When I turned my car lights on they shone brightly on her as she stood in the doorway, shoulders hunched against the cold, her hands cupping her elbows, the red lamp glow silhouetting her. She squinted into the light and waved good-by as if I were a hundred yards away instead of five. I backed out and drove toward the city.
I believed her. Portugal would not call me a fool in so many words. But I could guess at the expression he would wear. I drove to the hotel garage through the late city, remembering the look in Lita’s dark eyes.
If Shennary hadn’t killed Ken, the whole structure of a clumsy killing collapsed. Clumsiness became cleverness. The gun hidden in his room. Premeditation, cunning, motivation. It made the night and city seem darker. Something mysterious called They. Why had They killed him? How could his existence bother Them?
There is a sickness in murder. It made a sickness in the city, and made me think, perversely, of the Gulf in pre-dawn grayness, the sudden hard strike on the trolled lure, the dip of the rod tip, the singing of the reel, the breath-taking silver of the tarpoon at the height of his leap. Later the sun would come up and the Gulf would be blue and the terns would dip and waver on the morning wind, white as bone, squabbling like picnic children. I had left all that and I had begun to walk along a narrow place. Too narrow to turn around.
I stood in the dark hotel room and looked at the faint pinkness of neon against the overcast. It looked like a fire beyond the horizon. The emotional climate of the city was pre-storm — a stillness and a brassiness and winds out of nowhere that flickered and faded into stillness. I remembered a girl who had been visiting the Tarlesons over a year ago. I remembered the late afternoon when we had been on the beach, she and I, in front of my place, and the strange excitement with which we watched the storm moving in off the Gulf.
The day had been like a wire pulled tight, full of expectancy. We waited there, watching it come until the last possible moment, then grabbed the beach things and ran for my place, the first fat thunderous drops driving against our bare backs, lightning breaking the sky, and we laughed as we ran.
I remembered how dark the day became. We ran through the beach house, shutting windows. We turned on lights but the storm put the lights out. We were children in an attic. We made love while the storm winds made the house creak, and afterward we heard the thunder moving east. When the storm was gone we were strange with each other and tried too hard to recapture the way it had been while the storm was on.
At the Tarleson party the next day she got very drunk and very sick. I walked her for an endless time on the beach, and later she cried. The next day she went back north.
I felt there was a storm coming, and all the lights would go out, for all of us.
I went to bed and dreamed that I was at the drive-in and Niki, dressed as Lita had been, kept taking care of the customers in the other cars and would not look toward me, and I could not call to her because all the car windows were rolled tight and locked.
Chapter 8
Thursday morning at nine-thirty I drove to the plant. I drove into that section of the parking lot reserved for executive personnel and nosed into the space labeled K. Dean. By habit, I headed toward the entrance I had used in the old days.
A plant guard in gray uniform stepped out and blocked the doorway. “Have you got a pass, sir?”
“No, I haven’t. I’m Gevan Dean, and Mr. Mottling is—”
“Sorry, if you got no pass, sir, you got to use the office entrance out on the street. I can’t make any exceptions, Mr. Dean.”
I went out the parking-lot gates and around and in the main entrance. Salesmen were waiting stolidly for the receptionist to give them the nod; and applicants for jobs were waiting nervously for their appointment with the personnel office.
The receptionist gave me a cool professional glance and then suddenly reognized me and rewarded me with a brilliant smile. “Good morning, Mr. Dean! Would you sign here, please? I’m afraid you’ll have to wear this badge. Mr. Mottling said for you to come right up whenever you arrived.”
I signed and pinned the badge on my lapel. It said: “Vistor — Offices Only.”
“Shall I phone up and say you’re on the way, Mr. Dean?”
“No thanks. I want to stop off and say hello to Mr. Granby first.”
There was no need to give her that bit of information, but I did it consciously, knowing it was the sort of tidbit that would be transmitted by the office grapevine with the speed of light, and within a half hour I would be labeled a Granby supporter in the Granby-Mottling feud. I didn’t know whose side I was on yet. But I wanted to give Mottling a bad moment, if at all possible.
Joan Perrit sat behind the big secretarial desk in Walter Granby’s outer office. The desk was gray steel. The wall behind her was pale aqua. She wore a white blouse and, with her dark copper hair, the effect was that of an advertisement in color for office décor. She looked up quickly and smiled and said, “Good morning, Mr. Dean.” Both the smile and the tone were professionally correct, and I knew her code would never permit the odd closeness of the previous evening to overlap the working day.
As I answered her I guess some of that speculation was readable in my expression, because she colored slightly.
“Is Walter in, Perry?”
“Colonel Dolson is in there with some vouchers right now, Mr. Dean.” She reached toward the intercom on her desk. “But I think he’d like to know—”
“I’ll wait, thanks. Last night was fun, Perry.”
“Yes — it was.”
“You go right ahead with whatever you’re doing.”
I sat and watched her. She was using an electric typewriter. As she did not have to take her fingers from the keys to return the carriage to the beginning of each new line, the soft clatter of the keys was continuous. I knew she was aware of being watched. Once she frowned and compressed her lips, snatched up an eraser and erased original and carbons. She finished, took the sheets out of the machine, and sorted them.
I said, “I’m seeing Walter before I see Mottling. How will the rumor factory handle that, Perry?”
“It might change the odds a little. I heard yesterday that in the mail room you can get seven to one if you want to bet on Mr. Granby.”
The door of Walter’s office opened suddenly and a man in uniform came out, stepping briskly. He was a wide man in his fifties. His cropped gray hair had not receded. His skin tone was a firm, warm, healthy pink. The uniform was beautifully tailored. The shoulder eagles were as bright as freshly minted dimes.
He was humming softly to himself. He smiled at Joan Perrit, gave me a quick sharp glance out of blue eyes that looked young and clear, and walked on for three sharp paces, setting his heels down firmly. He then stopped and made an about face with parade-ground precision. He gave me another of those sharp glances, and smiled broadly and came toward me, hand outstretched.
“You must be Gevan Dean! I can see the family resemblance. I’m Colonel Dolson.”
I took his hand. His handshake was energetic. He exuded an aroma of barber shops, facials, rubdowns, manicures. He was a testimonial for prudent exercise, polished leather, a careful taste in brandy. His teeth gleamed.
I told him his guess was correct. “Damn glad to meet you, Dean. By God, Stanley promised me faithfully he’d get hold of me as soon as you arrived this morning.”
“I haven’t seen Mr. Mottling yet, Colonel.”
He glanced toward the door to the inner office, and seemed to realize the implications of finding me here. He pursed his lips for a moment, and then the smile returned.