Bad Desire (2 page)

He wrote the first word and smoothed it out, the gawky letters vanishing under the swipe of his hand as soon as the word was completed. Then he wrote again, wiped the words out and drew his hand back, leaving the sugar surface flat and ready. The man in the raincoat watched this without any reaction, his deep-set eyes switching from the marks on the table to the man making them.

Again the two men looked at each other.

At last the other man's hands rose to the edge of the table, an aristocrat's hands with slender, uncalloused fingers. Beecham saw that the man's left hand sported a square diamond ring. With his right index finger, the man wrote in the sugar and after a moment, wiped out the two words. The diamond ring gleamed. He wrote and smoothed and wrote. Then he prepared the sugar for a reply.

And Beecham wrote
NAME
and again flattened the white crystals.

The man wearing the raincoat did not hesitate.
RACHEL
, he wrote and then added the rest of the name,
BUCHANAN
, and when he had wiped the sugar flat again, he spelled out where she lived.

Beecham nodded, the first time he had made any such movement, and wrote
WHEN
and the other man wrote
SAT. NIGHT
, erased it and wrote,
BEFORE 12
.

There were other things that had to be understood and so it went on: first the man in the raincoat writing and wiping across the sugar and then the other man following suit, but always with fewer words, one or two at a time.

All at once, it was ending.

The dark-haired man in the raincoat wrote
NOT THE GIRL
and quickly smudged it out. Then,
NO MISTAKES
, and the words vanished.

He brushed his hands together, knocking a few white grains from his fingers. He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, laid it in the midst of the sugar, stood and immediately left the dining room through the rear.

Underneath the clear wrapping on the cigarette pack was a small metal key. Beecham took the red pack in his hand, shook out a cigarette and set it on his lips. He put the pack in his shirt pocket. With his hands hidden, he quickly removed the silencer from the .38 Special, slipped the handgun under his belt inside his shirt and returned the silencer to his trouser pocket. Twisting the newspaper into a cone, he parted the pages until they made a pouch. Then using the side of his hand, he scraped the sugar off the table into the wedge of newspaper, leaving only a few thin white seams on the black Formica. He folded the top of the newspaper over so nothing would spill and clamped it under his arm.

With that done, he put the cigarette, unlit, in the ashtray and sat looking through the long interior, toward the palmettos outside and the passing cars and the ocean that never changed. Above the sun-streaked window hung a sign for
ANCHOR STEAM BEER
and a clock that Beecham watched, its second hand sweeping around and around. When five minutes had passed, he got up and went in the direction the first man had gone, toward the rest rooms in back, and never returned.

Canyon Valley Drive ran through the oldest residential section of Rio Del Palmos, California. The street dated from a time when parcels of land were sold in tracts of five or ten acres instead of the quarter-acre lots currently on the market. In the thirties, the Canyon Valley district had been favored by the owners and captains of fishing fleets, and by the prosperous doctors and merchants in town; now, although the houses were still imposing, the area was decidedly middle-class, abandoned by the wealthy for the northern hillside estates on the other side of the city. Surrounded by grassy foothills, it was a pleasant neighborhood of widely spaced houses. The streets were like paved country lanes, curving, rising and falling with the contours of the rolling terrain.

With no more noise than the soft throb of its exhaust, the dusty black Mustang rolled through a dip in the street, coasted up the opposing knoll and slipped from sight. It was five after six on Thursday morning, the darkness just now turning deep blue with the sunrise. Mailboxes stood at the ends of driveways like lonely sentinels. One, a rusty, tin mailbox, carried the number 522 and the name:
R. BUCHANAN
. The Mustang's brake lights flickered for a second as the small black car rolled by, tires grinding softly at the pavement. Another mailbox appeared and sank away, then another. At last the brake lights came on solidly—the Mustang turned into a neighbor's shrub-lined drive, slipped back and started its return, moving forward on the power of its idle.

When the white house belonging to the rusted mailbox again came into view, the Mustang stopped. The engine was shut off; the driver's window slid down. John Howard Beecham sat staring past the iron fence, across the ample front yard at the two-story stucco house in need of paint. Next to the mailbox, a driveway ran alongside the fenced yard through a porte cochere to the white garage in back. Even deeper in the backyard, the green painted roof of a small barn or shed could be glimpsed through the leafy trees.

Beecham studied the house in detail, placing the location of the doors and windows firmly in his memory. The age and Mediterranean style of the house told him little; by the arrangement of balconies and curtains and blinds, he tried to imagine it inside—a long parlor or living room running from front to back on the right side of the downstairs, on this side a large dining room and an equally large kitchen in back. Upstairs, some bedrooms and a bath. But it was only a guess. There could be other rooms somewhere downstairs. He estimated the distance to the closest neighbor to be about forty yards, the separate properties divided by a grove of what appeared to be wild lilacs. The high bushes created a natural shield. Perfect, he thought.

As he made his various calculations, a light came on in the rear of the house; a shaft of light spilled over the driveway. That's the kitchen, Beecham concluded. Seconds later, he noticed that lights were coming on in the other houses along the street. He started the car and drove down the winding road to wait.

At 7:30 that morning, a school bus lumbered past the old mailbox and stopped at the next driveway to board three children. At the same time, a red and brown station wagon emerged from the white garage, moved under the porte cochere and down the drive to the street, where it proceeded on in the direction of Rio Del Palmos. It was driven by a girl, still in her teens. An elderly woman occupied the seat beside her. Through the car windows it was possible to see that they were talking in a lively exchange, but their faces, marred by reflections and tree shadows, were visible only in flashes. As they passed the San Lucia Mission—a small historical chapel and cemetery where restoration work was being done—Beecham pulled out behind them.

In leaving the neighborhood, Canyon Valley Drive meandered through an uninhabited wooded area and became a frontage road, dropping toward the lush basin of Rio Del Palmos and eventually joining the interstate. The traffic through town was already moving at a brisk pace as the station wagon crossed the Rialto River Bridge and left the six-lane highway. The girl maneuvered through two traffic lights, made a right-hand turn and pulled into the high school parking lot. At the busy intersection, the Mustang drew to the curb.

Gathering her books, the girl left the station wagon, mingling with the scattered flow of students headed toward the turreted building. Okay, Beecham thought, that's the girl. Even at a distance, she was strikingly beautiful; tumbling about her shoulders, her blond hair glistened like a lovely gold cap.

On a flagpole in front of the school, two flags snapped out on the wind—an American flag and below it, another flag with a panther leaping through a giant red
P
. Fluttering across the flag's top and bottom ran the legend:
HOME OF THE RIO DEL PALMOS FIGHTING PANTHERS
. Beecham's eyes took it in and then returned to the station wagon. The elderly woman, who had stayed behind, arranged herself behind the steering wheel and drove out of the parking lot. And that's the woman, he thought, waiting for her to pass before pulling out after her.

She stopped at Masterson's Flower Shop and came out carrying a sprig of white flowers in a chilled cellophane box. She went into a dress shop, which according to its window specialized in weddings and formal affairs. Beecham noted that she was gone for less than ten minutes. With a plastic garment bag over her arm, she came out still talking to the dressmaker, who accompanied her as far as the sidewalk, gossiping and saying good-bye. The woman drove to the post office and went inside; minutes later, she was back driving the station wagon. Everywhere she received polite attention, and when she had gone, the smiles on peoples' faces were tolerant, even kindly. She was obviously well known, holding a certain standing among these people and commanding their respect.

She was a vigorous woman of seventy or so, Beecham thought, and she looked like a New Englander or a Quaker. She had that look about her—that look of independence and thrift, of God-fearing self-reliance. She carried herself erect; there was still a spring in her step. Age had not diminished her in any way that he could see. Her hair was dark silver, going to white, and she wore it short, like a boy badly in need of a haircut.

In the open-air market of a greenhouse on Quincy Avenue, Beecham stood among flats of potted begonias and watched as she approached the makeshift counter carrying a plastic tray of six tomato plants. “Young man,” she said, loud enough to be heard distinctly, “could I speak to your father?”

The balding man behind the counter seemed a little frazzled. “You know Dad retired last year,” he told her. “Rachel, you know that.”

Beecham missed nothing. Appearing to sort through pots of begonias, he concentrated intently upon her, memorizing every small action and mannerism. Even the motion of her hand was printed indelibly in his mind. She said, “Then Jimmy Thompson, I'm ashamed of you. A dollar sixty-nine cents for six puny tomato plants. How much does your dirt cost nowadays, for pete's sake? I've never in my life paid more than fifty cents for a handful of plants, and that was too much. Does your father know what you've done to his prices?”

The man began to explain his rising costs, but it was no good. “All right, Rachel,” he said, at last. “This time you can have them for seventy-five cents, but that's rock bottom.” And then after she had paid him and with a mischievous glint of victory in her eyes, taken the plants to her car, Jim Thompson muttered to himself, “Feisty old Yankee broad.” But he couldn't help smiling. Rachel Buchanan—as tough as ever—had been his sixth-grade teacher.

As soon as the station wagon drove away, Beecham left the market. Half an hour later, along the strip of motels flanking the interstate north of the city, he checked into the Tides Inn. He paid in cash and signed the registration card with a name that occurred to him as he stood at the counter: Jim Haskins of Beaumont, Texas.

At eleven-thirty that morning, he left the rented room and drove twenty miles inland to the town of Morocco. It was exactly twelve noon when he entered the old Cypress Line train station, where a window fan stirred the damp heat and dust. A
CLOSED
sign hung lopsided in the ticket cage; the pewlike benches were deserted.

The room sounded hollow as Beecham made his way to the wall of metal lockers. From his pocket, he produced the small metal key, inserted it into the lock of locker number 28 and opened the six-inch-square door. The locker contained two Antonio y Cleopatra cigar boxes. Again, Beecham looked around him before he opened the lid of the box on top. It was filled level with used twenty-dollar bills—altogether there would be seventy-five hundred dollars, payment in full. He emptied the money into his gym bag, discarded the boxes and left the key in the slot.

Now would come the time that he hated, the two-day wait when his mind and the world fused into emptiness. There were still things he had to do, a few loose ends to take care of, but already he knew how it would happen. He could almost feel the minutes yielding, one into the next, impossible to stop now.

2

There were six of them, six young girls walking along side by side, rhythmically swaying their hips, and in their supple carelessness they were like thoroughbreds, long-legged and high-hipped, switching their tails. One of them ran up in front of the others and started walking backward, telling of some adventure, but Slater hardly looked at her. With his eyes hidden beneath the bill of his cap, only one girl among them held his gaze; only she had a kind of grandeur. She was like something he had left behind long ago.

She was a magnificent-looking ash blonde. He couldn't see her face—her head was turned—but he knew it. At seventeen, she was like ice cream, all the wonderful, cool, ripe colors: cherry and vanilla, peach and a smear of blueberry for her eyes. Thoughts that had lain dormant within him for years and years stirred once again.

In the light of the late afternoon, she was walking away and time seemed endless to him, elastic and slow. Her hips pumped softly, switching from side to side with the subtlest kick, her hips rising and falling and switching and then that tiny kick as if something very sweet were caught between her legs. On and on, pump and shift and then that little kick, pump and then kick, alternating to the movements of her straight sleek legs.

Her arm came up as she walked and settled around the girl next to her. She lowered her own head, drew the girl over close and whispered into her ear. Slater could almost feel her soft breath strike his cheek, imagined the small secret voice spilling into his ear, and the sensation of it ran up and down his body like a flame.

But time was passing, after all, and while he watched, she turned the corner. The shivery excitement washed through him; he was gripping the steering wheel harder than he knew. On his left hand, the square diamond ring gave off steely points of light. He forced himself to wait to the count of ten, careful, always careful, before he pulled away from the curb and went after them. Stopping at the intersection, he saw the girls trailing along together, drifting down the sidewalk. The traffic light was red; Slater made a right-hand turn, but before he could decide how to proceed, other cars were coming up behind him. He couldn't go slow enough to stay in back of her, so he speeded up, drove past without even glancing her way. At the corner he turned, went to the next intersection, whipped into a U-turn and came flying back.