Ezio was in a mood. "Why the h.e.l.l don't you ever turn on your ship-to-sh.o.r.e? I been trying to reach you for an hour."

"I go on this boat to get away from telephones, Ezio."

"You can't just do that, Frank. What if something important comes up?"

"Then you'll get in the outboard and come after me the way you just did. I left word where we'd be, didn't I?"

"Took me half the afternoon to find this place. Suppose it was really urgent?"

Frank showed his exasperation. "You kids go for a swim, OK?"

Nora said, "I'm hungry. You make it short."

"d.a.m.n right I will."

Anna watched the two of them go off into the water like dolphins. They went cleaving toward sh.o.r.e, racing each other. It wasn't much of a contest. Sandy's crawl was smooth enough for an Olympic; Nora splashed great thuds and geysers.

Ezio said, "Maybe Mrs. Pastor wants a swim too."

"What's it about, Ezio? This Merle business?"

"Yeah."

"Then she stays if she wants to."

She nodded and stayed where she was. Ezio showed his resentment in a brief pinching of his lips. Then he sat down and retied the laces of his plimsolls. "Gilfillan took off."

"Took off?"

"The whole family. Right into thin air."

2.

"We had two cars and a phone tap on those people, Ezio. Now what do you mean telling me they 'took off'?"

"They had help, Frank."

"Whose help? This Bradleigh?"

"I don't think so."

"Suppose you tell it from the top. And try not to blow my whole Sunday afternoon, all right?"

"I know you're sore being disturbed like this, Frank, but we've got to decide how to handle this and the trail's already getting colder while we sit here talking."

"Then hurry up."

"Well yesterday morning-Sat.u.r.day-Mrs. Merle called the Gilfillans again the way she said she would last week. We had a tap on it. The call came in from a pay phone in San Diego county. No telling if it was the same pay phone she used last time. We'd played it the way you figured, we let Gilfillan know he had a tail Friday afternoon, so they told Mrs. Merle."

"How'd she react?"

"I guess you'd say baffled, Frank. But it seems like she must have gone straight to where they're hiding out and told Merle about it because a couple hours later Merle calls Gilfillan."

Frank smiled. "I knew it. I knew it would bring the son of a b.i.t.c.h out in the open."

"Well anyhow Merle calls and he just gives Gilfillan this code of some kind, a bunch of numbers that Gilfillan can figure out a phone number from. There was no way we could get that number, the way he did it. You want me to spell it out?"

"No. Just let's have the meat."

"Our guys follow Gilfillan down to a shopping center in Culver City, right? He goes to a phone booth, he makes a call. Then Gilfillan goes back home. Now it takes a little time for things to get relayed, Frank, you know how it is. A couple of hours later I get a call from Deffeldorf out there. I tell him to put a couple extra guys on Gilfillan and watch him like a hawk, right? So now we got three cars, six guys, watching Gilfillan's place, and we got two more guys in the panel truck up the street manning the phone tap. Eight men on him. Four vehicles. Now that ought to be enough. I figured we had him sewed up."

"So what happened?"

"So about four o'clock Los Angeles time Gilfillan backs his car out of his garage. It's a Chrysler wagon. Him, his wife and his kid. Some luggage in the back, right? Our guys figure this is it, he's heading for a meet with Merle. They're on him like glue."

"This is yesterday?"

"Yeah, it's yesterday. They drive out to Riverside on the freeways. Maybe they know they're tailed, I don't know, but they don't pull anything, they just drive out to Riverside, right? No trouble following them."

"Ezio ..."

"I'm getting there. So these Gilfillans pull in at this cla.s.sy type restaurant out there. It's maybe five-thirty. They park the wagon, the three of them walk into this restaurant. Our guys park their cars the right way-one goes around behind the place, the other two bracket the Chrysler. What happens, they hardly get time to settle down and the Gilfillan people come trooping back out of the restaurant. They've been in there ten minutes tops."

"Making phone calls, probably."

"All we know is they get back in the car and they lead our guys a merry goose chase over half of Southern California. They head out to El Centro, they cut back toward Santa Ana, they go all over the d.a.m.n place. They stop for gas, our guys stop for gas. Our guys check in by phone when they get a chance but what the h.e.l.l can I tell them?"

"Bottom line, Ezio."

"Bottom line, yeah. They're out in one of those boondock areas-little farm towns, secondary roads, citrus farms. You know, it gets to be maybe eleven o'clock at night. They stop at some cafe, one of those drive-in things, they get hamburgers, they kill some time. Midnight, they're still driving around. Like they're sightseeing, you know, only it's the middle of the night. They turn down this farm road-dirt road-they go out of sight of our guys for a minute around a bend. Our guys. .h.i.t the bend and there's this U-Haul truck skewed right across the road. No way to get past it. Irrigation ditches on both sides of the road and it's just one of those narrow little farm dirt-tracks, you know. One-lane wide. This truck right across the road."

"I have the picture, Ezio. Who was in the truck?"

"n.o.body."

"So it was a setup. The guy in the truck waits there, they arranged it by phone. He waits, the Gilfillans come along. He puts the truck across the road behind their car, then he gets in their car and they all drive away."

"That's the size of it, Frank."

"This happened at midnight?"

"Naturally the guys screwed around for a while out there, they busted into the truck; finally they got it knocked apart enough to get things moving and they shoved it off the road. But by the time they got all that done, the Gilfillan car was long gone. There are two freeways and a dozen fairly major highways in the area. No way to trace them fast. Right now Deffeldorf's got people swarming all over the area trying to find out if anybody saw the Chrysler wagon but h.e.l.l, it was one o'clock in the morning by then, most places were shut up tight and they'd just filled the tank. Not much chance we'll find anybody who spotted the car."

Frank toyed with the game-fishing rig in its socket by the swivel chair. He said mildly, "Who rented the U-Haul?"

"Papers in the glove compartment said it was hired out by a guy with a name and an address. There's no such name at that address in Los Angeles."

"But it's a Los Angeles truck?"

"Right."

"Then probably it wasn't Merle."

"What does that tell us?"

"Tells us he's got help, doesn't it."

"I don't see where that helps us much, Frank."

"It's got to be somebody professional. Your ordinary citizen isn't equipped to walk into a U-Haul agency and plunk down the driver's license and the credit cards you've got to show them to rent a truck ..."

"Maybe the feds got Merle back under their wing."

"I get a feeling it's not federals. This whole elaborate business-it doesn't sound like federals to me. It sounds like some bright free-lance operation."

"That's kind of farfetched. What's he going to do with mercenaries?"

"Make war," Frank said calmly. "You send out feelers, Ezio, find out if there is any word about anybody getting hired for a job like that."

"All right. It probably won't get us anything. Those guys mainly work through mail drops. Like Deffeldorf and Arnie Tyrone."

"What about the riding stables?"

"We've checked out a lot of them. Nothing yet. There's a lot of ranches and farms down there, Frank. It could take months and we still might not find anything."

Frank turned; his face indicated his interest in the gra.s.s bank of the inlet under the trees. The girls were sliding into the water, swimming out from sh.o.r.e. Frank said, "I handled the son of a b.i.t.c.h with kid gloves because he's a movie star, I figured we couldn't afford to f.u.c.k around with a big movie star like that, get all the newspapers on it and everything. I was wrong, Ezio."

"Crying over spilt milk, Frank."

"Well it's a mistake I won't make again if I get the chance...."

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

Southern California: 1417 September

1.

MATHIESON WALKED DOWN THE PADDOCK AT AN EASY PACE, arms swinging. Watching the fence and the barn and the trees: alert but trying to keep relaxed. Homer's voice boomed behind him: "Now!"

He swiveled, saw the bull's-eye target on the tree, drove his hand inside his jacket and dropped to one knee while he raised the Police Special, c.o.c.ked the hammer with his thumb, brought up left forearm with elbow on knee ...

The movements were coming with synchronized automatic precision now: left hand locking up under the right wrist, target sights leveling.

Squeeze the trigger but squeeze it fast: The .38 charge exploded with an earsplitting boom. The revolver rocked in his fist and drove his shoulder back into the socket.

He forced it down, aimed instantaneously and fired the second one.

It kicked high and he brought it down ready to fire again.

"Maggie's drawers," Homer said disgustedly.

He heard hoofbeats-a fast rataplan-and when he turned he saw the horseman rush the fence like a charging cavalry general; a whoop, a flap of winglike elbows and the horse came soaring over the paddock rails. Mathieson wheeled back in terror.

The horse came down from its steeplechase leap with beautiful balance and Roger Gilfillan wheeled it on the spot, came unglued from his easy seat, lighted on both boots and spun away toward the paper target-the picture of the movie gunslinger. The single-action roared, five steady unhurried blasts, and went spinning back into its holster while Roger turned toward him with his high whinnying laugh and swept off his hat, bowing over it like Buffalo Bill to the crowd.

Homer stared at him. "Sweet jumping Jesus Christ."

Roger was still laughing. He took out the big revolver and started plugging the empties out. "Would've been a mite fancier if you boys had the foresight to set up a half-dozen whiskey bottles on the fenceposts. That's the way they usually shoot that scene."

Mathieson reloaded the Police Special. "You crazy buffoon. d.a.m.n near gave me cardiac arrest."

"That's what you're here for, ain't it? Learn to grapple with the unexpected, like?"

Homer came back. He looked stunned. "You put all five of them in the black."

"Did I now. Well how about that."

Homer shook his head in awe, still staring at Roger. "Sweet jumping Jesus Christ. And I always thought they had stunt experts with rifles behind the camera doing all that stuff for the actors."

"That's me, old son. How'd you think I started in this bin-ness? Stunt ridin' and stunt shootin'. I wasn't always an actress, you know." He turned to Mathieson. "Now you didn't do too good, did you."

"I've never been much of a hand with guns." His ears were ringing and whistling.

Homer said, "I've tried all the usual tricks. Hard to tell what he's doing wrong. I've about run out of ideas."

"Probably not bringin' the focus down," Roger said offhandedly. He took Mathieson's revolver and sighted experimentally at the target. "Good square sights on this piece. Shouldn't be no trouble. You sighted this, Homer?"

"Benchrest at a hundred yards. I ran a box of sh.e.l.ls through it. Good tight group. Nothing wrong with the sights."

Roger c.o.c.ked the hammer and the racket startled Mathieson when Roger began firing like a gunslinger. The bullets chewed splinters visibly out of the mangled center of the target.