Tengu (8 page)

“You want to
make love to me now?”

“I’m rushing
you?”

She threw her
head back and tried to laugh, but all that came out was a strangled,
high-pitched hih-hih-hih. She turned to him, her eyes watering and her hand
pressed over her mouth.

“I amuse you?”
Mr. Esmeralda asked.

“No,” she said.
“No, you don’t amuse me.”

“You laughed,”
he pointed out.

“Yes.” Then,
more softly, “Yes.”

She stood up.
“I laughed because you frighten me.”

He watched her
carefully. “I told you I might be a robber,” he said.
“Or a
rapist.”
She didn’t answer. She couldn’t understand the feelings rising
inside her stomach. What was she doing here? Where was this place, with its
intolerable afternoon light and its pale furnishings?

She said,
without looking at him, “The twins will be home in a quarter of an hour.”

He didn’t move.
His eyes were liquid and dark; the eyes of a conjuror, or a fairground
hypnotist.

“We can’t,” she
whispered hoarsely. “There isn’t time.”

Mr. Esmeralda
thought about that for a while, and then nodded. Eva crossed the room and sat
down opposite him, on a natural-colored canvas chair with X-shaped chrome legs.
She hated the chair, but somehow her discomfort in it made her feel better.
More real.

She said, “I
need to know who you are.”

He lifted an
eyebrow.

“I don’t mean
that’s a prerequisite” she added, hurrying her words. “I mean–I’m not saying
that if I know who you are, if you tell me–
that
I’ll...”

Mr. Esmeralda
nodded again. “I understand.”

She breathed
out. She could smell the gin on her own breath. “I’m afraid you’ve caught me at
a bad time,” she said. She hated the sound of apology in her voice. After all,
this was her apartment. This was her marriage.
Her pain.
But somehow Mr. Esmeralda was the kind of man who invited apologies. He was so
calm
, so self-possessed, that she couldn’t imagine him ever
having done anything wrong. Not socially, anyway.

Even his
seduction had been a model of politeness.

They waited in
silence. The apartment began to fade as the afternoon light faded. They could
even hear the sound of the elevators rising and falling through the building.

Eventually Mr.
Esmeralda stood up. He said, “You will allow me to call you, then?
One evening, when your husband is engaged with work.”

“You can call,
yes,” she said, her mouth dry.

“Perhaps dinner, a few cocktails.
Dancing.”

“Perhaps.”

He smiled.
The same smile.
He bowed his head.

“I shall look
forward to it, my dear Mrs. Crowley, in the same way that the night sky looks
forward to the lighting up of the stars.”

She lowered her
eyes. “That’s the first sham sentiment you’ve uttered.”

“Yes,” he
agreed. “But I am a Colombian, and all Colombians are permitted one sham
sentiment per day.”

She said
nothing more. He waited a while longer, and then left. His shoes clicked on the
floor.

He closed the
apartment door behind him.

She sat in the
X-legged chair, staring unblinkingly at the opposite wall and wondering if this
was the way all marriages ended.

S
ergeant Skrolnik pressed the doorbell for the third time. Beside
him, Detective Arthur took out a Kleenex that was crumpled into a tiny,
tattered ball and wiped his nose. Skrolnik said, “If you could run like your
nose, Irving, you’d catch every murderer in town.”

Detective
Arthur sniffed and didn’t answer. There was flowering jasmine tangled around
the doorway of this shabby three-story building on Franklin Avenue, and
flowering jasmine always got to his sinus. He wished somebody would hurry up
and open the door so that he could ask for a fresh Kleenex. With almost
masochistic regularity, he forgot to bring along a pack of his own.

“It doesn’t
look like there’s anyone here,” said Skrolnik, stepping back onto the cracked
concrete path and shading his eyes so that he could peer up at the second-floor
windows. “Can you make it back here this afternoon on your own? I have a
briefing with Captain Martin.”

Detective
Arthur shrugged okay and sniffed again, more conclusively this time.

Skrolnik was
turning to leave when a downstairs window opened, and a withered old man looked
out. “Did you want something?” he asked in a tremulous voice.

Skrolnik turned
back and stared at him. “No, no. I was just testing your response to your
doorbell. It’s a new city ordinance, you mustn’t respond to your doorbell for
at least ten minutes. But I’m glad to say you’ve passed with flying colors.”

“Doorbell?”
queried the old man. “That doorbell hasn’t worked in fifteen years. You want
anybody,
you have to throw stones at the winders.”

Skrolnik looked
at Detective Arthur, and then back at the old man.
“How
foolish of me.
I didn’t realize. Is Mack Holt home?”

“Sure. He’s on
nights this week. He’s probably sleeping.”

“Should I throw
a stone at his window, or might you come and open this door for me?”

“Maybe he
doesn’t want to see you.”

“Maybe he
doesn’t have any choice,” said Skrolnik, and produced his badge. The old man
screwed up his eyes so that he could make out what it was, and then said: “Oh.”

It took another
two or three minutes before he came shuffling to the door to let them in.

Skrolnik said:
“Thanks. If you ever need us cops for any reason, I hope we come just as
quick
.”

“It’s
upstairs,” said the old man, oblivious to Skrolnik’s sarcasm.

The hallway was
dim, and smellcd of Lysol and cheap tile polish. The walls were roughly
plastered and painted an unpleasant shade of orange. Someone had penciled by
the lightswitch:

“Sherry: L
called, wants to know if you can call back.” It was an epitaph to Sherry
Cantor’s past. It would probably still be there when they tore the building
down.

Skrolnik led
the way up the noisy stairs. He crossed the landing and knocked loudly on the
door numbered 2. Almost immediately, he knocked again. The old man waited
downstairs in the hallway. Detective Arthur
said,
“Beat
it.”

There was a
sound of bolts being shot back. A thin face appeared at the door, with curly
blond hair and a slightly twisted nose.
Two blue-gray eyes.
A lean, brown twenty-five-year-old torso.

Bright-green underpants.

“What do you
want?”

Skrolnik pushed
the door wide open and stepped into the room. It was dark, with all the drapes
drawn tight, and smelled of stale marijuana zndfri/o/es refritos. Mack Holt
said tensely, “What is this? What do you want?”

Skrolnik
flipped open his wallet and showed his badge to Mack Holt without even looking
at him. His eyes flicked around the room, taking in the sagging basketwork
chairs, the stacks of paperback books and magazines, the cut-price Japanese
stereo, the posters for rock concerts and bullfights.

“Is there anybody
else here?” asked Skrolnik, nodding toward the half-open bedroom door.

“A friend.”

“Go take a
look,” Skrolnik told Detective Arthur.

Mack Holt said,
“Hey, now, hold on there. She’s not dressed yet.”

“Keep your
hands over yours eyes,” Skrolnik instructed Detective Arthur. “And no peeking.”

Mack asked,
“Listen–what is this? Do you have a warrant?”

“A warrant for what?”

“A search warrant.
You can’t search this place without a
warrant.”

“Who’s
searching?”

Skrolnik
crossed the room. He touched the corner of the bandanna that had been hung
around the lampshade. He drew it toward him and sniffed it, then let it swing
back. “As a matter of scientific fact,” he said, “you’ll find that Aramis works
better than Carven when it comes to masking the smell of grass.

Mack said,
“What are you, an aftershave salesman?”

Detective
Arthur rapped at the bedroom door. A girl’s voice called out, “Mack?”

“It’s the
heat,” Mack called back. Then he looked at Skrolnik’s stony expression and
added, almost inaudibly, “The police.”

“You’ll have to
wait a moment,” said the girl. Skrolnik didn’t take his eyes off Mack.
Detective Arthur hesitated at the bedroom door.

Mack said
quietly, “I suppose you’ve come about Sherry.”

“That’s right,”
nodded Skrolnik. “You were a friend of hers, weren’t you?”

“More than a friend.
She lived here.”

Skrolnik gave
the room an exaggerated reappraisal. “She sure took a step up when she moved
out.”

“Maybe,” said
Mack defensively.

Skrolnik walked
around the room. “When did she leave?”

“Right after
they gave her that part in Our Family Jones. What was that? Eighteen months
ago.

Eighteen, nineteen months.”

“You’ve seen
her since?”

“Once or twice.”

Skrolnik
searched systematically through the pockets of his doubleknit coat until he
found a stick of gum. He peeled off the wrapper, folded the stick into his
mouth, and then said offhandedly,

“
they
tell me you were jealous of her.’’

“Jealous?
What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You were two
out-of-work actors. She got a plum part and you didn’t. Don’t tell me that
didn’t make you jealous.”

“I was pleased
for her.”

“So pleased that she packed her bags and cut out?”

Mack ran his
fingers through his tangled blond curls. “All right,” he admitted, “I was
jealous.

What does that
prove?”

“You tell me.”

Mack folded his
arms across his bare chest. Then he raised a finger and said incredulously,

“You’re not
trying to say that / killed her?”

Skrolnik stared
at him with contempt. “Whoever killed Sherry Cantor was pretty well superhuman.
I don’t think you’re quite in his league. Let’s say it’s the difference between
Arnold Schwarzenegger and Woody Alien.”

Mack lowered
his head. “Yes,” he said. “I heard about it on the news.”

“Can you tell
me where you were yesterday morning, around eight o’clock?”

The bedroom door
opened wider, and Detective Arthur said, “Come on, miss. You don’t have to be
shy.”

“I was here, in
bed,” said Mack. “Olive will tell you.”

Skrolnik raised
an eyebrow. Olive was a glittering, glossy-looking black girl, and she stalked
into the living room with her dreadlocks shaking and her head held defiantly
erect. She was wrapped in a thin flowered-silk sarong which barely concealed
her enormous bouncing breasts. She was pretty in a wide-eyed, 1960’s
Tamla-Motown kind of way, and there were jingling gold bells around her left
ankle. She paused, with her hand on her hip, and said, “That’s right. He was
here, all right.”

Skrolnik said,
“The poorer the nabes, the fancier the domestic help. What’s your name, miss?”

“It’s Mrs.,”
said the black girl. “Mrs. Robin T. Nesmith, Jr. But you can call me Mrs.
Nesmith.”

“Where’s Mr.
Nesmith? Hiding under the comforter?”

“Mr. Nesmith is
in Honolulu, with the U.S. Navy.”

“And this is
the thanks he gets, for serving his country?”

“I don’t see
that it’s any of your business,” said Olive, “but Mr. Ncsmith knows about it.
He reckons
it’s
better the devil you know.”

Skrolnik chewed
thoughtfully.
“Even when the devil’s a white devil?”

“Mr. Nesmith is
white, too.”

“I see. Can
anyone else substantiate your whereabouts?”

Mack put his
arm around Olive and drew her closer. He said, “A couple of friends called on
the telephone just before eight. But that’s all.”

“Give Detective
Arthur their names, will you?” asked Skrolnik.

Detective
Arthur took out his notebook and his ballpoint, while Skrolnik turned his back
on them and went to investigate the bedroom. There was a wide, sagging bed
covered by stained red satin sheets. The room smelled of perfume and sex, and a
blue tin ashtray beside the bed exuded its own peculiar fragrance. The walls
were papered with faded floribunda roses.

Skrolnik stood
there for a while, chewing and thinking. In one corner of the room, on the
floor, were a paperback edition of H. R. Haldeman’s The Ends of Power and a
tiny pair of transparent purple panties.

The incongruity
of human life, he thought.

He came back
into the living room. Olive was sitting on one of the basketwork chairs, and
Mack was stepping into a pair of newish Levi’s. The jeans were so tight that he
had difficulty zipping them up over his cock. Skrolnik said, “Need a shoehorn?”

Mack picked up
a T-shirt with Snoquaimie National Forest printed on it. “You must be the life
and soul of the squadroom.”

“Mr. Holt,”
Skrolnik retorted, “if you saw people torn apart the way that Sherry Cantor was
torn apart, then you’d understand just what it is that makes me talk the way I
do. After despair, there’s nothing left but humor.”

Without raising
his eyes, Mack asked, “Was she hurt? I mean, do you think she felt anything?”
Olive reached up and held his hand. Skrolnik said, “We don’t know.”

“I guess you’re
going to ask me if I knew anyone who could have done something like that,”

Mack told him.
“But I didn’t before, and I still don’t. She used to get to people sometimes.
She used to get to me. But that was only because life seemed so easy for her.
There she was, fresh out of Indiana and raw as an onion, and success fell
straight in her lap. That was what finished us, in the end, Sherry and me. And
what made it worst of
all,
she was so nice about it.
She used to say that success wouldn’t change her, and it damn well didn’t. She
was just so damn nice.”