Ed Lacy
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CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
Len Zinberg
Ragged red streak crawling up the sand to where she was spread-legged on her belly... as if staring over the top of the sand dune. Dull-dark and bright red blood on the strong legs, the bathing suit. I was quite sorry Lu was dead.
For a very long time I looked up at her solid thighs—the only direction in which I could look. So many men had known those legs, although not a one of us had really known her body or.... I heard these little dry coughs, like animal barks
....
Oh God, dogs attacking us? Turning my head was a great effort, so I pushed it back into the sand far as possible, tried rolling my head from side to side, looking for the dogs.
I saw blood splashes all over the sandy hollow... hell of a large stain under me. The red blotches... like one of my non-objective paintings. DEATH SCENE—obvious and corny title. But dying certainly is damn objective, the most objective thing....
The animal grunts came from above me... at the top of the dune. Pressing my head deep into the sand, rolling my eyes upward, I watched her lips move—it didn't seem possible she wasn't dead. Calling to her, I didn't hear my voice. Lu just kept staring intently ahead, making these weird barking sounds. Digging with my elbows, I started moving up the dune toward her....
then the fire broke out in my guts again.
A very long time later—the sky was now a much truer blue—I found myself next to Lu. I tried not seeing the bloody breast covered with sticky sand...
looking for all the world like a giant hamburger with bread crumbs, ready for frying. Her face had the falling-apart-look, as when she needed a shot. Full of taut lines... aged... harsh. But her eyes were bright, alive. With sand sticking to her thick red lips, Lu was making these muted grunts.
“Honey... Lu...”
Talking made me shoot into space again. When I came to, I touched her shoulder with my bloody finger. God, her skin was cold! She didn't look at me: her eyes fixed... ahead.
Digging in the sand with my right elbow...
then... jacking myself up with the left elbow—I flopped over on my side... only soaring a little. My can... legs... didn't move, no longer seemed a part of me.
My face now so near hers.
...
I felt the motion of air with each mumbled squeal Lu made. Stink of death already on her breath, the stale odor of dying. Were the barks that so-called...
death, rattle?
“Honey... Lu.... hon...” I had to rest and float around, each banal word a ton of effort.
Coming to, following her burning eyes staring hard toward the ocean—I saw it. Below us, below the dune... on the beach... this beautiful...
beautiful castle.
CHAPTER 1
I awoke feeling “wrong.”
For a brace of weeks I'd been full of a restless depression. I'd had these bottom-of-the-barrel feelings before, God knows, but only when things were going badly. Now, I should have been in high: I was painting well, had a few bucks—the result of seducing a dizzy school teacher into buying one of my water colors. I also had Sydney, even if I didn't quite understand my feelings about Syd.
But I was so jumpy I could hardly hold a brush.
At the moment it wasn't merely any blue mood —I was badly hungover. I couldn't recall having ever been so stupid-drunk as last night. Plus—the foggy idea I'd also smoked a few sticks of tea. I wasn't sure what I'd done.
I wasn't positive of a damn thing except I was half- alive on a sunny Tuesday morning. I saw the ultramarine blue Mediterranean through the window, and by the height of the sun it had to be around nine a.m. On a cockeyed chair before the open window, shorts, socks, and a pink sport shirt were drying. My sloppy clothes. I've always been a slob, now I dressed that way deliberately—figured it gave me an air of manliness.
I'd made a dozen attempts to paint the view from my window—they all came out like these $9.98 “original oils” in department store bargain basements. Of course, for me that wasn't bad—compared to the abstract crap I used to pass off as painting. The drying laundry, my “sneaky
