Walkers (9 page)

The little house where Joana lived was on Beachwood Drive in a quiet neighborhood above Hollywood. Originally it had been a guest cottage on the grounds of a large estate. The main house had been torn down some years ago to make way for an apartment building, and the guest house was scheduled to follow soon. While she had it, Joana enjoyed the feeling of living in a house that was all her own in an age of apartments. The house was just one room deep, with the rooms set end to end like a train: living room, den, bedroom, kitchen. The place was hard to keep clean and expensive to heat, and the roof leaked in heavy rains, but there were no neighbors to contend with, living just a wall's width away from you. Also, there was a nice spread of lawn out in front with oleanders and palmettos and great jungly ferns that were cared for by the real-estate company that owned the property.

Joana made herself two slices of toast, poured a cup of coffee, and sat down with the
Times
. She skimmed over the bad news and discarded Section 1 for the sports page. Things were better there. The

Dodgers had come up with two runs in the ninth last night to beat the hated Reds in Cincinnati. Way to go.

She poured another cup of coffee and lit her first cigarette of the day. By the end of the day she would have smoked no more than half a pack. Were it not for the self-righteous militancy of the antismoking people, Joana would have given them up completely. She kept to her ten Salems a day as a token rebellion.

Behind her the screen outside the kitchen door rattled. Joana got up and opened the door. Standing outside was a burly black cat with a torn ear. He had been abandoned as a kitten and now lived very well by his wits, mooching food and shelter from the soft-hearted residents of the neighborhood.

"I'm sorry, Bandido, I don't have anything for you this morning."

The cat looked up at her with disbelief in his luminous green eyes.

"Well, let me look, maybe there's a scrap of something." She pushed open the screen and the black cat sauntered in. In the refrigerator she found the end piece of a block of cheese, chopped it into bite-size morsels, and put them in a saucer. The cat sniffed at the cheese, poked at it with a paw, and finally ate.

"I'm so glad you approve," Joana said.

She went into the bathroom to put on her makeup, came out and removed the cat from her bed where he was feigning sleep, and left for work.

Another thing Joana liked about her location was that she had a direct route to the office that involved no freeway driving. She dropped down Vine Street to Santa Monica, then headed west through the tacky part of Beverly Hills to Century City, the island of gleaming high-rise office buildings across from 20th Century-Fox studios. Traffic slowed as she approached her building and the cars funneled into the subterranean parking area. While Joana was stopped for a moment a boy on a skateboard rolled up beside her on the street side. He carried an armload of flowers—red roses and pink carnations—divided into bouquets of twelve and wrapped in tissue paper.

"Hi, Joana," said the boy. "I didn't see you yesterday. Were you sick?"

"Hello, Davy. No, I wasn't sick, I just took the day off."

"That's good." The boy smiled at her, a sweet, childlike smile. He had the body of a rangy fourteen-year-old, but his mind would be forever seven.

"I'm glad you're back," he said. He took a rose from one of the bouquets and handed it to her. "This is for you."

Joana fumbled in her purse while watching for the car ahead of her to start moving.

"You don't have to pay for it," Davy said. "That's just from me."

"Well, thank you very much, Davy. That's awfully nice."

"Ah, that's all right."

A panel truck sped past in the traffic lane just beyond where the boy was standing balanced on his board. Joana winced.

"You worry me, Davy, rolling around on that thing in all this traffic."

"Ah, I'm okay. I can always get out of the way if somebody's coming too close."

"Be careful, anyway."

"I will."

The line of cars began to move and Joana drove On through the cavelike entrance to the underground parking. She inserted her coded parking pass into a slot and the cross-arm barrier rose to let her car through. She drove down the curving inclines to the second sublevel, where her company kept an area reserved for employees. She got out of the car and sniffed at the rose Davy had given her. Smiling, she promised herself she would buy a bouquet tonight on her way home.

She rode the elevator up to her floor and was welcomed back enthusiastically, although she had been off only one day. The advertising manager had a stack of back-to-school layouts for her to approve, and Joana plunged into the job eagerly.

The hours passed quickly and pleasantly enough, yet Joana sensed a growing anxiety. It took a while before she recognized the cause. It was Glen. She had not spoken to him since leaving his apartment yesterday morning, and that exchange had been none too warm. Why, she wondered, hadn't he called?

Yesterday, of course, had been hectic, and even if Glen had called, she was probably not at home. She might have called him last night, but by the time she had gone through her examination with Dr. Hovde, the business with the wild woman driver, and Peter Landau with his Tarot cards, she was exhausted. When she finally got home she had not felt like talking to anybody.

At three o'clock she stopped waiting for a call from Glen and picked up her own phone. She punched the button for an outside line and dialed his number at Datatron, his company in Torrance. Usually she did not like to call him at work, but it was silly to sit here wanting to hear from him and not doing anything about it.

She reached Glen's secretary, an attractive but noncompetitive redhead she had met a couple of times.

"Hi, Vicki, this is Joana Raitt. Is Glen busy?"

"He hasn't been in the office at all today. He's out calling on subcontractors."

"Oh. Will you give him a message to call me?"

"I'll do it, but he may not come back here."

"Thanks anyway."

As quitting time drew near, the other employees began to perk up with the thank-God-it's-Friday flow of adrenaline. Joana became steadily more depressed. Glen had not called. Although they had never made it a formal arrangement, spending weekends together had become a regular thing for her and Glen. She hoped the little disagreement they'd had at his place yesterday would not be one of those foolish arguments that ballooned into a major quarrel and wrecked a relationship.

Joana was a little surprised to discover just how much she really cared for Glen Early. Being a liberated young woman with a lively career and a bright future was well and good, but as far as Joana was concerned it didn't amount to beans if there was no man to share it with. A strong, caring man. Glen.

Five o'clock came, and still no call.

One of the girls from the art department stopped by her desk.

"A bunch of us are going over to Señor Pico's for margaritas," she said. "Want to come?"

"No, thanks," Joana said. "I've got some copy to get ready for the printer by Monday morning, so I'm going to hang in here a while."

"Listen to the company woman. Anyhow, if you get through before too long, come on over."

Joana gave her a noncommittal smile. Friday night after-work parties with the gang usually turned into bitching sessions about the job, the bosses, and the company. Joana liked it here. In her opinion, anybody who was unhappy with a job should leave and find something else to do. The complainers got no sympathy from her.

The copy she had stayed to prepare was not much of a job, and in half an hour she had finished it and stacked it in her OUT box. The big empty office oppressed her, and now she was anxious to leave. She said good night to the security guard and rode the elevator down to the first sub-basement.

Most of the people who worked in the building were gone now, and it was too early for the dinner and theater crowd to start coming in. Joana's footsteps echoed in the concrete cavern as she walked toward her car.

She got out her key and inserted it in the door lock, then froze at the sound of running feet behind her. She whirled and saw a man running down the aisle toward her.

Glen Early came pounding up and stopped in front of her, breathless and a little red in the face.

"I was afraid I'd missed you," he said. "I went up to your floor, but the security man told me you had just left."

"What is it, Glen? Something important?"

"You're damned right it's something important." He pulled her into his arms and kissed her hungrily. Joana let her body respond, and when they broke apart there were tears in her eyes.

"I love you, lady," he said. "And I've missed you."

"It's only been a day."

"So what? I was worried that I might have messed up somehow yesterday by not telling you how important you are to me."

"Me too," she said, laughing and hugging him. "I tried to call you at Datatron."

"I was out of the office all day, in meetings, and couldn't get to a phone. I'm sure glad I caught you."

"So am I."

"Got any plans for the weekend?"

"I was going to start a new thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle, but I suppose I could postpone that if I got a better offer."

"Want to go to the mountains?"

"You and me? All weekend?"

"Yeah. We'll get a cabin off by ourselves at Big Bear. No parties, no discos, no swimming pools, just us and nature."

"It sounds like fun."

"Great. My car's outside in a red zone. I'll follow you home, and you can throw a couple of things in a bag, and we'll take off."

Joana drove Glen up to the street level and waited while he jogged back up the street to his car. Davy, the young flower seller, rolled up beside her car on his skateboard.

"You're about the last one out tonight, Joana."

"Do you keep track of everybody in our building?" she asked, smiling.

"Just the people I like. You look happy."

"Do I? I guess I am, Davy. How many bouquets do you have left?"

"Only these two—one roses and one carnations."

"I'll take them both."

Joana took the flowers through the window and passed the money out to Davy. Glen pulled up behind her in his dusty Camaro and beeped the horn. She drove off toward Hollywood feeling warm and buoyant. Suddenly the weekend ahead was bright with promise, the dark thoughts that had clouded her mind were forgotten.

It was the irregular
thwok, thwok
of a tennis match on the court outside his apartment that woke Dr. Warren Hovde on Saturday morning. He had left the sliding glass door open during the night with just the screen across the doorway, to let the flesh air in. Marge had taught him to sleep with the window open, winter and summer, and now he found it impossible to sleep otherwise.

He rolled over and squinted at the alarm clock on the bedside table. Half past eight. A whole day stretched out in front of him with nothing to do. Saturday had always been family day when the kids were little. He and Marge had taken them on picnics or to the beach or to Disneyland. Then when the kids grew older and found their own friends and activities, he and Marge had gone out on their own little trips of exploration in and around Los Angeles. They had found dozens of delightful little shops and restaurants and picnic spots that way, which were not in any guidebooks.

All right, enough of this nostalgic horseshit, he told himself, and rolled out of bed. He did his morning quota of sit-ups, push-ups, and isometrics, then took a shower. It would be a good day for a round of golf, but he had not enjoyed going to the club since he and Marge split up. People didn't come right out and ask questions, but he could tell they were curious. They expected some sort of explanation, and he was not ready to give one.

The night just passed had been a restless one for Warren Hovde. A troubling dream had fragmented his sleep. While he shaved he tried to remember what the dream was about. Then it came to him—Yvonne Carlson, the D.O.A. at the hospital yesterday. His mind, waking or sleeping, would not let go of the contradictions between the condition of the body, dead at least twelve hours, and the accident report, with witnesses seeing Mrs. Carlson getting out of a car and falling to the ground some ten hours after she should have been dead.

After a quick look in his poorly stocked refrigerator, Dr. Hovde went out to a nearby Sambo's for breakfast. He bought a copy of the Times and read it over a breakfast of sausage and eggs. There was no mention, of course, of Yvonne Carlson or the accident. One unspectacular death, more or less, on the streets of Los Angeles was hardly newsworthy.

He finished his breakfast and returned to his apartment at the Marina Village. This morning the sight of all the tanned, energetic young people coming and going depressed him. They all seemed so thoroughly satisfied with themselves, so confident about the direction of their lives. Hovde went inside and sat down to try to catch up on his medical journals.

After less than a hour he gave up. He went to the telephone and punched the number of the West Los Angeles Receiving Hospital. He asked the switchboard operator to connect him with Dr. Breedlove. After a series of clicks and buzzes the pathologist came on the line.

"Hello, Kermit, Warren Hovde here."

"Yeah, Warren, what can I do for you?"

"Remember the woman who came in yesterday afternoon, Yvonne Carlson, D.O.A.?"

"Female Caucasian, fifty-seven."

"Yes, that's her. Did you finish the autopsy?"

"Last night."

"What did you find?"

"Hang on, I'll get the sheet on her."

There was a clunk as Breedlove set the receiver down on something hard. Hovde gazed out the window at the tennis players while he waited for the pathologist to come back on the line.

"Okay, here it is. Cause of death, ventricular fibrillation. Significant findings, congestion of viscera, slight edema of the lungs, and petachial hemorrhages in the conjunctiva, pleura, and pericardium. Irregular charring and blistering of the fingers and palm of right hand. Deep symmetrical burns on the balls of both feet."