Self-Defense (52 page)

Lucy scooped and tossed dirt. Her eyes
were dry and her thoughts were impossible to read. Nova’s cheek was squashed
against the earth, her swollen eye totally shut, her lip split.

I breathed conspicuously and gave him
another few shovel strokes. “So what went wrong?”

“What do you think? She didn’t wake up—but
how did you find out?”

I didn’t answer. He put the gun to Nova’s
head.

“I remembered it,” said Lucy.

“You?” Graydon-Jones was amused. “What
were you back then, a fetus?”

Lucy started to say something. I shook my
head at her.

“The old idiot told you,” said
Graydon-Jones. “Fucking bloody fool. Well, as usual he’s screwed up.” Giggles.
“You’ve missed the spot completely.” Letting his gaze coast over us, toward the
larger of the willows.

Lucy made a soft, catlike sound.

I said, “Who was at the party besides you
and App and Lowell?”

“Not Lowell,” he said. “Thankfully. He was
always such a bore. Friday night, he had her on his lap, sad tales of the
writer’s lonely life. But Saturday he was too busy for that—Caligula in his
toga.”

“So why’d he get involved in burying her?”

“Because he’s such a kind man.” Laughter.
“He dropped in to pick up some papers and found me trying to revive her, and
panic, panic, panic. All that blood-and-gore verse; turns out he had
soft-boiled guts.”

“Did he drop in alone or was he with
Mellors and Trafficant? How big of a private party was—”

“Shut up. I want you finished well before
dark.”

I pantomimed more effort. “So the party
was right over there?” Glancing across the pond.

He said nothing.

“Far from the madding crowd,” I said.

“Far from the meddling
crud.”

Graydon-Jones pushed his foot on Nova. Her
eyes had stopped moving and her jaw was being pushed down in an unnatural
position, the scars compressing....

I said, “App’s got a good thing going.
Sits on the beach and you do the dirty work.”

“Wrong,” he said.
“You
do the dirty
work.”

Aiming the gun at the center of my nose.

I kept on faking, moving dirt from place
to place. Lucy had caught on and was doing the same. Her hair was caked into
dreadlocks. The hole was at least five feet deep. I wondered how much longer
we’d be able to avoid the next foot.

Graydon-Jones must have been thinking the
same thing.

He grabbed Nova by the back of her collar
and dragged her closer to the pit. The gun moved back and forth from her head
to Lucy and me. Nickel-plated automatic. Plenty of bullets for everyone.

Nova tried to shield her face. Her shut
eye was purplish, ballooning, and the gun barrel had made red circles on her
temple.

Graydon-Jones stopped six feet from the
rim, letting her drop, again, and putting his foot on the back of her neck. It
wouldn’t take much pressure to snap her cervical vertebrae.

He looked down.

“Bloody
hell.
Playing
games,
are we?”

Training the gun on Lucy, he started to
squeeze the trigger.

I dove to push her away but she was up,
screaming, throwing a clump of hard dirt at him. Direct hit on his chest. The
gun fired somewhere up in the air. Nova seized the moment to arch her back and
grab his foot. That diverted his gaze downward as he kicked at her and tried to
tighten his grip on the gun.

I drew the shovel back like a javelin and
fired it at his legs, blade first, as hard as my sandbag arms could muster.

The tip slammed into his left shin and he
yelled in pain and surprise.

Nova managed to break free. Graydon-Jones
aimed at her. She ran toward Inspiration as I vaulted out of the hole.

I threw myself on him. As we went down
together, I felt the gun pinned between our chests, digging into my sternum.
The arm holding it twisted in an unnatural way. I slammed the other down as he
tried to bite my nose. He was out of shape but adrenaline had powered him, too,
and he pitched and rolled, managing to slide the gun arm out.

Then something came from the left in a
brown-white blur, striking him hard in the cheek, quick as a snakebite.

His head whiplashed. Another blow, and his
eyes rolled back. He went loose.

I twisted the gun from his fingers.

Lucy’s muddy sneaker kicked him again.
Unconscious, he started to drool, then vomit. I jumped free of the trickle of
filth.

Standing over him, I trained the automatic
on his head.

His
Sausalito
sweatshirt a putrid
mess.

Breathing but not moving, the left side of
his head muddy, starting to balloon.

I was panting. So was Lucy.

She reached down toward Graydon-Jones,
then stopped herself.

I put my arm around her. She looked over
at the larger willow.

The shovel lay on the ground, not far from
Graydon-Jones.

“You okay?” I said.

She held her chest and nodded.

Movement across the pond. Nova had made
her way into the tall grass and was running toward the forest, the tints in her
hair bright as fruit among the green stalks.

“Call the police!” I shouted.

She gave no indication she heard.

I needed binding. Thought of something.

I gave the gun to Lucy. The way she took
it told me she’d never held one before.

“He probably won’t stir, but don’t get any
closer. Keep it aimed at his head and watch him. I’ll be back in a few
minutes.”

Taking the shovel, I followed Nova’s
flight into the forest, running hard until I came to the knotted, viney plant
that had blocked our way. Bent back now, and trodden—Graydon-Jones following
the path we’d laid out for him.

Chopping off several long tendrils, I ran
back and trussed him in a loose hogtie. He was breathing fine and his neck
pulse was strong and regular. He’d have a badly bruised shin, a monster
headache, maybe a concussion, but he’d survive.

We left him there and returned to the
lodge.

Lowell’s Jeep was still there but the
Mercedes was gone. A brown van with a rental sticker sat between Lucy’s car and
the Seville. The doors were unlocked and I looked inside. Rental form made out
to Mr. Hacker. Cash transaction. In back were shovels and a pickax, a hacksaw,
a spool of rope, and several boxes of heavy-duty garbage bags. The keys were
under the driver’s seat and I pocketed them. Fresh tire tracks and oil spots
traced the Mercedes’ exit.

We went inside the house.

Lowell was in bed, eyes closed.

Breathing very shallowly and slowly.

Ghostly white.

Two halves of an ampule glinted from the
floor, just under the bed. I found the hypodermic needle a few feet away, half
concealed by the yellowed corners of an old
New York Times Book Review.
A fresh red dot in the crook of his left arm.

Lucy was behind me, at the doorway. I
heard her walk away.

I picked up the old black phone and
dialed.

Sheriffs and technicians swarmed. Lowell
stayed asleep and he seemed to have lost even more color. One of the deputies
opined, “He doesn’t look too good.” Paramedics came a half hour later and
carted him away.

Milo was still out of the office, but I
asked for Del Hardy, and he arrived right after the first carful of deputies. I
hadn’t seen him in a while. His hair had turned almost completely gray and he’d
gotten heavier. His arrival rescued Lucy and me from the knee-jerk suspicions
of cops who didn’t know us. As it was, we were stuck answering questions till
after midnight.

Del came over. “How you guys doing?”

“Owe you another guitar—oh, yeah, no time.
How about dinner?”

“I can always eat.”

He asked Lucy if she was okay; then he
walked off to drink coffee with a sheriff’s homicide investigator. People kept
heading back toward the forest.

Lucy’d been back there an hour ago,
pinpointing the spot as technicians created a string-and-post perimeter.

Now the two of us were sitting on folding
chairs in front of the Seville. Lucy was covered with a blanket. She’d managed
to eat half a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

At 12:45 someone shouted, “Bones!”

Milo showed soon after.

He looked at us and shook his head.
“Doctor and patient, perfect match. And I set it up.”

He bent and kissed Lucy’s cheek. She held
his head and kissed him back. When she let go, he shook my hand and squeezed
it.

“Del filled me in over the computer. Sorry
I missed the cutting of the cake, but I was obstructing a helicopter.”

“Whose?”

“App’s.”

“Leaving town? How’d you know?”

“I didn’t. I was watching his office all
day, followed him to lunch at Mortons, then over to Bijan to buy a
nine-thousand-dollar leather jacket. Then back to his office, but instead of
getting off at his floor he continued up to the heliport. Blades whirring, the
whole bit. He tried the indignant citizen bit, claimed it was just a
back-and-forth to Santa Barbara, tennis with some other shitbag producer. But
his stretch limo was packed up with Vuitton luggage, and his chauffeur was
carrying paperwork for a private charter to Lisbon out of the Imperial
terminal.”

He smiled. “Big guy, the chauffeur, but
very low pain threshold. Anyway, App’s not going anywhere for the time being.
Got a suite at County jail.”

“What charge?” I said.

He gave a wide, malicious grin. “Traffic
tickets. Idiot ran up four thousand bucks’ worth last year alone, mostly
outside clubs and restaurants and violations of neighborhood permits.”

“Traffic warrants won’t keep him in very
long.”

“Hold on, hold on. When I frisked him, I
found a nice little chunk of a white powdery substance. Another chunk on the
chauffeur. Then I called in a K-9 unit and the dogs went crazy. We’re talking
half of one of the Vuittons crammed with coke.”

“Negotiable currency for an extended
vacation,” I said. “So even if Graydon-Jones ran into trouble here,
he’d
be long gone.”

“Best laid plans. Only vacation he’s gonna
get for a while is at good old Club Dread.” To Lucy: “I hear you’re quite a
kick boxer.”

She shrugged under the blanket and forced
a smile. “The things you learn in therapy.”

Christopher Graydon-Jones, his head
bandaged, whispered earnestly to his lawyer.

I sat on the other side of the one-way
mirror with Milo, Lucy, and an assistant deputy district attorney named Leah
Schwartz. She was a very good-looking woman, tiny, around thirty, with a cloud
of blond, kinky hair, gigantic blue eyes, and the sometimes graceless manner of
a very bright high school student. She’d been interviewing Lucy and me for most
of two days, writing down detailed notes and using a tape recorder. She was
writing now, sitting apart from the three of us. The little receiver she’d worn
in her ear glimmered in the lap of her black skirt. Milo still wore his.

I said, “Any luck yet with App?”

Headshake.

The cocaine in the producer’s luggage had
proved to be only a small part of his stash. Twenty times as much had turned up
in a vault in his Broad Beach home, sparking the interest of men in suits.

“Another task force.” Milo had groaned.

Leah said, “The circus is in town.”

She found out, soon after, that the
federal government had been looking into App’s dealings for a while, believing
the Advent Group and its subsidiary businesses—including Enterprise
Insurance—to be major conduits for money laundering. Milo’d filled in the
details, yesterday, over coffee and crullers, as we waited outside Leah
Schwartz’s office while she finished a phone conversation with her boss.

“How long have they suspected him?” I
said.

“Long time.”

“So why didn’t they move on him?”

“Hey,” he said, “it’s the government. They
could give a shit about crime control. What they’re into is getting precise
appraisal of his holdings so they can confiscate everything under the RICO
statutes. Better racket than parking meters.”

“So what happens now? He weasels out on
Karen so they can line their coffers?”

“That assumes there’s something to weasel
out on, Alex. Thank God for the dope, because Karen’s death is still not a
homicide.”

“What about the bones?”

“No evidence of foul play; all the neck
bones we found were intact. And what Graydon-Jones described to you at the pit
was an accidental OD.”

“He’s
credible
?”

“When he told you, he was holding all the
cards, no reason to lie. Fact is, attempted murder on you and Lucy’s a lot more
trouble for him than Karen. But we can’t tie
that
in with App.”