UNIDENTIFIED

by Billie Sue Mosiman

  He looked in the rearview. The white Ford was gaining for the third time. The front end of the car was smashed up pretty good, which made Karl realize his own car must look like a crushed tin can in the rear.

  Upping his speed to over a hundred miles an hour, Karl passed the car in the right lane, the one he'd almost hit, and swerved in front of it. He saw the next two lanes over to the right were pretty busy—cars, pickup trucks, a semi. He couldn't get over yet. He pressed the accelerator and the speedometer inched up to one hundred twenty. He had passed the wolf pack of vehicles and found a little area of empty lanes.

  Sweat rolled down his face. He could feel his heart rocketing around like a loose pinball. He passed over into the next lane right. He saw the Ford, two, four, then five cars behind, doing the same. Shifting lanes. Relentless.

  "Oh god," Karl whispered, so scared he thought he might black out. "Get me out of this," he prayed. "Ohgodgetmeoutofthis."

  He had one more lane to cross over so he could reach an exit and a feeder lane. There was a farm truck with an old tin camper on the back in his way. If he sped up to pass it, he'd be blocked by another wolf pack.

  He dropped back, hoping to scoot over behind the farm truck. Then the white Ford was behind him. He still couldn't see the driver. They were headed east, the sun square in front of them, lancing off the other car's windshield, making the driver invisible.

  Opening! Karl quickly changed lanes, saw an exit up ahead. It didn't look more than a quarter mile distant. If only he could . . . The Ford rammed him and the wheel again flew from his fingers like a startled bird winging away to freedom. The Jaguar angled to the left into the left lane's traffic just coming up on him. Cars hit their brakes, swerved and hit other cars in lanes next to them. Before Karl could straighten out the Jag, he heard metal bending and the sound of explosions as half a dozen cars and trucks slammed into one another.

  Now the Ford was in the lane left of Karl. He looked over, waiting for the front end of the Ford to clear his midsection, trying to see the driver. Before the big front grill came even with his door, Karl saw it shift like a gear clicking into place. It was going to sideswipe him.

  Karl didn't know what to do, step on the gas or the brake. He didn't have time to do anything. The Jag flew from the lane onto the emergency stopping pavement, hit the gravel lining, and went airborne over a short ditch. It landed hard on the incline, the tires digging in, and spun onto the feeder road that was mercifully empty. Karl hit the brakes so hard his foot slammed into the carpet. The Jag burned rubber on the feeder, the back end whipping around until the car had done a full circle and shuddered to a stop. The engine stalled.

  Karl hung over the wheel, breathless. "Goddamn," he muttered. "Oh shit."

  He craned his head to look for the white Ford but it had vanished. The driver must have gone on down the freeway. It was already out of sight. Karl hadn't even had a chance to watch for the license plate.

  Cars had slowed and stopped behind Karl on the feeder. They took turns honking their horns at him. Karl reached with trembling fingers to the key in the ignition and started the car.

  He didn't realize his head had bumped the front windshield and that he was bleeding from the front of his scalp.

  He didn't know he'd even been hurt until one side of his face felt wet and he reached up to wipe off what he thought was sweat and brought his fingers away blood red.

  28

  "The insane are always mere guests on earth, eternal strangers carrying around broken decalogues that they cannot read."

  F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald

  The Body made it to the studio gate just fifteen minutes late. Cam was going to throttle him, but no matter what degree of rant he got into—and he could get into some good ones—he'd get over it.

  The effort on the freeway from Malibu to Burbank had taken time, it was so out of the way. Waiting not far from Karl's house, The Body had followed him from his block right onto the entrance ramp. This meant the day started before dawn. A full day's excitement and work and danger had been used up in mere hours.

  Then after the rear bumper ramming and the last slam into the side of the Jag, The Body had to drop off the smoking, wrecked Ford in an alley in Hollywood where the other car was parked.

  It all took time. It took finesse. It took such careful planning and a cunning performance.

  And it involved courage. The Body might have been hurt trying to ram the Jag at those speeds. Or another car might have gone out of control and totaled out the Ford.

  The Body quaked at the thought. It was as if a chill crept up the spine, ending with an electric shock at the base of the neck.

  Working on the set after the long, hard hours of setting up Karl on the freeway was child's play, but it did demand attention. First to deal with Cam for being late, then with the other crew members who didn't seem quite with-it for some reason. Everything had to be shot over several times. A boom mike didn't work, one of the cameramen was off with a rampaging case of the flu, no one hit their marks, the lighting director argued with the prop people.

  The day wore on endlessly, winding down finally like a battery-operated toy going on the blink. The Body said goodbye to everyone and left the studio lot as fast as possible.

  Once safe at home, The Body went directly to the sensory deprivation room and locked the door. Felt in the dark for the leather chair. Sat and reclined with feet raised.

  Breathed deeply of sin and covetousness and retribution. Luxuriated in replaying the early morning chase step-by-step, scene-by-scene. It was almost the way it had been filmed the day before. Very few differences, save for the lack of cameras, pacing vehicles, and little or no chance of harm.

  Had Karl been hurt when he went hurtling down the embankment to the feeder lane? Had someone crashed into him or had the Jag landed on another car that happened to be passing by?

  The Body hadn't been able to slow down enough to get a glimpse of the aftermath. Maybe The Body should have turned on the car radio on the way home to check for news of Karl LaRosa's death. If he'd died, they would have surely reported it. Karl was a man of power behind the scenes; he was a puppet master. He had groomed enough stars over the past ten years to make him newsworthy.

  Well, The Body didn't turn on the radio, therefore there was no way to know if Karl were alive or dead or hospitalized. It was too early for him to be dead, but The Body had to take into consideration that any action mimicking the script of Pure and Uncut could result in murder. At any time. Things could always go wrong. They weren't being as carefully choreographed as they were on soundstages and location shootings. It was all up to chance whether Karl survived to the end of the script or not.

  It would be a pity if he succumbed too soon, but it was his demise The Body meant to achieve, early in the game or late. It really didn't matter all that much.

  The effect of the silence and impenetrable dark served to ease The Body from a frenzied state to one resembling peace. The face relaxed once the mask was tossed aside. The limbs fell loose. The eyes rolled back in the head, and visions of blood and destruction were let from out of the cage in the back hallway of the brain to go dancing down the synapses and neuron networks.

  For another hour, until the timer signaled The Body must leave the deprivation room, madness reigned, gleeful and faceless as a mime on a street corner.

  29

  "Scratch a lover, and find a foe."

  Dorothy Parker, Ballade of a Great Weariness

  When Catherine Rivers called Karl's house after work on the set was finished for the night, Jimmy Watz answered the phone. "Can I speak to Karl, Jimmy?"

  "Who is this? Catherine?"

  "Yeah."

  "I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but Karl's having to stay overnight in the hospital. He was in a wreck and wound up with some stitches in his head."

  "He was in a wreck?"

  "Right. He said some joker ran him off the freeway this morning going in to work. He we
nt down an embankment and onto a feeder lane. Luckily the feeder was empty at the spot where he ended up or he'd probably be dead."

  "Oh, Jesus, Jimmy. Where is he? Is he going to be all right?"

  "He's in General. They're keeping him for observation, but he's going to be all right. Had a long cut on his scalp and some bruises, that's about it. He's pretty shook up."

  "Robyn told me Karl's been having a rough time. Could you fill me in?"

  Jimmy hesitated a couple of moments and that made Catherine frown. "Jimmy? What's been going on? I want to know."

  "Too much to tell you about over the phone." Jimmy was evasive. "Let's just say someone's got it out for him.”

  “Who?"

  Another pause. Jimmy finally said, "Karl doesn't know yet. Some damn nut, if you ask me. Tore up his house just a few days ago. Now tried to run him off the road."

  "Thanks, Jimmy. I'm going to the hospital to see Karl. I'll talk to you later."

  Catherine picked up her car keys from where she'd dropped them next to the phone. She called to her housekeeper to watch after Barb, she had to go out again. On the way to the hospital she couldn't help but notice the similarities between Karl's house being roughed up and his accident on the freeway today to the scenes they had recently filmed for Pure and Uncut. Some coincidence. It gave her a prickly feeling of foreboding. It was just too coincidental, wasn't it?

  She found out from the hospital information desk where Karl's room was and took the elevator up. The door to 221 was closed. She pushed it open slowly, wondering if she might accidentally intrude on some kind of medical procedure or maybe an aide giving Karl a sponge bath. She was relieved to see it was a private room and Karl was alone.

  "Hi there," she called cheerfully, having steeled herself for the worst. Karl's head looked like a bandaged melon. Both his eyes were blackened and an angry lump the color and size of a red rose swelled his left cheek.

  He was sitting up in bed, propped by two pillows. He immediately muted the television set where the evening news was playing. He turned toward her as if his head were made of thin, fragile glass that might roll off his shoulders and break.

  "Catherine. Who told you?"

  "I called your house and Jimmy answered. He told me. I wanted to see for myself how you were." She approached the bedside and laid a hand over his on the mattress. He withdrew his hand from beneath hers. She gave him a slightly puzzled look. "You look beat up, I'm afraid."

  "Everything from my neck up hurts," he said. "I was bleeding like a slaughtered hog when they brought me in. How are my eyes? Last I looked, I thought I had turned into a raccoon."

  She shrugged and tried to smile. "Looks like you took a few too many one-two punches from a heavyweight contender. Did the doctors say you're going to be okay?"

  He shifted on the sheets, trying to sit straighter. She automatically put her hands under his arm and lifted to help him. She could feel him stiffen and draw away a little. Maybe his ribs were bruised too. Just what was his problem with being touched by her?

  "I can go home tomorrow. They're just keeping me to see if I'm going to fall into a coma and die or something." He grinned a little to show he was making a brave joke. "It's not a bad head wound. Got some stitches . . . oh, about fifty-two of them." He reached up and gingerly touched the bandage on his head. "These bruises are from being knocked around in the car, slamming my head into the windshield. No big deal. I'll live."

  "Before I knew this happened," Catherine said, "Robyn told me you'd been having trouble and asked if I'd talked to you. Jimmy wouldn't tell me much about what's been going on. What's this about somebody busting up your house?"

  Now he turned to face her, wincing as he did so. His color was the dull, washed gray of concrete so that the black eyes and raised red knob on his cheekbone stood out like garish blobs of paint. "You're pretending you don't know about this, right?"

  "I'm not pretending anything, Karl. I didn't know anything until Robyn said something today."

  "You know, you're the one who might have made my life work out. If we'd given it a chance," he added.

  "Well, that was a long time ago. Why don't you tell me about the things going on in your life now?"

  "That's just it, Cat. Someone from the past is out to gut me like a fish. And doing a damn good job of it, I might add."

  "The person who ran you off the road today, you mean? Did you see him?"

  His eyes narrowed down so there was no light at all reflected from them. It looked as if empty black eye sockets were trained on her.

  "Sun kept me from seeing who tried to kill me today. But it's a her, not a him. Right, Cat? It's a her."

  "A woman? Who do you know crazy enough to play tag on a freeway during rush hour?"

  "You drive pretty good, as I remember."

  She had felt that coming since she'd walked into the room. He was holding back, he wasn't his old self, and it had nothing to do with his injuries. "You think I tried to run you down? Karl, why would I do that?" Maybe he was suffering from some kind of mental lapse from hitting his head. She had heard of head injury patients acting out of character. This wasn't at all like Karl to be paranoid and accuse people of crazy things.

  Now he glanced away and his mouth was set in hard lines. "Just come out and tell me if it's you, Catherine. Whatever you've got against me, we need to work it out."

  "Karl? What's wrong with you? I didn't run you off the road this morning."

  "Do you blame me for losing the babies? You got rid of them because of me, didn't you?" He sat straight up and grabbed her by the arms, pulling her in close. She shuddered, looking into his eyes. She saw rage there, enough for him to tear her head off if he wanted.

  He said, low and threatening, "How can you think it was my fault? I didn't even know about the pregnancy. If you'd asked me to choose between our relationship and the lives of the unborn, I wouldn't have hesitated a second. I would have told you to spare the twins."

  His words were a kick in the stomach that caused her to pull free his hands and step back from the bed in shock. "What are you talking about, Karl?"

  "You didn't know I found out about the abortion? You had it two days before our second date. You must have thought I wouldn't want anything to do with a woman pregnant by another man, but would have been wrong. You didn't even say anything to me. Did you even bother to tell the father? Did he want to abort them too?"

  Tears cascaded down Catherine's cheeks. She tried to bury her sorrow and the vile sickness that had risen in her to form a hard knot in her throat by pushing her head down, down, forcing her chin toward her chest.

  "I have to get out of here . . ."

  She whirled around and stumbled into the food stand, knocking a Styrofoam pitcher of ice water to the floor.

  "You did it, Cat. I didn't do it. I didn't even know. Is that why you want to hurt me now? To get me back for something I didn't really do? Don't you see how unfair that is? Cat, talk to me!"

  She stepped over the ice and the puddle of water, grabbed the door handle and pulled the heavy door toward her. Everything in her vision was clouded by a veil of tears. She heard Karl pleading with her at her back, but she was out the door now and away down the hall, stumbling, crying, wiping the wetness from her face, and furious now, pinwheeling down the hallway. She ran past the nurses' station to the elevator door.

  She did hate him now. She hated him for making her remember, for making her rehash the morality of her decision. For making her feel like a hard and cruel woman who had no heart at all.

  In the elevator, alone, she wiped the last of the tears from her face. She thought of Barbara, her little girl, of how much she loved her to distraction, would do anything for her, sacrifice anything.

  She sucked in breath, hurried out of the elevator on the ground floor, and rushed from the building.

  What he had said hurt because it pointed to the truth she didn't want to think about. She could have sacrificed one affair with a man, with Karl, for the twin children
she had been carrying in her body. She had acted selfishly and without honor. She had aborted the fetuses for the worst reason of all—for the hope of a love that never materialized. She had lost all around.

  Done it to herself.

  But Karl was wrong. She didn't blame him for anything.

  She had absolutely done it to herself.

  30

  "Hollywood money isn't money. It's congealed snow, melts in your hand, and there you are."

  Dorothy Parker, Writers at Work

  Karl looked straight ahead through the windshield of Lisa's car. She had taken the day off to pick him up from the hospital. She had been with him a few minutes when they'd brought him into emergency the day before. His face wasn't as black and purpled with bruises then. She flinched on seeing him this morning. He had to hold her close and reassure her before she stopped her anxious fidgeting around the room, gathering his things.

  "Karl, why don't you let me drive you to my house? I don't think you should stay at your place until this gets resolved."

  He tried to shake his head, but it hurt too much. "No, I'm going home. No one's going to run me out of my house. Whoever this is, she's not going to win. Not an inch."

  Lisa turned left onto his road. "If she kills you, I guess that means she wins."

  "No one's going to kill me. I'm going to start carrying my gun."

  "That won't help much when you're in your car being bumped off the freeway."

  "It'll help." Karl felt stubborn enough to hold out against any logic she might try on him. He wasn't moving out. He wasn't running. He wasn't going to give up his life or his career or his future over this.

  He turned in the seat so he could see Lisa. "Have you talked to the garage that towed my Jag?"