“What time was this?”
“A little before one.”
“Then what happened?”
“Nothing.” She frowned at me. “You think I should have called the cops?”
“Not necessarily.”
“Not necessarily,” she echoed, shaking her head. “The guys were gone, right, they were finished. They didn’t come for me in the first place. They were mad I was even here, they were just coming to check the place out. Besides which, if I call the cops, do I tell them these guys are friends of my boyfriend, or not?”
“Okay,” I said. “But how about going someplace else? Until whatever Ross is mixed up with is over.”
“No,” she said. “I stay here, I’m obedient, after a while it’s over.”
“You hope.”
“I hope. Ross phoned me yesterday, in the morning, around ten. All chipper and happy and how-you-doing-honey and it-won’t-be-long-now. Was I okay? Sure, I said.”
“You didn’t mention the rape.”
She sighed as though I were an idiot. “No,” she said, “I did not place him in any impossible positions. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“He called again this morning,” she said. “Same time, same message.”
I didn’t want to tell her about the death of Delia West, but I did want her to understand somehow the seriousness and the danger involved here. “Doreen,” I said, “something very bad is going on. Ross has let himself get in over his head, and now part of what’s happening is, he’s told these people not to hurt you if they want him to go on cooperating, and they promised him they wouldn’t hurt you, and that’s why he calls every morning to make sure. But what happens when the game is over, whatever it is?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Neither do I. But I do know one thing about the crowd Ross is tied up with; they aren’t afraid to kill people.”
“So what do you suggest?”
“Go somewhere else,” I told her. “Call Ross in a couple weeks, maybe a month, see how he is.”
She sighed, shaking her head. “I burned a lot of bridges when I took up with Ross. My parents were not amused. And I’m almost broke. There’re a couple friends I could impose myself on, but then there’s a whole lot of questions, and I’m lousy at making up answers. Besides, right now I think the danger’s over, at least for the next little while.”
“You have no idea what’s going on,” I told her, “so how can you say when it’s over, or how dangerous it is? You’re just whistling in the dark.”
“In the dark is where I am, so I might as well whistle.” She grinned at me. “What else is there?”
“Come with me now, to my house,” I said. “Stay as long as you like.”
She smiled, but in a wistful, troubled way. “You’re something of a hunk, you know?” she said. “And you seem to be a nice guy, so normally I’d jump at the chance. But just at the moment, the absolute truth is, I don’t feel very much like sex. I was just about to take my maybe eleventh shower when you walked in.”
“I have a girlfriend already,” I assured her. “In fact, I’m having dinner with her tonight, so you’ll eat with Robinson.” Then I grinned, looking at her. “I wonder what Robinson is going to make of you,” I said.
13
She didn’t have that much to pack; it all fit in a zippered canvas bag which I carried out so she could lock doors behind us when we left. I waited in the sunlight out front while she returned the key to its hiding place, and then we walked together to the station wagon.
He had been hiding on the other side of the car, and just as we got to it, he jumped up into view across the hood and pointed something at us. I didn’t even think; I just threw Doreen’s bag at him and followed it in a long flat dive over the hood that ended in me banging into him around the waist and the two of us toppling over onto the gravel-covered ground.
“Look out!” Doreen shrieked, and I twisted away, looking back and up to see a determined-looking woman — skinny, mid-thirties, large glasses, severe hairstyle — reaching for me. She, too, had been hidden behind the car.
I rolled again, but it wasn’t me she was reaching for, it was the thing the man had pointed at us. I made a lunge for her, but too late; she grabbed it by the strap and went running, while her male partner sat up and blundered into my way.
“God damn it,” I said. The woman was pegging it up Route 1 like an Olympic entrant. I glared at the man, the two of us sitting on the sharp gravel next to each other like a pair of infants in a sandbox.
He grinned at me, a bulky balding blond-haired guy in sweater and chinos. “Gotcha,” he said.
“What assholes you people are,” I said, disgusted, and got to my feet.
Doreen had come around the wagon and was staring in bewilderment at both of us. “What was that all about? Is he— Are they part of it?”
“No,” I said, while laughing boy clambered upright, brushing dust and gravel off his pants. “This is a photographer from the National Enquirer. Right?”
“Read all about it,” he said cheerfully. “’Bye now.” And he limped off after the woman, who with his camera was long out of sight.
Doreen still didn’t get it, and said so. “I don’t get it.”
“I made a police report this morning,” I told her. “The National Enquirer always follows up stuff like that if there’s a famous name involved, just in case it leads to something they can use. They have everybody’s license plate numbers, they follow people, they’re everywhere. Do you have a scrapbook?”
“I don’t lead that kind of life,” she said. “Why?”
“In a week or two,” I told her, “you’ll have a nice newspaper photograph of the two of us, suitable for framing, coming out of our love nest.”
14
Robinson treated Doreen exactly like a stray cat I might have brought in on a rainy night — distant sympathy not quite covering a fastidious conviction that this creature is probably flea-ridden. In lieu of putting a saucer of milk on the kitchen floor, he took her away to one of the guest rooms, plied her with thick towels, and urged her to take a good long soak in the tub. In the meantime I phoned Bly to tell her I hadn’t forgotten tonight’s dinner and to ask her what the Arabic word was for “lightning.”
The reason for this strange request was something Doreen had said on the way over. I’d mentioned the poolman’s van having been in the drive when I’d made my failed attempt to find Ross at home, and she said, “The Steno girls? Maybe that’s the whole secret; they were in there screwing.”
“No, no,” I said. “A pool-cleaning service.”
“Sure. Steno Pools. Don’t you know them?”
“I don’t think so. Are we talking about the same thing?”
She nodded, her expression cynical. “It’s one of our very local kinda gimmicks,” she said. “Steno Pools, the all-girl pool-cleaning service. They come around in their hot pants and halters and bend over the pool a lot, and nobody gives a shit if they miss a couple leaves. Ross has used them ever since I’ve known him, but I don’t think he’s ever actually scored with any.”
“Well, he’s stopped using them now,” I said. “There was some scruffy van there from an outfit called Barq.”
“Barak?” she asked, surprised.
So I spelled it, and then she spelled hers, and explained, “That’s Hebrew for ‘lightning.’ My father made me learn Hebrew for three years, just in case I ever wanted to go live on a kibbutz, which tells you how much he knew me. Now every foreign language sounds like Hebrew to me. When those guys broke into the house back there, at first I even thought they were talking Hebrew.”