At the cemetery he stood in the back of the crowd behind a senator and a cluster of local politicians. Joanna remained in the background, too, on the rim of the family, unobtrusive and isolated, somberly dressed but not in flaunting mourning.
After the ceremony she drove home alone.
The Eye put on his nanny clothes and pushed the baby carriage past the house. She sat in the MG in the driveway, gazing at the garage doors. She climbed out listlessly and walked up the street toward Wilshire.
He followed her, the wheels of the carriage squeaking like crickets.
She crossed La Cienega, passed his rooming house. She bought a newspaper and stood on the corner of Gale reading her horoscope. He knew what the Capricorn column advised; he’d already read it.
This is the winter of
your discontent and all
the planets lower upon you.
A radical change of scene is recommended. Hail and farewell!
She walked all the way to the museum, then turned around and walked back. Then turned again, crossed Wilshire, and wandered up Hamilton to San Vicente. Then she came down La Cienega to Wilshire again and turned into Ledoux. She came through Oak Lane to the Drive and stopped. She stood with her hands on her hips, staring at the house. She climbed into the MG and backed out of the driveway.
The Eye ran to the Lane, breaking all baby-carriage speed records. His car was parked on the corner of Ledoux. Two real nursemaids watched in amazement as he folded the carriage and lifted it into the trunk. He sprang behind the wheel and started the motor. It was four o’clock. He was almost certain that she would go either to the bookstore or to her bank. He drove to Olympic Boulevard.
The MG was just ahead of him, speeding toward Santa Monica.
She went to the bank and emptied her safe-deposit box. Then she drove to the bookstore. It was closed for the day. She unlocked the front door and walked past the deluxe displays to her desk behind the novels. She sat down, lit a Gitane. The cash box was on the floor behind a potted plant. She picked it up, set it on her lap, dialed its combination, opened it.
The Eye pulled off his nanny cap, his dress, the bonnet, and his Mother Hubbard wig. He went into the Del Rio, packed his bag, paid his bill, and checked out.
Across the street, Joanna left The Librairie without bothering to lock the door behind her.
He wondered if he had time to get his things out of the La Cienega rooming house. But there was nothing of any value there, except a favorite pair of shoes. He decided to abandon them.
She carried two valises out of the house, put them into the MG. She climbed behind the wheel and drove away. She didn’t look back.
Hail and farewell!
She spent two months driving around and around southern California, staying at motels and resorts. San Diego, El Centro, Lakeside, San Bernardino, San Ysidro, Escondido, Oceanside, Elsinore, Redlands, back to San Bernardino, back to El Centro. Up and down, in and out.
She had her hair cut. Her skin was burned copper from sunbathing. She wore slacks and sweaters and old jackets. She drank three, sometimes four, cognacs a day. She read her horoscope every morning. She read and reread Hamlet and marked its pages with green and red and orange and yellow felt pens. One afternoon, in a bar in La Jolla, she played ‘La Paloma’ over and over again on the jukebox, seventeen times.
Then in March she drove back to LA, parked the MG, and flew to Las Vegas. She spent a month there as Miss Leonor Shelley.
She lost six thousand dollars shooting crap.
The syndicate soldier ants waved their antennae at her, but sensed some interdiction that made them leave her alone. Perhaps it was just an antique Italian foreboding of evil, a Tyrrhenian seashell echo-warning of carriveria. They watched her, surrounding her with a deep moat of misgiving, but they never tried to move in. The Eye prayed that she wouldn’t pull anything here. If she did, they would drive a stake through her heart and stuff her mouth with garlic. But as long as she behaved, her anonymity was impregnable and absolute.
He knew that they were watching him, too, and that they were perfectly aware of his and Miss Shelley’s strange affiliation. They didn’t try to explain it. They simply stood back and waited for both of them to move on.
The Eye enjoyed his experience. It was restful and safe. He didn’t have to follow her twenty-four hours a day now. A bartender or pitman would always know exactly where she was and tell him if he asked.
He relaxed and took a vacation. He ate regularly and put on some weight. He slept soundly and dreamlessly. He worked out in a gym, played handball, swam, and won eighteen hundred dollars at roulette. He began enjoying Gitanes. He bought a copy of Hamlet and memorized it. His favorite passage was:
Leave her to heaven
And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge
To prick and sting her.
He enjoyed the long nights best of all, though – the taste of the desert on his pillow and the deep slumber without corridors and nightmares. He dreamed of Maggie only in the daytime, taking her with him to the pool, lunching with her, having breakfast with her on the terrace, meeting her on stifling afternoons in the street, and escaping with her into a cool movie or an ice cream place. Then she would disappear, and his longing would rack him mercilessly until she came back. And she always came back – always – walking across an intersection, waving to him, appearing suddenly out of the crowd and taking him by the hand, calling his name softly in the sunlight.
They spent more than thirty days together, almost constantly. He bought her a ‘Nevada’ patch to sew on her sweater. He gave her coins to play the slots. When he realized that she was no longer a little girl but a young woman now, in her twenties – a woman indeed! – he tried to think of some fabulous gift he could offer her. A bracelet or a Lancia or a Saint Laurent dress or … but what the fuck did fathers give to daughters anyway, in homage and veneration? Finally, in the hotel jewelry shop, he had her zodiac sign engraved on a platinum disc and wore it around his neck for the rest of his life.
In April, when Joanna-Leonor’s dice table losses amounted to sixty-two hundred dollars, she flew back to LA.
There was a riot at the airport when the plane landed. A task force of men and women wearing gas masks invaded the tarmac, waving signs reading ABOLISH JETS! DANGER DON’T BREATHE! IT’S A GAS! SAVE OUR ENVIRONMENT! The cops counter-attacked. The Eye lost his hat in the brawl. A half-dozen people were thrown off a ramp and taken to the hospital in a fleet of ambulances. Joanna-Leonor was mashed against a wall; her dress was torn and there was blood on her arm. An airport doctor bandaged her.
She reclaimed the MG and drove north along the coast. She spent the night in Santa Maria and the following day swung inland. She drove through Paso Robles, Coalinga, Harford, and Selma. On the outskirts of Fresno she stopped at a wayside hospital clinic and had her bandage changed.
The Eye drove past the clinic, turned into a side road, stopped beside the fence of a golf course. He opened a Chicago Sun-Times he’d found on the plane and did the crossword puzzle.
That was the day the mockingbird sang – thank God! Otherwise he might have forgotten the entire incident. It began jeering at him from a nearby tree, ranting, like an insane flutist. A golfer walked up to the fence.
‘You can’t park here,’ he said pleasantly. ‘This is private property.’
The Eye apologized. ‘I’ve been driving all day. I wanted to take a half-hour break.’
‘Well, go ahead, I guess. As long as you don’t block the road.’ He walked off.
The Eye tried to concentrate on the puzzle, but the bird scoffed at him vehemently, bombarding him with rancor and scorn. He folded the paper and set it aside.
Joanna slept at a hotel in Fresno, registering as Diane Morrell. The next day she turned back toward the coast.
A few miles from Gilroy she parked on the shoulder of the highway and opened the MG’s hood. The radiator was steaming; she tried to unfasten the cap and scorched her fingers. A dazzling new Porsche 927 pulled up behind her. A man in a pink cardigan jumped out.
‘Don’t bother with it,’ he said. ‘Throw it away and I’ll buy you a new one.’
The Eye slowed down, stopped beside them. ‘There’s a garage up ahead,’ he called stupidly.
He couldn’t for the life of him understand what made him do it. It was pure compulsion. They ignored him. They were bending into the MG’s steam, laughing and quipping. He drove on.
Pink Cardigan roped the two cars together and pulled her into Gilroy. They left the MG at a garage and had a drink together in a roadhouse.
The Eye drifted in after them. He sat at the bar. They were at a corner table, wrapped in shadows. His radar was erratic again. Bad vibes!
He was calling her Diane. She called him Ken.
The room was almost deserted. Two husky tennis players in white shorts were standing at the bar, filling the place with a locker room stink. The bartender was arguing with somebody. The shutters were closed, covering the tables with a pall or murk.
Ken. Ken. Ken. The Eye knew him; he was certain of that, the vibes told him so. Kenneth. Kenley. Kendall. Indianapolis. St. Louis. Kansas City. A heavy. A hardcore case. A Southerner. He opened the filing cabinets of his mind and dug out armfuls of old records covered with cobwebs. Tennessee. North Carolina. Mississippi. Nashville. Memphis. Chattanooga. Rough stuff. Brutal. Nasty. A rebel.
He was doing most of the talking. Joanna-Diane just sat back and let him smother her in thick sorghum molasses guile. Ken. Ken.
‘Did anybody ever tell you’ – he put two cigarettes between his lips – ‘that you have eyes like a puma?’
‘Pumatang,’ she laughed. ‘Pumatang eyes.’
This stopped him cold for an instant. Then he smiled. ‘My goodness,’ he drawled. ‘How you do talk.’ He lit both cigarettes, gave her one.
‘You’re superb,’ she said. The Eye recognized the voice – the accent – the intonation – everything – even the irony. It was Dr. Martine Darras speaking. ‘Superb and formidable. And pink.’ She touched his cardigan sleeve. ‘Why do men insist on wearing pink?’
‘My little sister knitted this for me.’ He took her wrist and looked at the bandage. ‘You cut yourself, honey girl?’
‘I fell down,’ she said. ‘Skiing. In Chamonix. My daddy and I. I dropped into the deep snow covering the rocks. He pulled me out and wrapped his scarf around my arm. “Can you hang on to me?” he said. And he lifted me on his back and skied down the mountain. The awful people there … the snobs and the playboys … the ski bums and the millionaires and the sharpies … all the sneering smug people with faces like Babylonian idols … they were ashamed. Because they were incapable of doing such a thing themselves, you see. They would have left their daughters in the snow to smother and freeze.’
He grinned, his even white teeth phosphorescent in the dimness. ‘Tell me more,’ he said.
The Eye went outside. The Porsche 927 was in a corner on the blind side of the parking area. He picked the lock of the trunk, lifted it open. A blanket covered the floor. He pulled it aside, revealing a Bowie knife in a rubber sheath, an army bayonet in a scabbard, a five-inch hunting knife, its point sticking in a cork, a moon knife, three king-sized switchblades, and a pair of brass knuckles. They were laid out in a neat row, like an array of butcher’s tools in Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory.
Ken. Yes, he remembered him now. There was a shoebox, too; he opened it. It was filled with dozens of sachets, needles, a spoon, two syringes, and a jar of blue devils. He closed it, re-covered everything with the blanket.
His name was Dan Kenny. The Eye shut the trunk, relocked it. Louisville, Kentucky. Dan ‘Ken Tuck’ Kenny.
Alias Kenny Tucker. A psycho. Three convictions – one stickup, one assault and battery, one homosexual bust. He’d been on the front pages for a week or so in seventy-six because of a lurid sexual aggression charge pressed by a male victim in Elkton. The case had never gotten to court.
At six thirty they went back to the garage. Then they drove off together, Kenny leading the way in the 927, Joanna following in the MG. They drove toward Santa Cruz and checked into a motel on Monterey Bay. It was going to be a wild night.
The Eye unpacked his .45, loaded it, stuck it in his belt. Their unit was the last in the block, in the dunes, separated from the beach by a high wire fence. He looked through the bathroom window, Joanna was sitting in the tub, leaning back tiredly, her face in her hands. A transistor sat on a chair beside her, playing Beethoven’s C-Minor Piano Concerto. Her goat disc was lying on the sill, three inches from his forehead. He moved to another window.
‘Diane!’
‘Ho?’
‘Hurry up, honey girl!’
‘Hold your horses, motherfucker. Honey girl is in the middle of ablutions.’
In the bedroom ‘Ken Tuck’ Kenny was pulling off his pink cardigan, chuckling. ‘How you talk!’ He unbuttoned his shirt. Around his waist he was wearing a heavy money belt. He unbuckled it, dropped it on the floor behind the couch, walked to the shoebox sitting on the bureau, lifted off its lid, took out a syringe. He turned. Joanna’s purse was on the bed. He went over to it, opened it, peeked into it. It was packed with money. He whistled. ‘What a doll!’
The Eye went back to the bathroom window. Joanna rose out of the tub, dripping all over the floor. ‘What?’
‘I said, What a doll.’
‘I can’t hear you.’
‘Doesn’t matter none.’
She pulled on a kimono, too weary to dry herself, picked up the disc, clasped it about her throat. She went into the bedroom.
The Eye glided to the other window. Kenny was no longer there. She walked over to the bureau and stood frowning at the syringe. She reached into the box, took out a needle. Where was Kenny? She went to the bed, opened her purse. The money was still there. She hissed with relief, rummaged, pulled out a tiny revolver. The Eye gaped. Where the hell did she get that? She must have picked it up in Vegas. She slipped it under the pillow. Where the fuck was Kenny?
He pivoted.
Kenny swung at him. He ducked. The fist swooped over the top of his head and thumped against the wall. He ran. Kenny lurched after him, swinging at him again, bellowing. The brass knuckles grazed the Eye’s shoulder, ripping open his jacket and lacerating his spine. He jumped up to the top of the fence, flopped over it, dropped, rolled down an incline of dunes. He somersaulted to his feet, raced along the beach.
Kenny laughed. ‘Asshole!’ he shouted. He went back into the unit, quivering, elated, rocking on his heels. Joanna stared at the knuckles. He tossed them on the bed. ‘Just some little peeper outside,’ he wheezed. ‘Gettin’ hisself an eyeful of the action.’ He fingered the front of her kimono. ‘Can’t blame him. You look real cool and nice, honey darlin’.’
She pointed to the syringe. ‘What’s this, Ken?’
‘It’s for you, baby doll.’
‘Oh, no.’
‘Sure.’
‘Not me.’
‘I don’t like to turn on alone.’
‘You go right ahead. I’ll just watch.’
‘Just watch, eh?’ He pushed her against the wall, grasping handfuls of her. ‘Watch the freaks. See them perform. A free floor show.’ He was bulging. He rubbed it against her. ‘It’ll be something to tell your friends afterwards.’
She tried to move past him. ‘I don’t have any friends.’
‘Something to tell your daddy.’ He rammed his knee between her legs. ‘Ol’ daddy.’
‘My daddy is dead.’
She pushed him back, ran toward the bed for the gun. He hit her across the side of the head. She fell to the floor. He stepped on her hand.
‘You like that? You want some more?’ He struck her again, flattening her against the rug. ‘Huh? An’ if you start yellin’, I’ll kick your teeth down your throat!’ He leaned over and bit her on the rump. ‘Little ol’ puma girl!’ He jerked back the kimono, wiped his face on her thighs.
He left her lying there and went to the bureau. He pulled off his trousers, stroked his erection, slapped it playfully. He crumpled a piece of newspaper, dropped it in an ashtray, struck a match, set it on fire. He took a spoon from the shoebox, heated it on the flame.
He stuck a needle on the syringe, filled it. He danced over to her, bent down, rolled her on her back. He stabbed her arm, pushed in the piston.
Then he cooked another jolt for himself, injected it, and sat on the floor patting his penis until the charge hit him. He crawled over to Joanna, pulled off her kimono. He played with her toes, her nipples, her navel. He tried to enter her ear but lost his hardness. He put it in her hand and wiggled his hips until he was oblique again.
She gazed at him, scowling at the hair on his chest. He sat on her face, bounced up and down, tried to empty his bowels. Then he dropped forward on his elbows and listened.
Outside, a car motor was sputtering.
He pulled himself up, bounded to the door, unbolted it, jerked it open, rolled outside. The 927 and the MG were parked side by side in the yard. He ambled around them, trying to open their doors. They were both locked.
‘You all there, now, hey!’ he shouted. He stumbled back into the room, slammed the door, bolted it.
Joanna was crawling toward the bed. Squeaking with glee, he took her by the ankles and tugged her back across the floor. He went into the bathroom, sat down on the edge of the tub, took one of her stockings, squirmed lasciviously, pulled it on, holding his hairy leg in the air. Then he clipped her bra around his chest. He got up, shimmied out into the other room. He clapped his hands, jogged, warbled.
He cakewalked around the bed, hopped over Joanna – stopped. The Eye was leaning against the bureau, smiling at him. His arm flew out like a catapult, whipping the barrel of the .45 across Kenny’s jaw, shattering his even white teeth and knocking him cold.
He threw back the bed covers, lifted Joanna gently, eased her naked body between the sheets. Her mouth spumed and she murmured, ‘Don’t hurt her … please don’t hurt her.’ She glared at him through the slits of her eyes, trying to rise, but he held her down until she passed out, then wet a washcloth and wiped her face.
He took the car keys from Kenny’s trousers, unbolted and opened the door, dragged Kenny outside, unlocked the 927, dumped him into it.
He came back into the room, took the money belt from behind the couch. Its pouches were filled with tightly packed wads of one-hundred-dollar bills. He helped himself to twenty of them, left the rest on the pillow beside Joanna.
He gathered up the pink cardigan, the shirt and trousers, loafers and socks, Kenny’s overnight bag and the shoebox, carried them outside, kicking the door shut behind him. He emptied the sachets on Kenny, scattered the needles and syringes around him, dropped the bag and clothing on top of him.
He climbed behind the wheel, released the brake, and rolled silently out to the highway. About five miles up the beach he parked in the dunes, unlocked the gas cap, and poured several handfuls of sand into the tank, then let the air out of two tires.
The sun was rising by the time he came into the yard of the motel.
The MG was no longer there.
He ran into the unit. The bed was empty. The money belt was gone. So was Joanna’s luggage. So was Joanna.
Gone.
He stood there for a moment, looking around inanely. The brass knuckles were lying on the floor. He picked them up, reached under the pillow. The revolver was still there, too. He pocketed it and left.
An old woman in pajamas was standing on the porch, lighting a cheroot.
‘The girl in number one eleven …’
‘She just left.’
‘How long ago?’
‘Twenty minutes.’
‘Which way did she go?’
‘How the fuck do I know?’ She waved toward the highway. ‘That way.’
He got into his car and drove to the gate. He sat staring up and down the empty road. To the left was Santa Cruz, to the right Wastonville. Which way indeed! She could be halfway to San Francisco by now, or on her way back to LA.
He turned left. In Santa Cruz he bought a newspaper and checked the horoscope column.
CAPRICORN. ‘Absence makes
the heart grow fonder.’
You will lose nothing by
going off by yourself for
a while to think things over.
Unknown shores beckon. Heed
the call.