The Nicholas Linnear Novels (9 page)

There was silence for a time, just the sound of the surf seeming far away. She moved, at last, over to the stereo, putting on a record. But almost immediately she took the needle off the groove as if the music were some intruder now to be kept away.

“He called me home during my sophomore year at Smith,” she said with her back to him. Her voice was flat and dry and contained. “Sent his goddamn private jet for me so I was sure not to miss any of my classes.” She turned around but her head was down, her gaze riveted on a paper clip she held, working it back and forth until it snapped apart. “Well, I was, I don’t know, I guess ‘frightened’ is the word. I couldn’t imagine what emergency he’d called me back home for. I immediately thought of my mother. Funny, not Gelda; she never got sick. Not like Mother.

“Anyway, I was brought into the study and there he was standing before the fire, toasting his hands. I stood watching him with my loden coat brushed with snow, not even bothering to take it off He offered me a drink.” Her head snapped up and she impaled him with her eyes. “Can you imagine! He offered me a drink as calmly as if we were business partners about to discuss an important deal.

“It’s odd, you know. That’s precisely the image I had at the time. It was prophetic. ‘My dear,’ he said, ‘I’ve a surprise for you. I’ve come across a most extraordinary man. He’ll be here any moment. I imagine the snow’s delayed him a bit. Come. Take off your coat and sit down.’ But I stayed where I was, dumbfounded. ‘Is this why you flew me home?’ I asked. ‘Well, yes. I want you to meet him. He’s ideal for you. His family’s in the right bracket and quite well connected. He’s good-looking and a three-letter man to boot.’ ‘Father,’ I said, ‘you scared me half to death over some mad idea that—’ ‘I scared you?’ ‘Yes, I thought something had happened, to Mother or—’ ‘Don’t be so idiotic, Justine! I can’t think what I’m going to do with you.’ I stormed out, furious, and he just couldn’t understand what he had done to upset me. It was all done out of love, he told me. ‘Do you know how much time I spent making this selection?’ he said as I went out the door.” She sighed. “For my father, time was always his most precious commodity.”

“People don’t do that anymore,” he said. “Trade off other people as if they were things.”

“Oh no?” She laughed sardonically. “It happens all the time, all around.” She spread out her arms. “In marriages, when the woman’s expected to perform certain duties; in divorces, when the kids are used as bargaining points; in affairs. All the time, Nick. Grow up, will you?”

He got up off the sofa, annoyed at her height advantage. “I’ll bet your father used to say that to you. ‘Grow up, Justine.’”

“You’re a bastard, you know that?”

“C’mon. You’re not going to start another fight now, are you? I told you—”

“Bastard!” She leaped across the intervening coffee table, her body crashing against his, her hands flailing against him, but he caught her slender wrists without difficulty, pinioning her.

“Now, listen,” he said. “I don’t mind horsing around with you, but I told you, I’m not Chris and you’re not going to provoke a fight with me every time you want some attention. There’re other ways to get it. For instance, you could ask.”

“I shouldn’t have to ask,” she said.

“Oho! So that’s it. I don’t have ESP. I’m just a human being. And I don’t need psychodramas.”

“But I do.”

“No,” he said, “you don’t.” He let her go.

“Prove it.”

“You’re the only one who can do that.”

“Not alone, I can’t.” She stared up into his face. Her hand lifted. Her fingertips grazed his cheek. “Help me,” she whispered. “Help me.”

His mouth covered her open lips.

It seemed highly improbable that Billy Shawtuck would have gotten the nickname “Wild Bill” but nevertheless there it was. He was a ruddy-complexioned man in his early forties, shortish and not even stocky. He always wore long-sleeved shirts, even in the dead of summer when, even out here near the shore, there was more sweat than wind around.

Ask his buddies at Grendel’s and they would tell you that was because he didn’t like to show off his enormous biceps. Of course, if pressed, they would also tell you he came to his nickname by way of eschewing beers for a double scotch on the rocks every time. Apparently the heat didn’t bother him much.

Billy worked for Lilco, riding power lines, and, he always said to those he beat at arm wrestling off-hours at Grendel’s, he came by his muscles honestly. “I didn’t have to go to no fag gym every day to get these,” he’d say, downing the double scotch on the rocks in a swallow and raising his arm to order another. “Shit, my job does all that. Honest work you can sweat at.” Then he would shake his head full of sandy hair. “I’m not one of those goddamned desk jockeys.”

Grendel’s was a local watering hole—almost exclusively blue-collar (the writers had their own favorite)—several miles outside of West Bay Bridge, roadside to Montauk Highway.

Late in the evening, Billy Shawtuck stood in the doorway to Grendel’s preparatory to leaving. The sky was turning from indigo to black, the traffic from the highway taking on a spectral quality as headlights and taillights flicked by like the inquisitive eyes of nocturnal animals.

On the top of the steps, Billy took a deep breath and cursed the summer influx. We’re all gonna die of carbon monoxide poisoning one of these days, he thought.

Not four paces away, his Lilco truck stood waiting for him, but this evening he was reluctant to leave the cheery warmth of the bar. Music blatted at his back from the juke inside. Tony Bennett singing “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.”

You could take San Francisco, Billy thought, take the whole of the West Coast and shove it up your ass. He’d been out there in the Army and had come to hate it. I didn’t leave anything there but a good case of the clap. He laughed. But, damn, I’m sure sorry I took this late job. Time and a half is all well and good but some days—well, some days it just wasn’t worth it. He had a feeling that this was one of those days.

Sighing deeply, he went down the stairs but not before giving the finger to Tony Bennett and his shit-ass city.

His mood changed, however, as he banged down one of the dark side roads and he began to whistle tunelessly. He didn’t think this job was going to take too long.

And, of course, by that time he was thinking of Helene and the stuff he had bought her from the Frederick’s of Hollywood catalog. Agh, he thought, maybe it came in the mail today. It was about due.

He was picturing Helene’s long-legged frame in the clothes—he laughed: if you could call them that—as he came around the last bend to the beach-front property and saw the black-clad figure step right into the beam of his left-side headlight.

“What the fuck!” He stepped on the brakes and swerved over to the right shoulder. Leaning out the window, he called, “You stupid bastard! I coulda killed you. What’s the matter with—”

The door on his side crashed open and it felt as if a tornado hurled him out of the cab. “Hey!” He rolled across the cool tarmac. “Hey, buddy!”

He got to his feet in a boxer’s semi-crouch, his fists up in front of his chest.

“Not to fool around, you sonovabitch.”

His eyes opened wide as he saw the flash of the long blade in the wash of the headlights. Christ, he thought, a sword. A sword? Jesus, I must be drunk.

A moth battled in the headlight, dazzled, and the cicadas sizzled. Close at hand, the surf hissed and shushed like a nanny calming a crying baby.

He threw a punch. It never connected.

The air in front of him seemed to split apart and vibrate like a beaded curtain.

He felt two sensations almost simultaneously. They were the sharpest, most exquisitely painful feelings he had ever experienced.

Once, just outside the base, he had had a scuffle with an M.P. and the bastard had managed to slash him with a knife, wounding him in the side, before he had had a chance to bury his fist in the M.P.’s face. It was the guardhouse for him for that, but he had never felt so satisfied in his life.

But that pain, that burning was nothing to what Billy Shawtuck felt now. The blur of the blade pierced the night and then pierced Billy. From the top of his right shoulder down across his abdomen to the left side of his pelvis. His guts began to spill out and his nostrils were suffused with a nauseating stench.

“Jesus Chri—”

Then the round wooden pole crashed, whistling like a boy at play, onto his shoulder. He heard the sharp crack as the bones broke but, astoundingly, there was absolutely no pain. Only the feeling that he had been driven straight through the tarmac of the road.

Tears came to Billy’s eyes for the first time in years. Momma, he thought, Momma, I’m comin’ home.

“I think I know what it is,” she said.

Night had come and a strong wind, springing up from the landward side of the house, rattled the trees outside. Far off a boat hooted once and was still. They lay close together on the bed, enjoying the nearness of their flesh, nothing sexual in it; just two beings, together.

“You won’t laugh,” she said, turning her face toward his. “Promise me you won’t laugh.”

“I promise.”

“If I’m hurt—physically—it prepares me, sort of.”

“For what?”

“For the other kind of hurt. The breaking up; the leaving.”

“That seems to me an awfully pessimistic view of life.”

“Yes, it does.”

He put his arm around her and she put one foot between his, rubbing his shins.

After a time, he said, “What is it you want?”

“To be happy,” she said. “That’s all.” There is nothing else in the world, she thought, but our linked bodies, our twined souls, and she felt that she had never been as close to anyone as she felt at that moment to Nicholas. Trust had to begin somewhere. Perhaps this was the place for her to start.

She jumped at the sound of an enormous crash that seemed to come from near the front of the house, the kitchen. She cried out as if a cold hand had clutched at her vitals, saw Nicholas sit up, swing his legs over the side of the bed.

He stood up, and as he began to move toward the bedroom door he seemed totally transformed to her. Standing there stark naked, he nevertheless seemed fully clothed, as if his rippling muscles and gleaming sweat-streaked skin were some mysterious raiment cloaking him.

He moved silently toward the lemon light streaming down the hallway. He led with his left foot, his body sideways as if he were a fencer, knees slightly bent, feet not leaving the floor. Down the hallway. He had said not a word to her.

Gathering her wits, she went after him.

His hands were up before him, she saw, their edges reminding her oddly of blades, the fingers as stiff as steel as he moved stealthily into the kitchen.

Past the table, she saw that the window over the sink had been shattered inward and shards of glass gleamed in the light. She dared not move farther on bare feet. The curtains flapped in the wind rushing in through the rent, whipping against the enameled walls.

She watched as Nicholas moved forward, stopped as still as a statue as he peered down at something on the floor on the far side of the table near the window. He stayed in that position for such a long time that she went cautiously across the littered floor to stand behind him. She gasped and turned away. But something drew her eyes inexorably back and she looked again.

On the floor was a black furry mass, large and unmoving. Blood seeped along the floor in several places from under the body, glistening where it shone upon the ruined glass. A strange, astringent smell assaulted her nostrils and she gagged. Her eyes began to tear.

“What—” She gagged again, swallowed hard. “What is that thing?”

“I’m not sure,” he said slowly. “It’s too big for a bat, at least in this part of the country, and its not a flying squirrel.”

The phone began to ring and Justine jumped. Her hands gripped her arms. “I’ve got gooseflesh,” she said. Nicholas remained where he was, staring down at the black thing that had crashed through the window. “Blinded by the light,” he said.

Justine went to the far wall and picked up the phone but he seemed oblivious as she spoke for several moments. She had to come back and touch him on the arm. “Vincent wants to speak to you,” she said.

He looked at her then, tearing his eyes away. “All right.” His voice seemed thick, his thoughts far away. “Don’t go near it,” he warned as he went to the phone. “What is it?” he said abruptly.

“I tried you at your place,” Vincent said. “When there was no answer, I took a chance.” Nicholas said nothing. “Look, I know what time it is.” His voice rattled against Nicholas’ ear, an odd note settled in it. “It’s happened again. Florum just brought in another body. They’re photographing it now.” The wind howling in through the broken window seemed chill to Nicholas. He waited, sweat breaking out on his body. He looked at the mess on the floor: the black-furred corpse, the red blood, seeping still as if seeking something or someone. “Nick, the body has been cut obliquely from shoulder-blade to hip joint as neatly as—It was one cut. Do you understand?”

T
HERE WAS A SHINTO
temple amid the lushest forest Nicholas had ever seen a mere three hundred meters from the extreme eastern edge of his father’s land. Then it was another hundred and fifty or so to the house, a large, delicate, precisely orchestrated structure of traditional Japanese design. The front was L-shaped, preceded, as one came upon it, by an exquisite formal garden which, needless to say, required tireless attention and as much love as a small child.

The irony of the location would come later when, on the far side of the long rolling knoll to the west, they would construct an ultramodern eight-lane superhighway to aid the bustling traffic to and from the heart of Tokyo.

The last traces of Japan’s military might had been ground to metal powder, its imperial
daimyo
tried and serving time as war criminals. The Emperor remained but everywhere uniformed Americans basked in what they often laughingly referred to as “the atomic sunshine.”