Fanny. He corrected himself—about Frances. Like Dr. Applewood, Frances had been an associate of North’s. No doubt it had been because several such people worked here that North had chosen to come here, to this God- forsaken resort hotel in winter, this huge old hotel so many miles from the city.
The blonde in the beauty shop had been someone from North’s organization too, then, since Fanny had been ordered (by whom?) to report to her.
Or Fanny was—what did they call it? Somebody who worked for both sides. Somebody who pretended to work for one while passing information to the other. For if Fanny had not come in the limousine, how had she come? And if the limousine were not Klamm’s, why did it have those papers in the trunk, papers from the FBI or the Secret Service—the Secret Police, whatever they might be called?
The drive was barely wide enough for one car, and the plow had thrown up snowbanks on each side higher than his head. He walked in a world of black and white, and it seemed to him after a time that he was no more than a bit player in an old movie, an old black-and-white movie. There was no color anyplace because the print had not been colorized yet and there was only the gray sky above, the blacktop beneath, and snow to either side. His shoes were black too, and the dark gray of his new coat looked almost black. Was it the beginning of the late movie? Or was it the end, when he (back in his apartment dully watching this old movie) would get up, yawn, and take his glass and the bottle off the coffee table, knowing how soon the lovers would embrace, the woman dressed as Liberty hold up her torch.
As he walked he looked from side to side, and after a time he realized he was hoping to find the other sheet that had blown out of the trunk, because it would have a picture of Lara. Two sheets had gotten away, one he had caught. The one he had caught had been North’s; one of those he had not caught had been Fanny’s—Frances’s. Surely then, the third sheet, which he had neither caught nor found, had been Lara’s, Lara last seen dancing across the asphalt, over the snow, dancing in the wind.
Its thunder behind him warned him just in time, and he dove into the snowbank on his left. The big, black limousine roared past, so close he felt its suction try to draw the shoe from one foot.
He climbed out. Not swearing, he was too happy to be alive—still alive!—to curse anything. A thin layer of ice had cut his left forefinger, and he sucked it as he dusted the snow from his coat with his bandaged hand. When he took the finger out of his mouth to examine it, blood welled from the cut and dribbled onto the blacktop and onto the white snow.
He had put the packet of handkerchiefs in the side pocket of his jacket with the map. He took it out and opened it, and wrapped his finger in one of the handkerchiefs.
If he had not been afraid of falling on the ice, he would have skipped. This (he thought) was why Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, William Powell and Myrna Loy radiated so much happiness—so much delight in those creaking late-night movies, shone so brightly even in black and gray when they should have been dead. How happy they were to be still alive, there in the flickering celluloid, there on the cramped screens that had been tacked to the radios they had known, how joyful!
Just like him. He might be dead now at home, dead and rotting as he sat before the television in the chair he had bought so cheaply; but he was alive here, his crimson blood proved it, even if this was the last reel.
The drive mounted a hill and bent to the right. He heard a truck roar past—not only heard it, but saw it, saw at least its orange-and-green top above the crests of the snowbanks. Another hundred steps or so brought him to the point at which the drive left a two-lane road, also of black asphalt, that might or might not have been one he had driven along with North. He tried to guess in which direction the ocean lay, and guessed wrong; but after a walk of half a mile reached a point from which he could see both the hotel and his mistake.
He was about to retrace his steps when an old red pickup with chains came rattling down the road, driven by a middle-aged farmer. He flagged it down and explained how he had been locked out as briefly as he could.
The farmer chuckled and opened the door. “Guess you won’t be goin’ out that way no more.”
He grinned. “Hell, no!” He felt he ought to be angry, but he was completely incapable of it. The old pickup had a heater that worked, and its hot breath on his feet was the promise of heaven.
“Don’t many people stay in the winter,” the farmer said. “My Junie works there sometimes, but come fall they lay her off. Didn’t even know it was open.”
He nodded and said, “It’s pretty empty. I hope you’re not going out of your way for me.”
“Goin’ right by anyhow. I’m goin’ into town. Hotel ain’t far, ’bout two, three miles from my place.”
The road ended with a stop-sign at a somewhat wider road; and after they had turned onto that, he heard the waves. Soon he saw them as well, cold and green—and yet alive, the scales of a watery snake coiled around the world, he thought, and not so much malevolent as inhuman.
“Here ’tis.” The pickup jolted to a stop. “Name’s Grudy, by the way.”
“Green,” he said, and they shook hands. “If I could pay you something for this, Mr. Grudy … ?”
The farmer snorted. “Don’t you even suggest it, Mr. Green. I’d do it any time—so’d you for me, I’m sure.”
He thanked the farmer again and climbed out, shutting the truck’s door carefully and waving while the farmer drove away. As he crossed the terrace toward the brightly lit glass wall of the hotel, he looked at his watch. It was eleven thirty-four; the coffee shop would be serving lunch, now or soon. He would find some way to speak to Fanny, who, even if she were a double agent, might lead him to those who were not. Fanny could learn no more by seeing him again than she already knew; but he might learn a lot, including how to think and act like a conspirator, which seemed to be the thing he needed most to know.
There was no bellboy at the entrance this morning. A sign that stretched across both glass doors announced: CLOSED FOR THE SEASON. A single bespectacled clerk fussed with papers at the desk. He pounded on the doors, but the clerk soon vanished into the office behind the desk, never to reappear; and after a time the lights in the lobby winked out.
The Cop
Studying the hotel from the terrace, he could not see a single light. For a moment, he considered breaking in— there were a hundred windows available to him, or so it seemed. In the end he rejected the idea; if there were no one inside, it would do him little good, and if some of the staff were still there (if the clerk were merely waiting in the office for him to leave, for example, as he suspected) he would be arrested and put in jail—a jail where Lara
