“Who the fuck?”
Wondering who had closed that outside door.
Sonny tugged on the fishing line.
He heard the outer door opening.
The bag!
He’d left his bag outside the...
He shoved the door open again, reached down for the bag and was stepping back into the closet when the man suddenly appeared in the alcove.
Tall and burly and wearing a ranger uniform.
Blue eyes and a reddish-brown mustache.
His mouth opening in surprise.
“What...?”
But Sonny was already moving forward. As Rhodes reached for the revolver in the holster at his waist, Sonny brought his right arm back, the elbow bent, the hand coming up close to his left cheek. As the gun came free, Sonny released his cocked arm, chopping the hard edge of his hand across the bridge of Rhodes’s nose. He heard the bone shatter, heard Rhodes yelp in startled pain, stepped around him at once, caught the back of his head in a double-handed lock, snapped it sharply forward — and broke his neck.
Rhodes went limp against him.
He dragged him into the closet and eased the door shut again. Tugging on the fishing line as hard as he could, he heard at last the heart-stopping click of the spring bolt snapping into the engaging strike plate. He was sealed inside now. No one could unlock that door from the outside, not with the lock effectively jammed.
He hunkered down beside Rhodes’s body.
Settling his back against the wall, he stretched out his legs and sat back to wait.
It would be a long night.
Geoffrey had brought two flat tins with him, one filled with forty water-soluble crayons, the other with thirty water-soluble pencils, for finer work. He’d confessed at dinner that he no longer had the pencils he’d used to paint on the shiner all those years ago, and had gone to an art supply house the moment he’d left her this afternoon. Now, in her mother’s Park Avenue apartment, he displayed his wares and asked her which eye she wanted done.
“Will it wash off later?” Elita asked.
“Of course,” he said. “They’re water soluble. In four languages.”
Indeed, the printed matter on both tins read water soluble, wasserlöslich, solubles à l’eau, and solubili in acqua.
“Pick an eye,” he said.
“Which do you think?” she asked.
“It’s hard to decide, they’re both so lovely,” he said. “But let’s try the left one. I’m right-handed, so it’ll be easier to work on that side of the face.”
“Are you sure it’ll wash off?”
“Positive.”
“You won’t get any on my blouse, will you?”
“No, no.”
“I hope not.”
She was wearing a white long-sleeved silk blouse she’d bought at Bendel’s. The last thing she wanted...
“I’ll need a glass of water,” he said.
“What for?”
“To dip them in,” he said, and started for the kitchen. “Actually, this isn’t the proper way to use them, one should also have a brush. But it’ll work this way as well.” He found a glass on the counter drainboard, called, “Okay to use this?” and filled it with water. When he came back into the living room, Elita was studying the array of crayons in the larger tin.
“What gorgeous colors,” she said.
Each of the crayons was wrapped with a band the color of the crayon itself. The range covered the entire spectrum, modulating subtly from shade to shade of yellow, red, orange, blue, violet, purple, grey, brown — and green.
She thought suddenly of Sonny.
And just as quickly put him out of her mind.
Geoffrey put the glass of water on the end table beside the easy chair in which she was sitting. Perching himself on the ottoman in front of it, he said, “I think an undercoating of yellow, don’t you?” and chose from the tin the lightest of the three yellow shades. Dipping the crayon into the glass of water, he applied the tip gingerly to the flesh under her eye. She was still afraid he was going to drip this stuff all over her blouse.
“Listen,” she said, “would it be all right if we got a dish towel or something?”
“Of course,” he said, and went back out to the kitchen again.
“Inside the door under the sink,” she called.
“I’ve got it,” he called back, and returned to the living room. Like a beautician fussing over a client, he draped the towel over her shoulders, stepped back to look at the yellow undercoating he’d already applied, and went to work again.
It was clear from the start that this was to be an artistic creation. No mere application of makeup was this, oh no. Carefully choosing his shades — a bit of red, a bit of blue, a bit of violet — he painstakingly colored the skin, working slowly and carefully, putting down one crayon to pick up another, chatting all the while. He was telling her now about the visit he’d had today from a police lieutenant and two men he suspected were spooks...
“... though, Lord knows, neither of the two identified himself except to offer a name, which was probably false anyway. These cloak and dagger people give me a severe pain in the arse, forgive me, don’t they you?”
But she had stopped listening. The moment he’d mentioned a police lieutenant, her mind leaped back to Westhampton Beach and her last conversation with Detective Gregors. She hadn’t heard a word from him since. She wondered now if she should call him again. She didn’t want to make a pest of herself, but goddamn it, this was her mother!
“... impression they’re worried about President Bush.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, “what...?”
“These men who came to see me. Do you remember my telling you about the two murdered women? The first time we had lunch togeth...?”
Mention of murder caused her mind to leap to her mother again, and the awful possibility that something terrible had happened to her. She felt an uncontrollable urge to go to the telephone this very instant, and almost leaped out of the chair. But he was working so closely, concentrating so intently...
“... the green tattoos,” he said, and picked up a green crayon.
A green the color of a jungle glade in brilliant sunlight.
“Which they seem to think identifies some sort of Libyan intelligence group,” Geoffrey said, and dipped the green crayon into the glass of water. “The green scimitar,” he said.
“What?” she said.
“The tattoo on each of the women. A green scimitar.”
His face was not six inches from hers. The green crayon was in his hand. A green the color of the scimitar tattoo on Sonny Hemkar’s chest. Her eyes opened wide.
“A green what?” she said, and the telephone rang.
She leaped out of the chair at once, almost knocking over the glass of water on the end table, rushing to the phone at the other end of the room, yanking the receiver from its cradle.
“Hello?” she said.
“Miss Randall, please.”
“This is she.”
“Detective Gregors, Westhampton Beach Police.”
But she had recognized his voice from his very first words.
“Yes, Mr. Gregors,” she said.
“We’ve got a pretty good composite on this guy your mother was with the other night, and I was wondering how we could get it to you. I could have it messengered, I suppose... you don’t have access to a fax machine, do you?”
“No, I... oh. Just a minute. Geoff!” she called. “Is there a fax machine at the consulate?”