The Eye of the Beholder

by Marc Behm

  He sat up, wide awake.

  Rain was splashing on the windows. The lamp beside the bed was on. He switched it off. The damp grayness of dawn moistened the edges of the room.

  Don’t hurt her. She’d said that in the motel, just after he’d belted Kenny.

  He got dressed and went down into the lobby. It was about six. The night clerk smiled at him miserably. ‘Good morning, sir.’

  ‘Good morning.’ He went outside and walked through the deserted leaden rainy streets. Don’t hurt her. She was telling him where she was; it was all there in his B-picture dream, he was sure of that.

  He sat down on a wet bench near the park.

  She’d thought he was Kenny and she was pleading with him not to harm her. Her. Me. The objective case of she or the objective case of I? No! Shit! She’d said her – please don’t hurt her! So she’d been talking about someone else. Who?

  It would come.

  He put it aside and tried to analyze the rest of the dream. The empty pen – that was obviously a Freudian bit. Sure. The inevitable cock. No ink. Impotency or sterility or something. The J was – what? A saint? San or Santa? One of the towns he’d searched recently? San Jose? San Juan? Santa Juanita? And the school and classrooms … the corridor and all that … that had been Maggie. Just a montage.

  Hold it! Maybe not, though. There was a fucking subtlety in dreaming that wakefulness always ridiculed. Maggie. His daughter. The school. A building. A building filled with hidden children. Sonofabitch! It was coming! J! His and Hers Hospitaler! Don’t hurt her!

  ‘What’re you doing, buddy?’

  He turned. A tall cop was standing beside the bench.

  ‘Toothache. Couldn’t sleep.’ He held his jaw. ‘It’s killing me.’

  ‘You live around here?’

  ‘Hotel there.’

  The cop eyed the tweed coat and good shoes. ‘You need an aspirin. Vitamin B-l.’

  ‘Tried that. No way.’

  ‘What’re you going to do?’

  ‘See a dentist. Got an appointment for nine o’clock. Until then I just sweat it out.’

  ‘Well, don’t get picked up for vagrancy.’ He walked off, chuckling.

  The Eye jumped up and went into the park. Goddamn it! He’d lost it! It was all just a shambles now! Balls! He typed out a Watchmen, Inc. report card in his mind:

  Subject – Joanna Eris

  Comment – During the last X months, sometime in the course of my surveillance, subject visited a location situated in the town of San J. After her disappearance she in all probability returned to this same lieu and is there at the present time.

  There are three flaws in this conclusion: (i) I don’t know where the place is; (ii) I don’t know why she returned there; (iii) I don’t know why she went there in the first place.

  Of course he knew! And he’d find her today! Fuck all! There was just one single piece missing. He leaned against a tree and bit his fingernails. All right, all right. It would come. She and Kenny had gone to the motel on Monterey Bay. Okay. And before that? She’s slept in a hotel in Fresno. And before that? Selma, Hartford, Coalinga, and Pasa Robles; one night in Santa Maria; LA and Vegas. Could she have gone back to Las Vegas? His radar spun and hummed. No, there was nothing there. LA, then? The radar rasped – zzzzzzz! Yeah! There was something there! What? They’d landed in Los Angeles. There had been a riot at the airport. She’d injured her arm. A doctor bandaged her. She’d gone to the garage to check out her MG and she’d driven north along the coast … The zzzzzzz faded. His thoughts scattered.

  He stood there blankly.

  It was worse than Crossword Number Seven.

  It stopped raining. The sun came up. People were walking in the park now. A hurdy-gurdy was playing ‘Oh Susannah.’

  It rained all night the day I left

  The weather it was dry

  The sun so hot I froze to death

  Susannah don’t you cry …

  Then the mockingbird sang. It sat on a branch just above him, screeching with derision.

  He listened to the children, delighted. There it was! Jesus God! The mockingbird! Holy Moses! He’d driven into that back road by the golf course; he’d tried to do a crossword puzzle, but that fucking bird had clamored at him like a bugle; a golfer had come over and said, ‘You can’t park here.’ And she was – having her bandage changed! Hospitaler! Hospital! A clinic! On the other side of Fresno! And that’s where she was now, by Christ!

  Four hours later he was in Fresno. He crossed the city and turned south on the Selma road. He rolled into the side lane bordering the golf course. He climbed out from behind the wheel numbly. He stood there beside the VW for five minutes, licking his lips and trembling like an epileptic. The last eighty miles had almost convinced him that the whole premise was pure wishful thinking, based on total nothingness.

  ‘You can’t park there, man.’ A fat caddie was standing on the other side of the fence, twirling a keychain.

  The Eye nodded dumbly and walked up the road to the gate of the clinic. He stared at the sign on the post. San Joaquin Maternity.

  J.

  He went into the driveway. Several cars were parked under the trees of a patio. Two Jags, a Mercedes, a Lancia HPE, an Austin Allegro, a Plymouth Volare. And an MG.

  The reception room was a wide, low-ceilinged, cool, tiled cave with an imitation Utrillo mural filling a back wall. A pretty girl in a striped uniform was sitting at a desk reading Buster Crabbe’s Energistics.

  ‘You’re too late,’ she said. He gaped at her. ‘Visiting hours are from nine thirty till ten thirty. And from two till four.’ She had a Massachusetts accent and green fingernails.

  ‘Ehhhh …’ he said. He couldn’t speak! His fucking voice was gone! He tightened his lips, concentrated on the Utrillo. A brown windmill. Fences. Trees. A pale blue sky. ‘I really don’t have time for a visit, I was just driving by and I thought I’d stop and –’ Shit! What name was she using? ‘– and see how our patient was coming along.’ Charlotte Vincent? Leonor Shelley? Diane Morrell? Mrs. Ralph Forbes? No. She wouldn’t want her child born with an alias. Would she?

  The girl flipped open the lid of a box of index cards. ‘What name?’

  ‘Joanna Eris.’

  ‘Oh, she’s doing fine. Are you a relative?’

  ‘Just a friend, just a friend,’ he babbled. ‘I’ve been away. I came back this morning and heard about – about it. And came right over.’ He hid his shaking hands in his pockets. ‘Thought I’d just zip in and …’ He swallowed and gulped. ‘Haven’t seen her for a while, and …’

  ‘You know’ – a whisper – ‘she lost the baby? A terrible shame. A little girl. But Mrs. Eris is great now. She’ll be out of here in a few days.’

  He gazed at her and saw three girls in striped uniforms sitting at three desks. ‘I want to see her,’ he said.

  ‘You better wait until this afternoon. She’s under sedation this morning, and –’

  ‘I want to see her.’

  ‘But–’

  ‘I want to see her. Please.’

  ‘Can’t you come back this afternoon?’

  ‘Please.’

  A nurse came by the desk. The girl got up and followed her. They whispered together, glancing at him. Then the nurse beckoned and led him through the reception room into a passageway.

  She opened a door, stepped inside.

  The blinds were closed. A single fine clean blade of white sunlight fell across the dark room on Joanna’s arm hanging from the bed. He stood over her.

  She was sound asleep, lying on her side, her profile on the pillow an ebon false face of shadows. He sat beside her, his hand reaching out timidly, hovering over her.

  He smiled, an enormous quietude settling on his soul. He took her gently by the wrist and lifted her arm to the bed, placing it on the sheet as if it were a fragile shell of jade.

  She stirred, her lips parted. She smelled of medicine and balm. Her hair had grown. Her long hands were lank.


  He had found her. In recompense for all his loss he had been given his prize – a girl asleep in a dim room. All the world was an abyss filled with her slaughtered men, but she was his redemption and his grace. She had called to him and he had come. He would never leave her now. They would remain forever under the oak trees, with their lost daughters and their miracle.

  11

  ‘Who was he?’ Joanna asked.

  ‘He didn’t give his name,’ the nurse said.

  ‘And he asked for me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He asked for Joanna Eris?’

  ‘Yes. He said he was a friend of yours.’

  ‘What did he look like?’

  They were in the clinic garden, walking along a sunken pathway through banks of high grass. The Eye stood less than five feet away from them, concealed on a knoll of lilacs.

  ‘They often do that,’ the nurse said.

  ‘Who? Do what?’

  ‘Salesmen and photographers and such. They get the names of our patients from the register and then come in here pretending they’re members of the family.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘To sell their junk. You know, silverware and baby pictures and all that motherhood shit. Or maybe he was a reporter. They’re always sneaking around, too, looking for celebrities having abortions.’ She named three Hollywood actresses. ‘They were all at St. Joaq’s. Using false names, of course.’

  ‘That must be it – yes. Something like that. Nobody knows I’m here.’ But she wasn’t satisfied. She turned and stood with her hands on her hips, peering around the garden.

  The little girl’s name was Jessica. She was buried on the banks of the San Joaquin River. Joanna spent an hour there every day, sitting beside the grave over the small headstone bearing the inscription Jessica Eris, 15 days old.

  The cemetery was a woodland, shaded with groves of old trees, filled with slopes of wildflowers, winding walks and hedges and ferns and mossy walls. Joanna would bring jars of roses or tulips or daffodils, place them on the tiny mound, then sit on the ground with her hands folded on her lap and try to come to terms with her grief. The Eye didn’t pity her yet. She was stupefied with misery, in a twilight coma of shock. The horror would come later – much later, with the return of perception.

  The following weekend she checked out of the clinic and drove to Sacramento. She registered in a hotel as Ellen Tegan, enrolled in a health club and spent three weeks, four hours a day, swimming and exercising. She had her hair cut again. She never drank. She spent some time under a sunlamp and lost her clinic pallor. She took long walks, hundreds of blocks every morning, striding athletically from one end of the city to the other, the Eye trudging behind her.

  On one of these killing hikes he became careless and she almost waylaid him. She stopped in a doorway and let him overtake her. He saw the trap at the last minute and, as casually as he could manage it, turned into the nearest building. It was an apartment house. He was in luck; the front door was ajar. He ran through the entranceway into the lobby, stepped into an elevator, and pushed a fifth floor button.

  Five minutes later he came back downstairs via the stairway. She was standing in the vestibule, her hands on her hips, reading the names on the mailboxes. He slipped out the back exit, circled the building, and was waiting for her farther up the block when she resumed her walk.

  That same afternoon she went to a see a man named Pancho Kinski. He had an office in the rear of a yellow brick hovel overlooking an alley. The sign on his door was noncommittal: Kinski Service. He was five feet high, wiry and tough, brainless and mean.

  He was a private dick.

  She hired him for three days for a few bucks an hour, and he came out of his hole and began sleuthing. It didn’t take the Eye long to find out what he was up to. He was looking for him!

  The Eye tried to avoid him but it was impossible – Joanna kept luring him to isolated, out-of-the-way places. A highway diner, a boathouse cafe on the river, a suburban bowling alley, a little theater in Folsom. And eventually, as inept as he was, Kinski spotted him.

  On the third night, he closed in, hard-guy style.

  Joanna drove to Lincoln for dinner. The Eye was three miles behind her in the VW Rabbit. A few miles from Roseville a Chevrolet sedan rolled in front of him, forcing him to the side of the road. Pancho jumped out, looking like a tall midget, holding a pistol as big as a piano leg.

  ‘I got you!’ he screamed. ‘Out! Out!’

  There were two other creatures with him. A tall scarecrow in a raincoat, aiming a Colt, and another runt wearing a sailor hat and waving a sap.

  The Eye didn’t like the looks of them, not at all. They were too wild. He obeyed quickly. They searched him, took his .45 away from him.

  ‘You’re comin’ with us,’ Pancho snarled. ‘You hear me? You hear me?’

  ‘I hear you, sure.’

  ‘Move! Move it! Move!’

  They shoved him into the back of the sedan. The runt got behind the wheel. They drove into Roseville.

  ‘Ike’s place,’ Pancho said.

  ‘Huh?’ The runt hit the brakes. The car skidded to a stop, bouncing them.

  ‘What’re you stoppin’ for? What’re you stoppin’ for?’

  ‘Huh?’ The runt blinked at him, mutton-faced.

  ‘Ike’s! Ike’s! Ike’s!’

  ‘Okay, yeah.’

  They drove on. They were rank with sweat, quaking and jerking with excitement. The three guns – .45, Colt, and cannon – were sticking in the Eye’s face. They turned through several back streets, drove twice around the same block.

  ‘Left!’ Pancho squealed. ‘Left! Left!’

  ‘Easy, easy,’ the scarecrow whispered. ‘This is the street.’

  They rolled through an open door into the black pit of a garage, swarmed out of the car, dragging the Eye after them. The runt slid the street door closed, the scarecrow turned on a light. Pancho pushed the Eye against a wall.

  ‘So who are you?’ he barked. ‘Who the fuck are you?’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘You, yeah, you!’ He slapped him across the shoulder with the barrel of the cannon. ‘You!’

  ‘Is this a stickup?’

  ‘What d’you mean is this a stickup? We’re legal private investigators workin’ legally.’

  ‘You abducted me. That’s not legal.’

  ‘We’ll do more than that before we’re finished with you, motherfucker!’ He barreled him again. ‘You get the idea?’

  ‘Armed aggression. Fifteen to twenty years.’

  ‘You get the idea? I’m askin’ you, you get the idea?’

  ‘Show me your license. And your permits to carry all this artillery.’

  ‘Belt him, Kinski!’ the runt yapped. ‘Clobber his ass!’

  ‘Why you followin’ that little lady for?’ Pancho asked.

  ‘What little lady?’

  ‘Miss Tegan. My client. Miss Ellen Tegan.’

  ‘I don’t know Miss Ellen Tegan.’

  ‘Why you followin’ her for? Why you followin’ her for?’

  ‘I don’t even know her. This must be some kind of a screw-up.’

  ‘She seen you! She seen your Rabbit! She seen you in Auburn and Folsom! Before that you was shadowin’ her in Fresno!’

  ‘I’m not shadowing anybody.’ He turned to the two clowns. ‘Abduction. A snatch. Thirty years. Fifty years. Life.’ But they couldn’t hear him. They were having too much fun to listen to points of order.

  ‘Break his arm, Kinski,’ the runt said.

  ‘I want some answers!’ Pancho shouted.

  ‘Cool it down, Pancho,’ the scarecrow whispered. ‘You’re makin’ too much noise.’

  ‘Answers! Empty your pockets!’

  ‘You’re supposed to call her, Pancho,’ the scarecrow whispered.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You said you’d call her.’

  ‘Yeah. Watch him!’ Pancho went over to a phone on the wall, reached up, lifted down the receiver,
dialed.

  ‘Break a few bones,’ the runt grunted, swishing the sap at the Eye.

  ‘Miss Tegan,’ Pancho yarred into the phone. ‘Ellen Tegan … is she there? Is Miss Tegan there? Well, she’ll be in later on because she’s got a reservation at your establishment tonight, so tell her to call … Hello! hello! Are you listening to me, jackass? Hello! Tell her to call Pancho Kinski … Kinski … Kinski … K-I-N-S-K-I! At this number. It’s a Roseville number.’ He gave the number. ‘You got that? It’s a Roseville number. You got it? … Right.’ He hung up.

  ‘I’m goin’ keep his piece,’ the runt said, taking the Eye’s .45 away from the scarecrow.

  ‘Give me that,’ Pancho growled, grabbing for the gun. The runt skipped away from him. ‘Gimme it! Gimme it!’

  The Eye walked over to the light switch and cricked it off. Then he dropped to the floor and rolled under the sedan. The three guns fired a salvo into the blackness. Bullets ricocheted off the walls, the car, the ceiling. The garage buzzed and hummed like a beehive. The wind-shield collapsed. A tire hissed air. The scarecrow screamed.

  The telephone rang.

  The Eye got up, turned on the light. They were toppled all over the red floor. The side of the runt’s head was nearly sawed off. The scarecrow was kneeling, holding his bleeding stomach, chirruping. There was a bullet hole in Pancho’s cheek. The Eye took the .45 away from the runt, pocketed it. He went to the phone, dropped his handkerchief over the receiver, lifted it, then hung up – then lifted it again and let it dangle.

  There was a door in the back wall. He came out of the garage into a yard filled with tubs and oil drums and fenders. Voices were shouting in the street. He climbed over a fence, jumped down into a lot, stamping his feet in the dirt to wipe the blood from the bottoms of his shoes. He ran across a dark field of rubble to an adjacent avenue and walked down the block, watching the stars, navigating toward the south.

  Two drunks were arguing in front of a bar. A cop came cantering up the sidewalk toward him. The Eye went over to the drunks and tried to separate them. ‘Come on, fellows,’ he pleaded. ‘Let’s all be friends.’

  One of them shoved him away. ‘Mind your own fuckin’ business! This is a grudge fight!’