"Nice work, Amber, I think."
"He was carrying all that around in his car," she said "Please take it. He said he found that audiocassette in my stereo, the night that Alice… died."
I slipped the tape into my coat pocket.
On the way back to the house, I put the box into the trunk of my car. My father was sitting at the kitchen table, dressed now, drinking his coffee. I walked Amber into the small bedroom. A lamp on the bed stand cast a warm light against the knotty-pine walls.
"Can I ask you a question?" she said.
"Sure."
"Did you like me better when you thought I was dead?
It was half surprise at the question and half uncertainty of my answer that left me quiet. All the deep silence of the night outside seemed to enter that small room and encircle us.
"No," I said.
Amber looked at me while she reached up, pulled off her wig, and shook out the great brown waves of her hair. They lengthened as they loosened, down past her shoulders. And I was struck then, as I had been struck before-but never, never so hard-by how much Amber looked like Isabella. In the burnished lamplight of the cabin, Amber was, at the moment her hair settled, radiant.
"Thank you," she said. Then she gave me that look, the one that had launched a hundred products into a billion households, that look half virginal and half carnal, inviting-no, imploring you-to partake in what was being offered, reassuring you that this transaction, no matter how publicly tendered, was and would forever remain a conspiracy of only two.
What she saw in my face, I do not know.
"You're welcome," I said. "Good night."
"Good night, Russell."
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I went to the Marine Room, had two shots and two beers, sat on a stool at the window, and watched the people walk by. The early-morning fog began to settle over the coast. I watched claim the shoreline, the beach, the boardwalk, then ease across Coast Highway, lap against the buildings, feel its way up Ocean Avenue, bury the streetlights, enfold the men and women and babies in strollers, the bums and dogs, the pigeons and gulls, the cats in the shadows, the eucalyptus and bougainvillea, the parking meters, Hennesey's Tavern, the art gallery, the sunglasses shop, the patrol car turning right on the highway, the sidewalk and the cracks in the sidewalk and the weeds growing from the cracks. With the fog came a hush I was not the only one aware of; it was a collective involuntary pause, a hiatus the minds of everyone on that busy summer sidewalk. It crossed their faces with the fog, and they slowed just a beat, like film decelerating to almost slow motion, responding as if to a great invisible psychic speed bump that everyone hit at once and no one knew was there. Something rippled across their faces at that moment, a question. Husband glanced to wife; wife looked to husband; lovers cuddled closer; those alone turned to look over their shoulders, crossed the street suddenly, stopped to look around them, all faces asking, What was that, me, someone, who, me? And at that precise second, the band in the back room ended its song on the downbeat, and the hush asserted itself through the bar in one of those rare moments during which all conversation waits and silence rushes in to remind us that there was silence in the beginning and there will be silence at the end and silence runs through everything like a secret no one wants to hear. A flicker of fear crossed every face in that bar. Our dread was one dread. Every expression confessed the superfluity of our pretensions, the sheer effrontery of assuming that life in the next heartbeat will be the same jolly thing we pretend it is now. Deep in that silence, I heard a voice-a groan, a low-frequency command-but I couldn't understand what it was saying. I have no idea whether anyone else heard it, too. Then a great gust of laughter-forced, counterfeit, desperately applied-rose up to claim the quiet and deny the truths the silence carried. The band kicked in. I left.
I sat in my car for a few minutes without running the engine and listened to the tape that Amber had stolen from Martin Parish. It was the Midnight Eye. He stuttered and mumbled his way through more unintelligible phrases:
" C-c-cun seed brat cun wormin from he…
Mustery move s-s-slime…"
I could make no sense of it. Surely, I thought, if Amber was right and Martin was trying to blame the murder of Alice on me, this tape should have been destroyed by now. When I had listened to it twice, I placed the tape carefully beneath the floor mat of the car, where I wouldn't step on it.
¦ ¦ ¦
Traffic slowed to a crawl in the canyon, just out of town, and took me twenty minutes to inch along far enough to find out why. The Highway Patrol had set up one of its Sobriety Check points to find drunken drivers. I could see the lights flashing, the orange pylons cutting down the outgoing lanes to one, the CHP officers shining lights into drivers' faces. I was secretly rooting for the ACLU when it challenged the legality of these spot check but the courts upheld the CHP's contention that they are necessary and constitutional. More of my distrust of authority, more of my rankle at the long arm of control. The thought came me that I might be better suited to a career in bank robbery than law enforcement, but this was neither a new nor very probing idea. Writing seemed a good way to split the difference.
I rolled down my windows, lighted a smoke, waited.
Up ahead, flashlights beamed into cars, officers leaned toward open windows, a stream of released drivers pensive accelerated north. In my rearview, I could see the fog moving in. Ten minutes later, it was my turn. I steered the car between the rows of orange pylons, greeted the officer with a nod, and waited. Behind him, I saw a familiar shape standing outside prowl car, but just as I started to figure who it was, the flashlight beam ached into my eyes.
"How are you tonight, sir?"
"Fine."
"Drinking tonight, sir?"
"Couple of beers."
"That's all?"
"That's right."
"For a total of how many, sir?"
"A couple still means two, last time I checked."
He paused then, ran the flashlight across my backseat, the passenger seat, then into my face again. A voice came from behind him, but all I could see was white light. There was a moment of consultation-voices hidden by the brightness of the beam-then the officer stepped away, and Martin Parish leaned into my window. His eyes were bloodshot, his big, morally superior chin was unshaven, his knit necktie fell forward against the door. With the flashlight out of my eyes now, I could see the Sheriff's Department cars waiting up ahead-three of them.
"Well, I figured we'd run across you, Monroe," said Marty.
"Not hard, since this is the only road to my house."
"Shall I let 'em test you? This clever Chip is just sure you've had more than two."
"Up to you, Marty, but two is what I've had."
"That'll be the day."
Marty walked around the front of my car, the headlights throwing his shadow along the asphalt. He opened the passenger door, got in, and closed it. "I'll escort you home, Russell. These Chippies have your number."
"I sense an ulterior motive."
"I'm one big ulterior, Russ. Drive."
"Long walk back, Marty."
"I got it covered."
The officer waved me down a long corridor of pylons that angled into the road. My turnoff was less than a mile out. I stopped at the box, got my mail, then headed up the steep, winding drive that leads to the stilt house. When we made the top and leveled off, I could see the Sheriff's Department car parked outside my home. The idea came to me that it was more than just Marty's ride back to the checkpoint. I swung around it and down into my driveway. A deputy in uniform learn against the car and watched us go by. I wondered whether Marty was about to return the beating I'd given him at the beach on the night of July the Fourth. Overkill, I thought. I parked the garage.