He did. He was wearing dark trousers and a white shirt, his tie partly unknotted. He hadn't shaved in days. His left hand was in his pocket.
A double bed covered in an unappealing shade of pumpkin stood against the far wall. 'Take your hand out of your pocket,' I said, 'and hold your other hand in it. Good. Now, back up slowly and sit on the bed.'
He did as he was told. I pushed at the door and it banged against the wall again.
'Nobody here?' I said, stepping into the room.
'You think I'm crazy?'
'One question at a time. That the bathroom?' I gestured at a door to my right.
'No,' he said nastily. 'It's the sitting room. I always insist on a suite.'
Through the open door behind me I heard the rain increase in volume to a dull roar. 'Let's go take a look,' I said. 'You first.'
'Oh, come on,' he said. 'I told you I was alone.'
'But that's a lie,' I said pleasantly. 'I'm here too. How can I trust you when you can't even tell the truth about something as simple as that?' I took the gun from my pocket and gave it a little wave in the direction of the bathroom. 'After you, darling.'
He grumbled, but he did it. I made him stand in the bathtub with his back to me while I checked the dressing room and the closet. All empty.
'Well, golly, Ambrose,' I said, following him back out into the living room, 'I'm sorry about all this. But these days, you know, a girl can't be too careful.'
'You want me to sit on the bed again?' he asked sullenly.
'Let's not pout. The bed looks very comfortable. Sit, sit.'
He did, and I reached behind me to close the door. There was a blur of movement to my right and the man who had come in and positioned himself behind the door while we were in the bathroom caught me at the base of the skull with something hard and heavy. As I headed for the carpet I saw Harker start to stand up, and then there was nothing but darkness and the mermaids singing, each to each.
It was the smell that woke me up.
My skull was clanging 'The Anvil Chorus' and there was a red film over my eyes, but the smell pushed its way through. It was a sharp smell, but not fresh. It was a smell I hated.
I'd been lying facedown on the polyester carpet, and the blood from the cut on the back of my head had run down over my face. I had to wipe it from my eyes before I could focus.
What I saw was a two-year-old's view of the world: carpet, table legs, and the bottom of a pumpkin-colored bedspread. Fighting the gravity of Jupiter, I lifted my head and saw a pair of black shoes dangling over the edge of the bed.
I laid my head back down on the carpet and said, 'Shit.' Sleep seemed like a good idea. I closed my eyes. Then whatever obscure corner of my brain was still up and about sounded the alarm to let me know that sleep was, all things considered, not really such a good idea. A fragment of Jack London pushed itself in front of me, something about people dozing off happily in the snow.
It took me maybe two minutes to get to my hands and knees and another minute, with some help from the table, to stand up. I had to wipe my face again before I could look around. Scalp wounds bleed ambitiously.
Ambrose Harker or Ellis Fauntleroy lay on the bed, clutching a pillow to his middle. He looked startled. The pillow had a couple of little black holes in it. The smell in the air was cordite, the stuff that makes guns go bang.
I held my head in one hand and picked up the pillow with the other. It was heavier than it should have been because it was saturated with blood. The pillow had functioned as a silencer and Harker's stomach had functioned as a target. Both had functioned flawlessly.
I let the pillow drop, and Harker made a rasping sound that trailed off into a gurgle. It was the last sound he ever made, and like all the others, it was louder than life.
My gun was gone. I should have known it would be gone. It didn't take an advanced degree in ballistics or an I.Q. much higher than room temperature to guess whose bullets had made such a travesty of Harker's viscera and whose prints were all over the gun.
After I washed the blood from my face I wiped everything I remembered touching and locked and closed the door behind me. A lot of good it would do. Somebody had the gun, and it wasn't anybody who wished me well.
On the drive home I had all I could do to turn four oncoming headlights into two and wonder where I'd put the iodine. By the time I'd scaled the driveway on all fours my head was slamming alarmingly and I was beginning to get mad.
The door to the house was open.
The message light on the answering machine blinked accusingly, but there was no way to know whether it had been Al Hammond or Mrs. Yount who'd called, because the cassette was gone. II — Judgment
Chapter 10
'If God doesn't want us to get drunk, why did He create alcohol? That's a good question,' Dixie Cohen said, as though someone else had asked it. He was coasting into the final third of a sixteen-ounce bottle of Singha. I was lagging behind his pace while his ex-wife, Chantra, and my ex-girlfriend, Eleanor, sipped white wine together in the far corner of Eleanor's Venice apartment.
'Look at this group,' I said. 'The evening is rated double-ex.'
'Dream on,' Eleanor said without looking up. She and Chantra, who was an ex-Charlene, were looking over galley proofs of Eleanor's most recent book, Two Fit. Its literary aim was to help weight-conscious couples support each other in their fight against flab. Its publisher, an ultra-fit New Age vegetarian who, I'd been delighted to see, was losing his hair faster than most people lose cheap sunglasses, had proclaimed it an Important Book. Even more Important, he'd suggested in hushed tones, than her first, Creative Stretching, the third printing of which was selling briskly in better coed gyms and running stores from coast to coast. She'd already received an advance for her third work, The Right-Brain Cookbook, a new look at the old idea that some forms of nourishment qualified as brain food. I'd suggested it as an unpleasant joke and she'd taken it seriously enough to get a large number of dollars as encouragement from her publisher. Some joke. This was one of a number of social events designed to test what I sourly regarded as a completely spurious collation of creativity-enhancing recipes.
Dixie hefted his bottle and knocked back most of what remained. Chantra was going to be driving. 'The first drunk,' he intoned, warming to his subject as his blood alcohol rose, 'after the Flood, of course, was Noah.'
'The Flood,' I said politely, picking for the thirtieth time that evening at the large bandage decorating the back of my head.
'Aha,' Dixie said, eyeing my half-full bottle with more than a trace of envy. He rapped his own bottle with his signet ring and it made a hollow noise. 'The Flood, indeed. Indeed, the Flood.' From across the room Chantra said to Eleanor, 'But what about complex carbohydrates?' I took Dixie's bottle away from him, poured three fingers of beer into it, and handed it back. 'God had two chances to prevent the formation of Alcoholics Anonymous,' Dixie said, drinking, 'before and after the Flood. He blew it both times.' He burped. 'Good thing, too.'
'Carbohydrates are in chapter thirteen,' Eleanor said.
'Are you going to explain, Dixie, or do you want someone to ask you?' Chantra said. 'Volunteers? Is there anyone in this room sufficiently immune to boredom to ask Dixie why God allowed alcohol to survive the Flood?'
'I think you just did,' I said, getting up and going into the tiny overheated kitchen to grab a couple of fresh beers.
'Unless I'm deeply mistaken,' Chantra said, 'I've heard it before.'
'According to Rabbi Eliezar-' Dixie began happily.
'No less,' Chantra interjected.
'Woman, hold thy tongue. According to Rabbi Eliezar, no less, Noah took onto the ark a vine that had been cast with Adam out of Eden. Adam had his own problems with the grape, as you may recall. The oldest profession, actually, is probably that of wine-maker.'
