He could not, however, expect to find one of them with scarlet eyes lacking irises and pupils. He was not confident, either, about the probability of locating any street person who could manifest himself out of a dust devil, or explode into a collection of mundane debris and fly away on the wind.
Perhaps he had imagined the encounter.
That was a possibility Harry was loath to consider. The pursuit and execution of James Ordegard had been traumatic. But he didn’t believe being caught in Ordegard’s bloody rampage was sufficiently stressful to cause hallucinations replete with dirty fingernails and killer halitosis.
If the filthy giant was real, where had he come from? Where had he gone, who had he been, what disease or birth defect had left him with those terrifying eyes?
Ticktock, ticktock, you’ll be dead by dawn.
He twisted the key in the ignition and started the engine.
Paperwork awaited him, soothingly tedious, with blanks to fill in and boxes to check. A neatly typed file would reduce the messy Ordegard case to crisp paragraphs of words on clean white paper, and then none of it would seem as inexplicable as it did at that moment.
He wouldn’t include the crimson-eyed hobo in his report, of course. That had nothing to do with Ordegard. Besides, he didn’t want to give Connie or anyone else in Special Projects a reason to make jokes at his expense. Dressing for work unfailingly in a coat and tie, being disdainful of foul language in a profession rife with it, going by the book at all times, and being obsessive about the neatness of his case files already made him a frequent target of their humor. But later, at home, he might type up a report about the hobo, just for himself, as a way of bringing order to the bizarre experience and putting it behind him.
“Lyon,” he said, meeting his own eyes in the rearview mirror, “you are a ridiculous specimen.”
He switched on the windshield wipers, and the melting world solidified.
The afternoon sky was so overcast that the streetlamps, which were operated by a solar-sensitive switch, were deceived by the false twilight. The pavement glistened, shiny black. All of the gutters were full of fast-moving, dirty water.
He went south on Pacific Coast Highway, but instead of turning east on Crown Valley Parkway toward Special Projects, he kept going. He passed Ritz Cove, then the turnoff for the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, and drove all the way into Dana Point.
When he pulled up in front of Enrique Estefan’s house, he was somewhat surprised, although subconsciously he had known where he was headed.
The house was one of those charming bungalows built in the ‘40s or early ‘50s, before soulless stucco tract homes had become the architecture of choice. Decoratively carved shutters, scalloped fascia, and a multiple-pitch roof gave it character. Rain drizzled off the fronds of the big date palms in the front yard.
During a brief lull in the downpour, he left the car and ran up the walkway. By the time he climbed the three brick steps onto the porch, the rain was coming down hard again. There was no wind any more, as if the great weight of the rain suppressed it.
Shadows waited like a gathering of old friends on the front porch, among a bench-style swing and white wooden chairs with green canvas cushions. Even on a sunny day the porch would be comfortably cool, for it was sheltered by densely interwoven, red-flowering bougainvillaea that festooned a trellis and spread across the roof.
He put his thumb on the bell push and, above the drumming of the rain, heard soft chimes inside the house.
A six-inch lizard skittered across the porch floor to the steps, and out into the storm.
Harry waited patiently. Enrique Estefan — Ricky to his friends— did not move very fast these days.
When the inner door swung open, Ricky squinted out through the screen door, clearly not happy to be disturbed. Then he grinned and said, “Harry, good to see you.” He opened the screen door, stepped aside. “Really good to see you.”
“I’m dripping,” Harry said, pulling off his shoes and leaving them on the porch.
“That’s not necessary,” Ricky said.
Harry entered the house in his stocking feet.
“Still the most considerate man I ever met,” Ricky said.
“That’s me. Ms. Manners of the gun-and-handcuff set.”
They shook hands. Enrique Estefan’s grip was firm, although his hand was hot, dry, leathery, padded with too little flesh, almost withered, all knuckles and metacarpals and phalanges. It was almost like exchanging greetings with a skeleton.
“Come on in the kitchen,” Ricky said.
Harry followed him across the polished-oak floor. Ricky shuffled, never entirely lifting either foot.
The short hallway was illumined only by the light spilling in from the kitchen at the end and by a votive candle flickering in a ruby glass. The candle was part of a shrine to the Holy Mother that was set up on a narrow table against one wall. Behind it was a mirror in a silver-leafed frame. Reflections of the small flame glimmered in the silver leaf and danced in the looking glass.
“How’ve you been, Ricky?”
“Pretty good. You?”
“I’ve had better days,” Harry admitted.
Although he was Harry’s height, Ricky seemed several inches shorter because he leaned forward as if progressing against a wind, his back rounded, the sharp lines of his shoulder blades poking up prominently against his pale-yellow shirt. From behind, his neck looked scrawny. The back of his skull appeared as fragile as that of an infant.
The kitchen was bigger than expected in a bungalow and a lot cheerier than the hallway: Mexican-tile floor, knotty-pine cabinetry, a large window looking onto a spacious backyard. A Kenny G number was on the radio. The air was heavy with the rich aroma of coffee.
“Like a cup?” Ricky asked.
“If it’s not any trouble.”
“No trouble at all. Just made a fresh pot.”
While Ricky got a cup and saucer from one of the cabinets and poured coffee, Harry studied him. He was worried by what he saw.
Ricky’s face was too thin, drawn with deeply carved lines at the corners of his eyes and framing his mouth. His skin sagged as if it had lost nearly all elasticity. His eyes were rheumy. Maybe it was only a backsplash of color from his shirt, but his white hair had an unhealthy yellow tint, and both his face and the whites of his eyes exhibited a hint of jaundice.
He had lost more weight. His clothes hung loosely on him. His belt was cinched to the last hole, and the seat of his pants drooped like an empty sack.
Enrique Estefan was an old man. He was only thirty-six, one year younger than Harry, but he was an old man just the same.
2
Much of the time, the blind woman lived not merely in darkness but in another world quite apart from the one into which she had been born. Sometimes that inner realm was a kingdom of brightest fantasy with pink and amber castles, palaces of jade, luxury high-rise apartments, Bel Air estates with vast verdant lawns. In these settings she was the queen and ultimate ruler — or a famous actress, fashion model, acclaimed novelist, ballerina. Her adventures were exciting, romantic, inspiring. At other times, however, it was an evil empire, all shadowy dungeons, dank and dripping catacombs full of decomposing corpses, blasted landscapes as gray and bleak as the craters of the moon, populated by monstrous and malevolent creatures, where she was always on the run, hiding and afraid, neither powerful nor famous, often cold and naked.