“That’s not my line. I wouldn’t stand a chance.”

“Then that kind of thinking, it’s only going to misery you. Torturing yourself ain’t going to help.”

“I’m not doing that.”

“Amy must just about have supper on the table. Let’s us go eat. Look here—you got a plan of some kind kicking around back there inside your head?”

“It’s beginning to.”

“You know there’s one man you ought to go and see. You know who that is.”

“Yes.” Mathieson knew.

PART TWO

TURNABOUT

CHAPTER NINE

Los Angeles: 22 August

1

THE RECEPTIONIST HAD ABUNDANT DARK RED HAIR AND frosty eye makeup; she had the look of a cocktail hostess in a pricey lounge. “Yes, sir?”

“My name’s Edward Merle. I phoned yesterday.”

“Yes, sir. Your appointment was for ten-thirty.”

“I know, I’m early. I took a chance …”

“Please have a seat? I’ll see if he’s free.”

The reception office was old-fashioned like the lobby of a rail-depot hotel.

The red-haired woman put her headphone down and pulled a cord. “Would you come this way, Mr. Merle?” She gave him a quick smile.

He followed her down a short paneled corridor. She showed him through a door into the corner office.

Diego Vasquez came to his feet.

Shirt-sleeved, tie at half-mast, long sidewise shock of glossy black hair. Vasquez had the incongruous face of an intellectual gone to seed.

The redhead vanished silently. Vasquez sized up his visitor with sad dark eyes. “Mr. Merle.”

The handshake was perfunctory as if Vasquez disliked the touch of flesh. He was thin and not very tall; he looked fragile. How old was he? Fifty?

Vasquez circled his desk and got into the high-backed leather swivel chair, seating himself as if he were a pilot settling at the controls. “How may I be of service?” Courtly, low-voiced—as contrivedly old-fashioned as his surroundings. But the redhead was a giveaway: This was Hollywood country and Image was rarely truthful.

On the wall in a glassed frame was the headline from the Times. FOUR EX-CONVICTS REVEALED DEAD IN VASQUEZ RESCUE OF ACTOR’S KIDNAPPED SON.

Vasquez pinned him with a speculative scrutiny. He prompted: “Sir?”

“It’s rather a confidential matter.” A lame beginning; he wished he hadn’t said it.

“They usually are.” A quick smile that vanished abruptly.

“I want to contract for your services.”

“So I gathered.” Patient, polite; but the eyes became harder.

Spit it out. Get on with it.

But it was the point of no return. Beyond this moment he would be committed.

“My family and I are being—harassed. By gangsters. Members of organized crime.”

“Indeed.”

“I testified against one of them. Some years ago.”

“You’re seeking protection? There are federal agencies that——”

“I’m not seeking protection, Mr. Vasquez.”

“I see.” The brown eyes narrowed. “Wear your hair longer, and take off that recently grown moustache, and yes. The photograph in the Examiner. It’s Mathieson, isn’t it? Fredric Mathieson?”

It jolted him. “Are you always that quick?”

“I read the newspapers, Mr. Mathieson. It’s not every day that a house is blown up in Los Angeles. Why did you come here under a false name?”

“Edward Merle is my real name.”

“Have you got any identification?”

“I’ve got papers in the name of Paul Baxter.”

“Yet a third name. It must be rather confusing for you.”

“Until a few days ago I was Jason W. Greene.” He managed a sliver of a smile.

“I once knew a writer who used nine pen names. Sometimes he forgot his real name.”

“My name is Edward Merle. That’s my real name, it’s the name the mobsters know me under.”

“Then Mathieson is an alias, but you used it for rather a long time, didn’t you.”

“Until a few weeks ago, yes. More than eight years.”

“I see. Let’s see if I can reconstruct this. Your house is bombed by contract killers, presumably. Now it turns out the intended victim has been living under an assumed name and reveals that he testified against a criminal some years ago. You’re not a Valachi type—you don’t have the earmarks of a gangster gone rogue. You’re not a defector from the syndicate, so I must assume you were an innocent witness to some criminal act. Correct?”

“Yes.”

“The whimsies of fate allowed you and your family to survive; but you’ve lost your house and you’ve had to go into hiding again. You’ve had to give up your job and your name for the second time. And apparently the law can’t do a thing to prevent this situation. So you’ve come to Vasquez. Is that a fair summation?”

“Close enough, yes.”

Vasquez searched his face. “What you’ve got in mind takes more than resolve, Mr. Merle.”

“I’ve got more than resolve.”

“What have you got?”

“Time. A great deal of hate.” He reached into his pocket. “And money.” He laid the check on the desk.

Vasquez picked up a pencil and used its eraser to pull the check across the desk to him. He glanced at it. “Twenty thousand dollars. Rather impressive.” He left the check where it was and tapped the pencil against his teeth. “Hate can wear off.”

Mathieson said nothing to that.

“You’re what, an agent for screenwriters?”

“I was, yes.”

“And what was your profession before? When you were Edward Merle.”

“I was a lawyer in New York.”

“Criminal practice?”

“The firm I worked for had mainly business clients.”

“But you did practice criminal law to some extent at least?”

“Now and then. Trivial matters. Sometimes a client would be arrested for assault in a bar, that kind of thing. Once or twice a year we’d take on a felony case for the Legal Aid Society.”

“You had a fairly good practice?”

“I was a junior staff member. Not a very brilliant lawyer, I guess. But yes, I kept busy.”

“Making, say, fifteen or sixteen thousand a year?”

“In that area. Why?”

“I’m trying to hold up a mirror for you. You witnessed some sort of offense perpetrated by an organized crime figure, I take it, and you stepped forward to testify to what you’d seen. Was your life threatened at that time?”

“Yes.”

“Anonymous calls or letters?”

“Yes.”

“Did you seek police protection?”

“Yes.”

“And this led to your being provided by the Justice Department with a new identity. You moved three thousand miles and went into a new profession. Putting it another way, you decided your testimony was important enough to justify sacrificing your law practice and profession, your home, even your name.”

Vasquez leaned back and crossed his legs. “Look in the mirror then, Mr. Merle. A man who distinguishes between right and wrong. A man who believes in the difference between good and evil. A man who believes in justice and law so deeply that he’s willing to make extraordinary sacrifices for the sake of moral principle. Is that a fair picture?”

“Distorted. I never aspired to sainthood.”

“Right now you’re angry. Anger saps the reason. For a while it can neutralize inhibitions. It can even cancel out a man’s deepest sense of moral rectitude—for a while. An angry man can make terrible mistakes. But anger wears off. If yours wears off after you’ve achieved your vengeance, how will you live with yourself?”

“I’ll manage.”

“Sarcasm would appear to be out of place just now. And if your anger wears off before you’ve exacted your revenge, what then? Suppose you find you’ve started something that can’t be recalled?”

“I won’t quit.”

“Naturally you feel that way now. But you may begin to question yourself in time. You’re a grown man whose life has conditioned you to accept certain values. You’ll never escape that conditioning—not for very long.”