She had hardly turned a hair when she saw Manny, her demon lover, out cold with his powerful arms gone flaccid. She’d looked him over, seen he was finished, and started planning her next move.
“Boardman is impulsive and excitable,” Cover-Hoover said—one professional to another, as if she were responding to Fred’s thought and distancing herself rapidly from these wayward patients. They rounded the narrow building. The back entrance would not be visible from the street. Surrounding buildings were too far away, or were warehouses without windows. Cover-Hoover pushed a buzzer next to a heavy iron door and spoke into an intercom grill. “The Stalker is with me. He is holding your sister somewhere.”
The door buzzed open. Fred went in behind her, stepping into darkness. He kept his hand under Cover-Hoover’s elbow. She turned a light on. Someone had done a half-decent job making a bad place habitable. It was lit by hanging fluorescent work lights, and furnished with camp stove, folding chairs and tables, and four metal single beds. Fred saw a big sink with dishes in it. The room was as wide as the building, maybe fourteen feet. It smelled like tuna fish.
No crowds of victims greeted them. Cover-Hoover looked around the empty space. “They must be in the meeting room,” she said. “We’ll go and see, shall we?”
“Where’s the door-lock buzzer?” Fred asked.
“One here. One in the meeting room.” Cover-Hoover opened a door at the room’s far end, giving access to a passage that was dark until she turned lights on with a switch. They were going back the length of the building, in the direction they had come from outside, along the walkway, in the rain. The smell of tuna was stronger. On either side of them the passage offered stall doorways. One led to a bathroom. Some were vacant and tumbled down; others had beds, and a couple of these had stout doors with hasps and padlocks ready.
“You kept the old man in one of these,” Fred remarked. “Martin Clarke. According to Ann.”
“Sometimes he wandered and required restraint,” she said matter-of-factly. “He’d get loose sometimes, deluded his daughter had been replaced by a changeling. He deteriorated rapidly.”
“But he could still sign checks? Or did he surrender his power of attorney?”
Cover-Hoover raised her eyebrows. “One night he simply disappeared,” she said. “We feel he went to stay with friends in San Antonio. We never heard. He was a free agent. Anything might have happened.”
The woman’s aplomb was so impermeable he could not get past the soothing professional veneer. Fred checked each stall for signs of either Molly or Sandy Clarke.
At the far end of the passage was another door. “I’ll do what I can to help you,” Cover-Hoover promised, easing open the door into a black cavern with small sounds in it. The smell was gasoline, not tuna fish.
“Fred? Don’t turn on lights,” Molly pleaded from the darkness. Fred was jerking Cover-Hoover’s arm down and back. “You’ll make a spark. Then the place goes up,” Molly explained, her voice shaking with tension. “Fred?”
“Right,” Fred said. “I’m here with Cover-Hoover.”
“I’m soaked with gasoline. She’s next to me. Sandy. Sandy Clarke. Blake. She has a lighter. She’s soaked too. I don’t know what she wants. I can’t figure her out.”
“This is Eunice,” Cover-Hoover said. Fred watched the light from the hall they had come through stretch slowly into the large room as his eyes adjusted. It was forty feet long or so. Molly was at the far end, kneeling on the floor in front of one of the posts that held the ceiling up, her hands back of her. Molly still was wearing Sam’s red down jacket, with the hood up now. She was drenched with gas; the fire, unless it was an immediate explosion, would take her head right away. Her feet were joined on the wrong side of the post. The area was storage space, burned sometime in the past. It smelled charred, once you got past the smell of the gasoline fumes.
Sandy Blake squatted next to Molly, a dark hump of limbs with a pale face that turned toward Fred and Cover-Hoover where they stood in the room’s doorway. She held a fist clenched next to Molly’s face. Fred could not distinguish the object in the gloom, but Molly would not make a rash misjudgment on so crucial a point. If that’s what Molly said, it was a lighter.
“I feel your pain,” Eunice Cover-Hoover called into the room, striving to push backward into the hallway. Fred stood their ground. “And I respect your patienthood. Both of you.”
It was Templeton’s method, to tie Molly’s feet and hands around the post. Molly was not one to accept a malignant fate without gesticulating protest. Manny had done the job on Marek, then met Cover-Hoover in Cambridge and taken Molly into safekeeping, and then gotten back to Cover-Hoover’s in time to greet Fred.
“I feared such an eventuality,” Cover-Hoover whispered to Fred, his colleague now. “I warned you.”
“Sandy?” Fred called.
Sandy Blake did not answer. If the woman’s intent was to inspire terror, Fred could not have advised her to a better posture at this moment; no pleas, no ultimatums, nothing but silence. Let the opponent engender his own idea of what might come to pass: blinding flash of fast fire; screams of air forced out of lungs in torment; smell of charred flesh. There was no use to think about it. If it happened it was going to follow its own logic, and fast. Fred took his jacket off to have something in hand to use against the blaze he could foresee consuming Molly’s head and body.
“Get blankets from the front room,” Fred whispered to Cover-Hoover. She’d know it was a chance to run; he’d been holding her by the waistband of her dress, not able to read her quiet. He hadn’t let go of it more than an instant, changing hands while he got his jacket off.
Cover-Hoover said, “This is not my concern. I will not, as a trained professional, take sides between patients. It is for them to work out their differences.”
She was trembling as the Romans must have when watching the games where lions and Christians worked out their differences. What a paper this would make. Fred shifted his hold to Cover-Hoover’s right arm, bringing it up behind her in a hammerlock. She had been given her chance. “You have a suggestion?” he asked Molly.
Molly said, her voice easy and conversational, not wanting to trip the alarm bells in the woman next to her, “It’s quite a puzzle. The one thing I know is, something you want is in the bathroom under the tub. They let me go … after Boardman Templeton brought me. Before he—well, before what you see now.”
“She doesn’t mind us talking?” Fred asked. Cover-Hoover trembled like an idling Lance-Flamme, well tuned. The huddle of crouched women at the far end of the meeting room hadn’t changed its profile while they were talking.
“I’m coming in then,” Fred said. Sandy Blake jerked her arm threateningly as Molly shouted, “Don’t!”
“Send Cover-Hoover,” Sandy Blake croaked. “Send Manny’s fucking-partner, Eunice.” Cover-Hoover went rigid. Sandy Blake stood upright, keeping hold of the hood of Molly’s jacket with her left hand and the lighter next to Molly’s face with her right. Molly coughed.
“I am your friend and healer,” Cover-Hoover said, trembling, but making no attempt to walk into the trap.
“You. I know you, Stalker,” Sandy Blake said. “Your name is Fred. You want this woman? I’ll trade. Want to trade?”
“Sounds fair,” Fred said. Cover-Hoover gave a convulsive jerk. Her perfume struggled against the vapors of fear and gasoline, and faltered badly.
“Bring Cover-fucking-Hoover in and tie her like this one, over there,” Sandy Blake commanded, gesturing with the lighter toward another post, ten feet away, between herself and Fred, to Fred’s right.
“Fred, there’s another factor you might want to consider,” Molly said reasonably. “Just so you know, my hands and feet are cuffed, not tied. Manny took the keys with him.”
“He gets these magazines,” Sandy said, giggling. “He sends away for stuff. Kung fu and that. Stud stuff. The fuck. So give me Cover-Hoover with his mangy sperms all gooshling down her leg.”
Cover
-Hoover had started babbling and struggling in a serious way while Sandy spoke.
“We know what she wants now,” Molly said.
“I want to see her fry and dance. I want to burn her at the fucking stake,” Sandy said.
“That’s fair,” Fred repeated.
“For what she did,” Sandy Clarke said calmly.
Eunice Cover-Hoover, struggling, shouted, “I rescued you. I helped you. You and your sister. Both of you.”
Fred was obliged to put considerable upward pressure on her arm. He felt the shoulder joint straining to escape, but he left play in the arm. She might yet decide to try doing something helpful.
“You made me a fucking orphan. You took everything. I have nothing,” Sandy Blake shrieked.
“How many people do you want to burn?” Fred asked her.
Sandy Blake stopped shrieking as this new idea dawned on her: hope tinged with bitterness. “What do you think? You believe I want to burn myself alive if I don’t have to? I got nothing against this other lady—what did you say your name is, lady?”
“Molly,” Molly said.
“Molly. There. Nothing against her. She explained it. I knew it but I wouldn’t see it, the ride this Cover-Hoover took us on? Maybe Molly burns too, because Manny has the keys, but I have nothing against her. Where’s fucking Manny? Bring him. I’ll burn him too.”
“He couldn’t make it,” Fred said.
“I am not intimate with my patients, Sandy,” Eunice Cover-Hoover announced in a loud voice, “until and unless there has been a marked improvement.…” She paused and whispered, only for Fred’s ears, “There’s a telephone in the living quarters. I’ll call for assistance.”
“Will you give me Cover-Hoover?” Sandy Blake demanded.
“Sure,” Fred said. She’d had an earlier chance to help and she’d refused it. What she wanted now was only to run. Cover-Hoover heaved in alarm. “What are you doing?” she whispered urgently.
“Trust me,” Fred said.
“No whispering,” Sandy Blake commanded.
“She doesn’t want to,” Fred reported. “You still want me to bring her?”
“I don’t believe you will.”
Molly said, “If Fred says he will do a thing, that thing gets done.”
Cover-Hoover shouted, as Fred started moving her into the large room, “Don’t be a goddamn fool. She’s my patient. Let me work with her.”
Fred got as far as the post and told Sandy, “I’m going to tie her with my shoelaces unless you have a better plan.” He was close enough to Molly and to Sandy Blake to see the dull glimmer of steel around Molly’s ankles and wrists. The fumes were heady; the red gas can sat in a far corner of the room. He held Cover-Hoover with one hand—she trying to bow and escape him—while he stood on one foot after the other, taking the laces from his shoes one-handed. He’d had to drop his jacket so he had nothing left to fight the fire with. He left his shoes on so as not to soak his socks in the puddles of gas on the cement floor.
“Just her hands. Don’t tie her feet. I want to see her dance,” Sandy Blake said, holding her lighter next to the furze of Molly’s darkened curls along the edge of Sam’s hood. Sandy was deeply, and sensibly, suspicious. Fred couldn’t find an opening anywhere.
“Tell you what,” Fred said, working on the laces. “With all the gas around, and the vapor—don’t strike your lighter until we’re ready, Sandy, OK? We could have an explosion instead of a fire, and you can’t watch her burn; I mean we’ll all be in it, instead of just her. That’s what you want, just her?”
Cover-Hoover, retching and trembling as he forced her hands back of the post and tied them, whispered, one pro to another, “I hope you know what you’re doing.” The longer they waited, the longer the gasoline had to combine with the room’s air. Where the flashpoint was, Fred could not guess. The room could have gone up even when Sandy Blake pressed the door-lock release.
Molly and Sandy Blake watched Fred’s work. When Fred was finished, Sandy said, “Get away and let me see what you did.” Fred stepped back to the room’s doorway while Sandy Blake examined his work. She held the lighter in Cover-Hoover’s face and said, easily, “Now look at you. You stole my father and you stole my sister. You stole my husband. You stole everything. You raked it all into a pile and lay down on it and started fucking my Manny.”
Cover-Hoover croaked, her voice under strain glowing with the light of pure reason, “Sandy, your father admitted his past actions, and regretted them. He became one of our foundation’s valued supporters. He received hours of therapy. We helped him understand that though the actions may have been his, some responsibility for them could be explained by the fact that he himself had been abused as a child. It is a vicious cycle.”
“Now pour gas on her,” Sandy Blake commanded Fred. “I threw the can in that corner, scared it would blow up.”
“Tell you what we’ll do,” Fred suggested. “Since you don’t want to burn if you don’t have to—there’s so much gas in your clothes, and all around, and what we want is for her to burn, not explode—my suggestion is, put your wet clothes around her feet, which gets them away from your skin, you know? We burn the pile of clothes, and she burns slower. Only if that’s what you want.”
Cover-Hoover seemed to be saying, “God, God, God.”
“Her first,” Sandy Blake said, suspicious, pointing at Molly. “Take her stuff off first.” She moved between Cover-Hoover and the door, keeping well away from Fred as he walked toward Molly. Sandy held her lighter, ready to spark into flame and throw.
35
Breathing was not easy in the room. Fred had been studying the twelve-foot ceiling, the joining of the beams, the rest of it. By now he could see quite well. The problem was what he did not see: a way out for Molly. One spark in here and she might be finished. Fred worked with his knife, cutting the soaked clothes off her.
“Manny’s going to come,” Sandy Blake warned. “We better hurry. My Manny’s not gonna like this.”
“He is injured,” Fred said. He’d gotten the jacket off and put it to one side. “He’s locked in Cover-Hoover’s office.”
Sandy Blake laughed. “You with the devil’s people?” she asked. “I knew he’d win. You’re with them, right?”
“I’m independent,” Fred said. He worked on Molly’s dress and slip, cutting them away, stooping over her, his blade trembling with caution and the desire to be faster than careful. He’d rather cut her than not get her out of this. He’d rather cut her hands and ankles off, save what he could from the furnace of stupidity these people were …
“My underpants. They’re nylon,” Molly pleaded. “Don’t be a prude. They’re going to melt.”
Fred cut them away and lifted Molly up enough to clear the rest of her clothes away from her, leaving her only the last slick of acrid gas. Her hair was sodden. She was slippery and cold with mortal fear. She said, “Thanks, Fred. That’s better.” She knew it wasn’t much better. The post, though charred, when he leaned against it while he worked, was firm, set in cement at its foot, and well joined to the rafter.
Molly whispered, “You’re in my will to be the children’s guardian. I never asked…”
“No talking,” Sandy Blake ordered. “Throw all the clothes over by the doctor’s feet. Then you, Fred, get back out of the way.”
Fred piled Molly’s cut clothes around the excessively pointed high-heeled green leather shoes of Eunice Cover-Hoover.
“One flick of my Bic,” Sandy Blake called, capering, waving the lighter.
Molly said, “We don’t want an accident. Put your clothes on mine, Mrs. Blake.”
“For God’s sake, listen to me, Sandy,” Eunice Cover-Hoover pleaded. “All this acting-out—I promise there is nothing you have done that cannot be explained. I am here for you. I am working with you even now. I promise hopeful-healing in your future.”
“Unless I catch on fire,” Sandy said. “You are right,” she told Molly and started stepping out of her low black sneake
rs, laughing. She tossed them one by one at Cover-Hoover. Fred leaned in the doorway again, against the jamb, at ease. “I never undressed in front of a man before,” Sandy Blake said, trying a new virgin personality on for size.
Fred assured her, “No big deal. I want to be here in case something goes wrong, Molly being my friend.”
Sandy Blake’s clothes were doused as completely as Molly’s had been. She had not been fooling around, making a bomb of herself. She discarded the green jersey she was wearing, doing it fast and making no opening for Fred to take advantage of the moment the poisonous fabric swished across her face. She kept hold of the lighter. Then she stepped out of the green corduroy pants. She stayed on the far side of Cover-Hoover, between her and Molly, with the lighter ready to use on the piled clothing. Each item of her clothing, once removed, she tossed on the growing pile at Cover-Hoover’s feet.
Down to a sleazy yellow camisole, Sandy Blake hesitated. Nothing else covered her breasts. She wore yellow socks and black briefs.
Molly said, “Don’t worry about it, honey. Join the club.”
Sandy stepped out of the pants and tossed them in Cover-Hoover’s face. “That’s for stealing my Big Manny.” She danced, shimmying as she stripped off her socks, twirled and threw them. Fred, leaning against the doorway, was considering the boarded door on the far end of the room, behind Molly. If the room went, and if he lived, he’d throw himself against the door. It might give. He might find a way to rip that post loose. He’d gotten gasoline on himself, of course, dealing with Molly’s clothes. He couldn’t help that. He couldn’t tell how much was in the room, his own air passages being saturated now.
Sandy, holding the lighter tightly and eying Fred, remembered she was a woman, and beautiful—even voluptuous. She shook out her long black hair. She swayed and let the audience appreciate the shift and shimmy of her body before she slipped her arms down into and under her camisole and lifted it over her head in a fluid motion. She tossed it at Cover-Hoover’s feet and stood in the center of the room, naked, and gleaming with gas.
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