Three Days to Never (10 page)

The old man shifted his gaze to Marrity. “I got worried and called the police in Shasta,” he said. “When she called me from there, she was talking as if she thought she would die soon, giving me the car and all. Even calling me.”

Marrity realized that he didn't believe him. Maybe, he thought, he
did
kill her! Well no, he couldn't have got back from Shasta in time to break Grammar's window and take her keys.

“You asked,” the old man said, apparently to Daphne, though he was staring into his drink, “why she was blackmailing me. A man died, and some money was
absconded
with, and she knew of evidence that would
implicate
me in it. She might even have believed I was the guilty party. But she didn't blackmail me for money, she only wanted me to go away and not contact any of you again. I'd have gone to prison, almost certainly—it was a very good circumstantial case. I even wondered if
she—
” He stopped, and groped clumsily for his glass; after closing his hand on empty air a few inches short of it, he managed to get hold of it and take a deep sip of the liquor.

Marrity could see that Daphne was anxious to ask a question, so he asked it for her. “Why did she want you to go away, to disappear?”

“It's not—really a subject for a little girl to hear,” said Marrity's father haltingly. “Uh—I married your mother, to some extent, just a little bit, to prove to myself that I—could love a woman. In the 1950s there was no other option, really. It—wasn't entirely a success.” The old man's face was red, and he gulped some more of the liquor and exhaled through his teeth in a near whistle.

“So was your grandfather Albert Einstein?” asked Marrity quickly. “My great-grandfather?”

“You seem to know it already,” old Marrity said cautiously.

“Why is it such a secret? I never got a hint of it till yesterday. The Britannica doesn't mention Grammar, and she never said a word about it.”

“Grammar was born in 1902, before Einstein and her mother were married. Uh—too much of a scandal. He wanted to be a professor, and this was really still nineteenth-century Switzerland. After a while the lie, and the little girl's new identity, were too established to change.”

“Huh. Why did you visit him in '55, right after leaving my mother?”

His father stared at him with no expression. “I don't think you have the story entirely correct,” he said. “We can go over all the old history later.”

“Were you going to blackmail Einstein?” asked Marrity. “About his daughter?”

“Can I smoke?” his father asked, reaching behind him to fumble in the pocket of his jacket.

“Sure. Daph, would you get an ashtray?” Daphne nodded and pushed her chair back.

“You don't know me at all,” the old man went on, “so I can't take any offense at that remark. But no, I didn't try to blackmail him. My mother may have.”

“To get what?” asked Marrity.

Daphne laid a glass ashtray on the table at the man's elbow, but he didn't look at her as he tugged out of his pocket an opened pack of Marlboros and shook one out. “The same thing she extorted from me, maybe. Absence. He never came back to California after '33.” He looked at Daphne at last. “I bet your movie wasn't wrecked. Did you pull it out?”

“It sure smoked,” she said cautiously. “And it's been outside all night. Snails probably ate it.”

The old man tore off two matches and lost hold of both of them, then with evident care tore off another and managed to strike it alight and hold it to the end of his cigarette. “I've got,” he said as he puffed on the cigarette and blew out the match, “a friend who restores all kinds of electromagnetic hardware—computer disks, cassette tapes. You give it to me and I'll show it to him.”

“No,” said Marrity. “I'm going to—fix it myself.”

“Right,” said Daphne.

His father stared at Marrity. “You know about that stuff, do you?”

“For all you know, that's what I do for a living,” Marrity said.

The old man frowned in evident puzzlement. “I suppose that's true. I've got some errands to run, but I'd like to take the two of you to lunch.” He dropped the burnt match into the ashtray. “On me!” he added.

“We've got a lunch date already,” Marrity said.

His father nodded, as if he'd expected the answer. “Uh—tomorrow?”

“I'll be working,” said Marrity. Reluctantly he added, “Maybe dinner tomorrow?”

“Dinner's good. Seven?”

”'Kay. Have you got a phone number?”

“Not, not right at the moment. You're listed—I'll call you at six, to make sure we're still on. Let's make it Italian—so don't have Italian today, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Promise?” The old man seemed anxious.

“Yes, I promise.” Marrity stood up. “Well, it's been—distressing.” He didn't hold out his hand.

“Bound to be, just at first,” the old man said, pushing back his chair. “Probably we'll get more friendly. I truly hope so. Daphne, a—pleasure to meet you. I wish you well.”

“Thanks,” said Daphne, staring down at the table.

“No Italian today, remember,” said Marrity's father as he got laboriously to his feet. “Tomorrow night we'll do it all—lasagna, pizza—antipasto—”

As Marrity and his father walked out the kitchen door, Marrity stood between the old man and the wrecked VCR, and when his father had hobbled away down the driveway, he bent down to pick it up.

“Daph,” he called into the kitchen, “would you get the gas can for the lawn mower? I'm going to just plain incinerate this thing.”

And, he thought, I believe I'll keep those letters of Grammar's with me, in my briefcase.

T
he old guy's walking out,” said Golze as he drove by the Marrity house for the fourth time, in a white Toyota now; “limping, to be more precise. The guy who was fixing his car on the other side of the street is gone.”

“Our man didn't answer his phone,” said Rascasse's voice from the radio clipped to the dashboard. “He let the machine take it. Charlotte, did you get anything? You never give me your money,” he added.

Golze reached out and clicked the radio's channel selector to the next frequency in their agreed-on sequence—they were using titles from the Beatles'
Abbey Road
album as cues.

“That house is set awful far back from the road,” Charlotte said. “I was able to see through a child, a bit—must have been the little girl. Two men at a kitchen table, one clearly her father: thirty-five, dark haired, six foot, thin; the other was this old guy who just got into the—oh! darling.” After Golze had switched channels again, she went on, “just got into the green Rambler. They're clearly related, the two men, strong resemblance. Old guy was smoking a cigarette, and drinking whiskey or brandy, brown stuff. That's all.”

Golze made a slow right turn, eyeing his mirrors. The yards around here all seemed to be scattered with wrecked trucks or live goats.

“No help with the floor plan?” asked Rascasse's voice from the radio.

“Not much. The kitchen is about ten by twenty, narrow ends at north and south; doorway at the north end of the east wall, a step up to a landing, I don't know what's past it.”

“Okay. You didn't see—mean Mr. Mustard.” Again Golze reached out and clicked the channel selector. “—see a videocassette, or some round, flat film cans—”

“No, but aside from the kitchen, all I saw was the bottom half of the driveway.” So, thought Charlotte, the dead old woman's magical device was a
movie
?

She suppressed a nervous smile—she'd been imagining something more like a candelabra made from a mummified hand, at least.

“Charlotte,” said the voice from the speaker, “I may want you to approach the girl's father, Maxwell's silver hammer.” Click. “—assuming we get a chance to get into his house and work up a profile. Preliminary, just establish a relationship, no questions yet. Come together.” Click. “Very accidental meeting, you know, the sort of thing that even in retrospect he won't think could have been planned. Be charming. Right?”

“Right,” she said.

Since first hearing of him last night, the Vespers had found out that Francis Thomas Marrity was a widower with one twelve-year-old daughter, Daphne; his wife, Lucy, had died in '85 of pancreatic cancer, when the child was ten. Marrity was a college literature professor, with a thirty-thousand-dollar mortgage, life insurance through the Automobile Club, and no criminal record at all.

She wasn't going to mention it to Rascasse or Golze, but while she'd briefly been looking through the little girl's eyes, she had momentarily got a flicker image of the little girl herself, though there hadn't been a mirror nearby—it was as if the girl had for an instant been sharing the perspective of one of the men on the other side of the table. She was a pretty little thing, apparently, with big eyes and brown bangs.

Charlotte had decided way back in her missile-silo days that there was no gain in mentioning details that might complicate settled arrangements. Do what's best for little Charlotte, she thought.

Through Golze's eyes now Charlotte saw a woman pause from hanging T-shirts and jeans in a fenced-in yard to glance at the white Toyota, and for a moment Charlotte shifted her viewpoint to the woman; and she eyed her own silhouette critically as the car drove past. Still cheerleader pretty, as always, she thought. And ideally I won't need it much longer.

O
pus is always looking for his mother,” said Daphne, sitting at the kitchen table. She was belatedly reading the comics, and clearly had got to the
Bloom County
strip. “I suppose she's a penguin too.”

“I suppose,” agreed Marrity, standing at the sink.

Daphne pushed the newspaper away. “It must be weird,” she said, “to suddenly have a real father, sitting in your kitchen smoking a cigarette.”

“It is,” said Marrity. He was washing his hands with dishwashing detergent. “He's got a good explanation, hasn't he?”
He dried his hands on a paper towel and smelled them—the gasoline reek was hardly detectable. My life stinks of gasoline lately, he thought.

“Did he mean he's gay?” asked Daphne.

“Um, yes.”

“He's not gay,” she said.

Marrity walked back to the table and sat down. “How do you know?” he asked her.

“Paul and Webster, at your college, they're gay. And some of Uncle Bennett's friends. They're—it's not like they're always joking, or always sad, but—they're not like your father.”

“Well, that's a small sample, and this father guy wasn't anything like relaxed.”

She shrugged, clearly not conceding the point. “We can't go to Alfredo's?”

“Sure we can.”

“You promised not to.”

“Actually I'd—” Marrity paused, then laughed uncertainly. “I think I'd like a chance to break a promise to him. He deserves a lot of broken promises.” He shrugged. “We can tell him we had Mexican.”

“Okay. And can we fix up my room this morning? Can I paint the walls?”

“Sure, if you don't mind that Swiss Coffee color we used in the hall. In fact, I should paint over the smoke marks on the hall ceiling.” Marrity picked up the glass his father had used and swirled the diminished ice cubes in it. “What do you think of him? Short acquaintance, I admit.”

“He wants something. From us.”

“That video?”

“I think so! But even with it gone, something.” She pushed her cold bowl of oatmeal away. “What do
you
think of him?”

“I'm embarrassed by him. I feel sorry for him. I think he's an alcoholic. And just telling me
why
he abandoned Moira and me and our mother doesn't change the math.” He
shook his head. “I don't think he'll…ever be more than a stranger to me.”

Tears stood in Daphne's eyes. “This is worse than before, isn't it?”

Marrity took a breath to answer, paused, and then let it out. “I guess it is,” he said finally. “No more hundreds of possibilities, just this one old drunk cranking around in Grammar's car.”

A
s Marrity held open the tinted glass door of Alfredo's for her, Daphne asked him, “What are you going to have
besides
beer?”

The air was cooler inside the dark restaurant, and smelled of fennel and garlic.

“Two for lunch, please, smoking or nonsmoking doesn't matter,” Marrity said to the hostess behind the cash-register counter. They had missed the lunch crowd because of having painted Daphne's room and the hall ceiling, and he could see several empty booths with fresh silverware and red-and-white paper place mats on the tables.

“It's a hot day,” he told Daphne as they followed a waitress to a booth against the west wall. “I'm thinking about a beer because that's what I want first. I don't know why sausage and bell peppers looks so good to you on a day like this.”

“I haven't absolutely made up my mind.”

“It's all I see in there,” he said as he sat down across from
her. “The young lady will have a—” Marrity said to the waitress, “—don't tell me—a lemon in it, that's an iced tea. And could I have a Coors, please.”

“You were picturing two,” Daphne said after the waitress had walked away.

“And I'm going to have two,” Marrity told her, “but not both at once.”

“You should get the chicken and broccoli. You don't eat enough vegetables.”

“Onions and potatoes are vegetables.”

“They're not green. You don't eat right. Your guts are probably all creepy looking.”

“You've got paint in your hair.”

She looked dismayed, and glanced back toward the cashier's counter as she patted her bangs. “A lot?”

“No. Here.” He reached across the table, pinched a strand of her brown hair and drew the fleck of paint down to the ends, where it slid off. “Only somebody sitting right across from you under this light could have seen it.”

“Thank God for that.”

C
harlotte Sinclair strolled from the back of the parking lot toward the entrance to Alfredo's, trailing the fingers of her right hand along the brick wall for balance. She had changed into black jeans and a burgundy short-sleeved blouse, and her dark brown hair was now pulled back in a ponytail, though her sunglasses were the same. She carried a purse in her left hand, letting the strap swing free.

She lingered at one section of the wall for a full thirty seconds, then moved on, rounding the building's northwest corner and shuffling carefully right past the entry door. By the coolness of the air, she knew she was in shadow now. At the northeast corner she turned right again and made her way along the restaurant's eastern wall, again trailing her fingers along the brick surface.

She turned around and walked back to the curb, and when she heard a car squeak to a stop in front of her, she looked out
of the driver's eyes and saw herself standing in the sunlight beyond the open passenger-side window; with that view to guide her, she was able to put her hand on the door handle and lean down to speak to the driver.

“Mirror,” she said.

“I always forget.” The man bent sideways to look at himself in the rearview mirror, and Charlotte recognized the lean, white-mustached face of Roger Canino, the Vespers security chief at the Amboy compound. Charlotte opened the door and got into the passenger seat.

“How's my favorite girl?”

“Fine, Roger.”

As the car began moving, she groped in her purse—no sense in asking old Canino to look in there for her—and by touch found the radio and switched it on. In a moment she heard Rascasse's voice say, “Prime here.” He pronounced it
preem.

Leaning down over the purse and pressing the send button, she said, “Seconde here. The old guy from the green Rambler, octopus's garden”—she switched the frequency up one notch—“is sitting way in the back on the east side, by the restrooms; it's the smoking section, there are ashtrays on the tables. He's got a couple of empty beer bottles and the remains of spaghetti in a white sauce in front of him, but he's done eating and it looks cold to me, polythene Pam.” Again she clicked the dial. “Our man and his daughter are in a booth against the west wall, toward the front, north, on the other side of the kitchen. They're just ordering now.”

“Got it, thanks,” came Rascasse's voice.

“Can I be one of the parties?” she said. “I'm hungry.” Actually she wanted to monitor Marrity and his daughter from a closer vantage point, without the restaurant wall between her and them; for a moment there, as she had been looking at Daphne through Marrity's eyes, she had found herself seeing Marrity's face, and she remembered the same skipping-across phenomenon happening this morning when she had been monitoring Daphne from the car.

I've never slipped from one viewpoint to another acci
dentally before today, she thought. Am I losing my grip? Will I start seeing everybody's viewpoint at once?

“No, Charlotte,” came the voice from the speaker, “because.”

The radio was silent. “That was a cue, sweetie,” said Canino without looking away from the traffic.

“What,” said Charlotte, “‘Because'? Shit.” She switched the frequency dial again.

“—bumper-beeper on his Ford—” Rascasse was saying.

“Again, from the bridge,” said Charlotte.

“Oh,” came Rascasse's voice. “Okay, You can't go in because you're going to
cute-meet
him later, remember? If we don't find the artifact in his house or truck. We're doing research in the house right now, to prep you for it. And we've got a bumper-beeper on his Ford pickup—if we need you, we should be able to make an opportunity before sundown.”

“Right.”

“Any clues about who the old fellow
is
? She came in through the bathroom window.”

“That one I get,” Charlotte muttered, switching the frequency again. “No,” she said. “Strong family resemblance with our man, as you've seen. His father, maybe.”

“Probably in town for the funeral,” said Rascasse. “Obviously he is supposed to meet them in the restaurant.”

Charlotte didn't correct him, but it seemed to her that neither Marrity nor the old man expected the other to be there.

W
ho
are
these guys?” whispered Bert Malk to himself as he drove past Alfredo's in the opposite direction. He had just seen the dark-haired girl in the sunglasses climb into a car that then sped away with her; she had probably been a lookout—probably another one had stepped up. And she was pretty definitely the same girl he had seen this morning cruising twice past Marrity's house.

Bozzaris would probably already be in the restaurant. Malk had stopped at a 7-Eleven parking lot pay phone to
call the relay
sayan,
and had got a message from Lepidopt:
Crew of three entered M's house as soon as father and daughter drove away. You two prevent any kidnap. Daylight.

“Daylight” meant “highest state of alert.”

This was a full-scale operation by somebody.

Malk was aware of the angular shape of the Beretta Model 70S against his hip. It held nine .22 long-rifle rounds—a small caliber, but it was the Mossad standard, and the theory was that it didn't need a silencer since the report of a .22 round, though loud, didn't exactly sound like a gunshot. It was more a loud
snap
than the deafening
pop
of bigger calibers. And the long-rifle .22s were plenty deadly if they were put in the right places.

He steered left onto E Street to check for alternate exits from the parking lot and any back doors of the restaurant.

W
hen Malk had finally parked and walked into the restaurant, Bozzaris was already inside, waiting on a vinyl couch by the west-side nonsmoking dining room, and he stood up and jerked his head in that direction.

“Yo, Steve,” he said. “Table's waiting.”

Any name that began with “S” meant
I haven't had time to do a route, to be sure I'm not being followed.

Swell, thought Malk as he followed the younger man to a table only a couple of yards away from a booth occupied by a preteen girl and a dark-haired man of about his own age, mid-thirties. That's our quarry, he thought, not letting himself look directly at Frank and Daphne Marrity. He noticed that Frank had lasagna, and Daphne was eating some kind of pasta with sausage and bell peppers on it.

Malk and Bozzaris sat at adjoining sides of the square table, more or less between the Marritys and everyone else. Malk was mentally rehearsing the old training on how to throw himself backward in his chair and shoot under the table.

When he had sat down, he pulled his Chap Stick out of his pocket and nervously twisted off the cap; then, reflecting that it was probably bad manners to use it in a restaurant, he snapped the cap back on. He looked more closely at it.

“Shit,” he said absently to Bozzaris, “this isn't Chap Stick—it's…‘Nose Soother'! There's a picture of a red nose on it. I've been putting it on my mouth!”

“Oh boy,” said Bozzaris. “They test those things in the factory, you know. Guys that test 'em, they can't get any other jobs.”

“Shut up,” said Malk, shoving the tube back into his pocket.

“Some big old retard had that up his nose.” Bozzaris looked at his watch and then toward the door, as if they were expecting a third person, and then he looked around at the tables and booths. “Bailey did say one o'clock, didn't he?”

“That's what the message on my machine said,” Malk agreed, looking around himself. Waiting impatiently for an imaginary third person was a good excuse to check out the surrounding people; he memorized the other diners—a man and a woman in the booth south of the Marritys, three older women toward the north end, and three college-looking boys in T-shirts against the inner wall, under a shelf full of pasta boxes and Italian cookie cans. At least one party, he told himself, must be operatives of the other force, whatever it is, and they'll be speculatively noting Bozzaris and me. At least we're talking spontaneously, what with the Nose Soother and all.

“What are you going to have?” Malk asked.

“I don't know. A beer, a sandwich.”

Because he was listening for it, Malk could hear Bozzaris suppressing his Israeli accent, pronouncing the
r
at the front of his mouth and flattening the emphases; somehow the cadence of American English wasn't as sociable as the Israeli cadence.

“Me too, I guess,” said Malk.

“I'm gonna hit the head first,” said Bozzaris, pushing his chair back. “A Budweiser, if the lady comes by.”

Malk nodded, and when Bozzaris strode away he took a ball point pen from his pocket and began doodling on the paper place mat so that he could keep his eyes in an unfocused stare that took in the periphery—absently he drew a dog wearing a bowler hat and a snail with a mustache and pince-nez glasses.

“No,” Marrity was saying six feet away, “I imagine the funeral will be down here. I guess Bennett and Moira will arrange to have the body flown down from Shasta. I should have called them this morning.”

Malk noted that Marrity was apparently not aware of any need for secrecy. As he'd told Bozzaris last night, Marrity didn't seem to know anything about his grandmother's history.

From the corner of his eye, he saw the girl nod.

Bozzaris came back and sat down. “You should go to the head too,” he said, very quietly. “Check out an old party sitting in the last booth by the east wall.”

Malk nodded, guessing that he meant the old man who had visited the Marritys five hours ago. What the hell did that mean? “Bailey can do it or not,” he said in a normal tone, “doesn't matter to us.” He pushed back his chair.

“Daph?” said Marrity urgently, and Malk looked over at them.

The girl was holding her throat with one hand, and her face was blank.

“Daph, can you talk?”

She shook her head, her eyes showing alarm now; and Marrity slid out of the booth and stood up, pulling her to her feet. He grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her around, then he crouched and linked his fists over her abdomen from behind.

“Relax, Daph,” he said. “Heimlich.”

He jerked his fists back and up, ramming the inner one into her stomach just below the ribs; her hands gripped her thighs, but apparently no food was dislodged.

“Hang on,” Marrity said hoarsely, “one more time, harder.”
Again he drove his fist upward into her abdomen, but again there was no result.

Malk had tensed, and his hands were tingling, but he was sure he couldn't do any better than the girl's father was.

“Somebody call 911,” Marrity shouted, and then yanked his fist powerfully into Daphne one more time. His shirt was already dark with sweat.

A gray-haired man in a green Members Only jacket had shuffled in from the other dining room, and now stood by Malk's table, looking on in evident horror; and he was indeed the man who had driven the green Rambler and spoken to Marrity this morning.

Malk looked back at the girl and her father, and gripped the edge of his table. He realized that he was praying.

The couple in the booth behind Marrity had got to their feet, but were only staring at the man holding the girl, and the three old women had all put down their forks and were blinking in evident confusion. Malk's training overrode his horrified fascination, and it occurred to him that this conspicuous emergency would probably wreck any kidnap plans.

Daphne opened her mouth and Malk could see her abdomen tighten as she tried uselessly to expel the blockage.

One of the college boys had a cellular phone out, and the cashier was anxiously looking their way and speaking into a telephone at the counter.

“And another, Daph,” said Marrity in a voice that was nearly a sob. This time her knees folded after the forceful upward thrust, and Marrity sat down hard on the linoleum, holding her in his lap now.