by Marc Behm
Yes, there is. Them children singing … can you hear them?
He woke at dawn and decided to break into the house.
In a used car lot in Glendale he found a battered old van. Painted on its sides were green triangles framing the white Ws of Wentworth Household Maintenance. The dealer let him rent it for the day for fifty dollars.
At three o’clock he drove it along OK Drive and turned boldly into her driveway. He parked before the garage, jumped out from behind the wheel carrying a tool kit. He was wearing khaki overalls and a cap. He walked to the back door of the house. It took him four minutes to spring the lock. He entered the kitchen.
He was sweating.
He stood for a moment by the sink until the pounding in his chest subsided. He turned on the tap, splashed water on his face. She was all around him, outraged, wrathful, screeching at him silently, her flailing arms beating him, fanning his ears like bat wings.
The kitchen was bare and spotless. A basket of pears sat on the counter of the breakfast gallery. Spread open beside it was a newspaper, the Capricorn section of the horoscope column encircled in crayon. He read it:
… you Dec. 22–Jan. 20
goat-people share birthdays
with Katy Jurado (1924),
Cary Grant (1904), Danny
Kaye (1913), Tippi Hedren
(1935), Guy Madison (1922),
Desi Arnaz Jr (1953), Dorothy
Provine (1937), Paul Scofield (1922),
Linda Blair (1959), Ann Sothern (1911) …
He went into the living room and stood beside the rocking chair. He listened. She had either accepted his presence or had left to summon a flock of avenging Erinyes to drive him out. For the moment, though, there wasn’t a sound.
He set the tool kit on the floor and glanced around. Five bottles of champagne stood on a shelf like a row of grenadiers. A book was lying on the settee – The Mind of Proust by F.C. Green. There was a Paris-Match on the table, an Elle on a bench. A pear sat by the telephone. A Parker on one wall, an Eakins on another. A pack of Gitanes on the windowsill.
He went into the bedroom.
Something tapped on the door as he opened it. He stopped, frozen. He advanced slowly. One of Ralph’s canes was hanging on the knob.
The blinds were drawn. The air was heavy with scent. A zodiacal chart was tacked to the wall: Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, Sagittarius, Scorpio …
A pipe sat in an ashtray on the bedside table. Did the sonofabitch smoke in bed? Did he lie there smoking his fucking pipe? A smoldering jealousy stabbed him. The prick! The blind cocksucker! Smoking his motherfucking pipe, stretched out between the clean cool sheets, his scrawny, blotchy carcass oozing and rumbling …
He leaned against the wall, sputtering with anger. Hold it! Hold it! Fuck all! He wiped his face with his sleeve and went into the bathroom. Christalmighty! Wow!
He dropped to his knees and vomited in the toilet. Christ! Jesus! Oooooh! Man! He filled the bowl with thick, sickening offal. Ugh! He pulled himself up and flushed away the mess. Balls! He plugged the sink, turned on the tap, plunged his face in the water, opened his mouth. His knees almost gave way beneath him. Goddamn! He pulled out the plug! Shit! He washed his hands, wiped the smears from the metal. There were two toothbrushes in a glass on the shelf.
Holy Moses! This hadn’t happened to him since – when was it? Oh, yeah – when his wife and Maggie left. Then again when he’d gotten that fucking photo in the mail…
He went back past the bed and out into the living room, his legs jerking.
Well, anyway, if they were living together, she couldn’t very well be wearing gloves in the house. Right? His mouth tasted like Sitting Bull’s jockstrap! He ate a pear. Then he opened the tool kit, took out a bottle of powder, a brush, a spool of adhesive cellophane, several blank white cards.
He powdered the door of the refrigerator, the surface of the Dual, the arms of the rocking chair, the telephone, several glasses, a drawer, the frame of the Parker. There were latents everywhere, clean and neat. Were they his or hers though? Or someone else’s?
Then he found it. Under the Match on a corner of the tabletop was a perfect left handprint – three fingers and a thumb, but no index. He taped the digits, transferred each to a separate card.
He dusted everything with a chamois rag, repacked the kit. He left, locking the kitchen door behind him. He climbed into the van and backed down the driveway to the street. It was three twenty-nine. He’d been inside the house exactly eighteen minutes.
The West Coast branch of Watchmen, Inc. was in a new high-rise on Central Avenue. The girl in charge of records was an ex-policewoman named Gomez. He was amazed that she remembered him. Not only that, but she seemed genuinely pleased to see him.
‘Well, well! When did you get in, stranger?’
‘Last night. How are you, Miss Gomez?’
‘Up and down, like the stock market. Hey! We had an all-points telex on you last month, pal. Baker is looking for you like wild.’
‘He probably just wants to wish me a happy New Year.’
‘So do I.’
‘The same to you.’ He gave her the fingerprint cards. ‘Can you drop these through the slot for me, Miss Gomez?’
‘Sure thing.’
‘How long will it take?’
‘A couple of hours.’
He went back to his room at the Del Rio and sat staring out the window. Balls! He’d have to do something about Baker. He couldn’t just stay out of the office forever without some goddamned explanation. He called him up.
‘You shithead! Where the fuck are you?’
‘In Los Angeles. At the airport.’
‘Listen –’
‘Hello?’
‘Hello! Listen, you schmuck –’
‘Hello! I can’t hear you!’
‘Paul Hugo!!! What about Paul Hugo?’
‘He changed his name. He calls himself Gregory Finch now. He spent a week in Montreal, two weeks in Ottawa, a week in Seattle and a month in Butte, Montana. He’s in LA now, catching a plane for Rome. Me, too.’
‘Rome?’
‘Hello?’
‘What’s going on? Rome? Look, Goddamn it to hell, I just can’t stall his parents any longer! They want to turn the whole thing over to the FBI! Another thing! Do you still have that Minolta XK you checked out? Hello!’
‘They’re calling my flight! See you!’
He hung up.
He was back in Miss Gomez’s office at six.
‘She’s got a record!’ she announced happily. Records people were always delighted to unearth felonies. ‘New York State.’
‘Does she?’ He was shaking like a leaf. He hid his hands behind his back. ‘Is she wanted for anything, Miss Gomez?’
‘Nope. She pulled her time.’ She opened a folder, pulled out a Watchmen rap sheet. He took it, snatching it away from her quickly to cover his trembling.
He tried to read it. It was a blur.
‘We’re closing,’ she said. ‘Come on, I’ll buy you a drink.’
‘I’d like that.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘But some other time. I have to be in – in – I’m meeting somebody in five minutes.’
He folded the sheet and hurried out to the elevators, feeling like Dolly Madison fleeing from the burning White House clutching the Declaration of Independence. Jesus! He had to take a leak! She had a record. No wonder she wore gloves. What would Baker do now? What could he do? Nothing! Of course she wore gloves. She pulled time. That meant there was a mug shot of her on file, and if they identified her they could circulate it. Hold it, though! There were pictures of Josephine Brunswick in existence, too. What about those photographers at the wedding when she married Dr. Brice? Those shots could be put into circulation. If they found Brice’s body. Christ! It would take only one little push to bring the whole fucking house of cards tumbling down on her head. Capricorns must be fanatical gamblers.
Two women on the elevator edged away from him, incommoded by his fidgetin
g. Fuck them. And fuck Baker, too. Wow! He had to take a monumental leak! It was abominable!
Down in the lobby he found a John. Then he went outside and sat on a bench on Central Avenue. No, hold it, Gomez might find him here. He got into his car and drove all the way to the Hollywood Bowl.
He parked in a remote slope, still trembling. He sat there a moment, tapping his fingers on the windshield. Then he read the rap sheet, holding his thumb over the first line, covering her name.
NAME
DATE OF BIRTH December 24, 1952
PLACE OF BIRTH Trenton, N.J.
ADDRESS REFERENCES 1952–63, 127 Tyler Street, Trenton, N.J. 1963–70, Mercer County Home for Girls, Mercerville, N.J. 1970–71 Incarceration. 1971–present X PLACE OF CONVICTION White Plains, N.Y. 1970 CHARGE & SENTENCE Automobile robbery 13 months, Women’s Detention Farm, Norwich, N.Y. Aug 70–May 71
Motors howled. A dozen boys and girls on bikes came bouncing along the road. They wore goggles, football helmets, and leather jackets blazoned with red stars. They passed in a typhoon of dust and noise.
The Eye lifted his thumb and read her real name.
JOANNA ERIS.
7
In December she had leased an empty shop downtown – a small, modern, brick-and-glass oblong on Hope Street. Almost overnight it became a bookstore, The Librairie.
Just across the street was a hotel, the Del Rio. The Eye moved into an upstairs front room, keeping his place at the La Cienega rooming house as well.
During the shop’s renovation, she would arrive in the morning and stay there all day, supervising painters and carpenters and electricians. At one o’clock the Bentley would drive up, and she and Ralph would have lunch together. They’d come back at two and the work would continue, Ralph seated in a corner, trying to keep out of everybody’s way. The chauffeur, Jake, would remove his tunic and spend the afternoon sawing boards and hammering nails. The only problem they had was with the gangs of bikers roaring up and down the street, terrorizing pedestrians and occasionally throwing something through a window.
The Eye sat in his room, watching all this through binoculars.
On opening day, all the Forbeses were there, popping champagne corks and distributing trays of sandwiches. Charlotte and Joan placed portraits of Proust and Hemmingway, Conan Doyle and Joyce in the display windows. Basil sat on a stool, playing folk songs on a zither. Ted stood outside, inviting passersby to come in for a drink. A best-selling author, a friend of Ralph’s, breezed in and autographed copies of his latest novel. A crowd gathered on the sidewalk. Two movie stars showed up and had their pictures taken.
By noon over a thousand customers had bought books, emptying half the shelves.
It was Christmas Eve, Joanna Eris’s birthday.
That night the Eye moved through the blackness of the yard to the living room window. Forbes was on the settee, drinking a cognac, smoking his pipe.
Joanna walked past him. She was holding his cane, twirling it.
‘I wanted to be a majorette,’ she said. ‘But we couldn’t afford it. The uniform cost fifty dollars. That was way beyond our means.’ She tossed the cane into the air, caught it. ‘I used to practice for hours. With a stick. Daddy kept promising me that just as soon as we had some money in the bank everything would be all right. But we never had any money in the bank and nothing was ever all right.’
Ralph said something.
‘He was everything,’ she continued. ‘A plumber, a truck driver, a paper hanger. Name it. Bartender, TV repairman, gardener, garbage man, bricklayer. Everything and nothing. One summer –’ her voice broke; she coughed. ‘One summer he sold encyclopedias from door to door. Or tried to. Never sold any.’ She whirled the cane, dropped it. ‘The worst job he ever had – oh, that was really awful! He was the chief usher at the Mayfair. God!’ She picked up the cane, set it on a chair. ‘The Mayfair was a movie theater on Broad Street. He wore a red uniform with big buttons and epaulets and a cloak – a mauve cloak – and a little round hat …’
She walked to the window. The Eye dropped to his knees. ‘He took tickets in the lobby, and looked absolutely ridiculous! Like a – a – I don’t know what.’ She went over to the Dual, turned it on.
She took a record from the rack, ‘It was bad enough when he was a plumber and used to come home smelling like shit. But that uniform! All my girlfriends at school saw him, my teachers, the neighbors.’
The record was playing. ‘But then, thank God, he was fired … as usual. That was the fall my mother died, in September. And there we were, just the two of us. He didn’t work at all then. We were totally broke. September. October. November.’
She wandered across the room, rubbing her hands, pinching her bent finger. ‘December. We were going to be evicted. One afternoon a man came and turned off our gas and electricity. It was my birthday. The twenty-fourth of December. I was eleven years old. Daddy bought a tree somehow, and we decorated it with strips of paper. An old woman who lived down the block – Mrs. Keegan – gave me some pears. That was our supper. Then we went out for a walk. We just roamed the streets like a couple of derelicts, looking at the lights. It was snowing, and people were still shopping. There were guys in Santa Claus outfits standing on the corners, ringing bells. I was frozen. We went into a department store to get warm.’
She walked to the Dual and replayed the record. ‘This was playing on the loudspeaker. “La Paloma.”’ She stared at the turning record. ‘It was so incredibly lovely! The most beautiful song I ever heard. It made me cry. He thought I was crying because he … because he … I was standing there sobbing, you see, and he thought it was because he couldn’t give me a present. So he said, “Wait a minute, I’ll get you something.” The poor man! He tried to steal a sweater and they caught him. I ran out of the store. I went home and waited for him. I waited all night. The next morning two detectives came and told me he was dead.’
She walked past the window. ‘He was dead. He had a heart attack at the police station. He just … he …’ Her mouth opened. She bit her finger. A rasp of deep sorrow down in her throat shook her body. She dropped to the floor and sat on the rug, wild-eyed, streaming with tears. Ralph got to his feet and came forward, groping for her. He collided with a chair, knocked it over.
‘Charlotte!’
His searching hands found her, seized her. He sank beside her, took her in his arms.
She leaned against him, wailing softly.
‘I can’t wait until judgement day,’ she moaned, ‘when I can stand before God and tell Him how much I loathe Him!’
The Eye walked off to the street.
He spent the rest of Christmas Eve in a bar on La Cienega, drinking beer and doing a crossword puzzle. At two in the morning he drove around LA, watching the merrymakers. He parked his car on Fifth Street and sat on the front steps of the library for an hour. A hooker, then a fag, then another hooker tried to pick him up. He walked past The Librairie on Hope Street and looked at the books and portraits in the window. He had a cup of coffee in an all-night place on Grand Avenue. There were Christmas cards on display at the cashier’s desk. He bought one of them. It was Norwegian. VELKOMMEN DEILIGE JULEFEST! He took his pen and wrote on the inner flap:
Long time no see. What are
you up to? I miss you terribly.
I hope you’re happy. Please
don’t forget me. I want so much
to see you, but I know I never will.
Merry Christmas.
Daddy
He addressed the envelope to Maggie, c/o American Express, Ulan Bator, Mongolia, and dropped it in a mailbox on Pershing Square.
The next day he flew to New Jersey.
The Mercer County Home for Girls was pure Charles Dickens. Grimy walls, a soot-smirched courtyard, dirty windows, dungeon archways. It looked like a Victorian flashback.
1963–70.
Joanna Eris.
A column of little girls in gray smocks marched out of a shed, all carrying buckets. Several others
were sweeping a hallway. Two more were changing the tire of a truck jacked up in the yard.
A thin, bald, erased-looking fellow wearing what looked like a streetcar conductor’s uniform led the Eye through a passageway. He knocked respectfully on a door, ushered him into the lair of an old woman named Mrs. Hutch.
She was in her seventies, walrus-necked, puffy, mean, carnivorous.
‘Joanna Eris? I remember her, yes.’ She didn’t invite him to sit down. ‘What about her?’
‘My company is trying to trace her. A deceased uncle in West Virginia left her some insurance money.’
He gave her one of his bogus cards. She didn’t bother to take it.
‘She’s probably in Sing Sing.’
‘Is that where your alumnae usually end up, Mrs. Hutch?’
‘In the last five years, Mr. Wiseacre’ – she picked up a ruler, moved it from the left to the right side of her desk – ‘fifteen hundred and thirty-six young ladies were discharged from this institution, and they are all now gainfully employed, every one of them.’
‘That’s remarkable.’
‘I think so, too. We’re very proud of our record. One of our alumnae, as you call them, is now in the State House, the private secretary of the governor of New Jersey. Another is a Bell Telephone supervisor, in charge of one hundred switchboards.’
‘And Joanna Eris?’
‘Joanna Eris’ – she picked up a pencil, moved it – ‘was one of our rare dropouts. She left here when she was eighteen. And good riddance!’
‘You didn’t like her, Mrs. Hutch?’
‘She was a troublemaker and a sneak. Insubordinate, vicious. A foul-mouthed, cat-eyed little misfit.’
‘Where did she go when she left?’
‘To Trenton. She worked for two months with General Motors. Then she was fired. The personnel manager called me up one day and said, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Hutch, I just cannot keep her on.” And he asked me if she was retarded.’
‘What did you tell him?’
‘I told him the matter was no concern of mine.’ She moved the ruler back from the right to the left side of her desk. ‘Then she went to New York and was arrested for theft.’ Her counterfeit grandmother’s head sank deeper into her blubbery neck, and she looked at him with hooded eyes. ‘Is this really about insurance?’ she asked.