The Kill Riff (13 page)

    Burt's desk was modern, glass-topped, open. On the wall facing him were rows of framed glossies and awards of merit-plaques and thank-yous. Tiny gold seals glittered. Kroeger Concepts had taken a Rubens Award in 1980 for a technical ad showing a stupendously ugly hound dog on a rural road, head in paws, face sagging into the most melancholy expression imaginable. Looming over him in the light of a country dusk was an empty mailbox-the barn-shaped type, with a little red flag. Nothing else for miles. The caption read: THERE MUST BE WORSE THINGS THAN MISSING THE LATEST ISSUE OF RAW FOOTAGE… The dog was Evelyn's, the suggestion had been Lucas's, the game form of the ad had been Burt's.

    Here was Burt shaking hands with Ned Tanen of Universal Pictures. Here was Burt with Steven Spielberg at a reception, a shot captured by Gustavo de la Luces. Here were Burt and Lucas arm in arm, frozen in a vaudeville pose, stopped in midkick, flourishing T squares in place of tap-dancing canes. The good old days. Before Lucas had taken his "vacation."

    The pill bottle sat on the glass desktop, waiting for him, and Burt shot a pill down with water. Everyone wanted to remind him that Lucas had suffered a small mental setback. Burt wanted to forget and continue as before. The hold light on his desk phone blinked at him accusingly, rushing him. He already resented Sara Windsor. Lucas had said she was a friend, intimated that she might become even more-a stabilizing, healing replacement for Cory, a lover to fill the emotional hole left by Kristen. She probably knew volumes about Lucas. So why was she calling?

    Why all this prodding, just when Burt's doubts had been comfortably filed away?

    He sighed, then lifted the receiver. "Burt Kroeger here."

    "Hello." Her timbre indicated she was used to being put on hold, not thrilled, yet aware of its necessity.

    He could have made a grunt of assent or an encouraging noise, but he didn't.
Let her set the tone,
he thought.

    "Once upon a time, Lucas told me that if I ever needed anything, and he was incommunicado, Burton Kroeger could, quote, get it, do it, or fix it, unquote."

    Burt chuckled despite his mood. "That's Lucas all right. What can I do for you?"

    "Well… I won myself some unanticipated time off. I thought I might drive down to L.A. and spend some time with Lucas, you know, without the oppressive professional atmosphere up here. We'd planned to do the town, but set no schedule. I gather he filled you in?"

    "In broad outline, yes."

    "He told me that you are a happily married man, that your wife's name is Diana, and she wrangles real estate. Also does stroganoff worthy of the czars."

    "I'm surprised he didn't set us up for a free dinner and invite you," said Burt, settling in. "I'd better be careful. You might already know enough to put me away."

    She laughed politely. "He only said good things about you."

    "And a smarmier tale you'll find nowhere. Except maybe in the pages of Hustler, which isn't one of our accounts right now. Which is a shame, because they bill high."

    "Did Lucas mention his plan to get together with me once he'd gotten back to Los Angeles?"

    There it was-the direct probing Burt had expected. He had to devise an answer that would not sound as if it were coming from a castle sentry on the safe side of the moat. What was it Lucas had told him?
We've arranged to get together later, after a few weeks. In a nonprofessional capacity.
He'd treated the trip to the cabin at Point Pitt as a matter of personal confidence, as if he didn't want Sara butting in, at least not yet. If she wasn't supposed to know where he was-and it sure sounded like she didn't-it was not Burt's place to spill any beans.

    Play professional, he thought. Grab the reins and jump ahead of her next question.

    "I think I know where you're going. Let me ease your mind on a couple of scores, Sara-if I can call you Sara?"

    A sound of relief on the far end. "If you can be Burt to me."

    "Great. Lucas isn't at home. He decided on the spur of the moment to get back to nature for a few weeks. Camping. Hiking. You know. Come back to deal with the city after dealing with the great outdoors. I'm sure he'll call you before he calls me."

    A telling silence, then: "He didn't tell you where he was headed?"

    "North was about as specific as he got."

    "San Francisco?"

    "No idea, Sara."

    "That's not… good." She seemed to say this away from the mouthpiece.

    "Anything the matter?"

    "No. No, I'm sure he's just, as you say, getting away from it all for a while. But there's no specific address, no phone number for messages?"

    "I'm it," said Burt. "Sara, forgive me if I presume on such a short acquaintance, but let me submit that the idea of being constantly watched at Olive Grove-not direct surveillance or anything like that, just that everpresent administrative air-probably inspired him to go breathe free for a few days before phasing back into the city grind. I know I'd go a little nuts-you should pardon the expression. But I'm positive he's okay. And I'm positive he's not running away from you, because I think you're important to him, and not just as his shrink. I caught strong vibes. Don't worry."

    "You sound like a lay analyst yourself."

    "Lucas always comes back, Sara. That's it. Simple, huh?"

    "So he probably hasn't been keeping track of the news, or television, stuff like that."

    There was a lot of hiss clogging the connection. Burt wanted the conversation over. "If you want to trade phone numbers, Sara, I'll give him yours if he calls me. You still coming to L.A.?"

    "I do have some other things to take care of in the city. I'll be driving down, then driving back day after next." She reeled off several numbers, including her home phone in the bedroom community of Dos Piedras, near Olive Grove, and several extensions at the hospital. Burt saw no harm in giving her his home phone. He rather liked the idea of Diana lifting the receiver and being sent into a momentary panic at the fluid sound of Sara's voice.

    "Since I thought of dinner, it's on as soon as Lucas resurfaces," he said. "Deal?"

    "That doesn't sound too dangerous. I accept. I assume Lucas will."

    
She had not gotten what she wanted,
Burt thought after they rang off.
Wonder what she was looking for?
Lucas himself had been very fuzzy about tacking down the exact location of his cabin, and Burt had a good sense of when not to pry. There was nothing but coastline up there. A cabin snuggled into the navel of some mountain "near" Point Pitt would be a challenge to sniff out. Hell, there were entire towns up there nobody knew existed.

    He decided that mentioning Point Pitt, or the fact Lucas had taken a tape deck, would have no value. He'd idly wondered what Lucas would do with a tape deck, since he was supposedly camping out. But he'd know if he was supposed to.

    He wondered what Sara had seen on the news. But he decided not to worry that one to death, either.

    

    

    HER NAME WAS CASS, AND she had been beaten up and abandoned in the mountains by her boyfriend.

    
Ex-boyfriend,
thought Lucas.

    He'd talked her into a camping excursion, and once they were removed from civilization, he'd reverted to an anthropoid stage and punched the shit out of her. There had been a lot of screaming about sexual misconduct. She saw his massive fist flying toward her face, then sparks, and that was all until she heard his truck speeding away. All her stuff was in it; sling bag, money, ID, everything. The guy's name was Reese. He drove a Datsun long-bed with a fancy camper shell on the back and Montana plates. Lucas remembered passing the truck on his way north. Cass did not remember being passed by his Bronco, and that was just as well.

    She had related all that while sipping hot coffee laced with a lot of sugar. Lucas had switched her from Percodans to stiff codeine pills. Now she was sponge bathing in the outside shower stall while he stood near the barbecue, hoping she didn't tumble and complicate the damage already done. She washed the woods off herself with slow, cautious movements. Her reach was restricted by pain.

    Her rugged clothing had taken some of the abuse for her, but her chest was a disaster area. Reese had used her breasts for boxing practice, and the bruises were vast and ugly. Contusions outlined all her ribs on one side.

    Her calves were firm and rounded from exercise; her thighs were almost muscularly expressive. The grace of her legs was interrupted by a ladder of welts. Once she fumbled and fell heavily into the side of the stall; Lucas was across the patio in a shot to catch her. She wiped a fat sponge along each arm, sluicing water down her body, rinsing away dirt and scabs and pain. She toweled off clumsily; she had trouble turning her head and was still using only her right eye for the most part. It obviously hurt like hell to move at all. Yet she had insisted on cleaning up.

    "I can smell myself," she'd said. "Gag. You'll have to fumigate your sleeping bag." When Lucas had told her about flinging her socks out the back door, she'd almost laughed. "Yeah. Bet they were real killers. Maybe we should just stuff my clothes into the fireplace. They're beyond detergent by now."

    With Lucas' help, over the tub sink, she'd managed to get the dry blood out of her hair.

    Seeing her naked in the shadows of a sun creeping toward noon, Lucas felt a nagging stab of
deja vu
. It wasn't just the idea of a surrogate daughter. It was the physical damage. Something about Cass' wounds keyed a nonspecific memory in him, a feeling of familiarity tied to Kristen.

    But no positive connection. He would never think of wreaking such injuries on Kristen, not the Kristen he remembered.

    Under normal circumstances, he realized, Cass would be very attractive. Not pretty. Pretty described twelve-year-olds in Easter dresses or costly trifles that were mostly frills and flowers. Cass would be attractive, with those eyes so direct and startlingly colored, with all that auburn hair untrussed, with her appealing shape and physique. She made no fuss about her nakedness; there were graver matters to be dealt with. He watched her fight her way determinedly into the merchant marine sweater.

    When her head and one arm were trapped inside, he rescued her. "Here. Hold your right arm still."

    "The sweater is winning," she said timidly.

    He guided her into the garment. "Don't bend your other arm back so far."

    "I can't, anyway." Her head poked through. "Jesus Christ, I never thought I'd wish for a bra, you know? But every time I move, my tits countermove, and it's like torture. Like what I imagine being gut shot feels like. Only higher up." She folded her arms, framing her breasts.

    "Like being kicked in the balls."

    She looked into his eyes to see if he was putting her on. "If you say so. My dear Reese never called them balls. It was always nuts, a kick in the nuts."

    "I don't like that word."

    "Aha-so you do have a delicacy threshold. The mark of the mature, older man." Once unclogged, her voice was low and resonant. He imagined her steering chat, kicking that voice over into sultry when she needed to. She spoke intelligently and did not trip over the English language the way her peers might.

    "One of Reese's big hangups was getting kicked in the balls," she said. "He got that gleam in his eyes. I knew I was going to get stomped, and there was no place to run, so I let him have it. Boom-he folded up like a card table hit by a falling safe. Unfortunately, he also got back up. I kept thinking, What do I do now? He had the car keys in his pocket. He can run faster and jump higher. And he got up. And I stood there like a heroine in a bad horror movie, you know, screaming at the monster instead of running like hell? And the monster pounded the shit out of me, jumped in his rig, and sped away into the sunset. I suppose he thought I'd die from the exposure. More likely he just got crazed, and ran. Which is why I started blundering through the woods in the dead of night. He might have come back for more." Lucas helped her into the bib coverall with the Rolling Stones patch on the butt. Before buttoning her up, he said, "Maybe we could use an Ace bandage to bind your chest as well as your ribs. I've seen it for breast operations-the idea is to immobilize the breasts so you don't open up sutures."

    "Yowtch." She grimaced. "Is that for real?"

    "Yeah. My wife had breast surgery once. Nothing serious. That's where I encountered it. Uh, my ex-wife."

    "How ex is your ex-wife?"

    "My late ex-wife." It hurt not at all to say it.

    Cass paused. "You a widower?"

    "No. She was an ex before she was-"

    "What was her name?"

    "Cory." He looked around, almost guiltily. "Yea or nay on the breast-binding technique? It'll be pretty warm inside all the clothes and bandages."

    "I say let's try it. It can't feel worse than it does already. Hike up the sweater." She dropped the bib and held out her arms. She was full-breasted but not heavy, and her small nipples shrank at the shock of air. Up close, the bruises were much uglier. Blood had been forced through the skin.

    Lucas slowly mummified her with an Ace bandage. "Why did Whats is name-Reese. Why did he go berserk?"

    "Thought I mentioned it," she said. "We got into a tiff about who was sleeping with whom. Reese had formulated this unbelievable set of rules for me. It might have helped if I'd known what the hell they were. I guess, to Reese, worthy women knew his rules instinctively. Ouch!"

    "Sorry."

    "His ego required utter fidelity. At the same time, his ego was so huge that it made him fuck as many girls as he could pounce on. When I discovered how extensive Reese's pouncing had gotten, I brought it up. That was the first time he smacked me. Stupid me, I thought
I
had overreacted.