trying to see what the man would have seen-the road, a driveway, and the upper story of a house visible through the leaves just across the road. The chimney of another house farther east. He stood here at night, Metzger thought. He would have seen house lights if any were on. He tried to remember if any had been on when he drove by, but could not recall. He would have seen me though, he thought. He would have seen me drive by, one way and then the other. Metzger imagined the man, crouched by the road, hidden by the trees and the darkness of the night, watching the cop car cruise by.
Was he laughing at me? Metzger wondered. He felt angry, and a little shamed by his own incompetence.
13
Luv knew that Denise was ready. Really ready. He met her in a restaurant parking lot and drove with her to the motel in his 'company' car. He almost always used the company car for his assignations. A four-year-old beige Chevy Caprice, it was as innocuous as a car could be, almost impossible to describe because it would never catch the viewer's attention. He kept it clean, serviced it often, made sure his emissions sticker was up to date. Luv took no chances on random inspections by the police, gave no one a reason to look any closer. That was the kind of stupid mistake that got people caught all the time.
Idiots were stopped because of broken headlights with several kilos of cocaine lying in the back seat. Luv had something a bit more incriminating that could be discovered by some overzealous cop-if Luv gave him the chance. He had Inge's remains in the trunk. Tonight he would be rid of them. Right after he took care of Denise.
When they stepped inside the motel room and he took her in his arms, she was trembling already. Luv thought it was with excitement and anticipation and he continued to embrace her, allowing her to collect herself, but when he gradually released her and tried to put his lips to hers she put up her arms and stopped him.
'I have something I have to tell you,' she said.
'What?' he asked softly, ready for any kind of foolishness. They often needed reassurance of some sort at this crucial point.
'I had-I have a mark,' Denise said. She looked shyly at his chest, then lifted her eyes to his, summoning the courage. 'A birthmark,' she said.
'Oh, my darling,' said Luv with genuine sympathy. 'That's all right.'
'It's ugly,' she said. 'I don't want it to-repulse you.'
'It won't bother me.'
Luv sat on the edge of the bed as she hesitantly lifted her blouse, revealing a purple stain that spread across her stomach. It looked raw, painful, as if freshly applied, as if her skin had been seared.
'It doesn't matter,' Luv said, meaning it. He was not offended by ugliness any more than he was swayed by beauty. Appearances were beside the point. 'Not at all.'
'Larry used to make fun of it,' she said, lowering the blouse to cover herself again. 'I think it made him sick. It made him think-It disappointed him to be with me when he looked at it.'
'The sonofabitch,' Luv said angrily. 'The dirty sonofabitch. He didn't deserve you.'
'No,' Denise agreed. 'No, he really didn't.'
Luv took her face in both hands and looked deeply into her eyes. 'It doesn't bother me, Denise. Only if it bothers you. Will you be self-conscious about it?' Denise hesitated only slightly. 'No.' He smiled sweetly. 'Good.'
He peeled the blouse away and pressed his face against the mark, which spread across her stomach and trailed tendrils beneath her skirt waist like a giant amoeba.
'Listen, I'm crazy about you. You're more woman than anyone else I know. I feel so lucky that you want to be with me.'
'Oh, Lyle,' she said, her eyes big and teary.
He kissed her and laid her back on the bed and made love to her as if he really meant it. She quivered and trembled and her breath came in excited gasps whenever he moved his hand or his lips. When he removed her clothes and put his hand between her legs she said, 'I've waited so long for you.'
Afterwards, she clung to his neck, her gratitude so huge and exposed that he felt protective. Some decent feeling stirred within him, touched by her vulnerability, cajoled by her brush with mortality. He wrapped his arms around her and then his legs, pressing himself against her to shield her from all of life's evils, including himself. 'You are so brave,' he said. 'I admire you.'
'I'm not brave,' she said, understanding that he was referring to her birthmark. 'I just don't have any choice.'
She touched the back of his neck and smiled to herself. She could not believe her luck. He was such a good man.
'If I ever meet up with your ex-husband, I'll kill the bastard,' he said. At the moment, he believed himself.
'No,' she said softly. 'Don't let him ruin this. Don't let's let anything ruin this. I feel more alive than I ever have in my life.'
'I love you,' Luv said, startling himself with the pronouncement. The words had burst forth of their own accord, pushed out by the force of this most unexpected emotion. Luv could scarcely believe he was feeling what he was feeling. 'I do!' Denise moaned and clasped him to her.
Stunned, amazed, delighted by the joy rising in his chest, he cried again, 'I love you.'
He got onto his hands and knees above her, leaned his face until it was touching hers. Her lips had been kissed so much they looked like satin, smoothed and extended beyond their limits. Her eyes were green, he realized, a bright hazel green, and her hair was the tint of autumn leaves. It sprouted and curled around her face and across the pillow in a thousand tiny rings. He grinned at her wildly, then laughed high in his throat, the lunacy and sheer delight of it all overwhelming him.
'I'm in love!' he cried. He sat up, towering over her, spreading his arms wide for all the world to see. His laughter built and cascaded out of him. 'I'm in love.'
She watched him with some alarm as his excitement teetered for a moment on the edge of control. She did not want to stop him in his enthusiasm-she knew that she, too, was in love-but the wildness frightened her. Denise reached her arms up to him and he collapsed down on her, embraced her and rolled back and forth across the bed, his limbs wrapped completely around her.
De Cap'n's in love, he thought in wonder. De Cap'n's in luvvv.
Three minutes after he had returned her to the restaurant lot and was driving toward the parking spot where he stowed the company car, he had forgotten the brief but ecstatic surge of 'love.' Forgotten that he had felt any emotion at all toward the woman he was just with. He liked to indulge such temporary enthusiasms, the victims enjoyed it, believed it, occasionally required it. It meant-beyond the zeal of the moment-no more to him than the sex, which meant nothing at all once it was past.
What mattered most to Luv about Denise once he had left her was that he could now mark her down in his journal. She was another victim, another triumph to add to his ever-growing list.
Kiwasee had located the house and was happy to see the New York Times, in its blue plastic bag still lying in the driveway where it had been flung by the man in the delivery car earlier that day. A downstairs light was burning at two in the morning, a certain giveaway that no one was at home. He approached through the backyard, listening for a dog, then found a window that was unlocked and entered the house. He moved through the rooms silently, but without trepidation. This was not Bridgeport, where some crazy mother might come at you with a knife or a baseball bat or some kind of automatic pistol that would shoot you as many times as a machine gun. Folks in Clamden was nice and civilized and cowardly and stayed in bed if they heard a noise. They was Kiwasee's kind of people, whether they knew it or not, because he was just as peaceable as they was. Burglary wasn't no crime of violence.
Taking things from people as rich as these wasn't hardly no crime at all. It was a redistribution. Kiwasee never hurt nobody, never threatened nobody, never scared nobody. Hell, he never even saw nobody.
