Death Benefits_ A Novel Part 3

"Like what?"

"Like they have to wash their hair. It was better than that, but it was still-I remember-she had to study for an exam we were having the day after the concert." He glared. "Satisfied?"

"You were twenty-two, and so was she, and neither of you was married," said Stillman. "Jesus, I don't know about people in your generation. You look the same as people used to, except for the hair, but you're not."

Walker said, "What's the complaint?"

"It would seem to me," Stillman said, "that the natural thing would be to make friends, have foolish s.e.xual relations.h.i.+ps, blow your paycheck, feel remorse. But you don't. All of you are so serious, so interested in making the leap from third a.s.sistant manager to second a.s.sistant manager. What is it? Are you all crazy for money?"

Walker stared out the window, pretending not to listen.

"Tell me this. Are men and women still attracted to each other?"

"I was attracted, she wasn't."

"That rea.s.sures me about you, anyway. A twenty-four-year-old who can't wait to be sixty and move into the corner office has got a problem."

Stillman stopped the car in front of a convenience store, but he didn't go in. Instead, he walked down the sidewalk and turned the corner onto a residential street. Walker got out and caught up, but Stillman still seemed to be marveling over the degeneration of civilization.

"Mind if I ask where we're going?" asked Walker.

Stillman seemed pleased. "Not at all. In that house up there to the right is Ellen Snyder's apartment. Bottom floor, rear entry."

"Wouldn't she be at work? It's barely three o'clock."

"She would be, if she were doing that sort of thing these days, but she isn't."

"They fired her for paying off a policy?"

Stillman shook his head. "They didn't fire her, and she didn't quit, either. She just seems to have gotten scarce." Stillman was up the driveway now, and he approached the door.

An uneasiness came over Walker. "Then why are we here?"

Stillman reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a pair of thin leather gloves.

"You aren't ...." said Walker.

Stillman knocked on the door, then put his ear to the door and listened. He knocked again. He shrugged at Walker. "See? What can I do?" He took out a pocketknife, wiggled the blade around between the door and the jamb for a couple of seconds, held it there, and pushed the door open. Walker backed a few paces away, but Stillman muttered, "Sitting in the car doesn't make you less guilty than I am, it just makes you easier to find."

Walker stopped backing away. He was almost relieved that Stillman had misinterpreted his reluctance. He was horrified at this man making this kind of intrusion on Ellen, but the mention of guilt made him realize that it was better this way. If Stillman was honest, he would see that there was nothing but evidence of Ellen's innocence, and leave her alone. If he was trying to frame her, then he had just made a mistake.

Stillman stepped in and held the door. "Come on in."

Walker had just crossed the threshold into a small, dark kitchen when Stillman edged past him and held his arm. "Don't touch anything."

Walker followed Stillman's eyes. He was looking at a window on the far side of the kitchen above the sink. The curtain swayed a little, then blew inward slightly as Stillman stepped toward it. He pulled the curtain aside to reveal electrical tape in an X shape from corner to corner of the upper pane, and a network of cracks. A couple of large triangles were missing.

"I guess she isn't very good at fixing broken windows," said Walker. "If I'd known, I might have tried telling her I was handy around the house."

"It's gotten lesser men where they wanted to go," said Stillman. "But that's not a repair job, it's a B and E. If you whack a window it goes crash, tinkle. If you tape it, it just goes thump. You reach in and unlock it."

Walker quickly moved through the doorway to the living room, his eyes scanning.

Stillman was instantly at his side. "What are you doing?"

"What if she was here when they broke in? She could be lying somewhere bleeding to death."

Stillman held his arm again. "Not for four days. If she's here, believe me, she can wait." He stepped ahead of Walker. "I don't think she is, of course."

"At least let me look." He jerked his arm away.

"I'll do it," said Stillman.

"Why you?"

Stillman sighed. "Because in your fit of chivalry you'll tromp all over everything that might tell me what happened here. Besides, I'm beginning to like you. A four-day stiff starts to get ripe. That means if she's here, somebody chopped her up and put her in a Coleman ice chest. You would find that looking at her would spoil the word 'picnic' for you forever."

Stillman moved rapidly across the living room, stepping in a straight path along the wall with his eyes on the floor. He opened a closet, then entered a doorway to the left that Walker judged must be the bedroom. In a moment he emerged, moved into another room, then returned to the kitchen. He stepped past Walker to the refrigerator, knocked on the front, opened it, then opened the freezer door. "n.o.body's home in there," he announced. "Sit down and relax for a while, and I'll call you if I need you."

Walker hesitated for a moment. Why wasn't she here? He reluctantly admitted to himself that maybe if he left Stillman alone, he would find out. He sat at the kitchen table and watched Stillman through the doorway. He walked in a spiral motion around the living room, staring at the floor until he reached the center. He stepped to the bookshelf and moved books around. He examined the back of the television set, did something to the radio, studied the pictures on the wall, the empty mantel above the fireplace. He looked at the windowsills and latches, the light fixtures.

As Stillman completed each operation, Walker had to resist asking, "What's that? What are you looking at? What does it mean?" At six o'clock, he heard a car in the driveway, and then there were footsteps above the ceiling. They were light and quick-a woman, probably. In the silence he heard water running, faint music that he recognized as the theme of a commercial for dog food. Stillman kept at it.

Finally, when the sun was down and the kitchen was almost completely black, Stillman came in and took off his gloves. Walker said, "Did you come to tell me something?"

"Yeah. I'm hungry." Stillman walked to the door, opened it, and left. He was walking down the driveway when Walker came out. Walker hesitated, then pushed in the lock b.u.t.ton with his fist, grasped the k.n.o.b with his coat, and closed the door. He caught up with Stillman on the sidewalk.

After they had walked a short distance, Stillman reached into his jacket and pulled out a folded sheaf of papers. "I'd like you to look at this."

Walker took the papers. "What is it?"

"It's six sheets of paper. Look them over."

Walker scanned the sheets as he walked, but that didn't diminish his confusion. "It's a lot of addresses and phone numbers. Restaurants, hotels, car-rental agencies ...hospitals. Why do you suppose she had them?"

Stillman took the sheets back. "She didn't. Whenever I go anywhere, I take a few addresses with me." He folded the sheets and returned them to his pocket.

"Hospitals?"

"You want to start looking for them after you need one?"

"Oh," said Walker. "Why did you want me to look at it?"

"Because I didn't find anything in the apartment," he said. "If somebody is watching the place, we want them to think we did."

"We do?"

"Yep," said Stillman. "If they broke in to look for something, they'll think we found it. If they broke in to clean up, they'll think they forgot something."

"What if they broke in because they're burglars who do that for a living?"

Stillman turned up a long, narrow alley that ran along the backs of the stores on the street where they had parked. "It's tough to get anywhere as a burglar if you leave all the stuff you can sell. The TV set is there. The radios are there. You can't get by stealing women's clothes and personal papers ...and for Christ's sake, stop looking over your shoulder."

"Sorry, I-"

A weight collided with Walker and spun him around. His back and head hit a brick wall hard, and he felt a wave of nausea. When his eyes tried to focus again they couldn't seem to find a reference point, because there was a face too close to his in the dark, and a forearm across his chest, a big man leaning against him so that he could barely breathe. The face was full of anger and hatred. The emotion was so unwarranted that the face was a monstrosity more frightening than the pain in his chest.

"Don't move, you son of a b.i.t.c.h. LAPD."

The instinctive notion that his survival might depend on his doing something melted away. His survival depended on not doing anything. He was going to jail for burglary. He tried to turn his eyes to see what was happening to Stillman, but the man gave his chest a push that felt as though it was cracking his sternum. "Don't move!" snarled the face. Reports of people being killed struggling with the police floated on the edge of Walker's consciousness.

Then his ears were a.s.saulted by a terrible sound. It was a loud, angry shout from Stillman, but the shout was almost instantly augmented by another voice, this one in pain. Both Walker and his captor turned in alarm.

Stillman's leg was on its way down from delivering a kick to the other policeman's groin, and he seemed to have punched him at least twice. The injured man bent over and appeared ready to topple.

Walker's eyes shot back to his captor's face in time to see that the fist was already on its way. Walker was unable to stifle the reflex to flinch. His right forearm jerked up to sweep the cop's arm away from his chest, while his body turned and his head moved to the side to avoid the punch. The cop's hand clutched Walker's coat, so Walker's sudden dodge kept the cop with him. The blow glanced off the back of Walker's head, and Walker saw bright red and green blotches explode into his field of vision and then float to the periphery.

Walker scrambled a few feet on the ground, then turned. Stillman had left his own opponent, and now he was advancing on Walker's. Walker was at once terrified and amazed. He expected the cop to do what cops did, which was to pull out his gun and kill Stillman.

Each instant that he didn't made Walker more frightened, because it meant it was certain to happen in the next. But the cop on the ground stirred, pus.h.i.+ng himself to his feet. Maybe he would be the one.

Walker panicked. He had to stop him from firing. He picked up a fist-sized rock from the ground beside him and hurled it at the cop, then reached for another, sprang to his feet, and threw it at the one who had tried to arrest him.

Nothing seemed to have the effect he had expected. The two cops ran in different directions, then disappeared into the black s.p.a.ces between buildings.

Stillman took Walker's arm and pulled him down the alley. "No time to hang around here," he muttered.

Walker stumbled along with him, slowly regaining his breath and letting his heartbeat slow. He felt a swelling of anger at Stillman. "Why would you do that?" He walked a few paces, faster, then turned. "We're going to jail." Then he added, "We're lucky we're not dead."

"Were you under the impression that those were police officers?" Stillman asked calmly.

Walker took in a breath to shout "Yes!" but he stopped. There was absolutely nothing about what they had done that any police officer he'd ever heard of would do. He changed his next words to "They scared the h.e.l.l out of me."

Stillman nodded. "You knew you were guilty, so you figured, 'Sure. Of course they're cops. I deserve it, so they must be.' That's why they pulled that on us." He looked ahead up the alley. "Now you can compare."

"What?"

The squad car seemed to fill the alley like a train in a tunnel, leaving little s.p.a.ce on either side. Its lights shot up into the sky as it b.u.mped over the incline at the end of the alley, then settled firmly and steadily, growing brighter as the vehicle accelerated toward Stillman and Walker. The car stopped a few feet from them, then eased forward slowly until the window was beside them. The cop in the pa.s.senger seat was a young black man. He said, "Good evening, sirs."

The construction struck Walker as odd, mildly sarcastic. He said, "Good evening."

"We got a call that there was a disturbance in this alley," said the cop. "Know anything about that?"

Stillman said, "We did happen to run into two men a few minutes ago. They seemed to be interested in robbing us, but we managed to frighten them off, I guess."

The policeman opened his door and got out, sliding his billy club into a rung on his belt. Walker noticed that his hand lingered there, between the club and the gun. He stood close to them. "Someone said there was a fight. Shouting and so on."

"That's kind of an exaggeration," said Stillman. "It was just two guys about six feet tall, about thirty years old. They were getting ready to jump us, but when we got close, I think we were bigger than they expected, so they ran."

"May I ask what you're doing in the alley?"

He was staring at Walker, but Stillman spoke. "We're visitors in town, and we parked over there on the street"-he turned to point in roughly the right direction-"and we figured this was a good shortcut."

The cop kept his eyes on Walker. "And two men just came along at the same time?"

Walker knew he had to be the one to answer. "They seemed to be waiting here for whoever showed up."

The policeman nodded. "Would you mind showing me some identification?"

Stillman pulled out his wallet and handed the cop his driver's license, so Walker did the same. The cop handed the two licenses to his partner in the car, and the partner punched some numbers into the computer terminal mounted beside him. The cop returned his attention to Walker and Stillman. "What brings you to Pasadena?"

Stillman was supremely calm and friendly. "We work for McClaren's, the insurance company. There's a girl-a lady my friend here knew from his training school days, and he asked me if we could stop by and see her. No luck. We missed her at the office, and now she's not at home, either."

"I see." His partner muttered something and the cop leaned into the window to confer with him. He came back with the licenses. "Here you go." He looked up and down the alley, then said, "We'll make a report of this, but I'm not sure what good it's going to do you. They're long gone by now."

Stillman nodded. "I understand. They didn't get any money from us, so I guess there's not much harm done."

The policeman sat in the car seat again, but before he pulled his leg in, he said, "Even in San Francisco, walking down dark alleys probably isn't the best idea."

"I've had better," Stillman said.

"Take care," said the cop. He shut the door and the car drifted down the alley. Now and then the bright beam of the spotlight shot out to the side and played about a row of garbage cans, a narrow s.p.a.ce between buildings. Then the police car turned and disappeared.

Stillman stepped into the nearest pa.s.sage toward the street. "Well, now that was a rotten piece of timing," he said. "I had hoped to get a couple of names out of their wallets, not give mine to a cop." He stopped and let Walker catch up. "What we need is dinner."

"It is?"

"Otherwise we'll have to drink on an empty stomach."

5.

The Coast of Borneo was a relic of a period that Walker had missed, and he calculated that even Stillman had to be too young to have seen anything but strange little outposts cut off and isolated by flanking movements of change. The big bare-beamed dining room had outrigger canoes hanging from the ceiling, and drinks served in ceramic mugs that were effigies of somebody's G.o.ds. As he followed Stillman deeper into the place, he gazed at a man in a chef's hat behind gla.s.s prodding a huge slab of sizzling meat over flames that threatened to flare up and engulf them both, then waited while an Oriental waiter in a tuxedo tucked two gigantic menus under his arm and conducted them across an unused dance floor and up onto the tiered gallery of tables.

Stillman sat down and squinted up at the waiter for a few seconds as though the two of them were in a poker game and the waiter had just raised. The waiter held a tiny pad in the palm of his hand with a pen poised over it. Stillman said, "Can your bartender make a real mai tai?"

"Old-fas.h.i.+oned kind?" asked the waiter, now a.s.sessing Stillman with veiled interest.

"That's right," said Stillman. "The old-fas.h.i.+oned kind."

"Two mai tai old-fas.h.i.+oned kind," the waiter announced, and put a strike mark on his pad that could not have been a Chinese character, then spun on his heel and went off. It seemed to Walker that the pad must be for appraising the customers, and Stillman had scored high.

"What's changed about mai tais?"