Watchers (13 page)
“Habit and self-defense kept me emotionally isolated,” he told Einstein.
The dog rose and crossed the few feet of kitchen floor that separated them. It insinuated itself between his legs and put its head in his lap.
Petting Einstein, Travis said, “Had no idea what I wanted to do after college, and there was a military draft then, so I joined up before they could call me. Chose the army. Special Forces. Liked it. Maybe because . . . well, there was a sense of camaraderie, and I was
forced
to make friends. See, I pretended not to want close ties with anyone, but I must have because I put myself in a situation where it was inevitable. Decided to make a career out of the service. When Delta Force—the antiterrorist group—was formed, that’s where I finally landed. The guys in Delta were tight, real buddies. They called me ‘The Mute’ and ‘Harpo’ because I wasn’t a talker, but in spite of myself I made friends. Then, on our eleventh operation, my squad was flown into Athens to take the U.S. embassy back from a group of Palestinian extremists who’d seized it. They’d killed eight staff members and were still killing one an hour, wouldn’t negotiate. We hit them quick and sneaky—and it was a fiasco. They’d booby-trapped the place. Nine men in my squad died. I was the only survivor. A bullet in my thigh. Shrapnel in my ass. But a survivor.”
forced
to make friends. See, I pretended not to want close ties with anyone, but I must have because I put myself in a situation where it was inevitable. Decided to make a career out of the service. When Delta Force—the antiterrorist group—was formed, that’s where I finally landed. The guys in Delta were tight, real buddies. They called me ‘The Mute’ and ‘Harpo’ because I wasn’t a talker, but in spite of myself I made friends. Then, on our eleventh operation, my squad was flown into Athens to take the U.S. embassy back from a group of Palestinian extremists who’d seized it. They’d killed eight staff members and were still killing one an hour, wouldn’t negotiate. We hit them quick and sneaky—and it was a fiasco. They’d booby-trapped the place. Nine men in my squad died. I was the only survivor. A bullet in my thigh. Shrapnel in my ass. But a survivor.”
Einstein raised his head from Travis’s lap.
Travis thought he saw sympathy in the dog’s eyes. Maybe because that was what he wanted to see.
“That’s eight years ago, when I was twenty-eight. Left the army. Came home to California. Got a real-estate license because my dad had sold real estate, and I didn’t know what else to do. Did real well, maybe ’cause I didn’t care if they bought the houses I showed them, didn’t push, didn’t act like a salesman. Fact is, I did so well that I became a broker, opened my own office, hired salespeople.”
Which was how he had met Paula. She was a tall blond beauty, bright and amusing, and she could sell real estate so well that she joked about having lived an earlier life in which she had represented the Dutch colonists when they had bought Manhattan from the Indians for beads and trinkets. She was smitten with Travis. That’s what she’d told him: “Mr. Cornell, sir, I am smitten. I think it’s your strong, silent act. Best Clint Eastwood imitation I’ve ever seen.” Travis resisted her at first. He did not believe he would jinx Paula; at least, he didn’t consciously believe it; he had not openly reverted to childhood superstition. But he did not want to risk the pain of loss again. Undeterred by his hesitancy, she pursued him, and in time he had to admit he was in love with her. So in love that he told her about his lifelong tag game with Death, something of which he spoke to no one else. “Listen,” Paula said, “you won’t have to mourn me. I’m going to outlive you because I’m not the type to bottle up my feelings. I take out my frustrations on those around me, so I’m bound to shave a decade off
your
life.”
your
life.”
They had been married in a simple courthouse ceremony four years ago, the summer after Travis’s thirty-second birthday. He had loved her. Oh God, how he had loved her.
To Einstein, he said, “We didn’t know it then, but she had cancer on our wedding day. Ten months later, she was dead.”
The dog put its head down in his lap again.
For a while, Travis could not continue.
He drank some beer.
He stroked the dog’s head.
In time he said, “After that, I tried to go on as usual. Always prided myself in going on, facing up to anything, keeping my chin up, all that bullshit. Kept the real-estate office running another year. But none of it mattered any more. Sold it two years ago. Cashed in all my investments, too. Turned everything into cash and socked it in the bank. Rented this house. Spent the last two years . . . well, brooding. And I got squirrelly. Hardly a surprise, huh? Squirrelly as hell. Came full circle, you see, right back to what I believed when I was a kid. That I was a danger to anyone who gets close to me. But you changed me, Einstein. You turned me around in one day. I swear, it’s like you were
sent
to show me that life’s mysterious, strange, and full of wonders— and that only a fool withdraws from it willingly and lets it pass him by.”
sent
to show me that life’s mysterious, strange, and full of wonders— and that only a fool withdraws from it willingly and lets it pass him by.”
The dog was peering up at him again.
He lifted his beer can, but it was empty.
Einstein went to the fridge and got another Coors.
Taking the can from the dog, Travis said, “Now, after hearing the whole sorry thing, what do you think? You think it’s wise for you to hang around with me? You think it’s safe?”
Einstein woofed.
“Was that a yes?”
Einstein rolled onto his back and put all four legs in the air, baring his belly as he had done earlier when he had permitted Travis to collar him.
Putting his beer aside, Travis got off his chair, settled on the floor, and stroked the dog’s belly. “All right,” he said. “All right. But don’t die on me, damn you. Don’t you dare die on me.”
Nora Devon’s telephone rang again at eleven o’clock.
It was Streck. “Are you in bed now, prettiness?”
She did not reply.
“Do you wish I was there with you?”
Since the previous call, she had thought about how to handle him and had come up with several threats she hoped might work. She said, “If you don’t leave me alone, I’ll go to the police.”
“Nora, do you sleep in the nude?”
She was sitting in bed. She sat up straighter, tense, rigid. “I’ll go to the police and say you tried to . . . to force yourself on me. I will, I swear I will.”
“I’d like to see you in the nude,” he said, ignoring her threat.
“I’ll lie. I’ll say you r-raped me.”
“Wouldn’t you like me to put my hands on your breasts, Nora?”
Dull cramps in her stomach forced her to bend forward in bed. “I’ll have the telephone company put a tap on my line, record all the calls I get, so I’ll have proof.”
“Kiss you all over, Nora. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
The cramps were getting worse. She was shaking uncontrollably, too. Her voice cracked repeatedly as she employed her final threat: “I have a gun. I have a gun.”
“Tonight you’ll dream about me, Nora. I’m sure you will. You’ll dream about me kissing you everywhere, all over your pretty body—”
She slammed the phone down.
Rolling onto her side on the bed, she hunched her shoulders and drew up her knees and hugged herself. The cramps had no physical cause. They were strictly an emotional reaction, generated by fear and shame and rage and enormous frustration.
Gradually, the pain passed. Fear subsided, leaving only rage.
She was so wrenchingly innocent of the world and its ways, so unaccustomed to dealing with people, that she couldn’t function unless she restricted herself to the house, to a private world without human contact. She knew nothing about social interaction. She had not even been capable of holding a polite conversation with Garrison Dilworth, Aunt Violet’s attorney—Nora’s attorney now—during their meetings to settle the estate. She had answered his questions as succinctly as possible and had sat in his presence with her eyes downcast and her cold hands fidgeting in her lap, crushingly shy. Afraid of her own lawyer! If she couldn’t deal with a kind man like Garrison Dilworth, how could she ever handle a beast like Art Streck? In the future, she wouldn’t dare have a repairman in her home, no matter what broke down; she would just have to live in ever-worsening decay and ruin because the next man might be another Streck—or worse. In the tradition established by her aunt, Nora already had groceries delivered from a neighborhood market, so she did not have to go out to shop, but now she would be afraid to let the delivery boy into the house; he had never been the least aggressive, suggestive, or in any way insulting, but one day he might see the vulnerability that Streck had seen . . .
She
hated
Aunt Violet.
hated
Aunt Violet.
On the other hand, Violet had been right: Nora was a mouse. Like all mice, her destiny was to run, to hide, and to cower in the dark.
Her fury abated just as her cramps had done.
Loneliness took the place of anger, and she wept quietly.
Later, sitting with her back against the headboard, blotting her reddened eyes with Kleenex and blowing her nose, she bravely vowed not to become a recluse. Somehow she would find the strength and courage to venture out into the world more than she’d done before. She would meet people. She would get to know the neighbors that Violet had more or less shunned. She would make friends. By God, she
would.
And she wouldn’t let Streck intimidate her. She would learn how to handle other problems that came along as well, and in time she would be a different woman from the one she was now. A promise to herself. A sacred vow.
would.
And she wouldn’t let Streck intimidate her. She would learn how to handle other problems that came along as well, and in time she would be a different woman from the one she was now. A promise to herself. A sacred vow.
She considered unplugging the telephone, thus foiling Streck, but she was afraid she might need it. What if she woke, heard someone in the house, and was unable to plug in the phone fast enough?
Before turning out the lights and pulling up the covers, she closed the lockless bedroom door and braced it shut with the armchair, which she tilted under the knob. In bed, in the dark, she felt for the butcher’s knife, which she’d placed on the nightstand, and she was reassured when she put her hand directly upon it without fumbling.
Nora lay on her back, eyes open, wide awake. Pale amber light from the streetlamps found its way through the shuttered windows. The ceiling was banded with alternating strips of black and faded gold, as if a tiger of infinite length were leaping over the bed in a jump that would never end. She wondered if she would ever sleep easily again.
She also wondered if she would find anyone who could care about her—and for her—out there in the bigger world that she had vowed to enter. Was there no one who could love a mouse and treat it gently?
Far away, a train whistle played a one-note dirge in the night. It was a hollow, cold, and mournful sound.
Vince Nasco had never been so busy. Or so happy.
When he called the usual Los Angeles number to report success at the Yarbeck house, he was referred to another public phone. This one was between a frozen-yogurt shop and a fish restaurant on Balboa Island in Newport Harbor.
There, he was called by the contact with the sexy, throaty, yet little-girl voice. She spoke circumspectly of murder, never using incriminating words but employing exotic euphemisms that would mean nothing in a court of law. She was calling from another pay phone, one she had chosen at random, so there was virtually no chance that either of them was tapped. But it was a Big Brother world where you didn’t dare take risks.
The woman had a third job for him. Three in one day.
As Vince watched the evening traffic inching past on the narrow island street, the woman—whom he had never seen and whose name he didn’t know—gave him the address of Dr. Albert Hudston in Laguna Beach. Hudston lived with his wife and a sixteen-year-old son. Both Dr. and Mrs. Hudston had to be hit; however, the boy’s fate was in Vince’s hands. If the kid could be kept out of it, fine. But if he saw Vince and could serve as a witness, he had to be eliminated, too.
“Your discretion,” the woman said.
Vince already knew that he would erase the kid, because killing was more useful to him, more energizing, if the victim was young. It had been a long time since he’d blown away a really young one, and the prospect excited him.
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