by Marc Behm
‘No. Somewhere else. Have you ever been –?’ She sipped her drink, frowning. ‘Have you ever been to Florida?’
‘Yeah. A couple of times.’
She shrugged. ‘Everybody looks familiar. This is very good.’ She took another sip. ‘Have you ever been to LA?’
‘No.’
‘What are you doing in Trenton?’
‘Just driving through. And you?’
‘I was born here.’ She got up. ‘I’m filthy. Could I use your shower?’
‘Go ahead.’
She carried her glass into the bathroom. The .45 was there, in its holster, hanging on the back of the door.
He opened her purse. It contained her glasses, a dirty handkerchief, a felt pen, her battered Hamlet paperback, and several wrapped cubes of sugar marked The Hessian Barracks.
She leaned out of the bathroom, nude. ‘By the way, my name is Rita Holden.’
‘Glad to know you, Rita.’ He pushed the purse behind him.
‘Who are you?’
‘Me? Oh – nobody in particular. I’m an accountant.’
‘Can I have another?’ She handed him her empty pony.
He took the bottle from the table, walked over to her. She covered her breasts coyly.
‘You don’t want to talk about yourself?’
‘Not really.’ He poured her a double shot.
‘What about me? Shall I tell you the story of my life?’
‘Certainly.’
He sat down on the bed again. They would be safe here for a little while. And if she drove all night she could lose them by tomorrow. They’d close in on her again sooner or later, but she could have weeks – months – maybe even a year of reprieve.
She turned on the shower. ‘My father was a famous shoplifter,’ she called. ‘Interpol and Scotland Yard and the FBI chased him for years and years. But they could never catch him. He was too cunning. Then one night … Can you hear me?’
‘Yes.’ He put his face in his hands. Rita. Where had he heard that name before?
‘Then one Christmas he dropped dead in a department store, his pockets filled with stolen jewelry. That’s how they caught him. Finally. But it was too late. He just died. It was Christmas. He had the last word. “Merry Christmas,” he said. And he passed away, cheating them of their punishment.’
Christmas Eve, yes. Saint Rita! In that church in Baltimore. O lovely saint, he prayed, let her kill me and be at peace for a while!
‘That’s not true,’ she laughed. ‘He was a doctor. A well-known gynecologist. He was struck by lightning one night while delivering a baby in a stable in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.’ She laughed again, turned off the shower and began whistling ‘La Paloma.’
He opened the attaché case, took out the money, counted the fifties: one, two, three, four, five six … Would she stay naked and continue to play this sad game with him? Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen … If he only knew where Maggie was, he’d give her a thousand dollars, too. It must be pleasant to be able to do that, he thought … give your daughter presents and money …
She came out of the bathroom. She was dressed, holding the .45. ‘Look what I found,’ she said.
‘Be careful.’ He got to his feet. ‘It’s loaded.’ He put the bills back into the attaché case. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not a mobster or anything like that. I have a permit for it. I usually carry a lot of money around with me.’
‘How much do you have there?’
‘Quite a bit.’
She shot him, twice. He spun back across the room, slamming into the bureau, then to the floor.
She threw the gun aside, pulled on her raincoat. She picked up the attaché case and the Porsche’s keys and ran outside.
He heard her drive away. Hallelujah!
He pulled himself up and leaned against the table. She’d forgotten her purse. And her glasses. He took them, closed his valise, corked the bottle of Martell, picked up the .45, carried everything out to the yard and threw them into the Chevette.
He drove out to the Turnpike and followed her.
Off and away!
He hoped she didn’t intend to go back to Yard Avenue. They would be watching the rooming house.
She didn’t. She drove though Mercerville, passing the Mercer County Home for Girls. She probably didn’t even see it. What could she see without her glasses? Avalanches of light, a blizzard of colors. She was going too fast.
She soared through Hightstown, then Princeton. Now she was in a long dark tunnel of trees on the bank of a river. Where was she going? Was she wearing her belt? A truck rolled out of a driveway in front of her. It swerved wildly to avoid the Porsche, its brakes squeaking. It banged into a parapet. Baskets tumbled to the road. The Eye passed, driving through a million bouncing apples.
She swooped into Pennington, missed a turn in the street, and cut across the corner of a lawn, smashing over a swing and demolishing a garden table. A crowd of people on the house’s front porch came shrieking toward her. She sledded along a pavement to the street, sidewiping a parked car.
She drove through the town like a hurricane, up one avenue and down another, looking for an exit. Then she burst out into the Ewing road, just missing a passing taxi. Their two fenders touched and grated.
Come on, Joanna, stop it!
She veered suddenly and skidded into a siding. She hit the brakes, sailed into a plowed field. She backed quickly out to the highway, slamming against a post.
Don’t panic! Park somewhere and wait until it’s daylight!
At the next intersection she scraped a roadsign. She zoomed through Ewing at eighty miles per hour. She braked again for no visible reason and hurtled into a pile of cans stacked on a curb, sending them clanging all over the roadway.
Why are you going so fucking fast?
She roared through Mercerville again, repassed the girls’ home. She’d fled in an immense circle and now was back on the Hightstown road.
It began to rain.
Just keep moving, Flatfeet always said, and they’ll never catch you.
Well, they’d certainly kept moving. God Almighty, how they had moved! It had been a long, long travelogue, indeed!
And they’d never been caught.
But it was all over now. This was their last road. He knew that the instant he saw her wheels lock.
The Porsche slid sideways into a fence, pulverized it, and flew into a billboard.
No more motels. No more cars. No more money. No more airports.
He waited for the flames.
No more wigs. No more pears. No more horoscopes.
He stopped, opened the door, jumped out to the grass. No flames. The horn was blaring like a trumpet, but it wasn’t burning. He raced through the breached fence, fell down a slope, jumped around the billboard. It wasn’t burning.
No more cognac. No more Gitanes. No more sharks and rattlesnakes.
She was hanging out the window, upside down, the rain slashing her face.
He took her by the shoulders, pulled her to the ground, lifted her, carried her up the slope. It still wasn’t burning. He stumbled across the highway, laid her out on a knoll of weeds.
He remembered her in her bookstore on Hope Street. He remembered her standing with her hands on her hips in New York and Chicago and Nashville.
Her nose was broken. Her ears were bleeding.
He remembered her skiing in Sun Valley and swimming in the Mississippi at dawn.
Her eyes opened, and she smiled at him. ‘Yes, I know you,’ she said. ‘You were in the park … you had a camera … you took my picture …’
And the Porsche exploded, throwing sunflowers of fire over their heads.
He looked across the road at the billboard and finally solved Crossword Puzzle Number Seven
DRINK PILSEN – THE CZECHOSLOVAKIAN BEER!
The flames whipped it, swallowing all the letters except OSLO, a capital in Czechoslovakia.
19
Shakespeare and The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire an
d most of the thick new books tired his eyes. But he had no trouble at all reading Zane Grey, Max Brand, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Sax Rohmer, Rex Stout, Erie Stanley Gardner, or Ellery Queen. He went through everything they ever wrote.
But he spent most of his time building model airplanes. His specialty was World War II fighters. He had whole squadrons of Stukas, Thunderbolts, ME 109s, FW 190s, Spitfires, Mustangs, and Zeros lined up on shelves all over the cottage.
In the mornings he’d go for walks in the hills or drive to Fresno to do his shopping.
The cottage was only a few miles from the San Joaquin River and in the afternoons he would go to the cemetery to visit Joanna.
Her real name was engraved on her headstone.
Joanna Eris
with the dates of her birth and death. Her epitaph was
Rest, perturbed spirit.
That had been one of the many passages underlined in her paperback Hamlet. He’d chosen it at random.
He would sit beside her grave for hours, chatting with her, sharing their memories, telling her stories.
When are you coming to bed? she would ask. And they would both laugh. This was their daily joke. It referred to the nearby burial plot he’d bought for himself. It was all ready for him.
At sunset he would go home.
He’d watch television in the evening, then read or work on his planes until midnight, then either lie on his cot or sit in his armchair and doze until dawn.
After her accident, when he’d had her body flown to California, the FBI pulled him in for questioning several times.
They wanted to know who and what he was and why he was so interested in the ‘subject’ Rita Holden, AKA Nita Iqutos, AKA Charlotte Vincent, AKA Dorothea Bishop, etc., etc., née Joanna Eris.
He’d told them vaguely about his involvement in the Paul Hugo case when he was working for Watchmen, Inc. (He’d felt that this was somehow fitting, ending her story as it began, with Paul Hugo. It more or less closed the circle.) He hadn’t given them any details. He’d merely stated that during the course of a routine inquiry – years ago! – he’d encountered the ‘subject’ in Chicago … or had it been San Francisco? or LA? Anyway, he’d met her again in Trenton when she was working as a waitress in The Hessian Barracks. He’d invited her out to dinner. They’d had a few drinks together, then she’d stolen his Porsche. He’d claimed her body because he wanted her to have ‘a Christian burial.’
They’d only half-believed him.
They’d put him in a lineup and brought in Duke, Abdel Idfa, and Martine to see if they could identify him. Duke and Abdel hadn’t the faintest idea who he was, and Martine had played dumb.
Later she and the Eye had had a few seconds alone together in the outer office. They hadn’t spoken. They’d both been afraid of bugs, so they just stood there staring at each other gravely. Then the Feds had called her into the other room, and before leaving she’d winked at him.
He laughed, remembering it. A wink was as good as a nod!
Finally, after the third or fourth interrogation, he’d told them all to go fuck themselves. They hadn’t retaliated.
And he’d gone to Fresno and rented his cottage – his ‘antechamber’ as Joanna called it. Hurry up! she kept saying. It’s cold in here alone!
His neighbors thought he was a widower. The kids called him Pop. His landlady, a swinging young matron who lived in Reedly, adored him. ‘Did you see what he’s done to the hovel!’ she would rave to her friends. ‘The roof and the windows and the porch? It looks brand new! Why, even the John works! If he wasn’t such an old dear I’d kick his ass out of there and sell the place for eighty thousand dollars!’
And time passed. Midnight, dawn, the morning, the afternoon, and twilight.
Once every five or six months he’d clean his .45 and drive to Oakland or San Mateo and hold up somebody for a few hundred dollars. This kept him in spending money and paid his rent. Only occasionally would he ask himself, What the fuck am I doing? The answer was always the same: Waiting.
Every so often he’d spend an evening with Father Anthony, the local priest. They’d drink beer and play gin and talk about football and God.
‘The Oakland Raiders, that was the team! Remember Cozie? And remember Ken Huff of the Colts?’
‘Mike Fanning was probably the best.’
‘Fanning couldn’t come anywhere near Cozie or Ken Huff. But my all-time favorite was Bartkowski!’
‘He played with the Eagles, didn’t he?’
‘What are you saying? The Eagles! He was with the Falcons … uhh … was that little girl down in the cemetery baptized.’
‘No, Father.’
‘And if I – uhh – read the names on the stones correctly, she was born out of wedlock?’
‘Yes, Father.’
‘Well – uhh – of course Fanning was great too. The last time I saw the Rams play was in seventy-five. Live, I mean. Against the Forty-niners …’
‘What does God see, Father, when he looks at us?’
The question didn’t take the priest aback. He was a wise old man who had served in many parishes, and nothing surprised him. ‘If I knew that, pal,’ he laughed, ‘I’d be God myself. Whatsoever he beholdeth is for his eyes only.’
On the last night of his life the Eye dreamed of the corridor. He found the door, and it was unlocked. He opened it and stepped into the photograph.
And there he was!
The fifteen lovely faces turned to him, alive and miraculous and startled.
He stood before them, absolutely certain that he was awake and that everything else, the whole long, long saga of his longing, had been a dream.
Maggie? he asked.
But he died before his lost daughter could answer him. And they buried him beneath the oak trees beside his inviolate bride.
Also published by Dover Publications
Keep reading for an extract from ...
‘A terrific American novelist … Afraid to Death is a fascinating mirror image to The Eye of the Beholder’
Maxim Jablowski, Guardian
1
He never knew when she was coming, that’s why he had to pay close attention to all the omens. Otherwise she would take him by surprise.
This morning, for instance, in Indianapolis.
He was playing cards all night with Maxie Hearn and two guys who made TV commercials. They were in Maxie’s penthouse on top of a building on English Avenue. He won twenty-six thousand dollars.
The sun was rising when he showed them his last hand. A king, two aces and two eights.
‘Hey!’ Maxie said. ‘Bad news!’
‘What?’
‘A pair of eights and a pair of aces. You know what that means?’
‘No.’
‘They call it a deadman’s hand.’
That was all the warning he needed. He got out of there. Fast.
He got off the elevator on the third floor and went down the service stairs to the back exit. He was trembling, sweaty, his lips were chalky, there were black dots swirling all over the walls. The old familiar symptoms of pure funk.
He cut through an alley, hid behind a tree.
She was there!
Sitting on a bench on English Avenue, watching the apartment entranceway.
He ran back through the alley to Prospect Street.
He didn’t bother to go to his hotel. There was nothing there worth keeping. Christ! How many neckties had he left behind in how many hotel rooms in how many cities? How many books, cigars, jackets, extra pairs of shoes, toothbrushes …?
He had a getaway valise in a locker at the bus terminal. He took a Greyhound to Lebanon, another to Crawfordville, another to Lafayette.
Once, years and years ago, he’d written a song about his many narrow escapes.
Ho! ho! ho! ho!
Just go Joe go go go!
She’ll get you if you go too slow!
Not much of a song. Not much to ho! ho! about. But it was better than a requiem.
&
nbsp; It was raining in Lafayette.
That night he flew to San Francisco. She wasn’t on the plane, thank God!
2
Joe met her for the first time when he was eleven years old. On Greenwood Avenue.
That was the year they bought the big house by the lake. His father was a professor of Musicology at the University. He was writing a book on Brahms. Mom worked for Hillcrest Realtors. She drove a scarlet Ferrari 328 GTS.
Joe bought an old canoe for eighteen dollars. The guy at the boatyard said it was a genuine Seneca imitation. He’d paddle it across the lake every morning to Dire Point and leave it there under the wharf of one of the summer cottages. Then he’d walk to school, past the chapel and the country club and along Greenwood Avenue to Washington Boulevard.
This morning she was in the middle of the block, standing under a tree beside a mailbox. She was blond, wearing a black raincoat, black boots and a black beret.
She smiled at him. They were all alone on the long, green, sunny avenue, just the two of them.
She had purple eyes.
‘Good morning,’ she said in a voice from Somewhere Else. Maybe South America. Or Asia. Or Canada.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Joe Egan.’
‘You’re Professor Egan’s son?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
Enormous eyes! He could see himself reflected in the purple.
‘I heard him conduct Brahms’ Ein Deutsches Requiem last year at Yale. It was magnificent.’
‘I know all the words by heart.’
‘You do? All of them? Do you speak German?’
‘Nope. I learnt the phonetics.’
‘Denn dies Fleisch est ist wie Cras,’ she sang softly, ‘und alle herrlichkeit wie des Grases Blumen.’
‘Das Gras is verdorret,’ he sang, ‘und die blume abgefallen.’
‘Do you know what it means?’
‘Nope.’
‘“Behold, all flesh is as grass … and lo the grass withers and the flower decays.”’ She stared at him, drowning him in her eyes. Eyes like the lake, like the sky in the lake. ‘Where does Mr. Morgan live, Joe?’ Like the sun, deep deep in the lake.
‘Over there,’ he pointed to Morgan’s house. ‘He’s sick.’