Chapter Nineteen

He was not, thank God, accompanied by his mother.

“How did you find me?” I asked.

“I didn’t. You think I don’t have to eat? This was the nearest kosher joint to your motel.”

“How did you find my motel?”

“I traced the phone number.”

“I never gave you my phone number.”

“All right, already,” he said impatiently. “I traced your last call.”

“What on earth did you do that for?”

“Standard practice,” Bormann said. “That liver good?”

“Delicious.”

“I think I’ll try some.” He signalled the waiter and gave his order. As he turned back he said, “I talked to the Doc Van Rindt at the Hilton. That’s the man you’re looking for all right, only he’s checked out now. I don’t know where he went.”

“He came to Washington,” I said.

“How do you know?”

I shrugged. “I’ve just left him a few hours ago.”

“Caught up with him, did you? That’s all right then. I’ll only charge you expenses on that part of the job. Now the broad you were looking for...” Despite my depression I felt a sudden stirring in the loins. “Beth?”

“Yeah - Beth. Once I checked out the Doc, I went to the restaurant you went to and the maitre de knew her. After that, it was only a matter of legwork.”

The stirring strengthened. “You found her? What’s her address?”

“Listen,” Bormann said, “I can give it to you, but it won’t do you any good. She ain’t there at the minute.”

The stirring died away abruptly. For some reason I thought of Beth’s story on the plane about her uncle’s rabbits. They had everything they needed in the way of material comfort. They even had the excitement of the whimsical touches Beth’s uncle had dreamed up for them. But they ignored it all and got on with doing the one thing they most wanted to do in the whole world. Which, rabbits being rabbits, was perpetual screwing.

Maybe Beth had been trying to tell me something with that story. But if so, the meaning had dawned, on me too late. In the last few days, fate had presented me with some prime opportunities to root like a rabbit, but I’d been too busy with my asshole Mission to take advantage of them. Now, like my former life, my Mission had crumbled into dust and the golden opportunity to bang a woman like Beth had gone down the drain since she was no longer at her old address. I toyed with the butter knife, wondering whether to plunge it into my own throat.

“She’s here in Washington,” Bormann said.

I stopped toying with the knife. “Here?” I asked.

“Yeah”

“In Washington?”

“Yeah.”

The waiter appeared with Bormann’s liver and took my empty plate away.

“Listen,” Bormann said, “I talked to this broad. She told me you and she had a nice little thing going and you were having a meal together when you suddenly jumped up and called her a bastard and ran out.”

My mouth, now unsupported by bandages, dropped open. “But I didn’t mean her! I meant...” I could hardly tell him I had been intent on slaughtering Van Rindt. “...somebody else,” I finished lamely.

“That’s what my mother figured,” Bormann told me through a mouthful of chopped liver.

“Your mother?”

“Yeah, you met her -remember? She insists on coming with me when I do any field work. In case it rains, or I get hungry or something. I try to tell her I’m a grown man now, but she won’t listen so what the hell? Anyway, she’s decided you’re a nice boy and nice boys don’t call women bastards, so you had to be shouting at somebody else. It makes sense to her, so she convinces this Philippe broad that’s the way it was.”

“She did?”

“Sure. So now she’s in Washington looking to meet you.”

“Your mother?”

“No, the broad!”

The stirring in my loins turned to a limited inferno. “Where’s she staying?”

“At your motel - where else?”

“What’s the chalet number?” I almost reached across and grabbed him in my impatience.

“Two zero,” Bormann said, solidly chewing chopped liver.

“Two zero -” I started to make a mental note, then stopped. “That’s my chalet number.”

“That’s right. She talked the desk clerk into giving her the key - said she was your wife.”

I was on my feet in a state of high excitement. I dropped my wallet on his bread plate. “Here, pay for the meal and take your fee out of that, Mr Bormann.” There was more than $500 in it at my last count, but I figured he deserved every penny. I turned and headed for the door.

“Listen,” Bormann said. “That psychiatrist friend of yours - you think he could cure me of an Oedipus Complex?”

Washington is exactly like London in that there is never a taxi about when you need one, so I ran all the way to the motel. I reached my chalet breathless to discover my key was in the little pouch compartment of my wallet and my wallet was with Bormann in the kosher restaurant.

Feeling foolish, excited, apprehensive, disbelieving and randy, I rang the bell.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then the door opened and Beth was standing there in a translucent negligee. I stared. It was touch and go whether she had anything at all on underneath, but what there might have been had to be tiny.

“Don’t say anything, John. Your nice little detective explained everything to me. At least his mother did.”

I opened and closed my mouth like a fish, not saying anything. Beth smiled a little as she watched me. “Aren’t you going to come in, John. It’s your chalet after all.”

The best I could do was croak a little. I’d never felt so excited in my entire life. I wondered if she had brought along any costumes.

As I stepped through the door, Beth said, “I want you to meet my little sister. I’ve brought her along to help me entertain you.”

And it was, by God, none other than Marian, the nymphomaniac student from the chalet next door. She was sitting in a chair beside the bed, no longer wearing her jeans and sweater or anything much else for that matter. I noticed a blackboard pointer on the floor beside her.

“You’re - you’re sisters?” I gasped.

“Hello, Father,” Marian said. Her eyes, I noticed were as glazed as they had been the last time she turned on. “I told you both my sisters were as bad as me.”

“Both?” I said. My head was swimming, the direct result of blood rushing to another area of my body.

The bathroom door opened behind me and a familiar voice said, “I’m the other one, Mr Trench.”

“She pretends to be a nun,” Beth told me grinning, “but she never lost the habit.”

And I turned to see Sister Martha with her abba hitched, adjusting one suspender of her long, black nylon stocking. I looked from Martha to Marian to Beth and back to Martha, who was now slowly divesting herself of the black nun’s clothing. All three smiled at me.

“Isn’t this what you wanted, John?” Beth asked. “Isn’t this what you really wanted?”

It was! It was! It was all I really wanted. More than security and fame. More than the bloody BBC More than travel and adventure. More than handguns, knives, garrottes and rifles. More than de Gaulle and his damn silly wife.

With my one good hand I started to undo the buttons of my shirt.