Winter Tides (33 page)

E
DMUND LEFT THE ENGINE RUNNING.
H
E SAT STUDYING
Mayhew, ideas flitting in and out of his mind like bats. He was hot, and his flesh tingled as if he were completely wired.

“What the hell is this?” Mayhew asked him.

“We’re meeting someone.”

“Out here?”

Edmund saw that there was a dirt road ahead on the right, leading out onto the bluffs. Synchronicity again—the music dying just at the moment that the road had appeared. It was all clicking, all coming together. What looked like coincidence
always
turned out to be something more. He drove forward slowly now and turned down the road, the car bumping along over rocks and chuckholes, the Highway disappearing behind them. Mayhew shifted uneasily in his seat, clearly wide awake. He darted a glance toward the door lock, and just to frost the cake, just to give him a thrill, Edmund pushed the lock switch, and there was the click of the doors locking. “Dangerous road,” Edmund told him.

“Damn straight it is,” Mayhew said, looking uneasily out the window. “You know, I got Mends who know where I am.”

“Don’t concern yourself with any of this,” Edmund said. “Mr. Mifflin, the man we worked with before, lives down in Laguna. We’re meeting him out here.”

“Why?”

“He stables his horses near here. He’s quite an avid equestrian.” There were, in fact, horse trails along the bluffs, and Mayhew didn’t contradict him. Edmund switched off the headlights now, and the sudden darkness was so deep that he braked hard and stopped the car. There were black shadows around them—the outline of ragged shrubs against the grayer darkness of the foggy night sky, which barely glowed with moonlight. He switched the dashboard lights back on.

“If you had something to say, you didn’t have to haul me way to hell and gone out here.”

“On the contrary,” Edmund told him. “That’s just what I had to do.”

“Okay. I guess I get it. I’m scared. Is that what you want? I’m scared as hell. Look, I’m shaking bad.” He held his hand out.

Edmund glanced in the rearview mirror. The dust had settled, and the fog was impenetrable. The night was silent except for the whirring of the fan under the hood. From somewhere ahead of them there was the sound of waves breaking. He could hear the old man’s breathing.

“If you were dissatisfied with what I paid you for your services last time, you should have spoken up,” Edmund told him, “and not gone talking to my employees.” He kept his expression flat and unreadable, as if he were merely making an observation.

“Is
that
what this is about? God almighty …”

“Now, Mr. Mayhew…” Edmund shook his head and smiled faintly. “
Why
was it necessary that my employees learn about our business transaction with Mr. Mifflin?”

“Necessary? It wasn’t necessary. I came around looking for
you
. The man I spoke to loaned me enough money to see me through a couple of days, that’s all. If you’d have
paid
me …”

“That can’t be
all
, can it? I got a call from our friend Mr. Mifflin. He was
very
upset. The man you spoke to has tried to turn this to his advantage. I believe that you meant to turn it to your advantage, too.”

“By God, I did
not
. Whatever this man did, I didn’t mean for it to happen. All I wanted was another twenty lousy bucks.”

“Did you mean for
this
to happen?” He took a .45 caliber derringer out from his inside coat pocket, and, with his trigger finger along the barrel, he held it palm up, pointed at the dashboard. He realized that he had known all along that he was going to show Mayhew the gun. He hadn’t been conscious of it, but it had been inevitable.

Mayhew glared at the pistol and then at Edmund. “Shit,” he said. “Don’t threaten me, you little asshole. Punks like you …”

“Shut up!” Edmund shouted, his voice unnaturally high. He swiveled in the seat, aiming the pistol at the old man now, holding his forearm flat against his side to stop his hand from shaking. It was loaded with steel shot, which would screw up any chance of police learning anything from ballistics if they ever found the gun, which they wouldn’t. And of course they wouldn’t give a damn anyway, not about a dead bum. Mayhew was roadkill. The pistol grip felt huge in his hand, like holding onto a wooden golf ball. He had only shot the gun a few times before, and the recoil had nearly broken his wrist.

“The man you spoke to is off limits to you, Mr. Mayhew. From now on, if you want to talk to me, you can beep me. Do you know what a beeper is?”

Mayhew sat back carefully against the door. He grinned suddenly and nodded, still watching the gun. His attitude was different now that it was pointed at his face. “Yes, I do know what a beeper is. I’m … I’m fine with that.”

“You are
not
fine, Mr. Mayhew. You’re a piece of human trash. You’ll keep a civil tongue in your head when you talk to me. You’ll address me as
Mr
. Dalton from now on.” The windshield was opaque with moisture now, and out the side windows the fog rolled through in waves that intermittently obscured the brush even a few yards from the car.

“That’s fine,” he said, nodding heavily. “I’ll …”

“Do you
want
to be shot? Right here? Is this where you want to die? Because I
will
shoot you.” He lifted his hand away from his side, and it shook nearly uncontrollably, so he grabbed his wrist with his left hand to steady it. Mayhew’s eyes were wide now, focused on the gun barrel.

“No,” the old man said weakly.

“What? Speak up. And once again, address me as
Mr
. Dalton.”

“No, Mr. Dalton.” Mayhew held his hands up in front of him, as if he were giving up, and then lurched suddenly forward, knocking Edmund’s hand into the air. The pistol slammed against the low ceiling of the car, but Edmund held onto it, pushing his free hand under Mayhew’s chin as the old man lunged for the door lock. The locks disengaged, Edmund shouldered him sideways into the dashboard, and Mayhew threw himself back against the seat again, punching at Edmund’s face with his left hand as he snatched at the door handle. The car door flew open, and Mayhew propelled himself backward through it, sliding off the edge of the seat into the dirt of the roadway with a wild grunt. He was illuminated now by the dome light. Edmund threw himself prone on the seat, clutched a handful of the old man’s tweed coat, and held on. Mayhew twisted away from him, jerking his arm out of the coat sleeve and simultaneously standing up and slamming the door. The door sprang back open, the latch jammed by the empty arm of the coat, and Edmund scrambled across the console as the door slammed shut again—on his arm now, smashing against his elbow. He whimpered in pain and clambered headfirst out onto the dirt, swinging the gun up as he crawled to his knees.

He yanked on the trigger without aiming. The recoil of the little .45 slammed his arm backward so hard that he hit himself in the face with the back of his hand. He staggered to his feet, deafened by the noise, and saw the old man rushing at him through the fog, swinging his loose coat around his head like a cowboy with a rope. Before Edmund could raise the pistol again, the loose coat flapped down over his head, and Mayhew smashed into him, pushing him over backward, his knee cracking into Edmund’s chin. Edmund flailed at him as the old man snatched the coat away again, the dry bushes crackling under their feet.

Mayhew ran, waving the coat, and Edmund scrambled forward now, aiming the pistol, and saw the old man loping into the fog fifteen feet ahead, heading for the cliffs. Without thinking, Edmund squeezed the trigger, holding the gun
two-handed, ready this time for the recoil. But the trigger, somehow, was jammed against the grip, and the gun didn’t fire. He stumbled to his feet, cursing himself for having forgotten to cock it.

Mayhew was gone, disappeared in the fog. Edmund followed him, peering into the mist ahead, holding the pistol out in front of him and trying to cock it. The mechanism was stiff, and his wrist hurt like hell, sprained by the last recoil. He stopped and used both hands to cock the pistol, and then started out at a run again down the narrow trail. There was nowhere to go but straight on. Mayhew wouldn’t elude him. Within moments the old man appeared again before him, loping slowly along with a heavy limp like some shadowy, hunched devil half hidden by the fog. Edmund ran right up on him, keeping pace easily, mimicking the old man’s limp, wheezing wildly as if he were singing along. Mayhew looked over his shoulder at Edmund, clearly wild with fear, and Edmund stopped running, stood in place, and fired the pistol straight at the old man’s back, his hands jerking skyward with the recoil. Mayhew vanished, lunging forward into the mist, and Edmund set out again, nearly stumbling over the old man where he lay in the dirt of the roadway.

He stood staring at Mayhew, at the bloodstained coat that he still clutched in his arms.
A hobo till the end
, Edmund thought, snickering with laughter. He would give up his life, but he wouldn’t give up his damned stinking coat. It was poetic somehow.

This was what they had driven out here for, Edmund realized—the killing of Mr. Mayhew in the darkness and the fog, hidden from the day, separate from the world. This was why it had occurred to him like a bolt out of the blue to borrow Mifflin’s credit card. This was why he had disconnected the license plate lamp, why he had thought to bring the gun and the video camera and the rest of the equipment in the trunk, why he had pulled over at the curb at just
exactly
the point where he had access to a dark and hidden place. Even the fog … he hadn’t seen fog this heavy in twenty-five years. Why tonight, of all nights?

He was full of an energetic insight, of a keen appreciation of the degree to which all of this had almost been choreographed up until now. He had trusted the deep places in his own mind, and, once again, he hadn’t let himself down. Oil or pastel? Marble or alabaster? All the vital questions had been answered, and he knew now what lay ahead of him. He thought of the Night Girl, of her paintings, of her secret place in the woods. He knew that she was waiting here in the fog, that she would come to him, that together they would see to the final details. He turned around and headed back down the trail toward the car, where his tools waited for him in the trunk.

E
DMUND THOUGHT OF THE PAY PHONE ON THE NORTHEAST
corner of Walnut and Main, near Anne’s apartment, as his “business phone.” He used it especially when he was at work and didn’t want to be overheard making a sensitive call from an office cubicle with thin wooden and glass walls. There was a certain glamour in the pay phone calls, too, whether he was calling Social Services to make up lies on Collier or was talking to Ray Mifflin’s old friend Hector, who was doing time in Chino Prison for smuggling drugs and aliens across the border. It had been Hector who had led him to Mifflin in the first place. This morning Edmund had put through a call to Hector’s cousin, a man named Fernando in East L.A., whom he had never met or spoken to until yesterday.

Like in the old song about Alice’s Restaurant, it was true that you could get anything you want from a man in prison, and usually it didn’t cost you any more than a couple of cartons of cigarettes that you sent over to the prison property room. Some sorts of information cost considerably
more than that, of course, but all Edmund had needed this time was information about purchasing false identification documents—a simple set, two authentic credit cards and a fake driver’s license. Stealing and using Mifflin’s cards had been easy, but perhaps wouldn’t have been as easy if he had hit a bigger, more security-conscious car rental agency like Hertz or Avis. Anyway, working the same kind of hoax more than once was both dangerous and inartistic.

Things had evolved to the point where Edmund needed
nom de plume
. There was certain work that an artist such as himself simply couldn’t do under his own name, no matter how elegant the work. What had happened with Mayhew was that sort of work. He wished that he could choose the name himself, but he probably wouldn’t be able to, not on short notice. He was anxious to give Mifflin his cards back, if only to see how the man would react when he discovered that once again he was a pawn, entirely at the mercy of forces he couldn’t begin to comprehend. And who could blame him? Mifflin no doubt thought by now that he was the means to an end; that Edmund was simply using him to make a quick bundle of money. There was no way that he could guess that the means and the end were the same, that he was as much the centerpiece of Edmund’s elaborate table setting as Mayhew had been. Mifflin’s fate was still hidden from Edmund, but by and by it would be revealed, and then Edmund would reveal it to Mifflin….

Edmund could hear music over the phone now, some kind of salsa music, and the sound of pots and pans clanging around, as if Fernando had uncradled a phone in the kitchen of a restaurant. He had the feeling that the man was making him wait just for the hell of it, maybe to get a psychological upper hand on him. But of course he had to put up with that kind of moronic behavior. He wasn’t in a position right now to do anything about it.

“What?” Edmund asked. The sudden voice on the other end had taken him by surprise.

“Okay. You said you need this quick?”

“The quicker the better.”

“Quick’s more expensive.”

“We were talking about twelve hundred dollars,” Edmund told him.

“Fifteen hundred is quicker.”

Edmund was silent for a moment. Obviously he was being screwed out of three hundred dollars. And if there was one thing he couldn’t tolerate, it was somebody weaseling his money, although he didn’t give much of a damn for the money itself.

“I can do it for twelve hundred,” Fernando said, “but it’s going to take another couple of days.”

“Let’s do it now,” Edmund told him.

“All right. Now what about the credit cards?”

“Visa and American Express.”

“Yeah, but what quality? For the money we’re talking you get stolen cards; they’ll be good maybe forty-eight, seventy-two hours max before they’re reported. You’ve got to move pretty fast.”