What's The Worst That Could Happen (28 page)

All the drapes inside cottage one were firmly drawn, and all the lights switched on, as though he’d suddenly gone backward again into night through all those time zones. On their feet, waiting for him, were two men, one of whom he recognized, the other not. The one he recognized was his manager here, Brandon Camberbridge, a solidly reliable if unimaginative cog in the giant machine of TUI. The other, in tan uniform, bearing an expression of unassailable self–confidence, would be head of security here; the local Earl.

As the original Earl came into the cottage behind Max, shutting the door on the dairy herd, Brandon Camberbridge stepped forward, looking worried, pleased, attentive, nervous, and weepy. Such an excess of emotion seemed unwarranted — even Max wasn’t
that
concerned about himself — but then all became clear when Camberbridge wailed, “Oh, Mr. Fairbanks, we
so
hope nothing will happen to you here at our beautiful hotel!”

“From your lips to God’s ear,” Max said, as he realized that Camberbridge cared more for the hotel than he did about his employer. By God, he thinks it’s
his
hotel!

Max smiled on the man, while deciding in that instant to have him transferred at the earliest possible moment to some other territory within the TUI empire. There was, for instance, an older downtown hotel in Boston; that might be good. It isn’t acceptable for employees to think of Max’s properties as their own, it encourages the wrong kind of loyalty. “Good to see you again, Brandon,” Max assured him, and, the man’s fate sealed, pleasantly shook his hand.

“I want you to meet Wylie Branch,” Camberbridge said, “head of security here at the Gaiety. I sometimes think he worries about the place almost as much as I do.”

“I don’t think I could,” Wylie Branch said, with a western drawl. “I don’t even think it would be fitting.”

Branch and Max eyed one another, understood one another in an instant, and both of them smiled as Max shook the rangy man’s hand, saying, “So you’ll be keeping an eye out for me.”

Branch grinned. “What I’ll mostly do, Mr. Fairbanks,” he said, “is try to keep out of your way.”

“We’ll get along,” Max assured him, then turned aside to yawn largely in Camberbridge’s face. “Sorry,” he said, “it was a long flight.”

“Yes, of course,” Camberbridge said. “We should leave you alone to unwind. What time should we send the chef to prepare your dinner?”

“Nine, I think. A lady chef, I believe?”

Camberbridge blinked. “Yes, certainly,” he said, with a brave smile.

“Have her phone me at seven,” Max said, “to discuss the menu.”

Camberbridge would have said something more, but Max yawned at him again, giving the man a full view of his long–ago tonsillectomy, and at last Camberbridge took the hint and, with the security men Earl and Wylie in tow, departed.

Not that he had done wrong, or, more accurately, not that he would care if he had done wrong. Many’s the time in Max’s eventful life he had done wrong, serious wrong, and never lost an instant’s repose over it. No. What he felt somehow was that he had made an error, he had exposed himself to something unexpected, he had leaped before he had looked.

That wasn’t like him. He was known for his impishness, for his surprising moves, but they were always grounded in his awareness of what was safe, safe for him. He didn’t, because he no longer had to, risk all.

He hadn’t known, in truth, that when he’d boosted that burglar’s ring he was risking anything.

In any event, the time had come. He was here now, in place, waiting for the burglar. The die was cast, it was too late to change his mind. Now he could consult The Book.

His luggage had been brought here when his plane had first landed, while he breakfasted, so that his clothing was now neatly stored in closet and dressers, and the briefcase containing The Book awaited him on the pass–through counter between the cottage’s living room and kitchen. Opening the briefcase there, Max took out The Book and the small leather Hermès cuff–link box in which he kept the three pennies.

These he carried to the conversation area of the living room, where he sat on the sofa, readied hotel pen and hotel pad on the coffee table, and tossed the coins six times onto a copy of the in–hotel magazine, to lessen the clatter they made.

The lines in a hexagram are built from the bottom up, and this time Max threw 8, 7, 8, 9, 7, and 8. And there was his personal trigram again, Tui, at the top. With what below?

He consulted The Book, and the trigram below was K’un, the Abysmal, or Water, and the name of the hexagram was Oppression (Exhaustion), and Max’s heart sank as he looked at that name. So The Book
really
didn’t approve.

Well, he might as well get on with it, read what The Book had to say. He did understand, somewhere below the level of belief, that much of the interchange between the
I Ching
and himself was dependent on his own interpretation of often ambiguous statements, so what could he find for The Book to say about his current situation?

K’UN — OPPRESSION (EXHAUSTION)
The Judgment
Oppression. Success. Perseverance.
The great man brings about good fortune.
No blame.
When one has something to say,
It is not believed.

Well, that’s not so bad. Is it? Success and perseverance and the great man bringing about good fortune; it certainly sounds as though The Book approves his current scheme. It even says there’s no blame for Max’s little peccadillo that got him into this situation.

On the other hand, what’s this business about having something to say, and not being believed? What could he want to say to anybody in this matter? And who is it who refuses to believe?

And why should Max give a damn if anybody believes him or not?

Well, let’s move on to the Image, and see if it gets any clearer.

The Image
There is no water in the lake:
The image of EXHAUSTION.
Thus the superior man stakes his life
On following his will.

Yes, of course! Nothing ambiguous there. Max had
always
staked his life on following his will. And on that special night, not quite three weeks ago, in Carrport, on Long Island, it had been Max’s will to possess this ring. Yes! The Book approves.

Is there more? In the second half of the
I Ching
there are further comments and explanations; Max turned to that part and read:

Miscellaneous Notes
OPPRESSION means an encounter.

So. This time at last we will meet, the burglar and I. And …

Appended Judgments
OPPRESSION is the test of character.
OPPRESSION leads to perplexity and thereby to success.
Through OPPRESSION one learns to lessen one’s rancor.

And even that made sense.
Rancor
was certainly an accurate word — if an odd one — to describe Max’s feelings toward the burglar who had stripped the Carrport house and reduced Lutetia’s New York home to bare bones and made off with fifty thousand dollars from the Watergate apartment, and it was certainly true that once Max had the son of a bitch in his grasp, that once the burglar was well and truly on his way to prison for the rest of his unnatural life, his rancor would lessen. His rancor would
disappear,
is what it would do. His rancor would be replaced by sunshine and glee. The last sound that damn burglar would hear, as he was hustled off the Gaiety’s property into durance permanent, would be the boom of Max’s laughter, vengeful and free.

And what else did The Book have to say? Again, as in every time when he’d thrown the coins on this particular question, there was only the one changing line, this time the nine in the fourth position, which read,

He comes very quietly,
Oppressed in a golden carriage.
Humiliation, but the end is reached.

Well, wait now.
Who
comes very quietly in a golden carriage? The plane that had brought Max here, he supposed that could probably be thought of as a golden carriage. But had he been oppressed?

Well, yes, actually he had been, in that he was still oppressed by the thought of the burglar out there, prowling after him. So that’s what it must mean.

It couldn’t very well be the
burglar
in a golden carriage, could it? What would a burglar be doing in a golden carriage?

Again Max went to the further commentaries in the back part of The Book, where he read:

“He comes very quietly”: his will is directed downward. Though the place is not appropriate, he nevertheless has companions.

I have companions. I have Earl Radburn and Wylie Branch and all those bulky security men. I have the hotel staff. I have thousands and thousands of employees at my beck and call. The place is not appropriate because a person in my position shouldn’t have to stoop to deal personally with such a gnat as this, that’s all it means.

And that’s why there’s humiliation in it, the humiliation of my having to deal with this gnat myself. But the end is reached. That’s the point.

Come on, Mr. Burglar. My companions and I are waiting for you, in our golden carriage. The end is about to be reached. And who do
you
have, to accompany you?

There were other thefts during the evening hours of that Monday night in May in the general Las Vegas area, all of which were discovered and reported to the authorities long before the end of September, but not soon enough to alter events. The Finest Fancy Linen Service, for example, of North Las Vegas, which provides cloth products for several of the Strip hotels, ranging from room–service napkins to croupiers’ pocketless trousers, was burglarized for eight freshly cleaned tan uniforms with shoulder patches and other markings to identify them as used by the security personnel at the Gaiety Hotel, Battle–Lake and Casino. Also, a large hydraulic–compacting garbage truck was liberated from Southern Nevada Disposal Service, a private trash contractor with several Strip hotels as its customers. In addition, five new cars, fresh from the factory, were boosted from a Honda dealer in the city, and equipped with license plates lifted from cars in McCarran Airport’s long–term parking lot.

One of these recently acquired Hondas was later that evening driven by Fred Lartz (Thelma at the wheel) with Stan Murch and Tiny Bulcher as passengers, both of them wearing dark blue coveralls, down to Henderson, where the Lartzes let them out next to General Manufacturing. There they found awaiting them the truck previously loaded to their specifications by Lester Vogel employees, with a lie freshly painted on both doors that read: