'Nice car,' she said, when he climbed in the driver's side. Cars were about four-hundredth on her priority list of Important Things in Life.
'Freeway cruiser,' he said, indifferently.
'And you play a little golf, huh?'
He looked at her, cool, and said, 'I do two things: I practice law, and I play golf.'
'I mean, like. seriously?'
'I'm serious about both,' he said; and she thought he was a little grim. Good-looking, but tight.
'Chasing a little white ball around a pasture.'
He looked at her, still not smiling: 'If golf was about chasing a little white ball around a pasture, I wouldn't do it,' he said.
She turned toward him, her face serious, touched his arm. 'Would you promise me something?'
'What?' The sudden, apparent intimacy took him by surprise.
'Don't ever, ever, evertry to explain to me what golf is really about.'
This time he grinned and she thought: Mmm. Harrison Ford.
At her house, he took a flashlight out of the trunk and walked once around the outside, checked the bushes, said, 'Ouch, what the hell is that?' and a couple minutes later, 'Good.'
Inside, he looked at the windows, including the boarded-up back window, and said, 'Leave the board for the time being,' and, 'You need to get some empty beer cans or pop cans. Before you go to sleep at night, stack them up inside the door. If anybody tries to come through, it'll sound like the end of the world.'
'Okay.'
'Your bushes scratched the heck out of me.'
'That's what they're for.'
'Okay. You got a gun?' he asked.
'Yeah.'
'Let's get it.'
He followed her upstairs to the bedroom, and she took the gun from its clip behind the bed's headboard.
'Smith amp; Wesson,' she said, handing him the chromed revolver.
'Good old six-forty,' he said. He checked the ammo: 'With three-fifty-seven wadcutters. You're in good shape. Do you know how to shoot it?'
'I went through a combat class when that was the fad,' she said. 'I go up behind Malibu every year or so and shoot up a gully, like they showed us. Ten feet.'
'So keep it handy,' he said. He handed the gun back, glanced at the quilt on the bed, said, 'Old-fashioned girl, huh?'
She opened her mouth to say something when the doorbell rang. They both looked at the head of the stairs: 'Uh-oh.'
'Probably not Aunt Pansy with a fruit pie,' Harper said, glancing at his watch.
'You think a killer is gonna ring the doorbell at'she glanced at her watch, too'five-oh-five in the morning?'
'Probably not,' he said. 'Let's go see. you go first.'
'Why me?'
''Cause you've got the gun.'
That seemed practical, if not particularly chivalrous. She led the way down, feeling slightly silly, gun in her hand, paused in the hallway, then whispered back, 'Now what?'
'Get away from the door and yell,' Harper suggested.
The doorbell rang again as they stepped into the kitchen and Anna shouted, 'Who is it?'
'Me. Creek.' Creek's voice, all right.
'Oh, boy,' Anna said. She went to the door, slipped the chain and pulled it open. Creek slouched on the porch, and his eyes stopped briefly on Anna and then flicked back to Harper.
'Just thought I'd check,' Creek said. To Harper, 'You all done?'
'Yeah, I'm done. I need to talk to Anna for a minute, alone. Then I'll be out of here.'
Creek nodded and stepped back on the porch, and pulled the door shut.
'Sorry about that,' Anna said. And she was thinking that Creek showed up at fairly inconvenient times.
'Yeah, no problem.' Harper took a slender leather wallet out of his jacket pocket, took out a thin gold pen, found a card and scribbled on it. 'My home phone. The office phone is on the front. Call me if anything comes up.'
'And you've got my card,' Anna said drily. He must've taken it from her purse.
'Yup.' Unembarrassed.
'I think we should let the police.'
She was talking over him, and only caught the last part: '. boyfriend stay over, it'd be another layer.'
She stopped: 'What?'
'Maybe you oughta have your boyfriend stay over,' he repeated. 'He'd be another layer between you and the killer. He's a big guy.'
'He's not my boyfriend. Creek's a friend.'
'Yeah? But you can trust him?'
'With my life.'
Harper bobbed his head, and said, Then you might think about it, even if he drives you nuts. I'll tell you what: This guy isn't gonna go away. This nut. He's thinking about you all the time. Sooner or laterhe'll turn up.'
Chapter 9
The two-faced man sat in the dirt, a hedge brushing his right ear, a fender a foot from his left. The spot was guarded, out of sight, and had the feel of a den. He was comfortable in it; he put the pistol barrel beside his nose, drew a breath scented with gunpowder and oil.
He waited; and as he waited, he lapsed into a fantasy.
He was invisible, drifting through Anna's house, hanging a few inches above the floor, like a wisp, or a genie. She was in the bathroom, naked, doing her face, bending over a counter, looking in the mirror.
Could she feel him there, so close, coming up behind? He reached out to touch the smooth bumps made by her vertebrae.
Mmm. no. She had to be totally unknowing. Unknowing, he'd be witness to her most intimate moments. Perfect moments.
But it'd be kind of neat if he could materialize, too. Not just an ethereal eye, watching, but somebody who had the power to materialize right behind her.
He edited: now he could materialize.
And she'd be naked, there, bending over the bathroom counter, putting on lipstick.
No. Edit again.
She'd be wearing nylons, with a garter belt, but that's all, nylons and a garter belt, no underwear, putting on lipstick, and he'd come up behind her and the first thing she'd feel would be his fingers trailing down her spine like a cold draft.
All right, he liked that. Return. He drifted in the door, set down beside her. She was leaning over the sink, her breasts free, nipples pink, a dark shadow where her legs joined; he put out a hand, touched her spine.
When he was a child, years before, he'd been captured by the image of Humpty Dumpty. Not the fall, but the shell. Because that's how he knew himself to be.
He had two faces, not one. The outer face looked to the worlda somber face, even when he was a child, but pretty, and forthright. The inner face was something else: dark, moody, fetid, closed. The inner face contemplated only himself. He might have been whole, once. But the wholeness had been beaten out of him, shattered like Humpty Dumpty.
His father had sold cars. Thousands of cars.
His father had been on television every night, prime time, with his fake nose and white painted face, his oversized shoes and Raggedy-Ann hair.
He was the most famous clown in the world, reeling across the sales floor with a gallon-sized jug marked XXX: 'Hey, you think Big Bandy is jes' being funny when he sez you can get this like-new Camaro for the low-low price of $6,240? What'd I say? Did I say $5,740? Another Bandy slip-o-the-tongue, that's old Bandy getting into the old brandy again, makin' mistakes like saying this like-new Camaro only $5,240. Whoops. There I go again. Get down here quick and you could get this Camaro for. Whoo, that's good stuff. Old Bandy may be into the old brandy again, but I'm as good as my word, so whatever ridiculous price I just said, that's all you'll pay.'
He could take the ridicule at school, Old Bandy being his father, because everybody knew that Old Bandy was making millions. What he couldn't take was when Old Bandy got into the old brandy at home, and beat the shit out of him.
His mother was worse. His mother was a small, dark-haired devil who drank more old brandy than Old Bandy did, and she'd turn him in'You know what your son did today?'as though he wasn't also her son.