“Certainly not. Her name’s Nomos. Laura Nomos.”
“Laura Nomos,” he repeated. He had heard the name, he felt sure. At the theater? In the hospital? He could not place it. Had Joe mentioned it? He found he associated it with Joe.
“This morning in the coffee shop I thought you really liked me.” Fanny was parodying what he had said a few moments before. “When I found out it was really Klamm’s stepdaughter, I was just devastated. I mean I am.” She sighed theatrically. “She’s a lawyer, I hear. You could look her up in the Bar Association’s guide—see how much you learn by hanging out with a cop?”
The little car turned right, and though they were not going fast, the turn was so abrupt that its rear wheels skidded.
“Any more questions?”
“Are you taking me to see Klamm?”
She laughed. “I’m taking you to my place—maybe in a week you’ll get to see Klamm. How old do you think I am?”
He hesitated, fearful of insulting her. “I’m not very good at this. Twenty?”
“Thanks. I’m twenty-two, and if I was a grade lower I’d be in uniform. My lieutenant reports to a captain who reports to a person who reports to a woman who reports to Klamm. We have to go up the chain of command, and we’ll have to have something to say that will make Klamm think you’re worth his time. Is there anything else?”
“Who is Kay?”
Her eyes left the road to stare at him, their expression a mixture of surprise and skepticism.
He explained, “Once I talked to Klamm on the phone, and he thought I was somebody called Kay. I’ve known women named Kay, but this was a man, I think. He heard my voice, and he called me ‘Herr Kay.’ That’s a man, isn’t it?”
“I suppose it is. But I haven’t the least idea
“Yes?”
“Sometimes Klamm himself is called Herr K. in the papers, from his initial and because he was born in the German Empire. But I don’t see how it could be that if you were really on the phone with Klamm.”
“I don’t either. One more question. What’s a Visitor?”
Her lips tightened. “And where did you hear about that?”
“Does it matter? I want to know what one is, because I think I may be one myself.”
Fanny nosed her little car to the curb. “It’ll have to wait until we get inside,” she said. “Here we are.”
The Room
“Not what you expected, huh?”
It was not. Fanny’s room was small and shabby, no bigger than ten by twelve. Electrical wiring had been strung across the ceiling, and lingerie (a black brassiere and two pairs of panties, one peach, one pink) dangled from it. He said, “Even for a waitress …”
“This is a little extreme? Is that what you think? Rest easy; the department didn’t rent this place for me to go with the job. We aren’t that thorough, and usually we don’t have to be. This is where I live.”
As though to prove it, she sat down on the bed. “If it had gone on longer, I might have picked up some extra money in tips when the weather got a little better. Well, it’s over with now. Tomorrow I’ll tell Blanche about you and get my new assignment. Sit down.”
There was only one chair, a wingback upholstered in faded chintz. He sat, feeling the chair was too small for him, that it had been scaled for a child, that it had once been part of the furnishings of a doll’s house—furnishings dispersed long ago, scattered through smoldering dumps, through Salvation Army stores until only this chair and the doll remained.
“You were going to ask me about Visitors,” she said. “You even said you thought you might be one yourself. Why is that?”
“Because I don’t seem to fit in here.” He paused, laboring to box his feelings in words; and at last he muttered, “I never really know what’s going on.”
Fanny put her fingertips together, reminding him suddenly of the buck-toothed woman in the Downtown Mental Health Center. “Just what is it you don’t understand? I’ll explain if I can.” She rummaged in her purse, took out a battered pack of Chamois and extended it to him. “Smoke?”
“No,” he told her, “and that’s one of them. Hardly anybody smokes any more, except maybe dope. But here almost everybody seems to smoke. Even Mr. Sheng, he smoked a pipe. Klamm smoked a cigar right in the theater. And once when I tried to call my apartment, I got Klamm. I was hoping that Lara would answer, and now I think maybe she was standing there beside him, like she was that night.”
“You know Laura Nomos?”
He shook his head. “Lara Morgan—she used to live with me. I’m looking for her.” He paused to savor the idea. “That’s why I’m here.” Just saying it made him feel stronger.
“You think Laura Nomos and this Lara Morgan are the same person?”
“I don’t know. They look the same—not really the same but like they might be. Maybe this won’t make sense to you, but we used to have a supervisor, Mr. Kolecke, in the department where I worked. He wasn’t friendly like some of them are, and he wasn’t always fair; sometimes he’d crack down on people pretty hard for something that wasn’t their fault at all. But I think probably he got more out of the department than anybody else ever did.
