Bernhardt's Edge (18 page)

Outside, at seven-thirty in the evening, the heat was less intense than it had been just an hour before, when she'd entered the restaurant. Her car was parked close by, a blue Nissan, rented at the Los Angeles airport. She stood beside the car, then leaned against it, her head lifted, looking up into the sky. To the east, the horizon was lightening; soon the moon would rise. To the west, only a few miles distant, mountains rose rank upon rank, diminishing shades of purple against a sky still blushed a fading orange by the setting sun. Farther to the west, beyond the mountains, the Los Angeles Basin began, that enormous smog-shrouded network of freeway-linked communities that crowded the shores of the Pacific from San Diego in the south to Newhall in the north: millions upon millions of people living in a shallow depression that, without Colorado River water brought over the mountains, would hardly support a few hundred thousand, herself probably not included.

She'd left the Nissan's windows open, as most people did, in Borrego Springs. She got in the car and sat motionless for a moment, looking out at the desert night. The year-round population of Borrego Springs was about two thousand, tripling or quadrupling when the winter residents arrived. The town was laid out around a central circle, the circular hub of four roads. One road led to the east, out to the town's small airport, and then across the desert to the Salton Sea. Another road led west from the circle toward the mountains, passing an upscale motel and two small shopping malls. Both of the malls were upscale, too, catering to the affluent “snowbirds” that came from as far away as New York and Chicago. The roads to the north and south led out from the circle to the town's residential districts. Some of the houses were small; others were elaborate desert haciendas, most of them Spanish-styled. A few miles out of town, both north and south, developers had built planned desert resorts: high-styled, high-priced condominiums clustered around the obligatory golf courses, tennis courts, swimming pools, and artificial lakes, all kept perpetually green by water pumped to the surface from an aquifer that, some said, could be depleted in a hundred years.

She started the car, made a U-turn in the middle of the deserted street, entered the central circle, and turned out to the right, heading south. Aware that the wine had dulled her reflexes, she drove slowly, with exaggerated care. Her motel, the Ram's Head, was almost a mile south of the circle, where the townspeople's small stucco houses thinned out and the haciendas began, each one built on more than an acre of desert land. Except for an illuminated roadside phone booth built close beside the motel entrance, the discreet blue of the Ram's Head's small neon sign was the only blemish of commercialism that local ordinances had allowed to intrude into the gathering darkness. The juxtaposition of the sign and the phone booth set against the dark, starry vastness of the desert night was provocative, evoking the subtleties of a Hopper painting, a comment on the uneasy coexistence of commerce and nature.

She drove slowly past the motel and continued south toward the open desert, the only car on the wide, string-straight county road. Occasionally she passed house lights set back from the roadside and scattered among the trees that grew so dramatically once water was brought up to the desert floor. Ahead was an intersection: a gravel road angling into the hard-topped road from the west. The graveled road rose gently, climbing a rise that lead to the mountains, only a few miles away. She slowed, turned, drove up the gentle rise for perhaps a mile before she pulled the Nissan onto the shoulder of the road. She switched off the engine and headlights, set the brake, got out of the car. Yes, her timing had been perfect. To the east, just visible above the far horizon, a new moon was rising. She would stand here in this vast, elemental silence, in this place she'd come to so often before, searching for the eternal illusion of inner peace that, sometimes, she had seemed to fleetingly find. Beneath these stars, she would wait for the moon to rise, Shakespeare's celestial orb, connected so mysteriously to life on earth. She would give as much of herself as she could to the soul-settling silence of the vista—and take as much as she could, in return.

Then she would return to the motel. And make the phone call.

S
HE'D READ THE BOOKS
, seen the movies, knew that, in a minute or two, it was possible to trace a phone call. So when the connection was made, after she pulled the door of the phone booth closed, she checked her watch: twenty minutes to nine, plus thirty seconds.

“This is Betty Giles,” she said. “I want to speak to Mr. DuBois. Now. Right now. Otherwise, I'll hang up. In thirty seconds, I'll hang up.” As she spoke, she watched the wristwatch's digital numerals change, one digit a second. In twenty seconds, she heard the husk-dry voice: “Yes, Betty?”

She didn't really know what she intended to say, hadn't rehearsed it. She knew only that she wanted to hear a tremor of fear in his voice, the same fear she'd seen him inflict so effortlessly, so dispassionately, on others—so many others, over so many years.

“I've told you that I'd make you pay for having him killed. And now I've decided how. Just now, just this minute, I've decided how.”

“Betty—” She heard him sigh: a deep, condescending, exhausted exhalation. Had she ever heard him speak quite like this? Had she ever heard him sound so fragile?

“Betty, it's a cliché, but you were like a daughter to me. You know that, don't you?”

She made no response.

“It's not too late to make this right,” he was saying. “Is it money? Is that what you want?”

“I want you to be afraid. I want you to beg.”

“You can't make me afraid, Betty. And you can't make me beg, either. You should know that.” His parched, cracked voice was mildly reproachful. He'd always talked to her like this—like she was a child. A talented, tolerated child.

“Then I'll tell the newspapers. I've given you your chance. But now I'm going to call the newspapers.”

“They won't believe you, Betty. They wouldn't dare to print what you tell them.”

“You had him murdered. You're not above the law. I'll tell them you had him murdered. And I'll tell them
why
you had him murdered. I'll tell the police, too—the newspapers and the police, both of them.”

A silence followed. Suddenly she remembered the time, looked at her watch. How many minutes had—?

“If you do that, Betty—if you tell the police this story—then I can't help you. If you'll think about it, you'll see that I can't—”

Her finger on the receiver hook cut off the rest. She stood for a moment slumped against the glass side of the phone booth, staring at her finger on the hook. The booth was stifling. She replaced the receiver and pushed open the bi-fold door. Immediately, the cool night air rushed in. She was perspiring—sweating, really. Her face, her neck, her body, were wet, and the cool air was a mild, welcome shock: evaporation, a physical law, working to stabilize her body temperature, keep her healthy—keep her alive.

But scientific fact was one thing; her mother's axioms were something else. And her mother believed that drafts caused colds. If you were inside a house—or a phone booth—and you were in a draft, then you'd certainly catch cold. Especially if your hair was wet, or you were sweating. Wind, though—natural, undirected, open-air wind—was less dangerous, her mother believed, less likely to produce a cold.

So she was leaving the phone booth. She was standing aimlessly a few feet from the blue neon motel sign. A dutiful daughter, she was minding her mother. From the south, out of the desert darkness, a car was coming, traveling fast. She turned, watched the headlights grow larger. It was a pickup truck, with rock music blaring louder than the sound of the engine. As it swept past, she saw two dirt bikes secured in the bed.

Nick had ridden dirt bikes, he'd once told her, in competition. A motocross accident had broken his leg, given him his slight limp. His body was a map of scars, a visual history of his life on the racetracks. When he'd first detailed his scars for her as they lay naked in bed, sated, she'd reacted as a properly educated young woman might be expected to react, with a certain prim fastidiousness, hesitant to look fully, frankly, at his naked body, hesitant to touch the scars with timid fingertips. Yet she'd also been aware of something more elemental: the tribal woman lying with her mate, her defender, the man who bore on his body the scars of the warrior, his badges of ancient honor.

Where was he lying now, her warrior, the man who challenged the titan? Tonight was Monday. He'd died—been murdered—on Thursday night, four days ago. How long did they keep bodies in the morgue—in cold storage? A week, they'd told her, possibly more. Because, in a murder investigation, the body was evidence. Like a bloodied length of pipe, or fingerprints found at the scene of the crime.

Would he have left her, if she'd been the target? Would he have run away, terrified, as she'd run away, leaving her dead on a stainless steel table, refrigerated in a stainless steel drawer?

At the thought, she heard herself moan: a long, wordless keening, an inarticulate protest at this self-inflicted pain. Yet it was necessary that she think about him, lying dead in the morgue. Because, yes, she must punish herself, must atone for the sin of leaving him alone, abandoning his body.

His only living relative, she knew, was his father, a ruined hulk of a man, a drinker, still a fast-buck salesman—except that the bucks were fewer now. His father had visited them once in Los Angeles. When he left, he'd asked Nick for money.

In the airport at San Francisco, she'd spent an hour on the phone until she'd finally located his father. He'd cried when she'd told him Nick was dead. They'd always been pals, he said. Always.

Now a car was coming from the north, from town. This one was a large car, a Cadillac, sedately driven. So, standing beside the road, she'd seen the two phases of Borrego Springs: dirt bikers returning from riding through the desert, and the tourists, so-called, comfortable in their Cadillacs, doubtless returning from dinner at the elegant French restaurant north of town, a millionaire's retreat that rigidly enforced a starchy dress code, even off-season.

She watched the Cadillac's taillights grow smaller in the darkness, heard the sound of its engine grow fainter, until finally both were lost in the desert to the south. Then, irresolutely, she turned to face the motel. It's twenty-odd cabins, some single, some double, were scattered among low-growing desert trees and high-growing cacti, all of it artfully planned, doubtless, for its studied naturalism. Her cabin was located roughly in the center of the motel's sizable tract, probably several acres, just beyond the southern edge of town. At nine o'clock there were only three other cabins lit, besides hers. In the off-season, on a weekday, the Ram's Head was certainly operating at a loss.

Earlier, she'd seen something in the
TV Guide
that interested her, an old movie. So she should return to her room, switch on the TV, try to lose herself.

Or else she should return to town, go to the bar adjacent to the restaurant, have a few drinks.

Unless, instead, she went to the liquor store, across from the restaurant. She could buy a bottle of brandy. She could take the bottle of brandy back here, to the motel. She could double lock the door, and switch on the TV, and drink the brandy while she watched the movie.

But first, before she decided, she would surrender herself to the telephone, for one more call. Because the television and the telephone were all that were left to her, now—one offering the balm of forgetfulness, one offering human contact once removed, her only real hope, her last illusion.

S
HOES OFF, PILLOWS PROPPED
behind his head, Bernhardt lay on top of the bedspread on the queen-size bed. On the TV screen, Robert Mitchum was threatening Gregory Peck in the opening scenes of
Night of the Hunter.
Whenever he could, he watched Mitchum, certainly one of the best actors the Hollywood star system had ever produced. Like Bogart and Lee J. Cobb, Mitchum made it look easy.

Sometimes he wondered how he would have fared in Hollywood. Years ago, he'd auditioned for a soap opera pilot that would have been shot in New York. He hadn't gotten the part, but the producer liked what he saw, and offered to introduce Bernhardt to some people “out on the coast.” He'd already decided to leave New York, either for Los Angeles or San Francisco. So he'd thanked the producer and bought an airplane ticket for Los Angeles. He'd stayed almost three weeks, making the rounds. The producer's name opened a few doors, and one agent had been interested enough in him to invite him to lunch—in a restaurant that, he'd later discovered, was habitually used for second or third echelon lunches. The agent had been a shrewd, aggressive, quick-talking barracuda of a woman, grossly overweight. Over coffee, she'd looked him squarely in the eye and told him that, frankly, she didn't think he was motivated enough to make it in Hollywood. Years later, he'd learned she'd committed suicide, because of a—

Beside the bed, the telephone rang. As he turned down the TV volume and answered the phone, he glanced at his watch. The time was almost eleven-thirty.

“Mr. Bernhardt?” It was a woman's voice: a soft, tentative, anxious voice, a young voice.

“Yes.”

“This is Julie Ralston. We talked earlier today, had coffee.”

“Yes, Miss Ralston. What's up?”

“Well, I—I heard from Betty, just about an hour ago. I'm sorry I didn't call sooner. But I've—” She hesitated. “I've been thinking whether I should tell you—call you.”

“You're doing the right thing, Miss Ralston. Believe it.”

“Well, I—I'm not sure. I mean, she told me not to tell anyone that she'd called. But she—she sounds terrible. Really terrible. And when you and I talked, I thought you were—you know—pretty sympathetic, pretty honest. So—” Her voice faded into an uncertain silence. He could visualize her, could imagine her frowning as she tried to decide what was best for her friend. What the world needed, Bernhardt decided, was more people like Julie Ralston: honest, conscientious people, with most of their illusions still intact.