Soon to disappear, he thought again.
When he had stepped barefoot out of the Kaleidoscope Shed yesterday, a good hour before Frank and Daphne had arrived, he had seen naked infants lying among the tall weeds, their waving pink limbs stark against the black dirt and the green stalks; the dozen? — half dozen? — tiny wailing forms had flickered out of existence when he had blinked at them in astonishment.
Delirium tremens, he thought; still mild, really. But in fact we're all just sparks arcing across the vacuum left by God when He withdrew, none of us any more substantial than those alcohol-conjured infants. What's one wasted life?
He's her father. Yes. Not me, damn my soul, not me. I had a daughter once, but she died. She will not come back to life. She will not, and I mustn't imagine anymore that she could.
I have… another daughter. She'll grow up, God help her, and God help me.
Through his mind flickered the quickly dismissed image of a dark-haired little girl frowning in concentration over a book; and then, just as quickly dismissed, another image: of a drunken woman resolutely climbing into the driver's seat of a Ford LTD and slamming the door.
He turned right at the next street, his bad leg aching now, and he could see the green Rambler parked in the shade of a pepper tree at the curb ahead of him — but he saw it blurrily, through tears.
By the rivers of Babylon, he thought, I sat down, yea, weeping again the King my father's wrack.
But he knew he was weeping for Daphne.
Bozzaris watched the old man hobble away, reflecting that he hadn't seemed quite sane. But Lepidopt had sayanim to follow him; any of the people on the street now might be one of them.
He turned to the old woman. "You said something in German, inside. Are you German?"
The question seemed to nettle her. "My mother was German," she said. "That was part of a prayer she used to say."
Bozzaris was about to ask her what it meant, but her two companions came bustling and chattering out of the restaurant then, and a moment later a boxy white Dial-A-Ride bus pulled up at the curb, and when the doors had hissed open the three of them clambered aboard.
Bozzaris waved cheerfully at the bus's opaque tinted glass, then turned to go back into the restaurant; but Malk stepped out onto the pavement and told him, "Lunch hour's over. To hell with Bailey."
"Right," said Bozzaris, falling into step beside the older man as he walked around the west corner to the parking lot. They both squinted in the direct sunlight.
Quietly, Malk told him, "Grab the bag by the Dumpster outside the back door; you'll probably have to jump a fence, but do it. I took the beer bottles from the old guy's table, replaced them with a couple of bottles from another table. Fingerprints."
"Got you."
Paul Golze was driving the Dial-A-Ride bus, and Charlotte Sinclair was sitting on the corrugated rubber floor in the back.
"That guy met up with the one he was with before," she said as the van speeded up, "and they're walking out to the parking lot, talking — and I'm out of range."
"Okay," Golze said. "We'll play the tapes soon," he went on, scowling into the rearview mirror, "but Tina, why did you speak German?"
Tina Iyana-Kurtycz closed her eyes and shook her head. "How should I know? I don't even know German."
"Schneid mal die Kehle auf," repeated the gaunt woman in the seat next to her, staring out the window.
"What you said means 'Cut open her throat,'" Golze said. "It was involuntary, yes?"
"Yes. I wouldn't voluntarily interfere in a, an area of measurement."
Golze seemed almost pleased. He looked down and clenched one fist in front of his chest, where only Charlotte could see, if she happened to be paying attention to him.
Eight
While Daphne was in surgery, Marrity blundered outside for a much needed cigarette. The glow of self-satisfaction at having saved her life was beginning to fade into shadows of worry. What if she does this again? he asked himself as he plodded across the glossy brown-tile floor of the hospital lobby to the electric-eye doors.
Should I start making sure I've always got a knife and a Bic pen on me? Give the sitter instructions on how to do a tracheotomy?
He was only aware of how chilly the hospital air was when the doors swung open and he stepped out into the the dry, sage-scented breeze. I wonder if I can go back to work tomorrow, he thought. Tomorrow is Modern Novel, and I should prepare a lecture tonight. My briefcase is in the truck at the Alfredo's parking lot — I'll take a cab there, drive the truck back, and then put the lecture together in the lobby here.
A slim, dark-haired woman in sunglasses was standing by the planter to the left of the door, and as he fumbled a pack of Dunhill cigarettes out of his coat pocket, she dropped a smoking cigarette butt onto the pavement and stepped on it and then took a pack of Dunhills out of her black leather purse.
"If they're going to kill us, we may as well smoke the best, right?" he said, holding up his pack.
She frowned at him, then tucked her own pack back into her purse and hurried past him into the lobby.
"Good, Frank, good," he muttered to himself, feeling his face heat up. "Always break the ice with a remark about dying. Especially to somebody standing in front of a hospital." But maybe she didn't speak English. He noticed half a dozen identical flattened cigarette butts on the pavement where she'd been standing.
He lit a cigarette and took a deep drag on it, then exhaled and leaned back against the pebbled-stone planter. Passing cars glinted in the afternoon sun on Twenty-first Street just beyond the iron fence at the edge of the hospital lawn, and he envied the drivers whatever concerns were theirs.
She's just got to be meticulous about chewing everything very thoroughly, he thought. Every swallow should be a careful, conscious action. Probably after this she won't even need reminding. I'm glad we painted her bedroom today. I wonder what that damned movie was, and why my father seemed to be interested in it.
And why was he at Alfredo's today? He must have followed us. That's unpleasant. I think we'd be better off having no further contact with him; to hell with why he visited Einstein in '55. Maybe the letters will give me a clue, before I sell them.
"I'm sorry," said a woman's voice behind him; he turned and saw that it was the woman in the sunglasses.
"I was distracted," said Charlotte Sinclair. "You were talking about the cigarettes. You're right, we may as well kill ourselves with the best."
So far so good, she thought, and she checked herself out through Francis Marrity's eyes: black jeans, loose burgundy short-sleeved blouse, and dark brown hair pulled back in a ponytail; she noted a strand of stray hair dangling above one eyebrow and smoothed it back.
They were alone on this breezy strip of shaded sidewalk, and she wished she could see Marrity's face.
"That was my last, in fact," she added, assessing her rueful smile.
"Would you like one of mine?" he said, and he held his pack out in front of himself.
"Thanks," she said, watching her own fingers to guide them as she reached out and picked a cigarette from the pack. "I owe you."
Denis Rascasse's Vespers research gang had reported that Marrity smoked Dunhills, so they had found a liquor store that carried the British cigarettes; on the drive here one of the Vespers men had broken several of the cigarettes and lit them and instantly ground them out, so that Charlotte could scatter the butts around where she'd stand.