Bone Deep

30

Three days following the incident at the Marriott, Kom arrived at Norwalk Hospital and sauntered through the lobby with a word for the receptionist as usual.

"A man's been asking for you, Dr. Kom," the receptionist told him.

"Who?"

"Didn't give his name. Wasn't no patient though."

"How do you know?"

"Said so. Just kept asking if you'd come in yet. Said he'd check back."

"What did he look like?" Kom asked. The receptionist hesitated. She had no words to distinguish between shades of pale. "Look like a cop," she said finally. Kom suppressed a smile. Becker. A sore loser. "Let me know if he comes again," he said.

The following day Kom left his office at noon and drove toward Trumbull on the Merritt Parkway. He made his usual evasive maneuvers, and when he was convinced that he was not followed, he drove to the motel where he saw Doris Waxman's black Acura waiting in the parking lot. In the darkened motel room, Kom was removing her brassiere when the telephone rang. They both stared at the instrument, startled and uncertain, as it rang again. On the fourth ring Kom picked it up gingerly, as if it might explode, and he held it to his ear without speaking. "Mrs.

Waxman," said a man's voice, flat and unaccented. Kom thought he knew the voice, but he was not certain.

"He asked for you," he said, holding the phone to the woman who sat beside him on the bed, now replacing her bra. She said, "Yes?" then held the receiver to her ear for a long time, saying nothing, listening.

Kom watched her expression change from puzzlement to fear, and not fear of being discovered by her husband but something far deeper, something genuinely terrifying. When she hung up at last, she grabbed her blouse from the floor and started for the door.

"Who was it?" Kom asked. Without answering, without glancing back at Kom, she opened the door and hurried from the room, dressing as she went. By the time Kom had put on his shoes and hastened after her, Mrs.

Waxman was already pulling out of the parking lot in her Acura. Kom jogged a few paces after her, waving for her to stop. At the exit onto the street, Mrs. Waxman was forced by traffic to halt. She turned to see Kom approaching her, then accelerated dangerously into the stream of oncoming cars. Amid a chorus of angry horns, she fishtailed briefly until she regained control of her car, then raced away, her engine howling.

Kom stood by the exit, wondering what could possibly have happened on the phone. The look on her face just before she risked her life in traffic had been one of sheer terror, and it had come from seeing Kom approach. Becker, he thought again bitterly.

Two nights later, Kom paced his darkened house restlessly while his wife slept. For the first time in years, he had no woman to visit. Denise was dead, Doris Waxman would not speak to him even on the telephone, and Karen Crist, for whom Kom still had hopes, was a very dangerous choice with Becker on the prowl. Her time would come, he had not given up, and his victory over her would be all the sweeter because of Becker's petty vindictiveness-but her time was not yet. He was seized by a kind of desperation which he had been forestalling by making love to his wife, but there were limits to how much of that he was willing to do. The woman bored him; all women bored him after half a dozen times. Once he had mastered their needs, once he had laid waste to their defenses and learned how to reduce them to eager accomplices of their own seduction, there was little else to maintain his interest. It was not sex that he craved, he had realized that about himself long ago; it was mastery, and sex was his chosen vehicle for its display. An artist did not continue to paint the same work after he had completed it; he sought a new canvas, a new subject. There were variations he could ring on Tovah, more ways that he could reduce her to his will, different means of demonstrating his control, but there was no point in it other than as a bravura exercise. He had mastered her years ago and she served him now-sexually, that is-as no more than an escape valve, a convenient means of letting off some libidinous steam, but while a session with her left him physically relieved, at least for a short time, it did nothing for him mentally. His spirit did not soar, because he had conquered her.

He needed more conquests, he needed more victims, Captain Luv was not a homebody, he was a presence abroad in the world, a natural force that could not be confined for any length of time. Not only did he have no woman to visit, none to court or flirt with or scheme about, but since Becker had impounded the Caprice, he had no safe way to get around. That problem could be addressed in due course once the hysteria surrounding the Appleseed murders had abatedas it would do, as it must do if no more bodies were found, and Kom would see to it that no more were found-but in the meantime, he felt the pressure of his need build within him.

The telephone rang and Kom looked instinctively at the hour. It was past midnight. The call was on their private, unlisted line, the one Tovah gave out only to her close friends and the one Kom gave to no one.

Neither his office nor the hospital had this number at any time.

He picked up the phone on the second ring and said, "Hello?"

"You home, stud?" a voice demanded.

Kom paused, shocked. He hesitated to respond. Perhaps it was a trap of some sort. Or just a crank… But he knew it was not. "It's you, isn't it?" he said. The voice laughed. "No."

"What do you think you're proving by this?"

The line went dead in his ear and Kom hung up, disappointed. He wanted to talk about it, to debate the voice, to have a chance for his superior wit to come into play. If Becker wanted to play games, that was all right with Kom, as long as he was allowed to play too. What was this silly long-distance sniping supposed to do? Did Becker seriously think a few anonymous phone calls could bother Kom for long? It could only mean that the so-called special agent had given up on direct confrontation. He had had his chance in the elevator and Kom had emerged victorious. And Becker knew it. The call to Doris in the motel, the call now, were just the acts of a desperate man. He knew that Kom could not be harmed, he was unassailable.

On Tuesday afternoon Kom decided to remine some territory he had prospected years before. There was a victim named Rachel whom he had slept with just once before disappearing from her life. She had proven to be a voracious, aggressive lover, so wrapped up in her own selfish notions of what she wanted that she had overpowered him, dismissed his attempts at tenderness and subtlety, and brought him to a sour, grudging climax long before she was ready, then had continued on her own after her flagellant attempts to enlist his continued cooperation failed. The evening was a disaster for both of them and one of the few failures on his record. In lieu of new conquests, Kom decided to revive their relationships feat in itself, given his abrupt and unceremonious departure-and bring his now greater mastery to the task. He would conquer and control her this time, subject her to his will. It would be a sweet victory. It would not constitute a new entry in his journal, would not add to the length of the list of his victims, but he would know what he had accomplished.

He called the selfish bitch from the hospital and got her to agree to see him. She did not know his real name, of course-only those whom he met socially or professionally did-so he did not want to use his own car and risk having the license plate traced. He exited the hospital from the rear and walked toward the Pathmark Mall. Halfway there he was aware that he was being followed. A man was on foot some thirty yards behind and across the street. Whenever Kom looked back the man would turn his back or step behind a tree in a clumsy attempt to hide-or was it a clumsy attempt to be seen? The man wore a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes and looked like ten thousand others who followed the current fad in headwear, and he kept his face averted, but Kom knew who it was. Kom thought of crossing the street and confronting the man, but there was something in his lurking, furtive posture that suggested danger.

Oh, we'll meet, he thought, but on my terms, in a place of my choosing.

He remembered attacking Kiwasee with the shovel, felt again the thrilling shock of the blows running through his forearms. He was not afraid of anyoneif conditions were right. He would wait until they were.

He could not proceed to the pay phone now, he could not call a cab.

There was no point in giving anything away. The bitch Rachel would have to wait for her comeuppance.

He turned around casually, as if he had only been out for a stroll, and headed back to the hospital. The man fled before him, gripping the baseball cap even lower, hurrying away from Kom, back the way he had come. Kom grinned savagely. My enemies run before me, he thought gleefully.

It was only later, as he drove home from the hospital to his wife, that Kom realized that his victory over Becker had been a defeat. Once more he was left with no woman to visit, no victim to please.

A day later Kom returned home late in the afternoon to see Becker's car pulling out of the driveway. Kom waved but Becker acted as if he did not see him. When Kom asked Tovah she said that he had just missed a social call. Becker had stopped by to say hello to Stanley, had stayed long enough to drink a beer, then had excused himself, saying he could wait no longer, just before Kom arrived home.

Kom studied her throughout this recital, looking for signs of deceit or unease, but she seemed as bored and phlegmatic as ever. It occurred to him to wonder if his wife was having an affair, but the subject did not interest him. He did not care, he realized, as long as she did not embarrass him publicly. He was only concerned with Becker's activities, not Tovah's. Whatever he had come for, it had not been for a social call.

It was another fitful night for Kom. First came the phone call, the same voice, Becker's voice, flat and menacing. "You home, stud?" Then gone before Kom could answer, leaving him again frustrated, filled with angry replies.

He paced the house in the darkness once more, fulminating, furious at the injustice of Becker's campaign. Kom had beaten Becker fairly, he had left him without a scrap of evidence, without so much as a clue-and yet Becker hounded him now out of spite. Yapped at him with the pathetically malicious determination of a chained dog. There was no way Becker could really harm him with all of this nonsense, he would tire of it eventually and Kom would resume his proper role in life. But in the meantime…

The phone rang again and Kom snatched it off the hook. This time he heard only the charged silence of someone listening on the other end.

"What do you think you're accomplishing?" Kom asked. There was no reply. "It's silly for friends to treat each other this way. I don't hold your behavior against you, I really don't. You were jealous, you lost control of yourself-I understand. I'm not a vengeful man, I forgive you. Can't we talk and patch this up? I still value your friendship…"

Kom realized that somewhere in the midst of his speech the line had gone dead, and he wondered for a moment if it had been Becker on the line at all, or some wrong number or late-night crank getting a strange earful.

His agitation growing, Kom went to his den and took out his journal, seeking consolation in remembering his past triumphs. The journal was kept in a plain notebook hidden inside the false cover of a miniature Latin-English/EnglishLatin dictionary small enough to fit in the palm of his hand, the last place Tovah would look-if she were inclined to search in the first place.

He opened the book at random to test his memory. It was much easier to recall the names or faces if he proceeded in chronological order, he could gauge his adventures by the seasons, by other major events. Whom had he had for a birthday treat? Who had rolled with him in the outdoors of summer, who had warmed him in the winter? There were 129 names in his journal now and Kom could remember something about all of them, some peculiarity, a way they had of moving, a favorite expression when in the throes, an endearing-or repulsive-physical characteristic, like Denise's strawberry mark. A special way in which he had fooled them, tricked them, lied to them, overcome them. He took all conquests as they came, but he preferred the hard ones, the contested struggles.

It was always better to have a worthy opponent, it made the victory sweeter.

One hundred and twenty-nine was not such a huge number for a man under different circumstances. There were probably men in the big cities who haunted singles bars who could top that total easily, but Kom had done it all in secret and much of it while married. He had kept his reputation intact, his marriage unsullied-Tovah's suspicions were only that, she could prove nothing-and no one knew about any of his affairs except himself and his victim. It was an extraordinary accomplishment, he was immense proud of it.

He had starred the entries that had become special because the victim died, but it was an unnecessary embellishment. He would never forget those moments; they had become the times for which he lived.

This night he struggled at first, trying to identify a few names-he was distracted and upset by his enforced inactivity and by the recent phone calls. He had opened the journal to someone called Becky and the name was meaningless to him, try as he might he could summon up neither sight nor scent nor taste. The next victim was also faceless and so he cheated, looking at the year and month, trying to force a recollection of an event that lasted a few weeks at best and had happened seven years earlier.

Impatient with the game, he put the book back on the shelf with his French, German, and Spanish dictionaries and reached for the phone. He would call Becker, give him tit for tat. Strike back, take the initiative away from his tormentor. He had not yet decided whether to speak or not when Karen answered the phone.

"Hello," she said, her voice fuzzy with sleep.

With a startling clarity, Kom's strategy snapped into place. He could see it all so clearly he nearly gasped aloud.

"Hello?" she said again.

"Karen, it's Stanley," he said, dropping his voice to the near whisper of her own, as if they were alone together in a darkened room. "I'm sorry to call so late, but I just can't sleep."

"What is it?" she said.

Was Becker in bed, next to her? he wondered. Listening, wondering who was talking to his wife at this hour? Or was he, too, pacing through his house, seething with frustration'?

"Please don't take this wrong," he said.

"What is it?"

"I know I shouldn't do this. I have no right to do this…" He trailed off, giving her room to chase after him.

"What?"

"Please don't hold it against me. I can't afford to lose your friendship, it means too much to me…

"Tell me what it is, Stanley."

She had used his name. Kom grinned triumphantly. If Becker was there, he knew who was calling. "I keep thinking about you," he said. He heard the check in her breathing, knew that she teetered on the delicate edge between caution and desire to hear more. He eased her over onto his side. "I don't mean anything more by that, — I know nothing can be done and I shouldn't even be saying it, but I just had to tell you. I'm not asking anything from you, Karen, I don't expect you to do anything, I know you don't want me to do anything-but please, just accept how I feel. It's all I can offer. I know it's very little, coming from me-but I had to share it with you, I had to let you know, it's been driving me crazy." She was silent for a long while and he listened to her breathing, trying to gauge her reaction-but in his heart Kom already knew her reaction. Any woman's reaction. The mastery lay as much in his delivery as in his lines. They loved his shyness, his unassuming candor, the implied morality of his stance. He groped for his words, tripped over them, stuttered forth his sincerity. His was an open heart, exposed and vulnerable, asking for nothing in return but the chance to adore her.

When she had had time enough to collect her thoughts, he continued. "I won't call you again," he said. "I'm sorry. I hope I didn't… I don't want to… I'm so sorry, I just had to tell you. "

"I don't know what to say," she said. Her voice was clear and fully awake now. He could see her sitting up in bed, struggling to find the right tone to deal with him, not wanting to say too much, not wanting him to hang up. Clearly Becker was not there. The guarded quality did not come from an effort to speak in code so an auditor would not understand, she was simply protecting herself. For all the good it might do her.

"You must have known," he said. "You must have seen how I was fall-how I was getting. Don't hate me for this. It's been so long since Tovah and I had any kind of decent relationship… you just make me feel so alive."

"Yes," she said timorously, "I know." Her voice was softer now. She had made up her mind. Kom smiled wolfishly to himself and settled in for a long late-night conversation, private and secret, a warm bath of intimacy. Who could resist love? Fresh, new, tender, hesitant, undemanding love? Hewas on his way.

"Can we talk for a while?" he asked. "Just talk?"

When she replied, her voice was barely audible, as if the simple word itself was committing her to an act of betrayal-which it was.

"Yes," said Karen. "We can talk."