“Don’t get me started on that again.”
He stood hipshot with his feet slightly apart, jingling keys in his trouser pocket, regarding her white bikini. “You’re very seductive in that outfit.”
“I know.”
“I’m feeling vaguely shitty.”
“Why?”
“General malaise. I must be regressing to sophomorics. The ‘what-does-it-all-matter’ phase. Like some idiot writing rancid poems in search of the meaning of it all.”
“At SFC we call that the professorial tenure syndrome.”
She taught at San Francisco College because the universities had regulations against husband and wife serving as tenured professors on the same faculty. Privately he felt it was a wise regulation.
“I told Elderslee I’m testifying against Mrs. Boley. He delivered himself of the usual harangue. For some reason I listened this time. And you know he’s got a point-a toss of the coin and I could just as easily be testifying for the other side.”
“So?”
“The rest of the woman’s life could hang on my whim. Maybe I chose to disbelieve her because I had something sour for breakfast. She could be committed on my error. I worry about it.… Did you hear, Calvin Duggai broke out?”
“Come on, Jay, nobody expects omniscience-all they want is our best judgment.” She downed the last of the drink and stood up. “Getting chilly out here.” Then, turning, she said in a musing voice, “Yes, I heard about Duggai. Maybe that’s why I feel cold. I hope they catch him quickly.”
In the house he stripped off his jacket and tie and watched her get into slacks and an old blouse. The swim had left her tight in her skin.
She gave him a sudden look. “Do you want to?”
“Later.”
She buttoned the blouse. “Should we have wine with dinner?”
“Sure.”
She went out of the room ahead of him and he followed her toward the living room. He banged into her when she stopped abruptly.
He looked over her shoulder.
In the center of the room loomed Calvin Duggai, his eyes cold as death.
Sight of the man stunned Jay to silence. Shirley’s shoulders lifted defensively. She backed into him; he gripped her arms.
Duggai stood absolutely still for such a long time that his very motionlessness became menacing. It was a while before Jay noticed the huge revolver in Duggai’s fist.
The silence nearly cracked his nerves before Duggai spoke.
“Come over here.”
The chilly precision of the Navajo’s voice was a terrifying thing.
4
Mackenzie’s mouth was painfully dry and he was having trouble breathing with the rag stuffed against his tongue. His hands behind him felt heavy and dead; he could picture them thickened and darkened with blood. In fact he knew the wires were not that tight but everything was cause for terror and he was sensitive to every nuance of pain in his cramped bruised body.
He heard the key in the lock and soon the door swung open and admitted light into the camper from a streetlamp fifty feet distant. He expected Duggai’s silhouette; he was taken by surprise when three shapes appeared, one of them a woman.
Then he recognized them.
At first they didn’t see him in the shadows. Then as Jay Painter climbed awkwardly inside, his hands wired behind him, Mackenzie saw his eyes change with recognition.
Jay stopped bolt still for a moment. Duggai prodded him.
Their faces were half masked by clothesline gags. Duggai’s scheme left no possibility of outcry or rebellion. Duggai wigwagged the Magnum and Jay obediently sat beside Mackenzie on the cot. After the initial contact Jay refused to look at him again; he averted his head. Duggai performed his noose-on-the-floor trick to prevent being kicked while tying Jay’s feet. Then he shoved Shirley inside. She tripped and fell past Mackenzie against the provisions on the bench seat. Bent nearly double under the low roof, Duggai fastened Mackenzie’s hands to a metal support behind him and wired Jay’s hands to the adjacent support. It was to prevent them from untying one another’s hands.
Duggai dragged Shirley to the back of the truck and sat her down roughly beside Jay and tied her up in the same way. It put Jay in the middle.
Duggai went. When the door slammed it took the light with it; only a vague illumination penetrated the checkerboard curtains. It was enough to see Jay’s silhouette.
He felt it when Duggai climbed into the driver’s seat. The engine started. Mackenzie saw a refracted red glow in the rear window when the taillight came on. The shift went into gear. He touched Jay with an elbow, leaning back at the same time, trying to tell Jay that he should brace him self. Jay didn’t understand the message; he sat stiffly upright exuding anger and indignity and fear until the truck lurched away from the curb-Duggai was not a smooth driver. It caught Jay off balance and he nearly went off the seat. After that he leaned hard back against the wall and Mackenzie saw him hold his elbow out protectively in front of Shirley.
It was an eerie time. The three of them sat side by side in silent darkness in a tangle of unspoken emotions. Memories grenaded into Mackenzie’s mind so powerfully they all but obliterated the agonies of the present moment. He was drawn back into recriminative bitterness: the mingled sordid complex relationships of the past.
He imagined he felt waves of similar feeling coming off his companions.
The truck pitched through back streets. It kept stopping and starting up again; he knew it could be no thoroughfare. Possibly Duggai had a road map on the seat beside him and was avoiding main-traveled highways because he feared roadblocks.
It had been easy enough during the morning to follow the truck’s progress even though his imprisonment in the curtained camper had rendered him effectively blind. There’d been no mistaking it when the truck had gone out onto the blacktop county road, or when it had dropped through the foothills and gone onto the freeway. But at that point he’d lost his sense of bearings; he’d been uncertain whether they were traveling east or west until now. This of course had to be Palo Alto because that was where Jay and Shirley lived. He remembered their white stucco house, the red tile roof, the swimming pool, the sliding glass doors to the crisp modern living room.
The truck growled slowly through the streets: not hurrying. Hurrying might have attracted the attention of a prowling police car.
The pickup turned a corner, pressing Mackenzie back against the wall. He heard the folded transparent plastic raincoat skid lightly across the floor; he even felt it, light as it was, when it struck the side of his shoe. For some perverse reason he lifted his foot and stamped down on the little bundle, pinning it under the sole of his shoe. It was a bit softer than the truck floor. He held it there with the weight of his foot.
Mackenzie had a clear idea where Duggai would stop next. There had been four psychiatric witnesses at Duggai’s trial.
5
Earle Dana watched himself on television, observing the performance critically.
He had switched off the lights in the apartment and he sat in the armchair facing the color set.
The interview had been taped yesterday morning. Certain things about the televised image disturbed him. The brown slacks and pale yellow turtleneck looked proper for the tone of casual informality he’d intended to set but the turtleneck betrayed his paunch. His pale hair, cropped close to the skull like fuzz on a tennis ball, gave him the look of a man of forty-five trying to emulate a collegian. I must take off weight and let the hair grow out a bit, he told himself.
The face was not quite as it looked in his shaving mirror each morning. He was distressed. The mouth had a way of folding primly at the conclusion of each statement. At other times as he listened to the interviewer’s questions the mouth seemed too small and as rigid as a coin slot. He had extraordinarily thin lips.