So now the area was all but abandoned, except for the occasional transient, bag lady, hooker, or runaway. Ironically, it was not a dangerous area to walk in because it was so desolate-even the muggers knew that the chances of making a score here were slim indeed.
The woman beneath Hap whispered, "I'm happy with my children."
It was a typically cryptic remark for her, so Hap merely shrugged and got back to the business of "giving her a poke or two."
He did not see the small silver knife she kept in the bodice of her dress, which lay now on the floor beside the bed.
And because his mind was very much on other things, he did not see her reach and take the knife into her long, graceful fingers.
And when she traced a thin, foot-long gash into his back with the knife, he thought at first that in the throes of her passion, her fingernails were digging hard into him, so he breathed at her, "Oh baby, baby!"
She plunged the inch-long blade into the small of his back.
He stiffened on her; his mouth and eyes opened wide; small stuttering sounds came from him.
She whispered, "Oh, yes, yes-you are never more alive than when death is near! Live, live!" And she plunged the knife quickly into a buttock, then into his side, below the rib cage, then into his spine, and at last he rolled off her to the floor, where he lay on his back and twitched.
She stood above him, feet on either side of him. She leaned over, put her lips near his chest. "Live!" she breathed. "Live!" She put her lips to his chest.
He was dead five minutes later.
Chapter Five
In Boston
The desk clerk at the Ritz Carlton Hotel was losing his patience. "I'm sorry, Mr. Biergarten," he said stiffly, "but as I've told you a half-dozen times already, there is no Joan Mott Evans registered here."
Ryerson was losing patience, too. Because when Joan had been about ready to leave his house on Newbury Street and he'd asked her where in Boston she was staying, the name Ritz Carlton had flashed into his head as bright as neon. But now, two hours later, facing off with this thin, balding, temperamental desk clerk, he was beginning to think that Joan had tricked him.
He said, "Let me describe her to you again," although he'd described her already.
"No," the desk clerk said, "as I told you, no one of that description is registered here. And if you don't let me attend to more pressing business, sir, I will be forced to call the house detective."
Ryerson shifted Creosote from one arm to the other. It was impossible for him to tell psychically if the man was lying-hard emotion, such as the man's growing impatience, was often a barrier to reception. Ryerson had to admit anyway that the man had no reason to lie-either Joan was staying at the Ritz Carlton, or she wasn't.
The desk clerk said, "Can I assume that that will be all for the evening, sir?"
Ryerson said, "Sure. Thank you," and shifted Creosote to his other arm. He wanted to press the subject further but could think of no way to do it. "I didn't mean to bother you," he added, then went over to one of three big red leather couches in the lobby and sat down sullenly with Creosote. "Yes," he whispered to the dog, "that's precisely what she did. She tricked me." At the other end of the couch, a chubby sixtyish man in an ill-fitting gray suit speared the air with a dark wooden cane and bellowed, "I'll have no more of that, Falstaff!"
Ryerson glanced at him, wondered if he was doing some bastardization of Shakespeare, read from him only what appeared in his mind's eye as a mass of live reddish worms-which was often all he could read from crazies-and looked away, embarrassed because the man had caught him looking.
"Fine dog," the man said heartily, manfully, as if commenting on Ryerson's ability at arm wrestling.
Ryerson glanced at him, smiled a little, said, "Thank you," and looked away again. He didn't like dealing with public crazies. Too often when he tried to untangle what he saw moving about in their heads he became frustrated and depressed; it was like working a huge jigsaw puzzle which, when finished, formed only one piece of an almost infinitely larger puzzle. And he usually read a profound and soul-shattering despair beneath the bubbly exterior, as if a personality, a human being, had been buried alive and was slowly suffocating.
It was the same sort of thing he'd encountered six months earlier, in Rochester, New York, when his investigation into what had come to be known as "The Park Werewolf" was nearly at an end. He had the name of the murderer, but no real proof. His only proof was a desperate whisper of despair from within the innermost recesses of the murderer's brain-as if someone were calling for help from the bottom of a very deep well. It was the same sort of whisper of despair that he read now from the man at the other end of the couch. The only difference was what had overlaid it-not a mass of live reddish worms, but something stiff and black and opaque, like an iced-over river choked with pollution.
The man on the couch speared the air again. "I'll have no more of that, Falstaff!" he bellowed, and within seconds a big, middle-aged, dark-haired man in a tight-fitting black suit appeared beside him, leaned over, and crooned, "Okay, Al, I think it's time for bed." He put one hand on Al's back, the other on his wrist, and helped him to his feet.
Ryerson said, "Pardon me, but is he registered here?"
The big man looked critically at Ryerson. "Who's asking?"
Ryerson shook his head as an apology for butting in. "No one. I'm just curious."
"He's my friend," the man said, and turned his attention back to Al. "C'mon, Al. Big day tomorrow."
Ryerson began, "It's just that-"
"Who's he hurtin'?" the big man cut in. "He ain't hurtin' no one. All he does is sit here and talk to himself. So what? I seen you talking to yourself a few minutes ago."
And Ryerson, regretting his words immediately, said, "Yes, I know, but for his own good-"
The beefy man said, "What's for his own good is between him and me, 'cuz we're friends, you know. I look after him, and he looks after me, when he can. Just because he's sick don't mean he ain't my friend no more, and it don't mean I don't know how he feels inside. Shit, you put him away and he'd die in a month. At least here he's got me; we got each other."
Ryerson wanted to say, That's a hell of a speech, but he knew the man would mistake it for sarcasm, so he said, "Yes, I agree, I'm sorry," and watched as the two of them made their way slowly-Al as if in pain-to the elevators.
~ * ~
In Buffalo
"Now why'd I do that?!" mumbled Sergeant Guy Mallory.
His partner, Gail Newman, looked over at him from her desk, grinned, and said, "Do what?"
He grimaced. "This stupid thing." He held up a white paper cup, put it back on his desk, grimaced again. "My wife's after me to take vitamins, you know. Vitamin A especially, because I've got this skin problem and vitamin A is supposed to be good for that, she says."