“I don’t care about that,” Wade said slowly, “this man and I are going to have a talk now.”
“This man should be hospitalized,” said the doctor. He and Wade argued, and that ended with Wade still sitting in his chair and the doctor outside the room and the door locked between them. “Tonight,” Wade said to me, “you’re going to tell all about it.” He was still speaking very slowly but biting the words so hard I could hear the pain in them. “You’re going to tell me who you went to meet in the lagoon tonight and why.”
“A woman,” I said.
“We found a woman,” he said, meaning the blonde, “and nothing happened between you as far as we can tell from what she told us.”
“A different woman.”
“A woman named Janet Dart?”
That confused me. “Who?”
“Janet Dart,” he said. “We know you met her a week ago and we know you went to her place. I told you to stay clear of that woman.”
“She was showing me her pictures. Have you seen them?” I said, “I thought she was a cop.”
“My understanding of your case,” he whispered, smoldering, “is such as to lead me to conclude you never thought she was a cop. My understanding of your case is such as to lead me to conclude you know why she came here.” He was hot and his face was wet as it was in the grotto that night, but now he didn’t notice it at all. “We know about her connection,” he said. “We know she came here to Los Angeles to see a man who was a member of your political cadre in New York City two and a half years ago. We know he escaped from an upper-annex New York prison seven weeks ago. We know your former political cronies have sent him for you and we’re reasonably certain he’s the one who’s been setting off the underground detonations. My understanding of your case is such as to lead me to conclude you went to the lagoon tonight to meet Janet Dart and perhaps this man, though we’re not sure why. I guess you’re right about one thing, we still can’t quite figure whose side you’re on.”
“Listen,” I said, “that woman’s crazy. She doesn’t care about politics. She’s in love with a guy who doesn’t even know who she is. She’s in love with a face that doesn’t need a light. Check the places with no lights.”
“Did you murder her too?”
“I haven’t murdered anybody.” I looked at him. “You think I murdered the man in the kitchen? What about those other times? On the beach and in the library. What about that.” Wade looked at me incredulously, and suddenly I saw it too. Suddenly I stopped seeing everything my way and saw it his. “Shit,” I said, still looking at him, “I keep forgetting. I keep forgetting you never saw those other times. I keep forgetting I’m the only one who ever saw those other times.”
He leaned back in the chair and waited. “Was it your contact, Cale?”
“It’s Ben Jarry,” I said. “And I did kill Ben Jarry once, as sure as if I had done it with a knife in my hand. But I didn’t kill him tonight.”
Wade didn’t even hear it. “They’ve sent someone for you, very possibly to kill you. Do you understand? I told you to leave that woman alone.” He sat up in the chair. “Stop jerking us around and we can make a case here for self-defense.”
“That would put me on your side for sure, wouldn’t it,” I said.
“But you have to level with us,” Wade said, nodding.
“Check out that body,” I said to him. “Check out the fingerprints and the blood type. Maybe it doesn’t make sense but I know it’s Jarry. I have a feeling you know it is too.”
Wade looked at the other two cops. “Get him out of here,” he said.
“Take him to the doc?” said Mallory.
“Take him to fucking jail,” said Wade. He got up so furiously the chair flew out behind him, hitting the wall. He slammed the door open and left.
They took me to the cells, toward the back of the building and down half a level. They opened one and threw me in. Up until this point they’d been relatively civil, but I guess now their general frustration with me bubbled over. They weren’t particularly gentle about introducing me to the prison floor. They also gave the cell door an extra rattle when they slammed it shut. In the dark I could distinguish several other cells, and though I couldn’t make out any other prisoners I could hear them sleeping. I lay on the ground against the wall thinking about being in jail again. A month ago, a week ago, there would have been something comfortable about it. It had been very uncomfortable to feel imprisoned, as I had felt, and not have the bars and floor and the physical evidence of a jail to confirm the feeling. If one is a prisoner by nature, it is best to have a prison as home; it’s a hard thing to be a prisoner trapped in the body of a free man. But then I escaped. I escaped the prison of my free body, and became a free man—at which point the free body was no longer a prison but a natural habitat. I would probably never understand how I had made this escape, I would probably never understand how she did it; but I knew she had done it, that she had cut me loose with her knife. I knew I was a step away from becoming another legend in the archives, I knew I was writing the documentation of it this very night. The poetry of
