Michael Marshall - The Straw Men

She stared at him, momentarily sobered. 'What do you mean?'

'What I mean,' he said, 'is that my daughter also disappeared, and coming to terms with it is never

going to happen. I want a very short period of your time, during which you might be able to help me find out who destroyed our lives.'

'Surely you should be talking to the Mattisons, rather than me?'

'I have one question for you. That's all.'

She turned away, this time pushing the door more firmly.

Zandt held it open once again, and spoke without allowing himself to think. 'A question that may stop your husband starting or continuing an affair. That may prevent your daughter from suggesting that it might be better if she doesn't bring her friends home. Which may mean that you're less likely to drive your car into a wall one afternoon because you misjudged a turn or because it just seemed like a good idea.'

Gloria Neiden stared at him. It took a few seconds for her to find a voice.

'Fuck off,' she said, low and hard. 'You have no right to speak to me like that. You should have found him. It's not my fault. None of this is my fault.'

'I know,' Zandt said, watching as her face underwent another horrific change, transformed from animal to frightened girl and back to woman, like a putty mask squeezed by a vicious child. 'Nothing that happened was your fault. I know that. Your family knows that. Everybody knows it except you. You can say it, but you don't really believe it. And that's what will kill you.'

They stood like that for a while, one each side of the doorway, both pushing. Then neither was pushing, merely standing.

He called Nina on the way to Santa Monica. She sounded distracted but agreed to meet him in Bel Air. The address was on file.

Michael Becker answered the door, and agreed to come with him without explanation. They left Zok standing on the doorstep, holding their younger daughter's hand. She did not create a fuss or demand to be told what was going on. Zandt realized it would have been the same if it had been Zok whom he had asked along, if Michael had been left receding in the rearview mirror of the Beckers' car. The Beckers trusted each other to hold the fort, responsibilities shifting as circumstances dictated. When nothing else makes sense, it is only your relationship to one person, and one person alone, that stands any chance of protecting you against the world. He wished this was a realization he could have had while he was still with Jennifer.

When the car was moving Zandt asked Michael for the address. Zandt told him to drive there, and refused to answer any of Michael's questions. 'You're going to have to see it' was all he would say. 'You're going to have to be there.'

Becker's post-Euclidean understanding of the geometry of LA meant it took nearly forty minutes to get back the other side of the city, but then they were climbing up into the hills and passing houses that got bigger and bigger with every turn, until they were so big that you couldn't even see them from the road.

Finally they came to a cul-de-sac. On either side lay tall security gates. The headlights revealed another car parked discreetly a little way up the road. Nina was leaning against it, her arms firmly folded and one eyebrow raised. Essence of Nina.

'This is it,' Michael said. 'This is where he lives.' he wasn't stupid. He had begun to make the journey, even if it had yet to reach a fully conscious level. 'What do I say?'

Zandt got out of the car. Nina was more than ready to ask some questions, but he held up a hand and she kept her peace.

'Just get us inside,' he told Michael.

Becker went up to the gatepost and pressed a button. He spoke briefly, and the gates opened within moments.

Then Zandt was walking fast up the path, with Michael and Nina struggling to keep up.

When they reached the house the door was open, and a slim man was standing in the light glow from within. The vastness of the estate stretched out on either side. Zandt grabbed Michael's arm, and shoved him in front as they covered the final yards.

'Hey, Michael,' the man said. 'Who's your friend?'

Zandt stepped out from behind and grabbed Charles Wang by the throat. With his other hand he hit

him twice, short-arm punches to the middle of the face.

Nina stared. 'John, what the hell are you doing?'

'Shut the door.' Zandt shoved Wang back into the vast foyer of the house. He punched him again,

threw him backward to crash into the white marble of the wall. Picked him up and smacked him into a French-style mirror, shattering the top half.

A very young man in a white jacket came running out of a doorway under the staircase which swept

around the foyer to the upper floor. He found that Zandt had a gun, and that it was pointing at his face.

'Go back inside, Julio,' Wang said. His voice was steady.

'Yes, Julio,' Zandt said. 'Go somewhere else and be very quiet. You pick up the phone, then when

I'm finished with this fuck I'm going to hunt you down and pull your fucking head off.'

The boy backed rapidly out of sight.

Zandt turned the gun back on Wang, who half-lay on the floor by the bottom of the mirror, crumpled

as if his back was broken.

'Aren't you going to run?' Zandt asked. He kicked him hard, in the side. 'Try to get away?'

'Stop it,' Nina shouted. 'Tell me what's going on.'

Suddenly Wang was in movement, a fluid push up from the floor. Zandt brought the barrel of the gun

hammering down into his face, stopping him dead in his tracks. Wang made a short clicking sound in his throat, and dropped back to the ground.

Zandt forced his head up. Wang's eyes stared back at him through blood that began to run down from a cut on his forehead. In them Zandt saw nothing but weakness and guile.

'We fucked up,' Zandt said. 'We looked at level one. We missed level two. We didn't even dream about a level three.'

Wang smiled up at him as if wondering how much he'd cost to buy. Zandt let go of his throat and slapped his face hard. 'Look at him, he shouted. 'Not me. Look at Michael.'

Wang seemed for a moment as if he was going to try to run again, but the jab of the gun in his throat convinced him to stay. He slowly turned his eyes toward Michael Becker.

'We never caught The Upright Man,' Zandt said, 'because we were looking for the person who abducted the girls. The reason why we didn't find the man who abducted the girls was that there was no common link, because they were abducted by different men. Today I looked at some other girls, girls who were similar and disappeared at around the same time. In the end I looked at two in particular. Two girls from New York, who couldn't possibly be connected with The Upright Man, because they went missing on the opposite side of the country at exactly the same time as he was working here.'

Wang blinked, tried to turn his eyes away from Becker's face. Zandt shoved the gun deeper into his windpipe, and the eyes swivelled back.

'One girl's father is a development exec for Miramax on the East Coast. The mother of the other girl is halfway up a brokering company who mainly deals with private banks in Switzerland but who also — as I established this very afternoon — has a sideline in using the banks' client lists to find sleeping partners for low-budget film production in Europe. But these are New York girls, right? We're looking for West Coast girls. So I called on Gloria Neiden before I called you. I asked her to list every single person she worked with in the year before her best friend's daughter wound up dead. Every partner, half-partner, agent, exec, financier, loser and wannabe. It took a while, because Mrs Neiden is flaky these days and it's a hard thing to ask someone to remember. But eventually a name came up.'