State Of Fear

The car screeched to a stop. "Here you are."



"Thanks," he said, getting out.



"Isn't it time to move? You've been here five years."



"I'm too busy to move," he said.



"Got your keys?"



"Yeah. But there's always one under the doormat." He reached in his pocket, jingled metal. "All set."



"See you." And she raced off, squealed around the corner, and was gone.



Evans walked through the little sunlit courtyard, and went up to his apartment, on the second floor. As always, he had found Sarah slightly distressing. She was so beautiful, and so flirtatious. He always had the feeling that she kept men at a distance by keeping them off balance. At least, she kept him off balance. He could never tell if she wanted him to ask her out or not. But considering his relationship with Morton, it was a bad idea. He would never do it.



As soon as he walked in the door, the phone began to ring. It was his assistant, Heather. She was going home early because she felt sick. Heather frequently felt sick toward the afternoon, in time to beat rush hour traffic. She tended to call in sick on Fridays or Mondays. Yet the firm showed a surprising reluctance to fire her; she had been there for years.



Some said she had had a relationship with Bruce Black, the founding partner, and that, ever since, Bruce lived in constant dread that his wife would find out, since she had all the money. Others claimed Heather was seeing another of the firm's partners, always unspecified. A third story was that she had been on the scene when the firm moved offices from one Century City skyscraper to another, in the course of which she stumbled on some incriminating documents, and copied them.



Evans suspected the truth was more mundane: that she was a clever woman who had worked in the firm long enough to know everything about wrongful termination suits, and now carefully gauged her repeated infractions against the cost and aggravation of their firing her. And in this way worked about thirty weeks a year.



Heather was invariably assigned to the best junior associate in the firm, on the assumption that a really good attorney wouldn't be hampered by her inconstancy. Evans had tried for years to get rid of her. He was promised a new assistant next year. He saw it as a promotion.



"I'm sorry you don't feel well," he told Heather dutifully. One had to go along with her pretense.



"It's just my stomach," she said. "I have to see the doctor."



"Are you going today?"



"Well, I'm trying to get an appointment amp;"



"All right, then."



"But I wanted to tell you they just set a big meeting for the day after tomorrow. Nine o'clock in the big conference room."



"Oh?"



"Mr. Morton just called it. Apparently ten or twelve people are called."



"You know who?"



"No. They didn't say."



Evans thought: Useless. "Okay," he said.



"And don't forget you have the arraignment for Morton's daughter next week. This time it's Pasadena, not downtown. And Margo Lane's calling about her Mercedes lawsuit. And that BMW dealer still wants to go forward."



"He still wants to sue the church?"



"He calls every other day."



"Okay. Is that it?"



"No, there's about ten others. I'll try to leave the list on your desk if I feel well enough amp;"



That meant she wouldn't. "Okay," he said.



"Are you coming in?"



"No, it's too late. I need to get some sleep."



"Then I'll see you tomorrow."



He realized he was very hungry. There was nothing to eat in the refrigerator except a container of yogurt of indeterminate age, some wilted celery, and a half-finished bottle of wine left over from his last date, about two weeks earlier. He had been seeing a girl named Carol who did product liability at another firm. They'd picked each other up in the gym and had begun a desultory, intermittent affair. They were both busy, and not especially interested in each other, to tell the truth. They met once or twice a week, had passionate sex, and then one of them would plead a breakfast appointment the next day and go home early. Sometimes they went to dinner as well, but not usually. Neither of them wanted to take the time.



He went into the living room to check his answering machine. There was no message from Carol, but there was a message from Janis, another girl he sometimes saw.



Janis was a trainer in the gym, the possessor of one of those LA bodies, perfectly proportioned and rock hard. Sex for Janis was an athletic event, involving multiple rooms, couches, and chairs, and it always left Evans feeling vaguely inadequate, as if his body fat weren't low enough for her. But he continued to see her, feeling vaguely proud that he could have a girl who looked so astonishing, even if the sex wasn't that good. And she was often available on short notice. Janis had a boyfriend who was older, a producer for a cable news station. He was out of town a lot, and she was restless.



Janis had left a message the night before. Evans didn't bother to call her back. With Janis it was always that night, or forget it.



Before Janis and Carol, there had been other women, more or less the same. Evans told himself he should find a more satisfying relationship. Something more serious, more adult. More suited to his age and station in life. But he was busy, and just took things as they came.



Meanwhile he was hungry.



He went back down to his car and drove to the nearest drive-in, a hamburger joint on Pico. They knew him there. He had a double cheeseburger and a strawberry shake.



He went home, intending to go to bed. Then he remembered that he owed Morton a call.



"I'm glad you called," Morton said, "I've just been going over some things withgoing over some things. Where are we now on my donations to NERF? The Vanutu lawsuit, all that?"



"I don't know," Evans said. "The papers are drawn and signed, but I don't think anything's been paid yet."



"Good. I want you to hold off payments."



"Sure, no problem."



"Just for a while."



"Okay."



"There's no need to say anything to NERF."



"No, no. Of course not."



"Good."



Evans hung up. He went into the bedroom to get undressed. The phone rang again.



It was Janis. The exercise instructor.



"Hey," she said. "I was thinking about you, and I wondered what you were doing."



"As a matter of fact, I was going to go to bed."



"Oh. Pretty early for that."



"I just got in from Iceland."



"So you must be tired."



"Well," he said. "Not that tired."



"Want company?"



"Sure."



She giggled and hung up.



Chapter 8



BEVERLY HILLS



TUESDAY, AUGUST 24



6:04 A.M.



Evans awoke to the sound of rhythmic gasping. He flung his hand across the bed, but Janis wasn't there. Her side of the bed was still warm. He raised his head slightly, yawning. In the warm morning light he saw one slender, perfectly formed leg rise above the foot of the bed, to be joined by the other leg. Then both legs slowly descended. Gasping. Then legs up again.



"Janis," he said, "what are you doing?"



"I have to warm up." She stood, smiling, naked and at ease, confident of her appearance, every muscle outlined. "I have a class at seven."



"What time is it?"



"Six."



He groaned, and buried his head in the pillow.



"You really should get up now," she said. "It shortens your lifespan to sleep in."



He groaned again. Janis was full of health information; it was her job. "How can it possibly shorten my life to sleep?"



"They did studies on rats. They didn't let them sleep, and you know what? They lived longer."



"Uh-huh. Would you mind turning on the coffee?"



"Okay," she said, "but you really should give up coffee amp;" She drifted out of the room.



He swung his feet onto the floor and said, "Haven't you heard? Coffee prevents strokes."



"It does not," she said, from the kitchen. "Coffee has nine hundred twenty-three different chemicals in it, and it is not good for you."



"New study," he said. It was true, too.



"Besides, it causes cancer."



"That's never been shown."



"And miscarriages."



"Not a concern for me."



"And nervous tension."



"Janis, please."



She came back, crossing her arms across her perfect breasts as she leaned against the doorjamb. He could see the veins in her lower abdomen, running down to her groin. "Well, you are nervous, Peter. You have to admit it."



"Only when I look at your body."



She pouted. "You don't take me seriously." She turned back into the kitchen, showing him her perfect, high glutes. He heard her open the refrigerator. "There's no milk."



"Black is fine."



He stood, and headed for the shower.



"Did you have any damage?" she said.



"From what?"



"From the earthquake. We had a little one, while you were gone. About 4.3."



"Not that I know."



"Well, it sure moved your TV."



He stopped in mid-stride. "What?"



"It moved your TV. Look for yourself."



The morning sunlight that slanted through the window clearly showed the faint outline where the base of the television had compressed the carpet. The TV had been moved about three inches from its former position. It was an old thirty-two-inch monitor, and damned heavy. It didn't move easily. Looking at it now gave Evans a chill.



"You're lucky," she said. "You have all those glass things on your mantel. They break all the time, even in a small quake. Do you have an insurance policy?"



He didn't answer. He was bent over, looking behind the television at the connections. Everything looked normal. But he hadn't looked behind his TV for about a year. He wouldn't really know.



"By the way," she said, "this is not organic coffee. You should at least drink organic. Are you listening to me?"



"Just a minute." He had crouched down in front of the television, looking for anything unusual beneath the set. He could see nothing out of the ordinary.



"And what is this?" she said.



He looked over. She was holding a donut in her hand. "Peter," Janis said severely, "do you know how much fat's in these things? You might as well just eat a stick of butter."



"I know amp;I should give them up."



"Well, you should. Unless you want to develop diabetes later in life. Why are you on the floor?"



"I was checking the TV."



"Why? Is it broken?"



"I don't think so." He got to his feet.



"The water is running in your shower," she said. "That's not environmentally conscious." She poured coffee, handed it to him. "Go and take your shower. I've got to get to my class."



When he came out of the shower, she was gone. He pulled the covers up over the bed (as close as he ever came to making it) and went into the closet to dress for the day.



Chapter 9



CENTURY CITY



TUESDAY, AUGUST 24



8:45 A.M.



The law firm of Hassle and Black occupied five floors of an office building in Century City. They were a forward-looking, socially aware firm. They represented many Hollywood celebrities and wealthy activists who were committed to environmental concerns. The fact that they also represented three of the biggest land developers in Orange County was less often publicized. But as the partners said, it kept the firm balanced.



Evans had joined the firm because of its many environmentally active clients, particularly George Morton. He was one of four attorneys who worked almost full-time for Morton, and for Morton's pet charity, the National Environmental Resource Fund, NERF.



Nevertheless, he was still a junior associate, and his office was small, with a window that looked directly at the flat glass wall of the skyscraper across the street.



Evans looked over the papers on his desk. It was the usual stuff that came to junior attorneys. There was a residential sublet, an employment agreement, written interrogatories for a bankruptcy, a form for the Franchise Tax Board, and two drafted letters threatening lawsuits on behalf of his clientsone for an artist against a gallery refusing to return his unsold paintings, and one for George Morton's mistress, who claimed that the parking attendant at Sushi Roku had scratched her Mercedes convertible while parking it.



The mistress, Margaret Lane, was an ex-actress with a bad temper and a propensity for litigation. Whenever George neglected herwhich, in recent months, was increasingly oftenshe would find a reason to sue somebody. And the suit would inevitably land on Evans's desk. He made a note to call Margo; he didn't think she should proceed with this suit, but she would take convincing.



The next item was a spreadsheet from a Beverly Hills BMW dealer who claimed that the "What Would Jesus Drive?" campaign had hurt his business because it denigrated luxury cars. Apparently his dealership was a block from a church, and some parishioners had come around after services and harangued his sales staff. The dealer didn't like that, but it looked to Evans as if his sales figures were higher this year than last. Evans made a note to call him, too.



Then he checked his e-mails, sorting through twenty offers to enlarge his penis, ten offers for tranquilizers, and another ten to get a new mortgage now before rates started to rise. There were only a half-dozen e-mails of importance, the first from Herb Lowenstein, asking to see him. Lowenstein was the senior partner on Morton's account; he did mostly estate management, but handled other aspects of investments as well. For Morton, estate management was a full-time job.



Evans wandered down the hall to Herb's office.



Lisa, Herb Lowenstein's assistant, was listening on the phone. She hung up and looked guilty when Evans entered. "He's talking to Jack Nicholson."



"How is Jack?"



"He's good. Finishing a picture with Meryl. There were some problems."