Huckleberry Fiend (7 page)

“Suppose she knows the manuscript is missing— in other words, knows Beverly had it, and was in cahoots with her, somehow or another. The manuscript disappears, Beverly gets killed, then the next day I turn up with a cock-and-bull story about Beverly wanting me to meet her for a possible
Chronicle
story. What could that mean to Isami? Maybe she thinks Bev was about to double-cross her and give the whole story out. Or maybe she gets the idea Bev already had. So she comes looking for my notes and accidentally finds the manuscript. Or maybe it isn’t that. Maybe she figures I’ve got the manuscript and came around to hold it for ransom or something.” I turned up my palms. “I don’t know. All I know is she’s the only possibility I can think of.”

“I guess we’ll have to take a look.”

Sardis put her face in her hand: “Oh, no.”

“You mean,” I said, “burglarize her again?”

Booker nodded. “I don’t see what else to do. Do you?”

“Excuse me,” said Sardis. “I don’t think I want to hear the rest of this.” She walked out on tanned and luscious legs.

A part of me wanted to get out too. But another part felt guilty about losing the manuscript, and yet another was frankly excited at the possibility of participating in a burglary.

With Booker’s help, I’d burgled before, but that was out of desperation. This time no one’s survival was on the line, but the manuscript
was
important— and there wouldn’t really be a victim. It wasn’t, after all, as if we were going to steal anything from Isami; we were merely going to look for something she wouldn’t have if she were a law-abiding citizen, and then we were going to walk away, leaving the place exactly the way we found it. Unless she actually had the manuscript— in which case we’d take it— she wouldn’t even know we’d been there.

There was that argument and then there was the other, the product of almost forty years of socialization. We
would
have been there. We would have invaded her privacy and her home, whether she knew it or not. It wasn’t right.

But the thing was, Booker was going to do it whether I helped him or not. What difference would it make if I went along for the ride? I reminded myself that I’d done a few illegal things— and certainly lied— in my reportorial days, and thought it perfectly permissible in the interests of getting a story. Meaning permissible because it had society’s sanction— or at least that of an important publishing corporation. Surely an irreplaceable literary treasure was as important as a newspaper story. So couldn’t I act on my own?

That didn’t get me anywhere because I knew I wasn’t going to be acting on my own and wouldn’t in any case. Without Booker, there was simply no possibility that I would break into Isami Nakamura’s house for any reason.

The question was a thicket of thorns and I decided not to pursue it a millimeter further. The plain fact was that, since I didn’t think anyone could get hurt and some good might actually be done in the long run, I could justify the burglary to myself in a dim way. Barely. And so I was going to do it.

Why did I want to? For the same reason I’d been a reporter, probably. Sardis liked to call me an experience junkie and I guess I was, in a way. I would do just about anything once if it wasn’t dangerous, illegal, or immoral. And some things, apparently, that were all three.

Booker gave Isami a call. “Damn answering machines. With people screening their calls, it’s hell to case jobs any more.” He sighed. “But she doesn’t answer, so let’s go on over.”

“Should I wear anything special?”

“You mean like jeans, black sweater, and stocking mask? I don’t usually, but it can’t hurt. Don’t forget gloves, though.”

I certainly wasn’t going to trouble Sardis for a stocking, so that settled that.

Not even a porch light was on when we arrived. Perhaps Isami was still staying with a friend. Booker gave me the OK sign, but walked around the house anyway, listening for tiny noises. We’d stopped for a bite and it was now about nine-thirty, so I figured if she was out for the evening, she wouldn’t be back for a while. Booker was a little nervous— people sometimes came home right after dinner, he said. But he thought she’d have left a light or two on if she planned to.

He’d gotten in a half-open bathroom window Friday night. By now, he figured, she’d have burglar-proofed— people usually did that after a break-in. But no problem— his collection of keys would get us in the back door in a trice. While he worked, I held a penlight.

“What do you do,” I whispered, “when I’m not here?”

“Teeth,” he said. “Or sometimes nothing. I’ve got a pretty good sense of touch.”

When the lock finally moved, he sighed deeply and sensuously, like someone tasting honey and nectar. We closed the door behind us and cased the rooms quickly, making double sure no one was home. The curtains hadn’t been closed and there was enough light to see the living room. It was furnished in the makeshift way of people who aren’t home much and don’t care to be. The sofa was old, looked secondhand, and hadn’t been very nice to begin with. There were a couple of overstuffed chairs in a similar condition and one rattan one that didn’t go with anything else. A few
Cosmos
and
Vogues
had been tossed into a basket, but there wasn’t a sign of a book, and there was hardly any place to hide anything. Quickly, Booker looked under the cushions and moved on.

I wanted to stop and go through the bathroom cabinets, but he nudged me towards Isami’s room. “The plan is to get in and out fast,” he said. “You know how long the average burglary takes? Forty seconds. But of course that’s just the hit-and-run grab-the-stereo kind. We could be here as long as ten minutes.” He turned his penlight on as we reached a bedroom threshold. “Get this.”

The curtains were pink-checked and so was the bedspread. On the bed was an extensive teddy bear collection. The furniture was painted white, except for an old trunk, the sort in which college kids send off their clothes. It had been painted pink. “My dad’s girlfriend’s room,” said Booker. “I wonder what it’s like to make love in a bed with a dozen teddy bears.”

“Your dad’s a psychologist, isn’t he?”

“Not exactly. Psych professor.”

“She’s probably doing him a lot of good. You ought to have a more open mind.”

Booker started opening her dresser drawers and going through them with the utmost care, even, I thought, caressing certain intimate garments rather more tenderly than necessary. I was starting to worry, but watching him later— going through towels, papers, even kitchen utensils— I realized that was just the way he worked. With utmost care.

Because he wanted to get the job done fast, he condescended to let me take the trunk, though I’m sure my ham-handed touch must have driven him nearly mad. As it happened, the trunk was Isami’s laundry hamper; thus there was no need in the world for a delicate approach. Next I looked under the bed and in the closet. Booker carefully checked under the pillows and under the mattress. If Isami had the manuscript, it wasn’t in her room.

Next we went through the bathroom and the kitchen. Finally, we entered Beverly’s room. A chamber more different from Isami’s would have been difficult to imagine. One wall held her books, others, traditional art she’d probably picked up traveling— African tribal masks, Balinese paintings, Japanese scrolls. A good collection, both eclectic and extensive. The bed was covered with a simple white down comforter, and the other furniture was white wicker. The overall effect was rather tropical, certainly very individual. Briefly, I wondered why I hadn’t seen her taste anywhere else in the apartment. Then I saw a cluster of pictures of herself that she’d arranged on her dresser and I thought I knew.

She was the female equivalent of Wanda Kimbrough’s hunky blond— a gorgeous blonde in a sporty, wind-blown, conventional sort of way. In the pictures she wore tennis togs, safari clothes, jeans, and fancy dresses, everything looking made for her— and not more than ten minutes earlier, either. Something about her was just a little too sleek, reminding one more of a panther than a cat. There was a smugness there, and a lot of vanity, and a no-holds-barred acquisitiveness.

All that I got from a few photographs in near-darkness. With that kind of imagination, it’s no accident I write fiction, probably, but in that moment I felt I had a real sense of Beverly Alexander. I thought the reason she’d holed up in here, rather than actually spread herself throughout the apartment, was simply that the idea would never have occurred to her. She was older, better educated, far worldlier than Isami Nakamura and didn’t, in her own eyes, really live with Isami, I was sure. Just a little on the shorts and passing through till something better came along.

“You take the dresser,” said Booker and, happily, I plunged in. Quite truthfully, I was enjoying myself. There was something evilly satisfying about going through someone else’s things. I thought I could understand Booker’s pleasurable sigh when we came in.

There were scarves in the first drawer, and a jewelry box. There was really no need to look in the box, but, frankly, I was carried away. I found a long rope of pearls, gold bracelets, ivory bracelets, and every kind of earrings— sapphire, ruby, emerald, diamond. Just studs, to be sure, but here was a woman who liked her gems. I imagined I heard her voice. “Paul, darling, how did you know?” as she ripped off the wrapping paper. And then I heard it echoing and echoing, again and again.

On to the underwear, which I’m afraid I handled quite as tenderly as Booker had handled Isami’s. It was silk and filmy and after all, how often did a man have a chance to touch women’s underwear? If you wanted to feel your girlfriend’s (without her in it) she’d think you were a pervert. Yet women were permitted to handle and caress these dainty things any time they wanted to. I thought of touching my cheek with one of those camisoles, just to see what it would feel like, but worried that Booker might see. I wondered if he did that sort of thing when he burgled alone and felt a shiver up the spine. These forbidden pleasures were getting a little creepy.

“Mcdonald, aren’t you done yet? Let me finish.”

Dreamily, in a kind of pleasant trance, the way women get when they’re shopping, I abandoned the dresser and opened Beverly’s closet. Shoeboxes were piled from the floor to the hems of dresses packed in tighter than tissues in a box. On the shelves above were more shoeboxes and some that looked like hatboxes. “I’ve gone through those,” said Booker.

I’d seen him check the pillows and mattress too. Wondering what was left for me to do, I sat for a moment on the bed, next to a small table with a white phone on it. Idly, I opened the table’s little drawer. If there had been a personal phone book, the police had undoubtedly taken it. I was just rummaging. The drawer was full of bills and bank statements, photos, rubber bands, and hair clips. There were also a couple of books that Bev had apparently dipped into at bedtime. One was Barbara Tuchman’s
March of Folly
, the other a trashy bestseller. Considering Beverly’s history background, the Tuchman book wasn’t surprising, nor would
Diamonds
, the Pamela Temby potboiler, have been odd on its own. But the wild diversity of the two caught my attention. I couldn’t imagine what there could possibly be about
Diamonds
to interest a woman who was also reading
March of Folly
. In fact, was so puzzled I opened it to the bookmark. Attached to the middle of the page was a yellow Post-It with six names on it. Or rather, three, and three variations of another. Sarah Williams, at the top, was underlined. Then three were listed, followed by phone numbers: Herb Wolf, Russell Kittrell, and Pamela Temby. Off to the side, more or less doodles, were Sarah M. Williams and Sarah Mary Williams.

I’d never heard of either of the men, but Temby was a huge celebrity, possibly the best selling author (if you could call her that) in the country. Still, that wasn’t the name I found most eye-catching. Sarah Williams was. I peeled off the Post-It and turned to Booker. He was frozen, like a dog watching a bug crawl. “Somebody’s home,” he said, even his whisper cracked with terror.

No lights were on, so all that really had to be done was close the two drawers we’d been investigating and slink out the back door. Stealthily, we made for the kitchen, Booker a basket case and me, for some reason, cucumber cool. Probably because my professional pride wasn’t at stake.

Booker was just reaching a surgically gloved hand toward a doorknob when a man’s voice shouted, maybe two feet from us: “Kitty? Kitty, kitty, kitty? Isami, she’s back here. Come around, okay? Maybe she’ll come to you.”

“That’s my dad,” mouthed Booker, significantly paler, even in the dark.

Apparently the thought of being caught by his old man had immobilized him. It was up to me to get us out of there. Waving him after me, I headed toward the front, thinking Booker the prideful professional must be a wreck indeed if this simple but effective strategy hadn’t even occurred to him. He shook his head, rooted to the spot.

“Luna! Come to Mommy,” cooed Mommy. “Oh, you big pretty Looney Tunesey, that’s a good kitty.”

There was absolutely no time to waste. Grabbing Booker by the elbow, I began to march him to freedom. It took nearly all my strength to budge him, but right was on my side. He had momentarily lost his mind, and I was leading him to safety. “Paul, listen, it won’t work. Paul!” He was whispering these and other nonsense syllables, but I simply paid him no mind. He scuttled along beside me, there being precious little else he could do.

Finally in the living room I opened the front door with a flourish. Or what would have been a flourish if the door had opened. I actually spoke out loud: “What in hell…” And that seemed to rouse Booker from his trance. First he shushed me, then pointed at the double deadbolt. Too late, I remembered this was the second time he’d been here, and even if it were the first, he would have been thorough. On that occasion, he would have searched to see if there was a key around, in case of fire. And judging from his reactions of the past few seconds, there wasn’t. But now he was functioning again. “Isami’s room,” he mouthed, as a key clicked in the back door lock.