Westlake, Donald E - Novel 50

by Sacred Monster (v1. 1)

  Buddy's old voice said, "You know what this means, don't you?"

  Jack tried a quick grin at the plate, but the feeling of it on his face was so terrible he stopped at once. He said, "It means I'm temporarily insane."

  "It means, Dad," Buddy said, "you're permanently retired.”

  Slowly Jack turned, losing his balance briefly, pressing his hand to the smooth warm surface of the table. Fearfully he looked at Buddy—that face!—and said, "Buddy, what have you done?"

  "You can see what I've done,” Buddy said, gesturing at his new face. "The question is, what am I going to do now? Can you guess?"

  "No,” Jack said.

  "Sure you can," Buddy told him, grinning Jack's famous crooked grin. "You just don't want to. Because you know what I'm going to do is take your place."

  "You're crazy!" Jack yelled. "You can't take my place! You can't possibly take my place!"

  Buddy shook his—Jack's—head. "An eight-by-ten glossy photograph could come damn near taking your place," he said, "the way you've been recently. Don't worry about me making it work, Dad, this has been very carefully thought out."

  "You'll never get away with it!" Jack cried. "People will know!”

  "People?" Buddy asked. "What people?"

  "Irwin! My agent, Irwin! You think you can fool him?”

  "He's in on it," Buddy told him. "Your accountant, Sol, is in on it."

  Appalled, Jack staggered back against the table. “I don't believe you."

  Buddy was inexorable. "A whole lot of people make their living off you, Dad," he said, "and you're putting all of our livelihoods at risk. Something had to be done."

  With a mad laugh, breaking into falsetto, Jack cried, "You don't sound like me!"

  Buddy smiled—Jack's smile! When he spoke, his sound and intonations were very like Jack's; not perfect, but a very good imitation, about on a par with a nightclub mimic. "I've been seeing a voice coach," said this new manner. "We aren't there yet, but we'll make it." With his own original voice, Buddy added, "And just to make things easier, next month you're going into Cedars of Lebanon for an adenoid operation. We've already made the reservation. Don't worry, you'll be on the celeb eighth floor." Reverting to the Jack imitation, he said, "Somehow, your voice will never be exactly the same again. But you'll carry on. The public will be proud of you."

  "I don't believe this," Jack said, staring at the pattern in the carpet. "A conspiracy."

  "Too much money involved, Dad," the new face said in the new voice. "This was the only solution."

  "But—" Jack squinted at Buddy as though that new face were a glaring searchlight, difficult to look at. "What happens to me?” he demanded, trying to sound tough but with the terror peeking through.

  "You become a bigger star than ever," the Buddy/Jack said.

  "No, dammit," the original Jack cried, fear so distorting his face that he looked less like himself. "You know what I mean!" Slapping his chest, he cried, "Me! This me!"

  Buddy/Jack chuckled. "Dr. Ovoid has a nice sanitarium up the coast—"

  “He’s in it, too? My doctor?”

  "He'll make you feel good every day for the rest of your life," Buddy/Jack said. "You won't mind at all. It's the way you want to live anyway."

  “You—" Jack moved from side to side, his feet shuffling on the intricately designed carpet. “You've taken everything/' he said. “My lighter, my money, my sweaters, my car. My wives.”

  “I never did get into Lorraine," Buddy/Jack said, with a little grin. “My one great regret."

  “And now," Jack said, moving, shuffling, staring, “now you want my life”

  His true contempt showing through fully at last, Buddy/Jack said, “I'm a much better you than you could ever be."

  A stink of truth in that statement twisted Jack's features, made him turn away, stagger across the room, toward the broad white mantelpiece. But then he changed, he found his equilibrium and his selfhood, he fought back. Spinning around, triumphant, aggressive, he pointed at the poor mannequin, the second-rate Buddy/ Jack, and shouted, “You don't have my talentl”

  Buddy/Jack's Jack-mouth twisted in scorn. “You don't have your talent," he said, “not anymore. You haven't had it for five years. You used to be an actor, one of the best, but now you're just a star turn. You go in front of the camera, you do your Jack Pine number, all the little schticks and tics, the shoulder movements and the grins, all those bits of business you developed over the years to take the place of working on the character. You do all that shit, and you come off. That I can do."

  Oscar stood on the mantle. The golden statuette, the highest award an actor can receive, the acknowledgement of excellence from his peers. Jack spun about, grabbed up Oscar, held him like a flaming torch aloft, and cried, “Then why do I have this?”

  Buddy/Jack chuckled; a Jack schtick. “In honor of your farewell performance," he said.

  “Nooo!!" Jack screamed, and rushed forward, Oscar raised high above his head.

  40

  I stare in horror at O'Connor, seeing those fragmentary memories, disbelieving them. "I couldn't!" I cry. "Not with Oscar!"

  O'Connor reaches behind him and brings out an object. "Do you recognize this, Mr. Pine?" he asked.

  It is Oscar. He is beaten and battered and bloodstained. His head is bent down onto his chest as though he's dead.

  And now the memory comes clear: myself, manic, laughing, striking downward over and over at that creature in the middle of the carpet. And I can hear myself screaming, “My face? Not my face, you don't take my face!" And beating and beating at that face which will never be me, never, never.

  And stopping. Panting, gleefully grinning, staring down at him, saying, “Now you don't look like me." And it is true. He doesn't look like me anymore. In fact, he doesn't look much like anybody anymore.

  "Oh, God," I say now, in the sunlight, and cover my eyes, not wanting to see poor Oscar there. "I killed him," I say.

  "Yes," O'Connor said. "Buddy Pal is dead."

  "Oh, him," I say, distracted. "I meant Oscar." I look at O'Connor, trying not to see poor Oscar. "But Buddy really is dead, isn't he?"

  "Yes," O'Connor says. "And after you killed him . .

  FLASHBACK 27

  Manic, wired, Jack emerged quietly from the main front door of the house and walked around toward the garage. When he was almost there, a security man approached him out of the darkness, saying, "Everything all right, Mr. Pine?"

  Jack screamed in surprise and shock, then recovered, gabbled a second, and at last said, "What? All right? Of course everything's all right. Naturally everything's all right. Why wouldn't everything be all right?"

  "No reason, sir," the security man said.

  "I'm just going for a little drive, that's all," Jack said, straining to act, to perform, naturalness and calm. "Be off with you now," he said, as though casually. "Go on to bed."

  "I'm supposed to patrol down here, Mr. Pine," the security man said.

  "I don't want you to patrol!" Jack snapped at him. "I'm the boss around here, and if I don't want you to patrol you don't patrol!"

  "Yes, sir," the security man said.

  "I don't need patrols!" Jack yelled. "Not tonight! Look how nice everything is! It's the full moon!”

  “Yes, sir,” the security man said.

  “Go to bed, or you’re fired!”

  “Good night, sir,” the security man said.

  The security man went away. Jack went on to the garage, opened the first door, went inside, and a minute later backed out the Mercedes. Giggling at the wheel, he backed the Mercedes in a great loop, off the drive and over the lawn and through the roses and right up to the wall of the house, stopping directly in front of an east parlor window, the rear bumper of the car just touching the wall of the house.

  Jack climbed out from behind the wheel, went to the rear of the car, opened the trunk. Then he went around the car, slipping at one point, falling to his knees, recovering, using the front of the car to brace hi
mself so he could stand again, then hurrying on.

  He went back through the front door, down the long hall, and into the east parlor, where the thing lay on the floor, drying blood in random blobs and lines disrupting the intricate pattern of the carpet. Jack stepped over the thing and opened the window and looked out at the rear of the Mercedes, the open trunk just below him. “Good,” he muttered, grinning. “Still there. Good.”

  He went back to the thing on the floor, grabbed it by the wrists, dragged it across the floor. The mess in the room he could take care of tomorrow. Every other problem could be taken care of tomorrow. There was only one thing that absolutely and positively had to be dealt with tonight.

  And Jack knew how to deal with it.

  41

  "I was doing it again last night," I say, remembering now at last, in awe of that previous self, that mad, busy, energetic, straining, scheming previous self. “All over again."

  “That's right, Mr. Pine," O'Connor says. “You followed the same method for disposing of the body as you did so many years ago with Wendy. You stuffed the body in the trunk of the car."

  “Yes. I remember."

  “Wendy's final resting place was deep water."

  “The lake."

  “You dropped her there, in her father's car, from high on a cliff."

  “Yes.”

  “That was the pattern you repeated last night."

  I rub my face with both hands. I'm so tired. No matter what you do, you can never do enough. I say, “I still only get bits and pieces of it. I was so stoned last night, I couldn't ... I don't even know how I got home."

  “Oh, you had no trouble," O'Connor says, mysteriously.

  But there's another mystery, I suddenly realize. Sitting up straighter, frowning at O'Connor, I say, "Wait a minute. I was wasted. I don't remember a thing. And nobody else was there. If I dumped Buddy and the car in the ocean, how come you know all about it?"

  "Because it wasn't the ocean, Mr. Pine," he tells me. "You're right, you were very heavily influenced by drugs last night."

  "Not the ocean? But—" I try to remember. I get bits of it, all so similar to Wendy: the car heaving in neutral with the weight on the accelerator, the gleaming Mercedes trunk in the bright moonlight, the moonlight sparkling off the water far below . . . "It's all there," I say, trying to piece it together. "Car—water—edge of the cliff— "

  "Edge, all right," O'Connor says, "but not of any cliff. And in the state you were in, you couldn't tell one body of water from another. Besides, you do hate to leave the property."

  Hate to leave the property? No trouble getting home? For the first time today, I turn full about and look over at the swimming pool.

  Frogmen and scuba divers are standing there, beside the pool. Something lies on the lawn under a sheet. A police- department wrecker, its back to the pool, is slowly winching my beautiful Mercedes back up onto dry land.

  The Mercedes. In the swimming pool.

  I look at O'Connor. "Did I really do that?" I say.

  "Yes, sir."

  What could I say? "Silly me," I said

  O'Connor gets to his feet, putting his pen and notepad away, smoothing out the gray knees of his trousers. "Shall we go, Mr. Pine?" he asks.

  Hoskins bows toward me. "Shall I pack your bag, sir?"

  I look again at the Mercedes, then at O'Connor. "Good idea, Hoskins," I say.

  "For how long a stay, sir?"

  "Oh, about twelve years, Hoskins, I would guess."

  "Very good, sir. May 1 help you to your feet?"

  "Excellent, Hoskins."

  He helps me to my feet. I modestly close the robe about myself. Glancing over at the pool, I remember something else; too late. “I forgot to get my lighter'back," I say.

  “Ready, Mr. Pine?" asks O'Connor.