Chameleon

by William Diehl

  "Dismal.

  "And then, damned if I didn't find out these little suckers could sing! Man, they could belt it out like angels. Fourteen-part harmony. So we changed our name from Mike Rothschild's Little Big Men to Jesus Rothschild and the Gospel Midgets, and lo, everybody loved us. We were doing state fairs, charity gigs, revival meetings. The black people loved us. Kids loved us. Red dirt farmers would come with their families and fruit jars and get drunk and get religion. Sweet Jesus, we were saving souls and making money. Hallelujah, what a summer!"

  "Magician, what in hell are you talking about?" O'Hara asked.

  "There's a point, stick with me. One night we pull into Soperton, Georgia, which is about as big as a flea's ass, and it's maybe one o'clock in the morning and we pass this Waffle House, which is open, so we all pile in for coffee. There's maybe half a dozen or so truck drivers in there raising hell and one thing leads to another and it's getting a little nasty what with the midget jokes and shit, so Herman Heartfinder, who was kind of the spokesman for the little guys—he also had a very bad temper—he says for them to go easy on the midget jokes. This one driver says to Herman, 'Hey, shortie, if your pecker was twice as big as your mouth, you'd still have to jack off with two fingers,' and Herman stands straight up, all three-foot-six of him, and lets fly with one of those old-fashioned glass sugar dispensers, the ones that weigh about two tons. Splat, right across the side of the head. All of a sudden, it's John Wayne time. Truck drivers and midgets, all kickin' the shit out of each other and, incidentally, wasting the Soperton, Georgia, Waffle House while they're at it.

  "Right then I figured Soperton, Georgia, was no place to be if you're a six-fingered Jewish piano player hustling fourteen midgets who are at that moment inciting a riot. So I just walked away from it, down to the Trailways bus station, where I stood around for about an hour, listening to the police cars and ambulance, until the bus came and I headed south and got off when we ran out of road in Key West."

  He stopped and smiled rather grandly and added, "And that's the point."

  "What's the point?" Eliza asked.

  "The point is, this is no place for us to be right now."

  "Amen," said O'Hara.

  "But Lavander could still be alive. If the police had a description of Lavander and Hinge ..."

  "They wouldn't do doodly-shit," said the Magician.

  "Lavander's had it," O'Hara said. "By now Hinge is probably on his way back to Tucson or wherever he's from, and all we've got is Lavander's little black book of gibberish."

  Outside, Hinge huddled close to the cottage to escape the driving rain. He was grateful for the storm, since it provided excellent sound cover. The raindrops, battering palm leaves and ferns, sounded like drums accompanied by the timpani of thunder. He had moved as close to the window as possible, standing just outside its orbit of light but close enough to hear their conversation through the open window.

  My God, he thought, they know my name and they know about Lavander! And what's this about Lavander's book?

  Who the hell are these people, anyway?

  It made no difference. Hinge decided very quickly that he had to kill all three of them. The question was when and how. He concluded that each of them had a cottage, accounting for the lights in the last three cottages. He would wait until they were each in their rooms and take them one at a time.

  Piece a cake.

  He continued his eavesdropping.

  "I think the book's going to give up something," said the Magician. "All we gotta do is break Lavander's code."

  "All," Eliza said.

  "He carries the book with him. Obviously he makes entries in it all the time, so he must have memorized his own code. And if he memorized it, I can break it. And if I can't, Izzie certainly can." He got up to leave. "What time did the pilot say he'd meet us at the airport?"

  "Five-thirty," O'Hara said.

  "I'll wake everybody up," he said and left, scampering through the rain to his cottage, the last one in the row.

  O'Hara hunched deep in one of the yellow-and-green chairs and said, "I'll sleep here in the chair."

  "I'll be all right," Eliza said.

  "We've already underestimated Hinge once tonight. I'd feel better being here."

  Thunder rumbled outside the window and lightning snapped close by.

  "Better be careful, O'Hara, I'm liable to get the wrong impression, think you have a heart after all."

  "Now, what does that mean?"

  "Up until now, you've been a robot."

  "A robot!"

  "That's right, a robot."

  "Well, I don't feel like a robot," he said, looking at her through half-closed eyes.

  "O'Hara had already dismissed the Lavander affair from his mind. They had botched it. Enough said. Now he concentrated on his competitor across the room, for that was how he still thought of her. Five feet tall, proficient and dangerously naive.

  That was the professional view. Personally; other things about her crowded his mind. She was prettier than he remembered from their brief meeting in Japan, and he had been too startled when she showed up in St. Lucifer to really pay any attention to her. Now he realized what a stunning woman she was. Her tininess simply added to her allure. Shaggy jet-black hair, cut short with curled strands peeking around her neck; wide, almost startled eyes, appearing even more vulnerable because of her size; a wondrously perfect nose and a tentative, pouty mouth that could, in an instant, become the most dazzling smile he had ever seen.

  Beautiful, smart and tempting.

  Very dangerous.

  She was momentarily flustered and avoided contact with his green eyes. She sat on the edge of the bed and looked down at the floor. O'Hara intimidated her and had since before she met him. The biographical material she had read had commended him for many things, including his investigative ability. But it was his apparent mastery of the Japanese philosophy that both fascinated and unsettled her. He moved with oiled grace, which she attributed to his martial-arts training in Japan. She remembered the speed with which he accepted and defeated his attacker in Japan. Unruffled. Even with a stab wound, he was simply unruffled. In fact, he was uncomfortably calm. And now he seemed able to accept the inevitability of Lavander's death without guilt or remorse. And yet, what she read to be something almost mystical might simply be the result of years of armoring. Perhaps O'Hara was so thoroughly shielded that he just seemed mystical.

  She sighed and said, "I can't get used to the fact that we may have caused Lavander's death."

  "No, didn't cause it. We didn't save him. There's a big difference."

  "But can't we do something? I'd recognize the car. And it was a rental, so he'll have to turn it in and—"

  "A good hunter knows when the hunt is over."

  "There you go. Mr. Kimura talks like that all the time."The smart man doesn't wear wet socks.' How's that?"

  "Actually, it would be, 'The wise man does not put on his sock until the sun blesses it.' "

  "Oh, bullshit." She paused for a second. "I'd just like to get another look at that creep, anyway. I've never seen a real live assassin before."

  "You really have a taste for this, don't you?"

  "For what?"

  "Chasing the big story. How did you get into this business, anyway? Hell, you've read my K-file, you know everything about me right down to my underwear size. I don't know anything about you."

  How did she get into the business? Well, it had started because she was chubby.

  When Eliza Gunn was growing up in Nebraska she was plump. Well, perhaps "plump" is being generous. Actually she was somewhere between plump and fat. Chipmunk-cheeks-and-dimpled-legs chubby is what she was.

  She lived in Ozone. Once you got a chuckle out of the name, it was all downhill. Dull. Dull. Dull. The only statue in town was of Calvin Coolidge, who once waved at Ozone from the rear of a passing train. So much for Ozone, Nebraska.

  Her father owned the local drugstore and was a kind, patient, Christian man. R
eserved, the kind that thinks a pat on the head is as good as a hug. Alwyn Gunn died thinking that only perverts read Playboy and that Quaaludes were tranquilizers. And that was in 1977.

  Her mother died when she was three in a car wreck driving back from a shopping trip to Omaha. The drive was so dull that she fell asleep at the wheel. Alwyn hired a housekeeper, a German widow whose husband had died in a fall off a tractor, and went about business as usual. He never remarried. Too much effort.

  Chubby kids are cute. Until they get to be about six. A fat twelve-year-old is not cute. Eliza didn't enter puberty, she stomped into it.

  One of the reasons Lizzie Gunn was chubby is that if you lived in Ozone, there was no reason to be skinny. Actually there wasn't much reason to do anything but eat, read books and get pregnant. A lot of Eliza's friends got pregnant. Eliza read books and ate. Among his many virtues, Alwyn Gunn was a lover of books. When she was just beginning to read, Alwyn would bring home half a dozen kids' books to her from the library. By the time she was ten she was into the adult section.

  She also realized, at about age ten, that she was different from everyone else. Not because she was chubby/fat, but because she didn't want to be like everybody else. She had no desire to be one of the gang. If she couldn't win, she would rather have come in ten minutes after everybody else. Anything to avoid being part of the herd. Fat or thin, the thought of being common repelled her. It was mental, not physical.

  She also had a passion to find out. To be the first to know. To have a secret nobody else shared.

  The more she read, the more her fantasies blossomed.

  No, they exploded.

  She rode to Valhalla with Kipling; stormed the gates of Moscow with Tolstoy; conned her way to New Orleans with Twain. She learned class from Shaw, grace from Galsworthy, elegance from Henry James. She was Anna Karenina, Sarah Bernhardt and Holly Golightly. She made up stories in school, told them to her toothbrush in the bathroom, to her dog, her cat, to anyone who would listen. And when old movies started appearing on television, she was Rosalind Russell, James Cagney and Pat O'Brien all wrapped in one, in hot pursuit of the big story. The scoop.

  She was editor of the school paper, a job usually relegated to chubby girls who wore glasses, since it was assumed that they were more serious than pretty girls with tits and ass, or to boys, who were too horny to do anything right. She wore her father's old fedora with a press pass in the brim, barked orders and drove everybody crazy. The paper won the Sigma Delta Chi award as the best high school newspaper in the state. She got a personal award for best editorial. It was about the passing of the town's last blacksmith. That was when she was sixteen, her junior year.

  And then she became seventeen. That year something happened to Lizzy. She got skinny. Skinny the way girls dream of being skinny.

  It happened suddenly. Like a cocoon bursting open, the fat just fell away and suddenly there was Lizzie Gunn, five feet tall, ninety-four pounds, with the best tits and ass in Ozone High School. The Hairbreath Harrys of the school went crazy. Her phone rang constantly, now she was cute.

  She was also independent, somewhat eccentric, a daydreamer and a loner. Slimmed down, she had boundless energy.

  Ozone to Missouri U. to Lincoln to Chicago to Boston. Life had been upbeat ever since. After Ozone, nothing would ever be dull again. Dull dissolved into the six o'clock nightly news and a constant what she called "twiddle" in her stomach. Her stomach had been in a "twiddle" ever since. And now, sitting with Frank O'Hara chasing a chimera named Chameleon, all her fantasies, daydreams, aspirations, everything! had come true.

  She kept the story short. Sunk down in the comfortable chair, he kept looking at her over his kneecaps as though he were sighting a gun. This time she stared back, and when she was finished she went right back to the subject at hand.

  "I can't believe a man is probably getting killed at this very moment and we're just sitting here helplessly."

  O'Hara got up and walked to the bed, and taking her hands, guided her to her feet. He put his arms around her and hugged her. It was a friendly hug, meant to restore her sense of security. She was moved by the simple act, and the warmth of his body was reassuring.

  "It got too nasty, too fast," he said.

  "You were right," she said, "those Mafia guys were kid stuff."

  He ran his finger down her cheek and along her jaw.

  "M-m-maybe you're right, maybe I'm not cut out for all this." My God, I'm stammering, she thought.

  "We did the best we could. Life's a lot easier if you can accept the inevitable." He stroked the soft part of her ear.

  "I thought I was so clever, following him that way and then I turned a corner and—"

  "We can't brood over it. I made a bad call. The man's a pro. It's what he does. Put it behind you." He lightly stroked her neck with his fingertips.

  She moved a little closer. He began to stroke her cheeks with his fingertips, then ran them lightly over her lower lip.

  She thought, Does he think he can do this for a minute or two and I'll just fall into bed?

  He said, "Close your eyes, Lizzie."

  She felt his wet lips slipping back and forth on hers and then his tongue barely touching her lips.

  She thought, yep, that's exactly what he thinks.

  Her mouth pouted open very slightly and the end of her tongue touched his.

  And she thought, He's right.

  The storm was getting worse. Lightning etched the clouds and speared the earth. The world lit up for a second, then pow!—the power went off and there was utter darkness.

  Hinge inched closer to the window.

  She slipped away from him for a moment and her lighter flicked. There were five candles in the room and she lit them. The flames wavered in the cool breeze blowing through the windows.

  "I'm a candlelight freak," she said in a whisper.

  "Some tough cookie," he said, taking her shirt collar in his hands and drawing her lightly to him again.

  Her emotions were hardly stable. She was tingling from the excitement of the night—and aroused by it. She found O'Hara irresistible, the pirate who comes swinging out of nowhere, snatches her out of the slave market and carries her away on his ship. It was a fantasy created when she first became aware of her sensuality, one that had persisted through the years. And finally she had met the pirate.

  And she was the girl in his fantasy: vulnerable, lovely—but wonderfully experienced.

  Hinge moved closer. It was raining harder and the wind was coming up and the garden around the cottage was turning into a mudhole and lightning seemed to be showering to the earth and in its garish light, he watched the man's fingers unbuttoning the girl's blouse. It seemed to take forever. Then the blouse fell open, but the man was between Hinge and the girl. He moved to the next window, saw him silhouetted against the garish flashes of lightning, barely tracing her full breasts with his thumb; taking her blouse off and dropping it on the bed; kissing her throat, her shoulders, the edge of her breast.

  Hinge took the cigar from his shirt pocket and put it between his teeth and slipped the knife out of his sleeve. He risked the chance that the lights might suddenly come back on or that he would be seen in a flare of lightning. They were too involved to see anything. The guy ought to thank him. What a way to go. He would dirk the man first and kill the girl with a dart if he did not kill the man with his first thrust.

  O'Hara and Eliza were a single moving form in the candlelight, illuminated sporadically by the yellow glare of the storm, fumbling with belts and buttons, finally entwined, hands searching, lips tasting, as he lowered her slowly to the bed.

  Fronds slapped one another in the wind, and the pelting rain stung his face. He could see them through the louvered window, dimly on the bed, naked now, lying sideways facing each other.

  Eliza felt O'Hara pressing against her, his lips seemed to be all over her body, on her nipples, her stomach. His tongue explored her while she moved her hands over his back, feeling his skin,
the deep arch in his back, his hard ass. She pressed slightly and he responded lightly. It was beginning. She could feel it on the back of her neck, under her ears, welling up in her stomach. She forgot where she was, who she was with, everything but the feeling that kept building, the wonderful electric responses to each touch and kiss.

  Hinge started around the corner of the cottage. He reached out to try the door.

  He did not hear or see the wire loop drop over his head, was not aware of its presence until it bit into his neck.

  He reacted immediately and by instinct. First he shoved himself backward toward his assailant. He bunched up his neck, swelling the muscles against the wire. Then he reached back, trying to grab his attacker. Nobody.

  He was on the Leash.

  The wire jerked him again and he went backwards across the sidewalk into the wet sand, rolling as he hit the ground and twisting so that he came to his knees facing the assassin. He saw only a tall, dim figure holding the garrote wire.

  It was an old trick, using the Leash. The wire ran through a small ratchet, which could be tightened by pulling the wire. The killer stayed three or four feet behind the victim, constantly throwing him off balance until the wire suffocated him.

  The wire had cut deep. Hinge could feel its harsh edge against his windpipe. He slashed out with the knife and tried to cut the wire. Moving quickly behind him, the assailant jerked him over backwards.

  Hinge half rolled, half flipped, and landed on his feet. He jumped at the figure and slashed at him, felt the knife bite into his forearm and tear through flesh. The cigar was still between his teeth but he could not get a clean shot at the tall man's throat.

  The assailant jumped back and pulled him over again.

  Hinge was losing his strength. His breath came in small gasps as the wire cut deeper. He rolled in the wet sand, grabbed the Leash and pulled the assassin toward him. The tall man lurched forward and landed close to the water's edge on his hands and knees.