"Bitch," he said again, and gripped by the anger, he pounded out of the parlor, up the stairs, into the bedroom. The cigarette case was with his keys and a pile of change, and he snapped it open, popped two amphetamines and a sliver of windowpane, and closed his eyes, waiting for Beauty.
There. The bed moved for him, melted, the closet opened like a mouth, a cave, a warm place to huddle. His clothes: they gripped him, and he fought the panic. He had felt it before, the shirt tightening around his throat, the sleeves gripping his arms like sandpaper, tightening… He fought the panic and stripped off the constricting shirt, slipped out of his pants and underwear, and threw them out into the room. The closet called, and he dropped to his knees and crawled inside. Warm and safe, with the musty smell of the shoes… comfortable.
He sat for a minute, for five minutes, letting the speed run through his veins and the acid through his brain. Fire, he thought. He needed fire. The realization came on him suddenly and he bolted from the cave, still on his hands and knees, suddenly afraid. He crawled to the dresser and reached over it, groping, found the book of matches and scuttled back to the closet, his eyes cranked wide, not handsome now, something else… In the semi-dark of the closet, he struck a match and stared into the flame…
Safe. With the fire. His anger grew and darkened. Bitch. Her face flashed, and melted. Pain flared in his hand, and suddenly he was in darkness. Match gone. He struck another one. Bitch. A bed popped up, not their bed, and strange wallpaper, with fleur-de-lis, where was that? The hotel in New York. With the acid singing through him, Bekker saw himself come out of the bathroom, naked, holding a towel, Stephanie on the phone… Pain in his hand again. Darkness. He dropped the match, struck a third. Bitch. Step into the bathroom to shower; when I come out, she's already on the phone, calling her paint stripper or someone…
His mind stretched and snapped, stretched and snapped, cooled, chilled. Pain. Darkness. Another match. He wiped spittle from his chin, staring at the guttering flame. Pain. Darkness. He crawled out of the closet, the first rush going now, leaving him with the power of ice, of a glacier…
And the answer was there, in the acid flash to New York. He stood up, his mind chilled, precise. Pain in his hand. "Am I stupid?"
Bekker walked out of the bedroom, still nude but unaware of it, down to the study, where he settled behind the big oak desk. He opened a deep drawer and took out a gray plastic box. The tape on the front said "Bills: Paid, Current."
"New York, January…" He dumped the box on the desk and combed through the stack of paper, receipts and stubs of paid bills. After a minute he said, "Here…"
The phone bill. He hadn't called anyone, but there were six calls on the bill, New York to Minneapolis, four of them to a university extension. He didn't know the number…
Mind like ice. Riding the speed, now. He punched the number into the desk phone. A moment later, a woman answered. "Professor George's office, can I help you?"
Bekker dropped the phone back on the hook, heat flushing the ice from his head. "Philip George," he crowed. "Philip George…"
There was work to do, but the drugs had him again and he sat for half an hour, rocking in the chair behind the big desk. Time was nothing in the grip of the acid…
Pain. He looked at his hand. A huge blister bubbled from the tip of his index finger. The ball of his thumb was raw, a patch of burned skin. How had he burned himself? Had there been a fire?
He went to the kitchen, pierced the blister with a needle, smeared both the finger and the thumb with a disinfectant and covered the burns with Band-Aids. A mystery… And Philip George.
Bekker pawed through the library, searching for the book. No. No. Where? Must be in the junk, must be in the keepsakes, where could she… Ah. Here: Faculty and Staff, University of Minnesota.
His own face flashed up at him as he flipped through the pages, then the face of Philip George. Bland. Slightly stupid, somewhat officious, he thought. Large. Blond. Fleshy. How could she? The pain bit into his hand, and confused, he looked at his finger again. How…? • • • "Carlo?"
"God damn, I thought…" Druze was shocked.
"I'm sorry, but this is an absolute emergency…"
"Have you seen the television?" Druze asked.
"Yes. And nobody has even begun to look at you. Yet. That's why I'm calling. I found our man."
"Who?" Druze blurted.
"A law professor named Philip George. We've got to move-you've seen the television."
"Yes, yes, where are you?" Druze asked impatiently. "Are you okay?"
"I'm a block down the street, in the VGA supermarket," Bekker said. He was using a convenience phone at the news-rack, and a woman customer was heading toward him with a shopping list in her hand. She'd want the phone. "I've checked and I've checked and there's nobody with me. I guarantee it. But I'm going out the back and down the alley. I'll be at your place sixty seconds after I hang up here. Buzz me in…"
"Man, if anybody sees you…"
"I know, but I'm wearing a hat and a jacket and sunglasses, and I'll make sure the lobby's empty before I come in. If you're ready for my buzz… I'll come up the stairs. Have the door open."
"All right. If you're sure…"
"I'm sure, but I need you to say yes, he's the one."
Bekker hung up and looked around. Was he being watched? He wasn't sure, but he didn't think so. The woman customer was using the phone now, paying no attention to him. An elderly man was going through the check-out with a can of coffee, and the only other people in sight were store employees.
He'd taken a quick trip around the store once before he picked up the phone. There was an exit sign by the dairy case…
He got a pushcart and started to the back of the store, checking the other customers. But you couldn't tell, could you? At the dairy case, he waited until he was alone, then left the cart and walked straight out a swinging door under the exit sign. He found himself in a storage area that stank of rotting produce, looking at a pair of swinging metal doors. He pushed through them to a loading dock, walked briskly along the dock and down the stairs at the far end, watching the door behind him.
Nobody came through, nobody looked through. Five seconds later he was in the alley that ran along the back of the store. He hurried down the length of the block, around the corner, another hundred feet and into the outer lobby of Druze's apartment building. He pushed the button on Druze's mailbox, got an instant answering buzz, pulled open the inner door and was inside. Elevator straight ahead, stairs through the door to the right. He took the stairs two at a time, checked the hallway and hustled down to Druze's apartment. The door was open and he pushed through.
"God damn, Mike…" Druze's face was normally as unreadable as a pumpkin. Now he looked stressed, uncharacteristic vertical lines creasing the patchwork skin of his forehead. He was wearing a tired cotton sweater the color of oatmeal, and pants with pleats. His hands were in his pockets.
"Is this him?" Bekker thrust the photo of Philip George at Druze.
Druze looked at it, carried it to a light, looked closer, his lower lip thrust out. "Huh."
"It must be him," Bekker said. "He fits: he's blond, he's heavy-he's even heavier in real life than he is in that picture. That photo must be four or five years old. And he wasn't in any of the other photos. And Stephanie was calling him secretly from New York."
Druze finally nodded. "It could be. It looks like him. But the guy at the house, I just saw him like that." Druze snapped his fingers.
"It must be him," Bekker said eagerly.
"Yeah. Yeah, I think it is. Give him a couple of more years… Yeah."
"God damn, Carlo," Bekker crowed, his beautiful face absolutely radiant. He caught Druze around the neck with the crook of his elbow and squeezed him down, a jocklike hug, and Druze felt the pleasure of approval flush through his stomach. Druze had never had a friend… "God damn, we beat the police."