The eye sat on the beach behind the gutted hull of a rowboat, watching them through his binoculars. He was on the point of a W between two coves. The Cariddi was anchored in the inlet to the left, a quarter of a mile offshore. Jerry was squatting on the forward deck, wearing a straw hat and drinking a can of orange juice.
They’d been coming out here every afternoon for the last three days, looking for the American destroyer that was supposed to be down there somewhere on the bottom of Kaneoke Bay.
Joanna surfaced, climbed up the ladder. She was naked to the waist, wearing a pair of jeans cut off at the thigh. She pushed the mask onto the top of her head, sat down on the bow. ‘Christ! The water’s like oil. What’s the temperature?’
‘Ninety-seven.’
Their voices carried across the cove with amphitheatre clearness. The Eye could even hear the hum of the radio in the cabin.
‘It’s twenty below in Boston. And it’s snowing in New Orleans.’
‘Turn off the goddamned radio,’ she said.
‘What for?’
‘My! You look fetching!’ He tried to crawl between her knees. She laughed, kicked him away.
The laugh was false – almost hysterical. Jerry couldn’t interpret it, but the Eye, who knew her much better than he did, was perfectly aware of what it meant. She was in mortal danger, so tautly drawn that she was giddy with tension. Every hour brought her closer to disaster. Five whole days had passed, and Cora’s body hadn’t been found yet. But perhaps at this very moment they were shoveling it out of the snow, and this evening the hunt for Ella Dory would begin. She wouldn’t be too difficult to locate. Her spoor led directly from Idaho to Oahu – directly to this blue cove in the warm sea. And instead of fleeing, she was forced to linger here in the sun, playing vacation games and parrying the amorous gropings of a man she loathed.
‘There’s no destroyer.’ Jerry threw the can overboard.
‘There’s something down there.’
‘Where?’
‘Just behind all those fucking weeds. A great big hump covered with sand.’
‘No kidding!’
‘As big as a house.’
This morning, while Jerry was having breakfast, she’d gone out and bought a pair of handcuffs in a toy shop near the hotel. The Eye had watched.
Jerry tossed his straw hat onto the roof of the cabin. ‘Let’s have a look.’ He donned his mask and flaps and jumped off the deck. Joanna sat there a moment, staring at the beach. Then she got up and pulled off her jeans, opened her bag, took out the handcuffs, unlocked their prongs. And over the side she went.
Flies devoured the Eye. He slapped his arms and neck, the blows echoing like rifle shots up and down the beach. The stink of salt and warm rot almost suffocated him. A spiked fin floated into the cove. He watched it dully, measuring it. It looked like a long golf bag drifting in the current He jumped up. Shit! It was a motherfucking shark! It circled the Cariddi, swam into the surf, thrashed atop a breaker. Jesus! It was gigantic! It twisted, dived. Joanna came up the ladder, her buttocks twinkling in the sun. The Eye crawled behind the rowboat, lifted his binoculars. She jumped over the cabin, unhooked the anchor chain from the aft cleat, dropped it overboard. The shark surfaced, bumped against the stern, dived again. Joanna went to the helm, started the engine. The Cariddi groaned and turned toward the open sea.
The Eye sat there a moment, watching it round the right headland of the W. Then he looked at the water. The cove was a mire of blue and green. Jerry was still down there, handcuffed to the anchor.
With the shark.
The Eye had already checked out and was sitting in the lobby doing a crossword puzzle when she arrived. She was wearing sandals and a sleeveless turquoise beach tunic. Her emerald eyes, overflowing in her sun-blackened face, were almost unbearably exotic. She looked about eighteen years old.
The waiting was over. She was on the run now, cool and smooth.
‘Mr. Vight has gone to Lahaina,’ she told the clerk. ‘He’ll be back on Friday or Saturday.’
‘Yes, Mrs. Vight.’
‘Get me a reservation on a flight to San Francisco this afternoon.’
‘Are you leaving us?’
‘Just for a week. My mother is ill.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that!’
‘Nothing serious. She sprained her wrist playing tennis or something.’
The Eye found a copy of yesterday’s Los Angeles Herald-Examiner on the plane. Cora Earl’s picture was on page one, under the headline SUSPICIOUS FALL IN SUN VALLEY! Inquest to Decide Cause of Celebrated Designer’s Death.
That night she stayed at the Mark Hopkins and kept her Mrs. Ella Vight alias until she’d cashed all of Jerry’s traveler’s checks. Then, wearing a red wig and changing her identity, she sold Cora’s jewels to a fence in San Mateo for another heavy bundle. She put nearly sixty thousand dollars in a safe–deposit box in a bank in Oakland the next day before leaving for the airport.
The Eye tried to get a seat on the same flight to Mexico City, but there were no vacancies. He tried two other airlines. All the Thursday planes were booked; the standby lists were filled. The catastrophe was so unexpected that he didn’t even have time to panic. Her flight was announced, she walked into the boarding ramp, stopped, glanced once over her shoulder and was gone. By the time he realized he’d probably never see her again, she was airborne.
Shit. From Mexico she could vanish in any direction – South America, the Caribbean, Europe – no, she couldn’t! She couldn’t get a passport. So it wasn’t total finality. She’d be only twelve hours ahead of him. And she’d probably stay overnight, at least – right? Maybe a day or two. Plenty of time. He made a reservation for the earliest Friday morning flight. Besides, there was still the safe-deposit box in Oakland. He could stake out the bank. She’d go back there sooner or later – in a month, six months, a year. His heart sank. A year? Shit.
He took a taxi back to the Mark Hopkins. He’d go to a movie, have dinner, get to bed early. His radar whined. In the lobby two men were standing at the desk, talking to the clerk. They were both young, long-haired, fit, wearing natty overcoats with fur collars. Feds!
‘Mrs. Vight? Yes –’ The clerk was rattled. ‘She checked out two hours ago.’
‘Any idea where she was going?’ Number One asked.
‘No, sir. She just paid the bill and –’
‘Describe her,’ Number Two cut in.
‘In her twenties – late twenties, I guess. Sunburned. Short hair. Blue eyes. Tall, about five eleven …’
‘Fine,’ Number One nodded. ‘That’s an excellent description. And you don’t know where she is now?’
‘Mrs. Vight?’ The Eye, all smiles, moved closer. ‘She’s in Denver.’
They stared at him. ‘You know her?’ Number Two asked.
‘Know her? Gosh, no. Wish I did. Lovely girl. We just had a friendly drink together last night. Matter of fact, I invited her to dinner, but she had a previous engagement, I’m sorry to say.’
He tried not to overdo it. They’d already sized him up – clothes, accent, fingernails, haircut – and classified him as a Type O: out-of-town oaf. A midwestern or New England bumpkin, Honest Homer Hayseed.
‘And she told you she was going to Denver?’
‘Yup.’ He smacked his lips smugly. ‘I can even give you her address.’
‘We’d appreciate it.’
‘Ramada Inn.’
‘Ramada Inn, Denver. Check.’
‘Said she’d be stayin’ there a couple of weeks, then go on to – ahhh … Kansas City, I think. No! I take that back. Omaha! Omaha, Nebraska!’
‘Much obliged.’
‘Not at all.’
They left. So did he. He went into the coffee shop and slipped out a side exit to the street. The crowd closed around him like a comforting bog of eiderdown. Feds, by Christ! From Sun Valley or Honolulu? For the next forty-eight hours all of Colorado and Nebraska was going to be Dragnetville! That would keep the motherfuckers busy for a while. But then they’d start backtracking.
He went into the bar and had two large cognacs. Then he checked into the Sir Francis Drake. He couldn’t sleep. He sat up all night reading Helter Skelter. He was at the airport at seven thirty. The plane took off at eight ten.
He found her at a quarter to twelve. She was sitting on a bench on the Paseo de la Reforma, eating a pear.
It was as if she were waiting for him – except that there was a man with her.
‘Why are you smiling?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know,’ she laughed. ‘For some reason or other, I feel – all of a sudden – I feel blissful. Reprieved.’
‘Reprieved?’
‘As if I were going to the gas chamber this morning, at’ – she glanced at her watch – ‘eleven forty-five exactly. And the warden just walked into my cell and said, “Miss Kane, let me be the first to congratulate you. You have been reprieved.” And I take a deep breath, and instead of inhaling cyanide, I smell the trees in the park and the water in the lake. And the flower stalls and the fruit carts.’
‘Are you sure you’re not sniffing glue, too?’
‘Let’s go to church and light candles.’
‘I’d rather go to San Juan Ixtayoapan and have a look at that new supermarket complex.’
His name was Rex Hollander. He was an architect from Savannah. He was forty-eight years old, recently divorced, lonely, cheerful, and boyish. He’d just built a seven-million-dollar office building in Mazatlán.
They spent the next three weeks together, visiting Atzcaptzalco, Ixtacalco, Coyoacán and the usual tourist places, returning to the city every evening for the restaurants and the nightlife. They lived in separate suites at the hotel and weren’t sleeping together yet. They played tennis and golf, they swam and went to the bullfights. They joined a private gambling club and Joanna lost four thousand dollars at chemin de fer. They took one long, grueling train trip to Juchitán and Tonala to look at some new apartment buildings.
Joanna was happy and at peace – her laughter was genuine, and apparently she had no intention of murdering him, at least for a while. The Eye did crossword puzzles in Spanish. He read The Conquest of Mexico by William H. Prescott. He bought a shawl for Maggie.
On January the thirtieth two divers found an arm handcuffed to an anchor chain on the bottom of Kaneoke Bay. On February the second Rex Hollander was on the cover of Time: ‘The Dissident Builder – A Challenge to Urbanization.’ To celebrate, he and Joanna went to bed together. The next day they flew to Tucson, Arizona. On February the fifth a justice of the peace married them in Casa Grande.
They rented a station wagon and trailer in Phoenix and drove north on a camping trip to Grand Canyon Park. On February the sixth the Hawaiian police identified the Kaneoke arm as having belonged to Jerome Vight. On February the seventh the Los Angeles Times, in a story on page three, reported that the deaths of Vight in Hawaii and Cora Earl in Sun Valley were ‘in all probability’ connected and that the FBI was seeking a Miss Ella Dory ‘for questioning.’
Ella Dory – AKA Mary Linda Kane, AKA Mrs. Rex Hollander, née Joanna Eris – and her husband were wandering across the Coconino Plateau, driving by night, camping during the day to avoid the heat.
The Eye followed them in a rented Mercury, keeping his distance. When they’d stop, he’d park the car and circle the trailer on foot, like an Apache. Once a large dusty scorpion stung the heel of his shoe, scaring him shitless. Another time he stepped into a hole atop a family of gila monsters. He began to hate Arizona passionately.
One morning Joanna drove into a nearby town, alone, for supplies. When she came back, she hammered the first nail into Rex’s coffin.
‘Rex, I just phoned my broker in LA. I’m in a jam.’
‘What’s the problem, dandelion?’
‘I need forty thousand dollars before the market closes on Friday. Can you loan it to me?’
‘Sure thing!’ He wrote out a check. She put it in an envelope, then drove back to town and pretended to mail it. She bought a rifle.
That same afternoon, all hell broke loose.
The Eye, prowling through a moonscape of crags, came upon the carcass of a jackal. Huge fat red ants were devouring it. Farther on, sticking out of a gulch, was a tin sign: Devil’s Mesa, Population 15. There was nothing else there except part of a fence and the ruins of a mud hut. And a rattlesnake. It reared up out of the stones, glaring at him. He jumped back, tripped and fell, rolled ass over head down a gully.
Rex saw him. He sprang out of the trailer, wild with excitement. ‘Mary Lin! There’s a guy up there in the rocks!’
She laughed. ‘No there isn’t. That’s just my poltergeist.’
‘Your which?’
‘A spirit I invented to haunt myself. Pay no attention to him.’
‘Like hell! Give me your rifle!’
‘Rex, I won’t have you gunning down my spirit.’
‘Then let’s capture the sonofabitch alive! You cut around there behind him. I’ll go straight up the hill.’
The Eye crawled into an escarpment of boulders, cursing him, cursing himself. He hid in a cleft, praying nothing would come out of the ground to gnaw him.
Rex came up the slope, ran past him, moved across the gulch behind the hut. Then Joanna appeared, coming from the opposite direction. She stopped, stood for a moment staring at the ants. She looked at the sign, walked past the fence into Devil’s Mesa.
The rattler rolled out of its lair, coiled on the trail in front of her. She froze. ‘Hi,’ she whispered. Its head bobbed toward her, its jaws opening and hissing. The Eye pulled his .45 from his belt. But she was in no danger – not yet. She had time enough to retreat. But she didn’t move. She just stood there, waiting. The snake swayed closer, rattling angrily. Rex came around the side of the hut.
‘Did you see him?’ he called.
‘No.’
‘I guess we scared him off.’ He walked toward her. ‘Look at this godforsaken place. It’s like a John Ford movie.’
Joanna’s arms came up slowly. ‘It must have been a ranch or something,’ she said, and oh-so-slowly put her hands on her hips, relaxed.
‘Imagine anyone living in this inferno!’ The snake’s head jerked around. The Eye watched them, fascinated. Rex moved closer – closer. His boot kicked a stone, the butt of the rifle scraped along the ground. Closer. Joanna remained motionless. Closer.
‘It’s perfect for sunbaths.’ She forced a laugh.
‘What a place to spend a honeymoon!’ he reached for her. ‘Let’s go back down to the trailer and –’
His shadow fell across the snake. The rattle snapped like a castanet. The jaws flew into the air, struck him on the crotch. He screamed, dropped the rifle. He hobbled back. ‘Mary Lin!’ The jaws hit him again, on the stomach. ‘Mary Lin!’
Then the Eye heard the car.
He came out of the cleft, climbed over the boulders to the top of the ridge. A sheriff’s cruiser was driving along the narrow trail behind the escarpment.
‘Mary Lin!’
He ran down the gulch. The snake was gone. So was Joanna. Rex was sitting on the ground, bellowing. He turned, saw the Eye. He tried to pull himself to his feet. ‘I can’t move my hips!’
The Eye picked up Joanna’s rifle, ran back to the summit of the ridge. The cruiser pulled into a gully just below him. The doors opened. A fat sheriff in a Stetson squeezed out from behind the wheel. Two men alighted from the other side – the same two Feds he’d met in the lobby of the Mark Hopkins last month. They stood listening to Rex’s shrieks echoing through the canyons around them.
‘Sounds like a fucking panther!’
The Eye dropped to one knee and fired. The first two bullets punctured the cruiser’s front and rear tires, the third slammed through the open door and pulverized the dashboard radio. The three men scattered for cover in the rocks.
He slid down the boulders and ran around the rim of the gulch to the slope above the camp. Joanna was in the station wagon, driving toward the road.
He glanced over at Rex. He was lying on his back in the dust, still calling to her. ‘Mary Lin!’ His face was covered with gurgling froth, his fists were beating his abdomen. ‘Mary Lin!’
The Mercury was parked a quarter of a mile to the south. The Eye raced toward it. A bullet dropped out of nowhere and tapped him on the shoulder. He thought it was the snake and yelled with terror. His feet kicked in opposite directions. He found himself surging through the air like a high jumper.
‘Halt, you cocksucker!’ a voice shouted.
He landed on his side in a deep rug of sand, all his bones dislocated. He reached behind him, tried to grasp the rattler’s head. He touched the wound and brayed.
‘Halt!’
A ricochet bounced past him.
‘Halt!’
He rolled behind a dune. He looked at his left arm. It was still there. He lifted it, flapped it, flexed his fingers. Fibers of exquisite pain twanged up and down his back, almost lulling him to sleep. Fuck all! He was going to pass out! He got up, stumbled toward the Mercury. He opened the doors – oops! The plateau tilted, flipping him behind the wheel. He started the motor. So far, so good! All he had to do now was keep moving. They’d never catch him, not without tires or a radio. Butterflies fluttered past the windshield – bright clouds of them, yellow and orange and black-dotted and gaudy.
Maggie reached over and closed the door. She opened the valise, took out the Mexican shawl. She wrapped it around him, pulled it tight. Good, okay. The bleeding stopped. Thanks. She pointed to the speedometer. He was doing fifty. He slowed to twenty. She showed him where the road was, held the wheel, steered him out of the rocks.
Right. He was on the road. Fine. He accelerated. Thirty … forty … fifty … sixty … whoopee!
She turned on the air-conditioner. She wiped his cheeks with her cool fingers. He wondered what she looked like. She leaned on him, wedging him against the door so he wouldn’t topple over. When the sun went down, she switched on the lights. Thanks. Then she turned on the radio. In the close darkness he could feel her breathing. He was afraid to move his head … his neck was too stiff … he’d look at her in a moment, though … he had to … She poked him awake when he fell asleep. Thanks. She sang to him.
It won’t be a stylish marriage
I can’t afford a carriage
But you’ll look sweet
Upon the seat
Of a bicycle built for two …
The station wagon was a mile ahead of them.