"About what?"
"I've never seen him this way. I mean, not for a few weeks."
"What's the matter?"
"I think he's upset about George. Such a shock. And then Drake is giving him fits. He must have called five times today. And I think they were discussing you."
"Me?"
"Yes." Lisa lowered her voice, taking on a conspiratorial tone. "Herb had his door closed while he was talking, but I, uh, I heard a few things."
"Like what?" Evans said.
"Don't say anything."
"I won't."
"I mean I wasn'tI just thought that you would want to know."
"I do."
"Because there's a lot of talk here," she said, dropping her voice even lower, "about whether you have to leave."
"Leave the firm?"
"Be, uh, let go. I thought you would want to know."
"I do. Thanks. Who's talking?"
"Well, Herb. And Don Blandings, and a couple of other senior partners. Bob and Louise. Because for some reason Nick Drake is furious with you. And somebody you are spending time with, a person named Kanner or Connor?"
"I see."
"Mr. Drake is very upset about Mr. Connor."
"Why is that?"
"He says he is a spy. For industry. For polluters."
"I see."
"Anyway, the feeling is Mr. Drake is an important client and you've pissed him off. Even so, they would never dare fire you if Morton were alive. But he's not, anymore. And you're gone all the time. And the police are calling here for you, which I have to tell you is not good. It makes everybody nervous. And then theywhat are you doing with this Mr. Connor, anyway?"
"It's a long story."
"Peter. I told you." She sounded sulky. He knew he would have to trade information.
"Okay," he said, trying to sound reluctant. "I'm carrying out an assignment that Morton gave me, before he died."
"Really? What is it?"
"It's a secret, I can't tell you yet."
"George Morton gave you an assignment?"
"In writing," he said. Thinking: That will cool their jets.
"Wow. Really. They don't dare fire you if you're on the business of the firm."
"Lisa, I have to go."
"And if they did, you would have such a wrongful termination action."
"Lisa amp;"
"Okay, okay. I know you can't talk. But just amp;good luck!"
He hung up. Jennifer was smiling. "That was very skillfully done," she said.
"Thank you."
But he wasn't smiling back. As far as he was concerned, the world was closing in around him. It didn't feel good. And he was still very, very tired.
He called Sarah to arrange for the plane, but got her voice mail. He called the pilot and was told that he was in the air.
"What do you mean?"
"He's flying, right now."
"Where?"
"I can't tell you that, sir. Would you like his voice mail?"
"No," Evans said. "I need to charter a plane."
"When would you like it?"
"In half an hour. To go to San Francisco, with a stop at whatever the airport is nearest Sequoia. Returning tonight."
"I'll see what I can do."
And then fatigue overcame him. He pulled over to the side of the road and got out of the car.
Jennifer said, "What's the matter?"
"You know the way to Van Nuys?"
"Sure."
"Then you drive."
He dropped into the passenger seat and fastened his seat belt. He watched her pull into traffic, and then closed his eyes and slept.
Chapter 62
SEQUOIA
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 12
4:30 P.M.
The forest floor was dark and cool. Shafts of sunlight filtered down from the magnificent trees rising all around them. The air smelled of pine. The ground was soft underfoot.
It was a pleasant spot, with sunlight dappling the forest floor, but even so the television cameras had to turn on their lights to film the third-grade schoolchildren who sat in concentric circles around the famous actor and activist Ted Bradley. Bradley was wearing a black T-shirt that set off his makeup and his dark good looks.
"These glorious trees are your birthright," he said, gesturing all around him. "They have been standing here for centuries. Long before you were born, before your parents or your grandparents or your great-grandparents were born. Some of them, before Columbus came to America! Before the Indians came! Before anything! These trees are the oldest living things on the planet; they are the guardians of the Earth; they are wise; and they have a message for us: Leave the planet alone. Don't mess with it, or with us. And we must listen to them."
The kids stared open-mouthed, transfixed. The cameras were trained on Bradley.
"But now these magnificent treeshaving survived the threat of fire, the threat of logging, the threat of soil erosion, the threat of acid rainnow face their greatest threat ever. Global warming. You kids know what global warming is, don't you?"
Hands went up all around the circle. "I know, I know!"
"I'm glad you do," Bradley said, gesturing for the kids to put their hands down. The only person talking today would be Ted Bradley. "But you may not know that global warming is going to cause a very sudden change in our climate. Maybe just a few months or years, and it will suddenly be much hotter or much colder. And there will be hordes of insects and diseases that will take down these wonderful trees."
"What kind of insects?" one kid asked.
"Bad ones," Bradley said. "The ones that eat trees, that worm inside them and chew them up." He wiggled his hands, suggesting the worming in progress.
"It would take an insect a long time to eat a whole tree," a girl offered.
"No, it wouldn't!" Bradley said. "That's the trouble. Because global warming means lots and lots of insects will comea plague of insectsand they'll eat the trees fast!"
Standing to one side, Jennifer leaned close to Evans. "Do you believe this shit?"
Evans yawned. He had slept on the flight up, and had dozed off again in the ride from the airport to this grove in Sequoia National Park. He felt groggy now, looking at Bradley. Groggy and bored.
By now the kids were fidgeting, and Bradley turned squarely to the cameras. He spoke with the easy authority he had mastered while playing the president for so many years on television. "The threat of abrupt climate change," he said, "is so devastating for mankind, and for all life on this planet, that conferences are being convened all around the world to deal with it. There is a conference in Los Angeles starting tomorrow, where scientists will discuss what we can do to mitigate this terrible threat. But if we do nothing, catastrophe looms. And these mighty, magnificent trees will be a memory, a postcard from the past, a snapshot of man's inhumanity to the natural world. We're responsible for catastrophic climate change. And only we can stop it."
He finished, with a slight turn to favor his good side, and a piercing stare from his baby blues, right into the lens.
"I have to pee-pee," one girl said.
The plane lifted off the runway and rose over the forest.
"Sorry to rush you," Evans said. "But we have to get to the morgue before six."
"No problem, no problem." Bradley smiled indulgently. After his talk, he had taken a few minutes to sign autographs for the kids. The cameras filmed that as well. He turned to Jennifer, giving her his best smile. "And what do you do, Miss Hadley?"
"I'm on the global warming legal team."
"Good, so you're one of us. How's the lawsuit going?"
"Just fine," she said, glancing at Evans.
"I get the feeling you're as brilliant as you are beautiful," Bradley said.
"Actually, no," she said. Evans could see that the actor was annoying her.
"You're being modest. It's very charming."
"I'm being honest," she said, "and telling you I don't like flattery."
"Hardly flattery, in your case," he said.
"And hardly honest, in yours," she replied.
"Believe me when I say that I genuinely admire what you're doing," Bradley said. "I can't wait for you people to stick it to the EPA. We have to keep the pressure on. That's why I did this thing with the kids. It's a sure-fire television segment for abrupt climate change. And I thought it went extremely well, didn't you?"
"Reasonably well, considering."
"Considering?"
"That it was all bullshit," Jennifer said.
Bradley's smile remained fixed, but his eyes narrowed. "I'm not sure what you're referring to," he said.
"I'm referring to all of it, Ted. The whole speech. Sequoias are sentinels and guardians of the planet? They have a message for us?"
"Well, they do"
"They're trees, Ted. Big trees. They have about as much of a message for mankind as an eggplant."
"I think you are missing"
"And they've managed to survive forest fires? Hardlythey're dependent on fires, because that's how they reproduce. Redwoods have tough seeds that only burst open in the heat of a fire. Fires are essential for the health of the redwood forest."
"I think," Bradley said rather stiffly, "that you may have missed my point."
"Really? What did I miss?"
"I was trying to conveyperhaps a bit lyricallythe timeless quality of these great primeval forests, and"
"Timeless? Primeval? Do you know anything about these forests?"
"Yes. I think I do." His voice was tight. He was visibly angry now.
"Look out the window," Jennifer said, pointing to the forest as they flew above it. "How long do you think your primeval forest has looked the way it does now?"
"Obviously, for hundreds of thousands of years"
"Not true, Ted. Human beings were here for many thousands of years before these forests ever appeared. Did you know that?"
He was clenching his jaw. He did not answer.
"Then let me lay it out for you," she said.
Twenty thousand years ago, the Ice Age glaciers receded from California, gouging out Yosemite Valley and other beauty spots as they left. As the ice walls withdrew, they left behind a gunky, damp plain with lots of lakes fed by the melting glaciers, but no vegetation at all. It was basically wet sand.
After a few thousand years, the land dried as the glaciers continued to move farther north. This region of California became arctic tundra, with tall grasses supporting little animals, like mice and squirrels. Human beings had arrived here by then, hunting the small animals and setting fires. "Okay so far?" Jennifer said. "No primeval forests yet."
"I'm listening," Ted growled. He was clearly trying to control his temper.
She continued. "At first, arctic grasses and shrubs were the only plants that could take hold in the barren glacial soil. But when they died they decomposed, and over thousands of years a layer of topsoil built up. And that initiated a sequence of plant colonization that was basically the same everywhere in post-glacial North America.
"First, lodgepole pine comes in. That's around fourteen thousand years ago. Later it's joined by spruce, hemlock, and aldertrees that are hardy but can't be first. These trees constitute the real primary' forest, and they dominated this landscape for the next four thousand years. Then the climate changed. It got much warmer, and all the glaciers in California melted. There were no glaciers at all in California back then. It was warm and dry, there were lots of fires, and the primary forest burned. It was replaced by a plains-type vegetation of oak trees and prairie herbs. And a few Douglas fir trees, but not many, because the climate was too dry for fir trees.
"Then, around six thousand years ago, the climate changed again. It became wetter, and the Douglas fir, hemlock, and cedar moved in and took over the land, creating the great closed-canopy forests that you see now. But someone might refer to these fir trees as a pest plantan oversized weedthat invaded the landscape, crowding out the native plants that had been there before them. Because these big canopy forests made the ground too dark for other trees to survive. And since there were frequent fires, the closed-canopy forests were able to spread like mad. So they're not timeless, Ted. They're merely the last in line."
Bradley snorted. "They're still six thousand years old, for God's sake."
But Jennifer was relentless. "Not true," she said. "Scientists have shown that the forests continuously changed their composition. Each thousand-year period was different from the one before it. The forests changed constantly, Ted. And then, of course, there were the Indians."
"What about them?"
"The Indians were expert observers of the natural world, so they realized that old-growth forests sucked. Those forests may look impressive, but they're dead landscapes for game. So the Indians set fires, making sure the forests burned down periodically. They made sure there were only islands of old-growth forest in the midst of plains and meadows. The forests that the first Europeans saw were hardly primeval. They were cultivated, Ted. And it's not surprising that one hundred fifty years ago, there was less old-growth forest than there is today. The Indians were realists. Today, it's all romantic mythology."* She sat back in her chair.
"Well, that's a very nice speech," Bradley said. "But those are technical objections. People aren't interested. And it's a good thing, because you're saying that these forests aren't really old and therefore aren't worth preserving. Whereas I say they are reminders of the beauty and power of the natural world and should be preserved at all costs. Especially from the dire threat of global warming."
Jennifer blinked. She said, "I need a drink."
"I'll join you there," Bradley said.
For Evanswho had intermittently been attempting to call Detective Perry while this discussion was taking placethe most disturbing aspect was the implication of constant change. Evans had never really focused on the idea that Indians had lived at the same time as the glaciers. Of course, he knew that this was true. He knew that early Indians had hunted the mammoth and other large mammals to extinction. But he had never considered the possibility that they would also have burned forests and changed the environment to suit their purposes.