WHEN HE’D FINISHED THE story, he realized that he was no longer turned toward her. Instead, even though her head was still cradled in the crook of his arm, he lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling. He’d been talking, uninterrupted, for more than a half hour.
“Are you telling me,” Paula said, her voice rising incredulously, “that you’ve got five thousand dollars of this guy Bacardo’s money? This—this hood?”
“He’s not a hood.” Reacting to her criticism, he spoke sharply. “He’s a big shot.”
“Okay. So he hires hoods.”
Bernhardt made no response.
“Jesus, Alan.” She raised herself on one elbow to look down into his face. “Jesus, if something should go wrong, you’d be in trouble with both the goddam Mafia and the goddam law.”
“There’s something I didn’t tell you.”
“Oh?”
“I told Bacardo that I might give the money back. I’ve got a number to call.”
“Then for God’s sake do it. Make the call.”
He studied her face in silence. Two months ago, give or take, Paula had begun pressuring him to let her work with him. “You’re turning down business,” she’d said. Adding fervently: “You don’t have enough time to direct, worse yet. Or write. Or even act.” In the end, Paula had prevailed. She’d started doing surveillance, fifteen dollars an hour. He’d charged the client forty—for surveillance jobs imaginatively, conscientiously well done. It was another reason, come to think of it, why she should move in with him.
“Alan?”
“Hmmm.”
“Are you mad at me?”
“Of course not. I’m just trying to decide.”
“I don’t see what there is to decide.”
“I’ve already looked at this from your point of view, which is the worst-case scenario. But there’s another scenario.”
She lowered her head back into the crook of his arm. With both of them staring up at the ceiling, she said, “And what’s that?”
“Now you’re mad.”
“I’m not mad.”
“That’s the way you always talk when you’re mad.”
“And how’s that?”
“It’s—” He hesitated, then ventured, “It’s haughty.”
“Haughty?” Suddenly she laughed: a sharp, sudden peal. “Haughty?”
He lay in silence—waiting. Finally, as he knew she would, Paula said, “Okay. So what’s the best-case scenario?”
“It’s interesting, you know …” He spoke reflectively, subtly teasing her. “You’ve only been doing surveillance for a couple of months. But already you’re talking different. You act different, too. Do you realize that?”
“Different in what sense?”
“For one thing, you swear more.”
“Hmmm …” Paula was considering the point.
“Back to the best-case scenario,” he said.
“Hmmm.”
“Tomorrow I call C.B. I tell him there’s a thousand dollars in it, win or lose, for a day’s work. I’ll tell him it’s dangerous, that he should bring his guns. For C.B. that’s a come-on. Next I’ll buy a shovel. Then about, say, eight o’clock tomorrow night, we get under way—me and Louise in my car, C.B. in his car. We start out for the delta. Of course, C.B. and I’ll have walkie-talkies, homers, the whole thing. Louise will give me directions as we go. We’ll get to the appointed spot about ten, ten-thirty. We’ll check it out very, very carefully. If there’s a problem, we’ll leave. Run, in other words. If there isn’t a problem, we dig up the jewels. Maybe we take them to a hotel, a suite, so we can all keep track of each other. Then, Monday morning, we take the stuff to the bank, put it in a safe-deposit box. In due time, with me riding shotgun, Louise sells some of the jewels. That’s when I get my ten percent.”
“If you and C.B. got greedy, what’d prevent you guys from taking the jewels away from Louise?”
“Nothing. But she’s got to trust someone. And she knows it. She also knows that time is of the essence.”
“What about—”
“Let me finish this. I’m making it up as I go along, but so far it sounds pretty good.”
In spite of herself, Paula chuckled. “The creative mind at work.”
“Let’s say,” Bernhardt went on, “that something goes wrong. You talked about the law. Okay, let’s say we get picked up by some deputy sheriff on suspicion. What’s going to happen?”
“I hate to think.”
“What’s going to happen is that I tell him the absolute truth. I say that Louise hired me to help her dig up an unspecified item at an unspecified location somewhere in the San Joaquin delta. Period.”
“That’s the law. What about the Mafia? If Bacardo is scared enough to run, then—”
“I don’t think Bacardo’s scared. He’s just being cautious. He wants to check out this Profaci guy.”
“Who’s probably a hoodlum, after the jewels.”
“I don’t think that’s what worried Bacardo. He’s got politics on his mind. Job tenure.”
“Mafia politics.”
Bernhardt considered, then decided to say, “Don’t knock Mafia politics. They play rough—but they play by the rules.”
“Mafia rules.”
“Naturally.”
They lay silently for a moment. Finally Paula said, “If you’re going to ride with Louise, then I should ride with C.B.”
Bernhardt snorted. “I knew you were going to say that. I knew it.”
She made no reply.
“If there’s any danger, it’ll come from the Mafia. We’re agreed on that. And if that should happen, then guns are the only way out. And Louise, unarmed, becomes a liability. The same thing would apply to you. You’d be a liability, just like Louise. If C.B. and I were alone, and something went wrong, we’d fire a shot over their bow and run—probably for the police. But if we have to hang back to protect the womenfolk—” Aware of the risk, he let the image dangle.
A mistake.
“The womenfolk, eh?” Her voice was grim. “I assume that, as always, you chose your words with care.”
“A little joke. Frontier humor.”
“I know how to shoot. You taught me, if you’ll recall.”
Now they lay neither together nor apart. Finally Bernhardt ventured, “If you really want to help, there is something you could do.”
“Oh? What’s that? Load the flintlocks?”
“If it plays out according to the script, then we’ll have to leave Angela behind. Louise’s orders, no compromise.”
“And you need a baby-sitter.”
“This is no kid. She’s twenty, at least. And beautiful. One of those blond California beauties.”
“Long-legged, I suppose. Great boobs. A world-class ass. Right?”
Bernhardt decided to make no reply, a tactical withdrawal in the face of unpredictable hostile action.