As he drove west toward Studio City, he thought of the red letters emblazoned on the black T-shirt worn by the attendant at the Post parking lot: FEAR NADA. That was a philosophy Joe could never embrace. He feared so much.
More than anything, he was tormented by the possibility that the crash had not been an accident, that Michelle and Chrissie and Nina died not at the whim of fate but by the hand of man. Although the National Transportation Safety Board hadn’t been able to settle on a probable cause, hydraulic control systems failure complicated by human error was one possible scenario—and one with which he had been able to live because it was so impersonal, as mechanical and cold as the universe itself. He would find it intolerable, however, if they had perished from a cowardly act of terrorism or because of some more personal crime, their lives sacrificed to human greed or envy or hatred.
He feared what such a discovery would do to him. He feared what he might become, his potential for savagery, the hideous ease with which he might embrace vengeance and call it justice.
3
In the current atmosphere of fierce competitiveness that marked their industry, California bankers were keeping their offices open on Saturdays, some as late as five o’clock. Joe arrived at the Studio City branch of his bank twenty minutes before the doors closed.
When he sold the house here, he had not bothered to switch his account to a branch nearer his one-room apartment in Laurel Canyon. Convenience wasn’t a consideration when time no longer mattered.
He went to a window where a woman named Heather was tending to paperwork as she waited for last-minute business. She had worked at this bank since Joe had first opened an account a decade ago.
“I need to make a cash withdrawal,” he said, after the requisite small talk, “but I don’t have my chequebook with me.”
“That’s no problem,” she assured him.
It became a small problem, however, when Joe asked for twenty thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills. Heather went to the other end of the bank and huddled in conversation with the head teller, who then consulted the assistant manager. This was a young man no less handsome than the current hottest movie hero; perhaps he was one of the legion of would-be stars who laboured in the real world to survive while waiting for the fantasy of fame. They glanced at Joe as if his identity was now in doubt.
Taking in money, banks were like industrial vacuum cleaners. Giving it out, they were clogged faucets.
Heather returned with a guarded expression and the news that they were happy to accommodate him, though there were, of course, procedures that must be followed.
At the other end of the bank, the assistant manager was talking on his phone, and Joe suspected that he himself was the subject of the conversation. He knew he was letting his paranoia get the better of him again, but his mouth went dry, and his heartbeat increased.
The money was his. He needed it.
That Heather had known Joe for years—in fact, attended the same Lutheran church where Michelle had taken Chrissie and Nina to Sunday school and services—did not obviate her need to see his driver’s license. The days of common trust and common sense were so far in America’s past that they seemed not merely to be ancient history but to be part of the history of another country altogether.
He remained patient. Everything he owned was on deposit here, including nearly sixty thousand dollars in equity from the sale of the house, so he could not be denied the money, which he would need for living expenses. With the same people seeking him who were searching for Rose Tucker, he could not go back to the apartment and would have to live out of motels for the duration.
The assistant manager had concluded his call. He was staring at a note pad on his desk, tapping it with a pencil.
Joe had considered using his few credit cards to pay for things, supplemented by small sums withdrawn as needed from automated teller machines. But authorities could track a suspect through credit-card use and ATM activity—and be ever on his heels. They could even have his plastic seized by any merchant at the point of purchase.