He folded his knife and put it away and flung open the door to the closet, shining in the thin beam of his flash.
The smell, the hateful smell, the scent of screaming and beating and choking and shaking. Another person, another's scent was under it somehow, that and the reek of gasoline, soap, and anger, but there it was, definite, horrible, coming from the figure standing in the closet doorway.
Caballo saw the eyes in the thin beam, glowing disks. Another toy, was his first thought, a teddy bear. Then the eyes moved and he heard the snarling growl. He backed away a step and something enormous and black was on him like a piece of the darkness come alive. He was on his back beating at it with the puny flashlight, struggling to get his knife out of his pants pocket. There was something wrong with his right hand; he couldn't move it. Then the pain hit him and he screamed.
The taste of blood, forbidden, exciting. The great head heaved, teeth met, the sharp carnassial teeth at the side of the jaw, cutting through flesh and tendon and bone. The screams stopped. The bad scent was gone. Sweetie played with what he had taken for a few minutes, chewing until most of the juice and all the bad scent was gone, and then went back into the closet and slept.
TWENTY
Harley Blaine's house was not the house in the Depuy film. That had been a traditional ranch house with a patio. Karp and Marlene now entered a much larger, more contemporary structure, a place of sheer white walls cut with the narrow clefts of windows.
"The architect was obviously inspired by The Guns of Navarone," Marlene whispered as their driver ushered them into an entrance hall tiled in glazed blue Mexican ceramic. "Notice how the house is on a little rise with the trees and shrubs cut back for a couple hundred yards? And the slit windows. The joint is a fortress."
"Yeah, you expect to see Richard Widmark coming down a rope in a watch cap," Karp agreed. "Speaking of movies, what happened to the lion and the scarecrow? And why are we whispering?"
Marlene suppressed a giggle. "I think we're trying to not scream. I wonder where the dungeons are?"
They were led through several doors and found themselves again in sunlight. The house was built around a vast atrium, glass-covered and heavily planted along its borders. Its center was occupied by a large swimming pool. By this stood a hospital-style bed. On the bed lay Harley Blaine.
"Have a seat," said Blaine when they approached the bed. "Welcome to Texas. And the Queen Ranch." They sat in the two elegant sling chairs that had been placed next to a low table by the bedside. "There are refreshments on that little bar by the pool, and I have arranged a luncheon for you all. I regret that I take my own nourishment nowadays through a tube."
He smiled, a ghastly sight. Blaine was wasted in the manner of victims of end-stage cancer, shocking to Marlene, whose image of him was based on films taken from his early youth onward to maturity. Once a good-sized man with a full head of hair, he had become a living skeleton, his head a death camp inmate's skull bearing a few wisps of dull fuzz. His eyes, however, sunken as they were, still blazed with energy, and with, Marlene thought, an unnatural, puckish glee that seemed almost obscene in so devastated a frame.
She looked at her husband, who appeared distinctly uncomfortable, his skin pale and damp-looking, his jaw tight and twitching, his hands clenching and uncoiling. It occurred to her that the last time he saw someone in this state it had been his mother lying there, and he had been fourteen.
Karp was thinking of his mother, but his discomfort arose from rage. He was considering why the eyes of this criminal, who had done so much evil, should shine so with intelligence and life, while those of his mother, who had been sweet and mild her whole life, had, at the same state in her disease, held nothing but pain and idiotic terror. In was another item in Karp's pending lawsuit against God, and it was all he could do to keep from smashing his fists into the man's face, smashing it like a rotten pumpkin.
Blaine was talking to Marlene again, in his soft, breathy voice, and Karp had to focus his attention to hear what was being said. Small talk. Their flight, the climate, the house. "It's quite an interesting house," he said, naming its features and the famous architect who had designed them. "I regret I can't show you around personally, but-"
"Yes, it's a lovely house, Mr. Blaine," Marlene broke in. "I especially admired the fields of fire."
Blaine chuckled hoarsely. "You are a card, ma'am. And observant too, as I have come to know. Yes, the place is defensible, no doubt. I have, or had, some business partners who were at times prone to take extreme measures in pursuit of what they considered proper redress of grievances." He paused and glanced at Karp. "But I see your husband is growing impatient. Perhaps we can turn to the purpose of your visit. This film. What are your intentions regarding this unfortunate item? I trust you understand the effect that publicizing it would have on the Dobbs family."
"Yes, I do," said Marlene. "And I, we, don't have any wish to hurt them. But what I do with the film is entirely up to you, Mr. Blaine."
"Is it? That sounds suspiciously like a blackmailer's speech. What sort of behavior on my part would be satisfactory?"
"Cut the crap, Blaine!" Karp snarled. "You know damn well we came here to find out how you killed Kennedy. So let's have it-from the beginning!"
At first they thought he was having a fit. He had thrown his head back against the pillows and a high rasping noise was emanating from his open mouth. Some tears rolled down his cheeks from his tightly shut eyes. But as Marlene glanced around nervously for someone to call, Blaine's face relaxed, and it turned out that he had only been having a laugh.
"Ahh, how very New York, Mr. Karp! How very tough! Direct and to the point. Well, first of all, I should tell you that when I heard the news about the tragic end of our late president, I was on board the cruise ship Pride of Norway in transit between Cancun and Trinidad. Like everyone else, I remember it quite clearly. For some days it cast quite a pall on the public merrymaking, although privately many of my shipmates wept only crocodile tears. The cruise was organized here in Texas, and Mr. Kennedy was not popular among certain circles in Texas."
"But you did it," Karp persisted, "wherever you were personally on November twenty-second. You thought up this whole chess-piece plot, this PXK thing. You're the queen. Bishop was your boy, and Caballo was Bishop's boy. You were neck-deep with anti-Castro Cubans. Your money financed the whole thing, the payoffs to Angelo Guel came from you, and you had Mosca and Guel killed when we got to them."
"There are many conspiracy theories, Mr. Karp," said Blaine in a mild tone. "That would seem to be a particularly florescent one and impossible to prove."
"I know it's impossible to prove," admitted Karp. "That's why we're here blackmailing you into telling us the truth."
Blaine smiled and his eyes sparkled wetly. "Yes, truth. So hard to determine after the passage of years. So far, in many cases, from justice. 'What is Truth, said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer.' Bacon. Do you know the essay? I see that Miss Ciampi does. I've always wondered whether, if Pilate had stayed for an answer, he would have gotten anything he could've understood from Jesus."
Karp said, "Let's get out of here, Marlene. This guy just wants to blow smoke."
Marlene gathered her purse. "Well, it's been pleasant meeting you, Mr. Blaine. I'm sorry we couldn't come to an agreement."
Blaine flapped his hand, waving them back to their seats. "Sit down, sit down. I'm sick and I tend to ramble." His voice grew sharper. "All right, my direct New York friends, let's horse-trade. You want a full accounting of how John F. Kennedy was killed, in return for which you will undertake to destroy the original of the film you most assuredly have in your possession. Obviously, I will never myself be a witness before any panel or court. I am, in several ways, beyond the reach of the law. In any case, we are not at a deposition, are we? You are not yourselves here in any legal guise, unless during my recent absence from the bar the threat of blackmail has been added to the armamentarium of congressional inquiry. Our status is thus that of… I won't say friends… acquaintances, doing one another reciprocal favors. I satisfy your curiosity; you relieve a family I cherish from the threat of embarrassment. Agreed?"