Violent Ward. Len Deighton

don’t you drop dead?’ he replied. You’d think they would have been mad at my neighbor, but the wet one was acting like I’d switched off the pool lights and lured him on.

      ‘We’ll get back to the precinct house,’ the dry one said. ‘We’re off duty in thirty minutes.’

      ‘Suit yourself,’ I said. Now that we were standing in the dim antiprowler light from my porch, I saw how wet he was. Up to his waist he was soaked, but his shoulders were only partly wet. He must have gone in at the shallow end, where all the toys and the inflated yellow alligator are floating, and recovered his balance before going under.

      ‘I should book you, smart-ass,’ said the wet one.

      Book me? ‘What for?’

      ‘Disorderly conduct,’ he said.

      ‘Next time you take a midnight dip,’ I said, ‘don’t count on me for the kiss of life.’

      ‘And next time you get burglarized, drop a dime to your interior decorator,’ he said. I guess he was mad that I’d told him not to chip my paintwork.

      They both got into the black-and-white, with the wet one moving carefully, and drove away. Once they’d sailed off into the night I went inside, poured myself a drink, sank down on the sofa, and kicked off my shoes. With a picture window in this town, who needs television? I looked around me; I should make more serious efforts to sell the house. Maybe if we swung a new office from Petrovitch I could rent a small service apartment somewhere nearby. If I could find a place real close, I could leave my car parked at the office. Why hadn’t I sold years ago? I knew the answer. This is the house where I’d been happy. Betty had brought Danny back here from the hospital, and everything in the house reminded me of those days. Under the dining room table were two cardboard boxes containing ornaments and chinaware. When Betty first left me I decided to move out right away and started packing up the breakable stuff. But it was a dispiriting task and I soon gave up. Now the half-filled boxes were just collecting dust under a dining table I never used. I had to do something about my life; it was a mess.

      What a tacky day I’d had. And then, just to make it complete, the phone gets up on its hind legs and warbles at me. ‘Is that you, Mickey?’ said a voice I recognized.

      ‘No, it’s his valet. I’ll put you through to the solarium.’

      ‘This is Goldie,’ he said. ‘Goldie Arnez.’

      ‘Yeah, I knew which one it was,’ I told him. ‘I haven’t got a confusingly large number of acquaintances named Goldie.’

      ‘You slipped away without my seeing you go.’

      ‘Did I? I do that sometimes, when the hands are creeping toward the witching hour and I’ve swallowed too many of those sharp little sticks they spear the cocktail wieners on.’

      ‘Mr Petrovitch wants to talk with you.’

      ‘Put him on.’

      A polite little chuckle. ‘Tomorrow. Nine A.M. sharp. At Camarillo airport. Bring all the papers concerning Vic Crichton’s deal with the British lord. The British companies and all.’

      ‘Camarillo?’

      ‘It’s a short drive down the freeway, Mickey. And at that time of day you should have the westbound side all to yourself.’

      ‘I would have thought a rich guy like that would have a hangar in John Wayne or Santa Monica, some place with a fancy restaurant.’

      ‘I got news for you. Rich guys like that have a chef right on the plane, cooking them all the fancy food they can eat.’

      ‘In the main building? Where will I find him?’

      ‘There’s no main building. You’ll spot his limo: white with tinted glass. Just make sure you bring the papers, like I said.’

      ‘I’m not sure I can do that. Those papers concern a client. There is a matter of confidentiality involved.’

      ‘Just bring the files.’

      ‘Like I’m telling you, Goldie. This is a matter of confidentiality, client-attorney confidentiality.’

      ‘Are you getting senile amnesia or something? One of the Petrovitch holding companies now owns your whole bailiwick. Remember, old buddy?’

      ‘That makes no difference in law. You can’t buy a law practice. All that’s happened is that we’ve taken on a new partner of Mr Petrovitch’s choosing. And I haven’t even met him yet.’

      ‘You play it any way you choose, Mickey. You were always a maverick. But if I were in your shoes I’d be at Camarillo airport with my notebook under my arm and my pencil sharpened.’

      ‘I’ll have to think about it.’ I was already thinking about it, and my thoughts were negative. That stuff went a long way back. Take the notebooks: Denise had filled them with that impenetrable shorthand of hers. Who knows what any of us might have said in some of those brainstorming sessions?

      ‘Yes, you think about it,’ said Goldie. ‘But don’t talk to Crichton or Lord Westbridge or any of their people. Got it?’

      ‘Did Petrovitch tell you to insert that clause into this tacky ultimatum of yours?’

      ‘It’s not an ultimatum.’ Then he amended it. ‘But, yes. As a matter of fact, Mickey, yes, he did.’

      ‘Tell him to get lost,’ I said.

      ‘I won’t relay that message. You be there in the morning, and if you still feel the same way you’ll be able to tell him in person.’

      ‘Okay.’

      He was reluctant to hang up; he wasn’t sure he’d threatened me enough. ‘Better still, what say we meet in Tommy’s on Ventura? Do you still go there for breakfast?’

      ‘Sometimes.’

      ‘Seven-thirty?’

      ‘Okay,’ I said. I guess Goldie wanted time enough to send the hounds after me if I didn’t show up.

      ‘Sleep on it, Mickey. If you want to talk to me anytime at all, day or night, the eight hundred number on the card I gave you is my cellular phone.’

      ‘Thanks.’ Goldie was the only man I knew with his own personal eight hundred number.

      ‘You’ll see reason,’ said Goldie.

      When I’d sipped a little more of my whisky I had a sudden inspiration. I went to my dressing room – it’s a walk-in closet, really – and to the place where my personal safe is hidden behind a locked panel. My heavy-duty fireproof-steel money box was alive and well and locked up tight. There was nothing in it that could be of much value to a thief. There were my insurance papers, the deeds of the house, and a dozen or so three-and-a-half-inch floppies that I copied from my computer each week and brought back for safekeeping. But now that I looked again at it, a closer inspection revealed faint gray streaks along the edge of the wooden outer panel. I couldn’t think of any way those marks could have got there – I don’t let the cleaning lady come into the dressing room – so maybe the intruder had got inside. Maybe he’d just started on the combination lock when my neighbor’s 911 call had interrupted him. The sort of intruder who goes housebreaking equipped with watchmaker’s tools would have brought with him a police scanner to monitor the call and would have got out before the black-and-white arrived. Maybe he’d stayed outside, stayed real still, hoping everyone would go away before his pal came to collect him. Wow! So who’s been eating my grandmother?

      I twirled the combination lock, opened the door of the safe, and looked inside. My stomach turned over. Flopped on top of a bundle of papers was an ugly brown withered hand, a severed hand. I jumped back like it was going to bite me. I looked again. There it was, like a huge tarantula poised to strike. It made me want to vomit. A hand! In a foolish and useless gesture I pushed the safe door closed while I went and got a flashlight from the garage.

      With