15

 

The solid thud of the trunk lock closed them both in darkness. Long groaned and eased his wounded side away from contact with the wall. His free hand sought and found Liz Macnamara’s face. He pried the tape from her mouth, then began to free her hands.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so very sorry.”

“For what?” The bands of tape peeled away with difficulty; she swallowed a cry of pain.

“For what?” Long repeated. “It’s I who have failed you, it seems, having entered the scene in the guise of a rescuer and succeeded only in adding to the defeat.”

Her hands now free, Liz began to work on the bindings on her legs. “Floyd showed up about two hours ago. I let him in. I was sure he wouldn’t risk … Oh hell!” Her voice began in outrage and faded.

“He told me you broke into his house, looking for me. I knew you were looking for Mother, of course. He said he shot you, and that you’d run off into the woods to die like an animal. He said his ceiling was soaked in blood.”

The thunder of the engine starting delayed his reply. Acceleration pushed the prisoners against the back wall. The air was close and sour with metal and gasoline. “He hit me. That much is true, at any rate.”

“Are you badly hurt?” Her hands blundered through the darkness. Found him.

“It’s bandaged,” said Mr. Long. One slim hand touched his injured shoulder. He enclosed it in his own hand and put it gently aside. “We have other things to worry about, now.”

“I’m sorry,” Elizabeth repeated helplessly. “If I had not gotten involved with Rasmussen in the first place …”

“If any one of an infinite number of events had not happened in their sequence, the present would be a different place.” He yawned. The trunk was getting warmer.

“Elizabeth, blame is a useless gesture. Regret is worse. Yet I regret that I am so weak and weary I may not be able to break the lock of the boot.”

As he spoke his fingers tapped against metal, seeking the point of attachment.

“Break the lock? Of course you can’t. It’s steel.”

“I can do a few parlor tricks,” Long said drily. “Even against steel. But now …” He flattened his hand against the top of the rear wall of their prison.

“Ugh! I have nothing to brace against.”

“Here.” She put her back to the far wall and her hands pushed against the middle of his back.

“I think your bones would give before the steel lock,” said Long, and at that moment the car turned right, rising onto two wheels, and the two of them were flung sideways and into one another’s arms.

The intimacy was involuntary, and lasted only as long as the turn that caused it. When it was over the dark air was filled with silence. Then Long began to laugh.

It was a heavy, deep, spontaneous laughter, incongruous in a man so slight and lean, impossible from a man so injured. Mr. Long’s laughter was like the cool thunder of a summer’s afternoon and Liz Macnamara found herself smiling in the middle of her dread.

“Ah! Elizabeth. It’s a very odd thing, to be a man.”

His words challenged her and she found herself replying, “I’ve often thought so myself, but of course my knowledge is secondhand.”

Without warning Long slammed the palm of his hand against the trunk lid. The lock snapped and a crack of light penetrated their prison. “Easier than I expected,” he said.

Elizabeth wasted no time in compliments. She peered through the crack. “We’re on 280,” she stated. “Going north.”

“Where is the Caroline docked?”

“North Beach. The marinas down here couldn’t accommodate her.” She settled back. “What are we going to do?”

Pushing with his feet against the trunk wall, Long edged closer. “We wait for an opportunity to jump.”

“Out of a moving car?”

“When it stops, preferably.” She saw a gleam of teeth in the darkness.

“You’ve never driven with Floyd Rasmussen,” she retorted, feeling stung. Remembering the earlier interchange, she added, “What did you mean—when you said wasn’t it funny to be a man?”

For a moment he did not respond, but rolled from his side to his back and lay staring at the metal ceiling. “I was referring to the species, not the sex.

“A man is an unusual being. He is capable of tremendous precision of thought. What is more, he creates—languages, philosophies, poetry … In short, he is the paragon of the animals. Yet he is so eminently—what is the right word?—distractable. During the most concentrated moments he may—no he will—float off like a butterfly and scatter all he has gained.

“Yet this is not a flaw in man, I think. This is what makes him man. And I must believe there is a value in that.”

“Are you talking about me, or mankind in general?” she asked in a small, hurt voice.

He turned toward her. “I am talking about myself, Elizabeth.” Seeing doubt in her face he continued, “You see, I have always been a collector—a hoarder of other people’s ideas. I was not creative by nature. Not—distractable. It wasn’t in me.

“But lately I have learned what it is to be human. Learned, but not understood. It seems to involve a great deal of misery crammed into a very short lifetime.”

His voice was urgent, almost demanding, as he looked into Liz’s eyes. “Why is that?” he asked.

“You’re asking me?”

“Why not you, Elizabeth? You are human. Also, you may be the last person I will be able to ask.”

She smiled and touched his face. “You should have asked my mother. I think she knew the answer to that.”

“Ah, but I wasted my time in lesser matters. Though perhaps she told me after all.” He shook his head. “I wish I could think more clearly.”

“Your eyes,” she whispered suddenly. “They glow in the dark.”

“I wouldn’t know about that.”

She kissed him. “They do. How did Mother find you?”

Slowly he drew his head back. “We were introduced by a bartender at the James Herald Hotel—the fancy place you yourself paid for, Elizabeth. I live there.”

“Is that how you find clients? Through the bartender?”

He stared a moment, uncomprehending. “Elizabeth. Do you also think I’m a professional detective?”

“You’re not?” Liz Macnamara hit her head against the trunk lid. “Then what are you?”

Mayland Long sighed and smiled. “I am a friend. Of your mother’s. I have no profession at all, merely sufficient money to live in comfort.”

Being the person she was, Liz Macnamara cried, “To live in comfort! That’s all I’ve ever wanted! How’d you get it?”

He hesitated. The tiny space echoed with road noise. “Out of a hole in the ground,” he said finally.

“Oil?”

“No, Elizabeth. Gold.”

“Oh! How free you must be.”

She heard her own words. “I’m sorry. More sorry than I can say. The finest thing in my life was Mother, and because of me she’s dead.” Long shot a glance at her, frowning, but he held his tongue. “And you …”

“I am not dead yet,” he replied, with a touch of acid. “And in no case do I wish to be added to your list of guilts.

“I have lived a long time, Elizabeth—longer than any creature on this earth can expect to live. These last years I have spent waiting for the fulfillment of a prophecy.”

“A what?”

“A prophecy. And it has been fulfilled. I don’t understand the sense of it, but then it was never said that I would understand—only that I would meet one who could show me the truth, and by that all I possessed I would lose.”

Liz’s eyebrows drew together. “What? Who was that, who could show you the truth, and take everything away …”

“Martha Macnamara showed me a rose.” His words were quiet, almost drowned in the rumble of the engine. His face was turned slightly away.

She stared. “Are—were you in love with my mother?” Elizabeth whispered.

The word struck Long by surprise. “In love?” He considered it.

“Yes,” he answered. “Your mother was the end of my waiting. But even had she not been a master of truth, had she only been the musician, the person she was …” He shook his head vainly. “But that’s all one. Yes, I am in love with your mother, Elizabeth. Even now.” His hands laced together over his face, concealing all but his black unreadable eyes.

“I …”

“And if you say you are sorry once more I may throw you out of the car.” He turned his attention to the passing scenery.

“He’s running the lights,” observed Mr. Long.

“That’s what I meant, about Floyd’s driving. He never obeys the rules if he thinks he can get away with it.

“And he always speeds.”

“We’re now on Nineteenth Avenue, Elizabeth. Perhaps if I prop the boot open you can roll out at a corner.”

“He’ll see!”

“All the better. In order to prevent us, he would have to stop the car, and I am confident I could delay him while you run.”

“My legs are both asleep. To the knees.”

Long laughed again, as though all of time were before him, as though the day were bright. “We’re a pretty pair,” he said. “Three arms and two legs between us. Still, it can’t be helped. Let’s see how the fellow responds.” He snapped the trunk open.

The answer was swift. The Mercedes shot forward as Rasmussen trod the accelerator and Long was nearly flung onto the pavement. He gripped the weather stripping and pulled himself back.

“Well, now we know,” said Liz bleakly. “Would you rather break your neck or be drowned?”

“Such a limited choice!” cried Mayland Long. He sat upright, stretching his back with relief. The wind wake blew his black hair around his face. “Our hand is played, child. Sit here with me a while.”

Liz Macnamara straightened painfully, propping the trunk open with one hand. She sat beside him. He put his arm around the young woman’s shoulder, perhaps for support. Nineteenth Avenue shot away beneath them; streetlights, signs and automobiles fading into the past. The streetcar tracks beat against the wheels of the Mercedes. Rasmussen cut through the empty street at sixty miles per hour.

“There’s a man—walking!” Liz waved her free hand and cried for help. The small figure vanished behind them. Rasmussen responded to her noise with a quick fishtail—left, then right across the lanes. The metal wall cracked her in the ribs.

“Goddamn him!” she shrieked, tears of anger in her eyes. Mr. Long’s hand tightened reassuringly on her shoulder. His hand was warm.

“Why didn’t you show up fifteen years ago,” Elizabeth lashed out. “We needed you.”

He drew hack to look at her: perfect features, angelic hair, eyes like the sea. “You are a beautiful woman, Elizabeth. Like a painting, which is beauty of color, and like a sculpture, which is beauty of form. But you are alive, and have a beauty of movement which is more than these. Perhaps it is the beauty of music.”

Before she could respond he added, “Do you remember Fred Frisch?”

“Fred? Of course I remember Fred. Class clown. We sat in the same classrooms for four years. Got the same grades, too, I think. How do you know Fred?”

He yawned and settled her against his good shoulder. “I met him a few days ago, while we were looking for you. This past night he … he kept me alive, I think.”

“Fred?” she repeated helplessly. “Fred?”

“I like Fred Frisch,” said Mr. Long.

This same Fred Frisch was sitting at his kitchen table, scrubbing blood-stained chair cushions. They really were ruined. He drizzled peroxide over the rusty blotches. It made a satisfactory hiss and bubble, but lifted the green dye from the ancient satin. By now the cushions were soaked through with his various attempts at cleaning. Probably they would mildew.

Fred sighed. He dropped the cushion, sighed again, dropped the pinkish rag and sighed once more. He did not know what to do.

He was gifted with a quick mind and a very simple emotional nature. He wanted to be loyal to Mr. Long. He was in awe of the man, who could endure such sickness and pain without breaking. Who managed to appear decisive in the middle of delirium. Who lay in this tatty living room so very close to dying—close as a military spec., was the way Fred put it—and spoke considerately, with impeccable manners. Who apologized to Fred for holding his arm too tightly.

And Jeez, that arm still ached.

He would have liked to be like Mr. Long, but he knew the stuff he himself was made of. He was just Fred, and the best he could do was to be loyal, and not blow the other man’s game.

He stared at a cobweb high in the corner by the window and wondered whether being Chinese helped.

He carried the cushions back to the chair. Have to remember not to sit on them the next few days, till they dried. There, on the bright fabric where the seat cushion would rest, sat a small white cassette tape.

The story came back to him: the smashed recorder and the circle on the bathroom wall—which sign he would not have understood had not Long explained its Buddhist significance. This was the tape from the kidnapper’s hole. He picked it up by one corner, as though it would bite. He took it to the kitchen.

He had four tape recorders in his small apartment. One took large tapes only and two did not work at all. The remaining unit had a bum recording head, but played back reasonably well. He dragged it from its place in the pile and plugged it in by the toaster. He rewound the tape and played it.

After a few minutes his shaking hand slammed down on the eject key. “Oh Jeezus.”

The cries, the curses, punctuated by the thud of something hard against flesh … This was concentration camp stuff. This was murder.

The image of Mrs. Macnamara filled his mind—her old-fashioned braids, the bird-tilt of her head as she followed the toy car over the carpet. Her round, blue eyes, like Liz’s eyes.

The face became Liz Macnamara’s, delicate alabaster yet flushed with anger as she turned to counter some frat boy’s silly cut. The memory was brief; it lasted as long as the action it recorded—Liz was most easily remembered in action.

Could she be dead? And her mother? Was this voice on the tape the voice of a dead woman—dying even as the tape ran? Fred’s imagination quailed and the images faded into darkness.

He shuddered, and the table rattled in sympathy. He saw Mr. Long—the Black Dragon—as he had lain on the living room rug, unconscious. Here was another one who might be dead now. Or soon.

But the eyes in his memory opened. Brown eyes, heavy lidded, looked out calm and focused. They held Fred in place as though he were a rabbit.

No. The young man shook his thick pale hair. No sir, loyalty was one thing but life was another. Lives.

Fred hit rewind. He picked up the recorder with tape inside and snatched up his keys. As he locked the door behind him he rehearsed the story he had to give the police.

“The sea,” whispered Mayland Long. “I smell it. And listen!”

“I don’t hear anything but the car,” Liz responded. “And I smell gas sloshing out of the tank. He’s taking corners like a madman.”

He drew her close to him, his single hand gripping her canvas belt. A screen of laurel appeared at the left, very close to the car. The leaves rustled in the breeze—a sea breeze, foretelling the dawn. “It is time for you to leave us,” Long announced. “Please double tie your belt, so that it doesn’t come loose.”

Mystified, Liz complied with his order. “What do you mean—time for me to leave? We’re going too fast, still. And what about you? I’ll bet you could survive jumping a lot better than I could.”

The pressure against her waist increased. She was lifted from the sheet metal. “Ouch! Please! You’re twisting me all around. What are you doing?”

“I’m sorry,” said Mr. Long, in unconscious parody of Elizabeth herself. “But it is difficult with only one arm.”

“What is?” she began, as the Mercedes, following the angle of the road, went into a hard right turn. In answer, Long braced his feet against the right wall of the trunk and flung his companion out of the car and into the shrubby trees.

Her shriek of surprise faded—like all else—into the past.