about the environment, it’s his real life’s work, while MacAllister Browne wound up going in a direction that more often than not has pitted him against the environmental movement. Wilkerson’s second great passion—scoring as much pussy as he can—also delineates the differences between the two old Tigers: Browne, now in his early sixties, has been married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and he’s never cheated on her; as far as he knows he’s the only man like him, in education and position, who has been absolutely faithful to one woman.

“Yes,” Browne affirms to the younger man. “Wilkerson was the smoothest guy I ever knew. Kind of a latter-day F. Scott Fitzgerald character. Maybe we’ll become reacquainted again, after all these years.”

“I’d say that’s inevitable.”

“That will be interesting.” Browne drains the last sip of his cocktail, signals the waiter for another.

“He hit on Miranda Sparks,” Hopkins tells the chairman. Having just been told Wilkerson is an unbridled cunt-hound allows Hopkins the license, he feels, to dispense this piece of gossip to a man a generation older who otherwise might find it slightly distasteful, given his own marital fidelity.

“I don’t doubt it,” Browne says casually—being faithful doesn’t make him a prude, he could give a shit about anyone else’s morality. “He loved the women, and they loved him.”

“Actually, she doesn’t speak that well of him.”

“He’s getting older. How do you know all this?”

“Miranda told me.”

“You’ve become good friends, I take it.” Straightforward, no judgment. Browne keeps his own counsel.

“Pretty good. I think I know when to trust her and when not to. Make that
believe
her, not
trust
her.”

“An important distinction. I’m glad you know the difference.”

The waiter clears their appetizers.

“Have you finalized our deal with her?” Browne asks, that question being the crux of this meal.

Hopkins nods. “It’s firm.” He pauses. “It’s what I told you it would have to be.”

“Because of her commitment to the project?”

Hopkins shakes his head. “Because of what we’re paying the family.”

“I think we’re paying them too much. Way too much.”

“We are. But we have to.”

“I’d like you to renegotiate,” Browne declares.

The waiter arrives with their entrees. The chairman is having a thick veal chop, grilled with rosemary, Tuscany-style. Hopkins has opted for the sole.

“I can’t do that.”

He’s being tested, he knows it. If you can’t stand the heat, get your ass out of the kitchen.

“Because?” Brown cuts into his chop. Medium rare, on the rare side. Perfect.

The waiter uncorks the wine, pours. Browne sips, nods approval. Hopkins declines, his hand over the mouth of his own glass. Not yet.

“Because Santa Barbara County’s the most environmentally sensitive and reactive county in the entire U.S.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Browne responds dryly, taking a mouthful of dark, red liquid.

Hopkins begins his explanation. “It’s private property. Start with that. They don’t want us in there, we aren’t in there. Okay? And since their property is the only workable location available to drill from, we have to come to them on their terms. I can’t emphasize that enough,” he says passionately. “If we don’t operate there we don’t do it anywhere. We’re done before the first shot’s ever fired.”

Browne listens, his face an impassive mask.

“Now we add in the kicker: the Sparks family runs the biggest environmental trust in the county, one of the largest in the entire state. Getting in bed with a company like ours is the last thing that would ever be expected of them, which is why we’re going to be able to pull this off, but we have to pay for it, and we have to protect them, which comes down to money, also.”

“How much money do you see them making off this?” Browne asks.

“After the initial contribution to the oceanography school?”

“Yes.”

“Two or three million a month, depending on volume.”

“That’s pesos, of course.” He’d better cut his meat into smaller bites or he’ll choke on a piece.

“Yeah, that would be nice, especially now with the peso gone to hell. But no, American dollars. That’s the normal coin of the realm, last I looked,” Hopkins answers.

“This is an expensive business we’re in,” Browne observes dryly. “And they don’t even control the mineral rights, the state has those. We’re paying them as much as we’re going to pay the state of California, for gosh sakes.”

“They have us over a barrel. No pun intended.”

“No chance of a renegotiation?” Browne asks again.

Hopkins shakes his head. “I’m still surprised they went for it, being such staunch conservationists, which is not a put-on, they are true believers. Which is why we have to do it this way. Even with what we’re going to be paying them I don’t know if I would have done it if I was in their shoes—they sure as hell don’t need the money, and they’re going to catch a lot of heat.”

“It’s unfortunate we can’t be completely straightforward in all this,” Browne says. “I don’t like subterfuge.”

“We’re not doing anything wrong,” Hopkins states. “They’re the ones who don’t want the full extent of their active participation known.”

“Still and all …” The older man thinks. “Down the line, once the deal is done, we’ll have to be a bit more forceful with them. Bad publicity isn’t in their best interest.” The way he says it leaves no room for argument—nobody pushes him, he’s dealt with tougher situations than this one with the Sparks family, old money or not.

Hopkins nods—a reply isn’t necessary or expected.

He is over the hump—he can feel it. Without asking, he pours some wine into his own glass. So what if he’s eating fish; he’s not auditioning for Miss Manners. “I think I did a hell of a job,” he states boldly.

“You did,” his boss tells him.

Hopkins sips the wine. He can feel its heat, matching his own glow. “Thank you.”