Recoil. Part 23

"At home managing their separate businesses."

Roger said, "You mean they just cut out and head back home right in the middle of the job?"

"Their part of the job is probably concluded. Such men are free lances."

Vasquez tapped a fingertip on Arnold Tyrone's grainy face. "When Pastor and Ezio Martin decided to employ a.s.sa.s.sins to seek out you and Walter Benson and the others, they shopped around to find out who'd be available for the work. They'd never use one of their own for this kind of a.s.signment. It's de rigueur to hire outside talent, and to hire it through an anonymous chain of intermediaries. Then if the talent is apprehended and decides to confess, nothing can be traced back to the source."

"Make your point."

"Contain your impatience. You have an annoying tendency to try to reduce everything to straight-line simplicities. There are things in life that aren't subject to that kind of reduction. An organization like Pastor's is not going to dry up and blow away if its taproot is severed. Remove Frank Pastor and the organization will go on quite happily without him. By personalizing your vendetta you render it meaningless."

"Are you suggesting I should go after the entire organization?"

"I suggest, Mr. Merle, that you decide once and for all which it is that you want-the removal of the threat against you and your family, or revenge against your enemies."

"You're making an artificial distinction."

"Not at all. If you're after revenge then by all means fill your hands with pistols and go roaring off in pursuit of Mr. Deffeldorf and Mr. Tyrone. I'm quite certain they're the men who a.s.saulted your home and hired the sniper who shot at you. But if you're after the removal of the threat then you must forget Deffeldorf and Tyrone. Individually they const.i.tute no threat to you. If Frank Pastor were removed from the scene you can be sure the hired hands would forget you instantly-they do only those jobs for which they can reasonably expect recompense, and there would be no profit in their continuing to hara.s.s you."

Mathieson pushed the photographs away. He walked to the window and stared through it. Meuth's tractor pulled a mower across the skyline, making a distant racket. Roger cleared his throat.

Vasquez hammered home his point. "You've no need to deal with outsiders who have no personal stake in your living or dying. Forget Deffeldorf and Tyrone. Forget the sniper, whoever he may have been. Focus your attentions on those who have compelling reasons to threaten you."

"Frank Pastor."

"Not merely Pastor. Think about the kind of importance these people attach to revenge. It is a familial obligation-a duty of the blood. If Frank Pastor is harmed, his family is obliged to retaliate. Anna Pastor, his wife. George Ramiro, who must maintain his reputation as the family's enforcer. C. K. Gillespie, who has designs on the family's fortunes and is, I'm told, merely waiting for the eldest Pastor daughter to reach the age of consent so that he may marry her. Ezio Martin who is a second cousin of Pastor's, his closest friend and heir apparent. Alicia Ramiro, Martin's stepsister, the wife of George Ramiro and again a cousin of Pastor's. Sandra and Nora Pastor, the daughters."

He turned away from the window and found Vasquez watching him with a peculiar narrowed eagerness. Mathieson said, "Teen-age girls?"

"They're your enemies. Make no mistake. Leave those two innocent little girls free to act and the time will come when they'll seek revenge on you. It's born in them-they have no choice. Therefore you have no choice."

"My G.o.d. This is absurd."

"Do you want to reconsider?"

"Why are you always after me to change my mind?"

"Answer my question, please."

"No. I can't reconsider. I've got to get them off my back."

Vasquez watched, unblinking.

Mathieson said, "You're testing me, aren't you."

"Testing your resolve, yes."

"Why?"

"Because you must realize the depth of your commitment. Once you start, there will be no turning back. Go after one of them and you must go after them all. You can't leave the job half done." Vasquez gathered up the photographs, squared them neatly and slid them into the envelope. "Suppose your campaign achieves the intended results-the neutralization, somehow, of the threat posed by Frank Pastor. I can't conceive of your accomplis.h.i.+ng that without incurring the rage of his family." Vasquez paused significantly. "Suppose in achieving your first goal-Pastor-you find you've offended your own moral sensibilities. Suppose you find yourself filled with self-loathing. Suppose self-disgust tempts you to take to your heels. You must realize now-before we really begin-that such a train of events would leave you and your wife and son and your friends in a far worse predicament than the one they're in now."

"How could it?"

"Your death has been a matter of sport to Frank Pastor. It's inconsequential. He's gone through the motions, he's honored the traditions to which he's obligated, but he hasn't yet devoted extraordinary energies to pursuing you. The attacks on you may have been engineered by a subordinate-perhaps Ezio Martin-and they were incidentals in Frank Pastor's life. Your demise is something he desires. But it's hardly a vital issue to him. Now if you should carry your attack directly to Pastor and do injury to him, then he and his family would drop absolutely everything in the rush to avenge themselves on you. Where a relatively insignificant proportion of their energies heretofore has been devoted to your hara.s.sment, now you would find that the entire force of their violent resources would be brought to bear in an intense concentration against you and your family."

The tractor sputtered to a stop. In the abrupt silence he could hear the breath whistling through Roger's nostrils.

Vasquez said, "I doubt you'd stand one chance in a million. You and your wife and son would not merely be tracked, found and taken. You'd very likely be subjected to punishments of agonizing painfulness before you were eventually slaughtered. As for Mr. Gilfillan and his family, one can't be sure whether their hunger for vengeance would stretch that far but it's possible."

Mathieson pulled out a chair and sat down slowly at the table. He laid both arms out flat along the tabletop and looked at the backs of his hands. Beside him Roger reached out; he felt the solid grip of Roger's fingers on his shoulder.

Vasquez was behind him and Mathieson did not look around. Eventually it forced Vasquez to walk around the table and stand on the far side looking at him. Mathieson raised his head.

In a kinder voice Vasquez said, "I have a responsibility to force you to think these things right through before you decide on a course of action. You resent it, of course-it would be unnatural if you didn't. I've thrown a few of your a.s.sumptions off the track. I've managed to depress you. I've made what already appeared difficult become all but impossible to conceive."

Roger's hand fell away; his chair sc.r.a.ped and Mathieson heard him stand up. "Tell you what you've done to me, you've made me start wondering whether you're getting a case of cold feet."

"I intend going all the way with this," Vasquez said. "Make no mistake about that."

"How do we know that? So far all I've seen is some athletics and some smoke screens."

Mathieson looked up at Roger in surprise: the anger in Roger's voice was unmistakable.

"I signed on to do something-not just set around and look at pictures and listen to your long-winded flapdoodle and wait on our b.u.t.ts for these four fire inspectors to come find us hidin' in the hayloft. So far all's I've seen you do is spend a lot of Fred's money on man-hours for your own operatives compiling these here beautiful plastic-bound Xerox dossiers, and now you're trying to tell us we can ignore Deffeldorf and Tyrone, just throw all that money and time away. h.e.l.l, the way you go at it we could all set around here waitin' for inspiration until we got long white whiskers on us."

Vasquez scowled. "We can't fight from ignorance. We'd get nowhere. Surely you can understand that. We need facts before we can move. We've got the facts now. We're sorting through them. In time we'll find facts we can use. It takes time-I'm sorry, I won't be held accountable for that, or for your impatience."

"You make it sound right reasonable. But somebody else might take a look at all this and call it foot-draggin'."

"In other words you don't trust me."

"Why should I? Why should Fred, for that matter? Just because you say out loud that you aim to go all the way with this, we supposed to believe you? Vasquez, I been listening to producers and directors talk real sweet to me all my life, and the only thing I really learned out of all that was that ninety-nine times out of a hundred those old boys are just yakking to practice their lying."

Vasquez looked at Mathieson. "Do you share your friend's distrust of me?"

"I'd like to know what your intentions are. I'd like to know your reasons-why you took this on in the first place, especially if you thought it was such a poor gamble."

"My reasons are personal."

"Something between you and Frank Pastor?"

"No. I've never had dealings with the man."

"Then what is it?" Mathieson sat up straight. "I realize it's an impertinent question."

"Impertinent? It's personal. But then the only things that matter are." Vasquez thrust his hands into his pockets. His face drew back defensively, chin tucked toward the plaid collar of his open s.h.i.+rt. "Call them my private demons. Matters of vanity and eccentric conviction. I'd prefer to leave it at that."

"Ain't enough," Roger said.

Mathieson said, "I agree with Roger. I'm sorry to pry but we've got a right to be satisfied on this. I don't want to be crude-but it's my money you're spending."

"And my time you're wasting," Roger said. "All of us, our time."

"An extraordinary amount of my own time as well," Vasquez said. "Do you know how many other cases I've had to turn away or set on the back burner?"

Mathieson's fist hit the table: "Why? You've got to tell us why."

Vasquez blinked. His shoulders rolled around and settled; his chin poked forward until he looked querulous. "Are you religious, Mr. Merle?"

It took him aback. "What? No-not particularly."

"You?"

Roger shook his head.

Vasquez said, "People who believe in G.o.d can leave the ultimate sortings-out to Him. Rewards and punishments. Heaven and h.e.l.l. When one has no faith in that, one must pay some attention to justice here and now. Otherwise it's all meaningless chaos."

Roger snapped at him: "We didn't ask for a course in philosophy."

"You're going to get one. You asked a question. I'm answering it." Vasquez's eyes swiveled bleakly toward Mathieson. "My reasons have to do with the fact that I lost my faith in G.o.d a long time ago. Do you understand at all? I'm a Chicano, Mr. Merle, I have experience of injustice."

Roger said, "You don't talk like no ignorant barrio slum."

"Nevertheless I was born in one. I was born on the south side of Tucson, Arizona. An adobe slum."

"So now we get into ethnic stuff?"

Vasquez shook his head. "I believe with Edmund Burke that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. You see I may have lost faith but I still carry the burden of absolutism-I was raised in the Church. I believe in absolute distinctions between good and evil. It would have been easier if I'd been able to adapt myself to the current fas.h.i.+ons in flexible morality. But I can't-I won't be corrupted, it would make my existence so complicated it would be impossible."

Mathieson stared at him. Was it possible Vasquez's reluctance had been caused solely by a fear of ridicule?

Vasquez said, "One meets decent people but most of them are decent largely because their lives have contained little hards.h.i.+p, little pain and little temptation. Mr. Merle is all but unique-he has faced those challenges and has not been ground down by them. He's made his choices from principle rather than expediency. I can't tell you how much I admire that."

Roger watched, skepticism undiminished. Vasquez pulled out a chair and arranged himself in it. His voice dropped; it took on the dense foggy ba.s.s tones of a church organ. "My son was drafted into the army in 1969. He submitted to the draft but pet.i.tioned to be treated as a conscientious objector. We had long arguments. He insisted he would not kill. He said that was his credo. He's a Catholic and as you know that's a congregation not noted for its pacifism, but I had no doubt of his sincerity. I put a hypothesis to him. If someone were to point a gun at his mother with the unmistakable intention of killing her, what would he do?"

Mathieson said, "What did he say?"

"The question at this juncture is what do you say?"

"I don't know what I might do. I'd try not to kill him. I'd stop him, or maybe get shot trying. But no, I wouldn't deliberately kill him."

"Those might have been my son's exact words."

Roger said, "What happened to him?"

"He was cla.s.sified I-A-o. a.s.signed as a noncombatant, a medical attendant. Near Hue, in 1970, he disappeared. He's still listed as missing."

Mathieson said, "I'm very sorry."

"Your sorrow isn't of much use."

It angered him. "I'm not a surrogate for your son. Don't work out your penances on me."

"Don't be idiotic. Or at least don't proclaim your idiocy. I'm not confusing you with my son. I'm trying to explain why I've had occasion to think these issues out."

Mathieson felt exhausted. "Do you want to argue metaphysics all day?"

Vasquez disregarded him. "A man does the sort of thing you're doing only after a great deal of considered a.n.a.lysis. To face such dangers requires a unique devotion to moral principle."

"If you say so. Seems to me I'd face more danger if I did anything else."

"Don't be disingenuous. It's not worthy of you. As we both know, you could always run."

Roger came toward the table. "To where?"

"Anywhere."

"Reckon that's the same as nowhere."

"We've tried it," Mathieson said.

Vasquez glanced from one to the other. "In any case you asked what my motives were. Are you satisfied?"

Roger gripped the edge of the table and leaned on his arms. For a long time he studied Vasquez. "I believe it. Don't ask me why."

"Very few men would believe it," Vasquez said. "It's a cynical age."

Mathieson was about to speak when he heard the door. Mrs. Meuth appeared. "Mr. Vasquez--"

"What is it?"

"Perkins says those men are coming up the road, sir."

Mathieson was out of his chair before she completed the sentence.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

Southern California: 22 September