"Better," he said.
"I'll take one of those," Joe remarked.
"What color do I look?"
Scowling, Joe kicked his way through the fractured crockery to the refrigerator, and got himself a Coke.
"What the hell happened to Maxine?" Eppstadt wondered.
"She went out back with Sawyer," Joe said, averting his face from a fan of erupting Coke.
Eppstadt went out into a passageway that led down to an open door, kicking a few pieces of fallen plaster out of the way as he went.
"Maxine!" he called. "Are you okay?"
There was no reply.
Without waiting for anyone to join him, he headed down to the back door. There was more plaster dust underfoot, and several large cracks in the walls and ceiling. Unlike other areas of the house this portion looked less solid to his eye, and very much less elegant. A hurried later addition, he guessed, and probably more vulnerable to shocks than the older parts of the house. He called out for Maxine again, but again there was no reply forthcoming. He wasn't surprised. The area just outside the door looked squalid; large masses of rotted vegetable matter covered the walkway on the other side of the threshold, giving off a sickly stench. The foliage overhanging the area was so thick that the area was practically benighted.
He went to the threshold, intending to call for Maxine again, but before he could do so he heard the sound of low, sibilant laughter. Since childhood he'd always been certain that laughter heard in his vicinity was laughter heard at his expense, and even though his therapist had worked hard for sixteen years to dissuade him of this neurosis, it lingered. He narrowed his eyes, trying to make sense of the shadows beneath the trees; dividing form from apparition. Obviously, the laughter had a source, perhaps more than one. He just couldn't make it out.
"Stop that," he ordered.
But the laughter continued, which enraged him. They were laughing at him, he was certain of it. Who else would they be laughing at? Bastards.
He stepped over the threshold, ready to sue. The air was cold and clammy. This wasn't a very pleasant house, he'd decided very quickly, and this was a particularly unpleasant corner of it. But the laughter continued, and he couldn't turn his back on it, not until he'd silenced it.
"Who the hell are you?" he demanded. "This is private property. You hear me? You shouldn't even—"
He stopped now because there, in the shadow of a humongous Bird of Paradise tree, he made out a human form. No, two. No, three. He could barely see their features, but he could feel the imprint of their stares upon him.
And then more laughter, mocking his protests.
"I'm warning you," he snapped, as though he were talking to children. "Get away from here. Go on! Get away!"
But instead of stopping, the addled laughter grew louder still, and its owners decided to step out from under the shade of the Bird of Paradise. Eppstadt could see them more clearly now. They were indeed trespassers, he guessed, who'd been up here partying the night away. One of them, a very lovely young woman (she couldn't have been more than seventeen, to judge by the tautness of her skin), was bare-breasted, her brunette hair wet and pressed to her skull. He vaguely thought he knew her; that perhaps as a child actress she'd been in a movie he'd produced over at Paramount, or during his earlier time at Fox. She was certainly developing into a beautiful woman. But there was something about the way she stepped out of the shadows—her head sinking down, as though she might at any moment drop to the ground and imitate some animal or other— that distressed him. He didn't want her near him, even with her tight skin, her lovely nubs of nipples, her pouty lips. There was too much hunger in her eyes, and even if he wasn't the focus of that appetite, he didn't want to be caught between such a mindless hunger and its object of desire, whatever it might be.
And then there were the others, still lurking close to the tree behind her. Wait, there were more than two. There was a host of others, whose gaze he now felt on him. They were everywhere out here, in this uncertain dawn. He could see the foliage moving where some of them had slunk, their naked bellies flat on the ground. And they were up in the branches too; rotted blossoms came down to add to the muck that slickened the Mexican pavers underfoot.
Eppstadt took a tentative backward step, regretting that he'd ever stepped out of the house. No, not just that. At that moment he was regretting the whole process of events that had brought him to this damned house in the first place. Going to Maxine's asinine party; having that witless argument with Pickett; then the interrogation of Jerry Brahms and the choice to come up here. Stupid, all of it.
He took a second backward step. As he did so, the eyes of the exhibitionist girl who'd first appeared became exceptionally bright, as though something in her head had caught fire. Then, without warning, she broke into a sudden run, racing at Eppstadt. He turned back toward the door, and in the instant that he did so he saw a dozen—no, two dozen—figures who'd been standing camouflaged in the murk break their cover and join her in her dash for the door.
He was a step from reaching the threshold when the young bitch caught hold of his arm.
"Please—" she said. Her fingers dug deep into the fat where healthier men had biceps.
"Let me go."
"Don't go in," she said.
She pulled him back toward her, her strength uncanny. He reached out and grabbed the doorjamb, thinking as he did so that he'd got through the last twenty-five years of his life without anyone laying an inappropriate hand upon him, and here he was in the midst of his second such indignity in the space of twenty-four hours.
The woman still had fierce hold of him, and she wasn't about to let him go.
"Stay out here," she implored.
He flailed away from her. His Armani shirt tore, and he seized the moment to wriggle free. From the corner of his eye he saw a lot of faces, eyes incandescent, converging on the spot.
Terror made him swifter than he'd been in three decades. He leapt over the threshold, and once he got inside, he turned on a quarter, throwing all his weight against the door. It slammed closed. He fumbled with the lock, expecting to feel instant pressure exerted from the other side.
But there was none. Despite the fact that the trespassers could have pushed the door open (smashed it open, lock and all, if they'd so chosen) they didn't. The girl simply called to him through the door, her voice well-modulated, like that of someone who'd been to a high-grade finishing schooclass="underline"
"You should be careful," she said, in an eerie sing-song. "This house is going to come down. Do you hear me, mister? It's coming down."
He heard; he heard loud and clear. But he didn't reply. He simply bolted the door, still mystified as to why they hadn't attempted to break in, and ran up the passageway back to the kitchen. Before he reached the door Joe rounded the corner, coming from the opposite direction, gun in hand.
"Where the hell were you?" Eppstadt demanded.
"I was just about to ask you the same—"
"We're under siege."
"From what?"
"There are crazy people out there. A lot of crazy, fucking people."
"Where?"
"Right outside that door!"
He pointed back down the passageway. There was nothing visible through the glass panel. They'd retreated in four or five seconds, taking refuge in the murk.
"Trust me," Eppstadt said, "there's twenty or thirty people waiting on the other side of that door. One of them tried to drag me out there with them." He proffered his torn shirt and bloodied arm as proof. "She was probably rabid. I should get shots."