“His house? In Villa Park? Why?”
“1 can’t tell you.”
“After his house, where?”
“Geneplan. His office.”
“Why?”
“I can’t tell you that, either.”
“Why not?”
“Benny, it’s dangerous. It could get violent.”
“So what the fuck am I-porcelain? Crystal? Shit, woman, do you think
I’m going to fly into a million goddamn pieces at the tap of a goddamn
finger?”
She looked at him. The amber glow of the streetlamp came through only
her half of the windshield, leaving him in darkness, but his eyes shone
in the shadows. She said, “My God, you’re furious. I’ve never heard
you use that kind of language before.”
He said, “Rachael, do we have something or not? I think we have
something. Special, I mean.”
“Yes.”
“You really think so?”
“You know I do.”
“Then you can’t freeze me out of this. You can’t keep me from helping
you, when you need help. Not if we’re to go on from here.
She looked at him, feeling very tender toward him, wanting more than
anything to bring him into her confidence, to have him as her ally, but
involving him would be a rotten thing to do. He was right now thinking
what kind of trouble she might be in, his mind churning furiously,
listing possibilities, but nothing he could imagine would be half as
dangerous as the truth.
If he knew the truth, he might not be so eager to help, but she dared
not tell him.
He said, “I mean, you know I’m a pretty old-fashioned guy. Not very
with it by most standards. Staid in some ways. Hell, half the guys in
California real estate wear white cords and pastel blazers when they go
to work on a summer day like this, but I don’t feel comfortable in less
than a three-piece suit and wing tips. I may be the last guy in a
real-estate office who even knows what a goddamn vest is. So when
someone like me sees the woman he cares about in trouble, he has to
help, it’s the only thing he can do, the plain old-fashioned thing, the
right thing, and if she won’t let him help, then that’s pretty much a
slap in the face, an affront to all his values, a rejection of what he
is, and no matter how much he likes her, he’s got to walk, it’s as
simple as that.”
She said, “I never heard you make a speech before.”
“I never had to before.”
Both touched and frustrated by his ultimatum, Rachael closed her eyes
and leaned back in the seat, unable to decide what to do. She kept her
hands on the steering wheel, gripping it tightly, for if she let go,
Benny would be sure to see how badly her hands were shaking.
He said, “Who are you afraid of, Rachael?”
She didn’t answer.
He said, “You know what happened to his body, don’t you?”
“Maybe.”
“You know who took it.”
“Maybe.”
“And you’re afraid of them. Who are they, Rachael?
For God’s sake, who would do something like thatand why?”
She opened her eyes, put the car in gear, and pulled away from the curb.
“Okay, you can come along with me.
“To Eric’s house, the office? What’re we looking for?”
“That,” she said, “I’m not prepared to tell you.”
He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Okay. All right. One step
at a time. I can live with that.”
She drove north on Main Street to Katella Avenue, east on Katella to the
expensive community of Villa Park, into the hills toward her dead
husband’s estate. In the upper reaches of Villa Park, the big houses,
many priced well over a million dollars, were less than half visible
beyond screens of shrubbery and the gathered cloaks of night.
Eric’s house, looming beyond a row of enormous Indian laurels, seemed
darker than any other, a cold place even on a June night, the many
windows like sheets of some strange obsidian that would not permit the
passage of light in either direction.
The long driveway, made of rust-red Mexican paving tiles, curved past
Eric Leben’s enormous Spanish-modern house before finally turning out of
sight to the garages in back. Rachael parked in front.