by Ed McBain
Whatever the condition of his leg, Ransome was able to hobble with her help. They staggered toward the house, whipsawed by the wind, until the rogue wave she’d anticipated burst over the seawall and sent them rolling helplessly a good fifty feet before its force was spent.
When she saw Ransome’s face again beneath the flaring sky he was blue around the mouth but his eyes had opened. He tried to speak but his chattering teeth chopped off the words.
“WHAT?”
He managed to say what was on his mind between shudders and gasps.
“I’m n-n-not w-worth it, y-you know.”
Hot showers, dry clothing. Soup and coffee when they met again in the kitchen. When she had Ransome seated on a stool she looked into his eyes for sign of a concussion, then examined the cut on his forehead, which was two inches long and deep enough so that it would probably scar. She pulled the edges of the cut together with butterfly bandages. He sipped his coffee with steady hands on the mug and regarded her with enough alertness so that she wasn’t worried about that possible concussion.
“How did you learn to do this?” he asked, touching one of the bandages.
“I was a rough-and-tumble kid. My parents weren’t always around, so I had to patch myself up.”
He put an inquisitive fingertip on a small scar under her chin.
“Street hockey,” she said. “And this one—”
Echo pulled her bulky fisherman’s sweater high enough to reveal a larger scar on her lower rib cage.
“Stickball. I fell over a fire hydrant.”
“Fortunately . . . nothing happened to your marvelous face.”
“Thanks be to God.” Echo repacked the first aid kit and ladled clam chowder into large bowls, straddled a stool next to him. “Ought to see my knees,” she said, as an afterthought. She was ravenous, but before dipping the spoon into her chowder she said, “You need to eat.”
“Maybe in a little while.” He uncorked a bottle of brandy and poured an ounce into his coffee.
Echo bowed her head and prayed silently, crossed herself. She dug in. “And thanks be to God for saving our lives out there.”
“I didn’t see anyone else on those rocks. Only you.”
Echo reached for a box of oyster crackers. “Do I make you uncomfortable?”
“How do you mean, Mary Catherine?”
“When I talk about God.”
“I find that. . . endearing.”
“But you don’t believe in Him. Or do you?”
Ransome massaged a sore shoulder.
“I believe in two gods. The god who creates, and the god who destroys.”
He leaned forward on the stool, folded his arms on the island counter, which was topped with butcher’s block, rested his head on his arms. Eyes still open, looking at her as he smiled faintly.
“The last few days I’ve been keeping company with the god who destroys. You have a good appetite, Mary Catherine.”
“Haven’t been eating much. I don’t like eating alone at night.”
“I apologize for—being away for so long.”
Echo glanced thoughtfully at him.
“Will you be all right now?”
He sat up, slipped off his stool, stood behind her and put a hand lightly on the back of her neck.
“I think the question is—after your experience tonight, will you be all right—with me?”
“John, were you trying to kill yourself?”
“I don’t think so. But I don’t remember what I was thinking out there. I’m also not sure how I happened to find myself sitting naked on the floor of the shower in my bathroom, scrubbed pink as a boiled lobster.”
Echo put her spoon down. “Look, I cut off your clothes with scissors and sort of bullied you into the shower and loofah’d you to get your blood going. Nothing personal. Something I thought I’d better do, or else. I left clothes out for you then went upstairs and took a shower myself.”
“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 Pierre Hotel. 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 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 o
f 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 out 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 wagonwheels, 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 prayerbooks. 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 fro
m 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 Ph.D. 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.