brought them two buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken with coleslaw, fries,
and biscuits.
While Sharp and Peake had been at Lake Arrowhead, Rachael Leben’s red
Mercedes 560 SL had been found, with one flat tire, behind an empty
house a few blocks west of Palm Canyon Drive. Also, the blue Ford that
Shadway had been driving in Arrowhead was traced to an airport rental
agency. Of course, neither car offered any hope of a lead.
Sharp called the airport and spoke with the pilot of the Bell JetRanger.
Repairs on the chopper were nearly completed. It would be fully fueled
and at the deputy director’s disposal within an hour.
Avoiding the french fries because he believed that eating them was
begging for heart disease, ignoring the coleslaw because it had turned
sour last April, he peeled the crisp and greasy breading off the fried
chicken and ate just the meat, no fatty skin, while he made a number of
other calls to subordinates at the Geneplan labs in Riverside and at
several places in Orange County. More than sixty agents were on the
case. He could not speak to all of them, but by contacting six, he got
a detailed picture of where the various aspects of the investigation
were going.
Where they were going was nowhere.
Lots of questions, no answers. Where was Eric Leben?
Where was Ben Shadway? Why hadn’t Rachael Leben been with Shadway at
the cabin above Lake Arrowhead?
Where had she gone? Where was she now? Was there any danger of Shadway
and Mrs. Leben putting their hands on the kind of proof that could blow
Wildcard wide open?
Considering all of those urgent unanswered questions and the humiliating
failure of the expedition to Arrowhead, most other men would have had
little appetite, but with gusto Anson Sharp worked through the last of
the chicken and biscuits. And considering that he had put his entire
future at risk by virtually subordinating the agency’s goals in this
case to his own personal vendetta against Ben Shadway, it seemed
unlikely that he would be able to lie down and enjoy the deep and
untroubled sleep of an innocent child. But as he turned back the covers
on the queen-sized motel bed, he had no fear of insomnia. He was always
able to sleep the moment he rested his head on the pillow, regardless of
the circumstances.
He was, after all, a man whose only passion was himself, whose only
commitment was to himself, whose only interests lay in those things
which impinged directly upon him. Therefore, taking care of
himselfan.ng well, sleeping, staying fit, and maintaining a good
appearance-was of paramount importance. Besides, truly believing
himself to be superior to other men and favored by fate, he could not be
devastated by any setback, for he was certain that bad luck and
disappointment were transitory conditions, insignificant anomalies in
his otherwise smooth and ever-ascending path to greatness and acclaim.
Before slipping into bed, Sharp sent Nelson Gosser to deliver some
instructions to Peake. Then he directed the motel switchboard to hold
all calls, pulled the drapes shut, took off his robe, fluffed his
pillow, and stretched out on the mattress.
Staring at the dark ceiling, he thought of Shadway and laughed.
Poor Shadway must be wondering how in the hell a man could be
court-martialed and dismissed from the Marine Corps with a dishonorable
discharge and still become a D.S.A agent. That was the primary problem
with good old pure-hearted Ben, He labored under the misconception that
some behavior was moral and some immoral, that good deeds were rewarded
and that, ultimately at least, bad deeds brought misery down upon the
heads of those committing them.
But Anson Sharp knew there was no justice in the abstract, that you had
to fear retribution from others only if you allowed them to retaliate,
and that altruism and fair play were not automatically rewarded. He
knew that morality and immorality were meaningless concepts, your
choices in life were not between good and evil but between those things
that would benefit you and those things that would not. And only a fool
would do anything that did not benefit him or that benefited someone