Kiss the Girls

CHAPTER 68.

KATE AND I moved back a safe distance from the cabin. We ducked behind a stand of thick fir trees.

“I heard him scream,” Kate said when we got into the deeper woods.

“What did you see back there, Alex?” “I saw the devil.” I told her the truth. “I saw an absolutely crazy and evil man talking to himself. If he isn't the Gentleman, he does a great imitation.” The two of us took shifts watching Rudolph's hideaway over the next several hours. That way, we both got some rest. Around six in the morning I met with the FBI team, and they gave me a pocket-sized walkie-talkie in case we needed to talk in a hurry. I still wondered how much they'd told me of what they knew.

When Dr. Will Rudolph eventually made another appearance outside, it was past one o'clock on Saturday afternoon. The silver-blue nimbus of sea mist had finally burned off. Scrub jays swooped and hollered overhead. Under different circumstances, it would have been a nice setting for a weekend in the mountains.

Dr. Rudolph cleaned up in a whitewashed outdoor shower behind the house. He was muscular, with a washboard stomach, and looked agile and fit. He was extremely handsome. He cavorted and danced around in the nude. His bearing seemed a little formal. The Gentleman.

“He's so unbelievably sure of himself, Alex,” Kate said as we watched Rudolph from the woods. “Just look at him.” Everything seemed very odd and ritualistic. Was the dance part of his act? His pattern?

When he finished his shower, he walked across the backyard to a small wildflower garden. He picked about a dozen flowers and brought them into the house. The Gentleman had his flowers! What now?

At four in the afternoon, Rudolph came out the back screen door of the cabin again. He was dressed in tight black jeans, a plain white pocket T, black leather sandals. He hopped in the Range Rover and drove toward Highway 1.

About two miles south on the coast road, he pulled into a restaurant and cafe called Nepenthe. Kate and I waited on the sandy road shoulder, then we followed the Range Rover into a large, crowded parking lot. Jimi Hendrix's “Electric Ladyland” was playing loudly from speakers hidden in the trees.

“Maybe he's just your average horny Los Angeles doctor,” Kate said as we finally entered the parking area and searched for a space.

“No. He's the Gentleman, all right. He's our California butcher boy.” I was sure of it after watching him the night before, and now today.

Nepenthe was busy, filled mostly with good-looking people in their twenties and thirties, but also a sprinkling of aging hippies, some of whom were sixty or more. Stonewashed jeans, the latest West Coast swimsuit creations, colorful flip-flops, expensive hiking boots were everywhere.

So were a lot of attractive women, I noticed. All ages, all sizes, all ethnic castes. Kiss the girls.

I had heard of Nepenthe, actually. It had been hot and famous in the sixties, but, even before that, Orson Welles had bought the desirable, breathtakingly beautiful property for Rita Hayworth.

Kate and I watched how Dr. Rudolph operated at the bar. He was polite. A smile for the bartender. Shared laughter. He looked around and seriously checked out several attractive women. Apparently they weren't attractive enough, though.

He ventured out onto a large field stone terrace overlooking the Pacific. Rock music from the seventies and eighties was playing from an expensive sound system. The Grateful Dead. The Doors. The Eagles.

This was Hotel California.

“It's a beautiful spot for it, Alex. Whatever in hell he's up to.” “He's up to six. He's looking for victim number seven,” I said.

Far below, on an inaccessible beach, we could see sea lions, brown pelicans, cormorants. I wished that Damon and Jannie were here to see them, and I wished the circumstances of my being here were completely different.

Out on the terrace, I took Kate's hand. “Makes us look like we belong,” I said and winked at her.

“Maybe we do.” Kate gave an exaggerated wink back.

We watched Rudolph approach a striking blond woman. She was the Gentleman's type. In her early twenties. Shapely. Beautiful face.

She was also Casanova's type, I couldn't help thinking.

Her wavy, sun bleached hair fell to her tiny waist. She wore a red-and-yellow flowered dress from Putumayo's that flowed down to a pair of black European work boots She flowed when she moved as well.

She was drinking champagne by the glass.

I hadn't spotted agents Cosgrove or Asaro yet, which was making me a little nervous, a little nuts.

“She's beautiful, isn't she? She's just perfect,” Kate whispered at my side. “We can't let him hurt her, Alex. We can't let anything happen to that poor woman.” “We won't,” I said, “but we have to catch him in the act, nail him for kidnapping, if nothing else. We need evidence that he is the Gentleman Caller.” I finally spotted John Asaro at the crowded main bar. He had on a bright yellow Nike T-shirt and fit in okay. I didn't spot Ray Cosgrove or any of the other agents which was actually a good sign.

Rudolph and the young blond woman seemed to have hit it off immediately. She appeared to be gregarious and fun-loving. She had perfect white teeth and her smile was dazzling. She couldn't help but make an impression across the crowded room. My brain was sliding into overload. We were watching the Gentleman Caller at work, weren't we?

“He's hunting ... and just like that” Kate snapped her fingers "he picks them up. Gets almost any woman he wants. That's how he does it.

So simple ... “It's the way he looks that gets them, Alex,” Kate continued. “He has a rebellious look about him and he's very handsome. That combination is irresistible to some women. She let him think it was his line of small talk that won her over, but it's because he's such a hunk.” “So, she just picked him up?” I asked. “Our killer hunk?” Kate nodded. She wouldn't take her eyes off the two of them. “She just picked up the Gentleman Caller. He wanted her to, of course. I'll bet that's how he gets them, and why he never gets caught.” “It's not how Casanova works, though. Is it?” “Maybe Casanova isn't good-looking.” Kate turned and looked at me.

“That might explain the masks he wears. Maybe he's ugly, or disfigured, and ashamed of how he looks.” I had another thought, another theory, about Casanova and his masks, but I didn't want to say anything just yet.

The Gentleman and his new girlfriend ordered ambro-siaburgers, the house specialty. So did Kate and I. When in paradise ... They hung around the cafe until around seven o'clock and then got up to leave.

Kate and I rose from our table, too. Actually, I was half enjoying myself, considering the eerie circumstances. We had a table that overlooked the water. Down below, the Pacific crashed against a black wall of slippery rocks, and we could hear sea lions barking loudly.

I noted that there was no touching between the two of them as they walked out to the parking lot. It suggested to me that one of them was secretly shy.

Dr. Will Rudolph politely held open the door of his Range Rover, and the blond woman was laughing as she hopped in. He performed a tiny, elegant bow at the car door. The Gentleman.

She chose him, I was thinking. It wasn't kidnapping yet. She was still making choices for herself.

We had nothing to go after him for, nothing to hold him on.

Perfect crimes.

On both coasts.