Vaughan Trumbill had cleaned up the breakfast dishes and vacuumed the living room and hall, and now sat at the desk in his room, writing checks in Betsy's big old checkbook. At a quarter to ten he figured up the new balance and inked the number at the bottom of the current page; then he closed the book and put it in the drawer.
He crossed to the aquarium and allowed himself to net up a two-inch-long catfish; he held it carefully just behind the head and bit off the body. Chewing strongly, he lowered his hand into the water and uprooted an Amazon sword-plant, swirled it in the murky water to get the dirt off the roots, and then folded that into his mouth. The catfish head he wrapped in several sheets of Kleenex and tucked into the pocket of his white shirt as he continued to chew his snack.
Live snacks, though of necessity generally skimpy, were always the most satisfying.
The white walls of his room were uncluttered by any pictures, and his window looked out onto a flat expanse of gravel and a high gray cinder-block wall. As always, he stared around at the sterile simplicity before leaving the room, breathing the chilly, odorless air, imprinting it all in his mind—for the rest of Betsy Reculver's house was a clutter of bookcases and overstuffed furniture and framed photographs, and these days she used too much perfume.
LaShane came trotting up to him in the hall, and Trumbill absently patted the big Doberman on its narrow head. Before stepping into the living room, he automatically glanced at the television screens above the doorway to make sure that there was nobody in the back or side yards or the area around the front door.
Betsy Reculver was sitting on the couch in the living room, staring at her hands in her lap, and when he entered the room she glanced at him blankly. "Beany," she said, then went back to staring at her hands.
He nodded and sat down in the only chair in the room she would let him put his weight on. He dug the Kleenex-wrapped catfish head out of his pocket and unobtrusively dropped it into a nearby wastebasket. He didn't like having organic stuff in the wastebasket in his own room, even just for a little while.
He looked around the living room, remembering times when there'd been half a dozen men sitting around waiting for Betsy's orders. Trumbill had found her and started working for her in 1955, when he'd been twenty-six, newly home from having learned the truth about the world in Korea. Some of the men working for her—Abrams, Guillen—had been with her since before 1949, when she'd still been inhabiting the Georges Leon body.
That poor old Georges Leon body, which was now known as Doctor Leaky.
Eventually, during the sixties, when she'd been Ricky Leroy, she'd had to kill all of them.
Every one of them had eventually come to want the throne for himself, the immortality that could be had through assuming a succession of one's own children. Trumbill knew that she … he, it, Georges Leon, really … had considered killing him, too, before finally realizing the truth—that Trumbill was not interested in any life beyond the life of his own body.
A skinny man trying to get out.
He knew all about the skinny man. He had seen him many times in Korea, the skeleton in the ditch, all the juices leaked or evaporated away, with only the flimsiest leathery remnant of skin to cover the intolerable bones—all the substance lost, gone to nourish other life: bugs and plants and birds and dogs.
Emptied.
In Korea he had formed the resolution to fill himself, to contain as much of all that other organic life as possible, to bury the skeleton as far below the surface of his skin as he could. And Betsy had sworn that when he eventually died, she would make sure that he was sunk in a block of cement before burial, so that nothing should be lost, ever.
Reculver stood up now and walked to the bookcase and back. "Whew. I hope he doesn't choke of asthma before he can get to his fresh inhaler," she said irritably. "I didn't let him take one break since that call at seven."
"Any signs?"
"I had Beany in the Seven-Stud game the whole time, so as to see more cards. The goddamn Queen of Hearts kept showing up, so I think this Diana person is in town somehow. There'll be other women around, wanting Isis's crown, but she's the one with the advantage of actually being a physical child of the old Queen, that Issit woman you folded in '60. I wish to hell you'd got the baby, too, then."
There was nothing in that for Trumbill, so he just kept looking at her stolidly.
"And the Jack of Hearts showed up way too often, generally with the Four of Hearts."
"What's the Four?"
"It's—sort of an old-bachelor figure. I don't see it as a threat to me, but I wonder who the hell it is."
"Who's this jack, is the question." Trumbill shifted in the chair and wished he had brought another one of his tropical fish out with him. A cichlid would go down well right now. He hated bringing up awkward topics with Betsy lately; he wished she'd wear the Richard body more often, or even haul the Art Hanari one out of mothballs. "It's got to be the jack you sensed last night, doesn't it? That seemed like the big one, the one to worry about."
"It's a jack," she said shortly. "I can handle jacks. I'm the King."
"But—" Oh, Jesus, Trumbill thought, here I go. "But it sounds like it's as—as far outranking the other jacks as this Diana woman is outranking the other wanna-be Queens. Now, Diana has that advantage because she is the actual kid of Issit." Unobtrusively he took a deep breath. "Way back when you were in the Georges Leon body—didn't you have a second kid, besides Richard? A second biological son?"
Her lower lip was pouched out, and there were tears in her eyes when she looked at him. "No. Who told you that?"
"You did, Betsy, one time in the sixties when you were in Richard, Ricky Leroy. Remember? I don't mean to … hurt your feelings, but if this jack may be that kid, isn't it something you've got to think about?"
"I can't think. I've got to do everything by myself. I—"
Trumbill flexed his massive arms and legs and got out of the chair. "Time," he said when she looked at him in alarm. "Got to get the tape going."
"Time? Oh, that call. Sure, go ahead."
Trumbill had just got the tape recorder going when the phone rang. He picked it up before the answering machine could cut in.
"Yes?" He turned on the speakerphone so that Betsy could hear.
"This is the guy that called before, about Scott Crane, Ozzie, and Diana. I know where they are, I can get to them for you. Are you interested?"
"Yes," said Trumbill. "We'll pay you twenty thousand dollars, half when you tell us and half after we've determined that your information is valid."
"Uh … okay. That'll do. Where do you want to meet?"
Trumbill looked over at Betsy. "The Flamingo," she mouthed.
"The Flamingo," said Trumbill. "Two o'clock this afternoon. In the coffee shop, Lindy's Deli. I'll be at the Trumbill table."
He spelled the name and then hung up.
"I'm going with you," Betsy said.
"I don't think—"
"You don't want me to, is that it? Who is this guy you're meeting, anyway?"
"You know as much about it all as I do, Betsy." He thought about asking her to step into the Art Hanari body and give him a call, but he suspected that she was too agitated right now to agree to it. "Betsy, I don't mean to upset you, but it might help me to help you if I knew the name of the boy, your son who got away in '48."
"I don't remember," she said, and then she stuck her tongue out at him.
Funo arrived early, and walked around the hotel for a while. He picked up a pamphlet and read it on one of the couches by the registration desk and learned that the hotel had been founded by a gangster named Bugsy Siegel.