Thomas Perry - Dead Aim

After another minute, the passenger door of the car parked ahead of the vans opened, and a woman got out. Mallon recognized the blond hair at once. It was Angela Berwell. She stepped away from the car and he could see that she was wearing a navy blue pantsuit. As she moved toward the white van, she was talking. One of the men leaning on the van approached her, and the other went to the back door of the van and climbed inside. Mallon waited, and the man who had gone inside came out again and stood in front of Angela Berwell.

Mallon guessed that on her way to meet him, she and her partner must have detected some violation, and this man was going to show her some permit, or maybe just his license and registration. But he didn’t show her anything. Instead, she opened her coat, held the lapel away from her body, and the man reached up to fiddle with something inside it. While he did, one of the two men near the blue van got into it.

The man with Detective Berwell said something to her, she talked for a few seconds, and then both of them turned to look at the man beside the blue van. He waved an arm and nodded. As Mallon watched, the man who had been sitting behind the wheel of the sedan got out and joined them for a moment, then returned to his car. The rest of the men got into the two vans, and all three vehicles drove around the circle and back down South Curson to Wilshire Boulevard. Then they turned right toward Fairfax. Angela Berwell stood and watched them make the turn, then began to walk alone down Sixth Street in the general direction of the corner where she had agreed to meet him. As she went, Mallon could see that she was talking to an invisible listener. She was wearing a wire.

Mallon sat motionless, trying to get over the shock and disappointment. She wasn’t interested in helping him. She was meeting him to try to get him to say something incriminating on a surveillance tape. He supposed they must be considering prosecuting him for running over the two men in the parking garage. Maybe they had even begun to suspect him of killing Catherine, or killing Lydia. Once he became a suspect, there was probably no limit to the crimes they could link to him. Diane Fleming had been right: it had not been smart to keep bringing himself to their attention, offering his help and asking for theirs.

Time was passing. What should he do now? He could not go to a meeting with Angela Berwell knowing that she was planning to trap him into saying something she could use against him, but how could he refuse? He got out of the car, walked across the grass of the park toward the back of the county art museum. There were pay telephones to the left, just across the path from the entrance to the Page Museum, where the finds from the La Brea Tar Pits were displayed. He hurried to the nearest of the telephones, put in two quarters, took out the sheet of paper where he had written the number of the Hollywood station, and dialed.

A male voice answered, “Hollywood Division.”

Mallon said, “I’d like to leave a message for Detective Angela Berwell in Homicide, please.”

“I’ll connect you with her voice mail.”

After Mallon had heard her recorded voice say, “Please leave a message,” he said, “This is Robert Mallon. I’m afraid I won’t be able to meet you today after all. I hope it’s not too late, and you check your messages in time. Anyway, I’m sorry.”

He hung up the telephone, hurried back to his car, and drove. He hated not being able to get Angela Berwell’s help, and the knowledge that she had turned on him made him afraid. He made his way to the San Diego Freeway and returned to his hotel. When he was in his room again, he dialed his own telephone number.

The telephone rang four times, there was a click, and his answering machine came on. “If you would like to leave a message-”

Mallon pressed the keys for his three-digit code. If the police in Santa Barbara suspected him too, they would hear him calling in to check his messages, but certainly they would have played them already. The machine said, “One. New. Message.”

“Robert?” The voice was high, tense, and worried. “It’s Diane. I’ve been trying to get in touch with you for days. Where are you? If you’re there, pick up.” There was a pause. “I guess you’re not. Call me as soon as you get in.”

Mallon hung up the telephone. He looked at his watch. It was after twelve, but he dialed Diane’s office.

There were two rings, an unfamiliar clicking, then another ring. Sylvia said, “Law office. May I help you?”

Mallon said, “Hello, Sylvia. This is Robert Mallon. I’m returning Diane’s call.”

Sylvia’s voice seemed uncomfortable. “She’s not in the office right now, Mr. Mallon. But she asked that you leave a number so she can call you back.”

Mallon said, “I’m in L.A.,” then read the number to her off the label on the telephone.

“I’ll have her call as soon as I can. She’s due back from the courthouse any minute.”

“Okay,” said Mallon. He hung up and sat on the bed for a moment, staring at the wall. He had heard a sound while she had been writing down his number. She had heard it, and had immediately started talking again, with that business about the courthouse. She had been trying to distract him, in case he had heard it too. The sound had been the whistle of a train.

Diane’s office was on De la Guerra. The nearest train tracks were south of Haley, near the ocean. The whistle he’d heard had been too loud, too close. She had not been in the office. She had not exactly said that she was in the building on De la Guerra Street. She had said, “Law office,” which was the way all lawyers’ phones were answered, for some reason. He decided it was foolish to make up excuses. She had lied to him. She had said Diane was on her way back from the courthouse. With call forwarding, either of them could be anywhere.

The telephone beside him rang. He took a breath. “Hello,” he said, keeping his voice even and calm. His own demeanor seemed to be the only part of the universe that he was able to control, and all he could do with it was to hide his uneasiness, anger, and confusion.

“Robert?” It was Diane’s voice, as he had expected. At one time he used to love to listen to it, the carefully modulated tones like music. He had never minded that the voice was an artifice. It had made him feel flattered, the way seeing a woman dress up to meet him did.

“Hello, Diane,” he said. “You left a message on my machine to call.” His own voice-the tone of unconcern-sounded insane to him. He had been attacked twice over the past two days by people he’d never seen before, and he was concealing it.

“Robert,” she said, her voice tightening to a breathless whisper. “I’m so glad I finally reached you. I think we’re both in terrible danger. I’m not calling from my office. I’m afraid to go near the place. The calls get forwarded to Sylvia, and she calls me so I can return them.”

Mallon was disconcerted. Over the past two days, he had slowly come to the belief that Diane had been lying to him. He let his suspicion come into his voice. “You heard about the power of attorney?”

“What power of attorney? Robert, I’m not calling you about some stupid papers that need to be signed. I think somebody is planning to kill us.”

“Listen to me,” he said. “Did you know I revoked your signature power for my accounts?”

She drew in a breath, as though to raise her voice and insist that he pay attention to what she had been trying to tell him, but then the silence grew longer. The pause sounded as though she had sensed that he believed what he had said was extremely important, and now she was trying to fathom what had been happening to him. “Why would you do that?”