24

The ferry to Brindamoor Island made its morning trip at seven-thirty.

When the wake-up call from the desk came in at six it found me showered, shaved and tensely bright eyed. The rain had started again shortly after midnight, pounding the glass walls of the suite. It had roused me for a dreamlike instant during which I was certain I'd heard the sound of cavalry hooves stampeding down the corridor, and had gone back to sleep anyway. Now it continued to come down, the city below awash and out of focus, as if viewed from inside a dirty aquarium.

I dressed in heavy slacks, leather jacket, wool turtleneck, and took along the only raincoat I had: an unlined poplin doublebreasted affair that was fine for Southern California but of uncertain utility in the present surroundings. I caught a quick breakfast of smoked salmon, bagels, juice and coffee and made it to the docks at ten after seven.

I was among the first to queue up at the entrance to the auto bay. The line moved and I drove down a ramp into the womb of the ferry behind a VW bus with Save the Whale stickers on the rear bumper. I obeyed the gesticulations of a crewman dressed in dayglo orange overalls and parked two inches from the slick, white wall of the bay. An ascent of two flights brought me on deck. I walked past a gift shop, tobacconist and snack bar, all closed, and a blackened room furnished wall to wall with video games. A waiter played Pac Man in solitude, devouring dots with brow furrowing concentration.

I found a seat with a view at the stern, folded my raincoat across my lap and settled back for the one hour ride.

The ship was virtually empty. My few fellow passengers were young and dressed for work: hired help from the mainland commuting to their assigned posts at the manors of Brindamoor. The return trip, no doubt, would be filled with commuters of another class: lawyers, bankers, other financial types, on their way to downtown offices and paneled boardrooms.

The ocean pitched and rolled, frothing in response to the surface winds that drag-raced along its surface. There were smaller craft at sea, mostly fishing boats, tugs and scows, and they danced in command, curtsying and dipping. For all the ferry moved it might have been a toy model on a shelf.

A group of six young men in their late teens came aboard and sat down ten feet away. Blond, bearded in varying degrees of shagginess, dressed in rumpled khakis and dirt-grayed jeans, they passed around a thermos full of something that wasn't coffee, joked, smoked, put their feet up on chairs and emitted a collective guffaw that sounded like a beery laugh track. One of them noticed me and held up the thermos.

"Swig, my man?" he offered.

I smiled and shook my head.

He shrugged, turned away and the party started up again.

The ferry's horn sounded, the rumble of its engines reverberating through the floorboards, and we started to move.

Halfway through the trip I walked over to where the six young drinkers sat, now slumped. Three of them slept, snoring open-mouthed, one was reading an obscene comic book, and two, including the one who'd offered me the drink, sat smoking, hypnotized by the glowing ends of their cigarettes.

"Excuse me."

The two smokers looked up. The reader paid no attention.

"Yeah?" The generous one smiled. He was missing half of his front teeth: bad oral hygiene or a quick temper. "Sorry, man, we got no more Campbell's soup." He picked up the thermos and shook it. "Ain't that right, Dougie?"

His companion, a fat boy with drooping mustaches and mutton chop sideburns, laughed and nodded his head.

"Yeah, no more soup. Chicken noodle. Ninety proof."

From where I was standing the whole bunch of them smelled like a distillery.

"That's all right. I appreciate the offer. I was just wondering if you could give me some information about Brindamoor."

Both boys looked puzzled, as if they'd never thought of themselves as having any information to give.

"What do you want to know? Place is a drag," said Generous.

"Fuckin-A." Fat Boy nodded assent.

"I'm trying to find a certain house on the island, can't seem to get hold of a map."

"That's 'cause there ain't any. People there like to hide from the rest of the world. They got private cops ready to roust you for spittin' the wrong way. Me 'n' Doug and the rest of these jokers go over to do grounds work on the golf course, pickin' up crap and litter and stuff. Finish the day and head straight back for the boat, man. We want to keep our jobs, we stick to that — exactly."

"Yeah," said the fat one. "No shootin' for the local beaver, no partyin'. Workin' people been doin' it for years and years — my dad worked Brindamoor before he got in the union, and I'm just doin' it until he gets me in. Then, fuck those hermits. He told me they had a song for it back in those days: Heft and tote, then float on the boat." He laughed and slapped his buddy on the back.

"What you interested in findin'?" Generous lit another cigarette and placed it in the snaggled gap where his upper incisors should have been.

"The Hickle house."

"You related to them?" Doug asked. His eyes were the color of the sea, bloodshot and suddenly dull with worry, wondering if I was someone who could turn his words against him.

"No. I'm an architect. Just doing a little sightseeing. I was told the Hickle house would be of interest. Supposed to be the biggest one on the island."

"Man," he said, "they're all big. You could fit my whole fuckin' neighborhood in one of them."

"Architect, huh?" Generous's face brightened with interest. "How much school it take to do that?"

"Five years of college."

"Forget it," the fat one kidded him. "You're an airhead, Harm. You got to learn how to read and write first."

"Fuck you!" said his friend, good-naturedly. To me: "I worked construction last summer. Architecture's probly pretty interestin'."

"It is. I do mostly private houses. Always looking for new ideas."

"Yeah, hey, right. Gotta keep it interestin'."

"Aw, man," chided Dougie. "We don't do nothing interestin'. Clean up goddam garbage — hell, man, there's fun going on there at that club, 'cause last week Matt 'n' me found a couple of used rubbers out by hole number eleven — and we're missin' it, Harm."

"I don't need those people for my fun," said the generous one. "You want to know about houses, mister, let's ask Ray." He turned and leaned across one sleeping boy to elbow the one with the comic book, who'd kept his nose buried in his reading and hadn't looked up once. When he did, his face had the glazed look of someone very stupid or very stoned.

"Huh?"

"Ray, you dumbshit, man wants to know about the Hickle house."

The boy blinked, uncomprehending.

"Ray's been droppin' too much acid out in the woods. Just can't seem to shake himself out of it." Harm grinned, his tonsils visible. "C'mon, man, where's the Hickle place?"

"Hickle," Ray said. "My old man used to work there — spooky place he said. Weird. I think it's on Charlemagne. The old man used to—"

"All right, man." Harm shoved Ray's head down and he returned to his comic book. "They got strange names for streets on the island, Mister. Charlemagne, Alexander, Suleiman."

Conquerors. The little joke of the very rich was evidently lost on those who were its intended butt.

"Charlemagne is an inland road. You go just past the main drag, past the market, a quarter mile — look hard because the street signs are usually covered by trees — and turn, lemme see, turn right, that's Charlemagne. After that you'd best ask around."

"Much obliged." I reached in and pulled out my wallet. "Here's for your trouble," I said, taking out a five.

Harm held out his hand — in protest, not collection. "Forget it, mister. We didn't do nothin'."

Doug, the fat boy, gave him an angry look and grunted.

"Up yours, Dougie," said the boy with the missing teeth. "We didn't do nothin' for the man's money." Despite his unkempt hair and the war zone of a mouth, he had intelligence and a certain dignity. He was the kind of kid I wouldn't mind having at my side when the going got rough.

"Let me buy you a round, then."

"Nah," said Harm. "We can't drink no more, mister. Got to hit the course in half an hour. Be slick as snot on a day like this. Bubble Butt here, drink any more, he could fall and bounce down and crush the rest of us."

"Fuck you, Harm," said Doug, without heart.

I put the money back. "Thanks much."

"Think nothin' of it. You build some houses that don't need union help, you want reliable construction muscle, remember Harmon Lundquist. I'm in the book."

"I will."

Ten minutes before the boat reached shore the island emerged from behind a dressing screen of rain and fog, an oblong, squat, gray chunk of rock. Except for the coiffure of trees that covered most of its outer edges, it could have been Alcatraz.

I went down to the auto bay, got behind the wheel of the Nova and was ready when the man in orange waved us down the ramp. The scene outside might have been lifted off the streets of London. There were enough black topcoats, black umbrellas, and black hats to fill Piccadilly. Pink hands held briefcases and the morning's Wall Street Journal. Eyes stared straight ahead. Lips set grimly. When the gate at the foot of the gangway opened they moved in procession, each man in his place, every shiny black shoe rising and falling in response to an unseen drummer. A squadron of perfect gentlemen. A gentleman's brigade…

Just beyond Brindamoor Harbor was a small town square built around an enormous towering elm and rimmed with shops: a bank with smoked glass windows, a brokerage house, three or four expensive looking clothiers with conservatively dressed, faceless mannequins in their windows, a grocer, a butcher, a dry cleaner's that also housed the local post office, a book store, two restaurants — one French, the other Italian — a gift shop, and a jewelers. All the stores were closed, the streets empty and, except for a flock of pigeons convening under the elm, devoid of life.

I followed Harm's directions and found Charlemagne Lane with no trouble. A thousand yards out of the square the road narrowed and darkened, shadowed by walls of fern, devil ivy and shrub maple. The green was broken by an occasional gate — wrought iron or redwood, the former usually backed by steel plating. There were no mailboxes on the road, no public display of names. The estates seemed to be spaced several acres apart. A few times I caught a glimpse of the properties behind the gates: lots of rolling lawns, sloping drives paved with brick and stone, the houses imposing and grand — Tudor, Regency, Colonial — the driveways stabling Rolls Royces, Mercedes and Cadillac limousines, as well as their more utilitarian four-wheeled cousins — station wagons paneled with phony wood, Volvos, compacts. Once or twice I saw gardeners laboring in the rain, their power mowers sputtering and belching.

The road continued for another half-mile, the properties growing larger, the houses set back further from the gates. It came to an abrupt halt at a thicket of cypress. There was no gate, no visible means of entry, just the forest like growth of thirty-foot trees, and for a moment I thought I'd been misled.

I put on my raincoat, pulled up the collar and got out. The ground was thick with pine needles and wet leaves. I walked to the thicket and peered through the branches. Twenty feet ahead, almost totally hidden by the overgrowth of tangled limbs and dripping vegetation, was a short stone pathway leading to a wooden gate. The trees had been planted to block the entry; from the size of them they were at least twenty years old. Discounting the possibility that someone had taken the trouble to transplant a score of full grown cypress to the site, I decided it had been a long time since the normal human business of living had taken place here.

I pushed my way to the gate and tried it. Nailed shut. I took a good look at it — two slabs of tongued and grooved redwood hinged to brick posts. The posts connected to chain link fencing piled high with thorny spirals. No sign of electricity or barbed wire. I found a foothold on a wet rock, slipped a couple of times and finally managed to scale the gate.

I landed on another world. Acres of wasteland spread before me; what had once been a formal lawn was now a swamp of weeds, dead grass and broken rock. The ground had sunk in several places, creating pools of water that stagnated and provided oases for the mosquitoes and gnats that hovered overhead. Once-noble trees had been reduced to jagged stumps and felled, rotten hulls crawling with fungus. Rusted auto parts, old tires and discarded cans and bottles were scattered throughout what was now a sodden trash dump. Rain fell on metal and made a hollow, clanging sound.

I walked up a pathway paved in herringbone brick, choked with weeds and covered by slimy moss. In the places where the roots had pushed through, the bricks stuck out of the ground like loose teeth in a broken jaw. I kicked aside a drowned field mouse and slogged toward the former residence of the Hickle clan.

The house was massive, a three-story structure of hand-hewn stone that had blackened with age. I couldn't imagine it as ever being beautiful but doubtless it had once been grand: a brooding, slate-roofed mansion trimmed with gingerbread, festooned with eaves and gables and girdled by wide stone porches. There was rusted wrought-iron furniture on the front porch, a nine-foot-high cathedral door and a weather vane at the highest peak in the shape of a witch riding a broomstick. The old crone twirled in the wind, safely above the desolation.

I climbed the stairs to the front entry. Weeds had grown clear up to the door, which was nailed shut. The windows were similarly boarded and bolted tight. In spite of its size — perhaps because of it — the house seemed pathetic, a forgotten dowager, abandoned to the point where she no longer cared how she looked and sentenced to a fate of decaying in silence.

I forced my way through a makeshift barrier of rotting boards that had been stacked in front of the porte-cochere. The house was at least a hundred and fifty feet long and it took me a while to check each window on the ground floor. All were sealed.

The rear property was another three acres of swamp. A four-car garage, designed as a miniature of the house, was inaccessible — nailed and fastened. A fifty-foot swimming pool was empty save for several inches of muddy water in which floated a host of organic debris. The remains of a grape arbor and trellised rose garden were evident only as a jumble of peeling wood and cracked stone supporting a bird's nest of lifeless twigs. Stone benches and statues slanted and pitched on broken bases, Pompeii in the wake of Vesuvius.

The rain began to come down harder and colder. I put my hands in the pocket of my raincoat, by now soaked through, and looked for shelter. It would take tools — hammer and crowbar — to get into the house or the garage, and there were no large trees that could be trusted not to topple at any moment. I was out in the open like a bum caught in a blitz.

I saw a flash of light and braced myself for an electric storm. None came and the light flashed again. The heavy downpour made it difficult to see but the third time the light appeared I was able to draw a bead on it and walk in its direction. Several squishy footsteps later I could see it had come from a glass greenhouse at the rear of the estate, just beyond the bombed-out arbor. The panes were opaque with dirt, some of which ran in brown trickles, but they appeared intact. I ran toward it, following the light that flickered, danced, disappeared, then flickered again.

The door to the greenhouse was closed but it opened silently to the prompting of my hand. Inside it was warm, steamy and sour with the aroma of decomposition. Waist-high wooden tables ran along both sides of the glass room; between them was a walkway floored with wood chips, peat, mulch and topsoil. A collection of tools — pitchforks, rakes, spades, hoes — stood in one corner.

Upon the tables were pots of gorgeously flowering plants: orchids, bromeliads, blue hydrangea, begonias of every hue, scarlet and white impatiens — all in full bloom and spilling abundantly from their terra cotta houses. A wooden beam into which metal hooks had been embedded was suspended above the tables. Hanging from the hooks were fuchsias dripping purple, ferns, spider plants, creeping char lies more begonias. It was the Garden of Eden in the Great Void.

The room was dim, and it reverberated with the sound of the rain assaulting the glass roof. The light that had drawn me appeared again, brighter and closer. I made out a shape at the other end of the greenhouse, a figure in yellow slicker and hood holding a flashlight. The figure shone the flashlight on plants, picking up a leaf here, a flower there, examining the soil, pinching off a dry branch, setting aside a ripe blossom.

"Hello," I said.

The figure whirled and the flashlight beam washed over my face. I squinted in the glare and brought my hand up to shield my eyes.

The figure came closer.

"Who are you?" demanded a voice, high and scared.

"Alex Delaware."

The beam lowered. I started to take a step.

"Stay right there!"

I put my foot down.

The hood was pulled back. The face it revealed was round, pale, flat, utterly Asian, female but not feminine. The eyes were two razor cuts in the parchment skin, the mouth an unsmiling hyphen.

"Hello, Mrs. Hickle."

"How do you know me — what do you want?" There was toughness diluted by fear in the voice, the toughness of the successful fugitive who knows vigilance must never cease.

"I just thought I'd pay you a visit."

"I don't want visitors. I don't know you."

"Don't you? Alex Delaware — doesn't the name mean anything to you?"

She didn't bother to lie, just said nothing.

"It was my office darling Stuart chose for his last big scene — or maybe it was chosen for him."

"I don't know what you're talking about. I don't want your company." Her English was clipped and slightly accented.

"Why don't you call the butler and have me ejected?"

Her jaws worked; white fingers tightened around the flashlight.

"You refuse to leave?"

"It's wet and cold outside. I'd appreciate the chance to dry off."

"Then you'll go?"

"Then I stay and we talk awhile. About your late husband and some of his good buddies."

"Stuart's dead. There's nothing to talk about."

"I think there's plenty. Lots of questions."

She put down the flashlight and folded her arms in front of her. There was defiance in the gesture. Any trace of fear had faded and her demeanor was one of irritation at being disturbed. It puzzled me — she was a lone woman accosted by a stranger in a deserted place but there was no panic.

"Last chance," she said.

"I'm not interested in blowing your cover. Just let me—"

She clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth.

A large shadow materialized into something living and breathing.

I saw what it was and my bowels went weak.

"This is Otto. He doesn't like strangers."

He was the largest dog I'd ever seen, a Great Dane the size of a healthy pony, colored like a Dalmatian — white dappled with gray-black splotches. One ear was partially shredded. His maws were black and wet with saliva, hanging loose in that half-smile, half-snarl so characteristic of attack dogs, revealing pearly-white fangs and a tongue the size of a hot-water bag. His eyes were piggy and too small for his head. They reflected orange pinpoints of light as they scanned me.

I must have moved, because his ears perked. He panted and looked up at his mistress. She cooed at him. He panted faster and gave her hand a fast swipe with the pink slab of tongue.

"Hi there, big fella," I said. The words came out strangled. His jaws opened wider in a growling yawn.

I backed away and the dog arched his neck forward. He was a muscular beast, from head to quivering haunch.

"Now maybe I don't want you to go," said Kim Hickle.

I backed away further. Otto exhaled and made a sound that came from deep in his belly.

"I told you I won't give you away."

"So you say."

I took two more steps backward. Baby steps. Playing a deranged version of Simon Says. The dog moved closer.

"I just wanted to be alone," she said. "Nobody to bother me. Me and Otto." She looked lovingly at the great brute. "You found out. You bother me. How did you find me?"

"You left your name in a library file at Jedson College."

She frowned, bothered by her carelessness.

"So you hunted me."

"No. It was an accident, finding the card. It's not you I'm after."

She clicked her tongue again and Otto came a few feet closer. His malevolent leer loomed larger. I could smell him, rank and eager.

"First you, now others will follow. Asking questions. Blaming me, saying I'm bad. I'm not bad. I'm a good woman, good for children. I was a good wife to a sick man, not a sick woman."

"I know," I soothed. "It wasn't your fault."

Another click. The dog moved within springing distance. She had him controlled, like a radio-operated toy. Start, Otto. Stop, Otto. Kill, Otto…

"No. Not my fault."

I stepped back. Otto followed me, stalking, one paw scraping the ground, the short hairs rising.

"I'll go," I said. "We don't have to talk. It's not that important. You deserve your privacy." I was rambling, stalling for time, my eyes on the tools in the corner. Mentally, I measured the distance to the pitchfork, covertly rehearsing the move I might have to make.

"I gave you a chance. You didn't take it. Now it's too late."

She clocked twice and the dog sprang, coming at me in a blur of snarling darkness. I saw the forepaws raised in the air, the wet, hungry, gnashing mouth, the orange eyes zeroed on their target, all in a fraction of a second. Still within that second, I feinted to the right, sank to my knees and lunged for the pitchfork. My fingers closed around wood and I snatched it and jabbed upward.

He came down on me, a ton of coiled monster, crushing the breath from my chest, the paws and teeth scraping and snapping. Something went through cloth, then leather, then skin. Pain took hold of my arm from elbow to shoulder, piercing and sickening. The handle of the pitchfork slipped from my grasp. I shielded my face with one sleeve, as Otto nuzzled at me with his wet nose, trying to get those buzz-saw jaws around my neck. I twisted away, reached out blindly for the pitchfork, got hold of it, lost it and found it again. I landed a knuckle punch on the crown of his skull. It was like pummeling armor plate. He reared up on his hind legs, roaring with rage and bore down. I turned the pitchfork prong-upwards. He lunged, throwing his full weight down on me. My legs bent and my back hit the dirt. The air went out of me and I fought for consciousness, swallowed up in churning fur and struggling to keep the fork between us.

Then he whinnied shrilly; at the same time I felt the pitchfork hit bone, scrape and slide as I twisted the handle, full of hate. The prongs went into him like warm knife into butter.

We embraced, the dog's tongue on my ear, his mouth slavering, open in agony, an inch from carving out a chunk of my face. I put all of my strength behind the pitchfork, pushing and twisting, vaguely aware of the sound of a woman screaming. He cried out like a puppy. The prongs went in a final inch and then could sink no deeper. His eyes opened wide with injured pride, blinked spasmodically, then closed. The huge body shuddered convulsively atop me. A tide of blood shot out of his mouth, splashing across my nose, lips and chin. I gagged on the warm, salty muck. Life passed out of him and I struggled to roll free.

The whole thing had taken less than half a minute.

Kim Hickle looked at the dead dog, then at me, and made a run for the door. I pulled myself to standing position, yanked the pitchfork out of the barrel chest and blocked her away.

"Get back," I gasped. I moved the pitchfork and droplets of gore flew through the air. She froze.

The greenhouse was silent. The rain had stopped.

The silence was broken by a low, rumbling noise: bubbles of gas escaping from the big dog's corpse. A mound of feces followed, running down the limp legs and mingling with the mulch.

She watched it and started to cry. Then she went limp and sat on the floor with the hopeless, stuporous look of a refugee.

I jammed the pitchfork into the ground and used it to lean on. It took me a full minute to catch my breath, another two or three to check for damages.

The raincoat was ruined, torn and blood-soaked. With some effort I got it off and let it fall to the ground. One arm of the leather jacket was shredded. I slipped out of it, too, and rolled up the sleeve of the turtleneck. I inspected my bicep. The layers of clothing had prevented it from being worse but it wasn't pretty: three puncture wounds that had already begun to swell, surrounded by a maze of abrasions. The arm felt stiff and sore. I bent it and nothing felt broken. The same went for my ribs and my other limbs, although my entire body floated just above agony. I stretched carefully, using a limbering routine I'd learned from Jaroslav. It made me feel a little better.

"Did Otto have his shots?" I asked.

She didn't answer. I repeated the question, punctuating it with a grasp of the pitchfork handle.

"Yes. I have the papers."

"I want to see them."

"It's true. You can believe me."

"You just tried to get that monster to rip out my throat. Right now your credibility isn't high."

She looked at the dead animal and went into a meditative sway. She seemed to be one who was used to waiting. I was in no mood for a battle of endurance.

"You've got two choices, Mrs. Hickle. One, cooperate and I'll leave you to your little Walden. Or, you can make it hard for me and I'll see that your story makes page one of the L.A. Times Metro section. Think of it: Molester's widow finds refuge in abandoned homesite. Poetic, isn't it? Ten to one the wire services pick it up."

"What do you want from me?"

"Answers to questions. I've no reason — or desire — to hurt you."

"You're really the one whose office Stuart — died in?"

"Yes. Who else were you expecting?"

"No one," she said too quickly.

"Towle? Hayden? McCaffrey?"

At the mention of each name her face registered pain sequentially, as if her bones were being broken in stages.

"I'm not with them. But I want to know more about them."

She raised herself to a squat, stood, and picked up the bloodied raincoat. Carefully she placed it over the dog's still form.

"I'll talk to you," she said.

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