Now the Gryphon would strike again. And the city would tremble before him. And he, Franklin Rood, would laugh.
Power, yes. He had power. Unlimited power.
He was the most powerful man in the world.
As he headed east on Pico Boulevard, approaching Miss Alden’s neighborhood, he found himself humming along with the new song on the radio, which was “Sweet Dreams.”
9
After dinner Wendy and Jeffrey crossed Pico Boulevard, jaywalking at his insistence, and entered the Westside Pavilion, a cavernous postmodern shopping mall echoing with footsteps and the blare of Muzak from trendy little stores. They rode the escalators from floor to floor, people-watching and window-shopping, stopping once to purchase two strawberry frozen-yogurt cones. They ended up at the multiplex theater facility on the top floor, where they debated seeing a movie-or, rather, Jeffrey knocked around the pros and cons of the idea while Wendy listened impassively. There was no shortage of first-run films to choose from, but none of them really appealed to Jeffrey, so he concluded that they didn’t want to go to a movie after all. Wendy agreed.
“Well,” Jeffrey said, which was what he always said when they reached the terminal point in one of their dates.
“Well,” she echoed foolishly.
“You’ve got yogurt on your nose,” he informed her.
She wiped it off. “Thanks.”
“So I guess we’ve had our fun for tonight, huh?”
“I guess so.”
He walked her back to her Honda. They stood on the curb watching random cars whiz past, headlights tracing white comet tails in the darkness. The dry wind was stronger than before; trees rustled ominously, and scraps of newspaper cartwheeled like tumbleweeds down the street.
“There’s still some yogurt on you,” Jeffrey said.
“Where?”
He kissed her mouth gently. “There.”
“Gone now?”
“Not quite.”
He kissed her again. His lips lingered. Her sudden awareness of his body, so close to her own, was frightening. Nervously she pulled away; then, to compensate for breaking contact so abruptly, she smiled.
“Thanks for dinner.”
He nodded, showing nothing in his face. “I’ll call you.”
Quickly she got into her car, turned the key in the ignition, switched on the headlights. She pulled away from the curb and left Jeffrey standing there, alone on the sidewalk, his hand lifted in a wave.
She’d been planning to drive straight home, but on impulse she took a detour into Westwood Village, where the sidewalks were always crowded, even on a Tuesday night. She cruised past movie theaters dressed in neon radiance, bars and restaurants throbbing with the electronic pulse of amplified music, storefront windows framing pyramids of record albums and platoons of T-shirts gliding on automated racks. A sudden inexplicable urge seized her, the urge to get out of her car, join the crowds, become part of that cheerful chaos just beyond her windshield, just out of reach.
The feeling passed. After she’d circled the Village a few times, crawling at five miles an hour in the sluggish traffic, she had no urge to do anything except go home and climb into bed.
She took Wilshire Boulevard east to Beverly Glen, cut south to Pico, and pulled into her parking space at nine-thirty. She got out of the car, carrying the shopping bag from the jewelry store, which now contained only an empty box; she stuffed the bag in the trash dumpster at the side of the building.
As she passed Jennifer Kutzlow’s apartment on the ground floor, she noted with relief that the lights were out, the place silent. Then she remembered having seen Jennifer leave this morning. Off to Seattle, she’d said, swinging her overnight bag. Well, there would be no rock and roll tonight, thank God.
Wendy checked her mail and found nothing but the usual assortment of bills and advertising circulars. She climbed the outside staircase, walked along the second-floor gallery, and unlocked her door. Stepping inside, she flipped up the wall switch; light flooded the living room. Automatically she glanced around to see if the place had been burglarized; it hadn’t.
She hung up her coat in the hall closet, then went into the bathroom to pour a glass of water. Her reflection in the mirror over the sink caught her eye. She stared at herself. The necklace sparkled like spilled wine. It really was beautiful. Beautiful-but wasted. Wasted on her. Because nobody would ever look twice at her, necklace or not.
“It was better off in the display case,” she whispered. Quick tears stung her eyes. “Shouldn’t have bought the thing.” Her fingers fumbled at the clasp. “Waste of money, is what it is. Goddamn waste.”
She yanked off the necklace and flung it to the floor. Then she sat on the closed lid of the toilet, shoulders slumping, and lowered her head, not quite crying but wishing she could.
After a few minutes she collected herself, then knelt and picked up the necklace. As far as she could tell, it was undamaged. She stroked it gently, almost tenderly, as if seeking to apologize for having been so rough with it.
In her bedroom, she opened the jewelry box in the top drawer of her mahogany dresser and laid the necklace inside. She pulled off her tan suit, then changed into white satin pajamas and a blue terry-cloth robe. Groping on the floor of her closet, she found a pair of cushioned Deerfoams and slipped them on her feet. She unclipped her hair and let it fall loosely around her shoulders.
Then she left the bedroom to fix herself a snack. She wasn’t particularly hungry, but an apple might be nice. In the kitchen, in the shadowless light of the overhead fluorescents, she cored and sliced a red Delicious. She switched on the portable TV for the company of a human voice. The ten o’clock news was already under way.
“… search continues for the Gryphon. Thirteen days have passed since the body of Elizabeth Osborn was found…”
Wendy snapped off the TV, letting silence settle over the apartment once more.
She put the apple on a plate, poured a glass of skim milk, and sat at the dining table in her usual chair, facing the two corner windows. Chewing slowly, not noticing the taste, she stared out at the leafy branches of the fig tree swaying and creaking in the wind.
She thought about Jeffrey and the games he played with her, the mind games, the power games. He was wrong to act like that, but she was equally wrong to let him get away with it. Why hadn’t she simply asked him straight out, “How do you like my new necklace?” Why had she been afraid to solicit a compliment from him? But she supposed she knew the answer. She remembered how, as a little girl, she’d dressed up for her parents, hoping to hear words of approval, only to be criticized for being a showoff.
A sigh escaped her lips like a hiss of air from a punctured tire, the weary sound of something shrinking, flattening, losing shape and firmness, a sound that matched the way she felt inside. No longer hungry, but determined to finish her snack, she picked up the second-to-last wedge of the apple and raised it to her mouth, and then from somewhere in the room at her back, she heard a noise.
The noise was faint, so faint as to be nearly inaudible, yet she had no difficulty identifying it in an automatic, almost instinctual way. It was the sound a joint makes when cartilage snap-crackle-pops. The crick of a spine, perhaps, or… or the creak of a knee.
A human sound.
Somebody is in here, she thought in slow, creeping horror. Somebody is… in the apartment… with me.
But that was crazy. Insane. There was no way anyone could have gotten in. The door had been locked. There’d been no sign of forced entry. She had to get hold of herself.