Three Days to Never: A Novel

  He pulled a white handkerchief out of his pocket and wrapped it around his latex-gloved forefinger and drew it across the top of the television set—he would look at it later in a bright light, but he sniffed it now, and smelled burnt plastic.

  He backed away from the window. If my amulets had been in place yesterday, he thought, the little teraphim statues and the fire-extinguishing Star of David, I bet there would be a working VCR sitting on top of this television set now. And they might very well provide protection in the future.

  But he knew the thought was sophistry. It was wrong to use magic, wrong to try to compel God’s will.

  Next month would be Selichot, beginning on the first Saturday night before Rosh Hashanah, and Lepidopt—if he were still alive—would pray for God’s forgiveness through the following two weeks and would finally be restored to holiness on October third, Yom Kippur. As, often in the past, the duties of his job would be prominent among the things he would ask forgiveness for.

  It was time to leave. Marrity might come home at any time. Admoni’s brief radio message had said that a senior katsa from Prague was being dispatched and would arrive at LAX tomorrow afternoon to take over the operation; Lepidopt was to leave the Marritys and the Bradleys alone until then, and never mind the rival team, whoever they might be.

  But Lepidopt paused, and for the second time he laid three pennies at the edges of the paperback book that lay open and facedown on the living room table, and then he carefully lifted the book. When he had picked it up an hour and a half ago there had still been enough light in the living room to read by, but now he took it to the lighted hall.

  The paperback was Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and when he’d first looked at it he had noted that it was a mess of inked underlining and margin notations, as would be expected from a literature professor. Lepidopt had photographed the two facing pages that the book was opened to, but he hadn’t bothered to photograph every marked-up page. He doubted that the other crowd had either.

  Now, up the landing and standing under the hall light, he flipped through the pages. It had been opened to the last page of the play, and one sentence from the Caliban character had been deeply underlined: What a thrice-double ass / Was I to take this drunkard for a god / And worship this dull fool! Now Lepidopt turned back through the text, looking at every page.

  Marrity’s inked notes were all clearly written: obviously not just hasty thoughts of a moment, but points that he would want to be reminded of every time he taught the play in a class.

  And so Lepidopt paused when he came to a couple of nearly illegible words scribbled vertically in the margin of page 110, next to a doubly underlined speech in which the Prospero character said, I’ll break my staff / Bury it certain fathoms in the earth, and deeper than did ever plummet sound / I’ll drown my book.

  The inked phrase in the margin was scrawled in such evident haste that the pen had not at any point lifted from the paper, but when Lepidopt squinted at it he saw that it was probably, and then certainly, Peccavit to LM.

  Peccavit. Lepidopt’s heart had begun thumping in his chest.

  Break my staff, drown my book—Peccavit—Marrity must know who his great-grandfather was, and must know something of the man’s work too. Not the public work, relativity and the photoelectric effect and the 1939 letter to Roosevelt about the atomic bomb, but the secret work, the weapon Einstein had not told Roosevelt about.

  The LM must be Lisa Marrity, or Lieserl Marity. Frank Marrity must know something about it all.

  Quickly Lepidopt flipped through the rest of the pages, but found only one more hasty scrawl of Peccavit to LM, on page 104, next to another twice-underlined sentence: We are such stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep.

  Lepidopt was sweating as he hurried back to the living room to put the book back exactly the way it had been and retrieve his pennies. He didn’t have enough film or time to photograph every page of the book now, and he prayed that Marrity wouldn’t move it too far before somebody could come back and photograph the entire text.

  And—in spite of Admoni’s order—Lepidopt clearly had to keep the rival group away from Marrity.

  He was padding back up the hall toward the laundry-room door, which fortunately faced trees and an empty yard next door, when the telephone rang in Marrity’s bedroom, loud in the silent house. He paused; the phone rang three times and then stopped, not enough rings to trigger the answering machine.

  And a moment later Lepidopt had to force his legs to go on supporting him, and not let him collapse against the wall; for in the instant that the phone had stopped ringing, he had been forcibly convinced that he would never again hear a telephone bell ring.

  And surely I will never see Deborah again, he thought; and surely I will never see Louis again.

  He clenched his narrow, maimed right hand and thumped the misshapen fist once, very softly, against the wall.

  Bennett Bradley pulled open his desk drawer and lifted out the bottle of Christian Brothers brandy, and he was glaring at the white plastic telephone-answering machine.

  His office was in what had been the garage, but he had put in a hardwood floor and pale paneling, and fluorescent tubes glowed behind frosted sheets of plastic set into the ceiling. Gray metal filing cabinets full of contracts and photographs stood against the west wall, and a long blond-wood table ran down the middle of the room. Right now there were dozens of four-by-six-inch color photographs laid out on the table, taped together into long strips, but he would have to be putting them away now, with no recompense.

  Now they were just on-spec samples, to be folded into a file and labeled “Hollywood Hills, Panoramic View w. Hollywood Sign & Easy Access,” and tucked away with all the others: “Laguna Cliff & Sea, w. Easy Parking,” and “Eaglerock Typical Middle-class 1960s House,” and “15,000 sf French Chateau in Brentwood, Shooting-Friendly.” And a thousand others, and probably a quarter of them were obsolete by now: torn down or renovated, or owned by uncooperative people, or with inappropriate freeways visible behind them.

  Bennett unscrewed the bottle’s cap and took a drink right from the neck of it, grimacing at the sting of the lukewarm brandy; and then he set it on the desk and stood up to put away the photographs.

  The Subaru agent had originally said they wanted the thirty-second commercial to have an “old Hollywood” feel.

  Bennett had driven up to his proposed site half a dozen times last week, starting north on Beachwood from Franklin, just a block up from modern Hollywood Boulevard but fifty years backward in architecture and atmosphere, with neoclassical apartment buildings shaded by shaggy carob trees along cracked and canted sidewalks; farther up the hill he had stopped to take pictures of the Beachwood Gates, two towering stonework pillars on either side of the street, and he had taken a picture of the brass plaque on the eastern pillar, with its raised letters that spelled hollywoodland 1923.

  He had followed Beachwood up to the left, and the street wound up Beachwood Canyon between old Spanish houses with red-tile roofs and brown-painted wooden balconies and old double-doored garages that were crowded right up to the street. There was no level ground—the roof of one house blocked the view of the foundations of another, and stairs and arched windows could be seen anywhere among the trees.

  Beachwood Drive was too narrow for trucks to pass easily, and at the top of the hill the road curled sharply to the right into Hollyridge Drive, which was so narrow that one car would have to pull to the curb for an oncoming car to get by—but right at the top, a pair of iron gates opened to the left onto a wide dirt lot.

  That was Griffith Park land, with an unobstructed view down the north slopes to Forest Lawn Memorial Park and the Ventura Freeway, with Burbank and Glendale beyond, and the Mulholland Highway could provide access for any sort of trucks from that direction. He had drawn a map of the unpaved hilltop lot, showing where the trucks could be parked and lunch tables set up.

  And on Hollyridge Drive he had found a v
acant house with a wide balcony overlooking Beachwood Canyon and—at the same height as the balcony and so close that the cross girders were clearly visible—the nine huge white letters of the Hollywood sign standing on the hill right across the canyon. Quickly he had contacted the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks and the owner of the vacant house, and he had already begun the work of arranging all the permissions and insurance coverage.

  He tipped the stack of pictures vertical now, and rapped them on the polished tabletop to get the edges straight.

  And with his new Nikon RF he had taken these photographs of the site. From the house’s balcony he had taken two panoramic series of shots, of the skyline and of the road below, and he had stood at the top of Beachwood Drive and slowly turned on his heel and taken fourteen level shots—a full 180 degrees—to show the Subaru people that there would be no billboards or other inappropriate structures behind the camera to be reflected in the polished bodywork of the car as it drove past; there was a big mirror mounted on the canyon wall where Beachwood looped into Hollyridge, but they could hang a camouflage cloth over it. He had even got down on his hands and knees and photographed the street surface, to indicate what sort of dolly moves would be possible for the cameraman.

  And then sometime this afternoon, while Bennett had been on the plane back from Shasta, the Subaru agent had called and left a message—they had decided to film the car on the Antelope Valley Highway east of Agua Dulce, way out north in the desert, and to hell with the “old Hollywood” idea. They’d pay Bennett for the days he had put into the project, but he would have no further part in it.

  All the on-site emergencies, the unforseen shadow patches or glare spots, the traffic and parking screwups, the crises with the available voltage and amperage, would be dealt with by another location manager. And that guy would get all the on-location pay too.

  Several thousand dollars that Bennett had been counting on—gone. Before the end of the month, he thought, we’ll be hurtin’ for certain.

  The telephone rang, and he hurried to the desk to answer it, thinking the Subaru people might have reconsidered.

  “Bradley Locations,” he said.

  A man’s voice said, “I’d like to speak to Bennett or Moira Bradley, please.” It wasn’t the Subaru agent.

  “This is Bennett Bradley.”

  “Mr. Bradley, I represent a company that’s always actively trying to expand its database, and we’re now in negotiation with a Francis Marrity for some items that belonged to his grandmother, a Ms. Lisa Marrity. There will probably be a substantial amount of money involved, and our research department has just established that Mr. Marrity is not the sole heir of Ms. Marrity.”

  “That’s true, my wife is coheir.” Son of a bitch! thought Bennett. “What items? Uh, in particular?”

  “I’m not involved in acquisitions, I’m afraid. But it’s probably papers, floppy disks, or films; even electrical machinery or precious metals, possibly.”

  Bennett had seized a pen and begun scrawling meaningless spirals on a legal pad. “What is your company?”

  “The remuneration would be greater if I didn’t say. Anonymity is our policy.”

  “How did—Mr. Marrity—approach you?—and when?”

  “We’ve been in negotiation with Lisa Marrity for some time. Yesterday we learned that she had died, and the only contact she had provided us with was Francis Marrity. We called him, and he expressed interest in consummating the sale we had arranged with Lisa Marrity.”

  “Well you definitely need to talk to my wife too. She’s coheir. As I said. As you know.” Bennett was breathing hard. “Now.”

  “Are you aware of the nature of the items to be sold?”

  “Of course I am,” Bennett said. What on earth could they be? he wondered—what papers, what precious metals? What electrical machinery? “My wife and I were in Shasta yesterday afternoon and today, making funeral arrangements—for, uh, Ms. Marrity—and we just got back from the airport half an hour ago. I’m sure Frank meant to get in touch with my wife before concluding any deal,” he said. “With my wife and I. Because no sale could be finalized without our cooperation.”

  “Who currently has physical possession of the items in question?”

  “Well, they’re—divvied up. Some here, some there. I’d need to see a list of which particular—items—are being discussed. The—” Bennett considered, and then dismissed, the idea of sneaking another drink from the bottle. “The old lady had a lot of valuable things. What’s your phone number?”

  “We’ll get in touch with you, probably tomorrow. Good night.”

  Bennett heard a click, and then the dial tone.

  He hung up the telephone, had another mouthful of the brandy, and then banged out through the door that led to the kitchen of his house, yelling, “Moira! Your bloody damned brother—!”

  Nine

  He doesn’t know what I was talking about,” said Rascasse, pushing his chair back from the telephone on the folding desk and standing up, gripping an overhead rail to steady himself as the bus rocked around a sharp housing-tract corner in the evening darkness. To the young man driving the bus he said, “But pull up in front of his house anyway, so Charlotte can take a look.”

  “He was just up in Shasta,” said Golze hopefully.

  Through Rascasse’s eyes Charlotte Sinclair looked down at herself and the chubby figure of Golze sitting on the first bus seat aft of the cleared rubber-tiled floor, both of them leaning forward to hear the radio speaker. She lifted her chin and pushed a wing of dark hair back from her face.

  From the speaker they could now dimly hear Bennett Bradley shouting at his wife.

  “Lousy signal,” said Rascasse.

  “I think they’re in the hall,” said Golze. “I didn’t put a mike in the hall.”

  “Yes,” said Charlotte, leaning back in her seat with her eyes closed, “they’re in a hall.”

  The bus was close enough to the Bradley house now for her to be able to see through the eyes of the people inside—and she saw a tanned blond woman in jeans, standing in a lighted hallway, with suitcases visible beside a door behind her; Charlotte switched to the woman’s view, and found herself looking at a man shouting; he had styled reddish hair, and a bristling mustache, and he was wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled back on his forearms.

  Charlotte felt the bus jolt to a stop, presumably at the curb in front of the Bradley house, but she kept her attention on Moira Bradley’s field of vision.

  The man was walking backward into a brightly lit kitchen, and the woman’s viewpoint followed, and all at once the sound from the speaker in the bus became clearer, and Charlotte had words to go with the man’s moving lips.

  “—that he doesn’t like you, it’s that he doesn’t like me,” Bennett Bradley was saying. “He’s always been jealous of me.”

  “Jealous? He likes teaching,” said the woman Charlotte was monitoring; Charlotte’s field of vision bobbed slightly at the syllables.

  “Out in the middle of nowhere?” said Bennett. Charlotte saw him wave a hand in the air. “With a dead wife and a bratty kid? And a million cats? He knows he’s rotting out there—he’d move west to L.A. or south to Orange County in a second, if he could, but that house of his is probably worth about a hundred dollars. Look at that joke truck he drives! And I drive a Mercedes and I’m on a first-name basis with Richard Dreyfuss!”

  “Frank wouldn’t try to gyp us out of any money,” said Moira. “I’m sure he—”

  “There were no messages on the machine from him, just from that damned Subaru agent. You think your brother wouldn’t try to keep this for himself? ‘Substantial amount of money,’ this guy said—”

  Charlotte’s view rocked as Moira’s voice from the speaker said, “For—what was it? Machinery? That doesn’t make any—”

  “Or papers, or gold. She knew Charlie Chaplin! Your grandmother—” Bennett backed into some decorative glass candleholders on the counter by the sink, a
nd clattering sounded from the speaker. “What is all this trash?” He shoved the jars that hadn’t fallen into the sink back against the wall, breaking at least one more.

  Bennett shifted out of Charlotte’s line of sight as Moira looked into the sink instead of at her husband; but his voice on the speaker said, “Your grandmother might have letters, manuscripts, even lost Chaplin films.”

  “Well, they’re trash now,” said Moira’s voice as Charlotte saw Bennett swing into view again. “The candles, I mean. So now you believe she knew Chaplin.”

  “Well obviously she had something. Maybe her violin is a Stradivarius.”

  “Frank will tell us. He’ll tell me, anyway. Unless this was a crank phone call. ‘Anonymity policy’! It’s certainly made trouble.”

  “Call him. Ask him. Or I will.”

  Charlotte’s field of vision swung away from Bennett to a calendar above a telephone on the wall, and then back. “We’ll see him Thursday.”

  Bennett shook his head. “This money guy wants to meet me tomorrow. And Frank won’t want to talk at his grandmother’s funeral, with Daffy underfoot. Call him.”

  “Okay.”

  Charlotte watched the telephone bob closer, and then she saw one of Moira’s hands lift the receiver while the other spun the dial. Charlotte read the number out loud as she watched Moira dial it—while from the speaker she heard the clicking of the dial being turned, and the hiss of it spinning back—and she felt Golze shift beside her on the bus seat. “That’s Marrity’s number, all right,” Golze said.

  Charlotte could smell tobacco smoke; evidently Golze had lit a cigarette.

  Charlotte watched the telephone receiver swing closer and then disappear beyond her right-side peripheral vision; of course she couldn’t hear anything from the phone. Then after about twenty seconds it appeared again, receding, and Moira’s hand hung it back in the cradle with a loud clatter from the speaker. The microphone must be very near the phone, Charlotte thought.