A
T THE FIFTH SERIES
of unanswered rings, Grace Campbell’s voice materialized on a recording. It was a short message, simply her unlisted phone number repeated, followed by a request that the caller leave a brief message.
“This is Alan Bernhardt calling, Grace. It’s seven forty-five Saturday evening, and I—”
“Mr. Bernhardt,” her voice interrupted. “What can I do for you?”
“The, ah, job I’m doing for Mr. DuBois. I can’t go any farther until I’ve seen him. Or at least talked to him.”
“Mr. DuBois is already in bed for the night. At eight o’clock his light goes out. He never takes messages after eight.”
“It isn’t quite eight.” He put an edge of authority on his voice. “I’d like you to tell him that—” He broke off, to order his thoughts. Then: “Tell him that I’ve got to have a detailed inventory of the, ah, merchandise before I can go any farther. Emphasize that. No inventory, no progress. Nothing.”
“Will you hang on? Or should I call back?”
“I’ll hang on.”
In less than five minutes she came back on the line. “Mr. DuBois says to tell you that he understands the message. But he’s tired. He’ll see you tomorrow at eight a.m. That’s the best I can do. Shall I send a car for you tomorrow?”
About to decline the offer, Bernhardt decided instead to say, “Please. And I’d like James to drive.”
“Not Raul? He’s the regular driver.”
“I want James.”
“Oh.” A moment’s pause. Then: “Fine. Consider it done. Shall he pick you up at your hotel? Seven-thirty tomorrow morning?”
“Fine. I’ll be in front.”
“Mr. DuBois wanted me to ask you whether your negotiations are producing results. When I get your answer, I’m to report back to Mr. DuBois. Briefly.”
“So far so good, I’d say. But I won’t have anything substantial until Monday midday. Assuming, that is, that I get the information I need from Mr. DuBois.”
“He also wants to know whether help has arrived. Your people.”
“They’ll be arriving tonight, from San Francisco.”
“Good. I’ll go tell him.” She spoke crisply, decisively. “Will I see you tomorrow after you’ve talked to Mr. DuBois?”
“Certainly.”
“Good.” The line clicked, went dead. Bernhardt cradled the phone on the nightstand, decided to stretch out on the bed, let his eyes slowly close. About eleven o’clock, he estimated, the phone would ring. It would be Paula, announcing their arrival at LAX.
A few months ago, they’d taken a trip to Santa Fe, and stayed for two nights at a luxury motel that he really couldn’t afford. It was only the second time they’d slept together in a hotel or motel, and Paula had confessed that staying in motels turned her on. Then she’d proceeded to prove it—dramatically.
From the very first, he’d known they suited each other, complemented each other. Fundamentally they were both quiet people, like most actors essentially introverts. They’d both seen their brightest young dreams turn to ashes, and the experience would always mark them. Both only children, they’d both had sheltered childhoods. Much loved, Paula had grown up in Los Angeles, where both her parents taught at USC. She’d gone to Pomona, where she’d graduated with a split major in English and Drama. Almost immediately after graduation, helped by her father’s connections in the USC drama program, she’d begun getting movie walk-ons. In New York, he’d started getting small parts off Broadway. Only a year out of college, they’d both gotten married—he to Jennie, she to a charismatic, deeply neurotic screenwriter who’d already been married twice before, and who drank. At that point the two stories diverged—and then cruelly converged. Paula’s marriage had ended in a traumatic divorce.
His marriage—his life, for almost the next twenty years—had ended just before eleven o’clock on a beautiful spring night in the Village. He’d answered the door to find two uniformed policemen in the hallway. There’d been an accident, a mugging. Two white males, early twenties, maybe late teens, had tried for Jennie’s purse. She’d resisted, and they’d knocked her down. Her head had hit the curb. She’d died.
Escaping their memories, both he and Paula had retreated to San Francisco, the last stop for a lot of people fleeing fear and defeat and loneliness, only to discover that the pain had gotten worse, not better.
Worse for him, until he’d found Paula.
And, yes, worse for her, until she’d found him.
He yawned, turned on his side, yawned again. How many thousand-dollar bills would it take to make twenty-five million dollars?
How many…
In the clangor, the confusion, the shrillness, he was dangling in a void, alone, surrounded by nothing, yet constrained by everything, too fearful to open his eyes. Fearful? Of what? Where? Why? Should he…?
It came again: the clangor, the shrilling. But it was more melodious now. More—
The telephone. Close beside him. On the nightstand.
“Alan.”
Yes, it was Paula.
“Hi. You made it.” He yawned, checked the time: ten minutes after eleven.
“We’re at United.”
“Okay. Twenty minutes, with luck. Everything all right? Crusher?”
“Everything’s fine.”
“Okay, here I come.”
“A
H …” TATE NODDED APPROVAL
as he surveyed his impressively furnished room. He stowed two suitcases in the closet, put another beside the bureau. “Yes. Very nice. Suddenly I’m feeling more positive about this gig.” He looked at Bernhardt. “You cashed the client’s checks yet?”
“As a matter of fact,” Bernhardt answered, “I put them in the ATM today. By Tuesday they’ll clear. Meanwhile, the client’s paying for everything. Including this.” His gesture swept Tate’s room.
“Good.” While Tate tested the bed, checked out the small wet bar, tried the TV, took note of the bathroom complete with phone extension and then went to the window and admired the view from the eleventh floor, Bernhardt moved close to Paula, took her shoulders, smiled gravely into her eyes, and kissed her meaningfully. As he felt her respond, felt her urgency, he waywardly thought of Tate’s girlfriend, alone in Sausalito on a Saturday night. Or maybe not alone.
With perfect synchronization, Bernhardt stepped away from Paula at the same moment Tate turned to face them. “Anyone hungry?” Bernhardt asked. “Thirsty? Room service is included.” He looked at Paula, who asked for a B and B. The request, Bernhardt knew, boded well for their night of love. The last time Paula had asked for a B and B, they’d been in Santa Fe, at the overpriced motel.
“I’ll take a bottle of Dos Equis,” Tate said. “And a big plate of Mexican snacks, heavy on the nacho chips, plus avocado dip. Plus lemon wedges.”
Adding a glass of chardonnay for himself, and then deciding to get a plate of seafood, courtesy of Powers Associates, Bernhardt phoned in the order. Then he gestured to a small round table with four expensively upholstered chairs. “Let’s talk.”
“Right.” Tate sat at the table, then produced a single sheet of paper torn from a spiral-bound composition book he’d taken from his luggage. Whenever they did business, the two men signed an agreement, retained by Tate. Bernhardt read the agreement, signed, returned the handwritten letter to Tate.
While they drank and nibbled at the room service food, Bernhardt told his story, beginning with the visit of the FBI men and ending with his last conversation with Grace Campbell, more than four hours ago.
“My God,” Tate breathed, “you want my opinion, I say the guys that make a movie of this are the ones going to clean up. I mean, this baby’s got everything.”
“Including,” Paula observed, “the ravishing South American beauty.” She looked speculatively at Bernhardt.
“What we should start figuring out,” Tate said, “is how it’ll go down, step by step.” He looked at Bernhardt. “Like, let’s say we rent a house tomorrow, which shouldn’t be a problem, according to what you hear about the economy down here. And let’s say that, also tomorrow, you get the descriptions you need, and you give them to Graham, and he says okay, everything’s cool. And then let’s say that Monday, Graham gets the money. So everything’s set for Tuesday, maybe even Monday night.”
“Tuesday,” Bernhardt said. “I’m figuring Tuesday at the earliest. Don’t forget, I’ve got to crate the pictures. That’ll take most of Monday.”
“We going to make the swap during the day? Or at night?”
“During the day. The earlier the better.”
“Okay.” Tate used the last two nacho chips to scoop up the dregs of the avocado and salsa dip. “Okay. So it’s Tuesday, bright and early. So then what? How’s it go? Hour by hour?”
Thinking through the time frame, improvising, Bernhardt speared a jumbo prawn, dipped it in an extraordinary white wine and capers sauce, reflectively chewed. “Monday night,” he began, “we stay at the rental house, the three of us. We—”
“Goddam,” Tate interrupted, “we should have Crusher here. A friend of mine, he never does a big-money dope deal without his faithful rottweiler. He says everyone likes to shoot their guns. But nobody wants to tangle with—”
“Come on, C.B.,” Bernhardt interrupted irritably. Thinking to himself,
The longer you talk, the longer Paula and I have to wait.
Saying audibly: “It’s one o’clock.”
With easy good humor Tate looked at each of them knowingly, then amiably subsided as he gestured broadly for Bernhardt to continue.
“Let’s start with Monday, best case. We have the house and the van we need, and Graham has the money from New York, converted into cash. The inventory’s acceptable, no problems. So Tuesday, bright and early, Graham brings the money to the house. We’ll check it out. If everything’s cool, C.B. and I’ll take the van and we’ll drive to Benedict Canyon. We’ll be buzzed inside the grounds by James, who’s DuBois’s security man. James is very—” Bernhardt hesitated, searching for the word. “He’s very formidable. Very quiet, very calm. And he’s totally loyal to DuBois. So James takes us inside the mansion. Or, rather, he’ll probably take me inside. C.B., you’ll stay with the van while I talk to DuBois. Then you’ll drive into the garage, and wait.”
“Does the garage connect to the house?”
“I’m not sure.” Bernhardt pointed to Tate’s spiral-bound notebook. “Tear me off a sheet.” Tate handed over two sheets of ripped-out paper and a ballpoint pen, one of several he carried in a brown plastic pocket protector. The protector was an incongruous Establishment touch, whimsically at odds with the clothing Tate had chosen for the flight to Los Angeles. He wore Birkenstock sandals, blue jeans, a flamboyant balloon-cut shirt. His neck, tree-trunk thick, was festooned with gold chains. In contrast, he wore only one ring, massive gold, custom-wrought into a “CBT” design. At almost two hundred fifty pounds, most of it muscle, head shaven, Tate was a formidable figure. He wore a close-cropped black beard, now lightly flecked with gray. His eyes were lively, characteristically perceptive, often alight with a humor that some considered quirky. Tomorrow Bernhardt would ask him to change his outfit, lower his profile. For the next few days, anonymity would serve them best.
On the paper Bernhardt wrote:
Ask G.C.:
On the next line he wrote
(1) Do garage, house connect?
“Let’s assume,” he said, improvising some more, “that you can drive into the garage, and that it connects to the house. You stay in the van, with the outside garage door closed. I go into the house, probably accompanied by James, at least until I connect with DuBois. Then, maybe James will go to you in the garage. Grace Campbell, I think, will be out of the house, with orders not to come back until she gets permission from DuBois. That’s the normal procedure when DuBois goes into his secret room. The nurse will be asked to leave, too. So it could be just DuBois and me inside the house, with you and James in the garage, waiting for the paintings. DuBois and I’ll go to the secret gallery, and DuBois will open the two doors. Then I’ll—”
“I have two questions,” Paula interrupted.
One glance at her face and Bernhardt quickly smiled, a wry apology: “I already know the first question,” he said. It was an attempt to finesse her irritation at not being included in the planning. “What’s the second question?”
Disciplining him, she did not return the smile. Instead, speaking with chilly deliberation, she said, “My second question is how DuBois has it arranged so that he gets into the secret gallery alone, unaided.”
“It’s like an airlock,” Bernhardt answered, grateful to be answering a factual question. “He goes to the outer door, which is steel armor plate, and he punches in a four-number code. The door slides open. When he’s inside, the outer door slides closed automatically. He’s in a short, windowless hallway, nothing on the walls. He goes to the inner door, which can’t be opened unless the outer door is closed. He punches in a three-number combination, and the inner door, also steel, slides open. So now he’s in the gallery, which isn’t very big, only eight by fourteen feet.”
“No windows,” Tate said. “Artificially humidified. Probably with a few killer gas jets, if something goes wrong.”
“Hmmm …” Bernhardt’s eyes turned speculative.
“What’s his procedure for getting out?” Paula asked, spearing a morsel of calamari, one of her favorites. She spoke crisply, remotely. Only when her first question was answered would she relent, unbend.
“He gets out the same way he gets in, a three-number code followed by a four-number code. I imagine the exit codes are the same as the entry codes. Otherwise, he’d have to memorize fourteen numbers.”
“Okay,” Tate said, “so you and DuBois are in the gallery, and let’s say James and I are in the garage, waiting for you. Then what?”
“Then,” Bernhardt said, “I imagine I’ll start moving the pictures one at a time, maybe stacking them in the hallway beside the interior door to the garage. I imagine it’ll take an hour, at least. And I’m sure DuBois will be with me the whole time.”
“Is he up to it?” Paula asked. “Physically?”
“If there’s a problem,” he answered, “there’s always James standing by. He’ll know what to do, how to contact Grace Campbell or Monica Gross.”
“This James,” Tate said, “will he be carrying a gun?”
“I’m sure of it. I’d be surprised if he didn’t carry a handgun plus a Uzi, in a suitcase.”