MICHAEL MCDOWELL

Halley’s Passing

Here’s a closely observed (and very scary) study of a very methodical man of a very unusual sort.

Michael McDowell is the author of more than thirty books, including Cold Moon over Babylon, The Amulet, and the six-volume serial novel Blackwater. McDowell has also worked extensively in television, and recently co-scripted his first feature film, Beetlejuice.

 

HALLEY’S PASSING

Michael McDowell

“Would you like to keep that on your credit card?” asked the woman on the desk. Her name was Donna and she was dressed like Snow White because it was Halloween.

“No,” said Mr. Farley, “I think I’ll pay cash.” Mr. Farley counted out twelve ten-dollar bills and laid them on the counter. Donna made sure there were twelve, then gave Mr. Farley change of three dollars and twenty-six cents. He watched to make certain she tore up the charge slips he had filled out two days before. She ripped them into thirds. Original copy, Customer’s Receipt, Bank Copy, two intervening carbons—all bearing the impress of Mr. Farley’s Visa card and his signature—they went into a trash basket that was invisible beneath the counter.

“Good-bye,” said Mr. Farley. He took up his one small suitcase and walked out the front door of the hotel. His suitcase was light blue Samsonite with an X of tape underneath the handle to make it recognizable at an airport baggage claim.

It was seven o’clock. Mr. Farley took a taxi from the hotel to the airport. In the back of the taxi, he opened his case and took out a black loose-leaf notebook and wrote in it:

10385            Double Tree Inn

Dallas, Texas

Checkout 1900/$116.74/

Donna

The taxi took Mr. Farley to the airport and cost him $12.50 with a tip that was generous but not too generous.

Mr. Farley went to the PSA counter and picked up an airline schedule and put it into the pocket of his jacket. Then he went to the Eastern counter and picked up another schedule. In a bar called the Range Room he sat at a small round table. He ordered a vodka martini from a waitress named Alyce. When she had brought it to him, and he had paid her and she had gone away, he opened his suitcase, pulled out his black loose-leaf notebook and added the notations:

Taxi $10.20 + 2.30/#1718

Drink at Airport Bar

$2.75 + .75/Alyce

He leafed backwards through the notebook and discovered that he had flown PSA three times in the past two months. Therefore he looked into the Eastern Schedule first. He looked on page 23 first because $2.30 had been the amount of the tip to the taxi driver. On page 23 of the Eastern airline schedule were flights from Dallas to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Mobile, Alabama. All of the flights to Milwaukee changed in Cincinnati or St. Louis. A direct flight to Mobile left at 9:10 p.m. arriving 10:50 p.m. Mr. Farley returned the black loose-leaf notebook to his case and got up from the table, spilling his drink in the process.

“I’m very sorry,” he said to Alyce, and left another dollar bill for her inconvenience.

“That’s all right,” said Alyce.

Mr. Farley went to the Eastern ticket counter and bought a coach ticket to Mobile, Alabama. He asked for an aisle seat in the nonsmoking section. He paid in cash and after taking out his black loose-leaf notebook, he checked his blue Samsonite bag. He went through security, momentarily surrendering a ringful of keys. The flight to Mobile departed Gate 15 but Mr. Farley sat in the seats allotted to Gate 13, directly across the way. He read through a copy of USA Today and he gave a Snickers bar to a child in a pumpkin costume who trick-or-treated him. He smiled at the child, not because he liked costumes or Halloween or children, but because he was pleased with himself for having been foresightful enough to buy three Snickers bars just in case he ran into trick-or-treating children on Halloween night. He opened his black loose-leaf notebook and amended the notation of his most recent bar tab:

Drink at Airport Bar

$2.75 + 1.75/Alyce

The flight for Mobile began boarding at 8:55. As the announcement was made for the early accommodation of those with young children or other difficulties, Mr. Farley went into the men’s room.

A Latino man in his twenties with a blue shirt and a lock of hair dangling down his neck stood at a urinal, looking at the ceiling and softly farting. His urine splashed against the porcelain wall of the urinal. Mr. Farley went past the urinals and stood in front of the two stalls and peered under them. He saw no legs or feet or shoes but he took the precaution of opening the doors. The stalls were empty, as he suspected, but Mr. Farley did not like to leave such matters to chance. The Latino man, looking downwards, flushed the urinal, zipping his trousers and backing away at the same time. Mr. Farley leaned down and took the Latino man by the waist. He swung the Latino man around so that he was facing the mirrors and the two sinks in the restroom and could see Mr. Farley’s face.

“Man—” protested the Latino man.

Mr. Farley rolled his left arm around the Latino man’s belt and put his right hand on the Latino man’s head. Mr. Farley pushed forward very swiftly with his right hand. The Latino man’s head went straight down towards the sink in such a way that the cold-water faucet, shaped like a Maltese Cross, shattered the bone above the Latino man’s right eye. Mr. Farley had gauged the strength of his attack so that the single blow served to press the Latino’s head all the way down to the porcelain. The chilled aluminum faucet was buried deeply in the Latino man’s brain. Mr. Farley took the Latino man’s wallet from his back pocket, removed the cash and his Social Security card. He gently dropped the wallet into the sink beneath the Latino man’s head and turned on the hot water. Mr. Farley peered into the sink, and saw blood, blackish and brackish swirling into the rusting drain. Retrieving his black loose-leaf notebook from the edge of the left-hand sink where he’d left it, Mr. Farley walked out of the rest room. The Eastern flight to Mobile was boarding all seats and Mr. Farley walked on directly behind a young woman with brown hair and a green scarf and directly in front of a young woman with slightly darker brown hair in a yellow sweater-dress. Mr. Farley sat in Seat 4-C and next to him, in Seat 4-A, was a bearded man in a blue corduroy jacket who fell asleep before take-off. Mr. Farley reached into his pocket and pulled out the bills he’d taken from the Latino man’s wallet. There were five five-dollar bills and nine one-dollar bills. Mr. Farley pulled out his own wallet and interleaved the Latino man’s bills with his own, mixing them up. Mr. Farley reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out the Latino man’s Social Security card, cupping it from sight and slipping it into the Eastern Airlines In-Flight Magazine. He turned on the reading light and opened the magazine. The Social Security card read:

IGNAZIOS LAZO

424-70-4063

Mr. Farley slipped the Social Security card back into his shirt pocket. He exchanged the in-flight magazine for the black loose-leaf notebook in the seat back pocket. He held the notebook in his lap for several minutes while he watched the man in the blue corduroy jacket next to him, timing his breaths by the sweep second hand on his watch. The man seemed genuinely to be asleep. Mr. Farley declined a beverage from the stewardess, who did not wear a name tag, and put his finger to his lips with a smile to indicate that the man in the blue corduroy jacket was sleeping and probably wouldn’t want to be disturbed. When the beverage cart was one row behind and conveniently blocking the aisle so that no one could look over his shoulder as he wrote, Mr. Farley opened the black loose-leaf notebook on his lap, and completed the entry for Halloween:

2155/Ignazios Lazo/c

27/Dallas Texas/ Airport/

RR/38/Head onto Faucet

RR meant Rest Room, and Mr. Farley stared at the abbreviation for a few moments, wondering whether he shouldn’t write out the words. There was a time when he had been a good deal given to abbreviations, but once, in looking over his book for a distant year, he had come across the notation CRB, and had had no idea what that stood for. Mr. Farley since that time had been careful about his notations. It didn’t do to forget things. If you forgot things, you might repeat them. And if you inadvertently fell into a repetitious pattern—well then, you just might get into trouble.

Mr. Farley got up and went into the rest room at the forward end of the passenger cabin. He burned Ignazios Lazo’s Social Security card, igniting it with a match torn from a book he had picked up at the casino at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas. He waited in the rest room till he could no longer smell the nitrate in the air from the burned match, then flushed the toilet, washed his hands, and returned to his seat.

The flight arrived in Mobile at three minutes past eleven. While waiting for his blue Samsonite bag, Mr. Farley went to a Yellow Pages telephone directory for Mobile. His flight from Dallas had been Eastern Flight No. 71, but Mr. Farley was not certain there would be that many hotels and motels in Mobile, Alabama, so he decided on number 36, which was half of 72 (the closest even number to 71). Mr. Farley turned to the pages advertising hotels and counted down thirty-six to the Oasis Hotel. He telephoned and found a room was available for fifty-six dollars. He asked what the cab fare from the airport would be and discovered it would be about twelve dollars, with tip. The reservations clerk asked for Mr. Farley’s name, and Mr. Farley, looking down at the credit card in his hand, said, “Mr. T.L. Rachman.” He spelled it for the clerk.

Mr. Rachman claimed his bag, and went outside for a taxi. He was first in line, and by 11:30 he had arrived at the Oasis Hotel, downtown in Mobile. In the hotel’s Shore Room Lounge, a band was playing in Halloween costume. The clerk on the hotel desk was made up to look like a mummy.

“You go to a lot of trouble here for holidays, I guess,” said Mr. Rachman pleasantly.

“Anything for a little change,” said the clerk as he pressed Mr. Rachman’s MasterCard against three copies of a voucher. Mr. Rachman signed his name on the topmost voucher and took back the card. Clerks never checked signatures at this point, and they never checked them later either, but Mr. Rachman had a practiced hand, at least when it came to imitating a signature.

Mr. Rachman’s room was on the fifth and topmost floor, and enjoyed a view down to the street. Mr. Rachman unpacked his small bag, carefully hanging his extra pair of trousers and his extra jacket. He set his extra pair of shoes, with trees inside, into the closet beneath the trousers and jacket. He placed his two laundered shirts inside the topmost bureau drawer, set his little carved box containing an extra watch and two pairs of cufflinks and a tie clip and extra pairs of brown and black shoelaces on top of the bureau, and set his toiletries case next to the sink in the bathroom. He opened his black loose-leaf notebook and though it was not yet midnight, he began the entry for 110185, beneath which he noted:

110185    Eastern 71 Dallas-Mobile

Taxi $9.80 + 1.70

Oasis Hotel/4th St

T.L. Rachman

In the bathroom, Mr. Rachman took scissors and cut up the Visa card bearing the name Thomas Farley, and flushed away the pieces. He went down to the lobby and went into the Shore Room Lounge and sat at the bar. He ordered a vodka martini and listened to the band. When the bartender went away to the rest room, Mr. Rachman poured his vodka martini into a basin of ice behind the bar. When the bartender returned, Mr. Rachman ordered another vodka martini.

The cocktail lounge—and every other bar in Mobile—closed at 1 a.m. Mr. Rachman returned to his room, and without ever turning on the light, he sat at his window and looked out into the street. After the laundry truck had arrived, unloaded, and driven off from the service entrance of the Hotel Oasis, Mr. Rachman retreated from the window. It was 4:37 on the morning of the first of November, 1985. Mr. Rachman pulled the shade and drew the curtains. Towards noon, when the maid came to make up the room, Mr. Rachman called out from the bathroom, “I’m taking a bath.”

“I’ll come back later,” the maid called back.

“That’s all right,” Mr. Rachman said loudly. “Just leave a couple of fresh towels on the bed.” He sat on the tile floor and ran his unsleeved arm up and down through the filled tub, making splashing noises.

*   *   *

Mr. Rachman counted his money at sundown. He had four hundred fifty-eight dollars in cash. With all of it in his pocket, Mr. Rachman walked around the block to get his bearings. He had been in Mobile before, but he didn’t remember exactly when. Mr. Rachman had his shoes shined in the lobby of a hotel that wasn’t the one he was staying in. When he was done, he paid the shoeshine boy seventy-five cents and a quarter tip, and got into the elevator behind a businessman who was carrying a briefcase. The businessman with the briefcase got off on the fourth floor, and just as the doors of the elevator were closing Mr. Rachman startled and said, “Oh this is my floor, too,” and jumped off behind the businessman with the briefcase. Mr. Rachman put his hand into his pocket, and jingled his loose change as if he were looking for his room key. The businessman with the briefcase put down his briefcase beside Room 419 and fumbled in his pocket for his own room key. Mr. Rachman stopped and patted all the pockets of his jacket and trousers. “Did I leave it at the desk?” he murmured to himself. The businessman with the briefcase put the key into the lock of Room 419, and smiled a smile that said to Mr. Rachman, It happens to me all the time, too. Mr. Rachman smiled a small embarrassed smile, and said, “I sure hope I left it at the desk,” and turned and started back down the hall past the businessman with the briefcase.

The businessman and his briefcase were already inside of Room 419 and the door was beginning to shut when Mr. Rachman suddenly changed direction in the hallway and pushed the door open.

“Hey,” said the businessman. He held his briefcase up protectively before him. Mr. Rachman shut the door quietly behind him. Room 419 was a much nicer room than his own, though he didn’t care for the painting above the bed. Mr. Rachman smiled, though, for the businessman was alone and that was always easier. Mr. Rachman pushed the businessman down on the bed and grabbed the briefcase away from him. The businessman reached for the telephone. The red light was blinking on the telephone telling the businessman he had a message at the desk. Mr. Rachman held the briefcase high above his head and then brought it down hard, giving a little twist to his wrist just at the last so that a corner of the rugged leather case smashed against the bridge of the businessman’s nose, breaking it. The businessman gaped, and fell sideways on the bed. Mr. Rachman raised the case again and brought the side of it down against the businessman’s cheek with such force that the handle of the case broke off in his hand and the businessman’s cheekbones were splintered and shoved up into his right eye. Mr. Rachman took the case in both hands and swung it hard along the length of the businessman’s body and caught him square beneath his chin in the midst of a choking scream so that the businessman’s lower jaw was shattered, detached, and then embedded in the roof of his mouth. In the businessman’s remaining eye was one second more of consciousness and then he was dead. Mr. Rachman turned over the businessman’s corpse and took out his wallet, discovering that his name was Edward P. Maguire, and that he was from Sudbury, Massachusetts. He had one hundred and thirty-three dollars in cash, which Mr. Rachman put into his pocket. Mr. Rachman glanced through the credit cards, but took only the New England Bell telephone credit card. Mr. Maguire’s briefcase, though battered and bloody, had remained locked, secured by an unknown combination. Mr. Rachman would have taken the time to break it open and examine its contents but the telephone on the bedside table rang. The hotel desk might not have noticed Mr. Maguire’s entrance into the hotel, but Mr. Rachman did not want to take a chance that Mr. Maguire’s failure to answer the telephone would lead to an investigation. Mr. Rachman went quickly through the dead man’s pockets, spilling his change onto the bedspread. He found the key of a Hertz rental car with the tag number indicated on a plastic ring. Mr. Rachman pocketed it. He turned the dead man over once more and pried open his shattered mouth. A thick broth of clotting blood and broken teeth spilled out over the knot of Mr. Maguire’s tie. With the tips of two fingers, Mr. Rachman picked out a pointed fragment of incisor, and put it into his mouth, licking the blood from his fingers as he did so. As he peered out into the hallway, Mr. Rachman rolled the broken tooth around the roof of his mouth, and then pressed it there with his tongue till its jagged edge drew blood and he could taste it. No one was in the hall, and Mr. Rachman walked out of Room 419, drawing it closed behind him. He took the elevator down to the basement garage, and walked slowly about till he found Mr. Maguire’s rented car. He drove out of the hotel garage and slowly circled several streets till he found a stationery store that was still open. Inside he bought a detailed street map of Mobile. He studied it by the interior roof light of the rented car. For two hours he drove through the outlying suburbs of the city, stopping now and then before a likely house, and noting its number on the map with a black felt-tip marker. At half-past eleven he returned to the Oasis Hotel and parked the rental car so that it would be visible from his window. He went up to his room, and noted in his diary, under 110185:

1910/Edward P Maguire/c

43/Mobile Alabama/Hotel

Palafox 419/1133/Jaw and

Briefcase

On a separate page in the back of the loose-leaf notebook, he added:

Edward P Maguire

(110185)/9 Farmer’s

Road/Sudbury MA 01776/

617 392 3690

That was just in case. Sometimes Mr. Rachman liked to visit widows. It added to the complexity of the pattern, and so far as Mr. Rachman was concerned, the one important thing was to maintain a pattern that couldn’t be analyzed, that was arbitrary in every point. That was why he sometimes made use of the page of notations in the back of the book—because too much randomness was a pattern in itself. If he sometimes visited a widow after he had met her husband, he broke up the pattern of entirely unconnected deaths. Mr. Rachman, who was methodical to the very core of his being, spent a great percentage of his waking time in devising methods to make each night’s work seem entirely apart from the last’s. Mr. Rachman, when he was young, had lived in a great city and had simply thought that its very size would hide him. But even in a great city, his very pattern of randomness had become apparent, and he had very nearly been uncovered. Mr. Rachman judged that he would have to do better, and he began to travel. In the time since then, he had merely refined his technique. He varied the length of his stays, he varied his acquaintance. That’s what he called them, and it wasn’t a euphemism—he simply had no other word for them, and really, they were the people he got to know best, if only for a short time. He varied his methods, he varied the time of the evening, and he even varied his variety. Sometimes he would arrange to meet three old woman in a row, three old women who lived in similar circumstances in a small geographical area, and then he would move on, and his next acquaintance would be a young man who exchanged his favors for cash. Mr. Rachman imagined a perfect pursuer, and expended a great deal of energy in evading and tricking this imaginary hound. Increasingly, over the years Mr. Rachman’s greatest satisfaction lay in evading this nonexistent, dogged detective. His only fear was that there was a pattern in the carpet he wove which was invisible to him, but perfectly apparent to anyone who looked at it from a certain angle.

*   *   *

No one took notice of Mr. Maguire’s rented car that night. Next morning Mr. Rachman told the chambermaid he wasn’t feeling well and would spend the day in bed, so she needn’t make it up. But he let her clean the bathroom as she hadn’t been able to do the day before. He lay with his arm over his eyes. “I hope you feel better,” said the chambermaid. “Do you have any aspirin?”

“I’ve already taken some,” said Mr. Rachman, “but thank you. I think I’ll just try to sleep.”

That night, Mr. Rachman got up and watched the rented car. It had two parking tickets on the windshield. At 11:30 p.m. he went downstairs, got into the car, and drove around three blocks slowly, just in case he was being followed. He was not, so far as he could tell. He opened his map of Mobile, and picked the house he’d marked that was nearest a crease. It was 117 Shadyglade Lane in a suburb called Spring Hill. Mr. Rachman drove on, to the nearest of the other places he’d marked. He stopped in front of a house on Live Oak Street, about a mile away. No lights burned. He turned into the driveway and waited for fifteen minutes. He saw no movement in the house. He got out of his car, closing the door loudly, and walked around to the back door, not making any effort to be quiet.

There was no door bell so he pulled open the screen door and knocked loudly. He stood back and looked up at the back of the house. No lights came on that he could see. He knocked more loudly, then without waiting for a response he kicked at the base of the door, splintering it in its frame. He went into the kitchen, but did not turn on the light.

“Anybody home?” Mr. Rachman called out as he went from the kitchen into the dining room. He picked up a round glass bowl from the sideboard and hurled it at a picture. The bowl shattered noisily. No one came. Mr. Rachman looked in the other two rooms on the ground floor, then went upstairs, calling again, “It’s Mr. Rachman!”

He went into the first bedroom, and saw that it belonged to a teenaged boy. He closed the door. He went into another bedroom and saw that it belonged to the parents of the teenaged boy. He went through the bureau drawers, but found no cash. The father’s shirts, however, were in Mr. Rachman size—16½ × 33—and he took two that still bore the paper bands from the laundry. Mr. Rachman checked the other rooms of the second floor just in case, but the house was empty. Mr. Rachman went out the back door again, crossed the backyard of the house, and pressed through the dense ligustrum thicket there. He found himself in the backyard of a ranch house with a patio and a brick barbeque. Mr. Rachman walked to the patio and picked up a pot of geraniums and hurled it through the sliding glass doors of the den. Then he walked quickly inside the house, searching for a light switch. A man in pajamas suddenly lurched through a doorway, and he too was reaching for the light switch. Mr. Rachman put one hand on the man’s shoulder, and with his other he grabbed the man’s wrist. Then Mr. Rachman gave a twist, and smashed the back of the man’s elbow against the edge of a television set with such force that all the bones there shattered at once. Mr. Rachman then took the man by the waist, lifted him up and carried him over to the broken glass door. He turned him sideways and then pushed him against the long line of broken glass, only making sure that the shattered glass was embedded deep into his face and neck. When Mr. Rachman let the man go, he remained standing, so deep had the edge of broken door penetrated his head and chest. Just in case, Mr. Rachman pressed harder. Blood poured out over Mr. Rachman’s hands. With a nod of satisfaction, Mr. Rachman released the man in pajamas and walked quickly back across the patio and disappeared into the shrubbery again. On the other side, he looked back, and could see the lights going on in the house. He heard a woman scream. He took out a handkerchief to cover his bloody hands and picked up the shirts which he’d left on the back porch of the first house. Then he got into his car and drove around till he came to a shopping mall. He parked near half a dozen other cars—probably belonging to night watchmen—and took off his blood-stained jacket. He tossed it out the window. He took off his shirt, and wiped off the blood that covered his hands. He threw that out of the window, too. He put on a fresh shirt and drove back to the Oasis Hotel. He parked the car around the block, threw the keys into an alleyway, and went back up to his room. In his black loose-leaf notebook he wrote, under 110285:

1205/unk./mc 35/Spring

Hill (Mobile) Alabama/

$0/Broken glass

Mr. Rachman spent the rest of the night simply reading through his black loose-leaf notebook, not trying to remember what he could not easily bring to mind, but merely playing the part of the tireless investigator trying to discern a pattern. Mr. Rachman did not think he was fooling himself when he decided that he could not.

When the chambermaid came the next day, Mr. Rachman sat on a chair with the telephone cradled between his ear and his shoulder, now and then saying, “Yes” or “No, not at all” or “Once more and let me check those numbers”, as he made notations on a pad of paper headed up with a silhouette cartouche of palm trees.

Mr. Rachman checked out of the Oasis Hotel a few minutes after sundown, and smiled a polite smile when the young woman on the desk apologized for having to charge him for an extra day. The bill came to $131.70 and Mr. Rachman paid in cash. As he watched the young woman on the desk tear up the credit card receipt, he remarked, “I don’t like to get near my limit,” and the young woman on the desk replied, “I won’t even apply for one.”

“But they sometimes come in handy, Marsha,” said Mr. Rachman, employing her name aloud as a reminder to note it later in his diary. Nametags were a great help to Mr. Rachman in his travels, and he had been pleased to watch the rapid spread of their use. Before 1960 or thereabouts, hardly anyone had worn a nametag.

Mr. Rachman drove around downtown Mobile for an hour or so, just in case something turned up. Once, driving slowly down an alleyway that was scarcely wider than his car, a prostitute on yellow heels lurched at him out of a recessed doorway, plunging a painted hand through his rolled-down window. Mr. Rachman said, “Wrong sex,” and drove on.

“Faggot!” the prostitute called after him.

Mr. Rachman didn’t employ prostitutes except in emergencies, that is to say, when it was nearly dawn and he had not managed to make anyone’s acquaintance for the night. Then he resorted to prostitutes, but not otherwise. Too easy to make that sort of thing a habit.

And habits were what Mr. Rachman had to avoid.

He drove to the airport, and took a ticket from a mechanized gate. He drove slowly around the parking lot, which was out of doors, and to one side of the airport buildings. He might have taken any of several spaces near the terminal, but Mr. Rachman drove slowly about the farther lanes. He could not drive very long, for fear of drawing the attention of a guard.

A blue Buick Skylark pulled into a space directly beneath a burning sodium lamp. Mr. Rachman made a sudden decision. He parked his car six vehicles down, and quickly climbed out with his blue Samsonite suitcase. He strode towards the terminal with purpose, coming abreast of the blue Buick Skylark. A woman, about thirty-five years old, was pulling a dark leather bag out of the backseat of the car. Mr. Rachman stopped suddenly, put down his case and patted the pockets of his trousers in alarm.

“My keys…” he said aloud.

Then he checked the pockets of his suit jacket. He often used the forgotten keys ploy. It didn’t really constitute a habit, for it was an action that would never appear later as evidence.

The woman with the suitcase came between her car and the recreational vehicle that was parked next to it. She had a handbag over her shoulder. Mr. Rachman suddenly wanted very badly to make this one work for him. For one thing, this was a woman, and he hadn’t made the acquaintance of a female since he’d been in Mobile. That would disrupt the pattern a bit. She had a purse, which might contain money. He liked the shape and size of her luggage, too.

“Excuse me,” she said politely, trying to squeeze by him. “I think I locked my keys in my car,” said Mr. Rachman, moving aside for her.

She smiled a smile which suggested that she was sorry but that there was nothing she could do about it.

She had taken a single step towards the terminal when Mr. Rachman lifted his right leg and took a long stride forward. He caught the sole of his shoe against her right calf, and pushed her down to the pavement. The woman crashed to her knees on the pavement with such force that the bones of her knees shattered. She started to fall forward, but Mr. Rachman spryly caught one arm around her waist and placed his other hand on the back of her head. In his clutching fingers, he could feel the scream building in her mouth. He swiftly turned her head and smashed her face into the high-beam headlight of the blue Buick Skylark. He jerked her head out again, and even before the broken glass had spilled down the front of her suit jacket, Mr. Rachman plunged her head into the low-beam headlight. He jerked her head out, and awkwardly straddling her body, he pushed her between her Buick and the next car in the lane, a silver VW GTI. He pushed her head hard down against the pavement four times, though he was sure she was dead already. He let go her head, and peered at his fingers in the light of the sodium lamp. He smelled the splotches of blood on his third finger and his palm and his thumb. He tasted the blood, and then wiped it off on the back of the woman’s bare leg. Another car turned down the lane, and Mr. Rachman threw himself onto the pavement, reaching for the woman’s suitcase before the automobile lights played over it. He pulled it into the darkness between the cars. The automobile drove past. Mr. Rachman pulled the woman’s handbag off her shoulder, and then rolled her beneath her car. Fishing inside the purse for her car keys, he opened the driver’s door and unlocked the back door. He climbed into the car and pulled in her bag with him. He emptied its contents onto the floor, then crawled across the back seat and opened the opposite door. He retrieved his blue Samsonite suitcase from beneath the recreational vehicle where he’d kicked it as he struck up his acquaintance with the woman. The occupants of the car that had passed a few moments before walked in front of the Buick. Mr. Rachman ducked behind the back seat for a moment till he could no longer hear the voices—a man and a woman. He opened his Samsonite case and repacked all his belongings into the woman’s black leather case. He reached into the woman’s bag and pulled out her wallet. He took her Alabama driver’s license and a Carte Blanche credit card that read A. B. Frost rather than Aileen Frost. He put the ticket in his pocket. Mr. Rachman was mostly indifferent to the matter of fingerprints, but he had a superstition against carbon paper of any sort.

Mr. Rachman surreptitiously checked the terminal display and found that a plane was leaving for Birmingham, Alabama, in twenty minutes. It would probably begin to board in five minutes. Mr. Rachman rushed to the Delta ticket counter, and said breathlessly, “Am I too late to get on the plane to Birmingham? I haven’t bought my ticket yet.”

Mark, the airline employee said, “You’re in plenty of time—the plane’s been delayed.”

This was not pleasant news. Mr. Rachman was anxious to leave Mobile. Aileen Frost was hidden beneath her car, it was true, and might not be found for a day or so—but there was always a chance that someone would find her quickly. Mr. Rachman didn’t want to be around for any part of the investigation. Also, he couldn’t now say, “Well, I think I’ll go to Atlanta instead.” That would draw dangerous attention to himself. Perhaps he should just return to Mr. Maguire’s car and drive away. The evening was still early. He could find a house in the country, make the acquaintance of anyone who lived there, sit out quietly the daylight hours, and leave early the following evening.

“How long a delay?” Mr. Rachman asked Mark.

“Fifteen minutes,” said Mark pleasantly, already making out the ticket. “What name?”

Not Frost, of course. And Rachman was already several days old.

“Como,” he said, not knowing why.

“Perry?” asked Mark with a laugh.

“Peter,” said Mr. Como.

Mr. Como sighed. He was already half enamoured of his alternative plan. But he couldn’t leave now. Mark might remember a man who had rushed in, then rushed out again because he couldn’t brook a fifteen-minute delay. The ticket from Mobile to Birmingham was $89, five dollars more than Mr. Como had predicted in his mind. Putting his ticket into the inside pocket of his jacket that did not contain Aileen Frost’s ticket to Wilmington, Mr. Como went into the men’s room and locked himself into a stall. Under the noise of the flushing toilet, he quickly tore up Aileen Frost’s ticket, and stuffed the fragments into his jacket pocket. When he left the stall he washed his hands at the sink until the only other man in the rest room left. Then he wrapped the fragments in a paper towel and stuffed that deep into the waste paper basket. Aileen Frost’s license and credit card he slipped into a knitting bag of a woman waiting for a plane to Houston.

Mr. Como had been given a window seat near the front of the plane. The seat beside him was empty. After figuring his expenses for the day, Mr. Como wrote in his black loose-leaf notebook:

0745/Aileen Frost/fc

35/Mobile Airport Parking

Lot/$212/Car headlights

Mr. Como was angry with himself. Two airport killings within a week. That was laziness. Mr. Como had fallen into the lazy, despicable habit of working as early in the evening as possible. This, even though Mr. Como had never failed, not a single night, not even when only minutes had remained till dawn. But he tended to fret, and he didn’t rest easy till he had got the evening’s business out of the way. That was the problem of course. He had no other business. So if he worked early, he was left with a long stretch of hours till he could sleep with the dawn. If he put off till late, he only spent the long hours fretting, wondering if he’d be put to trouble. Trouble to Mr. Como meant witnesses (whose acquaintance he had to make as well), or falling back on easy marks—prostitutes, nightwatchmen, hotel workers. Or, worst of all, pursuit and flight, and then some sudden, uncomfortable place to wait out the daylight hours.

On every plane trip, Mr. Como made promises to himself: he’d use even more ingenuity, he’d rely on his expertise and work at late hours as well as early hours, he’d try to develop other interests. Yet he was at the extremity of his ingenuity, late hours fretted him beyond any pleasure he took in making a new acquaintance, and he had long since lost his interest in any pleasure but that moment he saw the blood of each night’s new friend. And even that was only a febrile memory of what had once been a hot true necessity of desire.

Before the plane landed, Mr. Como invariably decided that he did too much thinking. For, finally, instinct had never failed him, though everything else—Mr. Como, the world Mr. Como inhabited, and Mr. Como’s tastes—everything else changed.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said the captain’s voice, “we have a special treat for you tonight. If you’ll look out the left side of the plane, and up—towards the Pleiades—you’ll see Halley’s Comet. You’ll see it better from up here than from down below. And I’d advise you to look now, because it won’t be back in our lifetimes.”

Mr. Como looked out of the window. Most of the other passengers didn’t know which stars were the Pleiades, but Mr. Como did. Halley’s Comet was a small blur to the right of the small constellation. Mr. Como gladly gave his seat to a young couple who wanted to see the comet. Mr. Como remembered the 1910 visitation quite clearly, and that time the comet had been spectacular. He’d been living in Canada, he thought, somewhere near Halifax. It was high in the sky then, brighter than Venus, with a real tail, and no one had to point it out to you. He tried to remember the time before—1834, he determined with a calculation of his fingernail on the glossy cover of the Delta In-Flight Magazine. But 1834 was beyond his power of recollection. The Comet was surely even brighter then, but where had he been at that time? Before airports, and hotels, and credit cards, and the convenience of nametags. He’d lived in one place then for long periods of time, and hadn’t even kept proper records. There’d been a lust then, too, for the blood, and every night he’d done more than merely place an incrimsoned finger to his lips.

But everything had changed, evolved slowly and immeasurably, and he was not what once he’d been. Mr. Como knew he’d change again. The brightness of comets deteriorated with every pass. Perhaps on its next journey around the sun, Mr. Como wouldn’t be able to see it at all.