It was a bad day, the start of September. Everyone in the Agency walked on eggshells, wore long faces, traded glances, rolled their eyes. Every time the phone rang at the front desk, voices fell silent in corridors and alcoves. Every time the door opened, anyone nearby faltered in his tracks.
Weiss had come in early, rumbled down the hall like some great brooding beast. Shut himself into his office, and stayed there, quiet as a stone. No one went near him for a long time. Everyone who passed looked at his door as if he might come raging out of it, or as if he could be seen through it mulling his troubles, fist to chin.
We imagined Bishop was the worst of it for him. The personal betrayal and so on. Jaffe & Jaffe, the lawyers upstairs, were telling anyone who’d listen that Bishop had done nothing wrong. That he hadn’t known about Honey’s involvement in the market killings. That he was just trying to do his job. He had gone to the clubhouse to recover the money for the police, they said, unaware that Cobra, patched up and morphined and powered by an almost supernatural thirst for revenge, was lying in wait for him.
The arguments had kept Bishop out of jail so far, had even kept any criminal charges at bay. But prosecutors in three counties were making ugly noises—murder, accessory to murder, conspiracy to commit burglary, grand theft, the works. And Ketchum was raging—raging—swearing in that guttural rasp of his that he would take Bishop down, so help him, that he would save Weiss from whatever mental defect it was that had caused him to hitch his wagon to such a psychopathic star.
As for Weiss, no one was sure what he believed or how he felt about it. But we all knew that Bishop was his personal reclamation project, his prodigal, proxy son. He was so sharp about these things that he must have at least suspected that the man had simply gone after the money for himself—gone after the money and the girl, and Weiss and his Agency be damned. So there was that on his mind, in his heart.
Then there was Beverly Graham—Honey. Behind bars in San Mateo, charged with murder, conspiracy to commit murder, felony murder, accessory to murder, and a whole bunch of other things, most of which ended in “murder.” Her father’s lawyers were laboring feverishly to get her sprung, but they were a hardworking crew and still found time to harrass the Agency with all sorts of threats and accusations. Apparently Philip Graham was not too happy about the fact that Weiss had set the police on the trail of his runaway baby. Plus his political career was over before it started, and that seemed to make him irritable, too. He was not, in short, the satisfied customer Weiss had been hoping for. Instead of the Agency thriving on his future business and the business of his wealthy friends, it had become a question of whether Weiss Investigations would survive his furious campaign to destroy it.
So it was a bad day.
Sometime around eleven, I finished sorting the mail and made my deliveries office to office. I left Weiss for last, but there was no way to avoid him forever. I knocked at his door meekly. Heard him grumble something. Opened the door a crack and peeked through.
He was in his chair, the phone to his ear. He was listening with sorrowful eyes. He gestured at me brusquely. I went in.
As I dropped the mail off on his desk, I caught a glimpse of a yellow legal pad on his blotter. One corner of the pad’s top page was covered with doodles. At the center of the doodles there was one word: Paradise. That was the name of the town that Julie Wyant’s phone call had come from. The last place he knew she’d been.
I turned to go—and as I did, I saw her image. It was that video he had of her—that ten-second loop—it was playing on his computer screen, over and over. I caught a sidelong glimpse of that angelic face of hers, that red-gold hair, that otherworldly expression as if she were beckoning you out of reality into a dream. Then I put my head down and hurried out.
A few moments after I left, Weiss set the phone down. He turned off the video of Julie Wyant. He sighed. It was Professor M. R. Brinks who had just called him. She had asked if she could hire him to do one more service for her. He’d agreed.
So, after lunch, he drove his Taurus out across the Bay Bridge again. It was a fine, bright afternoon, crisp and clear. The professor was waiting for him in front of her stucco cottage. She was standing very straight at the end of the flagstone path. Holding a little purse down in front of her, a small, ladylike purse, not her usual briefcase monstrosity. Other than that, she was in one of those mannish getups she favored. Another angular jacket, tweed this time, and jet-black slacks with dagger-sharp creases.
But as she slid into the front seat next to Weiss, the detective caught the scent of perfume on her. She’d never worn that before, not so he’d noticed, anyway.
Brinks smiled at him briefly, thinly, then quickly looked away, then just as quickly bowed her head so that her black hair fell forward, screening her reddening cheeks.
Weiss faced the windshield, made himself busy maneuvering the car from the curb into the street.
As they drove along, she stared out the window. “I feel like an idiot asking you to do this,” she said bitterly.
Weiss made a noise, a little puff of air. “Nah. Forget it.”
“I just somehow can’t bring myself to go alone,” she said. “And there’s no one else who knows. It’s nice of you to come out on such short notice.”
“Forget it. I’m telling you: It’s no problem.”
“You’re—” She seemed about to say more, but must’ve decided against it. They drove the rest of the way in silence.
The hospital wasn’t far, a gleaming box of white stone and shining glass near the border of Oakland. Weiss tried to take Brinks’s arm as they walked together across the parking lot. She stiffened, so he let her go, lumbered along beside her instead, his hands in his pants pockets. Dwarfed by his giant frame, she clopped over the asphalt in her thick heels, staring forward, clutching her purse in front of her like a squirrel with a nut. Her narrow, attractive features were set fast, lined. She looked nervous. She looked grim.
They found Arnold Freyberg alone in a room on the third floor. By now, he had shriveled nearly away. He was lying very still in bed, breathing on his own, but breathing hard. The sagging flesh seemed to have melted off him, and only a patina of translucent skin was left to cover his skeletal frame. His hands were lifted up to his chest as if to clutch the edge of his bedsheet, but the strength to clutch the sheet was gone; the hands lay limp. The eyes alone still lived—they were staring, motionless, but the fear in them made them live.
Weiss walked M.R. Brinks to the door. She signaled him with a touch of his elbow and he stayed there in the hall, on the threshold. She went into the room alone.
Weiss watched her move to Freyberg’s bed. There was a plastic chair nearby. She pulled it up to the bedside and sat down. She sat primly, her back straight, her knees clamped together, her purse held upright on her thighs. Her lips pressed to a thin line as she gazed down at the fading figure where he lay fighting for breath.
I will remake you into your body, he had written to her, Weiss remembered. Lips and nipples and clefts. You will have no hopes, no anxieties. No thoughts, no philosophy. Only flesh, only sensation.
“Arnold,” she said. Her voice was steady. “Arnold, it’s me, I’m here.”
Freyberg’s big eyes blinked in slow motion. Painfully, he drew in a rattling gasp. “Marianne?” he whispered.
He couldn’t turn to look at her, but with a tremulous effort he lifted his hand.
Professor Brinks swallowed hard. Carefully she set her purse down on the floor by her chair. Then she took Freyberg’s hand in both her own. She brought it to her lips. She bowed her head over it. She closed her eyes.
Weiss turned from the door and walked away.
He drove back alone. Down University Avenue, toward the bridge. Nearing the water, he stopped at a red light. He sat waiting there, thinking nothing, tapping his finger on the steering wheel. He gazed absently through the windshield. There was the sign for Interstate 80 just ahead.
The freeway ran in two directions, west over the bridge, back into the city, and up toward Richmond and San Rafael, where it met the 101 heading north. It was the 101 that went eventually to the town called Paradise.
Weiss gazed at the sign. Once again, he felt that chill of premonition on the back of his neck. He thought of the Shadowman, the killer who had sworn he would hunt Julie Wyant forever. His eyes went nervously to the rearview mirror.
He’ll be watching you now all the time, every second, she had told him. If you come to find me, he’ll follow you and he’ll find me first.
Weiss looked back at the freeway sign. West across the bridge. East and north to the 101, to Paradise.
The light turned green. Weiss started driving.