"What happened?"
"The company voted to do Cyrano. Who gets the lead? Gerrold. The pretty boy. They made him ugly and I'll carry a goddamn pike in the battle scenes. Before this bitch joined up-she supposedly played on Broadway, big deal, but that's why they took her, she can't act-I used to be something. The next thing I know, I'm carrying fuckin' pikes."
"What're you going to do?"
Druze had shaken his head. "I don't know. Finding a job is tough. Up on the stage, with the lights, with makeup, this face is okay. But getting in the door-people look at me, theater people, and they say, Whoa, you're ugly. Theater people don't like ugly. They like pretty."
Bekker had asked, "What if Elizabeth Armistead went away?"
"What do you mean?" But Bekker had caught the quick, feral glint when Druze looked toward him, and he knew the idea was there in the back of Druze's head. If Armistead went away, things would be different. Just like they would be for him, if Stephanie went away…
Bekker had kept the coveralls in a sack at the back of his chest of drawers since he bought them, at a Sears, three months earlier. They were blue, the kind a mechanic might wear. He pulled them over his jeans and sweatshirt, found the matching hat in the closet and put it on. Druze knew about costumes and had put it together for him. This costume said service. Nobody would look at him twice.
Bekker glanced at his watch, and the first dislocation occurred, thrilling him: the watch elongated, a Dali watch, draped over his wrist like a sausage. Wonderful. And the power was coming, darkening his vision, shifting everything to the ultraviolet end. He groped in his pocket for the cigarette case, found a tab of the speed and swallowed it.
So good… He staggered through the room, feeling it, the power surging along his veins, a nicotine rush times two hundred. He pushed the power back in a corner, held it there, felt the tension.
The time was getting tighter. He hurried down the steps, checked a window to see how dark it was, then carefully picked up the hammer and slid it into his right-hand pocket. The rest of his equipment, the clipboard, the meter and the identification tag, were piled on Stephanie's desk.
The clipboard, with the paper clipped to it, went with the service costume. So did the meter. Druze had found the meter in an electronics junk store and bought it for almost nothing: it was obsolete, with a big analog dial on top, originally made for checking magnetic fields around power lines. The identification tag was Bekker's old hospital ID. He'd laminated it and punched a hole in one end, and hung it from his neck by an elastic string.
He took a breath, did a mental checklist, walked out through the breezeway to the car and used the automatic garage-door opener to lift the door. He drove the long way out of the alley, then continued through the next alley, watching his mirror. Nobody.
Traveling by back streets, he made it to Elizabeth Armistead's house in a little over eight minutes. He would have to remember that. If Druze was suspected, he should know the time of his arrival. He just hoped she would be there.
"She does one half-hour of meditation, then drinks an herb tea, then comes down for the warm-ups," Druze said, prepping him. "She's fussy about it. She missed her meditation once and spent the whole show dropping lines."
Druze… The original plan had called for Bekker to phone Druze just before he left the house on the way to Armistead's. As soon as Druze got the call, at a remote phone in the theater's control booth, he would call the ticket office with his best California-cool accent. My name is Donaldson Whitney. Elizabeth Armistead said that she would put me on the guest list for two tickets. I'm in a rush through town, but I have time for her play. Could you call her and confirm?
They would call and confirm. They always did. Too many bullshitters trying to get in free. Donaldson Whitney, though, was a theater critic from Los Angeles. Armistead would gush… and the ticket people would remember. That was the point of the exercise: to create a last man to talk to the dead woman, with Druze already in makeup, onstage, warming up… alibied. Druze had suggested it and Bekker had found no way to demur.
He could, however, go early; Druze wouldn't have to know. But the cops would figure it out…
And after doing Armistead, he could call as though he were just leaving his house. Then Druze would make his Donaldson Whitney call, and if Armistead didn't answer the phone when the ticket office called her, well, she simply wasn't home yet. That could hardly be Bekker's fault…
Bekker took it slowly the last few minutes down to Armistead's. He'd cruised her house before, and there were no changes. The lots were small, but the houses were busy. One man coming or going would never be noticed. A light burned in Armistead's house, in the back. Her silver Dodge Omni was at the curb, where it usually was. He parked at the side of the house, under a tree heavy with bursting spring buds, got his equipment, leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes.
Like a digital readout: one-two-three-four-five. Easy steps. He let the power out, just a bit; when he looked, the steering wheel was out-of-round. He smiled, thinly, allowed himself to feel the burn in his blood for another moment, then got out of the car, changed the thin smile for a harassed look and walked around the corner to Armistead's house. Rang the doorbell. And again.
Armistead. Larger than he thought, in a robe. Pale oval face; dark hair swept back in a complicated roll, held with a wooden pin. Face slack, as though she'd been sleeping. Door on a chain. She peered out at him, her eyes large and dark. She'd look good on a stage. "Yes?"
"Gas company. Any odor of gas in the house?"
"No…"
"We show you have gas appliances, a washer and dryer, a hot-water heater?" All that from Druze's reconnaissance at an Armistead party. Bekker glanced down at the clipboard.
"Yes, down in the basement," she said. His knowledge of her home had confirmed his authority.
"We've had some critical pressure fluctuations up and down the street because of a main valve failure. We have a sniffer here"-Bekker hefted the black box, so she could see the meter-"and we'd like to take some readings in your basement, just in case. There could be a problem with sudden flareups. We had a fire over on the next block, you probably heard the fire trucks."
"Uh, I've been meditating…" But she was already pulling the chain. "I'm in a terrible rush, I've got to get to work…"
"Just take a minute or two," Bekker assured her. And he was in. He slipped his hand in his pocket, gripped the hammer, waited until he heard the door close firmly.
"Through the kitchen and down the stairs," Armistead said. Her voice was high and clear, but there was an impatient edge to it. A busy woman, interrupted.
"The kitchen?" Bekker glanced around. The drapes had been closed. The smell of prairie flowers was in the air, and spice, and Bekker realized that it must be her herb tea. The power came out now, out of the corner of his head, and his vision went momentarily blue…
"Here. I'll show you," Armistead said impatiently. She turned her back on him, walking toward the rear of the house. "I haven't smelled a thing."
Bekker took a step behind her, began to draw the hammer, and suddenly blood gushed from his nose. He dropped the meter and caught the blood with his hand, and she saw the motion, turned, saw the blood, opened her mouth… to scream?
"No, no," he said, and her mouth closed, halfway… everything so slow. So slow, now. "Ah, this is the second time today… Got hit in the nose by my child, just a five-year-old. Can't believe it… Do you have any tissue?"
"Yes…" Her eyes were wide, horrified, as the stream of blood dripped down his coveralls.