She sat in the airport cocktail lounge, naked under her mink, rereading Hamlet and drinking a Gaston de Lagrange. With a red felt pen she underlined
There’s a divinity that
shapes our ends …
She was alone, except for a man sitting at a corner table.
‘What time is it?’ he asked. She didn’t bother to answer. ‘What time is it, please?’
There was a clock on the wall just above them. She pointed to it.
‘I beg your pardon, could you tell me the time?’
‘Ten forty.’
‘Thank you.’
A few minutes later he knocked over his drink. A waiter came across the room and wiped up the mess.
‘Sorry,’ the man said.
‘That’s okay. Another one?’
‘Yes, please.’
She stared at him, intrigued. He was in his fifties, lean, gray, calm. His hand groped around him. She looked down. Lying on the floor beneath his chair was a cane. She got to her feet, went to him, picked it up, placed it in his hand.
‘Thank you.’
She went back to her table, sat down. He pulled out a billfold, extracted a ten, fingered it sightlessly. The waiter brought him another drink.
‘I’ll pay now.’
‘Yessir. Five sixty.’ He took the ten. ‘This is a five, sir.’
‘Is it? My apologies.’ He fumbled in the billfold for more money. ‘I thought it was a ten.’
She glared at the waiter, outraged. ‘It is a ten, you goddamned fink!’
He glared back at her. ‘Oh, yeah, so it is. My mistake.’ He walked off, boiling. The man chuckled.
‘Waiters are always pulling that on me,’ he said. ‘Actually, I can tell the difference between a ten and a five.’
‘How?’ she asked.
‘I fold them differently.’
‘Very clever.’
‘Peace be with you,’ he toasted.
‘Amen,’ she said. They drank together.
‘What are you reading?’
‘How do you know I’m reading?’
‘I can hear you turning the pages.’
‘Hamlet.’
‘I have it on records,’ he said. ‘Burton, Barrymore, Gielgud, Evans, Leslie Howard – everybody. A dozen albums.’
‘I saw it with Richard Burton.’
‘I’ve never seen it,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘Why are you reading Hamlet?’
‘There’s a line in it that fascinates me,’ she laughed. ‘It’s like listening to your favorite song over and over again. It always takes you by surprise.’
‘What line?’ he asked.
She turned the pages back to Act Two, Scene Two and read, ‘“For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak with most miraculous organ.”’
The LA flight was announced.
‘That’s me,’ he said.
‘Me too. Can I give you a hand?’
‘I’d appreciate it. My name is Ralph Forbes.’
‘Charlotte Vincent.’
The waiter watched them leave the lounge together. He turned to the barman. ‘Real cool,’ he grumbled. ‘She’ll probably take him for everything he’s got.’
The Eye thought exactly the same thing.
As they walked through the ramp she glanced around at the other passengers.
‘Looking for somebody?’ Forbes asked.
‘I thought maybe – a friend of mine might be here to see me off.’
He touched her wrist. ‘Easy,’ he whispered.
She looked at him, startled. ‘What?’
‘Your pulse,’ he said. ‘Beating much too fast. Beware of hypertension.’
‘I hate flying.’
‘I’ll take care of you.’ He patted her arm. ‘Nothing can happen to you when you’re with me.’
She stared at him, dumbfounded.
They sat in the quietly humming serenity of the first-class cabin, forty thousand feet over Pennsylvania.
She watched his profile out of the corner of her eye. He had a hooked nose and a chin like a stubborn C. There were shaving scars on his cheek.
He unzipped a flight bag and produced a bag of candy. ‘Have one of these. They’re supposed to calm the nerves.’
‘No thanks.’
‘Some gum, then?’ He took out a pack. ‘Or how about …’ He rummaged in the bag and lifted out a red box. ‘A strawberry and cream toffee? Made in England. Canard and Bowser, London.’
‘Come on, Ralph!’
‘What …?’
‘Chewing gum, candy!’ She laughed. ‘I hope you don’t think I’m a little girl. I mean … I’m not.’
‘I’m quite aware of that.’
‘Good. I was afraid you were going to offer me a comic book next.’
He unwrapped a toffee, ate it. ‘You’re about –’ He hesitated. ‘Twenty-five?’
‘Yes. About.’
‘And very big indeed. As tall as I am.’
‘What else am I?’
‘You’re wearing a fur coat.’ He touched her shoulder. ‘Aren’t you going to take it off? You’ll roast.’
‘No, I’m fine. Tell me more.’
‘You smoke foreign cigarettes.’
‘Gitanes.’ She opened the gold case, offered him one. He accepted it with deft fingers. She lit it for him.
‘You’ve been in a swimming pool recently,’ he said.
‘How did you know that?’
‘Your hair.’ He sniffed. ‘Chlorine. It’s even stronger than the cognac you’ve been drinking.’
She took a piece of gum, unwrapped it, chewed it.
‘I hope you’re not offended, Charlotte …’
‘No, no.’
‘You are.’
‘Of course not.’
‘I’m impossible!’ His hands moved clumsily, upsetting the flight bag, spilling candy and gum. ‘Imagine telling a woman her breath stinks!’
She gathered up the bags and packages, put them back into the bag. Lying on her lap were five one-hundred-dollar bills, held together with a paper clip.
‘It’s my beak,’ he said, pinching his hooked nose. ‘It leads me on. I can smell impending rain, earthquakes, hurricanes, forest fires, changes of temperature … Once, when I was a little boy, down in Tijuana, I – it – saved my mother’s life. We were picnicking out in the woods and I smelled a snake in the bushes. A grisly odor! Primeval! Awful!’
‘How …?’ she began to ask, then hesitated.
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Please!’ He put his hand on her arm.
‘How long have you been like this?’
‘Always.’
The plane lurched wildly. Someone in a nearby seat yelped.
He squeezed her arm. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he whispered.
‘I’m not afraid,’ she said, and put the money into his flight bag.
The Eye was sitting in an aft seat, finishing all the crosswords in his paperback. All except Number Seven. Fuck it. He put it away and opened a morning paper. The headline was impressive, but the facts were scanty. POLICEMAN SHOT IN HOTEL SUITE. Irwin Sheen. Forty-six years old. Vernon Boulevard, Queens. Divorced wife. Two sons, eighteen and twenty-one. His own gun. Daphne Henry. Twenty-some years old. Iola, Kansas. Present whereabouts unknown. Sought for questioning.
There was no reference to the unknown guest in the room next to hers who disappeared at the same time she did, but he knew he was being ‘sought for questioning’ too. The cops would never let a coincidence like that pass without an investigation. Fuck it. He’d registered at the Park Lane under an assumed name. He’d used another name when he bought his plane ticket. Daphne Henry never really existed. Neither did Erica Leigh. Neither did he.
He rang the stewardess and ordered a cognac.
Fuck it.
They came out of the airport building and stood in the warm sunshine. Forbes touched her.
‘You’re still wearing your mink? Take it off, for God’s sake!’
‘I can’t.’ She smiled.
‘Why not?’
A uniformed chauffeur walked up to them.
‘Good morning, Mr. Forbes.’
‘Is that you, Jake?’
‘Yes, sir. Sorry I’m late.’
‘That’s quite all right. I’m in good hands. Jake, this is Miss Vincent. We’re dropping her off at her hotel.’
‘Yes, sir.’
The Eye watched them drive away in a Bentley.
She stayed for three weeks at the Beverly Wilshire. She bought a new wardrobe and a car. An MG. She had lunch with Ralph Forbes almost every day. They went out together every night.
He lived in a chateau on Benedict Canyon. His grandfather had come to California in the 1900s and had made a fortune in orange grove real estate. There was a street named after him in downtown LA. His son had married a girl with oil money. Ralph had a factory in San Bernadino – Forbes Sportswear, Inc. There was a Forbes Cosmetics in Burbank, owned by his sister, Joan. There was a Forbes Gallery on Sunset, operated by his brother Ted. Another brother, Basil, was a TV vice-president. Their uncle was a DA.
Charlotte Vincent met them all. She was really coming out in the open now, but very demurely. Nonetheless, the Eye was worried. If she planned to follow her usual procedure, she wouldn’t get far this time.
In October she rented a small house on Oak Drive. She furnished it sparsely, like an ascetic’s temple, room by room – a few chairs, two paintings, some rugs, a bed, a table with benches, a settee, a rocking chair. Ralph gave her a three-hundred-dollar Dual 1249, and she began buying records. Bach, Verdi, Ravel, Shakespeare, Chopin. Ted Forbes was responsible for the paintings – a Thomas Eakins and a William Parker. Joan Forbes gave her a case of champagne. One evening they all had dinner there together – Ralph, Joan, Ted, Basil, and Charlotte. Charlotte cooked a navarin aux navets nouveaux and served a tarte au citron meringuée for dessert. Afterwards they went to a movie in Hollywood. Ralph and the chauffeur, Jake, brought Charlotte home at midnight and left her at the door. She sat up all night in the living room, smoking Gitanes.
There was nowhere in the neighborhood where the Eye could hide, so he moved into a rooming house on La Cienega, two blocks away. He had a car now, too, but since he couldn’t drive up and down her street a dozen times a day without attracting attention, he became a nanny.
He bought a wig. And a dress, a pair of pumps, a cape, and a bonnet. And he trudged back and forth along Oak Lane and Oak Drive every morning and afternoon, pushing a baby carriage containing a make-believe infant past her house.
At first he felt grotesque, like an ungainly transvestite. But there were several other nursemaids meandering through the streets with strollers, and he looked no more outlandish than they did. He blended into their procession, being careful never to approach any of them too closely.
Then faraway memories stirred. He began to imagine he was a father again, that the empty bundle in the buggy was little Maggie. She was four months old, wrapped in bright wool, unsmiling, staring at him with wide, solemn, azure eyes. Long-forgotten images and aromas came back to him … his tiny, almost inexistent daughter in her crib, in her bath, in lamplight, in darkness … her baptism, her tantrums, her bottles and powders and ointments, her fevers, her sleep, her wakings … It had passed so quickly, all that! He had hardly known her. There really hadn’t been time enough for remembrances.
Then one day she was gone.
But now she had returned. He’d found her again, as he always knew he would – in Beverly Hills of all places! She grew older … six months, ten months, fifteen months … her wrinkled red newborn rawness vanished, she became smooth and shining, golden and solar. She began repeating the words he taught her: tree … street … hand … daddy … sky …
He bought her a rattle and a rag doll in a shop on Wilshire.
He knew he was gone fucking nutty, but he didn’t care. His happiness was too acute; it anesthetized everything else.
He made a pact with her, a covenant that was the crowning point of all this madness. He asked her to promise him she would haunt him when she died – as often as she liked, but at least just once, so he would know she was dead and could stop searching for her. She told him she would. They even picked a spot for the encounter – under an oak tree somewhere, at twilight, just before the lonely nighttime came.
And all the while he watched Charlotte. He saw her washing her car, opening and closing blinds, returning to the house carrying shopping bags, walking through her rooms, standing in the yard with her hands on her hips.
At night he discarded his disguise and crouched behind her garage, peering through her windows.
One night Forbes visited her and didn’t go home.
They sat on the settee, watching TV together until eleven o’clock, then she led him into her bedroom.
The Eye slept in his car and dreamed of the corridor lined with doors. In one of the classrooms a choir of children’s voices sang a carol. He moved to a door and listened. He was afraid to open it, because he knew it would only lead him out of the school into other dreams. He rapped on it.
Maggie! he wailed. But maybe she didn’t like to be called Maggie. Children often resented their names. Margaret! he shouted. No, this would never do! He was making too much noise. Someone would come and throw him out. He walked on, passing through an open gate. Now he was in a graveyard filled with goats. An old shepherd in a ragged confederate uniform sat on a tombstone, watching him.
You never did turn in that Minolta XK, he said. Baker’s going to be tear-assed if he loses one of his cameras.
Is there a school around here anywhere? the Eye asked.
Yes, there is. Them children singing … can you hear them?
He woke at dawn and decided to break into the house.
In a used car lot in Glendale he found a battered old van. Painted on its sides were green triangles framing the white Ws of Wentworth Household Maintenance. The dealer let him rent it for the day for fifty dollars.
At three o’clock he drove it along OK Drive and turned boldly into her driveway. He parked before the garage, jumped out from behind the wheel carrying a tool kit. He was wearing khaki overalls and a cap. He walked to the back door of the house. It took him four minutes to spring the lock. He entered the kitchen.
He was sweating.
He stood for a moment by the sink until the pounding in his chest subsided. He turned on the tap, splashed water on his face. She was all around him, outraged, wrathful, screeching at him silently, her flailing arms beating him, fanning his ears like bat wings.
The kitchen was bare and spotless. A basket of pears sat on the counter of the breakfast gallery. Spread open beside it was a newspaper, the Capricorn section of the horoscope column encircled in crayon. He read it:
… you Dec. 22–Jan. 20
goat-people share birthdays
with Katy Jurado (1924),
Cary Grant (1904), Danny
Kaye (1913), Tippi Hedren
(1935), Guy Madison (1922),
Desi Arnaz Jr (1953), Dorothy
Provine (1937), Paul Scofield (1922),
Linda Blair (1959), Ann Sothern (1911) …
He went into the living room and stood beside the rocking chair. He listened. She had either accepted his presence or had left to summon a flock of avenging Erinyes to drive him out. For the moment, though, there wasn’t a sound.
He set the tool kit on the floor and glanced around. Five bottles of champagne stood on a shelf like a row of grenadiers. A book was lying on the settee – The Mind of Proust by F.C. Green. There was a Paris-Match on the table, an Elle on a bench. A pear sat by the telephone. A Parker on one wall, an Eakins on another. A pack of Gitanes on the windowsill.
He went into the bedroom.
Something tapped on the door as he opened it. He stopped, frozen. He advanced slowly. One of Ralph’s canes was hanging on the knob.
The blinds were drawn. The air was heavy with scent. A zodiacal chart was tacked to the wall: Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, Sagittarius, Scorpio …
A pipe sat in an ashtray on the bedside table. Did the sonofabitch smoke in bed? Did he lie there smoking his fucking pipe? A smoldering jealousy stabbed him. The prick! The blind cocksucker! Smoking his motherfucking pipe, stretched out between the clean cool sheets, his scrawny, blotchy carcass oozing and rumbling …
He leaned against the wall, sputtering with anger. Hold it! Hold it! Fuck all! He wiped his face with his sleeve and went into the bathroom. Christalmighty! Wow!
He dropped to his knees and vomited in the toilet. Christ! Jesus! Oooooh! Man! He filled the bowl with thick, sickening offal. Ugh! He pulled himself up and flushed away the mess. Balls! He plugged the sink, turned on the tap, plunged his face in the water, opened his mouth. His knees almost gave way beneath him. Goddamn! He pulled out the plug! Shit! He washed his hands, wiped the smears from the metal. There were two toothbrushes in a glass on the shelf.
Holy Moses! This hadn’t happened to him since – when was it? Oh, yeah – when his wife and Maggie left. Then again when he’d gotten that fucking photo in the mail…
He went back past the bed and out into the living room, his legs jerking.
Well, anyway, if they were living together, she couldn’t very well be wearing gloves in the house. Right? His mouth tasted like Sitting Bull’s jockstrap! He ate a pear. Then he opened the tool kit, took out a bottle of powder, a brush, a spool of adhesive cellophane, several blank white cards.
He powdered the door of the refrigerator, the surface of the Dual, the arms of the rocking chair, the telephone, several glasses, a drawer, the frame of the Parker. There were latents everywhere, clean and neat. Were they his or hers though? Or someone else’s?
Then he found it. Under the Match on a corner of the tabletop was a perfect left handprint – three fingers and a thumb, but no index. He taped the digits, transferred each to a separate card.
He dusted everything with a chamois rag, repacked the kit. He left, locking the kitchen door behind him. He climbed into the van and backed down the driveway to the street. It was three twenty-nine. He’d been inside the house exactly eighteen minutes.
The West Coast branch of Watchmen, Inc. was in a new high-rise on Central Avenue. The girl in charge of records was an ex-policewoman named Gomez. He was amazed that she remembered him. Not only that, but she seemed genuinely pleased to see him.
‘Well, well! When did you get in, stranger?’
‘Last night. How are you, Miss Gomez?’
‘Up and down, like the stock market. Hey! We had an all-points telex on you last month, pal. Baker is looking for you like wild.’
‘He probably just wants to wish me a happy New Year.’
‘So do I.’
‘The same to you.’ He gave her the fingerprint cards. ‘Can you drop these through the slot for me, Miss Gomez?’
‘Sure thing.’
‘How long will it take?’
‘A couple of hours.’
He went back to his room at the Del Rio and sat staring out the window. Balls! He’d have to do something about Baker. He couldn’t just stay out of the office forever without some goddamned explanation. He called him up.
‘You shithead! Where the fuck are you?’
‘In Los Angeles. At the airport.’
‘Listen –’
‘Hello?’
‘Hello! Listen, you schmuck –’
‘Hello! I can’t hear you!’
‘Paul Hugo!!! What about Paul Hugo?’
‘He changed his name. He calls himself Gregory Finch now. He spent a week in Montreal, two weeks in Ottawa, a week in Seattle and a month in Butte, Montana. He’s in LA now, catching a plane for Rome. Me, too.’
‘Rome?’
‘Hello?’
‘What’s going on? Rome? Look, Goddamn it to hell, I just can’t stall his parents any longer! They want to turn the whole thing over to the FBI! Another thing! Do you still have that Minolta XK you checked out? Hello!’
‘They’re calling my flight! See you!’
He hung up.
He was back in Miss Gomez’s office at six.
‘She’s got a record!’ she announced happily. Records people were always delighted to unearth felonies. ‘New York State.’
‘Does she?’ He was shaking like a leaf. He hid his hands behind his back. ‘Is she wanted for anything, Miss Gomez?’
‘Nope. She pulled her time.’ She opened a folder, pulled out a Watchmen rap sheet. He took it, snatching it away from her quickly to cover his trembling.
He tried to read it. It was a blur.
‘We’re closing,’ she said. ‘Come on, I’ll buy you a drink.’
‘I’d like that.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘But some other time. I have to be in – in – I’m meeting somebody in five minutes.’
He folded the sheet and hurried out to the elevators, feeling like Dolly Madison fleeing from the burning White House clutching the Declaration of Independence. Jesus! He had to take a leak! She had a record. No wonder she wore gloves. What would Baker do now? What could he do? Nothing! Of course she wore gloves. She pulled time. That meant there was a mug shot of her on file, and if they identified her they could circulate it. Hold it, though! There were pictures of Josephine Brunswick in existence, too. What about those photographers at the wedding when she married Dr. Brice? Those shots could be put into circulation. If they found Brice’s body. Christ! It would take only one little push to bring the whole fucking house of cards tumbling down on her head. Capricorns must be fanatical gamblers.
Two women on the elevator edged away from him, incommoded by his fidgeting. Fuck them. And fuck Baker, too. Wow! He had to take a monumental leak! It was abominable!
Down in the lobby he found a John. Then he went outside and sat on a bench on Central Avenue. No, hold it, Gomez might find him here. He got into his car and drove all the way to the Hollywood Bowl.
He parked in a remote slope, still trembling. He sat there a moment, tapping his fingers on the windshield. Then he read the rap sheet, holding his thumb over the first line, covering her name.
DATE OF BIRTH December 24, 1952
PLACE OF BIRTH Trenton, N.J.
ADDRESS REFERENCES 1952–63, 127 Tyler Street, Trenton, N.J. 1963–70, Mercer County Home for Girls, Mercerville, N.J. 1970–71 Incarceration. 1971–present X PLACE OF CONVICTION White Plains, N.Y. 1970 CHARGE & SENTENCE Automobile robbery 13 months, Women’s Detention Farm, Norwich, N.Y. Aug 70–May 71
Motors howled. A dozen boys and girls on bikes came bouncing along the road. They wore goggles, football helmets, and leather jackets blazoned with red stars. They passed in a typhoon of dust and noise.
The Eye lifted his thumb and read her real name.
JOANNA ERIS.