Necessity

34

She lets herself in and double-locks the door and slumps into the threadbare easy chair. Strength flows away as if a drainplug has been pulled.

Blood pressure, she thinks. That’s all it is. A drop in blood pressure that follows shock’s injections of adrenaline. The body feels it’s safe now so it wants to relax.

Got to keep the brain working now: analytical, observant. No time for Victorian swoons.

A drink. A drink would help …

No. Coffee would be better.

She fills the kettle and sets it on the burner. For a moment it is good to occupy her hands with methodical functions: fit the paper filter into the Melitta’s plastic funnel; dip measures of ground coffee into it.

Waiting for the kettle to boil she’s imagining a knock at the door-seeing herself go right up the wall.

Crooks, she wonders: fugitives whose faces are pinned up on post office walls. How can they live like that-wanting to scream every time someone sounds the doorbell, desperate to run if the telephone rings, terrified if a stranger so much as looks at them twice?

She remembers the glittering eyes of the coyote. Not furtive but startled. Fear is nothing to be ashamed of. But how do you go on endlessly living with it?

Now we have got to think, children. Quickly and very clearly.

The son of a bitch took you by surprise and he threw a hell of a scare into you. But how much of a danger is Graeme, really?

He’s jumped to confusions: he doesn’t suspect any part of the real truth.

What is he likely to do? What’s his next move?

You can’t predict that until you’ve figured out what he really wants.

If you assume he’s eager to find someone to blackmail, then it’s quite possible he’ll give it up as soon as he realizes there’s no profit in it for him; and he’ll arrive soon enough at that realization because he isn’t going to find any leads that will take him any closer to identifying the Very Important Person whose mistress he believes you to be.

Maybe he’ll try to follow you around. He may keep an eye on the bookshop until you show up. Then he’ll try to tail you to see where you’re living.

You’ll have to have eyes in the back of your head for a while: keep giving him the slip until he gets tired of it.

Isn’t he bound to get tired of it? He’s not likely to waste weeks or months on something that isn’t paying off.

If it comes to the worst he’ll trace you as far as this place. He’ll ask questions-neighbors, superintendent-and he’ll learn nobody’s ever seen a male visitor to her apartment.

Maybe even then he’ll still believe she’s consorting with a tycoon or a movie star or a senator; but he’ll realize she’s too cagey for him and he’ll have no name-no one to blackmail.

Graeme’s an opportunist. He won’t waste his time. He’ll give up; go somewhere else and harass someone else. He’s the kind who likes to exploit people’s weaknesses. If you show him none he’ll go away and find easier opportunities elsewhere. All you’ve got to do is remain calm and strong.

Just don’t panic, that’s all.

Realistically now: to what extent-if any-does he threaten your security or Ellen’s?

The kettle begins to whistle. She pours water through the coffee into the mug. When it stops dripping she sits at the dinette table with both hands wrapped around the mug; it’s now that she notices how cold she feels.

Trouble is, you know, you can’t count on Graeme’s perfidy. Just because you dislike him you mustn’t rush into a miscalculation. Suppose he isn’t a cheap blackmailer? What if he’s actually doing his job?

Suppose he’s looking for a front-page beat? A nice scandal over his byline?

Journalists. She’s known a few of them. Self-appointed truth seekers who respect no one’s privacy but their own-it never matters whose feelings they hurt or what damage they do: not so long as they can shove a microphone under a grieving widow’s nose or catch a princess naked in a telephoto lens or photograph grisly blood-soaked victims of wars and accidents or fill two columns of tabloid newsprint with lurid headlines and yellow sensationalism.

News. The people’s right to know. The Fourth Amendment.

Never mind whose life the story may destroy. A fourteen-month-old girl’s? Too bad. C’est la vie. C’est la news.

I think there’s a story in you. Quite possibly a big story.

The real risk isn’t that he’s a cheap blackmailing crook. The real risk is that he’s just what he says he is: an investigative reporter.

He’s already suspicious enough to have hung around four nights in a row watching the other apartment. Suspicious enough to have done a cursory job of tracing the backtrail and found out it led nowhere. Suspicious enough to keep looking? To find Jennifer Corfu Hartman’s 1953 death certificate in the Tucson courthouse?

And then what?

You’ve done everything possible to break every point of connection that might have led them to trace you from New York to here. But you didn’t think about what could happen if someone tried to trace you backward, starting out from here.

What can he find?

Be reasonable. Don’t attribute superhuman skills to him. He hasn’t got X-ray vision.

But he does have contacts. If he’s written lengthy articles about organized crime it means he must have developed a good number of useful lines of communication both in law enforcement and in the underworld.

Coincidences do occur-especially among people who share interests. Ray Seale persuaded you of that. If Graeme has informants in organized crime then you have to accept the possibility that he may happen to be acquainted with one or two of the very same people who’ve been instructed to keep an eye peeled for a woman named Madeleine LaCasse, five-foot-five, a hundred and sixteen pounds, formerly blond, grey blue eyes, possibly still carrying a suitcase full of diamonds and cash.…

They may even have photographs of her. God knows there are enough of those around. In the scrapbook she left in the Third Avenue apartment her face appeared full length or head-shot only in nineteen full-page magazine layouts and sixty-one smaller ads. They won’t have had any trouble finding pictures of her to distribute.

She’s changed the hair, exposed herself to enough sun al fresco at Buffalo Bill’s Saloon to build a good tan, put on the glasses, changed her style of make-up. Anyone passing her casually in the street won’t be likely to connect her with that model in the photographs.

But this is something else. If one of those pictures ever comes into Graeme’s hands and he hears any part of the story that goes with the picture, he’ll study it with a little imagination and put things together and he’ll know whose face it is.

Granted, in constructing this scenario you’re relying on one or two far-fetched assumptions; probably no such thing will ever happen.

But it could happen.

And that means you have no choice.

For Ellen and for yourself, you’ve got to run again. Disappear again. Start over again.

She looks around the dismal kitchenette. The ceiling feels as if it’s pressing down.