Metzgers dog, p.15
Metzger's Dog, page 15
Immelmann said to Margaret, “This doesn’t feel like a good place to be. In a minute they’re going to figure out some way of closing off the road.” As he said it, the sound of horns honking in the distance reached them.
“Into the car,” said Margaret.
Immelmann sat beside her, his knees nearly to his chest as the car began to creep across the field among hundreds of others. An ancient Austin Healey sedan drifted beside them in somnolent dignity, the driver a tiny, elderly lady with blue-gray hair who held a stemmed wineglass in her free hand.
To their right a squadron of howling Porsches knifed across the green toward the right-hand margin of the dirt road, only to find their flanking movement blocked by a narrowing at the first turn. They crouched in a frustrated line beside the main stream of traffic, sputtering and growling, the lead car rolling backward a few feet and then rocking forward again, threatening to wedge its nose between two Mercedes convertibles if so much as a yard of space should appear between them.
In the distance other cars were driving the perimeter of the broad pasture, streaming contrails of dust. “I guess we did this wrong,” Immelmann said. “There just wasn’t any way of knowing when they’d start up.”
“Why did they?” said Margaret. “Where are they going?”
“I don’t know. The way it works is that they hand out the route map when you start, and write down your starting time. At each of the checkpoints along the route they write down the time you got there. It’s not a race. The idea is to be efficient, not fast. We don’t have the route because we didn’t register.”
“Have you seen anybody get out yet?”
“Not yet. They’re all just driving around or joining the traffic jam. We might be better off with the crowd. There doesn’t seem to be a service road or anything.”
“I’m not going out there with stolen license plates and all this money in the car. Make sure no mental defectives come up on our right.” She steered the car to the right, veering over quickly while Immelmann held his arm out the window. Behind them the driver of an orange Audi hesitated and let Margaret break through the line to drive straight for the stand of tall trees along the edge of the field.
Immelmann said, “Trees ahead, Sunshine. Hard to starboard.” He waited a few seconds and said a little louder, “Trees. Big ones.” At last he said, “What the hell are you doing?”
“The biggest trees. You said Will Rogers had horses, so that’s got to be the way out.” She drove relentlessly, the trees now looming above them like palisades.
“Horses don’t live in trees,” said Immelmann.
“No, but there have to be bridle paths, and that’s where they’ll be, where the trees were already big enough to have room between them, and the underbrush is stunted, and—” The car slowed, then labored up a small slope and in among the trees. It jiggled over a line of exposed roots, then jerked up and down violently a few times as she meandered among the tree trunks. Immelmann gripped the dashboard and the door, but as they turned and bumped over a rock that was hidden by a tuft of weeds his head hammered into the roof of the car. “Are you okay?” she asked.
His eyes were closed. She couldn’t tell if he was nodding or if his neck had gone limp. She stopped the car, and he opened his eyes and smiled.
“I said, ‘Are you okay?’”
“Better by the second. Stay here.” He got out of the car and ran through the woods, staring at the ground. For a time she could see him running from side to side like a football player dodging invisible tacklers. Suddenly he seemed to throw himself full length on the ground as though one of them had caught him, but then she noticed the root he’d tripped on. He got up and ran again, this time out of sight beyond the trees. Overhead Margaret could hear the airplanes again, louder now that she was far from the noise of the cars in the pasture.
She wondered if she’d made a mistake. Immelmann must know more than she did about horses and riding and—if only he hadn’t looked that way a moment ago, running off like a madman in the woods, with the airplanes up there, and who knew what else down here, searching. She shivered, suddenly aware of herself: Here I am. I know this woman sitting in the woods in a car, and I’m not somebody else watching her, and it’s not a dream I dreamed. I am in trouble. I may very well die in a few minutes. I may die. Why does it matter so much that I’m alone in this car when it happens?
Immelmann appeared beside her, and she jumped. A wave of heat seemed to slide down her spine, but she said, “Oh.”
“Follow me.” He started trotting again, and she put the car in gear and drove after him. At first she felt as though it really was a dream, watching his muscular back bobbing up and down as she drove. It was as though she were floating after him among the trees. After the first few turns her body wasn’t cold anymore, it was just hands and eyes gauging the space she had to weave along the meandering path, her touch on the wheel precise and accurate. Once she steered between two trees that nearly touched the fenders, but miraculously the car passed without scraping.
Finally they were through the woods, and Immelmann was standing in a clearing, waiting. She stopped the car and he got in and closed the door. “Driver, take me to the bank. Lots of room up there,” he said.
Margaret’s eyes followed his finger, and she drove toward the spot. It was a path, old and overgrown with weeds and grass, but now she could drive faster.
“Margaret, you’re a genius,” Immelmann said.
“Yes, that’s true.”
“Yeah, it’s really a good thing,” he went on, “because I’ve been thinking. This definitely is an old horse path. What if it leads back to the ranch house?”
“That would be annoying.”
“It’d ruin my day.”
KEPLER SAT IN THE RENTED CHEVROLET on the shoulder of the highway, three hundred yards past the park entrance. He had folded his jacket into a thick pad on the sill of the window to hold the foregrip of the rifle. There was nothing esoteric about this kind of shooting. It was all a matter of adequate preparation; keeping your pulse rate low, and making deliberate, economical movements.
The Mannlicher Model ST rifle’s clip held only three of the thick, heavy cartridges, so it wasn’t a question of squeezing off a few rounds to get the feel of things. He knew he wouldn’t need to. All he had to do was hit something. The Winchester .458 Magnum steel-jacketed five-hundred-grain bullet would still be traveling at well over fifteen hundred feet per second when it arrived. When it got there it would still easily pierce a car door. Kepler stared into the eyepiece of the Weaver T-25 scope. The entrance to the park drive was a strange, circular scene that consisted of only about twenty feet of glittering green leaves and bristling grass, all supernaturally bright and clear because of the scope’s optics, but from this distance silent, like a world seen through a closed window.
He held the crosshairs on a dandelion for a few seconds, then slowly moved down the stem and across to a rock on the drive at the entrance. He would have to use the time after the shot and before the report of the rifle reached their ears to recover from the vicious recoil, chamber the next round with the bolt, and aim again.
He rested the rifle on the windowsill and watched the traffic on the highway. Already there were cars that must have come from the baseball fields and picnic groves on the other side of the park. When he heard the airplane engines he knew something must be wrong. There was supposed to be only one airplane, and it sounded like more. A few seconds later he saw Chinese Gordon’s van pass him, going toward Sunset in the midst of a line of small foreign cars. He thought of signaling, but something else caught his eye. Already cars were streaming out of the park, much faster than he’d expected. He stared through the telescopic sight at the faces of the drivers, but their expressions didn’t seem to show alarm or even worry. The third one out was laughing, and the girl next to him leaned over to kiss his cheek as he skidded around the curve. They weren’t running from something, he decided. They were just idiots. Still, there should be only one airplane.
Kepler held the crosshairs on a level a few inches below the side window of the next car, and he left them there after the car whisked past. Something was wrong, and if there was a trap, this was where it would have to be. Then he saw it. A dark blue sedan pulled up beside the highway, then drifted slowly across the park entrance. Inside were four men wearing sportcoats and tinted glasses. Two got out, and one of them opened the hood of the car and stood looking down at the engine.
Almost immediately Kepler heard the faint honking of the distant cars trapped in the park. Overhead he could see four airplanes circling and swooping over the field. There were only a few choices, and none of them seemed to fit. With the elephant gun he could immobilize the car, but he couldn’t move it. Something had to change, and there was only one way to do it. He emptied his lungs halfway and lined up the crosshairs on the man standing in front of the car. He wished he’d brought something smaller. There wouldn’t be much left of this man’s chest. He couldn’t even aim low and just take a leg off, or the slug might pass through and into the engine. But when the others saw it they’d move as fast as they could, and that meant the car would be out of the way.
He grasped the stock and started to squeeze the trigger, then remembered. It would be smart to have his own engine running before he did it, even if it shook the car a little. All he had to do was hit any part of the man, and he’d be such a gruesome sight the others would drive over his body to get out of there. Kepler turned around in the seat and reached for the key, but as he did, he looked through the windshield and smiled.
Through the woods beside the road a yellow Volkswagen was bouncing along slowly, making its laborious and choppy progress over roots and stones and ruts, the weeds parting at its bumper. As it reached the highway it flashed its headlights at him and he laughed aloud. He reached over to click the safety catch on the rifle and muttered, “Gentlemen, start your engines.”
CHINESE GORDON WATCHED THE LINE of small, bright cars rocking on the curves of Sunset Boulevard toward the canyons. He cursed himself for what he was doing. Kepler would give him another lecture on urban commando operational procedure. Nobody was supposed to change plans in the middle, no matter what happened. Now he was parked in front of the Seven-Eleven on one of the busiest corners of Los Angeles, with his motor running and his eyes on the rearview mirror.
He had to hope that at least one of the cars had gotten out. He hoped that Margaret had gotten out. It was different for Immelmann and Kepler. He knew that was a lie, too. The whole thing stank so much it didn’t matter who couldn’t get out of it, but the thought of Margaret in danger made him feel frantic. It wasn’t his fault, he was the only one capable of firing the gun in the van. Margaret and Immelmann had to be the ones to take out the money. It wasn’t his fault. Yes, it was his fault.
If only one of the cars made it out. If only Margaret made it to the highway. He watched the line of foreign cars sputtering at the traffic light. Maybe the thing to do was create a diversion. It would be easy to line up the van with the gas station across the street and make this corner look like a war zone, but not yet, not while there was still a chance they’d made it the easy way.
Finally he saw the yellow Volkswagen drive up to the intersection and swing into a right turn. Behind it was Kepler’s rented car. Kepler was drumming his fingers on the steering wheel to some inaudible rhythm of the car radio. Chinese Gordon pulled the van out onto the street two cars behind him and followed.
Chinese Gordon was in a better mood now. He sang a verse of “Let My People Go” as he drove along, his eyes flickering upward to the rearview mirror every few seconds to search for the wrong kind of car with the wrong kind of passengers. He knew that in his present mood some part of him was wishing for it, so it wouldn’t happen. He hoped Margaret hadn’t taken too many chances to pick up the sacks they’d dropped from the airplane. As soon as he’d seen the second airplane he’d given up any thought that the sacks contained money. These people couldn’t be trusted, it was as simple as that. He hoped the others wouldn’t be too disappointed, but there was no getting around the fact that some things just didn’t come easily. Chinese Gordon resolved to say that to them, if necessary, and any other platitudes that seemed likely to raise their spirits and ease the strains to come. As he drove the smooth, winding highway, he reflected on the enormity of human folly. He had always considered himself a reasonable man, and he’d offered these people a chance to buy him out safely for a sum that must be petty cash for them. This time he was going to demonstrate that a few of his other choices had big, sharp teeth.
22 The Deputy Director paced near the door of the conference room, a distant, solitary figure dwarfed by the vast maps on the walls above him.
At the end of the table Goldschmidt whispered to Porterfield, “We both said it wouldn’t work. Do you think it would be more polite to be somewhere far away while they go through with it and he finds out for himself?”
Porterfield shook his head slowly and watched the Deputy Director. “We might learn something by accident if we pay attention.”
“You mean from watching Generalissimo Pines pacing in his bunker?”
“Of course not. From the reports of the field people.”
“Then we might as well make it interesting. I say they never show up at the drop. Is a hundred dollars okay with you?”
“My hundred says they show up at the drop and get away clean with the sacks.”
“All right. What happens if Pines and the Director get lucky and pick up one or two of them?”
“Fair is fair. We give all the money to Pines.”
Kearns leaned forward from across the table. “Do you mind if I get in on this?”
“Not at all,” said Goldschmidt. “What’s your pleasure?”
“I say the Los Angeles police arrest somebody in the field crew and Racine has to go bail for him.”
“Very likely,” Goldschmidt snorted. “I wish I’d taken that possibility myself. You know, of course, that if anything in this farcical operation works, Pines will win a handsome sum without betting anything?”
Porterfield yawned. “That’s the best part of the game. If he doesn’t get all of them and every copy of the papers, he’ll lose his job—”
“Not relevant,” Kearns interrupted. “He’ll go back to the Mister Food Corporation and make five times as much.”
Porterfield continued, “No, I don’t think he’ll go back there. If he loses his job, he’ll also lose his bodyguards.”
KEPLER POPPED THE TOP of a beer can and took a gulp. “There’s not a whole lot of point to doing this.”
“I suppose not,” Margaret said, shrugging. “I’m a little bit curious, though, aren’t you? We did go to an awful lot of trouble.”
“So did they, and they’ve been at this a lot longer than we have. It’s probably four bags full of rabid weasels.”
Chinese Gordon said, “We have to open them, and it has to be now. If there’s a transmitter inside, we can’t take the bags home.”
“Agreed,” said Immelmann. “Let’s get to it and then out of here.” He kicked one of the bags and then took a folding knife out of his pocket and began to slit the stitching on the bag’s lower seam carefully, squinting to see that the blade didn’t penetrate too deeply.
Kepler swallowed more beer and said, “It’s a strange fact of life that there are people who look intelligent, and others who don’t.” He stared at the green hillside across the road.
Immelmann peered into the bag, then reached inside. “Hello. What have we here?” He handed the bag to Chinese Gordon and began to work on the second bag.
Chinese Gordon disappeared into the back of the van. When he didn’t return, Margaret followed. “Well? What is it? Will it blow up?” she asked.
Chinese Gordon sat cross-legged inside, the empty bag beside him. He was frowning, but he shook his head.
“Then what is it?”
Immelmann was staring into the second bag. “There’s some money. Hundred-dollar bills.”
“What else?”
“Newspaper. More cut-up newspaper than we’ll ever need.”
WHEN MARGARET AWOKE IN THE MORNING, Chinese Gordon was sitting in his bathrobe at the kitchen table with his hands folded. He appeared to be studying Doctor Henry Metzger, who was lying on the table beside Chinese Gordon’s coffee cup. Margaret walked up behind Chinese Gordon and kissed the top of his head.
“Nice,” he said. She petted Doctor Henry Metzger’s head, and the cat’s eyes narrowed slightly in acknowledgment. At Chinese Gordon’s feet the huge dog lay on its side, the long, pink tongue draped along its jowl.
“How long have you been up?”
“Don’t know. A long time.”
“All three of you?”
“More or less.”
“Please don’t be cranky.”
“We’re not cranky.”
Two hours later Margaret left for the market. When she returned, Chinese Gordon was in exactly the same position. The dog raised its head for a moment and stared at her, then lowered it. When Margaret crossed Chinese Gordon’s field of vision, he smiled.
Margaret spent the afternoon in the bedroom. For a time she read three magazines she’d bought in the supermarket, and then she fell asleep. When consciousness returned, the first thing she saw was Chinese Gordon, still in the kitchen, staring at his cat, the weak, yellow light of the waning sun falling across the table.
Margaret got up and walked into the kitchen. She put her hands on Chinese Gordon’s hunched shoulders and said, “Chinese, why are you doing this? It’s okay to be disappointed, but you can’t become a catatonic.”
Chinese Gordon shook his head. “I’m not.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m thinking.”
“What are you thinking?”
“I’ll tell you when I’ve thought it.”
