by Ed McBain
“You must have been as near freezing as I was. But you helped me first. You’re a tough kid, all right.”
“You were outside longer than me. How much longer I didn’t know. But I knew hypothermia could kill you in a matter of minutes. You had all of the symptoms.”
Echo resumed eating, changing hands with the spoon because she felt as if her right hand was about to cramp; it had been doing that for an hour.
She had cut off his clothes because she wanted him naked. Not out of prurience; she’d been scared and angry and needed to distance herself from his near-death folly and the hard reality of the impulse that had driven him outside in his shirt and bare feet to freeze or drown amid the rocks. Nude, barely conscious, and semicoherent, the significance of Ransome was reduced in her mind and imagination; sitting on the floor of the shower and shuddering as the hot water drove into him, he was to her like an anonymous subject in a life class, to be viewed objectively without unreliable emotional investment. It gave her time to think about the situation. And decide. If it was only creative impotence there was still a chance she could be of use to him. Otherwise she might as well be aboard when the ferry left at sunrise.
“Mary Catherine?”
“Yes?”
“I’ve never loved a woman. Not one. Not ever. But I may be in love with you.”
She thought that was too pat to take seriously. A compliment he felt he owed her. Not that she minded the mild pressure of his palm on her neck. It was soothing, and she had a headache.
Echo looked around at Ramsome. “You’re bipolar, aren’t you?”
He wasn’t surprised by her diagnosis.
“That’s the medical term. Probably all artists have a form of it. Soaring in the clouds or morbid in the depths, too blue and self-pitying to take a deep breath.”
Echo let him hold her with his gaze. His fingers moved slowly along her jawline to her chin. She felt that, all right. Maybe it was going to become an issue. He had the knack of not blinking very often that could be mesmerizing in a certain context. She lifted her chin away from his hand.
“My father was manic-depressive,” she said. “I learned to deal with it.”
“I know that he didn’t kill himself.”
“Nope. Chain-smoking did the job for him.”
“You were twelve?”
“Just twelve. He died on the same day that I got—my—when I—”
She felt that she had blundered—Way too personal, Echo—and shut up.
“Became a woman. One of the most beautiful women I’ve been privileged to know. I feel that in a small way I may do your father honor by preserving that beauty for—who knows? Generations to come.”
“Thank you,” Echo said, still resonant from his touch, her brain on lull. Then she got what he was saying. She looked at Ransome again in astonishment and joy. He nodded.
“I feel it beginning to happen,” he said. “I need to sleep for a few hours. Then I want to go back to that portrait of you I began in New York. I have several ideas.” He smiled rather shyly. “About time, don’t you think?”
NINE
After a few days of indecision, followed by an unwelcome intrusion that locked two seemingly unrelated incidents together in his mind, Cy Mellichamp made a phone call, then dropped around to the penthouse apartment John Ransome maintained at the Hotel Pierre. It was snowing in Manhattan. Thanksgiving had passed, and jingle bell season dominated Cy’s social calendar. Business was brisk at the gallery.
The Woman in Black opened the door to Cy, admitting him to the large gloomy foyer, where she left him standing, still wearing his alpaca overcoat, muffler, and Cossack’s hat. Cy swallowed his dislike for and mistrust of Taja and pretended he wasn’t being slighted by John Ransome’s gypsy whore. And who knew what else she was to Ransome in what had the appearance, to Mellichamp, of a folie à deux relationship.
“We were hacked last night,” he said. “Whoever it was now has the complete list of Ransome women. Including addresses, of course.”
Taja cocked her head slightly, waiting, the low light of a nearby sconce repeated in her dark irises.
“The other, ah, visitation might not be germane, but I can’t be sure. Peter O’Neill came to the gallery a few days ago. There was belligerence in his manner I didn’t care for. Anyway, he claimed to know Anne Van Lier’s whereabouts. Whether he’d visited her he didn’t say. He wanted to know who the other women are. Pressing me for information. I said I couldn’t help him. Then, last night as I’ve said, someone very resourceful somehow plucked that very information from our computer files.” He gestured a little awkwardly, denying personal responsibility. There was no such thing as totally secure in a world managed by machines. “I thought John ought to know.”
Taja’s eyes were unwinking in her odd, scarily immobile face for a few moments longer. Then she abruptly quit the foyer, moving soundlessly on slippered feet, leaving the sharp scent of her perfume behind—perfume that didn’t beguile, it mugged you. She disappeared down a hallway lined with a dozen hugely valuable portraits and drawings by Old Masters.
Mellichamp licked his lips and waited, hat in hand, feeling obscurely humiliated. He heard no sound other than the slight wheeze of his own breath within the apartment.
“I, I really must be going,” he said to a bust of Hadrian and his own backup reflection in a framed mirror that once had flattered royalty in a Bavarian palace. But he waited another minute before opening one of the bronze doors and letting himself out into the elevator foyer.
Gypsy whore, he thought again, extracting some small satisfaction from this judgment. Fortunately he seldom had to deal with her. Just to lay eyes on the Woman in Black with her bilious temperament and air of closely held violence made him feel less secure in the world of social distinction that, beginning with John Ransome’s money, he had established for himself: a magical, intoxicating, uniquely New York place where money was in the air always, like pixie dust further enchanting the blessed.
Money and prestige were both highly combustible, however. In circumstances such as a morbid scandal could arrange, disastrous events turned reputations to ash.
The elevator arrived.
Not that he was legally culpable, Cy assured himself while descending. It had become his mantra. On the snowy bright-eyed street he headed for his limo at the curb, taking full breaths of the heady winter air. Feeling psychologically exonerated as well, blamelessly distanced from the tragedy he now accepted must be played out for the innocent and guilty alike.
Peter O’Neill arrived in Las Vegas on an early flight and signed for his rental car in the cavernous baggage claim area of McCarran airport.
“Do you know how I can find a place called the King Rooster?”
The girl waiting on him hesitated, smiled ironically, looked up and said softly, “Now I wouldn’t have thought you were the type.”
“What’s that mean?”
“First trip to Vegas?”
“Yeah.”
She shrugged. “You didn’t know that the King Rooster is, um, a brothel?”
“No kidding?”
“They’re not legal in Las Vegas or Clark County.” She looked thoughtfully at him. “If you don’t mind my saying—you probably could do better for yourself. But it’s none of my business, is it?” She had two impish dimples in her left cheek.
Next, Peter thought, she was going to tell him what time she got off from work. He smiled and showed his gold shield.
“I’m not on vacation.”
“Ohhh. NYPD Blue, huh? I hated it when Jimmy Smits died.” She turned around the book of maps the car company gave away and made notations on the top sheet with her pen. “When you leave the airport, take the interstate south to exit thirty-three, that’s Route 160 west? Blue Diamond Road. You want to go about forty miles past Blue Diamond to Nye County. When you get there you’ll see this big mailbox on the left with a humungous, um, red cock—the crowing kind—on top of it. That’s all, no sign or anything. Are you ou
t here on a big case?”
“Too soon to tell,” Peter said.
The whorehouse, when he got there, wasn’t much to look at. The style right out of an old Western movie: two square stories of cedar with a long deep balcony on three sides. In the yard that was dominated by a big cottonwood tree the kind of discards you might see at a flea market were scattered around. Old wagon wheels, an art-glass birdbath, a dusty carriage in the lean-to of a blacksmith’s shed. There was a roofed wishing well beside the flagstone walk to the house. A chain-link fence that clashed with the rustic ambience surrounded the property. The gate was locked; he had to be buzzed in.
Inside it was cool and dim and New Orleans rococo, with paintings of reclining nudes that observed the civilities of fin de siècle. Nothing explicit to threaten a timid male; their pussies were as chaste as closed prayer books. A Hispanic maid showed Peter into a separate parlor. Drapes were drawn. The maid withdrew, closing pocket doors. Peter waited, turning the pages of an expensive-looking leather-bound book featuring porn etchings in a time of derbies and bustles. The maid returned with a silver tray, delicate china cups and coffee service.
She said, “You ask for Eileen. But she is indispose this morning. There is another girl she believe you will like, coming in just a—”
Peter flashed his shield and said, “Get Eileen in here. Now.”
Ten more minutes passed. Peter opened the drapes and looked at sere mountains, the mid-range landscape pocked and rocky. A couple of wild burros were keeping each other company out there. He drank coffee. The doors opened again. He turned.
She was tall, a little taller than Peter in her high heels. She wore pale green silk lounging pajamas and a pale green harem mask that clung to the contours of her face but revealed only her eyes: they were dark, plummy, febrile in pockets of mascara. Tiny moons of sclera showed beneath the pupils.
“I’m Eileen.”
“Peter O’Neill.”
“Is there a problem?”
“What’s with the mask, Eileen?”
“That’s why you asked for me, isn’t it? All part of the show you want.”
“No. I didn’t know about—. Mind taking the mask off?”
“But that’s for upstairs,” she protested, her tone demure. She began running her hands over her breasts, molding the almost sheer material of the draped pajamas around dark nipples. She cupped her breasts, making of them an offering.
“Listen, I didn’t come here to fuck you. Just take it off. I have to see—what that bastard did to you, Eileen.”
Her hands fell to her sides as she exhaled; the right hand twitched. Otherwise she didn’t move.
“You know? After all these years I’m going to find out who did this to me?”
“I’ve got a good idea.”
She made a sound deep in her throat of pain and sorrow, but didn’t attempt to remove the mask. She shied when Peter impatiently put out a hand to her shrouded face.
“It’s okay. You can trust me, Eileen.” Inches from her body, feeling the heat of her, aware of a light perfume and arousing musk, he reached slowly behind her blond head and touched the little bow where her mask was tied as gently as if he were about to grasp a butterfly.
“I’ve only trusted one man in my life,” she said dispiritedly. Then, unagressively but firmly, she snugged her groin against his, tamely laying her head on his shoulder so he could easily untie the mask.
He’d been expecting scars similar to those Anne Van Lier wore for life. But Eileen’s were worse. Much of her face had burned, rendered almost to bone. The scar gullies were slick and mahogany-colored, with glisters of purple. He could see a gleam of her back teeth on the left, most heavily damaged side.
She flinched at his appalled examination, lowering her head, thrusting at him with her pelvis.
“All right,” she said. “Now you’re satisfied? Or are we just getting started?”
“I told you I didn’t want to—”
“That’s a lie. You’re ready to explode in your pants.” But she relented, stepping back from him, with a grin that was almost evil in the context of a ravaged face. “What’s the matter? Your mommy told you to stay away from women like me? I’m clean. Cleaner than any little piece you’re likely to pick up in a bar on Friday night. Huh? We’re regulated in Nevada, in case you didn’t know. The Board of Health dudes are here every week.”
“I just want to talk. How did you get the face, Eileen?”
Her breath whistled painfully between her teeth.
“Fuck you mean? It’s all in the case file.”
“But I want to hear it from you.”
Her face had little mobility, but her lovely eyes could sneer.
“Oh. Cops and their perversions. You all belong in a Dumpster. Give me back my mask.”
She shied again when he tried to tie the mask on, then sighed, touching one of Peter’s wrists, an exchange of intimacy.
“My face, my fortune,” she said. “Would you believe how many men need a freakshow to get them up? God damn all of them. Present company excluded, I guess. You try to act tough but you’ve got a kind face.” With the mask secure she felt bold enough to look him in the eye. “Your coffee must have cooled off by now,” she said, suddenly the gracious hostess. “Would you like another cup?”
He nodded. She sat on the edge of a gilt and maroon–striped settee to pour coffee for them.
“So you want to hear it again. Why not?” She licked a sugar cube a couple of times before putting it into her cup. “I was alone in the lab, working on an experiment. Part of my PhD requirement in O-chem.” Peter sipped coffee from the cup she handed him as he remained standing close to the settee. Still encouraging the intimacy she seemed to crave. It wasn’t just cop technique to get someone to spill their guts. He felt anguish for Eileen, as her eyes wandered in remembrance. “I, I was tired, you know, hadn’t slept for thirty-six hours. Something like that. Didn’t hear anyone come in. Didn’t know he was there until he was breathing down my neck.” She looked up. “Is this what turns you on?” she said, as if she’d lost track of who he was. Only another john to be entertained. She took Peter’s free hand, raised it to her face, guided his ring finger beneath the mask and between her lips, touching it with the tip of her tongue. That was a new one on Peter, but the effect was disturbingly erotic.
“I started to turn on my stool,” Eileen said, her voice close to a whisper as she looked up at Peter, lips caressing his captive finger, “and got a cup of H2SO4 in my face.”
“But you didn’t see—”
“All I saw was a gloved hand, an arm. Then—I was burning in hell.” She bit down on his finger, at the base of the nail, laughed delightedly when he jerked his hand away.
“I can tell you who it was,” Peter said angrily. “Because you’re not the first woman who posed for John Ransome and got a face like yours.”
He wasn’t fully prepared for the ferocity with which she came at him, hissing like a feral cat, hands clawlike to ream out his eyes. He caught her wrists and forced her hands down.
“John Ransome? That’s crazy! John loved me and I loved him!”
“Take it easy, Eileen! Did he come to see you after it happened?”
“No! So what? You think I wanted him to see me like this? Think I want anyone looking at me unless they’re paying for it? Oh how I make them pay!”
“Eileen, I’m sorry.” He had used as much force as he dared; she was strong in her fury and could inadvertantly break a wrist struggling with him. When she was off balance Peter pushed her hard away from him. “I’m sorry, but I’m not wrong.” He moved laterally away from her, not wanting some of his face to wind up under her fingernails. But she had choked on her outrage and was having trouble getting her breath.
“F-Fuck you! What are you cops … trying to do to John? Did one of the others say something against him? Tell me, I’ll tear her fucking heart out!”
“Were you that much in love with him?”
“I’m not talking
to you anymore! Some things are still sacred to me!”
Eileen backed up a few steps and sat down heavily, her body in a bind as if she wore a straitjacket, harrowing sounds of grief in her throat.
“Whatever happened to that PhD?” he asked calmly, though the skin of his forearms was prickling.
“That was someone else. Get out of here, before I have you thrown out. The sheriff and I are old friends. We paint each other’s toenails. The chain-link fence? The goddamn desert? Forget about it. This is my home, no matter what you think. I own the Rooster. John paid for it.”
Saying his name she quaked as if an old, unendurable torment was about to erupt. She leaned forward and, one arm moving jerkily like a string puppet’s, she began smashing teacups on the tray with her fist. Shards flew. When she stopped her hand was bleeding profusely. She put it in her lap and let it bleed.
“On your way, bud,” Eileen said to Peter.
“Would you mind asking Lourdes to come in? I think it may be time for my meds.”
While he was waiting at the Las Vegas airport for his flight to Houston, delayed an hour and a half because of a storm out of the Gulf of Mexico, Peter composed a long e-mail to Echo, concluding with:
So far I can’t prove anything. There’s at least two more of them I need to see, so I’m on my way to Texas. But I want you to get off the island now. No good-byes, don’t bother to pack. Go to my Uncle Charlie’s in Brookline. 3074 East Mather. Wait for me there, I’ll only be a couple of days.
By the time he boarded his flight to Houston, there still was no acknowledgment from Echo. It was six thirty-six P.M. on the East Coast.
John Ransome was still working in his aerie studio and Echo was taking a shower when the Woman in Black walked into Echo’s bedroom without a knock and had a look around. Art books heaped on the writing desk. The blouse and skirt and pearls she’d laid out for a leisurely dinner with Ransome. Her silver rosary, her Bible, her laptop. There was an e-mail message on the screen from Rosemay, apparently only half-read. Taja scrolled past it to another e-mail from a girl whom she knew had been Echo’s college roommate. She skipped that one too and came to Peter O’Neill’s most recent message.