"That will be all, Detective."
"Plooped, snooped, looped,/Just like you,/There's nothing I can do."
"I disagree," Harry said. "We all bear existential responsibility for ourselves and our actions."
"I say we ship the poor slob off to Bellevue!"
"Thankfully, Detective, you are not the one who makes those decisions."
"There was a young lady from Sparta—"
"Limericks?" Harry asked.
"Are limericks important to you, Mr. Briggs?" Mrs. Cantor asked.
He looked at her. Christ, he'd been talking to himself again. He shook his head. "No. Of course not."
"And what the hell is wrong with limericks?" the voice in Harry's head asked.
"Will you shut up!"
"He's losing it. Cuff him, Tony."
"You'll do no such thing. This man is clearly walking a very fine line—"
"He's walking a tightrope, lady, and he's going to fall straight into hell. Tony, cuff him!"
Chapter Thirty
Kennedy Whelan was bending over the broken body of a bellhop in a fifth-floor broom closet at the Ritz Carlton, and a man behind him was saying, "I saw who did this. He looked just like the guy in all those Humphrey Bogart movies."
Whelan glanced at the man speaking. He looked to be well into his eighties, and showed every day of it. "Peter Lorre?" Whelan asked.
The man shook his bald head earnestly. "No, no, no. Peter Lorre was short and thin. This man was large. Tall too. And he wore a ... I got it! Sydney Greenstreet. The guy looked exactly like Sydney Greenstreet."
Whelan glanced at his partner. "Get the police artist down here."
Amelia, who was standing with Freely, Conrad and Morgan near the comer of one of the ugly, gray cinder-block buildings, nodded toward the monster Buick, which was not far away, and asked, "Are those some of the women you created?"
"Yes," Conrad answered sheepishly.
"Jesus, you must lead a hell of a fantasy life."
"I do," Conrad said. He was holding his .45 so it pointed up, near his temple. "At least, I did lead a hell of a fantasy life. It was very gratifying, at first—"
One of the women called out, "Hand yourself over to us, Conrad, or this man dies!" She and another of the voluptuous, scantily clad, dark-haired women were holding Jack South, who looked confused and very frightened. The woman who had called out was pointing what looked like a submachine gun at South's head.
Conrad called back, "Don't be afraid, young man. They're not going to do anything to you. I'm not absolutely sure they can."
"And not absolutely sure they can't either?" Morgan asked, grinning.
Jack South called, "If this is some kind of game—"
"It's not a game, monsieur. You tell him it is not a game, Conrad."
"No one believes it's a game anymore, Justine," Conrad called.
"Will someone give someone a straight answer!" Amelia fumed.
"There are no straight answers," Conrad told her.
"The fuck there aren't!" Amelia hissed, and stepped out into the open. "If you're going to shoot someone, shoot me!"
The French partisans looked confused. Justine called out, "Who is this woman taking your place, Conrad?"
"No one's taking my place!" he called back.
"Didn't you say there were men too?" Morgan asked.
"Yes," Conrad answered. "Eleven men. The women killed them."
"You're kidding."
"No. They're strong women. I've always liked strong women." He paused meaningfully. "But I'm afraid that these women turned out to be quite a bit stronger than I'd bargained for."
"And what do they want with you?"
"God only knows."
Morgan smiled. "And as far as they're concerned, that's you."
"Me."
"Sure. To them, you're God."
"Oh. Of course," Conrad said, as if the concept were wearyingly familiar to him.
Amelia took a couple of steps toward the monster Buick. "Let him go, bitch!"
"I am no bitch! I am Justine, reluctant but fearless fighter for the causes of justice and independence and a free France!"
Amelia laughed.
"Don't laugh at her," Conrad warned. "They don't like to be laughed at"
Amelia took another couple of steps toward the Buick. The scantily clad French partisans continued to look confused.
Morgan said, "Maybe they don't like you to laugh at them."
Conrad grimaced, as if he knew that this was also the truth.
"Let the man go!" Amelia commanded.
And the French partisans turned and ran, weapons held high, breasts and fannies moving deliciously.
Amelia glanced at Conrad. His intelligent, rheumy gray eyes were lit up with lust. "Christ," she whispered. "No wonder they're trying to get hold of you. You've made them slaves to your fucking libido. What woman wants that?"
Conrad was amazed. "What are you talking about? They're my creations, after all!"
"Are they?" Amelia asked. "Are they really?" Then she went to Jack South, who was trembling, and put him in the front passenger seat of the car. She called to Morgan and Freely, who came at once.
"You believe I'm a devil, don't you?" said Conrad. "No. None of us is a devil. I don't believe in devils."
He nodded. "I understand that."
Amelia said, "My people need spaces of their own. How do I find them?"
Conrad shook his head dismally. "I don't really know. I imagine you simply ... look. How did you find your space?"
Amelia thought about this. She wasn't sure. It was simply there for her.
Conrad continued, "There are probably billions of spaces, but finding them, and melding with them, is in all likelihood a very time-consuming thing. I wish you luck."
"Sure," Amelia said drily, rolling up her window, and, without another word, drove off.
Within moments, Conrad and his ugly gray buildings were behind them and they were once again in the midst of the waving sunflowers and blue-green sky.
"That's him!" declared the bald octogenarian to the police artist. "That's the man. Sydney Greenstreet!"
The artist looked at the drawing that he'd created under the old man's guidance. He was not a connoisseur of detective films, but he knew that the face staring back at him from the sketch pad was indeed the face of Sydney Greenstreet.
"Jesus," he said, "you're right."
"Of course I'm right, young man," the old man told him. "He's the one who killed that poor bellhop, and you can take that straight to the bank!"
"Yes," said the artist, "I think I will."
"Address?" the detective asked Harry.
"Chappaqua," Harry answered.
"Where in Chappaqua?"
"Portland Road. Number Twenty-six." Harry felt a sudden discomfort, as if something were pulling on him everywhere at once. He frowned.
The detective gave him an incredulous look. "You're telling me that you live on Portland Road in Chappaqua and yet you're running around barefoot and in that getup?" He nodded to indicate Harry's soiled brown trench coat and double-breasted gray suit.
Harry looked at himself. "What's wrong with this getup?"
The detective sighed. "Phone number?"
Harry tried to remember his phone number. He couldn't. "I can't remember," he said.
"No problem. We'll get it," the detective said, and pulled a thick phone book out of one of his desk drawers. A moment later, he wrote a number down on Harry's booking sheet.
Harry said, "Do I really need to wear these handcuffs?" They were chafing him.
The detective glanced at him, then back at the booking sheet. "Yes, you do," he said tersely.
"Because I talk to myself and I don't wear shoes?"
"That's right," the detective answered, and smiled quickly. "We have to determine that you're not a danger to yourself or to others."
"I can tell you that. Just ask me."
"Sure," the cop said, and smiled again. He picked up the
phone, dialed a number, waited, then hung up the phone. "You married, Mr. Briggs?"
"Yes."
"How come no one answers the phone at your house?"
"I don't know." He shook his head. Why didn't Barbara answer, indeed?
"I'll try again," the detective said. "Maybe I dialed wrong the first time."
Sydney, who was seated in a big wingback chair in his hotel room at the Ritz Carlton, was contented. Life was good. Death was good. He felt sated, if only temporarily. A full stomach and a quieted libido. What more could a man need?
Sleep, perhaps?
Sleep? Close the eyes, lapse into unconsciousness and leave oneself as vulnerable as an infant. Where had that dreadful idea come from? Didn't one need to be tired in order to sleep?
He stood, went to the door, tested the knob to be sure it was locked and then slid the bolt across too.
It was possible that he was tired, now that he thought about it.
He went to the bed and regarded it with uncertainty. Perhaps this was the tug he'd been feeling. Sleepiness. He had seen others sleep—Anna Freely, for instance—but had never felt the need for it himself, until now.
He took off his black suit jacket, hung it neatly in the closet, returned to the bed, patted it with one meaty hand and lay down on his back. What were these changes taking place within him? he wondered.
Unconsciousness came almost at once.
"Do you mind if I turn on the radio?" Jack South asked. "I need music." He was still trembling.
"Sure, go ahead," Amelia said.
The road had narrowed considerably, had become very badly rutted, and Amelia wasn't sure the Buick's suspension was up to the test.
Jack turned the dials. Music blared out at once—Hank Williams, which Jack declared to be unlistenable, although, amazingly, Morgan objected from the backseat that country music was "the most listenable music ever produced." Jack turned to another station. Karen Carpenter's voice filled the car.
Amelia squirmed and grimaced. "Please," she said, "something else."
"I like it," Freely said.
"Yeah, well I don't," Jack said, "and I got control of the radio." He turned to another station. News, apparently. He prepared to change channels again, but Amelia reached out and stayed his hand.
"No," she said.
He shrugged. "Okay. You're the boss."
"... additional mapping will be attempted soon, according to Mr. Fuller, who also reported vague magnetic shifts at various points," the announcer was saying. "Such shifts have also been reported by airplane pilots flying within their own spaces. Mr. Fuller also tells us that an attempt at high-altitude exploration has again been made by Rosalind Moore, whose last attempt ended in failure. This time, says Mr. Fuller, Ms. Moore's high-altitude explorations yielded some very interesting data."
Silence. Then John Lennon's "Instant Karma" came on.
"Hey!" Freely shouted from the backseat. "I was listening to that. It was interesting."
Jack South gave her an exasperated look. "I didn't touch it," he said.
"You know what it sounded like?" Morgan said. "It sounded like someone is trying to map out this place we're in. It sounded like this place has its own kinds of geographers and explorers."
"And it also sounded like they've been pretty unsuccessful so far," Amelia said.
"Do you believe she's at home?" the detective asked Harry.
"Tell him to fuck off," said the voice in Harry's head. "What can he do to you?"
Harry ignored the voice. He had begun to think of it as an annoyance, and ever since then the voice had grown weaker and less insistent. Harry said, "I'm sure Barbara's home."
"Is she hard of hearing?"
"No."
"Do you think I should call the police in Chappaqua and have them check it out? It's possible that your wife's in some kind of trouble."
Harry shrugged. "You'll have the house checked out whether I think you should or not."
The detective grinned. "Smart boy." He picked up the phone and dialed a number. "Yeah, this is Detective Gribbons, Manhattan North. I was wondering if you could do me a little favor."
On Portland Road, in Chappaqua, two boys in their mid-teens had stopped their snowmobiles at the top of a rise that overlooked a sparsely populated area of upscale homes, neat gardens and heated swimming pools. The snowmobiles were Christmas presents—presented a day early—and the boys were not yet completely comfortable with them, although they drove them over the pasture country that belonged to their "Gentleman Farmer" fathers as if they were immortal.
One of the boys nodded toward a house not far off and said, "Hey, look at that."
The other boy looked. "What is it?" he asked, because his glasses were beginning to fog now that the snowmobiles had stopped.
"It looks like a naked lady," the first boy said.
The other boy wiped off his glasses and looked again. "Yeah," he said. "A naked lady floating in the water."
Chapter Thirty-one
Kennedy Whelan was on his way to Manhattan North to see a policewoman who was stationed there. She was tall, substantial, attractive, bright and strong.
Whelan had decided to give sex one more chance. He'd convinced himself that sex was the only real reason that men and women got together. Otherwise, men would simply get together with men and women would get together with women. He'd convinced himself of this absurdity because his last fling had been with a woman who had thrown him over for a younger man and it had lacerated his ego. The policewoman at Manhattan North, he told himself, looked as though she'd be a tiger in the sack. Wide hips, double-X tits. She'd ride him, screaming out her pleasure, until next Tuesday.
When Whelan thought like this, he blushed. He was alone in the car, so there was no one to see him, but he looked around anyway. The people walking the early evening, snow-covered streets of Manhattan paid him no attention.
Amelia brought the monster Buick to a jarring stop. The rutted road had ended. There were no more fields of grass and sunflowers, and no more blue-green sky. Instead, the sky was gray and in turmoil, as if immense, ghostly armies battled within it. The landscape was barren, windswept and dotted with emaciated trees and clumps of spiky, dark grasses.
Amelia whispered, "What the hell is this?"
"I think hell is exactly the right word," Morgan said.
Jack South said, "It's neat. I like it."
"You would," Morgan retorted.
"I'm all for turning around and going back the way we came," Freely added.
"Well, we certainly can't go forward, can we?" Amelia pointed out. She was right. There was no road.
"We could walk," Jack South suggested.
A scream broke through the white noise of the air-conditioning and the car radio—Ricky Nelson belting out "I'm a traveling man, made a lot of stops . . ."
"Jesus, did you hear that?" Morgan whispered. "Someone screamed."
"Yes," Amelia said, and turned off the radio. "I heard it too."
Another scream, which seemed louder, because the radio was now silent.
"Someone's in trouble out there," Morgan said.
Amelia didn't reply.
Freely said, "I really don't like this. If you're not going to turn around, I'm going to walk."
Amelia looked back at her. "I'm not sure how far you'd get," she said. "I think that in order to survive, we have to keep moving."
"You could be wrong," Morgan said.
Amelia nodded. "I could be. Yes."
"And it wouldn't be the first time," Freely pointed out.
Amelia sighed. "Yes, I'm aware of that. I'm as human and as fallible as anyone."
Jack South opened his door and stepped out onto the bleak, windswept landscape. He got back in at once and shut the door hard. "It smells bad."
"Oh, like what?" Morgan asked.
"I don't know. Rotten eggs."
Freely chuckled. "Sulfur. It fits."
"And there ain't no wind," Jack added. "It only looks like there
's wind." This seemed to disappoint him
There was another scream, closer this time. Amelia saw movement ahead, at the crest of a little hillock dotted with stunted, nasty-looking clumps of dark grasses. "What's that?" she said. She could see very little—the top of a blond head, a narrow expanse of white skin.
"I say we vamoose!" Morgan said.
"I second that," Freely added.
Amelia nodded briskly, put the car in reverse and tromped on the accelerator. Nothing. She looked at the dashboard. All the red warning lights were lit. The engine was off. "Shit!" she whispered, put the car in park again and turned on the engine. It fired up at once, but then shut off. "Shit!" she repeated.
"Don't flood it!" Morgan warned.
"I'm not flooding it!" Amelia shot back. "I know how to drive, god dammit!" She turned the engine back on and pushed the accelerator halfway to the floor, thinking the idle might be too low.
"You're going to flood it!" Morgan shouted.
Amelia put the car in reverse again. It screamed backward. The blue-green sky and nodding sunflowers reappeared. She smiled. Success.
The engine shut off. "Dammit to hell!" she cried, and looked at the gas gauge. It read empty. "Great," she whispered. Wasn't this a fine kettle of fish? Where in the hell was she going to find gas around here?
"What's wrong?" Freely asked, and leaned forward, so her face was close to Amelia's neck. "Oh," she said dismally, "out of gas. That's too bad."
"Yes, it is," Amelia said. "And it appears that we have no choice now but to walk."
She was looking at Freely as she said this. Morgan was sitting next to her. Suddenly his jaw dropped and his eyes opened wide. Amelia turned and saw through the windshield just what he was seeing. As if it were expanding from within, the bleak, windswept landscape and gray sky in turmoil had overtaken them. She turned her head quickly, looked through the rear window, saw the hint of sunflowers, green grasses and blue-green sky. Then it was gone.
Everyone stayed quiet for a long moment.
Then Morgan whispered, "It's some kind of trap. It feels like a trap."
Amelia tried the engine again.
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