He drove to Los Gratos and San Jose. To Palo Alto, to Redwood City, to San Mateo. He drove everywhere, showing blow-ups of the Minolta photos to desk clerks, chambermaids, bartenders, waitresses, gas station mechanics, bus drivers, taxi drivers, hairdressers, railroad porters, newsboys.
Back in Beverly Hills the house on Oak Drive was still empty, a For Rent sign on the lawn. He telephoned Ted Forbes, pretending to be one of Charlotte Vincent’s old school chums from New Jersey and asking him if he had her address.
‘No, I haven’t,’ Ted answered. ‘Charlotte left Los Angeles months ago. In March. We haven’t seen her since.’
‘How can I get in touch with her?’
‘I haven’t got the faintest idea. Sorry.’
The Eye hadn’t the faintest idea, either. He drove past the bookstore on Hope Street. It was now a barbershop.
He spent two months in Alameda, turning in endless circles, roaming the countryside, visiting Livermore, Tracy, Stockton, Sonora, Angel’s Camp, Lodi, Rittsburg, Richmond, Berkeley, Oakland. He spent another month in San Francisco, checking thousands of hotels.
But he really had no reason to believe she was still in California. He just couldn’t think of anywhere else to look for her, couldn’t think of anything else to do. He’d get out of bed at six in the morning, thinking it was twilight, and drowse around in a doze until noon, waiting for the sun to set, then go back to bed and wake again at four or five, thinking it was dawn. One afternoon he found himself on Half Moon Beach and had no idea how he got there, one evening he fell asleep in his car in a parking lot in San Lorenzo, only to wake up five hours later on the other side of the bay in a bus terminal waiting room in Belmont. He looked in the mirror one morning and was astonished to see that he had a mustache.
He would lie on the floor for hours in his hotel room, surrounded by her photos, trying to evoke some living shape of the real Joanna from the myriad of artificial faces and wigs, trying to abstract some substance from her, something he could absorb for its nourishment of hope. His radar probes ranged in every direction, through hundreds of villages and cities, but she resisted him resolutely.
For three months, he didn’t do a single crossword puzzle.
In August he read in the paper that three convicts had been killed in a cell block riot in a prison in San Jose. One of them was Dan ‘Ken Tuck’ Kenny. He’d been serving a ten-year sentence on a narcotics rap.
In early September he finally faced the fact that he had failed. He either had to give it up or flip. So he shaved off his mustache and called Baker.
‘No shit! I don’t believe it!’
‘I lost Paul Hugo, Mr. Baker.’
‘I’ve got two guys in Rome looking for both of you!’
‘I’m not in Rome, I’m in Frisco.’
‘Frisco?!?’
‘He flew to Cairo in May, then went to Hong Kong via Bombay and Singapore.’
‘You gotta be kidding me!’
‘He came back to the States yesterday and I lost him this morning. What do I do now?’
‘Call it off. His parents bought it last week in a car smash-up in Florida. No more client.’
‘That’s too bad.’
‘Don’t worry. Their last payment’ll cover your expenses. How much have you been spending?’
‘Something like … uhh … forty grand.’
‘Jesus H. Christ!’
‘I tried to keep it down to a minimum, but –’
‘All right. No sweat. Come on back.’
‘I’d like to take a couple of weeks off first. How about some bread?’
‘See the local people. Let them handle the fucking bookkeeping!’ He hung up.
The Eye faked some vouchers on the hotel typewriter and took them to the Watchmen, Inc. office on Post Street. The cashier cleared everything by Telex and gave him a check for forty-five thousand dollars, which covered all his expenses for the last eight months three times over.
He deposited it in a bank, bought two suits, a half-dozen shirts, a sweater, some ties, a pair of Hugo shoes (Founded in 1867), and a Harris Tweed topcoat. He traded in his car for a new VW Rabbit. He changed hotels. He drank three double cognacs. Then he went to bed and waited to see what would happen.
He was surprised to find himself suddenly back in the school corridor, trying to open the classroom doors. They were all locked, naturally. He was still playing in the same old B picture! He laughed with delight. He loved this movie! He’d seen it hundreds of times! The hero was a poor fink looking for his daughter, and he kept pounding on doors … it was hilarious! There was this classroom somewhere in the building and fifteen little girls were sitting at tables. One of them was Maggie … but he didn’t know which one. She was hiding from him. Why? That was the mystery. The Mystery of the Fifteen Tiny Pupils. Anyway, the big scene – the denouement (ten letters meaning ‘the resolution of a doubtful series of occurrences’) – was when he came barging into the room yelling, Maggie! Hey, Maggie! Where are you? and … Well, it was only a movie. He’d catch her between classes. During – what did they call it? Recess.
He sat down on a bench in the corridor and smoked a Gitane, waiting for the bell to ring. Facing him, hanging on the wall, were two towel racks, one marked His, the other Hers. He took out the paperback to finish Crossword Number Seven.
Czechoslovakia. Hold it! He knew the solution, but his pen was empty. He tried to scratch in the four letters, but it was impossible. No ink. But it didn’t matter. He knew the goddamned solution, he’d just have to remember it when he woke up. It was the name of a saint beginning with a J. St. John … St. James … St. Joseph … St. Joan … J… J … Why J? Hospitaler! The Knights of St. John of Jerusalem! But what the fuck did that have to do with Czechoslovakia? Then her voice whispered in his ear, Don’t hurt her.
He sat up, wide awake.
Rain was splashing on the windows. The lamp beside the bed was on. He switched it off. The damp grayness of dawn moistened the edges of the room.
Don’t hurt her. She’d said that in the motel, just after he’d belted Kenny.
He got dressed and went down into the lobby. It was about six. The night clerk smiled at him miserably. ‘Good morning, sir.’
‘Good morning.’ He went outside and walked through the deserted leaden rainy streets. Don’t hurt her. She was telling him where she was; it was all there in his B-picture dream, he was sure of that.
He sat down on a wet bench near the park.
She’d thought he was Kenny and she was pleading with him not to harm her. Her. Me. The objective case of she or the objective case of I? No! Shit! She’d said her – please don’t hurt her! So she’d been talking about someone else. Who?
It would come.
He put it aside and tried to analyze the rest of the dream. The empty pen – that was obviously a Freudian bit. Sure. The inevitable cock. No ink. Impotency or sterility or something. The J was – what? A saint? San or Santa? One of the towns he’d searched recently? San Jose? San Juan? Santa Juanita? And the school and classrooms … the corridor and all that … that had been Maggie. Just a montage.
Hold it! Maybe not, though. There was a fucking subtlety in dreaming that wakefulness always ridiculed. Maggie. His daughter. The school. A building. A building filled with hidden children. Sonofabitch! It was coming! J! His and Hers Hospitaler! Don’t hurt her!
‘What’re you doing, buddy?’
He turned. A tall cop was standing beside the bench.
‘Toothache. Couldn’t sleep.’ He held his jaw. ‘It’s killing me.’
‘You live around here?’
‘Hotel there.’
The cop eyed the tweed coat and good shoes. ‘You need an aspirin. Vitamin B-l.’
‘Tried that. No way.’
‘What’re you going to do?’
‘See a dentist. Got an appointment for nine o’clock. Until then I just sweat it out.’
‘Well, don’t get picked up for vagrancy.’ He walked off, chuckling.
The Eye jumped up and went into the park. Goddamn it! He’d lost it! It was all just a shambles now! Balls! He typed out a Watchmen, Inc. report card in his mind:
Subject – Joanna Eris
Comment – During the last X months, sometime in the course of my surveillance, subject visited a location situated in the town of San J. After her disappearance she in all probability returned to this same lieu and is there at the present time.
There are three flaws in this conclusion: (i) I don’t know where the place is; (ii) I don’t know why she returned there; (iii) I don’t know why she went there in the first place.
Of course he knew! And he’d find her today! Fuck all! There was just one single piece missing. He leaned against a tree and bit his fingernails. All right, all right. It would come. She and Kenny had gone to the motel on Monterey Bay. Okay. And before that? She’s slept in a hotel in Fresno. And before that? Selma, Hartford, Coalinga, and Pasa Robles; one night in Santa Maria; LA and Vegas. Could she have gone back to Las Vegas? His radar spun and hummed. No, there was nothing there. LA, then? The radar rasped – zzzzzzz! Yeah! There was something there! What? They’d landed in Los Angeles. There had been a riot at the airport. She’d injured her arm. A doctor bandaged her. She’d gone to the garage to check out her MG and she’d driven north along the coast … The zzzzzzz faded. His thoughts scattered.
He stood there blankly.
It was worse than Crossword Number Seven.
It stopped raining. The sun came up. People were walking in the park now. A hurdy-gurdy was playing ‘Oh Susannah.’
It rained all night the day I left
The weather it was dry
The sun so hot I froze to death
Susannah don’t you cry …
Then the mockingbird sang. It sat on a branch just above him, screeching with derision.
He listened to the children, delighted. There it was! Jesus God! The mockingbird! Holy Moses! He’d driven into that back road by the golf course; he’d tried to do a crossword puzzle, but that fucking bird had clamored at him like a bugle; a golfer had come over and said, ‘You can’t park here.’ And she was – having her bandage changed! Hospitaler! Hospital! A clinic! On the other side of Fresno! And that’s where she was now, by Christ!
Four hours later he was in Fresno. He crossed the city and turned south on the Selma road. He rolled into the side lane bordering the golf course. He climbed out from behind the wheel numbly. He stood there beside the VW for five minutes, licking his lips and trembling like an epileptic. The last eighty miles had almost convinced him that the whole premise was pure wishful thinking, based on total nothingness.
‘You can’t park there, man.’ A fat caddie was standing on the other side of the fence, twirling a keychain.
The Eye nodded dumbly and walked up the road to the gate of the clinic. He stared at the sign on the post. San Joaquin Maternity.
J.
He went into the driveway. Several cars were parked under the trees of a patio. Two Jags, a Mercedes, a Lancia HPE, an Austin Allegro, a Plymouth Volare. And an MG.
The reception room was a wide, low-ceilinged, cool, tiled cave with an imitation Utrillo mural filling a back wall. A pretty girl in a striped uniform was sitting at a desk reading Buster Crabbe’s Energistics.
‘You’re too late,’ she said. He gaped at her. ‘Visiting hours are from nine thirty till ten thirty. And from two till four.’ She had a Massachusetts accent and green fingernails.
‘Ehhhh …’ he said. He couldn’t speak! His fucking voice was gone! He tightened his lips, concentrated on the Utrillo. A brown windmill. Fences. Trees. A pale blue sky. ‘I really don’t have time for a visit, I was just driving by and I thought I’d stop and –’ Shit! What name was she using? ‘– and see how our patient was coming along.’ Charlotte Vincent? Leonor Shelley? Diane Morrell? Mrs. Ralph Forbes? No. She wouldn’t want her child born with an alias. Would she?
The girl flipped open the lid of a box of index cards. ‘What name?’
‘Joanna Eris.’
‘Oh, she’s doing fine. Are you a relative?’
‘Just a friend, just a friend,’ he babbled. ‘I’ve been away. I came back this morning and heard about – about it. And came right over.’ He hid his shaking hands in his pockets. ‘Thought I’d just zip in and …’ He swallowed and gulped. ‘Haven’t seen her for a while, and …’
‘You know’ – a whisper – ‘she lost the baby? A terrible shame. A little girl. But Mrs. Eris is great now. She’ll be out of here in a few days.’
He gazed at her and saw three girls in striped uniforms sitting at three desks. ‘I want to see her,’ he said.
‘You better wait until this afternoon. She’s under sedation this morning, and –’
‘I want to see her.’
‘I want to see her. Please.’
‘Can’t you come back this afternoon?’
‘Please.’
A nurse came by the desk. The girl got up and followed her. They whispered together, glancing at him. Then the nurse beckoned and led him through the reception room into a passageway.
She opened a door, stepped inside.
The blinds were closed. A single fine clean blade of white sunlight fell across the dark room on Joanna’s arm hanging from the bed. He stood over her.
She was sound asleep, lying on her side, her profile on the pillow an ebon false face of shadows. He sat beside her, his hand reaching out timidly, hovering over her.
He smiled, an enormous quietude settling on his soul. He took her gently by the wrist and lifted her arm to the bed, placing it on the sheet as if it were a fragile shell of jade.
She stirred, her lips parted. She smelled of medicine and balm. Her hair had grown. Her long hands were lank.
He had found her. In recompense for all his loss he had been given his prize – a girl asleep in a dim room. All the world was an abyss filled with her slaughtered men, but she was his redemption and his grace. She had called to him and he had come. He would never leave her now. They would remain forever under the oak trees, with their lost daughters and their miracle.