‘Who was he?’ Joanna asked.
‘He didn’t give his name,’ the nurse said.
‘And he asked for me?’
‘Yes.’
‘He asked for Joanna Eris?’
‘Yes. He said he was a friend of yours.’
‘What did he look like?’
They were in the clinic garden, walking along a sunken pathway through banks of high grass. The Eye stood less than five feet away from them, concealed on a knoll of lilacs.
‘They often do that,’ the nurse said.
‘Who? Do what?’
‘Salesmen and photographers and such. They get the names of our patients from the register and then come in here pretending they’re members of the family.’
‘But why?’
‘To sell their junk. You know, silverware and baby pictures and all that motherhood shit. Or maybe he was a reporter. They’re always sneaking around, too, looking for celebrities having abortions.’ She named three Hollywood actresses. ‘They were all at St. Joaq’s. Using false names, of course.’
‘That must be it – yes. Something like that. Nobody knows I’m here.’ But she wasn’t satisfied. She turned and stood with her hands on her hips, peering around the garden.
The little girl’s name was Jessica. She was buried on the banks of the San Joaquin River. Joanna spent an hour there every day, sitting beside the grave over the small headstone bearing the inscription Jessica Eris, 15 days old.
The cemetery was a woodland, shaded with groves of old trees, filled with slopes of wildflowers, winding walks and hedges and ferns and mossy walls. Joanna would bring jars of roses or tulips or daffodils, place them on the tiny mound, then sit on the ground with her hands folded on her lap and try to come to terms with her grief. The Eye didn’t pity her yet. She was stupefied with misery, in a twilight coma of shock. The horror would come later – much later, with the return of perception.
The following weekend she checked out of the clinic and drove to Sacramento. She registered in a hotel as Ellen Tegan, enrolled in a health club and spent three weeks, four hours a day, swimming and exercising. She had her hair cut again. She never drank. She spent some time under a sunlamp and lost her clinic pallor. She took long walks, hundreds of blocks every morning, striding athletically from one end of the city to the other, the Eye trudging behind her.
On one of these killing hikes he became careless and she almost waylaid him. She stopped in a doorway and let him overtake her. He saw the trap at the last minute and, as casually as he could manage it, turned into the nearest building. It was an apartment house. He was in luck; the front door was ajar. He ran through the entranceway into the lobby, stepped into an elevator, and pushed a fifth floor button.
Five minutes later he came back downstairs via the stairway. She was standing in the vestibule, her hands on her hips, reading the names on the mailboxes. He slipped out the back exit, circled the building, and was waiting for her farther up the block when she resumed her walk.
That same afternoon she went to a see a man named Pancho Kinski. He had an office in the rear of a yellow brick hovel overlooking an alley. The sign on his door was noncommittal: Kinski Service. He was five feet high, wiry and tough, brainless and mean.
He was a private dick.
She hired him for three days for a few bucks an hour, and he came out of his hole and began sleuthing. It didn’t take the Eye long to find out what he was up to. He was looking for him!
The Eye tried to avoid him but it was impossible – Joanna kept luring him to isolated, out-of-the-way places. A highway diner, a boathouse cafe on the river, a suburban bowling alley, a little theater in Folsom. And eventually, as inept as he was, Kinski spotted him.
On the third night, he closed in, hard-guy style.
Joanna drove to Lincoln for dinner. The Eye was three miles behind her in the VW Rabbit. A few miles from Roseville a Chevrolet sedan rolled in front of him, forcing him to the side of the road. Pancho jumped out, looking like a tall midget, holding a pistol as big as a piano leg.
‘I got you!’ he screamed. ‘Out! Out!’
There were two other creatures with him. A tall scarecrow in a raincoat, aiming a Colt, and another runt wearing a sailor hat and waving a sap.
The Eye didn’t like the looks of them, not at all. They were too wild. He obeyed quickly. They searched him, took his .45 away from him.
‘You’re comin’ with us,’ Pancho snarled. ‘You hear me? You hear me?’
‘I hear you, sure.’
‘Move! Move it! Move!’
They shoved him into the back of the sedan. The runt got behind the wheel. They drove into Roseville.
‘Ike’s place,’ Pancho said.
‘Huh?’ The runt hit the brakes. The car skidded to a stop, bouncing them.
‘What’re you stoppin’ for? What’re you stoppin’ for?’
‘Huh?’ The runt blinked at him, mutton-faced.
‘Ike’s! Ike’s! Ike’s!’
‘Okay, yeah.’
They drove on. They were rank with sweat, quaking and jerking with excitement. The three guns – .45, Colt, and cannon – were sticking in the Eye’s face. They turned through several back streets, drove twice around the same block.
‘Left!’ Pancho squealed. ‘Left! Left!’
‘Easy, easy,’ the scarecrow whispered. ‘This is the street.’
They rolled through an open door into the black pit of a garage, swarmed out of the car, dragging the Eye after them. The runt slid the street door closed, the scarecrow turned on a light. Pancho pushed the Eye against a wall.
‘So who are you?’ he barked. ‘Who the fuck are you?’
‘Me?’
‘You, yeah, you!’ He slapped him across the shoulder with the barrel of the cannon. ‘You!’
‘Is this a stickup?’
‘What d’you mean is this a stickup? We’re legal private investigators workin’ legally.’
‘You abducted me. That’s not legal.’
‘We’ll do more than that before we’re finished with you, motherfucker!’ He barreled him again. ‘You get the idea?’
‘Armed aggression. Fifteen to twenty years.’
‘You get the idea? I’m askin’ you, you get the idea?’
‘Show me your license. And your permits to carry all this artillery.’
‘Belt him, Kinski!’ the runt yapped. ‘Clobber his ass!’
‘Why you followin’ that little lady for?’ Pancho asked.
‘What little lady?’
‘Miss Tegan. My client. Miss Ellen Tegan.’
‘I don’t know Miss Ellen Tegan.’
‘Why you followin’ her for? Why you followin’ her for?’
‘I don’t even know her. This must be some kind of a screw-up.’
‘She seen you! She seen your Rabbit! She seen you in Auburn and Folsom! Before that you was shadowin’ her in Fresno!’
‘I’m not shadowing anybody.’ He turned to the two clowns. ‘Abduction. A snatch. Thirty years. Fifty years. Life.’ But they couldn’t hear him. They were having too much fun to listen to points of order.
‘Break his arm, Kinski,’ the runt said.
‘I want some answers!’ Pancho shouted.
‘Cool it down, Pancho,’ the scarecrow whispered. ‘You’re makin’ too much noise.’
‘Answers! Empty your pockets!’
‘You’re supposed to call her, Pancho,’ the scarecrow whispered.
‘What?’
‘You said you’d call her.’
‘Yeah. Watch him!’ Pancho went over to a phone on the wall, reached up, lifted down the receiver, dialed.
‘Break a few bones,’ the runt grunted, swishing the sap at the Eye.
‘Miss Tegan,’ Pancho yarred into the phone. ‘Ellen Tegan … is she there? Is Miss Tegan there? Well, she’ll be in later on because she’s got a reservation at your establishment tonight, so tell her to call … Hello! hello! Are you listening to me, jackass? Hello! Tell her to call Pancho Kinski … Kinski … Kinski … K-I-N-S-K-I! At this number. It’s a Roseville number.’ He gave the number. ‘You got that? It’s a Roseville number. You got it? … Right.’ He hung up.
‘I’m goin’ keep his piece,’ the runt said, taking the Eye’s .45 away from the scarecrow.
‘Give me that,’ Pancho growled, grabbing for the gun. The runt skipped away from him. ‘Gimme it! Gimme it!’
The Eye walked over to the light switch and cricked it off. Then he dropped to the floor and rolled under the sedan. The three guns fired a salvo into the blackness. Bullets ricocheted off the walls, the car, the ceiling. The garage buzzed and hummed like a beehive. The wind-shield collapsed. A tire hissed air. The scarecrow screamed.
The telephone rang.
The Eye got up, turned on the light. They were toppled all over the red floor. The side of the runt’s head was nearly sawed off. The scarecrow was kneeling, holding his bleeding stomach, chirruping. There was a bullet hole in Pancho’s cheek. The Eye took the .45 away from the runt, pocketed it. He went to the phone, dropped his handkerchief over the receiver, lifted it, then hung up – then lifted it again and let it dangle.
There was a door in the back wall. He came out of the garage into a yard filled with tubs and oil drums and fenders. Voices were shouting in the street. He climbed over a fence, jumped down into a lot, stamping his feet in the dirt to wipe the blood from the bottoms of his shoes. He ran across a dark field of rubble to an adjacent avenue and walked down the block, watching the stars, navigating toward the south.
Two drunks were arguing in front of a bar. A cop came cantering up the sidewalk toward him. The Eye went over to the drunks and tried to separate them. ‘Come on, fellows,’ he pleaded. ‘Let’s all be friends.’
One of them shoved him away. ‘Mind your own fuckin’ business! This is a grudge fight!’
‘He’s got it comin’ to him!’ the other yelled.
‘Break it up!’ the cop shouted as he raced past them. The Eye walked on. A half-hour later he was out of Roseville on the open road. A Ford convertible filled with hooting youngsters zoomed by. One of them threw a bottle at him. He passed a horse grazing like a silver ghost in a moonlit pasture.
No … Joanna didn’t know he existed. Not really. No. She was suspicious of everybody and he was just another goblin in her mind. So there were two possibilities: (1) She wanted to disappear again and had hired Kinski to ambush anyone who might be after her. Which meant that she was probably already on the run. (2) She was curious to find out once and for all whether or not she was actually being followed. Which meant that she would stay around awhile to see what Kinski dragged up; which meant that she was in danger now, if the local fuzz found out she was Kinski’s client; which meant that she would have to be warned.
He found the Rabbit parked where he’d left it on the shoulder of the road. He climbed behind the wheel and drove to Sacramento.
The MG was in the parking lot behind the hotel. He went to a bar and phoned her room.
‘Miss Ellen Tegan?’
‘Yes.’
Her voice jolted him. ‘H-hello.’
‘This is Lieutenant McElligott, State Police. We’re investigating the slaying of a Pancho Kinski, and we found your name in his office files …’
‘Oh, yes. I hired him a couple of days ago to – to find a – something I lost. Slaying, you say?’
‘Could you come to my office sometime tomorrow, Miss Tegan? It’s just a formality. Make a statement.’
‘Certainly.’
‘Thank you. Good night.’
‘Good night, Lieutenant.’
Ten minutes later she checked out of the hotel. She drove to Oakland at a steady eighty miles per hour.
She spent the rest of the night in a motel, registered as Miss Valerie Anderson. In the morning she sold the MG at a used car lot in Alameda. The Eye got rid of the Rabbit there, too.
She took a taxi to the airport and flew to Boise, Idaho.
She spent two months in Sun Valley. Her new name was Ella Dory.
Mornings and afternoons the Eye, bundled in a fur anorak and scarf, sat shivering on the hotel terrace with his binoculars, watching her ski; nights, he would go to The Igloo, one of the resort taverns, and watch her dance. She became friendly with only one man. And their meeting almost cost the Eye an attack of apoplexy.
As he was coming into The Igloo one evening, she suddenly appeared in front of him, emerging from the tap room.
‘I wish you’d stop following me,’ she said. ‘Really.’
He stood there, petrified.
But she was looking past him at someone standing in the entrance. He turned, saw a slim, dark, smiling man in his fifties, wearing a sheepskin jacket.
‘I’m not following you,’ he laughed. ‘We just always seem to be going in the same direction at the same time.’
The Eye ran outside and gulped down lungfuls of air. He felt as if he’d just tobogganed down the side of Borah Peak.
His name was Jerome Vight. He was an attorney from Little Rock, Arkansas. A bachelor. After that they and several other couples formed a casual skiing and cocktail clique, Joanna completely indifferent to the whole arrangement, and Vight (the Eye watching every phase of his beguilement) becoming more and more captivated by her unconcern. By the end of the first month he was hooked.
Cora Earl was another matter altogether. She was a fashion designer from New York, thirty-two years old, twice divorced, thoroughly misanthropic. She arrived at the hotel one afternoon with a safari of bellboys carrying fifteen pieces of luggage. She saw Joanna sitting in the lounge, marched over to her, and said exactly the right thing.
‘I’ll bet you a thousand bucks that you’ve been seduced by at least one of these scurvy ski-bum bastards since you’ve been here.’
Joanna looked at her coolly and held out her hand. ‘Give me the thousand,’ she replied.
Cora opened her purse, took out two five hundreds. ‘I’m in one seventeen C,’ she said. ‘Whenever you get horny, come up and sleep with me.’
A week later Joanna accepted the offer.
The Eye, watching them dance together in The Igloo, was secretly pleased. She needed someone to restore her self-confidence and to mend her body. No man on earth was capable of the job but Cora was perfect – just as Dr. Martine Darras had been, years ago. Both women were the same opiate of appeasement, the same dream of passion in the night, the same goddess smiling in the tempest, reaching out with a soothing hand to heal a sacred hurt.
He followed them back to the hotel. On the seventeenth corridor he climbed out a window and inched his way along a slippery ledge to the terrace of 117C. He stood in the snow at the window of the suite, watching them.
Joanna was hanging her mink coat over the back of a chair. Then she sat down and pulled off her boots. Cora walked across the room, waving her arms angrily.
‘… I taught her everything she knows about designing clothes, the bitch! In fact, all that LA stuff last year was my idea originally. The harem trousers and the handkerchief bit and jump suits and chamois bathing suits and all that. I called her up last week and said, “Darling, bravo!” and she said, “Go fuck yourself!” How do you like that!’ She laughed. ‘But wait’ll she sees my new collection! It’ll make her rags look like the latest thing from Bulgaria! The little toad!’
She was wearing a deerskin skirt and a see-through chiffon blouson. A cylinder hung on a chain around her neck. Joanna took it in her hand. ‘What’s this?’ she asked. Cora opened it and pulled out a toothbrush. ‘It’s for wherever you happen to be,’ she said, ‘afterwards.’ She peeled everything off and walked naked to the window. Joanna pulled off her sweater and ski suit. She got up, came behind her, leaned against her back. They were standing in the steamy pane just in front of the Eye. Cora touched the glass with her nipples. ‘What’s with you and Jerry Vight?’ she whispered.
‘He’s a Taurus,’ Joanna said.
Cora reached behind her, put her hands on her hips and pulled her closer. ‘You ought to grab him. He doesn’t know what to do with all his fucking money. But don’t put out until he’s ready to marry you. I like you on my back.’ She closed her eyes. ‘You feel menacing. A friend of mine got sodomized by a cop in Central Park. Said it was heaven! I never tried it. It’s supposed to blow all sorts of fuses. Physically, he’s repugnant – Jerry, I mean. A weasel. Probably got a cock on him like an obelisk. But he’s so fucking rich! He once flew around the world with a girl he picked up in New Orleans. They went to Madrid, Athens, Nairobi, Sydney, Tokyo. Just like that! But I digress!’ She turned and took her in her arms. ‘Let me look at you.’ She kissed her shoulder. ‘“To have, to hold,”’ she crooned, ‘“for just one brief hour of ecstasy …’”
‘My father went to Nairobi,’ Joanna said. ‘He was an anthropologist. He wrote a book, The Beginning of Time.’
‘“And then to let you go again,”’ Cora sang. Her hands moved between them.
‘He went to Mozambique.’ Joanna lifted her crooked finger to her mouth, bit it. ‘And sailed up the Crocodile River in a schooner all the way to … I don’t know where. He never came back. He was looking for the lost tribe of the Limpopo People. The Limpopos were a race of gods who built golden cities all over Africa, aeons ago. They probably never existed … but he was certain they were still there, somewhere beyond the rain forests and the plains, living in golden temples, waiting for him. Maybe he found them. Maybe he’s there now.’
‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ Cora pulled her down to the floor and wrapped her in her legs.
The Eye climbed over the railing, slid back along the ledge to the corridor window. He went to his room and did a crossword puzzle.
Joanna met Jerry Vight in the coffee shop the next morning. Naturally, he was peeved.
‘Let me give you a word of fatherly advice, Ella,’ he snapped.
‘“Be thy intents wicked or charitable?”’ she asked him gravely. ‘“Thou com’st in such a questionable shape that I will speak to thee.’”
He scowled. ‘What?’
‘Hamlet,’ she smiled. ‘What’s on your mind, pal?’
‘Well, listen …’ He lowered his voice. ‘I know this girl-to-girl business is quite the thing these days, and I don’t want to sound like an out-of-date fogey, but …’ He took her by the hand. ‘Cora is a whore. A genuine honest-to-God creep, Ella. She’s selfish, cruel, egomaniacal, and completely heartless. When she’s through with you she’ll just kick you out and slam the door.’
Joanna laughed. ‘You make her sound like a man.’
‘She’s worse than a man,’ he said. ‘She’s neuter.’
The Eye, sitting at a nearby table, watched Joanna’s face. Her wanness had vanished overnight. She was wearing her killer’s mask again. He felt cold fists of stage fright grip his vitals.
She struck on New Year’s Eve.
As soon as the sun went down, he climbed out the corridor window to the terrace of 117C. He’d been doing this every night for the last three weeks and was now familiar with every slippery foot of the ledge and the cornice.
It was snowing.
He stood in the white darkness, staring through the window. She was alone, lying on the floor, nude. Her back was covered with nail scratches and bruises. She sat up, held out her arms. They were wrapped from wrists to shoulders in shimmering garlands of bracelets. A string of pearls was tied around her waist. One of Cora’s fifteen pieces of luggage was open before her. It was a small blue leather case filled with jewelry. She took a diamond ring and slipped it on her little toe. She turned and smiled. He could see her liquid green eyes all the way across the room, shining with pleasure as she pinned a small ruby on her ear. She was almost looking at him, and it was as if his presence were the cause of her delight.
He raised his hand, waved at her timidly.
She rolled over on her spine like a cat and scratched her back on the rug. Then she jumped up, took her watch from the chimney, checked the time. She put all the jewels back in the case, closed and locked the lid.
She went into the bedroom. She reappeared, dragging Cora’s naked, rigid body by the feet. She pulled it across the room, opened the window. The Eye climbed up on the ledge and hid in a black angle of the wall. Joanna lifted the corpse and pitched it over the railing. It dropped down seven stories into the cul-de-sac alleyway behind the hotel and sank into nine feet of snow. She went back into the room and closed the window.
Fifteen minutes later the Eye was down in the lobby, checking out. At nine o’clock she emerged from the elevator, followed by a bellboy carrying her luggage. She was holding the blue leather jewel case under her arm, wrapped in her mink. She paid her bill, then sent the boy off looking for Vight. She sat down in the lounge and lit a Gitane.
There was a party in the bar. An orchestra was playing beer hall polkas. Guests in paper hats were reeling in and out of all the passages, throwing streamers and blowing whistles.
Jerry came across the lounge, his dinner jacket sprinkled with confetti.
‘What is it, Ella?’
‘You were right.’ She held a handkerchief to her eyes, sniffed and whimpered. ‘She gave me my walking papers. It was awful. I feel so shitty. You should have heard her. You were right. She’s a monster.’
‘Well …’ He didn’t know what to say. ‘The hell with her.’
She got up. ‘So long, Jerry.’
‘What do you mean so long?’
‘I’m leaving.’ She went out into the lobby.
He followed her. ‘Ella! Wait a second … Ella! … Please – listen to me! You can’t – Ella! …’
He checked out, too.
They were married that night in Boise. They flew to Honolulu the next morning.