“Ours?”

“Certainly. It should convince them the place is innocent.”

“It’s dangerous. Suppose we forgot some tiny detail? It wouldn’t take much to make them suspicious.”

“I’m rather professional at that sort of thing.”

“So was Glenn Bradleigh.”

“Bradleigh’s well-meaning but he’s a bureaucrat. Inevitably his mind’s been stultified by manuals of procedure.”

Mathieson clenched his fists around the damp ends of the towel. “It’ll put a strain on our group.”

“On your wife, you mean. Do you want me to tell her?”

“No. I’ll do it.” Feeling as if things had gone altogether out of his control he walked back up toward the house, treading gingerly in his bare feet.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Southern California: 18–22 September

1

HE CAME AWAKE SLUGGISHLY WITH THE MEMORY OF A frightening dream. He reached for her in the darkness and she slid down against him, throwing the sheet back. She accepted him; it was enough. His fears dwindled away in the heat of love-making. Afterward he was overcome by a debilitating melancholy but he did not sleep.

In the darkness she spoke drowsily: “I’m sorry I took it so hard last night. That wasn’t fair to any of you.”

“You didn’t bring any of this on yourself. I brought it on you. You’ve got a right to—”

“I haven’t got a right to go to pieces like that in front of everyone. Dear God. I’m scared to death all the time, I’m wretchedly depressed—I’ve turned into a useless neurotic; I feel like Blanche DuBois.”

He thought, And that’s something else Frank Pastor can pay for.

In the morning after breakfast he took her down past the copse of trees; he took her hand and they watched Roger chase the two boys around the paddock on horseback, twirling a rope. They were keeping close to the barn.

A flight of geese went overhead in formation. Sunlight dappled the creek that fed down into the pond a mile away. The water flashed white where it birled over the stones. The smell of early autumn was strong—pine resin on dry dawn-chilled air.

Mathieson ran a hand over his brush-cut hair. The bristle still took him by surprise; it was the first short haircut he’d had since he’d been in the army.

He spoke gently. “What do you think? Can we make it?”

“Sometimes I think we can.” She withdrew her hand and put her back to him, watching the boys on horseback. “Sometimes I don’t even want to.”

“If I can settle this thing—get Pastor off our backs—”

“What’s the sense talking about it? We don’t know what’s going to happen. You don’t even know if you can do anything yet—you haven’t got any idea how to approach it.”

“I’m beginning to see how it can be done.”

“Are you?” She didn’t sound reassured. She looked around at him, wary as a fawn. “I’m afraid. Let’s go back to the house?”

2

Vasquez opened the photo album on the dining table. Roger Gilfillan pulled his chair closer; Mathieson stood behind Vasquez’s shoulder.

“This one?”

“Sandra Pastor. The older daughter. Fourteen.”

“Chubby kid,” Roger observed. “Too much of that there spaghetti.”

Vasquez turned the picture over and slid the next out of the folder. “Him?”

“Hard to say.” Mathieson leaned forward. “It’s a lousy picture. It could be a rear-quarter profile of Ezio Martin.”

“It is. You’re getting quite good. Either of you recognize these two men?”

Roger shook his head; Mathieson said, “No. Should we?”

“This one’s name is Fritz Deffeldorf. The mug shots date back four years, the other two were taken by my people in the past few weeks. Now the other one. I’m afraid the pictures aren’t as good—he’s camera-shy. He’s Arnold Tyrone.”

“Tyrone?”

“It’s an Anglicization of something or other.”

Roger asked, “Where do these two hairpins fit in?”

“We believe they’re the men who bombed the house.”

Mathieson leaned over the photographs and burned them into his memory. “Tell me about it.”

“What we have is mainly circumstantial. It wouldn’t hold up in court.”

“Come on, come on.” He shifted the mug shot to get another angle on it.

“We managed to check the passenger lists on flights into Los Angeles International. They both arrived in Los Angeles the morning of the bombing—not together, they were on separate planes.”

“Using their real names?”

“Yes. It’s not unusual. Deffeldorf came in on a nonstop from Newark airport. Tyrone came in from Oklahoma City airport. That’s the airport that serves Norman, Oklahoma.”

“Then Tyrone may be the man who shot Walter Benson.”

“It seems a reasonable assumption. Tyrone flew back to Newark about ten days later. From Albuquerque.”

Mathieson looked up. “After they lost Glenn Bradleigh in Gallup.”

“That isn’t a supportable conclusion yet. But it’s an allowable surmise.”

“Go on.”

“Fritz Deffeldorf is a specialist for hire. His specialty is demolitions.”

“You’ve done a lot of digging.”

“I’ve had weeks to do it, Mr. Merle. But I must point out to you that your friend Bradleigh may have more information than I have about these two men. I haven’t approached him—I assume you don’t want my connection with you known. Now then. Arnold Tyrone. He owns and manages a sporting goods store in Trenton, New Jersey. Through his business front he procures weapons and hardware for those who need them. He’s said to be one of the best marksmen in the country. He may be, as I said, the one who shot Walter Benson in Oklahoma. By the same chain of reasoning I suspect he’s not the man who fired at you from the ridge above your house—the man with the motorcycle. That one missed.”

“Then who was that sniper? Deffeldorf?”

“I doubt it. Deffeldorfs expertise is in explosives, not rifles. You told me that Bradleigh was followed to Arizona by men in separate cars. That sort of operation usually entails at least three cars with two men in each car. Six men, then. Even if we assume two of them were Deffeldorf and Tyrone, there remain four men unaccounted for. There’s also reason to believe that at least three men were involved in the attack on your house. I’d guess that Tyrone drove the car, Deffeldorf threw the bomb from it, and a third man with a motorcycle was stationed on top of the ridge to cover the house in case anyone came out of it after the bomb was thrown. We’re still trying to identify him, as well as others who must have joined the team to shadow Mr. Bradleigh. We’re also trying to identify the four men who are combing San Diego County for riding stables. We’ve had descriptions of them—sufficient to indicate that none of them is Deffeldorf or Tyrone or, for that matter, anyone familiar to our operatives. But that’s not surprising. It’s a menial sort of assignment and I’m sure the four men are local hoodlums, perhaps from San Diego itself.”

“Then where are Deffeldorf and Tyrone now?”

“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 assassins 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 assignment. 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.”