And then we heard him calling, the distant assertiveness of an off-stage horn. She looked warily at the house, then pulled my head down and kissed me full on the lips.
There was everything in that kiss: passion, hunger, longing, promise. When she was through with my lips she drew back and lightly touched them with two fingers.
“I read somewhere,” she said, “it takes practice to kiss like that, like a beginner.”
“Practice has nothing to do with it,” I said.
At the back door, she said, “I’d like to see you again.”
I looked at her, not just a handsome woman, but a woman capable of the full expression of her feelings. Maybe she was seeking rescue from this outpost of whoredom: the unloved on top of the unloved. There was something about her that legitimized what she was doing.
Then I looked at the flip side. There was every indication she wanted more than a lover, probably a confessor or maybe just a big ear. I thought of being privy to every secret in that house, of knowing every niggling mean-spirited thing that went on in it. Aside from all the right considerations, the wages of sin, in this case, would be boredom. I decided to make some salesman happy.
“Well, Oscar?”
I felt like a kid whose path to First Communion is strewn with demons. “I wouldn’t want to do anything—” I stumbled over the word, then expelled it like a ball of phlegm — “bad.”
“Bad, Oscar?” she said, laughing. “You writers. The magic of words. I’m giddy.” Her laughter had a surface ripple that didn’t do much to hide the scorn beneath.
Then she went into the house.
His voice was the last thing I heard as I walked down the driveway. He was alternately shouting and whining. “Where have you been? You know I can’t do for myself with these hands.” Then softly, “He’ll write it?”
My editor was ticked off when I came back empty-handed, but he didn’t reassign the story. No one wrote it. A month or so later, I got a call from the colonel asking about it. I told him it had been killed, and dumped all the blame on my editor. I told my editor afterwards, in case Gahn called him. He took it with a measure of expected bad grace. On a newspaper, it’s the editor who wears the flak suit.
The Grabber went into a period of inactivity, and then, about a year later, struck once more. He assaulted and raped a girl who was going home alone. I kept a distance from the story, expressed no interest in the Grabber or his victim.
Then Brosnan called me. “He’s come out of the woodwork,” he said. “Number seven.”
“So I heard.”
“He picked on the wrong kid this time. She fought back. Hard. Ripped off the ski-mask. Made a positive ID. A squad s gone to get him. I’m leaving now. Want to come?”
Hit with a question like that, a newsman’s reflexes take over. I forgot that just before Brosnan’s call I didn’t want to hear a thing about the Grabber. I said, “Pick me up!”
We got there quickly. But it was too late. As Brosnan eased his car, portable flasher going, next to a black-and-white, the popping of rifle shots above us followed by a heavy silence told us it was over. A uniformed arm signaled from a third-floor window and, on the street, cops got up from behind parked cars, put bullhorns and special weapons into the trunks of the cars, and began talking to each other in that hushed way we do when death is around.
After a while, a middle-aged plainclothesman came toward Brosnan. He was pale and it didn’t look like that was his natural color. As he got nearer, he visibly straightened up so that by the time he got to Brosnan he was almost jaunty.
“So, Dempsey?” Brosnan said.
“He got it in a room up there, Lieutenant. Something interesting up there in that room. I could show it to you.”
“Please do,” Brosnan said, and then to me, “Let’s go, Monahan.”
We followed Dempsey into the apartment building. It was the kind of place that had never seen better days. All its days had been the same, sad and hard. We got in a rickety elevator that made me feel glad when its door opened on the third floor. We walked down a hall to an apartment.
In the apartment, we went to the living room. This was where the Grabber made his stand. His last stand. Already someone had thrown a covering, a uniform jacket, over the upper part of the body. I expected Brosnan to bend down, lift the jacket, and look at the Grabber’s face. He didn’t. All he did was ask Dempsey, “Sure he’s the right one?”
“He checks. Also, he resisted.” Dempsey pointed to a wicked-looking automatic on the floor in one of the comers. “We’re leaving it there for the technicians.”
“Very wise,” Brosnan said. He nodded at the wall opposite the double windows fronting the street. “I guess that’s your interesting thing?”
“Yes, sir,” Dempsey said. “Notice, they’re not on a line, but they’re pretty close together. Six-six-six. You see?”
“Why don’t you tell me.”
Dempsey flashed a wide smile, trying hard to keep it from growing into a grin. “Apocalypse. Revelation. Six-six-six — the sign of the beast. The Grabber identified with the devil. Maybe he thought he was a demon or the beast.”
“I have it now,” Brosnan said, looking down benignly at his man. “That explains those numbers — that number. Sounds great, Dempsey. Make sure you get that into your report. Off you go now.”
When Dempsey left, exit beaming, Brosnan turned back to the wall and looked at the three sixes. I did too. They didn’t look altogether that close to me.
I said to Brosnan, “The sign of the beast? You believe that?”
Brosnan kept his eyes on the numbers. “Monahan, you’re confusing belief with acceptance. Belief is a fringe benefit. Acceptance is what closes the books. I wouldn’t want you to quote me.”
“Not to worry,” I said. “Acceptance also makes good copy.”
Back in my office, I got right on the story, maybe the easiest I ever wrote. It was a good piece and pointed up the distance between what a feature writer does and what a reporter extrudes from his typewriter. When my editor read it, his eyebrows went up, a sign he liked it. Without comment, he blocked in space for it in the evening edition.
My work done, I decided to call Arthur Gahn and give him the news. She answered the phone. I told her who I was and asked for the colonel.
“He died, Oscar. The notice was in your paper. Don’t you read it?”
“Only the poets’ corner and the funnies.”
“Why did you call?”
“The Grabber was killed. About an hour ago or so.”
“I’d like to talk to you about that, but I don’t have much time.” There was a five-second pause, long enough for her to look at her watch and figure out just how much time she did have. “I’m taking flight six-sixteen to Chicago tonight. Is there someplace I could meet you for a drink beforehand?”
I told her how to get to the White House and she said, okay, she’d be there in about ten minutes.
The White House had a small lounge at its rear. I waited for Suleika at the front entrance and when she showed up took her back there. We found a table and sat down. A waitress transferred some dampness from a cloth to the table surface and waited for our orders. I got a beer. Suleika ordered one of those things with fruit and a parasol and a colored straw, a little floor show atop a glass.
I drank off half my beer in a healthy gulp and wiped the liquid off my lips with two fingers. She sipped noiselessly through her straw, dabbed at her mouth with a flimsy cocktail napkin. With both of us reinforced, I told her of the events earlier that day, of what the police and papers would call the Grabber’s seventh and last assault.