I was in no hurry. I had a third beer, smoked yet another cigarette, then getting to my feet, I walked out on to the street. By now it was 18.15. Two giggling girls, in miniskirts, came out of the office block as I entered. In another hour it would be dark. I didn’t want to turn on the lights in the office. That could be a giveaway. I walked up the six flights of stairs. The owners of the one-room offices were going home. They brushed by me as I climbed: little men, tall men, fat men, thin men: some with their typists. They didn’t notice me. They were too eager to get back to the discomfort of their homes, to eat, to watch television and then go to bed with their dreary wives.
As I reached the sixth floor, a woman with a face like a wrinkled prune came out of an office, slammed the door shut and edged by me as if I were the Boston Strangler. I unlocked Jenny’s door, slid into the tiny office, shut the door and turned the key.
It took me some ten minutes to find Rhea Morgan’s file. I sat at the desk and read her case history the way I would have read my own case history.
Jenny had done a good job. The report was written in her sprawling handwriting. She must have felt it was too personal for a helper to type.
Rhea Morgan, I learned, was now twenty-eight years of age. At the age of eight, she had come before the law as uncontrollable. She had been sent to a home. At the age of ten she had been caught stealing lipstick and perfume from a self-service store. She had been sent back to the home. At the age of thirteen, she had had sexual relations with one of the executives of the home. They had been caught in the act and a few hours later, before the police arrived, the executive had cut his throat. She had been moved to a stricter home. After a year, she had run away. A year later, she had been picked up while prostituting herself to truck drivers on a freeway to New York. She had come before the law again and had been sent for psychiatric treatment. No success there for she had slipped away and had gone missing for two years. She had then been picked up in Jacksonville with three men who were attempting a bank robbery. There had been a plea for her age and she drew a year. By this time, she would be around seventeen years of age. After serving the sentence, she dropped out of sight, then she reappeared three years later. This time she was involved with two men in a jewel robbery. She was handling the getaway car. The two men, armed with toy pistols, had walked into a cheap jewellery store in Miami. They were amateurs and came apart at the seams when a guard appeared with a .45 automatic in his fist. Rhea could have driven away, but she stuck and was arrested. With her past record, she drew four years. Out again, she was involved with three men in a gas station holdup. This time the judge threw the book at her and she went away for another four years, and that was her life up-to-date.
I dropped the report on the desk and lit a cigarette. I now knew her background and I was now curious about her brother. I searched through the files, but came up with nothing. It looked as if Jenny had had no dealings with him, but I was sure he was in Rhea’s league.
As the light began to fade, I sat on the desk and thought of Rhea. I thought of the life she had led and I found I was envying her. I thought of my own dull home life, and my mother, kind, who had died when I was fifteen years old, and my father who had slaved in a diamond mine, had made a lot of money, had invested badly and had been defeated when he had died. Rhea had lived a vicious life, but she hadn’t been defeated. The moment she had got out of prison, she had followed her destiny of crime. At least she had purpose and drive. The purpose was bad, but she had set her signals and had driven ahead.
Bad?
I crushed out my cigarette and lit another.
I had been taught that stealing was bad, but was it in this modern world in which I lived? Wasn’t it rather the survival of the fittest? Wasn’t it a brave, private war waged by one individual against the police? Wasn’t that better than living the dreary life the people lived who scrounged on Jenny?
Half my mind told me I was wrong, but the other half argued. I knew Rhea had suddenly become the most important person in my life. The fascination was sexual, but also there was this envy that she could have more courage than I had. I wanted suddenly to experience what she had experienced. She had been hunted by the police. This was an experience that I found myself wanting. I thought of how she must have felt when the pressure was on and yet she hadn’t panicked and driven away from the jewellery store. I envied her that experience. I felt the urge to find out if I had the guts, under pressure that she had.
It was getting dark now so I returned the report to the filing cabinet, emptied my ash and two cigarette butts into an envelope which I put in my pocket. I didn’t want Hatchetface to know someone had been in the office, then I left.
As I walked down the stairs, I kept thinking of Rhea, with her brother in the sordid bungalow, and I envied them.
Judy?
I continued to walk down the stairs.
Judy was dead, I told myself, but Rhea was alive.
What I should have done was to have checked out of the Bendix Hotel and driven back to Paradise City. I should have talked to Dr. Melish and put myself in his hands. I should have told him I had met a woman with a vicious criminal record and had become sexually obsessed with her. I should have confessed to him that I now had an overpowering urge to do what she had done, trying to explain that when I had her, she and I had to be on equal terms: I as bad as she was, and she as bad as I was. I should have admitted that, because I was male and she was female, I had this thought now hammering in my mind that whatever she could do, I could do better. Maybe it would have helped me. I don’t know because I never gave him the chance. I didn’t check out of the hotel, nor did I run away to Paradise City.
I sat in a dreary bar and toyed with a stale sandwich and a beer and thought about Rhea. Finally, I got in the Buick and drove out to her place.
She was pulling me with such magnetic force I was powerless to resist.
At the top of the dirt road, I parked the car, turned off the lights and walked the rest of the way. As I approached the bungalow I could hear strident jazz from a transistor, blaring across the debris. Then I came around the slight bend in the lane and saw the lighted windows.
I went as far as the broken down fence and I stood in the shadow of a tree, looking at the windows the way a man lost in a sun-scorched desert looks at an oasis without knowing it is a mirage.
It was a hot night and the air was close. The windows were open. The time was 22.00. I saw a figure move across the light... the brother. So he was there! I moved cautiously forward, picking my way through the empty cans, the oil drums, stepping carefully to make no noise, but I need not have taken this precaution. With the transistor going at full blast I could have made any noise and still not have been heard.
With my heart thumping, I got close enough to be able to see through the window and yet still not be seen.
Now, I could see the brother clearly. He was stomping around the room in time with the music, an open can in one hand, a spoon in the other. While he stomped, he kept shovelling some gooey looking mess into his mouth. I looked beyond him and found Rhea. She lolled in a beat-up chair, the leather split, the dirty stuffing showing. She had on a red smock and pants that could have been painted on her. I felt my heartbeat quicken at the sight of her long legs and slim thighs. A cigarette dangled from her thin hard lips. She was staring up at the ceiling, her face an expressionless marble mask, while he continued to jerk, weave and stomp to the music as he fed himself.
As I stood there watching, I wondered what was going on in her mind. What a couple! Part of my sane mind said this, but the other half was envious. Then suddenly she leaned forward and snapped off the transistor that stood on a chair by her side. The silence that descended over the bungalow and around me was like a physical blow.