by Marc Behm
She went to bed at midnight. He drove to La Cienega and spent the night in his rooming house.
He dreamed of the corridor again. All the doors opened for him, but it was Sunday and the classrooms were empty.
All but one.
In the same bare dank chamber where he once met the Leper King, he found old Mrs. Hutch writing on a blackboard.
Your daughter is no longer here, Mr. Wiseacre, she told him. She is now gainfully employed as an embalmer in a funeral parlor. And she laughed like a jackal. One of these days a corpse will be brought before her. It will be you. She’ll prepare you for burial, never knowing it’s her daddy’s body she’s putting in the box. Time passes. Nothing remains. Except old photographs of young faces.
He looked past her. Printed on the blackboard was the word CZECHOSLOVAKIA. And he suddenly saw the solution to Crossword Puzzle Number Seven. Holy Moses! There it was! Right there in front of him!
Mrs. Hutch erased it quickly. Never mind that, she said. You know what you have to do.
He woke with a start. He knew indeed! There was only one way of stopping her from killing Ralph Forbes.
At nine o’clock she backed her MG out of the garage and drove to Benedict Canyon. She spent all day Sunday concealed behind the high walls of Ralph’s Colosseum. At seven thirty they drove to Santa Monica and had dinner at Nero’s. She brought him home at ten.
The Eye walked through a black hollow behind the estate. He climbed over the wall, dropped down into an orchard. He moved through the trees, his radar fondling the darkness for traps.
He felt a faint pulse of danger … a mere rustling in the grass. He stopped, listened. A snake? A dog? There
it was again! He waited. A tiny hedgehog ran across a patch of moonlight in front of him.
He moved on. He found a paved footpath, followed it past a tennis court and a pool. The house sprawled before him, as inky as a mausoleum.
The MG was parked by the terrace. Joanna and Ralph were standing beside it, laughing.
He melted into the shadows, watched them.
‘But you have an enormous family,’ Joanna was saying. ‘Aunts and cousins and uncles who never see one another except at weddings and funerals. They’ve all been phoning me, insisting on a big thing.’
‘I want a quiet wedding,’ Ralph said. ‘In a little church in a village somewhere. We can invite them all here afterwards for the family bit.’
‘But why not give them a production number, if that’s what they like?’
‘Listen, Charlotte, the idea of having all my relatives present, sitting there in their pews, watching me walk to the altar, waiting for me to trip over something, just doesn’t appeal to me.’
‘All right.’ She laughed. ‘But in that case, why wait then? Let’s go right now.’
‘Go where?’
‘I don’t know. To San Luis Obispo or someplace.’
‘Tonight?’
‘Sure.’
‘We can’t. I have a meeting with the auditors in the morning.’
‘Tomorrow, then.’
‘Okay!’ He took her in his arms. ‘Tomorrow afternoon. It’s a date.’
She backed away from him, pointing across the driveway. ‘Look!’
‘I never look, sweetheart. What is it?’
‘A hedgehog!’ She came around the car, moving past a row of chrysanthemums. ‘He’s in the bushes here,’ she called. ‘Isn’t that a sign of good luck, Ralph?’
‘Hedgehogs? Yes, I believe so. If you see one during the full moon or something.’
‘Is there a full moon tonight?’ She picked up a stick, poked it around the Eye’s shoes.
‘How do I know? No, I think it’s the first quarter. Are you sure it wasn’t a rat?’
‘I saw it. Right here. Does that mean I’ll only be seventy-five percent lucky?’
She drove away a few minutes later.
Ralph lit his pipe and tapped his cane on the terrace flagstones, walking toward the rear of the house. He stopped, leaned against a pillar. ‘I know you’re there,’ he said. ‘What do you want?’
The Eye jumped back as the cane slashed past his face. He circled Ralph quickly, kicked him in the knee, knocking him down into the driveway. He sprang after him, aiming at his legs. He chopped the edge of his hand at his thigh, missed and hit his wrist. Ralph flounced along the ground away from him, neighing with agony, hacking at him wildly with the cane. The Eye hammered him again, on the arm, breaking it. Ralph screamed and floundered. The Eye danced around him, pounded him on the calf. The blow was painful, but harmless. He had to break one of his legs.
He tried to grasp an ankle. The flailing cane forced him back. He chopped him on the hip, then on the kidneys. A leg! He had to have a goddamned leg! He swung at the thigh again, missed again, hit the left tibia.
Lights were going on in the windows. He tried one last desperate blow. It slammed into Ralph’s shoe, sending him spinning like a rolling log across the lawn.
Someone was shouting on the terrace. The Eye ran around the back of the house, crossed a patio, scampered up a flight of brick steps. He tried to reckon his position. The orchard was east of the house. The back of the house faced north. He was moving west – straight toward Benedict Canyon. No way! He veered to the left – south. He passed a shed, a sundial, a beach umbrella, chairs, a swing. Left again – east. Hands applauded behind him – clap! clap! clap! Three bullets whistled past him. Fuck all! A rifle or a carbine! Breath blew in his ear. A muttering bumblebee almost touched his nose. Ricochets! He raced up a slope. Trees. The orchard. The wall. He scrambled up it, flopped over its coping, dropped. The black hollow closed around him.
‘Hey! What’s that!’
A flashlight went on. He saw two prone bare figures on a blanket under a willow.
‘Is it the pigs, George?’
‘Somebody jumped over the wall!’
He galloped past them.
‘There he is!’
The beam followed him as he came out of the dip, lighting his way. He flew across a clearing, turned right – south – in an arroyo, right again – west – toward the bottom of Benedict.
Five minutes later he was safe in the womb of his car, parked on Sunset.
He spent the morning sitting in the window of his room at the Del Rio, watching The Librairie through his binoculars.
Joanna arrived at eight, the other girl at eight fifteen. They made coffee on a hot plate. Joanna read the mail. They unpacked a carton of books, placed one of them in the front window – Roots, by Alex Haley. A waiter from a restaurant down the street brought them a bag of buns and three pears. The first customer came into the store – a woman with a dog. She began filling a shopping basket with paperbacks – four … six … eight … ten … a dozen of them. The paperbacks were to the left, the hardcovers to the right, novels in the back, non-fiction in front. Along the rear wall was the counter. The deluxe editions were on several stands in the center of the store, and Joanna’s desk was in an alcove just behind the novels.
More customers entered. They bought five copies of Roots. One of them bought a large Picasso volume in a gaudy jacket for fifteen dollars. The woman with the dog carried her basket of paperbacks to the cash register. She huddled over the counter, scratched a pen point on her tongue, wrote out a check. She tore it up, wrote out another. A girl in a cowboy hat bought a bulky dictionary – twenty-five dollars. A small boy bought a Tarzan album, paid for it with a handful of pennies and dimes. Now the woman’s pen was out of ink. She shook it, dropped it, picked it up, licked it, scratched it on the counter. Joanna loaned her a ballpoint.
There was no mention of Ralph in the morning papers or on the nine o’clock news. The Eye hoped he was in the hospital, at least for a few weeks. A broken leg would have put him out of circulation much longer, but assaulting a blind man hadn’t been as easy as he thought it would be. His arms and wrists were purple with cane marks. Anyway, there would be no marriage this afternoon.
The binoculars pul
led the bookstore closer, and Joanna was standing in front of him. She was leaning against the counter, one hand on her hip, the other holding the goat disc, spinning it between her fingers as she talked to a customer.
She turned suddenly and looked straight at the Eye.
She saw only the passing traffic and the hotel across the street.
‘Is anything wrong?’ the customer asked.
She laughed. ‘Somebody’s walking over my grave.’
The Bentley pulled up to the curb outside. Jake alighted from it quickly and opened the rear door. Ralph climbed out to the pavement. His arm was in a sling and one foot was bundled in a heavy bandage. He was carrying a crutch.
The Eye rose from his chair, stunned, and ran downstairs to the lobby.
He came out on the sidewalk just as Joanna rushed out of the store.
She stood before Ralph, petrified with surprise. He tucked his crutch under his arm, laughing. He kissed her, kicked his bandaged foot gaily. Jake was laughing too, gesturing, shadowboxing, jabbering.
The Eye crossed the street numbly.
Motors droned. A swarm of bikes flashed past him. He whirled, saw the football helmets, the black jackets with red stars, the hairy jowls, the bug-eyed goggles. A boy rolled in front of him, inches away, his yaklike face glaring, his mouth slit open in a savage snarl.
The Eye ran.
The boy U-turned smartly, zoomed after him. The Eye jumped across the pavement into a doorway. The bike bounced behind him, howling like a fury. It hit Ralph, sending him pirouetting with slapstick whimsicality along the curb, then lifting him in the air and pitching him acrobatically into the fenders of a passing car. The car dragged him up the block, its brakes squealing.
Joanna ran to the crushed heap piled in the gutter. She dropped atop it, screaming, pulling it into her arms.
And in that one terrible instant the Eye knew she’d never had any intention of killing Ralph Forbes.
On God’s plotting board a tiny red light flashed on Hope Street.
9
At the cemetery he stood in the back of the crowd behind a senator and a cluster of local politicians. Joanna remained in the background, too, on the rim of the family, unobtrusive and isolated, somberly dressed but not in flaunting mourning.
After the ceremony she drove home alone.
The Eye put on his nanny clothes and pushed the baby carriage past the house. She sat in the MG in the driveway, gazing at the garage doors. She climbed out listlessly and walked up the street toward Wilshire.
He followed her, the wheels of the carriage squeaking like crickets.
She crossed La Cienega, passed his rooming house. She bought a newspaper and stood on the corner of Gale reading her horoscope. He knew what the Capricorn column advised; he’d already read it.
This is the winter of
your discontent and all
the planets lower upon you.
A radical change of scene is recommended. Hail and farewell!
She walked all the way to the museum, then turned around and walked back. Then turned again, crossed Wilshire, and wandered up Hamilton to San Vicente. Then she came down La Cienega to Wilshire again and turned into Ledoux. She came through Oak Lane to the Drive and stopped. She stood with her hands on her hips, staring at the house. She climbed into the MG and backed out of the driveway.
The Eye ran to the Lane, breaking all baby-carriage speed records. His car was parked on the corner of Ledoux. Two real nursemaids watched in amazement as he folded the carriage and lifted it into the trunk. He sprang behind the wheel and started the motor. It was four o’clock. He was almost certain that she would go either to the bookstore or to her bank. He drove to Olympic Boulevard.
The MG was just ahead of him, speeding toward Santa Monica.
She went to the bank and emptied her safe-deposit box. Then she drove to the bookstore. It was closed for the day. She unlocked the front door and walked past the deluxe displays to her desk behind the novels. She sat down, lit a Gitane. The cash box was on the floor behind a potted plant. She picked it up, set it on her lap, dialed its combination, opened it.
The Eye pulled off his nanny cap, his dress, the bonnet, and his Mother Hubbard wig. He went into the Del Rio, packed his bag, paid his bill, and checked out.
Across the street, Joanna left The Librairie without bothering to lock the door behind her.
She drove home.
He wondered if he had time to get his things out of the La Cienega rooming house. But there was nothing of any value there, except a favorite pair of shoes. He decided to abandon them.
She carried two valises out of the house, put them into the MG. She climbed behind the wheel and drove away. She didn’t look back.
Hail and farewell!
She spent two months driving around and around southern California, staying at motels and resorts. San Diego, El Centro, Lakeside, San Bernardino, San Ysidro, Escondido, Oceanside, Elsinore, Redlands, back to San Bernardino, back to El Centro. Up and down, in and out.
She had her hair cut. Her skin was burned copper from sunbathing. She wore slacks and sweaters and old jackets. She drank three, sometimes four, cognacs a day. She read her horoscope every morning. She read and reread Hamlet and marked its pages with green and red and orange and yellow felt pens. One afternoon, in a bar in La Jolla, she played ‘La Paloma’ over and over again on the jukebox, seventeen times.
Then in March she drove back to LA, parked the MG, and flew to Las Vegas. She spent a month there as Miss Leonor Shelley.
She lost six thousand dollars shooting crap.
The syndicate soldier ants waved their antennae at her, but sensed some interdiction that made them leave her alone. Perhaps it was just an antique Italian foreboding of evil, a Tyrrhenian seashell echo-warning of carriveria. They watched her, surrounding her with a deep moat of misgiving, but they never tried to move in. The Eye prayed that she wouldn’t pull anything here. If she did, they would drive a stake through her heart and stuff her mouth with garlic. But as long as she behaved, her anonymity was impregnable and absolute.
He knew that they were watching him, too, and that they were perfectly aware of his and Miss Shelley’s strange affiliation. They didn’t try to explain it. They simply stood back and waited for both of them to move on.
The Eye enjoyed his experience. It was restful and safe. He didn’t have to follow her twenty-four hours a day now. A bartender or pitman would always know exactly where she was and tell him if he asked.
He relaxed and took a vacation. He ate regularly and put on some weight. He slept soundly and dreamlessly. He worked out in a gym, played handball, swam, and won eighteen hundred dollars at roulette. He began enjoying Gitanes. He bought a copy of Hamlet and memorized it. His favorite passage was:
Leave her to heaven
And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge
To prick and sting her.
He enjoyed the long nights best of all, though – the taste of the desert on his pillow and the deep slumber without corridors and nightmares. He dreamed of Maggie only in the daytime, taking her with him to the pool, lunching with her, having breakfast with her on the terrace, meeting her on stifling afternoons in the street, and escaping with her into a cool movie or an ice cream place. Then she would disappear, and his longing would rack him mercilessly until she came back. And she always came back – always – walking across an intersection, waving to him, appearing suddenly out of the crowd and taking him by the hand, calling his name softly in the sunlight.
They spent more than thirty days together, almost constantly. He bought her a ‘Nevada’ patch to sew on her sweater. He gave her coins to play the slots. When he realized that she was no longer a little girl but a young woman now, in her twenties – a woman indeed! – he tried to think of some fabulous gift he could offer her. A bracelet or a Lancia or a Saint Laurent dress or … but what the fuck did fathers give to daughters anyway, in homage and veneration? Finally, in the hotel jewelry shop, he had her zodiac
sign engraved on a platinum disc and wore it around his neck for the rest of his life.
In April, when Joanna-Leonor’s dice table losses amounted to sixty-two hundred dollars, she flew back to LA.
There was a riot at the airport when the plane landed. A task force of men and women wearing gas masks invaded the tarmac, waving signs reading ABOLISH JETS! DANGER DON’T BREATHE! IT’S A GAS! SAVE OUR ENVIRONMENT! The cops counter-attacked. The Eye lost his hat in the brawl. A half-dozen people were thrown off a ramp and taken to the hospital in a fleet of ambulances. Joanna-Leonor was mashed against a wall; her dress was torn and there was blood on her arm. An airport doctor bandaged her.
She reclaimed the MG and drove north along the coast. She spent the night in Santa Maria and the following day swung inland. She drove through Paso Robles, Coalinga, Harford, and Selma. On the outskirts of Fresno she stopped at a wayside hospital clinic and had her bandage changed.
The Eye drove past the clinic, turned into a side road, stopped beside the fence of a golf course. He opened a Chicago Sun-Times he’d found on the plane and did the crossword puzzle.
That was the day the mockingbird sang – thank God! Otherwise he might have forgotten the entire incident. It began jeering at him from a nearby tree, ranting, like an insane flutist. A golfer walked up to the fence.
‘You can’t park here,’ he said pleasantly. ‘This is private property.’
The Eye apologized. ‘I’ve been driving all day. I wanted to take a half-hour break.’
‘Well, go ahead, I guess. As long as you don’t block the road.’ He walked off.
The Eye tried to concentrate on the puzzle, but the bird scoffed at him vehemently, bombarding him with rancor and scorn. He folded the paper and set it aside.
Joanna slept at a hotel in Fresno, registering as Diane Morrell. The next day she turned back toward the coast.
A few miles from Gilroy she parked on the shoulder of the highway and opened the MG’s hood. The radiator was steaming; she tried to unfasten the cap and scorched her fingers. A dazzling new Porsche 927 pulled up behind her. A man in a pink cardigan jumped out.
‘Don’t bother with it,’ he said. ‘Throw it away and I’ll buy you a new one.’