Then it hit him. It was his car. The smoke was rising from the remains of his Saab, parked where he'd left it after returning from seeing Dakin.
"There, Frank?" Sarah's voice grated against his ear, still ringing from the explosion.
"I'm still here."
"What's going on?"
"You want to know what's going on?" :'Is it a secret?" She snickered.
"No, it's not a secret." He felt himself growing furious, at her and at the world.
"So, what is it?"
"They've just blown up my fucking car, that's what the fuck it is! "
After he hung up, he shouted the phrase again: "They've blown up my fucking car!"
It was only later, when he'd gotten over his anger and incredulity, that he asked himself just whom he'd meant by they.
The Riddle!
There were times when, staring into mirrors, she felt herself empowered.
At other times, mirror-madness times, she felt as though mirrors were sucking out her strength, her very life itself… At first she didn't notice. She was lying in bed reading the latest issue of ARTnews with the TV set on across the room. As usual, she had the sound turned down so that the flickering television was little more than a barely audible presence. She probably would have missed the story entirely if she hadn't happened to look up just as a still photo of her latest mark filled the screen. She nearly choked when she saw it.
She sat up, grabbed her remote, thumbed down hard on the volume control, then clicked her VCR on to record. An attractive young Asian woman was talking to a tall, tired looking man in front of the Savoy. They were talking about Phil Dietz. From the gist of their conversation, Gelsey understood that Dietz had been murdered in his room.
She watched spellbound. The tired man was a detective; the Asian woman was a journalist. The detective was middle-aged, and had searching eyes with bags beneath them and a well-sculpted chin. He also displayed a world weary manner that she associated with certain French film stars of the 1940s. The reporter asked sharp, aggressive questions to which the detective responded with patient, noncommittal answers. And then they started talking about her: . a redheaded woman in the downstairs lounge… a mystery redhead seen with Philip Dietz just before he was killed… "
After the segment was over, she rewound the tape and watched it again.
What was going on?
She got out of bed, pulled on her clothes, began to pace the loft. If Dietz had been stabbed with, say, a pair of scissors, she might have cause to worry that she'd done the deed, perhaps in the amnesic dream-sister trance-state into which she sometimes slipped after taking down a mark.
But she distinctly remembered hearing Dietz snore when she wished him sweet dreams from his door. So, whatever had happened to him had occurred after she'd left the room. She had left it neat, too-she remembered that. Yet the reporter had referred to it as "ransacked."
That meant that someone had gone into it after she had left. Which meant, again, that whatever had happened to Dietz had had nothing whatever to do with her.
Except… They were looking for her now. The detective's searching eyes told her he was a hunter. She knew the sort of man: quiet, sometimes gentle, but relentless in pursuit. He was a hunter and she was his quarry.
Another thing she knew about him: He was serious-he was no Leering Man.
That night she didn't sleep. She had a painting to finish, her latest version of Leering Man-and this time she was determined to get him right.
At three in the morning, still haunted by Dietz, she thought of a way to put him out of her mind. She went to the drawer in which she stashed the loot she took off marks, pulled out the gizmo she'd found inside Dietz's money belt and brought it over to her workbench.
She centered it carefully, picked up a steel ball hammer, raised it above the object, then brought it down with all her might.
The object jumped but didn't break.
She hammered at it several more times, but to no avail. Determined to destroy it, she set it lengthwise in her steel vise, then screwed the jaws closed. It buckled beneath the pressure. The transparent material, some sort of resin or plastic, split apart and fine metal tracing broke out. After that, by a combination of hammering and crushing, she was able to reduce it to irregular jagged pieces, which she added with glue to the other debris attached to the ground around Leering Man's face, and then covered with thick gushes of paint applied directly with a palette knife.
At dawn, exhausted but satisfied, she flung off her clothes, crawled into her bed, pulled the covers over her head and fell asleep.
Three days later she sat nervously in Dr. Zimmerman's office wondering what he was going to say. She had just delivered her confession. She was, she had just admitted, a species of poisoner, a thief and, worse, a destroyer of men's egos. Now she gazed at the empty eye holes in the masks on Dr. Z's wall and imagined eyes slowly appearing in them-twenty pairs of eyes that would glare at her in moral judgment until she bowed her head in shame.
"So… Dr. Zimmerman's soothing voice cut through her reverie. She tightened her elbows against her sides, fearful of his indignation.
"So… perhaps," he continued, "now you would like to tell me a little bit about ''?"
Is that what he wants now? God!
"Sure, Doc," she said in her best tough-girl voice, pleased at least that he had not condemned her. "What can I tell you?"
"Whatever you want, Gelsey," he answered kindly.
"And if you prefer not to talk about it-that will be all right, too."
What a gracious man. He deserves something nice, anything for sparing me a sermon. And his question relieved her of having to discuss her fear of being connected to the Dietz murder-a fear that had filled her life the past three days, ever since she'd seen the report on TV, "Playtime," she said, "-it's not all that unusual from what I've heard.
My father… well, you know… he'd make suggestions. And then we'd go down to the maze." She stared at the masks again. The eyes were gone from the eye holes.
She felt alone.
She continued: "We'd never enter through the outside door. We'd always descend to it from the loft-open the trapdoor, climb down the ladder to the catwalks, then shinny down the rope to the floor."
"Then?"
"Then… you know, we'd do it. Play."
"That was his word for it?"
" ',' '." That's what he always called it. Like: ', honey bunch-it's a rainy day. Let's go down the rope and play."
"He called you ' bunch'?"
More questions! Why can't he just leave it alone? "That and 'sweetheart." Sometimes '." Lots of different things." She smiled, a forced little smile. "Affectionate names."
"And then?"
"Then what?"
"What would he do?"
She glared at him sharply. "Christ, Doc! What the hell do you think?"