Saturday afternoon, San Diego
Carol Gee hung up the phone and stared out the twenty-fifth-story window of the Hyatt Regency San Diego. Her room overlooked the harbor and the glimmering deep blue of the Pacific Ocean. The sun was high overhead, the day brilliantly clear. Far below her, in the distance, the Coro-nado ferry chugged slowly southwest.
Right now, she would have given anything to be on that ferry, sailing away to anywhere but here. Ten stories above her-on the Gold Passport floor, of course-Michael Schiftmann was settling into his room and planning God knew what for his last evening on book tour. Carol had almost five hours to herself, time that she would need if she intended to regroup and steel herself for the signing tonight after what she had just learned.
Carol stood there for a long time, leaning against the heavy plate glass and staring out at the sea. She tried to find a calm place inside herself, someplace where she could sort out all the conflicts, all the noise in her head. She wished, honestly wished, that Brett Silverman had never said a thing to her about Michael Schiftmann and Taylor Robinson’s involvement. If she’d never been told, she’d never have been faced with the kind of dilemma now forced upon her.
It wasn’t that Carol Gee and Taylor were even that close.
They knew each other casually, as professionals, in a business that, as large as it was, was still based on personal relationships. And Carol Gee had also been in the publishing business long enough to know that, to paraphrase the cliche, no good deed goes unpunished. The smart thing to do would be to keep her mouth shut, spend one more night babysitting, then go hang out on a beach for a week to rebuild her dimin-ished reserves and forget the past couple of months.
Carol Gee, however, had one problem: a nagging conscience. She wasn’t a prude or moral right-wing zealot; she’d had her share of lovers. And while the number of lovers she’d had in her twenty-eight years would have shocked her parents and probably killed her grandparents, the truth was she was just about average for a woman in her late twenties.
So the fact that Michael Schiftmann had been picking up women on the book tour virtually from day one wasn’t so much a moral issue for Carol as it was one of trust. If she were in Taylor’s position-a thought that momentarily repulsed her-would she want to know the man she was seriously involved with had been bedding the literary equivalent of groupies all across the continent? What about health issues, AIDS and all that? Carol had already seen more than one friend felled by the disease, not all of them gay men.
Carol absentmindedly raised her left thumb to her lips and chewed the nail. Should she tell Taylor what she knew?
Should she call Brett back and let her know, or perhaps ask her advice on how to handle it?
And again, the question came back to her: If it were she, would she want to know?
“Damn it,” she whispered. She looked down, checked the clock: one-thirty. She and Michael planned to meet in the lobby just before six-thirty to drive to the last signing, at the Barnes
amp; Noble on Rosecrans. They would either get dinner together afterward or, as Carol was now extremely inclined to do, each order in from room service and eat alone.
Carol sighed. “I can’t imagine eating another meal with that man,” she said out loud.
She went into the bathroom and washed her face, then brushed her shoulder-length, bone-straight black hair. As she stared into the mirror, she saw for the first time how tired she looked.
“You need a break,” she whispered to her reflection.
Carol walked back into the room and sat on the edge of the bed. She picked up a stack of brochures she’d gotten out of the lobby. As always, she’d read them, then return the ones she didn’t need to the rack downstairs. She looked through the brochure for the San Diego Zoo, then the one for Sea-World. She’d asked at the front desk earlier which was the best attraction and quickly learned that San Diegans split into two camps: Either you’re a zoo fanatic or you’re a Sea-World fanatic. There didn’t seem to be much in between.
Maybe, she thought, a walk on the beach would do just as well.
Then Carol Gee, exhausted, pulled her draperies closed, peeled off her slacks, took off her blouse and put on a T-shirt, and slid between the covers. In a matter of moments, she was fast asleep.
Carol shook her head, trying to focus, to wake completely up, as the polished chrome doors of the elevator opened in the Hyatt Regency lobby. Behind her, the glass walls of the elevator revealed a panorama that Carol, slightly acropho-bic, had been unable to stomach.
She bolted out of the elevator, turned to her immediate left, and pushed her way past a crowd of retirees in golf caps and nearly identical plaid shorts.
“I’m sorry,” she puffed, out of breath, as she walked up to Michael Schiftmann. He stood in the center of the lobby, tapping his foot, his eyes dark.
“Where have you been?” he demanded, his voice low, controlled.
“I’m sorry,” Carol said again before she could stop herself. “I fell asleep and forgot to set the clock.”
Michael raised his jacket sleeve and checked his watch.
“We’re going to be late.”
“We won’t be late,” Carol said defensively. “The bookstore’s only ten minutes away.”
“We’d better not be,” Michael said, turning from her and marching through the lobby toward the back entrance to the parking garage.
Once in the rental car, Carol maneuvered around the hotel until she got her bearings, then headed north on Pacific Highway. They briefly slowed at a tie-up in front of the Am-trak station, but the traffic soon loosened and began to flow freely. In minutes, they were passing the airport on their left, then leaving it behind. Carol checked her directions one last time, then turned left on Barnet, right on Midway, and in two more minutes was parking the car in front of the Barnes
amp; Noble with fifteen minutes to spare. Michael hadn’t said a word the entire trip. As she braked the car, he was already unbuckling his seat belt.
“See,” Carol said, trying to placate him. “I told you we’d make it.”
Carol’s intentions failed miserably; Michael turned to her. “Good for you, although let’s not forget that the issue wouldn’t have come up if you’d gotten out of bed on time and done your job right.”
Carol flared. God, I feel like I’m married to this guy, she thought.
Michael reached for the door handle as she killed the engine.
“Wait,” she said as he lifted the handle on the door. He turned. “What?”
“I want to talk to you,” she said. The sentence came out of her mouth without her even thinking, as if it had to, as if she were just the delivery person.
Michael settled back on the brown leather. “So talk,” he said calmly.
Carol looked down and stared at the hub of the steering wheel. “This is the last time we have to do this, and I suspect we’ll both be well rid of each other. If it were anybody else in the world, I’d just keep my mouth shut and go on with my life. But I can’t, not this time.”
Michael turned to face her. “So you’re going to tell me off,”
he said. “Okay, get it over with. You won’t be the first.”
She shook her head. “No, that’s not what this is about.”
Michael glanced at his watch. “Then what is this about?”
he demanded. “We don’t have a lot of time here.”
“It’s about Taylor,” she said. “About you and Taylor.”
There was a stillness in the car, a silence that filled the interior like a dam bursting.
“What about me and Taylor?” Michael asked softly, seconds later.
“I know about you and Taylor,” she said. “And I’ve watched you these past few weeks while we’ve been travel-ing together.”
“You’ve been spying on me,” Michael said. It was a statement of fact, not a question.
“No,” Carol answered sternly. “Not spying. But you’ve been so blatant about it, anyone with open eyes is going to see everything.”
Neither of them had mentioned what “it” was. They didn’t have to.
“How dare you,” he said, his voice too calm.
Carol turned to him, her voice imploring. “Don’t you know how dangerous that kind of behavior is? In this day and age? You could catch anything. The medical risks alone ought to keep you from doing it, let alone relationship and trust issues.”
Michael’s face reddened slightly, and for a moment Carol was afraid he was going to explode. At least, she thought, we’re in a public place. But then he took a few slow, deep breaths, and the redness went away. He was silent for a few more moments before looking up, directly into her face.
“So what are you going to do with all this?” he asked.
Carol gripped the steering wheel until her knuckles whit-ened. The interior of the car was beginning to get stuffy, and she wished she’d never brought this up.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Are you going to tell her?”
“I don’t know.”
“If you do, you’ll only hurt her,” Michael said softly. “And I care for her very much. I don’t want to see her hurt.”
“Hah,” Carol said, her voice low. “Yeah, right.”
“What if I told you our little talk here has been a wake-up call, that my behavior is at least partly related to the stress I’m under, and now that the tour’s over, so is the stress?”
Carol looked at him. “I want to believe that.”
“You can believe that.”
“If I thought you were telling the truth, then there would be nothing to protect her from.”
“There isn’t anything to protect her from.”
“You’re sure of that,” Carol said.
“Absolutely.”
“So you’ve been taking precautions, practicing safe sex.”
It was the first time either of them had uttered the word.
“Completely,” Michael said. “There’s nothing to worry about on that account.”
Carol sighed. “For the time being, I’ll try to believe that.
But I want you to know that if I see any evidence that you aren’t telling me the truth, then-” Her voice tightened and she seemed unable to get the words out.
Michael smiled at her, a soft, endearing smile that seemed to melt around the edges of his lips. “I understand, Carol.
Really, I do. Look, why don’t we go in, get this last one over with. Then I can buy you a nice dinner somewhere to celebrate.”
“I’m tired. I’m not feeling very well,” Carol said, reaching for the door handle. “I think I’d just rather go back and order room service.”
The signing went well. Carol counted eighty people in the crowd, which wasn’t bad in the sixth largest city in America on a balmy Saturday night in February when there were lots of other things to do. Michael handled the crowd well, she thought. She had to give him this much; he was a great public speaker, relaxed and comfortable with a crowd. He controlled them, using alternating patterns of humor and warm earnestness. He came across as intelligent, passionate about his work, and eloquent. His book sales were rising steadily as he learned the art of warming up to bookstore clerks and salespeople as well as readers. He signed books for more than an hour after the reading, then signed stock for another forty-five minutes. Carol hung back on the edges of the crowd, too tired and bored to be completely present but always staying just close enough to be on call if needed.
After Michael signed stock, he huddled in the corner for a couple of minutes with the assistant manager on duty that Saturday night. The young man’s nose was pierced, he needed a shave, and his dirty khakis were riding low enough on his hips to expose the band of his underwear. If he hadn’t been wearing a plastic nameplate identifying himself, no one would ever guess he worked here or anywhere else. He seemed to enjoy having a private moment with a New York Times best-selling author, and the two talked in hushed tones broken only by a casual just-between-us-guys laugh. Carol was about to start seriously eavesdropping when the conversation broke up. Michael smiled broadly as he said good-bye to the manager and a couple of other people on the way out.
It was almost nine-thirty when Carol followed him out to the parking lot, neither of them speaking. The bright yellow sulfurous lights of the parking lot aggravated Carol’s growing headache. Even though the temperature was in the high fifties, there seemed to be a chill in the air. Carol wished she’d brought a jacket or at least a heavier sweater. When they got to the car, Michael crossed to the driver’s side and held out his hand.
“Here, let me drive,” he said.
It was the first time in forty-something cities he’d ever offered to drive. “No,” she answered, “that’s okay.”
“Look, you said you were tired and don’t feel well. Please, Carol, let me at least do this much for you.” There was almost a remorseful quality to his voice, as if he had changed, really changed, and was now trying to make up to her.
“C’mon, it’s our last night,” he said.
And she was so tired.
Carol Gee reached into her handbag and fished out the keys to the rental. They would never be friends, she knew, but perhaps they could at least end this tour on an up note.
“Okay, Michael, if you insist.”
He smiled and pointed the tiny black box at the car and pressed a button. The electronic door locks thunked as they opened. Carol, secretly relieved to be a passenger, climbed in on the right side of the red Buick. As soon as she reached for the seat belt, she heard another thunk as the doors locked.
Michael started the car and pulled out onto Rosecrans.
The traffic had thinned; the February chill seemed to have settled the city down a bit. Carol looked around, confused.
Hadn’t they made the wrong turn out of the lot?
“Weren’t we supposed to-” Carol said, turning and pointing the other way down Rosecrans Street.
Michael smiled. “I’ve got a little surprise for you,” he said.
“I was talking to Jack, you know, the assistant manager?”
Carol nodded.
“And I told him this was our last stop on a very hard tour and that I hadn’t always been the easiest person in the world to get along with, blah blah blah-and that I wanted to take you out to someplace really special as a way of thanking you.”
“That’s not necessary, Michael,” Carol said. “Let’s just go back to the hotel.”
“Oh, we can’t do that!” he said. “It’s our last night on what was, even with our little difficulties, a very successful tour.”
“Look, you don’t have to-”
“C’mon, next week we’ll all be back in the grind, so let’s just have one last blowout. I’ll even pick up the tab.”
Michael drove on down Rosecrans Street as he continued talking. They were hitting the lights just right. They crossed Nimitz Boulevard and then the smaller side streets off to the right-Keats, Jarvis, one she couldn’t catch, then Garrison, Fenelon, Emerson-seemed to buzz by.
“I’m not going back to the grind,” Carol said almost offhandedly. “I’m taking a week off. Won’t be back in the city until a week from Monday.”
Michael turned to her and smiled. “So much the better,”
he said. “How nice for you. I’m jealous.”
“So where is this restaurant,” Carol asked, her resolve for room service weakening.
“Not far,” Michael answered. “On the point.”
“The point?”
“Yeah, down toward Point Loma.”
“What are you talking about?” Carol asked. “There’s nothing down there.”
“Oh yeah, Jack told me all about it. Trust me. It’s going to be wonderful.”
Carol suddenly felt exhausted, as if the whole of the last two months had caught up with her all at once. She was hungry as well, she realized, and thought that maybe that was where her headache was coming from.
“All right,” she said. “We’ll get dinner. But let’s make it an early evening. You’ve got a seven A.M. flight out tomorrow.”
“You know, it’s funny,” Michael said. “But I don’t really need that much sleep. Too much to do, I guess. What’s the joke? I’ll sleep when I’m dead. “
“I can’t wait that long,” Carol said. “I’m exhausted.”
“Okay,” Michael said. “We’ll make it an early evening.”
Rosecrans Street turned south, into a less densely populated area. There was little traffic now, and the houses were farther apart. Another mile or so on and there were no more traffic lights, then no more streetlights. The terrain was hillier now, or perhaps the rolling was exaggerated by the darkness. The lights of San Diego were off to their left, across North San Diego Bay, and the city seemed much farther away. Carol felt her stomach heave slightly as the car went up and down, which only added to her discomfort from her headache.
“I’m kind of hungry,” she said. “Maybe a little nauseous from blood sugar. Will we get there soon?”
“Very soon,” Michael said, his eyes never leaving the road. “Very soon.”
A couple of minutes later, a sign loomed on their left and Carol caught just enough to read it-BALLAST POINT-as they went by.
“This place must not get very much business,” she said.
“To be so far out.”
To be so far out … Suddenly, something caught in Carol Gee’s throat.
“Where are we?” she demanded.
“It’s not far,” Michael said. A sign up ahead read CABRILLO
NATIONAL MONUMENT-.5 MILES.
“What’s the name of this place?” Carol said, fighting to keep her voice calm.
Michael stepped harder on the gas. The car accelerated.
Carol looked down at the speedometer; they were doing sixty on this narrow, curving road.
“Slow down,” Carol said.
“I hate it when people tell me how to drive.”
“Damn it, where are you taking me?”
“We’re going to celebrate,” Michael said. “It’s the end of our tour.”
“Stop the car,” Carol said, as they drifted to the right.
She could barely see the road in the beam cast by the head-lights.
“Stop the car, I want out,” she said again. “Now.”
“C’mon, Carol,” Michael said. “Whaddaya want out here for? What, you’re going to call a cab out here? Just sit still.
We’ll be there soon.”
Think, damn it! Carol felt her forehead flush and her breath coming in shorter bursts, as if she were gulping for air. Think!
Not once in twenty-eight years had her superb mind failed her. There had to be a way out of this. If she jerked the door open and jumped, she’d be killed by the fall. If she tried to wrestle the wheel away from him …
No, he’s too big. It’ll never work. The crash’ll kill both of us.
“What are you going to do? ” Carol said, her voice breaking.
“Carol,” Michael said. “You’re beginning to bore me.”
Carol gripped the armrest on the door with her right hand, feeling the leather beneath her hand, kneading it back and forth, the sweat from her palm rubbing into the material.
He’s got to stop sooner or later. I’ll jerk the door open, run like crazy. I’m fast. I’m younger than he is.
The car went past a sign so fast it was just a blur. “Welcome to the Cabrillo National Forest,” Michael said. “Isn’t it pretty?”
She looked outside, through the glass clouded with reflected light from the instrument panel. All she saw was black.
Fatigue and hunger settled in on her like weight, a weight that forced her outside herself, and she saw herself sitting frozen on the seat next to him, her eyes large and blank.
Carol Gee had minored in psychology at Yale; she knew the phenomenon of disassociation, had studied it in a class called Abnormal Criminal Psychology. As if there was such a thing as normal …
Fight this! a voice inside her head screamed.
Damn it! Fight!
The car slowed as it made a long, lazy turn to the right.
Carol looked up through the windshield and saw that they were at an intersection. Michael turned the car left, to the south, toward the ocean.
Carol reached down and pressed the unlock button on the armrest, while with her left hand she pressed the release button on her seat belt. At the instant the door-lock stem shot up from the door, she grabbed the handle and yanked as hard as she could.
“Bitch!” Michael yelled, grabbing her by the hair as the door flew open. Carol screamed, grabbed at his hands behind her, flailing helplessly, her legs partway out the door.
Michael slammed on the brake, and the car slid to a stop.
Carol slammed into the dashboard, her knees exploding in bursts of sharp, focused pain. He yanked her hair again, hard, hard enough to get another yelp out of her.
“No, please!” Carol yelled as she felt herself being pulled back into the car. She fought, scraped, jumped, flailed as she felt him pulling her closer. Then he had her with both hands, cradling her head, pulling her face down onto his lap. She tried to think, but panic swept over her. Her arms fluttered like the wings of a bird caught in a trap, with about as much effect.
She thought of the tiny canister of pepper spray she carried hooked to her key chain, the one she’d left at home because they were going through so many airport security checkpoints.
Then she felt his right arm around her neck, the crook of his elbow right at the hollow of her throat. And pressure.
Tightening pressure …
Her eyes bulged as she realized for the first time what was happening. She tried to kick, but in the tight confines of the front seat of the Buick, there was nothing to kick, nothing that would help her. She opened her mouth to scream; nothing came out. She felt his forearm against her throat, his right hand locked in the crook of his left arm, his left arm bent around the back of her head. She felt his palm on the top of her head, pushing down into his curled right arm. She opened her mouth, tried to push her face into his crotch where she could bite him, but he held her too tightly to move.
Her eyes watered, the pressure behind them causing them to bulge.
And then …
From the corners of her field of vision, tiny sparkles. Red ones and gold ones and blue ones, like glitter. Sparkling and dancing.
Her chest was about to explode.
Please …
Her grandmother. She saw her grandmother’s face in front of her.
Please …
She felt her legs kicking, her arms shaking, as if they were no longer part of her, as if they had minds and wills of their own.
She heard a voice, a soft voice, a low, masculine voice above her, behind her head: “Let go, Carol. Let go. It’s easier this way.”
Where had she heard it before?
The sparkles were larger now, like a cascade of colored gemstones spilling in on both sides of her, filling her vision.
And as the dark shapes in front of her became more and more dim, the twinkling colored lights got larger and more vibrant.
“That’s it, baby,” the voice said again, soothing, almost sweet. Michael’s voice. “Let it go. Go to sleep, my sweet baby. It’s time for you to go to sleep.”
Like a vet putting a dog to sleep …
So tired, she thought. So tired.
Her cheeks tingled red, felt full, the skin stretched almost to breaking. Carol Gee felt an overwhelming sadness that welled up inside her, and as the dancing brilliant blues and reds and greens and purples and yellows ran together and through each other and into each other until they became one pulsating, blood-red globe surrounding her, she felt the sadness drift away and the lights shift from painfully bright to soft white, and there was a humming in her head, like the bowing of a violin string, and then she let go. Carol Gee let go of everything.
And found her peace.
Michael stared down at her as she went limp. He let go slowly, ready to clamp on again if she had somehow managed to fake it better than anybody had ever faked death in the history of the species. He patted her back, felt the bra strap beneath the fabric of her blouse.
No, he thought. Not now. This is business.
He shifted her over on the seat, off his lap, then reached down and pulled her legs inside the car. He snatched the door to, killing the dome light inside the car. He listened carefully and looked all around. There was no one. No traffic, no nearby homes, no intruders. He shifted the car back into gear and eased forward down the narrow road.
He drove slowly this time. No need to hurry. Still, it took only a minute or so to get to the end of the road. He parked the car, got out, listened carefully for any unexpected noises.
All was silent, except for the wind and the crashing of the waves at the base of the cliff that was the blunt end of Point Loma.
He opened the passenger door and lifted her out. She couldn’t weigh more than one-ten, he thought. During a break in the signing, after the last idiotic inscription had been written and the last sycophant rushed through and out, he had wandered over and picked up a local paper. The tide had crested at nine forty-five, not quite an hour ago. He lifted her up and threw her over his shoulder, grateful that neither her bladder nor her bowels had let go. He’d done his research and verified it in practice: It was a myth that the body always emptied itself at the moment of death.
He walked the fifty yards or so from the end of the road to the edge of the cliff and set Carol down in the grass. He removed her ring and necklace and checked the pockets on her slacks. They were empty; there was nothing on Carol Gee to identify her.
He looked over the edge of the cliff. There was only a thin sliver of moon to illuminate the ocean floor below, but it was enough to see that the waves were still lapping at the base of the cliff.
He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply through his nostrils, savoring the fresh, salty air. The hairs on his arm stood up, tingling and dancing on his skin. The sound of the waves below intensified, grew louder and sharper, more focused.
Like a needle being dragged across a record …
Every nerve in his body alive to every sense, Michael Schiftmann grinned broadly and lifted the lifeless body of Carol Gee over his shoulder, holding her by the collar of her blouse and the belt buckle of her slacks. Already she was beginning to stiffen. He backed up a few steps, held her high in the military press position, then ran forward and flung her out as far as he could over the edge of the cliff, barely missing going over with her.
He froze, a clump of dirt under his foot breaking loose and falling, and listened. Perhaps two seconds later, he heard a crystalline, full splash, clear and sharp like the breaking of glass.
The tide would carry her out, out into the vast, endless Pacific. If she was ever found, there most likely wouldn’t be enough left to autopsy. And there were a thousand Dumpsters between here and downtown San Diego. Carol Gee’s purse and the contents inside, along with her jewelry, would be spread out through a dozen of them.
Michael Schiftmann had never felt more alive than at this moment. It was a sensation beyond sexual, beyond any physical thrill he’d ever felt or experienced.
Michael Schiftmann felt …
Liberated.
He sauntered back to the car, relishing the feel of the soft earth beneath his feet, the smell of living grass, breathing plants and trees. He felt the clean air fill his lungs.
Despite the chill, he was warm all over, and in very good appetite.