wandering around the room, a little nervous so that she had to remind herself to put down her purse, and she was looking at things. There was a door to the side of the parlor, and she opened it and peeked inside and stopped. In there was a plain-looking bedroom, and in the corner of the room was a movie camera on a stand. Halliday came out of the kitchen holding two drinks, saw her standing there, and made a face. “Looking over the old workroom, huh?”
“You make those movies,” she told him.
“Sure. I told you, I’m a hood. I do lots of things. C’mon, close the door. Let’s not think about things like that tonight.”
She was shaking her head. “You make those movies.”
“Rebecca,” he said softly. “What? C’mon. I do worse things’n movies. I told you.”
“You didn’t tell me movies.”
“Well, what do you care? I’m not in them
“Yes? Work? And what am I?”
He stared at her. He looked like he’d been kicked.
“What?” he said. “Aw, no. Oh, no, no, you can’t be thinking like that. Look, if I sold shoes, and I met you and I asked you to dinner, would you say, that guy only wants me so he can sell me a pair of shoes? That’s work. You’ve got nothing to do with that.”
“Yes, I do. I have had to do with that. I’ve had everything to do with it.”
He was silent.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Well, I’m sorry, too. What do you mean, you’re sorry?”
“I’m sorry. I have to go now. I’m sorry, I can’t see you any more.”
“Look, you’re upset.”
“I’m sorry. I have to go now. Good night. I’m sorry.”
“Go? Just like that?” he said.
“Just like that,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
He closed his eyes then. She’d never forget it, no matter how long she lived. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, they were different eyes. It was as if there was a mechanism in his head that had rolled away the old eyes and rotated a new pair into position, the same size and color as the first, but horrible. He stood there, the new eyes looking at her from inside the old face. It was the worst thing she’d ever seen.
“Enjoy the car,” he said.
She just stood there, staring at the eyes.
“I must be the biggest, the biggest goddamn fool,” he said quietly. “No, take the car. Take it. I’m not in the mood for it back right now.”
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll—”
“I’ll take it some other night.”
“Okay,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“Some night, some night when you’re out riding? When you’re out some night.
She’d listened to the rest of it then, her torn stockings, her black legs and bleeding feet, and the farm hands, and how she’d love it, but by that time she’d snatched her purse up and was stumbling out the door. She slammed it and ran across the lawn and got into her car. No, it was his car now. Hood, she thought, hood hood, you can’t talk like that to a hood, you can’t do that to a hood, he’ll kill you, I don’t know what he’ll do, you can’t. She was holding the wheel, getting control of herself again. She told herself she had to think. She thought, You can’t say you will to a hood and then you don’t. All right, she told herself. All right. You have to give him what you said. You have to do what you said, she thought, the way she’d told herself when she’d first came into the room, that first room, months ago, with the man and the other man with the camera and the bed. You can do this, you’ve done it enough. She got out of the car again and went steadily up the walk. She rang the bell.
When he opened the door, his face looked sorry, as if it wanted to apologize. It was wet with tears, as if the eyes were hurting him, but it was the same eyes looking out as before. Still, she made herself stand there and not run. It’s just him, she told herself, just him and he’s upset. She said, “I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you. I never meant to trick you. I’ll stay with you tonight. I’ll stay with you all weekend, just so you see, just so you know it’s not that. It’s that I can’t be your girl. Because of the movies, but I never meant to trick you, and you can have me and get me out of your system, because you think I’m something that I’m not. I’ll stay with you and you can have everything and that way you’ll see I’m nothing special,” and then she stopped, because he was walking toward her.
“That’s nice,” he said. “I can do what I want, huh? It doesn’t matter to you.”
She began backing away.
“It wasn’t enough, I guess. It wasn’t enough to string me and then turn me down. You weren’t having enough fun with that. You had to come back. You had to come back and tell me I can do whatever I like and it doesn’t matter. That even if I was on top of you, I’m nothing to you. You wanted to tell me with your whole body. Two evenings stringing me and laughing at me, but it wasn’t enough. You had to come back and make me nothing.”
She tripped and was up again in a moment, limping backward.
He said, “Fifteen minutes and fifteen minutes and fifteen minutes and then you’re dead. Everybody’s got to take your time. Everybody’s got to make a clown of you. Tell you what we did once, though, that worked pretty good. It was this guy that was skimming on our marina operation? And we had to let everyone know, you know, that wasn’t a good idea. We used lye on him, plain old lye. On the face. You should’ve seen it work. It actually did more than we planned, because it seeped down under the lids and took one of his eyes, but that’s all right, that just made our point a little clearer, and afterward? You wouldn’t forget this guy’s face if you saw it. You think I’m kidding, or just having a little fit, or getting a kick out of scaring you, but I’m just telling you. I’m just trying to get a little of my time back. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m nothing,” he said, as she reached the car and scrambled inside. She dropped the keys and was down under the dashboard, scrabbling for them, and his voice was coming from above her as he stood by the car. “I must be nothing, because you’ve told me it doesn’t matter what I do. But you, you’re just pretty. Just a pretty face, and without it, you’re nothing, too.” She sat there weeping as the motor sawed and sawed and wouldn’t catch. “I’ll take your face,” he told her. “I’ll make you nothing.”
The first thing I did after I left Rebecca’s room was call Joan Healey down at the county courthouse. She either worked in the probate office or with them, I kept forgetting. We didn’t know each other that well anymore, but she thought we did, and she was happy to hear from me and promised she’d see what she could see. I said I’d take her to lunch on Saturday and we rang off. Then I went to the library and spent a couple hours with the atlases. I was looking for towns named Halliday. Sometimes they’ll take their home town or their old street as a new last name. It was a hunch I had, and after two hours I closed the books with a list of several dozen Hallidays and decided not to play any more hunches. I came home and washed my new car, and poked at the right rear fender and wondered what it would cost to have the dents hammered out. It’s a pretty solid car, in spite of how it looks. Joey hadn’t treated me too badly. When this one died, I’d probably go back to him. There wasn’t much in the house, and I dumped the last of the canned hash in with some leftover spaghetti, warmed it up in a frying pan, and ate it.
When I finished dinner, I did the washing up. Nothing’s grimmer than coming home alone, late at night, to a sink full of crap. My shoes needed polishing, so I polished them, then brushed my teeth and shaved myself twice. I spread out my suits on the bed. They’re the ones I wore bodyguarding, and neither was that good to begin with. The brown one seemed like the better of the two, and I put it on and had a look in the mirror. If the light was low, I figured I could pass for an actor who played pugs instead of a pug. I looked at the gun in the bottom right drawer of my desk, left it there, and went out to the car.
The Centaur was about fifteen miles out of town on Route 5 toward the valley, a big place with a semicircular
