"Expected that," Roger said. "You et?"

He had to think. "No."

"Then go down and get yourself around some grub. Might improve your disposition some."

Without arguing he went downstairs, debating the dining rooms, settled on the coffee shop. Afterward he had a drink in one of the bars, a double, and felt slightly mellowed when he returned to the suite. Roger inspected him critically. "My turn to call tomorrow. I hope it don't have the same effect on me."

"h.e.l.l, Roger, you've got the best marriage in the world."

"Always tend to agree when people tell me that. Strange thing is, it's true."

Vasquez folded the newspaper and put it away. "Mr. Merle, you didn't honestly expect your marriage to survive this. It would be imbecilic to blame its failure solely on these experiences."

"I don't need undercutting-not from my wife and certainly not from you."

"You do, however, need a clear mind. You've half-persuaded yourself that if you were to give up your quixotic quest, even at this late date, you'd have a chance of recovering your marriage. You've convinced yourself somehow that it's an either-or situation-that you can have Pastor or you can have your wife, but you can't have both. It's idiotic. If you accede to these irrational pressures you'll surely lose both of them."

Roger said, "I hate to say this but I agree with the man."

Acidly Mathieson turned to Homer. "What about you? n.o.body seems to have asked your opinion."

"Haven't got one, Mr. Merle. I don't mess in other people's private lives. Done enough messing in my own. I've got a back trail littered with ex-wives-three of them."

Roger said, "I never knew that."

Neither did Mathieson but it wasn't enough of a surprise to distract him. He said savagely, "n.o.body said anything about giving anything up. Have I even hinted I ever thought about quitting?"

"That's beside the point," Vasquez said. "You've created a talisman-the superst.i.tious belief that if you succeed against Pastor it will cost you your marriage. I'm bringing it out in the open now because I believe it's the kind of superst.i.tion that may become a trip wire. Whatever happens to your marriage, it will not be the result of anything that occurs here. The two matters are completely unrelated. You must admit it-without reservation. Otherwise we're in peril."

"You may be right. I may have been putting it to myself like that. I don't know. I haven't been able to think clearly about it."

"Then do so now." Vasquez left his chair and stood looking down at Homer. "I've been thinking that perhaps you should leave us, Homer."

"What?"

"Return to Los Angeles. There are tasks waiting at the home office. Things have piled up during my inexcusable absence."

"You've never thrown me off a case in the middle."

"There are things that will transpire here, things you don't need to partic.i.p.ate in. Please don't be whimsically gallant. I need you more at the home office than here."

Mathieson's rage shifted toward the available target: "Is that the thanks he gets? At least Homer deserves to be in at the finish."

"Please stay out of this, Mr. Merle. Homer knows nothing of your plans. If we exposed the scheme to him he would find it anathema. It would go against every principle in him. But he would insist on backing us to the hilt out of his loyalty to me. I don't wish to confront him with that dilemma."

Homer was on his feet. "Talk to me, not about me."

"I've done so. You have your instructions."

"It must be something that stinks pretty awful. I've gone a long way down a lot of roads with you. Where did you change? I didn't spot it. Where'd you all of a sudden park your values, Diego?"

"I never had a shot at evil so large before."

"And all of a sudden it's the end that justifies the means?"

"The means are, to say the least, appropriate."

Abruptly Homer turned to Mathieson. "We've had fun so far. Does it have to go sour now?"

"I was never playing for fun, Homer."

"That's too bad. You play the game better than anybody I know outside of Diego." He turned back to Vasquez. "I'm not going."

"Don't presume to--"

"Diego, I'm not going. You want to fire me, then fire me. I imagine Mr. Merle will put me on the payroll."

Mathieson said, "If that's what you want."

Vasquez turned away. "It's a b.l.o.o.d.y mutiny."

"No," Homer said. "Just a touch of insubordination. You've never hired lackeys-what do you expect?"

"I'm rather touched, Homer."

"Is that sarcasm?"

"No. It's the simple truth."

"Then I stay."

"I'd prefer you didn't."

"Your exception is noted."

"Very well." Capitulating, Vasquez sat down again. But distaste was ground into his features. He scrutinized Mathieson. "It's reprehensible. Despicable."

"Think of an alternative."

"Easily. Kill them."

"No. I won't do that."

"You're a terrible man, Mr. Merle."

"Then clear out."

"You couldn't possibly handle it alone. It will be supremely difficult for four of us."

"Then why did you try to send Homer away?"

"For exactly the reasons I gave. I don't lie about such things."

"If you're so reluctant you may only be a burden to me."

"I'll carry my share of the weight-and the guilt." Vasquez lifted his coat off the back of the chair. "There's little sense wasting time. Let's find a dealer."

"How? I blew it with Cestone-he never led us to the connection."

"Cestone's connection is not the only source in New York. I made several calls while you were on the line to California."

"And you found a connection just by making a few phone calls?"

"I've been in my profession a great many years ..."

Roger said, "I take it you got names."

"Names and likely places where we can look for the bearers of those names. You have your revolver?"

"Yes."

"Very well. Follow my lead and don't speak unless you must."

"I'm becoming an expert at looking sinister." Mathieson didn't smile at all. "Do you know how to use the stuff?"

Vasquez hesitated. Something happened in him-an emotion had been provoked. He turned away. "Oddly enough yes, I do."

"I wish we'd found Cestone's connection."

"Why?"

"It would have been neater. Using Pastor's own heroin."

"Heroin is all the same. The vein can't tell whose it was."

"Just the same, I'm going to tell Pastor that it was his own dope."

2.

The trivial things always ruin a schedule and in this case it was the tedious matter of the hideout. In the end they had to settle on something farther from the city than they'd antic.i.p.ated-a broker's summer home on Culver Lake near the Water Gap in northwest New Jersey; it was nearly a two-hour run from the city and that made for a dangerously long period in transit but it couldn't be helped because they'd already used up four days in the search and it was the first suitable property they'd found. It was isolated; there were no close neighbors. Vasquez took it on a month's rental at an exorbitant price; they posed as businessmen looking for a quiet place to hold a series of high-echelon management conferences. The house was furnished, it was st.u.r.dy, and the owner thoughtfully had prepared it against break-ins by installing heavy bars over the ground-floor windows. They also would serve to keep a prisoner in.

Vasquez made only one change in the house. In a hardware store he bought a heavy dead-bolt lock and installed it on the corridor door of the downstairs guest bedroom. It could not be opened from either side of the door without a key. Two keys were provided with the lock. Mathieson kept them both.

It was Wednesday night when the four of them left to return to Manhattan but there was still one ch.o.r.e to do en route. In a sleeping Leonia street they unscrewed the license plates of a parked car and drove several blocks and stopped again to remove their rent-a-car's New York plates; they put the stolen Jersey plates on the car, stowed the New York plates in the trunk and drove on across the George Washington Bridge. It would be a little while before the owner of the Leonia car would notice the absence of his license plates; by the time he reported them stolen-if he reported it at all-the plates would be in a trash can somewhere.

Vasquez had never worked in New York before and Mathieson was baffled by the number of people there who seemed to owe favors to someone who, in turn, owed Vasquez a favor. They had an absurdly easy time making the heroin buy; Vasquez judged the price exorbitant but paid it without balking-it was, after all, George Ramiro's money.

Now it was a pharmacist on West Seventy-second Street who provided, at a price but without prescription, a phial of sodium pentothal and a large bottle of chloral hydrate capsules and two cartons each of which contained forty-eight disposable syringes.

By midnight they were back at the hotel. Mathieson unlocked the door to his room. Vasquez walked on toward his own room, then stopped and looked back at him. "You're convinced this is the only way."

"Can you think of another?"

"One, but we've already been through that."

"Nothing else?"

"Nothing else comes to mind. Variations on the same sort of scheme-all of them equally reprehensible."

"There aren't any clean ways of dealing with vermin."

Vasquez said, "Get some sleep. We'll check out of here in the morning."

3.

Friday was the day scheduled for the calls-Halloween.

The first was due at two in the afternoon; the phone was in a booth in the Plaza Hotel; he was in the booth at eight minutes to two, pretending to be talking into the phone. Then the woman in the fur stole found another booth and Mathieson put the receiver back on the hook and waited for it to ring.

Two o'clock came and went. At five minutes past the hour he decided Benson wasn't going to call. Bradleigh had made a mistake somewhere-put on too little pressure or perhaps too much. But he'd give it another ten minutes.

It rang at 2:12.

"You're still there. Sorry. We had busy circuits. This really Edward Merle? Talk to me, let me hear your voice."

"It's me, Walter. It's been a long time but I don't think my voice has changed much."

"Been a lot of blood pa.s.sed under the bridge, hasn't there." Benson's voice hadn't changed either: precise, thin, prissy. He'd been a bookkeeper in a numbers operation in Brooklyn but he hadn't been born there; his voice still had the Midwest in it. Of course he'd been living in Oklahoma for eight years.

Benson went right on-he'd always been filled with chatter. "How's that lovely wife of yours? How've you all been doing?"

"We're just fine, Walter. Look, I don't think we should spend more time on this line than we have to."

"It's secure at both ends. You're in a phone booth, aren't you?"

"Yes."