So that was the second time. The time we arranged our future. And now, now I wait for the third time. This is the last time here. She's coming to take me out this time. She's no knowledge of what I'm going to do. She only knows the place we're to meet after I've done it. She has ideas, she has a fear, but unlike her conquering her guilt over Sammy, there's no way any consideration for Joan is going to stop me doing what I'm going to do. All right, she's had seven years to drive her to her present state of mind, but part of her motivation stems from love and I'm driven by hate, and in my book that's the stronger of the two emotions. I've had three months to stoke up that hatred, and the hatred's not just been warped and hyped up by mind pictures. I've had real pictures: the pictures in the papers, pictures of Murdock in different attitudes of death taken from the different vantage points of the photographers almost adding up to a two-dimensional essay on death in the round; the blood-soaked shirt he'd been so careful to hang up when he first moved into my apartment; the fingers stiff in their final grab for the gunânow frozen in the futile pose of grasping for life; the eyes like pebbles; the trouser leg screwed up to his knee displaying a neat, suspender-fixed sock; and the blood itself, on his mouth, on the hand clutching the shirt where his stomach has opened up on the floor around him. And the counterpoint of the relaxed legs and easy balance of the cops standing around him, dispassionately placed shoes, the way I would have been viewing just another death.
The coffee boils over and I turn off the stove, but instead of pouring some coffee into a cup I pick up the scotch and fill a tumbler and drink until the tumbler's only half-full; then I open the door and stand on the porch looking down the dry wash of the low canyon. The wind is cold and the desert scene is as usual clear and clean in its sharp deep focus. But there is nothing else. I look at my watch. Late. She's late. Not much but enough to set me off like a con who's on his last day waiting for the guard to come and conduct him through the ritual with the warden, and then to the opening gates; he knows it's going to happen, he knows he's going out, but it doesn't help. His guts are water, and the panic of expectancy matches the panic of the moment of capture, and no amount of repeating to himself that it's true (as opposed to repeating it's not true when the bust happened), none of that helps. Only the closing door is the final convincer.
I turn to go back inside again and as I get to the doorway, I hear the sound I've been waiting forâthe lurching, hesitant sound of the pickup being carried down the wind toward me. I turn back and the pickup is just appearing at the top of the gully. Then it dips and starts on its downward path toward the ranch. I finish the rest of my scotch and there is a cracking tension in me and without any conscious thought I hurl the tumbler at the nearest rock and spin around and scream into the evening air.
We put my stuff in the pickup and look at each other.
“Come on,” I say to her. “Let's go inside. We have to have a farewell drink.”
She doesn't say anything.
“What I mean is this is where we met. You know what I mean. It deserves the honor of a final drink.”
She nods and we go inside. I fill the remaining tumbler for her and take mine from the bottle and when we've taken our drinks, we kiss for a long, long time; then after the kiss she rests her head against my chest and we stay that way for a while, no words, scarcely moving, the only sound the wind outside.
It's a small town on the edge of the highway. Even the main street's been bypassed by the through road. On the opposite side of the town, the railroad flanks the straggling buildings.
Joan drives the pickup off the main street and takes a left and then another left until she's almost back to the main street again. Then she stops the pickup and we sit there in silence for a minute or two. I look at the brightly lit car lot on the corner of Main Street. Then Joan takes out the envelope with the money in it I'd stashed at Sammy's and gives it to me. I open it and count out what she's going to need and put the rest in my inside pocket. “Did Sammy ask why I wanted the whole bundle?” I ask her.
She nods and says, “Yes. I told him what you told me to. I told him you'd had this fear that you might have to move fast and without the money you'd be dead.”
“And he still thinks I'm at the ranch?”
“I told you. I told him everything you said to tell him.”
“And when you go back, you tell him I want to move on and that's why you've got to go back to the ranch so soon.”
She nods.
“Don't worry,” I tell her. “He'll be so relieved he'll never question anything else again. You'll just go and you'll have eight hours start.”
“It's not that I'm worried about.”
“No,” I tell her. “I know it's not that. I'm just pretending to help us both.”
She nods, agrees, but nothing's helping her. There's another long silence. Then she gets out of the pickup and begins to walk toward the car lot and I slide over to the driver's seat.
It takes her around twenty minutes. Then I see her drive across the intersection in a â72 Pontiac. I take a pull from the scotch and during the ten minutes I wait, I take a couple more pulls and then I switch on the ignition and making a U-Turn I drive back around the block and get on to Main Street and make it back onto the highway. A quarter of an hour later, I turn off left and a mile or so down the road the Pontiac's in the pickup's headlights. I stop the pickup and get out and Joan gets out.
“Till the day,” I say to her.
Again she doesn't say anything, just nods. We transfer all the gear I need for what I'm going to do and then she gets into the pickup and I get into the Pontiac and I sit there watching the pickup's headlights in the driving mirror as she begins her reverse.
Hoffman in his town is like Florian in mine. A member of that particular Masonic Order that stretches nationwide and can tune in the Hit Parade. And unlike Florian, he's single and unlike Florian, he's stupid with the broads. Sure, he's got guys walking behind him, but when he's into a broad or two that's all that matters to him, all that's in front of his eyes; that he's lived this long is some kind of miracle. The boys can go home and file their nails or the numbers of their heat and expect to see him in the morning, maybe. A couple of days' watching him in his town, it makes me smile and not only because he's so fucking stupid because his stupidity is an omen. His charmed life is a lucky charm for me.
So on the third night, I follow him through his usual routine. Around ten he comes out of his house. A nice house, well-appointed, secure as Fort Knox. So having a house as secure as Fort Knox, he leaves it. The limousine slides out of the garage, he gets in, the chauffeur eases the automobile down to the gates, the gates are opened, the automobile slides out. And from then on it's the same route as the night before. On to the Blue Dahlia. Hoffman goes in, the chauffeur waits and so do I. Then two hours later, a guy comes out, has words with the chauffeur, the chauffeur says something back and about ten minutes later, the guy comes back with a tray with some beer and sandwiches on it. The chauffeur takes the tray, puts it on the passenger seat and sits in the car to have his midnight feast. So we're there for another couple of hours. The only activity in that time is the guy coming back out for the tray and taking it back in again. But eventually Hoffman reappears and like on the last two nights, he's not alone. He has a blonde on each arm, lookalikes, same kind of hairstyles, clothes, they could be sisters, but my guess is they're just a team; some way back they decided two could make three times as much as one. Last night and the night before, Hoffman left the Blue Dahlia with them, and so I know where they're going to be going. I ease away before Hoffman and party have time to get into their job and I drive across town ahead of them, keeping them in sight of my driving mirror. When I get to the house where the blondes hang out, I take a left and park and get out of the Pontiac and wait around the corner until I hear Hoffman's car pull in at the curb. I hear the chauffeur get out and let out Hoffman and his trade and I hear Hoffman tell his man to go on home and he'll call tomorrow afternoon or sometime when he needs picking up. Then I hear the chauffeur close his door and the car pulls away and when it's passed the corner I'm hiding around, that's when I come out to play.
Hoffman and the girls are on the house steps; one of the girls is trying to put the key in the lock while Hoffman and the other girl are standing a couple of steps below. The house is on the corner of the block, so Hoffman has no real time to make me as I walk up the steps holding what I'm holding. There's nothing but blank disbelief on Hoffman's face but the girl standing next to him starts to fix her lips to shriek but I cut that by talking to them and saying, “No noise. Otherwise the three of you take it here. No noise, no death. Just inside. Open the door and we all go inside.”
The other girl, the girl with the key, she just stares at me.
“You heard me,” I tell her.
“Do it,” Hoffman says, in a voice that only just makes it through the phlegm in his throat.
The girl flicks her head in animal-like assent and now she's able to put the key in the lock.
“Wait,” I tell her. “I want the right answer to thisâthere anybody else?”
Hoffman answers for her by shaking his head over and over.
“Fine,” I say. “So now we all go in.”
The girl turns the key and the door swings inward; the three of them walk very carefully through the door and I follow them and close the door behind me and then I lock it, both locks.
We're in a very low-lighted hall, very tastefully decorated, a couple of expensive original rubbish paintings and a pedestal bearing a statuette of some Grecian goddess. There are two doors on either side of the hallway and there is a flight of stairs leading to an even dimmer upstairs. I frisk Hoffman and then I say, “Upstairs. Girls first. Stop on the landing.”
The girls go upstairs, Hoffman follows them and I follow Hoffman. They all do as they're told and stop on the landing.
“The bedroom,” I tell them.
The girl who unlocked the front door opens a door on the right of the landing. I look through the door, “Okay,” I say. “In. Go over to the left-hand wall and stand with your noses touching it. One at a time.”
The first girl goes in, then her partner, then Hoffman. They all face the wall like I said to.
The bedroom is just as dim as the rest of the house. It's lit by a central orb of diffused light set in the ceiling. There is an eight-foot-square bed and the wall in back of the bed is all mirror. On the other walls there are half a dozen framed pornographic drawings, each one showing different aspects of a set-up involving two mature girls and a boy of around seven or eight.
“Nice,” I say. “You never grew up, hey, Hoffman?”
Hoffman begins to speak but I shut him up. Then the room is full of silence and I let it hang for a minute or two. Then I say, “Okay girls, listen carefully. When I say go, the one next to Hoffman, turn away from the wall and walk over to the bed and sit on the end near where I am. Then you, the other one, you do the same, only when I say so. You got that?”
They nod. There is a visible sagging relief from Hoffman; he suddenly thinks he's got it all figured.
“Fine,” I say. “First one go.”
The first one turns away from the wall and sits on the edge of the bed.
“Now you.”
The other one does the same and sits next to her partner. They look ten years older than when they left the Blue Dahlia. I take the bottle of pills out of my top pocket. I hand the bottle to the first girl. They both stare at the bottle.
“Unscrew the cap and shake out all the tablets onto the bed next to you.”
She's frozen.
“Do it,” I tell her.
She doesn't move. I let my silence speak for me. Then she moves. When she's emptied the tablets on the bed I say, “Now divide them equally into two heaps. There'll be a dozen each.”
This time she does like I say first time.
“Now pick up one heap and give them to your friend.”
She does it.
“Pick up the others yourself.”
She does that, too.
“Now I want you both to eat them.”
They both look at me.
“Don't worry,” I tell them. “All you're going to do is sleep. But if you like, there's another alternative.”
They begin to eat the tablets. It takes about five minutes until they've swallowed the last one. Then I take out the surgical tape and hand it to the first girl.
“Your partner's mouth. And you, when she's done that, you do hers.” Again, they do as they're told. Then I say to the first one, “Now get on the bed and lie face down and put your hands behind your back.”
She twists around and crawls up the bed and lies face down and puts her hands behind her back.
“You,” I say to the other one, “take off your friend's tights and tie her hands.”
I get no argument from her either. She crawls up the bed, too, and kneels next to her partner and pulls up her partner's long dress to the waist and tugs down her tights, fumbling them off her feet, and ties her partner's hands. She knows how tightly I need it done; she doesn't want to have to be asked to retie the knot, and when she's done that she looks dumbly at me for the next instructions.
“Lie down like her,” I tell her.
She turns around and lies down alongside her partner. When she's done that, I bend down and take the lengths of slim cord from my hold-all and throw them on the bed; they land at the feet of the girls.
“Okay Jimmy,” I say to Hoffman, “now it's your turn to get in on the act. You can turn around now.”
He turns around.
“Listen Mister,” he says. “Look, you don't have to go this far. You don't have to worry any; you can have them any way you like only let me go home, huh? You don't need me around and I won't cause you any grief. Christ, how can I? I mean, I don't even know you.”