The bartender yelled across the room: “Hey, everybody listen here!”

He was turning up the volume of the radio behind the bar. It was a news announcer’s voice:

“… promises to hold a news conference at nine tomorrow morning, Los Angeles time, at which time he expects to have been reunited with his son, Sam Stedman Junior. The star’s sixteen-year-old son, who was kidnapped last Saturday, is being taken by helicopter from his place of rescue in Baja California to a hospital in Hermosillo, Mexico. Mr. Stedman stressed that his son appears to be unharmed, according to his reports from private investigator Diego Vasquez, who rescued the youth this afternoon. But he said his son had been drugged with sedatives by the kidnappers to prevent his escaping. The flight to Hermosillo hospital is purely precautionary, Mr. Stedman said, and his son will be flown home to Los Angeles tonight in a private chartered plane which Mr. Stedman, a licensed pilot, will fly himself. On his way to Los Angeles airport, Mr. Stedman spoke briefly with this reporter.”

There was no mistaking the deep heartland twang of Sam Stedman’s voice. “Through the grace of God and the mercy of Jesus Christ my son has been set free. I’m clasping my hands in a prayer of profound thanks to Almighty God.”

“Mr. Stedman, is it true that your son was rescued by an armed assault on the kidnappers’ camp by Mr. Vasquez?”

“Yes, sir, it was Diego Vasquez’s show, pure and simple. My son and I owe a great deal to that fine man—more than we can ever repay. I pray to God to bestow His blessing on Mr. Vasquez and his fine family.”

“We’ve heard reports that three or four of the kidnappers may have been shot during the rescue operation. Can you confirm that, sir?”

“No, I can’t. I think we’d just better wait and find out the truth from the people who are actually down there. You have to excuse me now. Bless you.”

The bartender turned the radio down and beamed at everyone in the room. “Well now how about that, folks?”

The fat actor lurched to the door. He looked around owlishly. “Hallelujah,” he muttered, and went.

Conversations picked up again. The waitress plugged the jukebox back in. Bradleigh seemed annoyed: “Vasquez. I’m sick of hearing Vasquez, Vasquez, Vasquez. You’d think he was Emiliano Zapata. Fucking gunslinger. He’s found a way to commit legal murder and the press loves the son of a bitch. In a sane society he’d be locked up in a rubber room.”

Bradleigh lit another cigarette and inhaled ferociously. “They say he gets the job done. Well the bastard that tried to murder Benson in Oklahoma—he almost got the job done too. Where’s the difference? Come on, let’s get out of here.” He signaled for the check.

Mathieson said, “Where can I reach you?”

“Right behind you. I’ll tag along in my car and hang around until we’ve got you packed and on the plane.”

7

Going up toward the top of the canyon drive he heard sirens somewhere nearby. There were always sirens in the valley; the sound carried up the gorges.

He saw the blue Plymouth in the rearview mirror, Bradleigh’s left hand propping up the frame of the open window.

By habit he had the car radio tuned to KGEB, the all-news station; a fraction of his attention absorbed the Stedman-Vasquez story and the hour’s catalog of disasters while he stopped and waited for a Datsun to back out of a driveway. He was starting to move again when his ear picked up the name Mathieson; he shot his hand to the radio knob to turn it up.

“… explosion evidently was caused by a powerful bomb that was thrown from a passing car. The bomb was hurled into the house through a front window, shattering the glass and exploding violently inside the living room. Jim Schott reported from the scene of the explosion a few minutes ago that police and rescue workers still are not certain whether the Mathieson residence was occupied at the time of the blast. Firemen and police are sifting the wreckage …”

He was jammed up behind the lackadaisical Datsun with traffic flicking past in the opposite lane; he held the horn down and hooted the Datsun right off the road and went up to the crest ramming the gearshift around, swinging the Porsche fast through the bends, squealing. In the mirror Bradleigh’s Plymouth was lodged behind the Datsun, dwindling.

At the top he squirted recklessly across the stop-sign intersection; down the turns on the north slope he rode the brake, teetering around the sharp curves, hunched forward over the wheel.

He heard the grind of a siren starting up. One last bend and then he swerved through it, nearly banging nose to windshield as he tried to see ahead.

Maddeningly his view was blocked by a great red fire truck that was beginning to pull away. He slewed toward the curb behind it.

A cop ran forward, gesturing at him angrily. The lawn was aswarm with men in uniform. Three patrol cruisers were drawn up at haphazard angles, askew on the road. He saw the Gilfillans and Jan, standing in a rigid little knot like mannequins: Jan was pale, she had both fists clenched at her sides, she wasn’t looking at the man in the business suit who was talking to her with a notebook in his hand.

“Get back in that car and move along out of here, buddy.”

He was searching for Ronny; he still had his hand on the car door and he felt the Porsche begin to roll—he hadn’t pulled the brake. He dived back into the seat, stabbing for the pedal. That was when something made a loud sharp crack over his shoulder.

He hadn’t heard that sound in twenty-three years but his instincts knew it: the crack of a high-velocity bullet passing near—a tiny sonic boom.

He threw himself flat across the seats and heard the distant cough of the rifle, delayed by range. He jackknifed his legs inside the car and the brass of fear coated his tongue with sudden bitterness. The next shot clanged against metal and sighed away whistling: again the distant bark of the rifle.

The Porsche was rolling slowly. The third bullet starred the windshield and then his ears thudded with the shockingly close-by boom of a handgun shot. Another explosion, and he realized it was the cop shooting back.

The car whacked the curb. It threw him against the dash and wedged him down toward the floor; his knee cracked the shift knob and sharp pain shot up his leg. The curb chocked the wheel and the car didn’t move again; he heard the cop empty his revolver methodically. Other guns opened up and the racket was intense, like a battlefield. Someone kept yelling—he couldn’t make out the words. Heedlessly he lifted himself off the floor and searched the lawn. The plainclothesman must have knocked Jan down; the man was down on one knee, hiding her behind his own bulk, sighting his revolver up across the street at the high canyon slope beyond. Roger had his arm across Amy’s shoulders and was running her toward cover, the hedge on the property line. Then he saw Ronny and Billy, both of them diving into the ruins of the house.

Bradleigh’s blue Plymouth came lurching downhill. The cop just outside the Porsche was belly-flat with his revolver extended in both hands toward the slope.

He heard the distant cough and sputter of a kicked-over motorcycle engine and he spun his eyes toward the far slope. The cycle roared and abruptly appeared in flitting bursts, ramming through the trees on the ridge line above the houses. It drew police gunfire from the lawn but the motorcyclist dropped off the skyline, disappearing beyond the crest.

Bradleigh was running forward, bellowing: “Get that mother!” A cruiser plunged away, siren unwinding from a growl. Cops swarmed past Mathieson and slammed into their cars.

Mathieson backed out of the Porsche, dimly aware that his body was doing the necessary things: pulling the hand brake, ducking to clear the opening with his head, turning to face Bradleigh. “Jesus Christ, Glenn—”