Simultaneously Cash flung the door open, two-handed his revolver, and bolted through, while Whitehead splintered the connecting door with a single kick and charged into the Scheherezade Suite.
I sat there, immobile, watching it all on the monitor:
Fat and Antrim pummeling the unseen Mainwaring; faces raised suddenly in panic; a dive for the knife. Doors breaking; Milo lumbering into the room, gun drawn, stomping a groping hand, yelling, 'Freeze, fuckers! Drop the knife! Drop it! Drop the knife! Drop the knife! Drop it! On the ground! On the ground!'
Antrim backed off. Cash retrieved the buck knife, wrapped it in a handkerchief, then dropped it in his pocket. Whitehead made a flying tackle at Fat. Milo yanked Antrim to his feet, cuffed him to the bedpost, and used plastic ties to bind his feet.
Whitehead was still trying to roll Fat off Mainwaring, groaning at the effort. Cash joined him. The two of them pulled hard on Fat's arms, fought to hoist him upright. Unable to cuff him because the arms couldn't reach around the obese body, they called for more plastic ties.
Mainwaring sat up, bloody and bruised. Smiling with satisfaction.
'Stand the fuck up,' gasped Cash, still struggling with Fat. 'Fucking . . . rodeo . . . event.'
Fat squirmed in their grasp, jiggling, squealing, gnashing his teeth, spitting in Whitehead's face. The sheriffs investigator struck out impulsively, slapping the fat face hard. Knocking the beard askew. A high-pitched wail.
'Huh?' said Whitehead as he ripped away the false hair. 'What the - '
'Get the eyelashes, too,' said Cash.
Off came the thick black fringes.
'Aahh!' cried the naked face, doughy and porcine and androgynous. A booted foot stamped the carpet, and tears coursed down the blubbery cheeks.
'Who - what the fuck are you?' asked Cash.
'Aahh!' Fat snuffled and snapped like a wild boar in a trap, bared its teeth, and tried to bite off one of Whitehead's jug ears. He recoiled and slapped it again.
'Hurt her again, and I'll kill you,' howled Antrim, thrashing in confinement. 'Hurt her again, and I'll - '
'Shut the fuck up!' screamed Whitehead. 'What the fuck is going on here?' * 'Aahh!' cried the hairless face.
'Hurt her agai - ' Milo jammed a handkerchief in Antrim's mouth.
'Aahh!'
'This is weird,' said Ginzburg, mopping his forehead.
I got up and made my way through the splintered doorway.
Mainwaring was in the bathroom, dabbing at his wounds with a damp washcloth. Whitehead stood guard over Antrim. Milo was on the phone, and Cash was still staring at the hairless woman, looking nauseated as he half demanded, half pleaded, 'What are you? What the fuck are you?'
'Her name is Marthe Surtees,' I said. 'She was Jamey's nurse.'
The room grew silent.
Marthe Surtees managed somehow to curtsy.
'Hello, Dr. Delaware,' she said sweetly. Batting her lashes, the suety face blotched with patches of adhesive and strands of false hair. 'How nice to see you again.'
MILO SPEARED a new potato, rolled it in butter, and ate it. He'd finished one loin lamb chop, and three others crowded his plate. I swallowed a cube of filet mignon and washed it down with a swallow of Grolsch.
It was 10.30 P.M.. and we were the chophouse's last customers. But the bar at the front was packed three deep and resonant with mating sounds.
'William Tull Bonney,' he said, wiping his face. 'As in Billy the Kid. Claims he's a lineal descendant. Used Antrim as an alias, 'cause that was the name of Billy's stepfather. '
He looked at the remains of his gin and tonic, considered a reorder and turned, instead, to his water glass, which he drained. Pulling a piece of paper from his breast pocket he unfolded it. He leaned forward, squinting, and read in the dim light of the glassed candle.
'Once we ID'd him and fed him into the computer, it just kept printing and printing. This is just an abstract, your basic American success story. Born in Mesilla, New
Mexico, mom a boozehound, dad unknown. Truant from day one. Drunk and disorderly at the age of eleven - how's that for precocious? Vandalism, fire setting, string of juvenile assaults and robberies. Bunch of suspected rapes and at least one murder - mutilation cutting of an Indian girl - that no one could prove but everyone knew he did. This was at sixteen. County-raised till he was eighteen. Out for year, came to California, busted within a month for attempted murder - bar knifing up in Kern County - took a year in the county jail, got extra time for attacking a guard and sundry other bad behaviours, placed in some rehab programme, where he learned auto mechanics, got a job as a grease monkey when he got out, lost it for beating up the boss. Busted for a string of armed robberies and assaults. Graduate school at Soledad, where he hooked up with the Aryan Brotherhood, absorbed a bit of two- wheeler philosophy. Upon release, rode with an outlaw gang called the Ghouls, up near Fresno, busted for second- degree murder - gang war cutting - case dismissed on a technicality raised by his attorney, Horace Souza, Esquire.'
He turned the paper over.
'Now for the illustrious Marthe Surtees aka Wilhelmina Surtees aka Billy Mae Sorrell aka Marthe Sorrel aka Sabrina Skull.'
'Sabrina Skull?'
'As in cranium. Gang name - she was a Ghoul mama. Social history similar to Antrim's - drugs, booze, and pulling the legs off tiny animals - except that she got a shitload of psychiatric treatment and avoided imprisonment as an adult. One disorderly conduct bust, case dismissed. Only reason I could get anything on her was that the Fresno DA has a file on the Ghouls in which she figured prominently: she liked to hurt people.'
'Is she a real nurse?'
'Oh, yeah. When she got out of youth camp, some federal grant paid her tuition at a fly-by-night operation, and she got an LVN. When the Ghouls weren't partying, she free-lanced at old-age homes. Left the last one under
suspicion of stealing drugs, but no charges were filed. Then she disappeared. Turns out she and Antrim were living in a cabin out in Tujunga. Stuck in the middle of a hundred acres of forest owned by Souza. Birds, bees, outdoor plumbing, a portable TV, and plenty of crank. Place was a sty. I saw it this morning. In one corner was a fibreboard closet - starched white dresses on one side, smelly black leather on the other. Two drawers at the bottom, crammed with theatrical make-up, beards, moustaches, hairpieces, some very smarmy S and M mags.' 'Charming' I said.
'Yeah. And romantic, too.' He gave a cold laugh, reached for the mint jelly, and prepared another lamb chop for surgery. 'Antrim caved in the moment we got him alone. Said he'd cooperate if we went easy on her; he'd done all the knife work anyway. We told him there were limits to the kind of flexibility you could muster in this kind of case, and besides, she'd been the one to poison the kid. Asshole started crying - do you believe that?'
He shook his head and chewed a piece of meat into oblivion.
'Anyway, inside of an hour we had the whole story, pictures included. He'd buried them under the floorboards of the cabin along with his notes. All part of his insurance policy.'
He'd shown me the snapshots before dinner. The story they told was a familiar one. But the players had been surprising.
'Planning on using them?' I asked. 'Can't see why we'd need to at this point. But they do help clarify matters, don't they? Give the case a little context. Now all we need are some numbers. Which our guest should be able to provide.' He shot his Timex out from under his cuffs. 'Twenty more minutes if he's punctual. Let's finish up.'
Eighteen minutes later the door to the bar opened, and clamorous waves of conversation spilled through. When it closed, a narrow young man stood in the doorway, suspended in the silence, eyes blinking furiously behind
gold-rimmed glasses as they adjusted to the dimness of the dining room. He wore a dark suit and tie that blended with the sombre panelling and carried a large attache case that seemed a prosthetic extension of his right arm.
'Looks like our boy,' said Milo, and he got up and escorted the newcomer to our table. As he walked, the man placed both hands on the case and carried it gingerly, as if it housed something alive and excitable.
