Shadowfires

to Eric's place.”
    “His house? In Villa Park? Why?”
    “I can't tell you.”
    “After his house, where?”
    “Geneplan. His office.”
    “Why?”
    “I can't tell you that, either.”
    “Why not?”
    “Benny, it's dangerous. It could get violent.”
    “So what the fuck am I-porcelain? Crystal? Shit, woman, do you
think I'm going to fly into a million goddamn pieces at the tap of a goddamn finger?”
    She looked at him. The amber glow of the streetlamp came through
only her half of the windshield, leaving him in darkness, but his
eyes shone in the shadows. She said, “My God, you're furious. I've
never heard you use that kind of language before.”
    He said, “Rachael, do we have something or not? I think we have
something. Special, I mean.”
    “Yes.”
    “You really think so?”
    “You know I do.”
    “Then you can't freeze me out of this. You can't keep me from
helping you when you need help. Not if we're to go on from here.”
    She looked at him, feeling very tender toward him, wanting more
than anything to bring him into her confidence, to have him as her
ally, but involving him would be a rotten thing to do. He was right
now thinking what kind of trouble she might be in, his mind churning
furiously, listing possibilities, but nothing he could imagine would
be half as dangerous as the truth. If he knew the truth, he might not
be so eager to help, but she dared not tell him.
    He said, “I mean, you know
I'm a pretty old-fashioned guy. Not very with it by most standards. Staid in some ways. Hell, half the guys in California real estate wear white cords and pastel blazers when they go to work on a summer day like this, but I don't
feel comfortable in less than a three-piece suit and wing tips. I may
be the last guy in a real-estate office who even knows what a goddamn
vest is. So when someone like me sees the woman he cares about
in trouble, he has to help,
it's the only thing he can do, the plain old-fashioned thing, the right thing, and if she won't
let him help, then
that's pretty much a slap in the face, an affront to all his values, a rejection of what he is, and no matter how much he likes her, he's
got to walk, it's as simple as that.”
    She said, “I never heard you make a speech before.”
    “I never had to before.”
    Both touched and frustrated by his ultimatum, Rachael closed her
eyes and leaned back in the seat, unable to decide what to do. She
kept her hands on the steering wheel, gripping it tightly, for if she
let go, Benny would be sure to see how badly her hands were
shaking.
    He said, “Who are you afraid of, Rachael?”
    She didn't answer.
    He said, “You know what happened to his body, don't you?”
    “Maybe.”
    “You know who took it.”
    “Maybe.”
    “And you're afraid of them. Who are they, Rachael? For God's sake,
who would do something like that-and why?”
    She opened her eyes, put the car in gear, and pulled away from the
curb. “Okay, you can come along with me.”
    “To Eric's house, the office? What're we looking for?”
    “That,” she said, “I'm not prepared to tell you.”
    He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Okay. All right. One
step at a time. I can live with that.”
    She drove north on Main Street to Katella Avenue, east on Katella
to the expensive community of Villa Park, into the hills toward her
dead
husband's estate. In the upper reaches of Villa Park, the big houses, many priced well over a million dollars, were less than half visible beyond screens of shrubbery and the gathered cloaks of night. Eric's
house, looming beyond a row of enormous Indian laurels, seemed darker
than any other, a cold place even on a June night, the many windows
like sheets of some strange obsidian that would not permit the
passage of light in either direction.

----
6 THE
TRUNK
    The long driveway, made of rust-red Mexican
paving tiles, curved past Eric Leben's enormous Spanish-modern house before finally turning out of sight to the garages in back. Rachael parked in front.
    Although Ben Shadway delighted in authentic Spanish buildings with
their multiplicity of arches and angles and deep-set leaded windows,
he was no fan of Spanish modern. The stark lines, smooth
surfaces, big plate-glass windows, and total lack of ornamentation
might seem stylish and satisfyingly clean to some, but he found such
architecture boring, without character, and perilously close to the
cheap-looking stucco boxes of so many southern California
neighborhoods.
    Nevertheless, as he got out of