Serpent's Kiss (10 page)

    "It's just that neighbourhood-"

    "I know. But the people are so interesting, Mom. I just like it."

    And that was true. The bookstore attracted all sorts of interesting people-not just the usual paperback browsers, either, but holdovers from the days of beatniks who looked through all the Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg books; smart and somewhat sarcastic science professors who bought science fiction novels and made tart comments on the authors they were purchasing; and intense, lonely men and women-women she liked to think would fit into her group at school-who talked of all kinds of books (everything from mysteries to eighteenth-century romances) with great smoking passion. Despite the shabbiness of the store itself, and the somewhat frightening neighbourhood surrounding it, Marie loved her hours in the store, feeling as if she belonged there. The people who came in there took note of her foot, of course, but somehow it didn't seem to matter much to them. She strongly suspected that each of them-in his or her own way-was a geek, too.

    "Anyway," Marie said. She'd been going to tell her mother later, savouring the moment when she could actually say that she had something like a date. Not exactly a date, true; but something at least not unlike a date.

    "Anyway, what?" her mother said.

    "Anyway, I've got a ride to and from the store tonight."

    "You do?"

    "I do."

    "With whom?"

    Marie couldn't help herself then. She grinned like a little girl opening a birthday present. "Remember I told you about Richie Beck?"

    "The cute one who sits at your table every day but doesn't say much?"

    "Right."

    "He's going to give you a ride to and from the bookstore?"

    Marie nodded. "Isn't that great?"

    But instead of answering directly, her mother did something wholly unexpected, reached out and brought her daughter to her, and held her tighter than she had in years.

    "I'm really happy for you," her mother said.

    And Marie knew her mother was crying. That was the oddest thing of all. Her mother crying.

    Marie felt her mother's warm tears on the shoulder of her cotton blouse. "Mom, are you all right?"

    "I'm just happy for you."

    Marie grinned again as they separated. "Mom, I'm not getting married. He's just giving me a ride."

    Her mother, still crying softly, said, "But don't you see what this means?"

    "What what means?"

    "Richie. You."

    "I'm afraid I don't understand."

    "A boy in your life, honey. It means you won't turn out like me. Some crazed old widow lady who keeps all the toilet bowls sparkling."

    In the phrase about toilet bowls, Marie heard with real sorrow that her mother did indeed know the kind of woman she'd turned into. And didn't want her daughter to turn into. Marie had never liked and loved her mother more than she did right now.

    "I was just afraid that with your foot, you'd become like me," her mother said.

    Then she leaned forward and gave her daughter a tearstained kiss on the cheek.

    Then her mother turned and started back for the living room. "I'd better get back there, hon. Who knows? Maybe Oprah herself will get abducted this afternoon."

    Now it was Marie's turn to stand there and cry softly. Crazed as her mother sometimes was, she was still the sweetest person Marie had ever known.

    

    

    "What the hell're you looking so smug about?"

    "Wouldn't you like to know?"

    "C'mon, Holland, for Christ's sake tell me. Three hours ago you were sitting in my office crying."

    "Maybe I got a phone call."

    "Oh, yeah? What kind of phone call? A job offer?"

    They were in the second-floor coffee room. She liked it up here because now, around five, there was never anybody up here and she could take her heels off and rub her feet and stare out the window at the silver river winding north three blocks away.

    "Don't I wish," she said.

    "Then if it wasn't a job offer, what kind of phone call could of made you so happy."

    "Story."

    "News story?"

    She enjoyed keeping him in the dark. She liked seeing him sort of beg, like this big shaggy (and, all right, loveable) dog.

    "Well if it's a news story phone call, don't you think you should be telling me about it?"

    "Not necessarily."

    "I just came up here to see how you were doing-being a pretty nice goddamned guy when you come right down to it-and now look."

    "If it's anything, I'll tell you all about it."

    He took his paper cup of coffee and went to the door. "Won't you even give me a hint?"

    She decided to really get his motor running. "Let's just say it involves murder."

    "Murder?" He sounded practically exultant. News directors always sounded practically exultant when you dropped the word 'murder.' Murders made great visuals. Great visuals.

    "Several of them."

    "Several of them?"

    He looked as if he were going to jump on her and start strangling her until she gave him the whole story but just then a TV sales rep came in.

    "Hey," the sleek rep said. "News guys up here on the second floor." He seemed stunned that such a thing could happen.

    "Yeah," Chris Holland said to O'Sullivan. "Better call CBS and tell them all about it. How there are 'news guys' on the second floor."

    Despite himself, O'Sullivan smiled.

    And then had the good sense to leave.

    Because she sure wasn't going to tell him any more. Not right now anyway.

    At the door, O'Sullivan said, "Oh, yeah, I'm making some dinner tonight. Stop by."

    Then, without waiting for her answer, he left.

    

    

    She hadn't been in the apartment in eight years, not since the night with her brother.

    She stood in the hallway now, the key she'd stolen all those years ago damp and metallic in the soft flesh of her palm.

    What if Dobyns was to walk in right now?

    What could she do?

    How could she escape?

    She eased the key into the Yale lock. Turned it gently. Looked again-
for the ninth time? tenth?
-for a sign of anybody coming or peeking out of a door.

    And then she pushed at the door and went inside.

    The odour was the first thing that struck her. Of dampness, of something hidden in darkness too long, unclean.

    She remembered the odour vividly from the night with her brother.

    She pushed the door shut behind her.

    Even in the afternoon, sunlight still golden and gorgeous outside, the apartment was a place of deep shadows.

    She looked around the small rooms, knowing she was afraid to move.

    She forced herself to take a single step.

    
This is for him not for me. I've got to be brave. Anyway, I've spent all these years for this moment.

    Now-

    Down the hall, a door slammed shut and she jumped.

    She felt terrified and ridiculous at the same time.

    Her heart was loud in her ears.

    Sweat like glue covered her flesh.

    And then she smiled at herself, just as Rob had always smiled at her for being such a chicken. Remembering Rob's smile, the almost beatific boyishness of it, calmed her.

    She took a second step. And then a third.

    And then she began, traffic sounds in the background, a baby crying somewhere on the second floor, her search of the apartment.

    She spent the next thirty-six minutes going through every closet and every drawer in the place, pausing only once when she had to pee.

    She felt stupid, huddled just above the toilet seat (her parents had taught her too well about strange toilet seats) in an apartment she'd just broken into.

    And then she was back at work

    In one drawer she found a yellowed, brittle newspaper used as lining. She lifted it out and took it over by one of the windows. She held the curtain back with one hand and studied the paper with another. May 23, 1958 was the date. She hadn't even been born then.

    But she knew she didn't have time to waste looking at old newspapers and so she put it back in the drawer.

    There were rings of dirt in the bathtub and in the kitchen a half eaten sandwich that two cockroaches, antennae flicking, were busy with. And in the hall closet she found an ancient, threadbare London Fog with flecks of what was probably dried blood on the sleeve.

    Five minutes later she found the manila envelope.

    Memories of the manila envelope Rob had showed her that night came back in jarring, upsetting images.

    The girls someone had killed several decades ago... and photographed afterward...

    Fingers trembling, stomach tightening, she started to slip the glossy photos from the manila envelope.

    And then she heard the key in the lock. She froze, glancing around the room for someplace to hide. But the apartment was so small-

    The key turning in the lock now-

    The doorknob being turned-

    The door being pushed inward-

    The smell of the day's heat and a man's sweat-

    And there, framed perfectly in the doorway, sunlight blasting behind him and turning him into little more than a silhouette, stood Richard Dobyns.

    He barely hesitated.

    He started to turn.

    It was obvious he was going to run.

    "No!" she shouted, her voice almost hysterical in the ancient shadowy room.

    She had waited all these years for proof. And now her proof was running away from her.

    She lunged for Dobyns, grabbing him by the sleeve.

    "I want to help you. You've got to believe me," she said.

    He was in the doorway, out of breath now, fear lurid in his eyes.

    "Close the door, Richard, and I'll help you." She took the tone of a person trying to reassure a child or a skittish animal.

    "You're not the police?"

    "No."

    He stared out the doorway with a real longing. Freedom lay that way. In this room was only a mysterious woman who claimed to want to help him but whom he deeply distrusted. She could see all this in his gaze.

    "I know what happened at Hastings House," she said.

    He put a shaky hand to his mouth. He licked dry lips.

    "And I know about the thing in your stomach, too," she said.

    "My God," he said. "Who are you?"

    And then he quietly closed the door behind him and came back into the apartment.

    

    

    The old black manual Royal was O'Sullivan's pride. It made him feel like a real journalist.

    Would Edward R. Murrow have used a wimpy word processor?

    Hell no.

    O'Sullivan saw the word processor as just one more symbol of journalism's decline.

    In journalism school now (or TV school as the kids these days called it) the professors spent as much time on 'presentation', (i.e., how to put on makeup and hair spray) as they did on writing news stories.

    And it showed in the kind of writing you saw on local TV. Badly structured pieces that didn't answer half the questions they raised, sometimes including-incredibly enough-the basics of the story itself.

    But the makeup looked good.

    And the King Kong hair spray was working hard.

    So to hell with journalism.

    O'Sullivan was thinking all these uncharitable thoughts because Dashing David Starrett had just handed in another totally incomprehensible tale about alleged corruption in city hall.

    Not until halfway into the story did Starrett's copy tell you which city council members were allegedly involved. Not until three fourths of the way in did the copy tell you what the specific charges were. And three times in a page and a half of copy Starrett seriously violated not only the letter but the spirit of the English language.

    Unfortunately for O'Sullivan, who usually ended up rewriting Dashing David's stuff, the kid was the darling of the news consultants. He booked well in focus groups because-as one grandmotherly woman supposedly told the consultant-he 'has dreamy eyes.'

    Though he was not yet quite twenty-five, Dashing David would most likely get a network job within the next few years.

    He had the 'presentation' part down and there was always an O'Sullivan type somewhere to do the rewriting for him.

    O'Sullivan wondered if Edward R. Murrow had had dreamy eyes.

    Somehow O'Sullivan couldn't imagine that.

    He took a break at a quarter to five.

    The news would be on the air in another hour and fifteen minutes so he stood in his doorway watching the craziness.

    Reporters literally tripped over each other as they stumbled toward deadlines rewriting, reediting, repolishing. There was, predictably, a flare up of egos and tempers in front of one of the small editing rooms. With nine reporters and only three rooms, the video machines needed to complete a story were at a premium. A few times punches had even been exchanged.

    As he stood there, feeling properly paternal about this whole resplendent process of TV journalism, O'Sullivan started wondering about Chris again.

    Had she been joking about a 'murder' tip?

    Where the hell was she now?