36

Jackson R.W. Bishop stood outside the New York Public Library and pondered murder. He had never planned a murder before. It would be a new sensation.

There was Christine Rivers, certainly, but that couldn’t be called murder. Assault, perhaps, with cause. But without intent to kill.

He remembered her face in the lamplight, the nose akilter, the blood welling in her throat. His breath came in little gasps and he leaned against the building.

“You okay, mister?” A little boy stared up at him, his lips pursed, his eyes troubled.

“Don’t talk to anyone!” A woman yanked at the boy’s arm, pulling him off his feet.

“I’m okay,” he called after the child.

He sighed, his breathing pattern normal now. Jack’s death had been timely, but none of his doing. He hadn’t even seen Jack’s body, or what was left of it. Still, he felt that Jack, somehow, had died in his behalf.

Jackson R.W. Bishop imagined Lida, a knife jutting from her abdomen. “Don’t be silly,” she would holler, pulling it out, flinging it across the room. Or with her head enveloped in a plastic bag. “Stop,” she would say, fighting free. “This isn’t funny.”

How would he kill her?

He could shoot her, but he hadn’t a pistol. Poison? She would never notice. She had eaten two helpings of those hideous hash-browns in the Howard Johnson’s.

He could arrange to meet her in some crime-ridden part of Washington. A place where she would be murdered and possibly raped beforehand. Or, depending on the neighborhood, afterward. He saw a gang of thugs backing away. “Get fucked,” she was screaming at them, “I’m waiting for someone.”

He laughed out loud. Lida did, on the face of it, seem invincible. His laughter was drawing attention from passersby.

Still. He cautioned himself sufficiently to halt his merriment with the thought of what she knew. Lida’s death was no trifle.

But what was at the root of the trouble he was having? Why wouldn’t Lida stay dead? She was infuriating. He thought and thought.

And then he knew. Jackson R.W. Bishop was at the root of it, the wrong man for the job.

Duvivier had a flair for violence that quite eluded Bishop. Duvivier could set a man, asshole-first, onto a spike and laugh into the darkness. Or fuck a woman with grotesque implements until she bled to death. Duvivier could slash a man’s stomach and watch the viscera slither to the floor. And then he would describe the mess.

It was Duvivier who must consider the exasperating Lida’s death, but later. Jackson R.W. Bishop meanwhile would go inside and check out this pseudonym business.

He got off the elevator on the third floor, with Room 315 his destination. He had once seen a book dedicated to Room 315 of the New York Public Library. He could not remember which book it was and, after some seconds, gave it up. What did it matter?

Once there, he was immediately distressed by the enormity of the card catalog. So many drawers. And so many people using them.

He walked to the D drawers and looked down the row. He found the one that would contain Duvivier. He began sifting through the cards, without removing the drawer. Someone behind him gave a long-suffering sigh. He turned, nodded an apology, and took the drawer to a table.

Only two of Duvivier’s books were listed. That rather angered him. He wondered about the rest. Then he saw a notice that referred him to a newer catalog. This turned out to be a row of blue books on a shelf in yet another part of the room.

He was partially appeased. All of Duvivier’s books were listed here, but none of the entries bore any author’s name but that one. He walked to the information counter and asked how he might find the real name of an author using a pseudonym.

“What’s the name?” the clerk asked.

“Duvivier,” he said, expecting that he would have to spell it.

“Oh, yes!” The clerk brightened. “That’s pretty recent. Let’s see.” He stood rubbing his nose, his eyes panning the room. “Try bookcase number four, over there. Down at the bottom. It should be in Current Biography. They’re indexed.” The clerk immediately turned his attention to the person who stood behind Duvivier.

He stooped and read the indices of several of the volumes. Up to 1974. He could not find 1975. But it was, he knew, a stupid search. Worthless. He glanced up from the spot where he crouched and saw a woman reading from the 1975 volume. The hell with it.

He moved into another room, one with long tables and rows of incandescent lamps. He stood near the door, wondering whether to go back into the street or stay here awhile.

“Help you?” A crisp accent. British.

He found a buxom woman with very red lipstick smiling up at him. “I don’t suppose,” he said halfheartedly, “there’s any way of getting the real name of an author using a pseudonym.”

“Oh, yes,” she said, “there are several books you can look at.” She turned to a small boxed catalog just behind her desk. “P-s-e-u …” flipping the cards very quickly.

He read over her shoulder.

Her fingers stopped. “PSEUDONYMS,” the card read, “SEE ANONYMS AND PSEUDONYMS.” She closed the drawer with a hint of embarrassment and opened another. “Here we are,” she announced, stepping aside. “Look through these and then go on to Section Seventy-four, over there.” She gestured toward the far wall.

He thanked her and listened to her heels click out of range.

None of the books in Section Seventy-four contained any of his names. Most of the volumes were not contemporary, but dealt with authors long dead. They seemed exercises, largely, the tedious sort of work for which doctoral degrees were awarded. The one entry in the small card file which had seemed promising—a book by someone named Gribbons—was not on the shelf.

How had Lida found the Wendolyn name? She had told him. Yes. At the Library of Congress. He would have to try there. He would do it soon.

He was eager to leave New York. He was tired of it, tired of people asking at the end of every sentence if he knew what they meant.

Outside, the snow was fast turning to slush. New York, he thought, was very like Madrid. The buildings here were taller, of course. And there were fewer trees. But the weather was the same and the people were the same. The great cities of the world, he decided, were all alike.

He slipped into the bookstore, largely to escape the wind. He purchased a notepad and, as it was being rung up, read the placard affixed to the register.

Ah! The Play of Herod, the sign said, would be performed tomorrow night. And, he noted with relief, by former members of the New York Pro Musica. Where? Washington National Cathedral, Washington D.C. It would be ably done, then.

He remembered the campus production that someone had arranged many years ago. The innocents, young boys from the town, perhaps eight or nine years old, stood center stage awaiting the wrath of the evil king. One of them, an Oriental lad, yawned profusely. Another, a young Billy Budd, all pallor and platinum, had to drop his head to hide his laughter. Even dead, the boy kept breaking up, his thin shoulders heaving under his white robe. The others fought hard to ignore him.

The narrator, a sophomore whose name he could not recall, had stuttered over the fine MacLeish text. And the voices! They seemed to have been chosen from random shower stalls in the various college dormitories.

Afterward, he had eavesdropped on members of the audience. Paul Riley had wondered if the singer who had joined in Rachel’s lamentation—the one in woman’s garb—was indeed the man who had played the shepherd at the start of the play. His students had wondered how the archangel had managed to stand so still throughout the production.

Oh, academe! He had never regretted leaving it behind.

In the lobby of his New York hotel, Duvivier watched the people pass. Occasionally he would pause to write.

The characters—victim and killer—had been fixed. But where? And how?

He pocketed the pen and watched the lobby traffic again.

A hotel—even a landmark like the Watergate—wouldn’t do. He needed to take advantage of the setting, and not in any obvious way. That meant that the White House, the Capitol, and the various monuments and memorials were out.

But what about the Supreme Court? That hadn’t been done. The place had a nice, sepulchral air. And wasn’t there a floating staircase in the building? He thought he’d seen photos of that. Ah, yes. He closed his eyes and visualized Lida’s body lying there, pale and limp and broken. Yes, there! Her luxurious hair would be tousled, but becomingly so. And beneath that jet-black hair, bright red rivulets would flow, would stain the alabaster stair. Ah, yes!

Innocent, indestructable Lida—like the innocents in Herod, doomed to slaughter.

It was then that he saw the light bulb, a small, bare globule so very like the ones in comic strips. The ones that signify the dawning of an idea. How much more fitting that would be: The Play of Herod. Washington National Cathedral, Washington, D.C. It was perfect. He smiled and uncapped his pen. And Lida would love it, if she knew. Upon the pad he wrote: Murder in the Cathedral.

And then he walked to a row of telephones, reaching for the envelope upon which he’d written the number.