An Evil Guest

DEATH AND DEATH’S VISITORS

“What was all that about?” India inquired when the stagehand had gone.

“A man I know has heard rumors about Wally. He wanted to know if I’d heard anything. I said I hadn’t.”

“You said you couldn’t ask him questions. I remember that.”

“About what he’d told me. He said this was what he knew and he didn’t have time for questions. Then he began quizzing me.”

“What was this about somebody taking you, too?” The chair squealed a soft complaint as India leaned forward.

“Wally. He’d heard that Wally and some of his people — I suppose a secretary and maybe his lawyer, people like that — that Wally and these staff people were going on a big trip, out of the country. He thought maybe Wally would want me along.”

“Wow!”

“Right. I’d be paying for the bracelet, I guess. Did I show it to you?”

India shook her head. “You didn’t, but I saw it. I was there when he gave it to you.”

Cassie let the misunderstanding pass. “Anyway, I don’t know. That’s what I told the doctor on the phone, and that’s the truth.” She hesitated, seeking to measure her own courage. “I — I’m no virgin.”

“I never thought you were.”

“Not for a long, long time. But I’m not a whore, either...” She fell silent.

“Penny for thoughts?”

Cassie heaved a sigh. “I was just thinking that I’ve slept with some awful losers, and it might be nice to sleep with a winner for a change.”

“That’s the spirit! Your friends will be counting on you.”

“Yes, there’s that.” Cassie smiled. “I won’t forget you. What’s your news? You said you had big news. We’re going home?”

“Bet your ass! Everybody knows that Wally’s got a major hit here, and that includes Wally. So we’re getting new costumes, bigger and better scenery, and a bigger cast. It’s too late to take Volcano to Broadway this season, so we’re going home to work the kinks out of the new stuff at the Tiara.”

“That’s good.”

“You bet it is. It’s wonderful, and don’t you forget it. The ship gets ten more sailors, and Tiny gets twenty more natives. Fifteen girls and five boys. The whole damned show gets a humongous ad campaign featuring you. I figure a couple months to audition new people and rehearse. The new sets could make that three. Then we play the Tiara for the rest of the season.” India licked her lips. “We ought to be able to open a week or two before Christmas. There’s nothing like Christmas.”

Cassie, who had only half heard her, nodded. “I’ve been worrying about Margaret’s apartment. What if she has a cat?”

“She’d have gotten somebody to take care of it, that’s all.”

“I hope so, somebody to come in and feed the cat, clean the cat box, and water the plants. But sometimes people don’t.”

“Margaret isn’t people. I’ve seen enough of her to know she’d have done it. Aren’t you going to open that envelope?” India pointed.

“Not ’til you’re gone.”

“It’s probably from Wally.”

“I’m sure it is.” Largely to herself, Cassie nodded. “It’s probably just personal, though. If it says anything you ought to know about, I’ll tell you.”

“Got it.” India grunted and stood up, a moderately lengthy operation. After a final curious glance at the envelope, she went out.

Cassie herself rose as soon as she was gone, and bolted the door.

Cassie laid the note aside, wishing desperately that she had someone to talk to. Margaret was gone, only God knew where. Gid was gone as well. Much of what Gid said might be rubbish, but...

Should she burn it? She had no matches, and might set fire to the theater if she tried. She picked the note up again.

Someone was rapping on her door. Cassie called out, and a familiar voice answered, “It’s me, Norma. Want to split a cab back to the hotel?”

“Just a minute.” She opened the door. “I haven’t changed yet, but... but I hope you’ll wait. I’ll be as fast as I can.”

“I’ll help.”

The help included holding Cassie’s navy-blue wool coat while she slipped into it. “Cold out there, Norma?”

“It’s bound to be, this late. The rain’s stopped, though. I looked out the window.”

“So did I, but I didn’t even notice the rain. I’ve got a problem. A big one so complicated I don’t even know if I can tell you about it. Make it clear, you know? It’s not clear to me.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“Just like that?” Cassie realized that she was miss-buttoning her coat and started over. “I thought maybe you had something.”

“I do, Cassie, but you first.” Norma smiled, warm and friendly. “You’re our star.”

“All right.” Had she worn her beret? She glanced around and decided she had not. “Let’s start with this. Wally scares me.”

Norma nodded. “Me, too. He scares everybody.”

“Can you love a man who scares you? I feel as if I shouldn’t be able to do that, but...”

“You like him.”

“You’re right.” Cassie sighed. “I do. He’s a stand-up, no buckshot guy. That’s how he seems to me. Is it all right if I say buckshot? Everybody else says bullshit.”

The smile became a grin. “They talk it, too. Sure. Say whatever you feel like saying.”

“He wants me to go someplace with him. He’s promising a lot, but it sounds crazy.”

“Go where?”

“That’s it. Or part of it. I don’t know.”

“Some terrible place, right? Death Valley in the summer.”

“Please don’t make jokes. He says it’s paradise.”

“That means a resort. Great weather, surfing, maybe scuba diving. You know. Great food and a spa. You’re not married, are you, Cassie?”

“Not now. Divorced.”

“Me, too. I used to be married to the volcano god. Did you know?”

“Vince? I’m ready to go if you are.” Cassie gestured toward the door. “That must have been weird.”

“We were both younger then. It wasn’t too bad. After a couple of years I explained that what he really wanted wasn’t a wife, it was a servant who screwed. We split, and there were no hard feelings.”

For a moment, Cassie gnawed her lower lip. “Are you sorry now?”

“Sometimes.” Norma finished buttoning her own coat; it was black wool and a little longer than Cassie’s. “But not mostly.”

The theater was silent, the audience gone. Where it had been, the ushers would be cleaning up — collecting programs, and the plastic cups in which the cash bar served drinks between the acts.

“I’m sorry about Herbie, sometimes. Never about dumping Scott.”

“What’s that, Cassie? I didn’t quite catch it.”

A dancer trotted past without a word, hurrying home, perhaps, or hurrying off to the Pink Lemonade Stand for a drink with the boys.

“I said Wally took me to dinner at Rusterman’s one time. Did I ever tell you about that?”

Norma shook her head.

“I met him there. He said he’d been hoping to take me himself, but he couldn’t make it. He’d be there as soon as he could.”

“Sounds bad.”

“I don’t know.” Cassie stopped, held where she was by her own feelings. “He’d made a reservation, and they took me to the table and treated me like the Queen of Sheba. Then my doorman phoned. My place had been broken into and the police were on the way.”

“Are you saying it was him? Mr. Rosenquist?”

Cassie nodded. “This is confidential. Please. If you let it out you might ruin us.”

“Right. I understand.”

“I know it was him. He told me when he joined me at Rusterman’s.”

“He admitted it?”

“He did. He has enemies, and he felt he had to check up on me. He didn’t take anything. So I thought of the show, and you and me and India and everybody. And I smiled and said, fine now you know you can trust me.”

“Good for you!”

“We sparred around a little. No, we sparred around a lot, and when dinner was over we got up and I took his arm — you know how you do — and we walked out of our private room and through the restaurant. And I was holding on to this big important man, almost a foot taller than I am, in a thousand-dollar suit. Everybody looked, and everybody was impressed. I’d been drinking wine with dinner, but that was better than any wine I ever drank. This wasn’t just some handsome twit. I’ve had three or four of those. This was a — I don’t know.”

“The alpha male,” Norma supplied.

“Right. A Man with a capital M. He told me after how proud he was because every man who saw us wanted to be him. I’ve never told him I felt prouder than he did.”

The security guard touched his cap and opened the stage door.

“He’s an alpha male,” Cassie continued, “like you say, if that means what I think it does. He can be hurt, just the same. I could hurt him at least as easily as he could hurt me. As tough as he is and as smart as he is, he’s terribly vulnerable. Oh, darn it, Norma, I like him! I do, and I can’t help myself. I don’t want to hurt him. Should I go with him? Go with him to his crazy paradise? Tell me.”

Norma nodded. “I would. I heard about the bracelet.”

Cassie breathed deeply, drawing in the cold, stale air of the alley. “Somebody I trust told me once that he was — was... Well, never mind.”

“Bad, huh? That bracelet didn’t sound bad.”

Cassie nodded. “It’s devastating, really, and then there’s the kidnapping. You must have heard from Gil. Zelda and Ebony are still back home, and Margaret — Margaret...” She felt she was choking, and paused to push aside an empty beer can. “Another darned old alley!”

Norma gestured. “Come on, if we hike up to Fifth Street — ”

“I know.”

“Well, sure. Listen, Cassie, we will be getting a whole bunch of new people. It’s not just Gil for Dean Heeny.”

Wearily, she nodded. There were few pedestrians at this time of night; the street, which had been glutted with traffic an hour ago, was almost deserted as well. A black-and-white police cruiser glided past and was gone.

“You’re solid, naturally. My guess is that Vince and Gil are solid, too. Probably Tiny. The rest of us are on the bubble, and I was hoping — ”

That was as far as Norma got before the bullet doubled her over.

HOURS later, back in her room with the door locked and the hotel operator under strict orders to block incoming calls, Cassie reflected that hoping had been the last word Norma (who had spoken so many lines flawlessly) had ever said. Had Norma heard the sound of the shot? Could she have guessed, before the shot... ?

No. Norma had bent forward, her knees buckling, and the sound had come after that, as if the intention to kill had killed.

POLICEWOMAN: “What do you know about rifles, Miss Casey?”

Cassie: “Nothing really. I shot a twenty-two one time.”

Policewoman: “I’m glad you’re feeling better now.”

SIGHING, Cassie unlocked her next-to-largest suitcase and took out the small pistol she sometimes strapped to her thigh. There was nothing reassuring about it tonight; she returned it to the suitcase and turned the key in the lock.

Dialing Zelda got a recorded voice: “You have reached the Youmans Theatrical Agency. Our staff is otherwise engaged. Please leave a message at the tone, and we’ll get back to you as soon — ”

Cassie was cradling the hotel telephone when her cell phone played “Pigs in Paradise.” Wearily, she pressed the incomprehensible symbol that let her answer. “Hello.”

“Cassie? This’s Sharon. There must be a couple dozen reporters trying to get hold of you. Have you talked to any of them?”

“No. I don’t want to.”

“Will you talk to me? Please? We’ve been friends for years. An exclusive? Please?”

“I have to talk to somebody.” Cassie sighed, and felt the sigh turn into a sob. “I’ll talk, if you don’t ask me questions.”

“Fine! I won’t. Girl Scout’s honor.”

“When I got back here, I called the hotel operator and asked her to block calls. She said she would. After that I cried. After that I took a shower and cried some more. I know you don’t want to hear all this, but I’ve got to say it to somebody.”

“I do want to hear it. Trust me, Cassie. I really do. Go on.”

“After that I thought, ‘Thank God! I don’t have to talk to anybody.’ Only as soon as I thought it, I knew I wanted to talk to somebody.”

“I’m here for you, Cassie. I’m listening.”

“So I tried to talk to God, but I got his answering machine. You know what I mean?”

“Sure. Go on.”

“Gid says there’s no good and no evil, and it took me a long time to understand what he meant by it. Mariah believes in God. That’s who I am in the show — Mariah.”

“I’ve got it.”

“Mariah believes in God, but we don’t. Add nothing to God and you get good. Does it make sense to you, Sharon?”

“It does to you, and that’s what’s important.”

“Wally isn’t here. He’s supposed to be, but he isn’t. I thought of talking to him, even if he was in South Africa or someplace. I tried and tried, but I couldn’t find him. It was like everybody in the world that I know had died with Norma.”

“That must have been awful.”

“I couldn’t think of anybody else. My mom’s dead, and my father wouldn’t care. Somebody stole Margaret and there didn’t seem to be anybody left for me. I thought of Gid, but I don’t have any way to get hold of him. His phone’s turned off and I don’t know where he is. So I thought of Gil Corby. He wasn’t in the theater and he wasn’t at the diner where he used to work. I tried to call India, but she didn’t answer.”

“She’s probably talking to the police. I don’t know who Gil Corby is, but I’ll help you get hold of him if I can.”

“He plays Mr. Sharpy. I don’t know him, but I like him. Can you like somebody you don’t know?”

“Sure. I’ll try to find him for you.”

“Then I cried again, and after that I tried to talk to Zelda. I got her answering machine, too.”

“You’ve got me,” Sharon said. “I’m right here.”

“Yes.” Cassie swallowed. “Norma’s dead. Do you know about that?”

“I heard. Norma Peiper.”

“She was my Aunt Jane in the show, and she was walking next to me when they sh-sh-shot — Excuse me.”

When Cassie picked up the cell phone again, she said, “I had to go into the bathroom to get — it doesn’t matter. My nose was running. It still is.”

Sharon said, “No problem.”

“Thanks. I remember the shot. How it sounded when it hit her and the bang right after that. I was beside her on the wet sidewalk, on my knees yelling and yelling. After that I was in a police car and Norma was gone. The woman said I was hysterical and I wanted to say I wasn’t, but I couldn’t stop crying. I...

“Sniveling. Isn’t that what you call this? What I’m doing now? I’m sniveling. You’d probably like to kick me for it and I don’t blame you, but I feel all hollow inside. No grit, no grit at all. I’m terribly, horribly scared.”

“Anybody would be, and I’d like to hug you. I wish I could.”

“A rifle can kill somebody three hundred yards away. Did you know that? A woman told me. A cop. They think he was on the roof of a building almost three hundred yards away, with a digital scope on his rifle. He shot her the way you’d shoot something on vid, and she was dead, and he went down in an elevator and out to the street. Wouldn’t people see his gun, Sharon?”

“He didn’t leave it behind?”

“I don’t think so. They said they found an empty case — that’s the brass part that holds the gunpowder. She explained it to me, and — ” Cassie thought of her own gun, the silver-tipped bullets she could count through the clear window in its neat plastic magazine, and the brass cases that contained them. Those brass cases were tarnished again, although she had taken them out and polished them once. Aloud she said, “Oh, never mind.”

“Then he hid it some way.” Sharon sounded confident. “He might have put in one of those long cardboard boxes, for instance.”

“Norma was from Maine. She’d grown up there, I mean. Some little town in Maine. She could do the accent, too. I talked to her a few times, and I wish we’d talked a lot more. She took me out to lunch before we left town, but I never took her back and now I feel terrible about it. She was from Maine and she did stand-up comedy in clubs when she couldn’t get a real part, stand-up comedy with drunks yelling and trying to ruin her act. And that’s everything I can remember about her, every last bit. One more thing — India thought she smiled too much, and I r-remember th-th-that.”

Sharon said, “Don’t start crying again.”

“I w-wish I could. Crying would make me feel better. Norma died for me. She died in my place. I know it, and it’s tearing me up inside. Someone paid that man with the rifle. We were walking side by side, two women about the same size, and he shot the r-r-wrong w-w-one.”

“Who’d want to kill you, Cassie?”

SHE had said, “Nobody! Nobody at all,” but now, as she prepared for bed, she wondered whether that answer had been the right one. Bill Reis was a murderer and Wally Rosenquist was Bill Reis. But her? Did you give diamond bracelets to women you meant to murder?

Someone had tried to murder Gideon Chase, and she was working for him, supposedly. And for Wally, who was really Bill.

Did the police kill people? That lieutenant — she could not recall his name — had seemed capable of any number of murders.

Berg? It had been something like that...

SHE was sitting in a hard wooden chair with a writing arm. Before her, the teacher rapped her desk with a ruler. The teacher was frowning, her frown was deeply disturbing, and the tapping never ended.

SHE sat up in bed. There had been gray light through the scrim when she had switched off the bedside lamp, the mixed contributions of headlights and taillights, of ugly yellow streetlights and many-colored electric signs. Her window was dark now, night-black glass behind the scrim, night solidified.

On which someone or something tapped.

Throwing aside sheet and blanket, she stood up. The tapping continued.

“Who’s there?”

There was no answer.

“What do you want?”

There was only the tapping. Step by step she made her way across the dark room to the window and pushed aside the scrim.

They might have been vultures, if vultures stood taller than men and possessed towering pale helmets with elongated visors like caricatures of human faces.

She screamed. One of the tall figures gestured and she screamed again.

Her suitcase was locked and she had forgotten where she put her keys.

The door opened an inch or two — and stubbornly refused to open farther.

Dumping her purse on the floor revealed jangling keys. Suddenly compliant, her suitcase flew open. She crouched beside it trembling, gun in hand.