Buzz Cut (11 page)

She let the drapes settle.

She opened her drawer, scooped out her clothes, dumped them in her college knapsack. Went to the bathroom, got the Tampax box. Shook it. Took a long, disbelieving breath. Opened the flaps. The box was empty. Her nest egg gone. Saved dollar by dollar for these three years. She dug her fingers inside it, then bent back to the lavatory cabinet. In a panic now, peering under there, but no, there was only that one Tampax box.

She turned and slung it back into the bedroom.

There was a double-hung window in the bathroom. She pried it open, pushed out the screen, wriggled through, stepped into the parking lot. A transfer truck blew past on the overseas highway. Someone was playing a radio nearby. Boom chucka. Silver clouds had muffled the moon. What breeze there was smelled like deep fried grease, air that could clog an artery.

She sifted down a row of rental cars, found the white Winnebago parked at the edge of the lot near a stand of Australian pines. There was no light on inside, no movement.

Hesitating there, outside the Winnebago. She hated the idea of throwing herself on the mercy of some guy. But she had to consider the practicalities. For all she knew there'd be a manhunt, roadblocks, helicopters with spotlights. Morton milking this for its market potential. With only one narrow road out of there, the sea on both sides, there was nowhere to duck. And no way in hell she was going to hitchhike in the dark, face into random headlights and hope.

Across the parking lot, she heard Jesse's voice. Saw him coming around the west wing of the motel.

And Irma Slater rapped on the door of the Winnebago.

Maybe Butler Jack would have a shotgun, or know where to get one.

The Winnebago was dark, Irma bumping her shoulder, her shins, hands out like a sleepwalker, cursing. Heavy curtains blocking all but a trickle of light from the parking lot. She had no idea of the layout, never been in one of these before. Very cramped, with an odor like motor oil, something metallic.

Butler Jack stood at the curtains, staring out. She joined him and saw the lights blazing in her room. Someone in the bathroom window, examining the broken screen. She saw his bald head, the fringe of white. Her father craning out, looking left and right. Morton Sampson.

"I'm gonna kill him," she said. "I want to kill that bastard. It's the only way I'm ever going to get away."

"Slow down," Butler said. "Maybe we can find something worse than that."

She stepped away from him, stared warily at his profile for a moment. But she was no judge of lunatics. For all she knew she might be one herself. She went back to the window. They watched for a while longer. The lights in her room switched off. Irma hoped her father remembered that room. Hoped it made his heart squirm. Remembering Al. The man who could make Morton Sampson's wife smile.

They waited. No helicopters came. No police with their bloodhounds. Another quiet night in Sugarloaf. They waited at the window, watched the empty lot. It unnerved her. Surely Morton Sampson wasn't going to lose his precious Monica again so easily. Give up without a good struggle.

At midnight, they saw him duck into the rear seat of a white Lincoln, Jesse bending low to have a word or two, then the car slid out of the parking lot, headed up the road toward Miami.

"Well, that's that," Butler said. "So now it begins. We move on to number seven."

"What?"

"I have a list," Butler said. "We're at number six, moving on to seven."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"With a list, you can't get sidetracked. You know where you are. Moving down the list. There are so many distractions, so many ways to get lost. But with a list, you always know. Like the ten commandments. All written down. Very clear."

She peered at him through the dark but couldn't see his face. It sounded like some kind of put-on, but she wasn't sure. Not sure about anything at that moment.

She let him steer her to the bunk bed, and he told her she had the top. She climbed up. A simple cot, thick canvas stretched between two boards, a mattress pad. She patted the area to get her bearings, felt something silky spread on the top sheet.

"Lingerie," Butler said. "A nightie. I guessed the size."

She groaned and lay down on the top sheet, arms stiff at her sides. Ready to claw out his eyes if he tried anything. Irma pissed. But going along for the moment.

Butler rustled around in the dark, then got into the bunk below her. He sighed, then a few moments later sighed again. She could feel him lying there, awake in the dark. Deepening the silence. Reminding her of pajama parties from her youth. Hours of aimless chatter and giggles that suddenly dissolve into quiet. Everyone still awake, eyes open, listening.

She stiffened. She thought she felt him touch her back through the canvas, follow the shape of her body, his lingers trailing across her butt. But the touch was so light she wasn't sure. She said nothing.

She held the lingerie, rubbed it against her cheek, as slick as oil. Hadn't touched any satin in years, not since Irma Slater took over things.

"Fornication," he said. "It's from Latin
fornix.
Which is an architectural term that means arched or vaulted."

She was silent, eyes open in the dark.

"Combined with
forno,
which means oven. Which is where the word furnace comes from. The Romans at the time of Christ used arched brickwork in the underground parts of buildings, and because that's where prostitutes worked, in the basements, the word gradually was associated with illicit sex. But it's interesting, isn't it, all those other words floating around in there, furnace, underground, vaulted. Heat, excitement, basements, tombs, the shape of female anatomy. Death and sex, heat and hell. It's all there."

She leaned over the edge of the cot, stared down. "I'm no prostitute."

"I know that."

"I'm not that little girl either. The one in the swing."

"Now there you're wrong," he said. "People are the same as words. They have all those things floating inside of them. Their histories. Nothing disappears. The ice sculptures melt, but they're always there. The little girl in the swing. You can try to escape, but you can't."

She lay back against the cot, looked up into the dark. "No sex, Butler. End of debate."

He was quiet for a moment. She could hear him breathing. "Well, we're talking about it," he said. "At least the subject is broached. It's important to talk. Put things into words, that's important, don't you think? Giving voice to the hidden world."

She lay still, eyes open, waiting. He was silent beneath her. The parking lot was quiet. Just a breeze sifting through the Australian pines, that ghostly moan. It wasn't right. Not like her father, the man who'd put up a million-dollar reward. She lay for a long time, listening. Hours. She heard Butler's breath slow and begin to flutter. Still she lay awake. Hours.

And then she was dreaming and her dream was filled with eyes. Human eyes, unblinking. They were watching her. Watching Monica sleep. Haunted eyes, sad and hungry, those ludicrous oversized eyes from roadside black velvet paintings. Her black velvet father watching her every moment. Morton Sampson, and her mother Irene, black velvet Irene, and Butler Jack, his milky blue eyes, others she couldn't name. Everyone watching her, seeing her. Feeling their eyes, floating out there in dream space. She did not wake, knowing somehow that they were not dangerous, but still she felt their eyes like breath against her skin. Felt them every moment of the night, eyes through the dark, those eyes, those sad eyes.

***

Even with his eyes closed, even in the total dark, he could see her glowing above him. Butler Jack couldn't stop trembling. The glow of her. The power. He'd been wrong to believe it would be the same. The little girl had power, yes, her image in the swing, the white dress, the wide porch, all that. She had power, but it was nothing like the woman who lay in the cot above him. This one glowed. The uranium more unstable than he'd imagined. So close. He could reach out his arm. Her body molded above him. The heat she threw out. Butler sweating, his bones aching. His erection.

She was here.

None of it mattered now. None of the humiliations mattered. The pains he'd endured. The intricate work, the plotting. She was here. Monica lay above him in the dark, her body floating a foot away. The night glowed with her. The air was rich. Giving him a strength he'd never known. He was a warrior. A Viking. He could wade through a thousand armored soldiers. Slaughter them all. Berserk.

***

Before dawn on Saturday Thorn rose, dressed in the shadowy living room, and left the house without waking Rochelle. He drove to Sugar's concrete-block house in Largo Sound Park. The sun beginning to tint the low mountain range of clouds with the purples and sulturous yellows of a week-old bruise.

Sugarman's house was locked up, blinds drawn, no car in the drive. Cal Higgins from across the street was having a cup of coffee in his front yard, watching his dog pee on the neighbor's trees.

"Haven't seen them since last week," he called over to Thorn. "Crack of dawn Monday, I think it was."

Next door Mrs. Miranda came out to her porch. Pink housecoat, front half of her hair in curlers. Thorn went over. Mrs. Miranda shook out a Camel, lit it, and talked around the smoke. Saying she thought the two of them were getting a divorce.

"A divorce!"

"They didn't tell me in so many words. But both of them been hinting around about it for a week or two. Then one morning she drives off in that Jeep, it's full of her things, baggage, a TV set, lamps, her macrame collection. Half hour later he leaves in a taxicab, hanging his head. Now to me that looks like she was setting up shop somewhere else. Going their separate ways."

Thorn stared at Sugar's house.

"Usually he tells us when he's away," she said. "Leaves a number where he can be reached. But I guess he was in a hurry this time, embarrassed or just forgot. He was working the cruise ships, you know, but a couple of days ago he let it slip that he was quitting that job."

"Quitting?"

"Yeah," she said. "Tell 'em to shove it."

"You know all Sugarman's business, don't you?"

She squinted at him through her acrid smoke. "I see what I see."

Thorn drove a couple of miles up U.S. 1 to the strip shopping center where Sugar's office was wedged in between an inflatable raft store and a beauty shop. The red-haired beautician opening up next door had no idea where he was. Gone for at least a week as far as she knew.

He went back to the VW, climbed inside, stared out the windshield at the big plastic alligators and sharks hanging in the window of the raft shop, the air-conditioning stirring them. He stared at the heavy door on Sugar's office. It was constructed from thick planks of mahogany, Thorn's office-warming gift. Some leftover wood from rebuilding his house. Sugarman loved that goddamn door. And Thorn remembered vividly the couple of punch-drunk days they'd spent dovetailing it together.

Under ordinary circumstances Sugarman never would've left the island without giving Thorn his full itinerary. And for twenty years he'd consulted with Thorn over the slightest tremor in his marriage. But then, circumstances were no longer ordinary between them. Sugarman had seen to that. Pushing Thorn into that impossible ultimatum. An act so completely unlike his mild-mannered friend that the more Thorn had considered it, the more obvious it became that Sugarman was concocting this feud. Pushing Thorn away. Pushing him, it seemed, safely out of range.

Thorn started the engine, continued to stare at the bright floats in the window beside Sugar's office. With a growl, he revved the tinny engine, sucked down a long breath, then jammed the shifter into first, popped the clutch.

The wheels mashed against the curb and the car stalled.

He started it again, drove it up against the edge of the sidewalk, the engine groaning and complaining as if it had been babied too much lately, Thorn letting it get flabby. Just like he'd been babying every fucking thing, letting it all go soft and dopey.

Thorn revved it higher, worked the clutch, and finally the car lurched forward, scraped and bumped over the curb, kept grinding forward until it rammed into Sugar's office door. He threw it in reverse, pulled back. The mahogany was barely nicked.

Thorn thumped back down into the lot. Sat there a moment revving the engine, goosing it higher and higher. The red-headed hairdresser from next door threw open her door, stuck her head out, a cigarette in her mouth and a portable phone pressed to her ear. She was in her aqua smock.

Holding the throttle flat to the floor, Thorn gave her a nod and shoved it into first again, popped the clutch, and the car lunged forward, slammed over the curb. This time he angled the wheels properly, and the edge of the bumper battered the center of Sugar's door. Cracked the thing down the middle, top to bottom. He backed up, parked the car, took care to get it neatly between the lines before he turned it off. The beautician was yammering into the phone as she craned for a view of the door, half of which still dangled on its hinges.

Thorn pushed his way inside, went through the reception area into Sugar's office, flipped on all the lights and began to search. He found no notes in Sugarman's calendar, no tickets, no reservation slips, nothing. Not even any papers strewn about his desk. Only a neat stack of magazines,
Time
and
Newsweek, People,
a month or two out of date, dentist's office stuff. Perhaps Mrs. Miranda was right. A divorce, gone their separate ways. A not-so-sudden dismemberment of their union, a decision that had been in the making for years.

Stubbornly Thorn worked his way through the drawers, top to bottom. Finding nothing the least bit unusual until he reached the next to last one. There, tucked beneath a stack of typing paper, was a five by nine black-and-white photograph. He drew it out.