AS HE CLIMBED INTO the pickup Price saw a figure on a bicycle just topping the ridge to the west and pedaling down the slope to the winery buildings. A man. Martelli.
Price started the truck’s engine, put the transmission in gear, drove around the house’s circular driveway and headed down to the winery. He stopped in the shade of a giant oak tree that grew beside the fermenting shed and stepped out of the truck. As Martelli came closer, coasting down the gentle incline, Price could easily read the uneasiness in the other man’s dark Italian face.
“Where’s John?”
“He’ll be along in a few minutes. We were fishing. He wanted to stay and catch some crawdads.”
“Why’d you leave him?”
“I—ah—” Martelli gestured to the nearby building: “There’s a couple of calls I have to make.”
“Business calls?”
Martelli shrugged. “One business, one personal.”
He drew a deep, ragged breath. Self-control was important now. Mastery. He was, after all, the employer, the superior. “They must be very important calls, Al. You’ve never left John before.”
Standing with his bike resting against his thigh, wearing his habitual blue jeans and white T-shirt, Martelli made no reply. His face revealed nothing—and everything. His body language, as always, suggested an independence that bordered on insolence. Between them, the silence lengthened—and tightened.
It was necessary, therefore, to assert himself, necessary to dominate: “I think there’s more to it than that.”
“I don’t know what you mean.” Arms defiantly folded across a muscular chest, thighs bulging beneath tight jeans, dark eyes smoldering, Martelli was the instant’s reincarnation of the sullen peasant, silently confronting his angry master.
Speaking slowly, deliberately provocative, Price said, “I mean that I don’t think John is in the woods by himself. I don’t think you left him alone.”
“I don’t remember ever promising that I wouldn’t leave him alone.”
“Did you leave him alone?”
“Look—don’t sweat it. He’ll show up. Give it a half hour or so.”
“I asked you whether John is alone.”
Holding his pose, arms still crossed, eyes still flat, Martelli made no response.
“Goddammit—” Back bowed, chin outthrust, Price took a half step forward. “Goddammit, I asked you a question. Tell me.”
Sardonic amusement twitched at the corners of Martelli’s mouth. He let a long, defiant beat pass. Then, very quietly: “You’d get further, you know, if you’d say ‘please.’”
“You—you—” Price half-raised his hand. “You’ll be sorry, if you don’t tell me.” But his voice had suddenly cracked, an ineffectual falsetto now. In the dark peasant eyes, he saw a glint of derision. If he had a gun—a weapon—he would make Martelli falter, give ground.
A gun—yes.
The thought changed the balance, let him step back, lower his voice, make a fresh start: “It’s Bernhardt, isn’t it? That fucking private eye. Isn’t it?”
Half-smiling, enjoying himself now, Martelli shrugged. Taunting him. Daring him to act, do something decisive.
“You’re fired, Martelli. I want you out of here. Now. Right now.”
The reaction was a sharper twist of the mouth, a more contemptuous quirk around the eyes. “You’re really worried, aren’t you, Dennis? This Bernhardt, he really jangles your bells. Doesn’t he?”
“Don’t—don’t call me ‘Dennis.’”
“Oh—Jeez—sorry.”
“I—want—you—to—tell—me, has Bernhardt got John? Or Janice? Has Janice got him?”
“No comment.”
But the answer was there: that dark, Italian face, peasant-cunning. Taunting him. Telling him that, yes, Bernhardt had John.
“All right—” Hardly aware that he was doing it, he swung his arm toward the driveway’s two stone pillars and the county road beyond. “Then get out of here. Now. Right now. This—this is kidnapping. Kidnapping, do you understand? And you—you’re a part of it. You’re an—an accessory.” The arm swung toward the house. His fingers, he saw, were shaking. Shaking. “I’m going to go up to the house, and I’m going to get my rifle. And if I were you, goddam you, I’d be gone before I get back here. Because if you’re not gone—” His voice choked by sudden fury, uncontrolled, he was forced to break off.
Now Martelli’s grin turned ugly. Imitating his antagonist’s gesture, Martelli half-turned away as he pointed toward his own house. “I’m not leaving, Dennis. At least, not now. Not this minute—and not this hour, either. But I will go down and start packing. Gladly. And I’ll leave. I’ll pack up my truck, and I’ll leave. But between now and then, if you really do get that rifle, I wouldn’t advise you to point it in my direction. Not unless you’re ready to pull the trigger. Do you understand, you sad-ass bastard?”
As if his body was in control, no longer his will, Price realized that he had turned away. He was running toward his house. In his thoughts, only the gun was real—the rifle, and the power it held for him.