Westlake, Donald E - Sara and Jack 01 (37 page)

 
          
“Sara,”
Jack said mildly, “who did you think our readership
was?
The senior class at MIT?”

 
          
Sara
sat up in bed, watching the red numerals on the television/radio/clock slowly
slowly change. 7:08. 7:09.
7:10
.

 
          
She
had been awake for well over an hour, as the light grew and changed in this
spacious but anonymous hotel room and her mind teemed with a confusion of
thoughts. The untraceable dark blue Buick. The ugliness of the body in the box.
The idea of Phyllis Perkinson as a person who empties pistols into hotel rooms.

 
          
As
to that last,
this
hotel room was
surely safe. It was on the seventh floor, with no balcony outside the
drape-covered windows. Every possible means of locking the door had been used
and then double-checked by Sara last night. She was, as well, registered in a
different room on a different floor, and she’d made sure last night to go in
there and muss the bed, leave some clothing and spare bits of makeup around, to
give the impression she was really in residence there.

 
          
As
to the body in the box, why had that shocked her so? Weddings, funerals, wasn’t
it all the same? The picture of the event. What do family and friends do, as
their last interaction with the deceased? They view the remains.

 
          
So
the body in the box was merely the great American public wanting to be treated
like family; the outsiders pressing their noses to the window- pane, trying to
see what the insiders see. If the body in the box was a little more ghoulish
than a wedding album or a hundred-year-old birthday, wasn’t it nevertheless
still merely another element in that great cycle of happenings among the select
Few at which the Many stand outside the ropes and pay obeisance by their
gawking?

 
          
I
wonder, Sara thought, unwillingly, what picture
Massa
wants when a major female star gives birth.
She averted her gaze from that question, to consider another, being the
question of Jack’s attitude toward her. It seemed to Sara that, in some way,
Jack was testing her, had been doing so for some time. When he’d told her about
the body in the box last night, she could sense the intensity with which he’d
watched her, as though still wondering, after everything she’d already done, if
she were up to this. She’d deliberately done what she could to hide her
revulsion, to show how quickly she could adapt to whatever he might choose to
throw at her. She’d even joined enthusiastically in the final part of the
discussion about just how to get into the Crawfish viewing.

 
          
Had
he appreciated that? It was hard to tell. He hadn’t raised the subject again in
here afterward, had made no further comment at all. But Sara found herself,
rather against her will, wanting Jack Ingersoll’s good opinion, and if that
meant being cool about the taking of pictures of dead bodies, so be it. As cool
and capable and unaffected as he'wanted, that’s who she was.

 
          
She
peeked at him, still asleep in the bed beside her. It was awfully early—
7:17
,
7:18
—but she wanted to talk to him. She couldn’t
go back to sleep herself, and she didn’t want to just sit here and brood forever.
She needed to talk to Jack. Not about the body in the box, about the dark blue
Buick.

 
          
How
do I find it now?

 
          
Wake
up,
Jack.

 
          
Awake,
Jack studied Sara’s profile through slitted eyes. What is she thinking about?
The body in the box? Christ, she took to that quick enough. She had the normal
first reaction—ooo, that’s disgusting, all that—but then immediately she was
with it, helping to think up ways to get into the Crawfish compound, get next
to the Crawfish bier, get above the open Crawfish casket.

 
          
What’s
the problem here? Why do I want this

 
          
girl
to fail at her job? I look inside my heart and I wonder if I’m simply making
her a surrogate for myself, giving her all
my
unused innocence and pushing her out to sea on this small thin cake of ice
here, just to prove to myself yet again how far innocence will take you. But
why her? If I like the girl—and I do, I do, let’s let it go at that—so if I
like her, why do I keep measuring her for the sackcloth and ashes?

 
          
Particularly
since she’s shown not the
slightest interest in wearing them. So what’s it all about? Sometimes I don’t
understand me.

 
          
Sara
was growing restless, sitting there beside him, shifting around, readjusting
her pillows, occasionally as though by accident kicking him in the shin. She
wants companionship, he thought, and decided it was time to awaken. With a huge
yawn, he thrashed about in the bed, managing to kick
her
once, half opening his eyes, peering up at her and saying, “Is
it morning?”

 
          
“Yes,”
she said.

 
          
He
lifted himself a bit and looked across the room at the red numerals above and
to the right of the dead television screen. 7:23. “Sara,” he said. “It’s
awfully
early”

 
          
“I
want to ask you about something,” she said.

 
          
He
propped himself up beside her, blinking fuzz out of his eyes. “Good morning,”
he said. “You’re beautiful.”

 
          
“You’re
beautiful, too,” she commented offhandedly. “I haven’t brushed my teeth yet.”

 
          
“Neither
have I.”

 
          
“I
know. Listen, I have a question.”

 
          
“Okay,”
he said. His hand, under the covers, rested on her thigh. “Ask away.”

 
          
“How
do I find a car,” she said, “if I know it’s a rental, and I have a description
of the car, and I know it’s registered in
Dade
County
, but I don’t know the license number?”

 
          
“Hmmmm,”
he said. He thought about the question. He also thought about the question
behind the question, or: Why does she want to know? He said, “Would this have
anything to do with the dead man you found beside the road, your first day on
the job?”

 
          
“I’m
not asking for the job,” she told him. “I’m asking for me.”

 
          
“I
understand that. Do I take it, then, you think the gunfire in
Martha’s Vineyard
is connected with that dead man?”

 
          
“It’s
possible,” she said.

 
          
“How
come you didn’t say anything? When it happened, I mean.”

 
          
She
gave him a clear-eyed look. “Why should I? On what series am / a regular?”

 
          
“Oh,
come on, Sara,” he said, pulling his hand away from her thigh as though it had
burned him. He sat up straighter and said, “If somebody’s trying to
shoot
you?”

 
          
“I
should try to do something about it,” she said. “I know, I agree with you. But
I
should. Not you. Not the
Galaxy
.”

 
          
“How
about the cops?”

 
          
“Do
you know how interested in the case they were in
Martha’s Vineyard
,” she asked, “when I told them I worked for
the
Galaxy?
My attempted murder just
wasn’t a crime they could get all that excited about.”

 
          
“The
down side of being beneath notice,” he said. “We’re also beneath contempt. All
right, tell me about this car.”

 
          
“A
dark blue Buick, I think a
Riviera
. Two or three years old. Lease or rental,
Dade
County
plate. I checked with the Dade sheriff, and
it wasn’t stolen.”

 
          
He
frowned at the gray TV screen, thinking about it. “Two or three years old,” he
said. “And a Buick, at that. Clean, good-looking?”

 
          
“Kind
of scruffy, actually,” she said.

 
          
“Okay.
Probably not a long-term lease, then, that’s mosdy new cars, this one’s beyond
most lease agreements. And not one of the big regular rental outfits like
Hertz. Some kind of Rent-A-Wreck outfit, local company with cheaper rates. How
many of them could there be?”

 
          
“In
Dade
County
?” she asked him. “In
Miami
? Thousands.”

 
          
“Well,
no. Hundreds, maybe. I tell you what, I’ll call Mary Kate, have her collect an
IOU from somebody, put a reporter on it, call every off-brand rental outfit in
the
Miami
yellow pages.”

 
          
“That
would be terrific, Jack.” She was looking perkier and perkier.

 
          
“Too
bad Binx got himself fragged,” Jack said, musing. “He was always good for crap
like this.”

 
          
“Uh,”
Sara said.

 
          
Jack
frowned at her. “Was that a noise of prerevelation?”

 
          
“Binx
is back,” Sara said.

 
          
Jack
was astonished, delighted and depressed. “Back? That’s amazing!
Massa
never
brings them back from the dead. Back in his old squaricle, is he, cheerful as
ever?”

 
          
“Well,
no,” Sara said. “He was hired as a reporter, at starting salary.”

 
          
“Oh, shit!”

           
“Assigned to Boy Cartwright.”

 
          
“And
he
took
it?”

 
          
Sara
just let that one he there. Jack looked at it, sighed, nodded, and said, “We
work for an evil empire, darling. Don’t ever forget that.”

 
          
“I
don’t intend to.”

 
          
“Anyway,
I’ll call Mary Kate as soon as we get to the command center. Maybe Binx can
play hooky today.”

 
          
“I
appreciate this, Jack,” she said. “I really do.”

 
          
“Ah,
it’s nothing,” he assured her. “Besides, you’re a good enough reporter,
valuable enough member of the team, if there’s a chance to keep you alive, what
the hell, I say go for it.”

 
          
She
smiled at him. “You are a nice boss, after all,” she said.

 
          
“After
ah what?”

 
          
“Wait
right there,” she told him, “while I go brush my teeth.”

 
          
Copy
poured from the house on
Edger Street
, messengered swiftly to
Massa
down in
Florida
. UFO sightings at both Johnny Crawfish’s
death
and
birth; premonitions;
reminiscences from suspiciously articulate jailbirds; incredible parallels
drawn with the lives of Mozart, Thomas Jefferson and John Lennon; thoroughly
bogus romances with three television series stars; a little known (because
nonexistent) tale of Johnny’s service as a Peace Corps volunteer; other odds
and ends of detritus. Some of this sludge would be summarily dealt with by
Massa
’s own true red pencil, some would fail to
make it through the fact checkers or Rewrite or the evaluators, some would
actually appear in the paper. But none of it mattered, one way or the other,
just so long as they got the body in the box.

 
          
It
wasn’t going to be easy.
Virginia
state police patrolled the only public highway that went past the
compound, and they’d already been rather aggressive with Don Grove when he
innocently stopped his car beside the fence to clean bugs from his windshield.
Within the compound, the cutthroats and brigands with whom Johnny Crawfish had
liked to idle away his free hours were belligerently on guard, having already
hospitalized three ordinary fans of the late great man who had in their
innocence thought they might be forgiven for sneaking in to say goodbye.

 
          
The
main hope was the cousins. Johnny Crawfish had risen from a teeming and
scrofulous family, any one of whom would have sold his sister to orangutans if
the price were right. (“Don’t worry, Sis, they promised you’ll get your own fur
coat.”) Singly and in groups, the cousins were approached, coated with a
promissory sprinkling of money, trained in the operation of the simple and
concealable cameras, and promised vast additional moneys should they return with
a usable photo of their dead departed relative, entire, recognizable, in focus,
and in the box.

 
          
There
would be two viewings, neither public; both were meant for family (cousins),
friends (thugs) and showbiz peers exclusively. Printed invitations were jealously
guarded and eagerly sought after. (Chauncey Chapperell’s visit to the printer
of these invitations produced, instead of the duplicate ducats hoped for, a
fresh swelling under Chauncey’s left eye and a little difficulty with his voice
for a few days.) The two viewings —Wednesday, 5:00 till 10:00 p.m., Thursday,
6:00 till 9:00—were democratically divided among the various categories of
invitees, so that cousins and thugs could hobnob with the great and near-great
on both occasions.

 
          
The
idea of buying invitations from a couple of cousins, and sending Don Grove or
somebody to pretend to be a Crawfish, was scotched, much to Don’s relief, when
it was learned there would always be a relative or two on duty at the entrance,
looking out for just that sort of substitution. With the obsequies taking place
indoors, there was nothing for a
Galaxy
air force to do. With the Crawfish fleet at the ready, the
Galaxy
navy must needs stay in port. And with razor- wire-topped
walls and armed thugs in jeeps to contend with, there was no thought of the
cavalry this time coming to the rescue.

 
          
It
was all up to the cousins.

 
          
Wednesday,
4:30
p.m.
The first camera-equipped cousins had been
sent off, but no result as yet was known. Sara sat as quietly as everybody
else, at her desk in the command center, and when the white light on her phone
began to flash she couldn’t at first think why on earth anybody would call her
at this particular moment. Then she picked up the receiver and said, “Yes?”
half expecting a wrong number, and it was Binx:

 
          
“Is
that the lovely and charming Sara Joslyn?”

 
          
“Binx!
How are you?”

 
          
“Reasonably
well,” he said. “Sitting up, taking nourishment.”

 
          
“Did
you want Jack?”

 
          
“I
don’t think so,” Binx said, “I never have before. Actually, it’s you I’m calling.
I’ve got your Buick, I think.”

 
          
Heart
quickening, Sara reached for pen and paper. “You do? Great!”

 
          
“Mary
Kate was pretty closemouthed about the purpose of all this,” Binx said,
complaining gendy, “so I’m not sure exactly what you need, so I just got
whatever I could.”

 
          
“That’s
great,” Sara said, being just as closemouthed as Mary Kate. “That’s fine,
whatever you can get is exacdy what I need.”

 
          
“Okay.
The Buick was rented from A-Betta Car Rental, out near the airport.” Binx
spelled the name of the rental company. “The renter, who used an American
Express card, gave the name Michael Hanrahan.”

 
          
“Irish?”
Sara said, surprised. The salsa music, the toughness of that face, all had made
her think he was Latin in some way. Dope dealers, something like that. So what
was this? Gun-running?

 
          
“If
Hanrahan is an Irish name,” Binx said, “and if he wasn’t fibbing when he gave
it, then I guess he’s Irish. Is this significant?”

 
          
“I
have no idea,” Sara told him truthfully. “What else do we have? Anything?”

 
          
“Mr.
Hanrahan gave a corporate address in
Los Angeles
,” Binx said. “On Sunset Boulevard.” He
reeled off the address, and said, “I think from the number it’s way east, out
of the good section. And the company is called Western States Investigations. ”

 
          
Sara
absorbed that one, then said, “Private detectives?”

 
          
“I
think so.” Binx said, “I called there, and they said Michael Hanrahan doesn’t
work for them anymore.”

 
          
“Did
they say when he left, or why, or any—”

           
“Sara, Sara,” Binx said. “I am only
human. In fact, barely that.”

           
“Yes, you’re right, I’m sorry.”

           
“I can tell you when the car was
turned in, if you’d like.”

           
“I’d like,” Sara said.

           
“July twelfth.”

           
The same day she’d found the dead
man; the car was turned in the same day. “Ah hah,” Sara said.

 
          
“The
interesting thing,” Binx said, “anyway I guess it’s interesting, is, that was
the second day of a one-week rental. They hadn’t expected it back until the
weekend.”

 
          
“Well,”
Sara said, “I guess Hanrahan didn’t need it anymore.”

           
“And that,” Binx said, “is all I
could learn. I hope it helps, with whatever you’re doing.”

           
“Thank you, Binx, I’m sure it
will,” Sara said. “I really appreciate this.”

           
“De nada. See you when you get
back.”

           
“Right.”

           
“Oh, and Sara ...”

           
Sara listened. “Yes?”

           
“I’ve been thinking, you know,” Binx
said, hemming and hawing and sounding very nervous and embarrassed, “and I’m
pretty sure the time has come and I’ve just got to leave Marcy. I mean, for
everybody’s sake. And I was thinking, uh, uh, when you come back, uh, maybe you
and I could have dinner or something, uh, talk about it, you know, and, uh, you
could give me the woman’s point of view.”

 
          
‘“Uh
huh,” said Sara.

           
“I think maybe you like understand
my situation,” Binx said. “You know, a sympathetic ear.”

           
“Uh huh,” said Sara.

           
“A shoulder to cry on, you know,
kind of thing.”

           
“Uh huh,” said Sara.

 
          
“Well,”
Binx said, and cleared his throat, and said, “See you, then.”

           
“Uh huh,” said Sara.