by Marc Behm
‘Mrs. Vight? Yes –’ The clerk was rattled. ‘She checked out two hours ago.’
‘Any idea where she was going?’ Number One asked.
‘No, sir. She just paid the bill and –’
‘Describe her,’ Number Two cut in.
‘In her twenties – late twenties, I guess. Sunburned. Short hair. Blue eyes. Tall, about five eleven …’
‘Fine,’ Number One nodded. ‘That’s an excellent description. And you don’t know where she is now?’
‘Mrs. Vight?’ The Eye, all smiles, moved closer. ‘She’s in Denver.’
They stared at him. ‘You know her?’ Number Two asked.
‘Know her? Gosh, no. Wish I did. Lovely girl. We just had a friendly drink together last night. Matter of fact, I invited her to dinner, but she had a previous engagement, I’m sorry to say.’
He tried not to overdo it. They’d already sized him up – clothes, accent, fingernails, haircut – and classified him as a Type O: out-of-town oaf. A midwestern or New England bumpkin, Honest Homer Hayseed.
‘And she told you she was going to Denver?’
‘Yup.’ He smacked his lips smugly. ‘I can even give you her address.’
‘We’d appreciate it.’
‘Ramada Inn.’
‘Ramada Inn, Denver. Check.’
‘Said she’d be stayin’ there a couple of weeks, then go on to – ahhh … Kansas City, I think. No! I take that back. Omaha! Omaha, Nebraska!’
‘Much obliged.’
‘Not at all.’
They left. So did he. He went into the coffee shop and slipped out a side exit to the street. The crowd closed around him like a comforting bog of eiderdown. Feds, by Christ! From Sun Valley or Honolulu? For the next forty-eight hours all of Colorado and Nebraska was going to be Dragnetville! That would keep the motherfuckers busy for a while. But then they’d start backtracking.
He went into the bar and had two large cognacs. Then he checked into the Sir Francis Drake. He couldn’t sleep. He sat up all night reading Helter Skelter. He was at the airport at seven thirty. The plane took off at eight ten.
He found her at a quarter to twelve. She was sitting on a bench on the Paseo de la Reforma, eating a pear.
It was as if she were waiting for him – except that there was a man with her.
‘Why are you smiling?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know,’ she laughed. ‘For some reason or other, I feel – all of a sudden – I feel blissful. Reprieved.’
‘Reprieved?’
‘As if I were going to the gas chamber this morning, at’ – she glanced at her watch – ‘eleven forty-five exactly. And the warden just walked into my cell and said, “Miss Kane, let me be the first to congratulate you. You have been reprieved.” And I take a deep breath, and instead of inhaling cyanide, I smell the trees in the park and the water in the lake. And the flower stalls and the fruit carts.’
‘Are you sure you’re not sniffing glue, too?’
‘Let’s go to church and light candles.’
‘I’d rather go to San Juan Ixtayoapan and have a look at that new supermarket complex.’
His name was Rex Hollander. He was an architect from Savannah. He was forty-eight years old, recently divorced, lonely, cheerful, and boyish. He’d just built a seven-million-dollar office building in Mazatlán.
They spent the next three weeks together, visiting Atzcaptzalco, Ixtacalco, Coyoacán and the usual tourist places, returning to the city every evening for the restaurants and the nightlife. They lived in separate suites at the hotel and weren’t sleeping together yet. They played tennis and golf, they swam and went to the bullfights. They joined a private gambling club and Joanna lost four thousand dollars at chemin de fer. They took one long, grueling train trip to Juchitán and Tonala to look at some new apartment buildings.
Joanna was happy and at peace – her laughter was genuine, and apparently she had no intention of murdering him, at least for a while. The Eye did crossword puzzles in Spanish. He read The Conquest of Mexico by William H. Prescott. He bought a shawl for Maggie.
On January the thirtieth two divers found an arm handcuffed to an anchor chain on the bottom of Kaneoke Bay. On February the second Rex Hollander was on the cover of Time: ‘The Dissident Builder – A Challenge to Urbanization.’ To celebrate, he and Joanna went to bed together. The next day they flew to Tucson, Arizona. On February the fifth a justice of the peace married them in Casa Grande.
They rented a station wagon and trailer in Phoenix and drove north on a camping trip to Grand Canyon Park. On February the sixth the Hawaiian police identified the Kaneoke arm as having belonged to Jerome Vight. On February the seventh the Los Angeles Times, in a story on page three, reported that the deaths of Vight in Hawaii and Cora Earl in Sun Valley were ‘in all probability’ connected and that the FBI was seeking a Miss Ella Dory ‘for questioning.’
Ella Dory – AKA Mary Linda Kane, AKA Mrs. Rex Hollander, née Joanna Eris – and her husband were wandering across the Coconino Plateau, driving by night, camping during the day to avoid the heat.
The Eye followed them in a rented Mercury, keeping his distance. When they’d stop, he’d park the car and circle the trailer on foot, like an Apache. Once a large dusty scorpion stung the heel of his shoe, scaring him shitless. Another time he stepped into a hole atop a family of gila monsters. He began to hate Arizona passionately.
One morning Joanna drove into a nearby town, alone, for supplies. When she came back, she hammered the first nail into Rex’s coffin.
‘Rex, I just phoned my broker in LA. I’m in a jam.’
‘What’s the problem, dandelion?’
‘I need forty thousand dollars before the market closes on Friday. Can you loan it to me?’
‘Sure thing!’ He wrote out a check. She put it in an envelope, then drove back to town and pretended to mail it. She bought a rifle.
That same afternoon, all hell broke loose.
The Eye, prowling through a moonscape of crags, came upon the carcass of a jackal. Huge fat red ants were devouring it. Farther on, sticking out of a gulch, was a tin sign: Devil’s Mesa, Population 15. There was nothing else there except part of a fence and the ruins of a mud hut. And a rattlesnake. It reared up out of the stones, glaring at him. He jumped back, tripped and fell, rolled ass over head down a gully.
Rex saw him. He sprang out of the trailer, wild with excitement. ‘Mary Lin! There’s a guy up there in the rocks!’
She laughed. ‘No there isn’t. That’s just my poltergeist.’
‘Your which?’
‘A spirit I invented to haunt myself. Pay no attention to him.’
‘Like hell! Give me your rifle!’
‘Rex, I won’t have you gunning down my spirit.’
‘Then let’s capture the sonofabitch alive! You cut around there behind him. I’ll go straight up the hill.’
The Eye crawled into an escarpment of boulders, cursing him, cursing himself. He hid in a cleft, praying nothing would come out of the ground to gnaw him.
Rex came up the slope, ran past him, moved across the gulch behind the hut. Then Joanna appeared, coming from the opposite direction. She stopped, stood for a moment staring at the ants. She looked at the sign, walked past the fence into Devil’s Mesa.
The rattler rolled out of its lair, coiled on the trail in front of her. She froze. ‘Hi,’ she whispered. Its head bobbed toward her, its jaws opening and hissing. The Eye pulled his .45 from his belt. But she was in no danger – not yet. She had time enough to retreat. But she didn’t move. She just stood there, waiting. The snake swayed closer, rattling angrily. Rex came around the side of the hut.
‘Did you see him?’ he called.
‘No.’
‘I guess we scared him off.’ He walked toward her. ‘Look at this godforsaken place. It’s like a John Ford movie.’
Joanna’s arms came up slowly. ‘It must have been a ranch or something,’ she said, and oh-so-slowly put her hands on her hips,
relaxed.
‘Imagine anyone living in this inferno!’ The snake’s head jerked around. The Eye watched them, fascinated. Rex moved closer – closer. His boot kicked a stone, the butt of the rifle scraped along the ground. Closer. Joanna remained motionless. Closer.
‘It’s perfect for sunbaths.’ She forced a laugh.
‘What a place to spend a honeymoon!’ he reached for her. ‘Let’s go back down to the trailer and –’
His shadow fell across the snake. The rattle snapped like a castanet. The jaws flew into the air, struck him on the crotch. He screamed, dropped the rifle. He hobbled back. ‘Mary Lin!’ The jaws hit him again, on the stomach. ‘Mary Lin!’
Then the Eye heard the car.
He came out of the cleft, climbed over the boulders to the top of the ridge. A sheriff’s cruiser was driving along the narrow trail behind the escarpment.
‘Mary Lin!’
He ran down the gulch. The snake was gone. So was Joanna. Rex was sitting on the ground, bellowing. He turned, saw the Eye. He tried to pull himself to his feet. ‘I can’t move my hips!’
The Eye picked up Joanna’s rifle, ran back to the summit of the ridge. The cruiser pulled into a gully just below him. The doors opened. A fat sheriff in a Stetson squeezed out from behind the wheel. Two men alighted from the other side – the same two Feds he’d met in the lobby of the Mark Hopkins last month. They stood listening to Rex’s shrieks echoing through the canyons around them.
‘Sounds like a fucking panther!’
The Eye dropped to one knee and fired. The first two bullets punctured the cruiser’s front and rear tires, the third slammed through the open door and pulverized the dashboard radio. The three men scattered for cover in the rocks.
He slid down the boulders and ran around the rim of the gulch to the slope above the camp. Joanna was in the station wagon, driving toward the road.
He glanced over at Rex. He was lying on his back in the dust, still calling to her. ‘Mary Lin!’ His face was covered with gurgling froth, his fists were beating his abdomen. ‘Mary Lin!’
The Mercury was parked a quarter of a mile to the south. The Eye raced toward it. A bullet dropped out of nowhere and tapped him on the shoulder. He thought it was the snake and yelled with terror. His feet kicked in opposite directions. He found himself surging through the air like a high jumper.
‘Halt, you cocksucker!’ a voice shouted.
He landed on his side in a deep rug of sand, all his bones dislocated. He reached behind him, tried to grasp the rattler’s head. He touched the wound and brayed.
‘Halt!’
A ricochet bounced past him.
‘Halt!’
He rolled behind a dune. He looked at his left arm. It was still there. He lifted it, flapped it, flexed his fingers. Fibers of exquisite pain twanged up and down his back, almost lulling him to sleep. Fuck all! He was going to pass out! He got up, stumbled toward the Mercury. He opened the doors – oops! The plateau tilted, flipping him behind the wheel. He started the motor. So far, so good! All he had to do now was keep moving. They’d never catch him, not without tires or a radio. Butterflies fluttered past the windshield – bright clouds of them, yellow and orange and black-dotted and gaudy.
Maggie reached over and closed the door. She opened the valise, took out the Mexican shawl. She wrapped it around him, pulled it tight. Good, okay. The bleeding stopped. Thanks. She pointed to the speedometer. He was doing fifty. He slowed to twenty. She showed him where the road was, held the wheel, steered him out of the rocks.
Right. He was on the road. Fine. He accelerated. Thirty … forty … fifty … sixty … whoopee!
She turned on the air-conditioner. She wiped his cheeks with her cool fingers. He wondered what she looked like. She leaned on him, wedging him against the door so he wouldn’t topple over. When the sun went down, she switched on the lights. Thanks. Then she turned on the radio. In the close darkness he could feel her breathing. He was afraid to move his head … his neck was too stiff … he’d look at her in a moment, though … he had to … She poked him awake when he fell asleep. Thanks. She sang to him.
It won’t be a stylish marriage
I can’t afford a carriage
But you’ll look sweet
Upon the seat
Of a bicycle built for two …
The station wagon was a mile ahead of them.
13
Nine hours later, at three o’clock in the morning, they were in Albuquerque. The station wagon turned into a motel, putting an end to the grisly journey.
The Mercury skidded into an all-night filling station, knocked over a pile of cans, scraped against a gas pump, and banged into a fence. The Eye sat behind the wheel, chuckling at a disc jockey’s joke. ‘Doctor, it’s terrible, I’m losing my memory! What’ll I do?’ And the doctor said, ‘Well, first of all, pay me in advance.’ He turned off the radio, opened the door, tried to move his legs.
A girl in overalls came rushing out of the garage. ‘You fuckhead! What the fuck’s all this!’ Then she saw the bloody shawl and whistled.
He slid to the ground, leaned against the fender. ‘Can I have a glass of water?’
‘Sure.’
‘And give the young lady a Coke or something.’
‘What young lady?’
He squinted at the car. Maggie was gone. ‘Oh, that’s right … she got out in Arizona.’ It was true. She’d left him somewhere in the Petrified Forest. She’d just opened the door and jumped away into the night. He’d seen her once after that in New Mexico, standing in a field, waving to him …
The girl pulled a Smith and Wesson .38 out of her overalls and aimed it at him nonchalantly. ‘Now,’ she drawled, ‘I don’t want no part of whatever you’re mixed up with.’
‘Me?’ he grinned at her. ‘I’m not mixed up with anything.’
‘Cut yourself shavin’, maybe?’
‘Something like that, yeah.’ He gave her a fifty and told her to phone the local Watchmen, Inc. number. While he was waiting, he sat down on the curb, wrapped in the shawl like a tired old woman, and drank a quart of water. She kept the .38 pointed at him.
Twenty minutes later an operative named Dace arrived in a red MGB. He was wearing cowboy boots. The Eye waved to him. ‘Howdy!’
‘Can you move, pal?’
‘Nope.’
Dace picked him up and put him in the car. He drove him to an out-of-the-way house in Istela. A doctor probed the wound with hooks and pulled a ton of pig iron out of his shoulder. The Eye fainted twice. When he woke up the second time he was bandaged and high on M. The sun was shining.
‘So how do you feel?’ Dace asked him.
‘Keen!’ He got up and moved across the floor like a tightrope walker. ‘Nifty peachy keen.’ The hole in his back was smothered in numbness. His left arm was weightless. ‘Just dandy.’ He touched his chin. ‘I need a shave.’
‘Doc says you ought to stay put awhile.’
‘No way. Can’t.’
‘Your Mercury’s outside.’
‘Can’t do it. I have to – my what? The Mercury?’ He walked back and forth, the M seeping through him, untying all the knots. ‘You take care of that for me, will you, Race … Mace … Pace …’
‘Dace.’
‘Get rid of it. I won’t need it anymore.’
‘Are you lucid, pal?’
‘I’ll be leaving here by plane. You can drive me to the airport in your MG. What do you mean am I lucid?’
‘Can you hear me?’
‘Certainly I can hear you.’
‘Good, because I got bad news for you.’
‘Just park it somewhere where they can find it. How far are we from Albuquerque? Let me put on a clean shirt and you can get me out of here … Bad news?’
‘Are you sure I’m getting through to you, pal?’
‘Yeah, speak up.’
‘I’ve just been talking to Mr. Baker on the phone. He says to tell you you’re fired. And he wants you to give me hi
s Minolta camera.’
He checked his luggage at the airport and took a taxi to the motel. She was still there. It was eleven o’clock. She was running late. With the FBI one state behind her she’d have to move faster than that.
He went back to the airport, had a shave in the barbershop, and waited for her in the lounge. She’d be in sooner or later. She had to leave by plane. Keeping the station wagon was out of the question, and renting another car was almost as risky. And she was in too much of a hurry to take a train.
He sat sweating and squirming as the M faded, laying bare his pain. He thought about Watchmen, Inc. They could never fire him if he made an issue of it. Or if he groveled a bit. All he had to do was telephone Baker and promise him he’d be back at the office tomorrow. But why bother? He would never go back now.
Eleven forty-five. Where the fuck was she? For better or for worse. In sickness and in health. He swallowed an aspirin. He wondered who would take over his desk in the corner by the window. It had been his only home for twenty years. Jesus! What had he left in the drawer? A bottle of Old Smuggler, a tube of glue, his sewing kit and razor, pens and pencils. Twenty years!
‘Yeah,’ he said aloud.
She arrived at noon, wearing a red wig. She bought a ticket to Savannah.
What kept you so long? We should have been out of here hours ago!
Do you think Rex is dead?
I don’t know. Probably.
If he is, how long will it be before the bank knows about it?
What bank?
His bank, stupid!
A couple of days. They’ll notify his family first. Why? You’re worried about the check?
Yes. How’s your arm?
Petrified. Listen, you’re not going to try to cash that fucking check, are you, Joanna?
Of course I am.
He dropped into a rear seat and fell sound asleep. He walked for hours along the school corridor, looking for the classrooms. But there were no doors, just walls. He pounded on them with his left fist until his arm dropped off. Then, in a dim alcove in the back of the building, he found a bulletin board. There was a message from Maggie pinned to it, scribbled on a piece of wrinkled brown wrapping paper.