A Grave Talent

meeting with the reporters on Tuesday morning. We'll set up a trace on any such call, and if we don't get lucky, we'll wait for him to show his head Tuesday morning. If none of the three brings him to us, on Wednesday we'll go after him. What's wrong?'

'Nothing's wrong,' said Vaun, 'it sounds fine. It's just… it's so difficult to tie all this together with Andy.'

'He's a bastard, Vaun,' said Hawkin in a hard voice. 'He's a monster inside a man's body, a creature who thinks nothing of strangling cats and dogs and little girls and sending other people to prison and into madness, so long as he has his revenge.'

'Oh, God, I know, I know. You have to stop him—we have to stop him. You have to remember, though, he was my first lover, and to a part of me he'll always be that. For heaven's sake, Al, don't look so worried. I won't go all sentimental on you. I'll do what needs doing.'

'Are you sure? It's not too late to back out.'

'I am sure.'

He studied her face for some hint of the future, and sighed.

'All right. I just need a word from you to get the machinery moving. Where do you want to go tomorrow?'

Lee cleared her throat. 'There's a lovely show of Postimpressionists at the Legion of Honor, if you haven't seen it,' she suggested. 'Or some gorgeous Tibetan sculptures at—'

Vaun set her cup down with a crack and stood up, thrust her hands into her pockets, moved over to stand at the gap in the curtain and peer with one eye out at the city spilling down at her feet.

'I couldn't do that,' she said lightly. 'I could never look a Cezanne in the face again if I performed this farce in his presence. No, some place that can't be spoiled.' She turned to face them, an odd expression around her gaunt eyes and mouth, an expression that in another, less invariably serious face might have been read as deadpan humor. She met Hawkin's eyes and jerked her head slightly to indicate the curtain behind her.

'I think, if you don't mind, I would like to go to Alcatraz.'

29

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After Hawkin left they dispersed upstairs, each to her separate room. Kate stripped and put on her warm robe, and went to run herself a long, hot bath. She had not slept well in many days, partly because of the omnipresent responsibility down the hall, but mostly because she did not like to sleep alone. She was tired, and edgy, and unhappy because she was not in top form and tomorrow would need her full attention. She ran the bath very hot, soaked until it cooled, and then half drained and filled it again with hot water until she felt rather boiled. She then took a rough washcloth and methodically scrubbed every reachable inch, and shampooed her hair three times, and shaved her legs. She then turned the shower to almost straight hot, and when her skin was numb with the heat she flipped it to cold and screamed silently for a count of ten. She turned it off and leaned against the tiles in relief for a moment before reaching for her towel.

She dried her hair, did her nails, cut her toenails, brushed and flossed her teeth, put on her bathrobe again, and went down the dim, carpeted hallway to her room. The heat and the water had emptied her, and she felt hollow, and more at peace than she had for many days. She could sleep now.

At the end of the hall a flickering light showed under Vaun's door, and the low mutter of the television. Kate stopped outside Lee's closed door and saw from the blue-white light under its edge that the reading light was on. She heard the sound of a page turning, and a minute later the tap tap tap of a pencil on the oversized artist's board that Lee used as a desk in bed, and a grumble as she complained to the author about whatever article she was reading. Kate smiled, reached out for the doorknob, and then slowly let her hand fall away.

In her own room she exchanged the robe for an oversized T-shirt and a pair of soft running shorts, in case of nocturnal emergencies, and crawled into her bed. Sleep came to her quickly and pulled her down into a place that was thick and black and heavy and dreamless.

Hours later a small sound broke sleep's hold on her and she struggled up from the depths, automatically fumbling for the gun on the table next to her as the door whispered open across the carpeting. She had the sights trained on the gap before she was yet awake, and Lee's outline stepped into them.

'Oh, Christ, hon,' Kate blurted out. 'Don't do that to me.' She put the gun carefully on the table and sat up. 'What's wrong?' she whispered.

'Nothing's wrong.' The door closed and Lee moved surely through the dark room. 'Move over.'

'Lee, what are you doing? We agreed—'

'I didn't agree, you told me, and now I've decided you were wrong. Move over.'

'Look, sweetheart, Vaun's just down the hallway and I promised Al—'

'You and Al didn't talk about our sleeping arrangements, and Vaun couldn't give a damn.'

'But what if she—'

'If she comes in during the night she'll figure we're sleeping together. I don't think there's much that can surprise that lady.'

'Aren't you going to let me finish a sen—'

'No. Shut up.'

Kate shut up and moved over, and during the time that followed she made a considerable effort to maintain an awareness of the world outside the door, but there were moments when she would not have heard Andy Lewis come through the house if he'd been wearing cleated boots and sleigh bells.

Some time later Kate lay limp and purring, and spoke into Lee's shoulder.

'What was all that hostility about?'

'What hostility?' Lee said drowsily.

' 'What hostility?' I like that. And what have you done with your beeper?'

'On the table next to your damned gun. And I wasn't hostile, I was healthily sublimating my hostility into a libidinous outburst. If you'd been Jack Zuckerman I would have been hostile.'

'I'm glad I'm not Jack Zuckerman. I'm always glad I'm not Jack Zuckerman. Who is Jack Zuckerman?'

'He wrote an attack in the Psychotherapeutic Journal on that article I did for them last month. A brilliant piece of writing. His, I mean. Nasty, snide, but slippery, nothing to respond to. Leaves the reader with the distinct impression that Lee Cooper is a well-meaning amateur who would be better off leaving people's heads to the big boys like himself who know what they're doing.'

'Remind me to thank him for giving you some hostility to sublimate.'

'Oh, he'd like that. He has a special place in his heart for me, because he knows that his ex-wife told me all the more sordid details of their relationship when she was working herself up to leave him, and he hates knowing that I know. He also thinks that I convinced her to make the break.'

'Did you?' Kate was not interested, but she enjoyed lying on Lee's shoulder and listening to her talk.

'Of course not. I didn't have to. Look,' she said abruptly, 'what are we going to do about Vaun?'

'Well, I was sort of hoping to help keep her from getting killed,' said Kate mildly.

'Yes, but after that?' Kate smiled to herself at Lee's casual dismissal of obstacles and wished she were as sure of the outcome as Lee seemed to be.

'All right, I'll go for it. What are we going to do about Vaun?'

'I'll have to talk with Gerry Bruckner again, see if he's come up with anything.' Lee was lying staring up at the gray square of ceiling, and had her arm been free she would have been tapping her teeth with a pencil eraser. 'Maybe she should go to him for a while.'

'If she wants to,' Kate added, even more mildly. Lee laughed.

'I'm doing a Hawkin, aren't I? Go here, go there, do this. I do know one thing that might help her, and that would be if you would allow her to be your friend instead of doing your armadillo routine.'

'My what?'

'Don't get all huffy, you know what I mean. Two people in the last couple of weeks have held out a hand to you in friendship, and with both of them you pretend not to see it and curl into a well-armored ball. First Hawkin, and now Vaun. Both of them would be good friends for you.'

'I thought you didn't like Hawkin,' said Kate, sidestepping.

'Like doesn't enter into it. I respect him. I trust him.'