he was young again seemed miracle enough to sustain a dream and keep it
interesting.
At the moment he was eighteen, lying on a big bench swing on the front
porch of the Santa Ana house in which he had been born and raised. He
was just swinging gently and peeling an apple that he intended to eat,
nothing more, but it was a wonderful dream, rich with scents and
textures, more erotic than if he had imagined himself in a harem of
undressed beauties.
“Wake up, Mr. Lob.”
He tried to ignore the voice because he wanted to be alone on that
porch. He kept his eyes on the curled length of peel that he was paring
from the apple.
“Come on, you old sleepyhead.”
He was trying to strip the apple in one continuous ribbon of peel.
“Did you take a sleeping pill or what?”
To Loffman’s regret, the front porch, the swing, the apple and paring
knife dissolved into darkness. His bedroom.
He struggled awake and an intruder was present. A barely visible,
spectral figure stood beside the bed.
Although he’d never been the victim of a crime and lived in as safe a
neighborhood as existed these days, age had saddled him with feelings of
vulnerability. He had started keeping a loaded pistol next to the lamp
at his bedside. He reached for it now, his heart pounding hard as he
groped along the cool marble surface of the 18th century French ormolu
chest that served as his nightstand. The gun was gone.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the intruder said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.
Please calm down. If it’s the pistol you’re after, I saw it as soon as
I came in. I have it now.”
The stranger could not have seen the gun without turning on the light,
and the light would have awakened Loffman sooner. He was sure of that,
so he kept groping for the weapon.
From out of the darkness, something cold and blunt probed against his
throat. He twitched away from it, but the coldness followed him,
pressing insistently, as if the specter tormenting him could see him
clearly in the gloom. He froze when he what the coldness was. The
muzzle of the pistol. Against his Adam’s apple. It slid slowly upward,
under his chin.
“If I pulled the trigger, sir, your brains would be all over the
headboard But I do not need to hurt you, sir. Pain is quite unnecessary
as long as you cooperate. I only want you to answer one important
question for me.”
If Robert Loffman actually had been eighteen, as in his best dreams, he
could not have valued the remainder of his time on earth more highly
than he did at seventy, in spite of having far less of it to lose now.
He was prepared to hold onto life with all the tenacity of a burrowing
tick. He would answer any question, perform any deed to save himself,
regardless of the cost to his pride and dignity. He tried to convey all
of that to the phantom who held the pistol under his chin, but it seemed
to him that he produced a gabble of words and sounds that, in sum, had
no meaning whatsoever.
“Yes, sir,” the intruder said, “I understand, and I appreciate your
attitude. Now correct me if I am wrong, but I suppose the antique
business, being relatively small when compared to others, is a tight
community here in Laguna. You all know each other, see each other
socially, you’re friends.”
Antique business? Loffman was tempted to believe that he was still
asleep and that his dream had become an absurd nightmare. Why would
anyone break into his house in the dead of night to talk about the
antique business at gunpoint?
“We know each other, some of us are good friends, of course, but some
bastards in this business are thieves,” Loffman said. He was babbling,
unable to stop, hopeful that his obvious fear would testify to his
truthfulness, whether this was nightmare or reality. “They’re nothing
more than crooks with cash registers, and you aren’t friends with that
kind if you have any self-respect at all.”