"What were doing in there, shaving your legs?"
Shelley only smiled. She called Madeline, who told her that the BMW was gone. Another car was sitting in Shelley's driveway, Madeline said, a big fat American car she didn't know.
* * *
They woke up in the middle of the night.
"What's this?" Shelley asked. "Is that your arm?"
"No. What's that?"
"What shall we do with them?"
"Let's do it until my thing falls off."
"We can't do it until your thing falls off, because then we couldn't do it anymore."
"Then let's do it until my thing almost falls off."
"Tell me when it's about to fall off and then I'll stop for you."
"You tell me if you get too sore and I'll stop."
"Your thing will fall off before I get too sore."
* * *
Later in the night, Clendon woke and reached for her, but she wasn't there. Through the closed bathroom door came the retching sound. She'd eaten a large pizza they'd had delivered, and later, a bag of corn chips. As he drifted back into sleep, he smelled pine scent.
* * *
The woman with the shopping center hat had come alive off her billboard and was dancing on a stage under a spotlight. She was wearing a chocolate-colored boxy dress that matched her hat. Clendon sat close as the spotlight followed each move. She gyrated and swerved, dancing above him, trying to take her dress off, but when she reached to pull it off, her hat threw her off balance. Clendon wanted to rush up and help her rebalance. He dashed for the steps that led up to the stage, but they became endless, and the woman unattainable, wrestling with her pill box hat, swaying under the spotlight.
* * *
They met Diedecek for lunch on the top floor of the Beverly Center. "He loves it," Shelley said. He was waiting at a back table of an Italian restaurant that had white table cloths, plants, and full-length wall mirrors. Diedecek was smoking his cigarette, but put it out when they arrived. The restaurant was almost empty.
Diedecek wore a red plaid sports jacket and needed a shave. Clendon ordered spaghetti and meatballs because he wasn't sure what the rest of the menu said. Bourbon whiskey wasn't on it. Shelley ordered antipasto and capellini primavera.
"I love American shopping centers," Diedecek said. "They're so bright and clean."
"Shelley says you can help us. If you can't, I'm leaving."
"Clendon, would like a beer?"
"No. I want some truth serum so I can spike your food with it."
"Be polite and take off your sunglasses," Shelley said.
"How did you two meet?" Clendon asked. "At a flea market for computer disks?"
"Clendon, you need to take a Valium," Shelley said.
"All right, I think I will."
As he watched her face, he took her Valium bottle from his pants pocket. He swallowed one pill and shoved the bottle back in his pocket.
"I'll feel fine in about thirty minutes," he said.
"Beer is quicker."
Clendon turned and stared at Diedecek.
"We've been reading the newspapers," he said. "Yesterday's papers. About Positron and Lyman and top secret computer programs and criminal trials and Agent Kenneth Asp."
Diedecek sipped some water.
"I saw you twice talking to Brooks in Palisades Park, once right before he was shot. If I wanted to be shark bait, I'd go jump in the ocean. I used to think you were the smartest guy in ten counties when you surprised me at the hotel and then again that night outside Brooks's apartment, but it was only because Shelley had called you, right?"
"Clendon-- "
"What else could it be? And where was Diedecek when Asp and his boys came to see us?"
"I came by," Diedecek said. "I knew you had the company that morning."
"Asp was waiting for you," Clendon almost shouted. "Why didn't you come in and get caught like you were supposed to?"
"The newspaper," Shelley said.
"What about it?"
"It was a signal," Shelley said. "If the morning newspaper was ever left outside after nine in the morning, then it wasn't safe for him to stop by."
"I drove by about ten," he said. "I saw the paper and the big dark American car parked down the street and I knew Asp was probably in there."
"If you want to help us so much," Clendon said, "why didn't you help us then?"
"I can't do everything, Clendon."
"Am I asking too much to simply want to know what is going on?"
The waiter brought their food. Clendon was starving and gobbled his spaghetti and meatballs down while he listened to Diedecek.
"I am here to tell you. I am Czechoslovakian. I worked in computer programming. It is a very boring job. Other jobs were more interesting. Your agents and prosecutor people nailed me several years ago for trying to, as they said, improperly appropriate a certain program, but they turned me instead of prosecuting me. They wanted to break the foreign networks in southern California that circle around the defense industry. And now Star Wars must be protected. And you know what I know now?" Diedecek leaned over his plate of linguini and said very quietly, "the Russians are incompetent and have given up. I predict Soviet Union collapses in five years. Now, the worst and biggest is being practiced by the American corporations against each other. They're always trying to steal each other's secrets and technologies, especially computer programs. And FBI and CIA don't know what to do about it. As long as I gave them a Communist every year or so, they stayed happy, but now. . . "
Clendon stared at his plate. One meatball was left, sitting on top of his spaghetti. It made him think of a ball and chain.
"And Brooks-- he said he was in the software business-- "
"Yes."
"Brooks was a software thief."
"Yes," Diedecek said and looked at Shelley. "He's a bright guy."
"Why didn't you tell me all this that first night?"
"Fear." He pointed at Clendon with his fork. "In the business, compartmentalization is an important technique. No one knows any more than one has to know. Sometimes compartments leak and then the technique of containment must be used. Sometimes containment fails and the leak continues or becomes worse even. Then we have to mop it up."
"Brooks stole a secret computer program from Positron," Clendon said.
"Yes, sort of," Shelley said. "Kidnapped it, really. For ransom."
"Didn't he have more than one copy?"
"He had only one," Shelley said. "Brooks had someone inside Posi who made sure Lyman's two back up copies got ruined. Lyman would do anything to get it back before anyone else at Posi found out."
Clendon looked at Shelley. It was empty and useless to ask her why she didn't tell him all this the day Brooks was shot and why she had told him all the other things instead. It was hard to look at himself and Shelley in the wall mirrors.
"I used to be in the oil business," he said. "I know about leaks, and I don't like it when crude oil leaks all over my new shoes."
"The oil leak has become a spill and already ruined your shoes and is about to drown you, Clendon. We are way beyond mop up. We are at sea and I'm your only life boat."
"Why should I believe that?"
Diedecek shrugged.
"Call up your friend Asp and see what happens. Do you know who is the best criminal lawyer in America?"
"No."
"You should because you maybe are going to need him."
Clendon reached for his wallet and took out the scrap of paper he had found in Brooks's apartment.
"If you can tell me what this means and where I got it, I'll believe anything you want to lay on me."
He handed it to Diedecek, who jerked when he read it. He took a larger scrap of paper from his own wallet. When he pieced the two together, they fit. Joined, Brooks's handwriting read:
10,000,000 lines
When Clendon first focused on it, he thought it sai
d ten million lies.
"What kind of ten million lines?"
"Binary code lines," Diedecek said. "Ten million is the number needed to run the Star Wars computer program."
"So?"
"The most complex computer program yet designed, the one to run the American space shuttle, is only one million lines," Diedecek said. "You can see, a major breakthrough was needed in computer speed and programming technology."
"Why would Brooks write 'ten million lines' on a scrap of paper that would get torn in half?"
"My kind of work has its unknowns," Diedecek said.
"D. C. Lyman's the computer nerd who's made this breakthrough," Clendon said.
"Lyman thinks he has made a program that leaps similar to Einstein's Theory of Relativity," Diedecek said. "Only few people know about it, and that breakthrough is on disks in the missing briefcase. Those disks contain a program that can run Star Wars using computers that exist now. It is the only copy. It would take Lyman another year to rewrite it from his notes and his head. They don't want to have to wait and hope for a faster, ultra-super computer, either. Do you want to know how much such a computer program is worth that runs one hundred billion dollars worth of super-secret technology?"
"What if he's been lying?"
"The rumor is that he's already proved it works to the satisfaction of the Chiefs of the Joint Staff."
"You mean the Joint Chiefs of Staff."
"Yes, I mean that."
"Why did you want us to sell the briefcase back to Lyman?"
"You are an experienced negotiator? It is called win-win."
"It's called ransom," Shelley said.
"Brooks was going to sell it to the highest bidder," Clendon said.
"Yes. If he needed to. Other American defense corporations have much more money to bid than Russians. But he knew Lyman would pay almost anything."
"How did Brooks get the briefcase in the first place?" Clendon asked.
"Probably from a man named Adolfo," Diedecek said.
Clendon was glad he could feel the first seepage of Valium ease through him.
"Lyman and Adolfo have something going."
"That's a way of saying it."
Diedecek had finished eating and lit another cigarette.
"Why doesn't the FBI crossfork Lyman and Adolfo now?"
"I am sure that Asp wants to, but Asp is still not sure what you know," Diedecek said. "I am convinced the L. A. FBI office doesn't want to do anything, because you can't accuse Einstein of treason after he develops the bomb for you unless you have the Russians holding a smoking bomb itself."
"If another corporation gets it," Shelley said, "then it's merely a civil case."
"Where do these people get their training?"
"The Mormon mafia runs the L. A. office," Diedecek said. "And Lyman himself is what they call a jack Mormon. Asp is from Texas-- "
"Asp thinks Mormons are heretics," Clendon said.
"Yes, yes. They hate him because he's made some big cases while they're over praying at their temple on Santa Monica Boulevard. They screw up and cover for each other. Do you know what FBI really stands for? Full Blown Incompetents. The Mormons jerk Asp around, never giving him enough men or enough cars. Asp wants to be the next J. Edgar Hoover."
"How do you know-- "
"I know."
"How did Asp know that we gave Lyman the wrong briefcase?"
Diedecek shrugged.
"He must have a mole at Positron," he said.
"Asp said that they were going to let us walk clean if they'd gotten the right briefcase," Clendon said.
"It's true. No muss, no fuss. I love American expressions. No muss, no fuss."
Diedecek giggled.
"What do you think was in the briefcase we did deliver to Lyman?"
"Who knows. Blank computer disks. A stack of newspapers. Pornographic video tapes. Bricks. Anything. It appears that Brooks had a diversion planned. My sources tell me they already blew up Brooks's office safe and found nothing."
"Who came up with that stupid name Eskimo Shoes?"
"Brooks did," Shelley said. "He got it from the name of his favorite horse at Hollywood Park."
"Keeping their little big secrets is more important than some cash in a briefcase and you two people," Diedecek said. "How embarrassing to the American government-- paying ransom for what it owned, the most important computer program in the world, and having a trial and reported on TV. But you failed, so now you're still in the chasing for the Eskimo shoes."
"Shelley said you'd help us run if we wanted."
"I can give you a key to a safety deposit box in a Mexico City bank. In the box you'll find about $50,000 in American money and Mexican pesos. There's also passports, and California driver's licenses in other names, all legitimate and secure. All you need are your own photos, but before you have the photos taken, you should call the phone number that's on a slip of paper in the box."
"Whose number is it?"
"The best plastic surgeon in Mexico City. Tell him Mr. D sent you. He'll bill the right people."
"You mean we have to have our faces changed?"
"To be the very safest, yes. Also the color of your eyes and hair. And rub away your fingerprints. Afterwards, your parents won't know you."
"I don't want to have my face changed," Clendon said. "I like it."
"It is the only way. You will have many full blown incompetents after you. Sometimes they have luck."
Clendon looked into a wall mirror again to see Shelley's face, trying to imagine it as it might be altered by a Mexican plastic surgeon. She avoided his stare.
"Why are you helping us instead of giving us up to Asp?"
"Because I hate the guts of Mr. Asp. He never paid me the money he said he would for helping him. Instead, he says I owe him. So you see, I am an entrepreneur. I want a cut. And-- and I want Shelley to have a life far away from this because she never asked for any of it."
Clendon had hoped that the Valium would help clarify his thinking. He imagined Diedecek's mouth buried between Shelley's legs.
"Since you threw Brooks out," Clendon said, "Mr. D's been giving you a lot of money because you don't make enough as a therapist to pay for that house and car."
Shelley picked at her salad and looked away from Clendon and the wall mirror.
"I know your office phone's been disconnected. He gave you all that money-- "
"How much money have I given you, Mr. Landman?"
"It was nothing," Diedecek said, but the smoke from his cigarette began wavering.
"Why don't you take her to Mexico City yourself and to hell with me," Clendon said.
"They are watching everywhere for me."
That sounded weak to Clendon, but he let it pass.
"Then how do we get to Mexico City? Won't people be watching for us, too?"
"I said before I can't help you with everything."
"I thought once you got involved in this," Clendon said, "you can never get out. Just look at yourself."
Diedecek's cigarette had burned out, but he kept holding it between his fingers.
"You're involved now."
"Where's the safety deposit box key?" Clendon asked.
"I have it."
"What guarantee do we have?"
"What alternative do you have?"
"Give me the key and I'll go take a leak and think about working in the oil business in Venezuela."
Diedecek took out the key and placed it on the table. Clendon picked it up, left the restaurant, and went across the mall to a card shop and bought an envelope and stamp. He addressed the envelope to himself, General Delivery, Santa Monica, put the key in the envelope, sealed it and stamped it, then found a mailbox and mailed it.
* * *
Clendon was gone about ten minutes. To get back to the Italian restaurant, he squeezed through the crowd of shoppers that coagulated around the food court. Through the restaurant's open fro
nt, he saw Asp inside with his other two men. Carl had a bandage wrapped around his neck. They had Diedecek sprawled across a table, hands cuffed behind his back. Shelley stood, arms folded and trapped from any escape, leaning against the mirrors. When she glimpsed Clendon standing outside at a railing, she turned her head away.
He dashed for the escalator as pudgy Ed turned to look at him. Shouting echoed from the restaurant and flying chairs crashed into tables. Clendon knocked an old Asian woman down. When he reached the escalator, he leaped onto the hand rail, straddling it, and tried to slide down it. It mashed his balls. Off balance, he shifted position and kicked escalator riders. A large black man called him an asshole and shoved him. He teetered, lost his grip, and went over the side as his sunglasses flew out of his shirt pocket. He held on by hanging over the side of the escalator, and slowly descended. About five feet above the floor, Clendon let go and fell. The landing jolted his ankles, but he rolled over and jumped up. People began shouting. He hoped there weren't any security guards around as he ran to a glass-encased elevator.
"Let me in! I'm crazy!" he shouted.
The elevator doors opened.
"Out! Out!"
In the elevator, he spit on the floor.
"Leave me alone!"
A bleached blonde in spandex and pumps backed out of the elevator, lost her balance, broke a spiked heel, and sprawled out. The elevator door closed as Carl reached the foot of the escalator.
When the elevator stopped at level four of the parking garage, Clendon pressed all the buttons and got out. After he stepped out and the door closed, he knew he should have ridden it to the ground floor. The garage seemed turned around backwards and tilted sideways. After he waited for the whirligig feeling to pass, he ran through the garage toward more escalators. Two teenage girls dressed like French whores gave him a wolf whistle.