He decided he felt hungry, but he couldn’t make up his mind what he wanted to eat. These days, the hunger in him had been growing fiercer, and he wasn’t altogether sure that it was simply for food.
Twenty-Seven
John woke up just before dawn with a hangover that rose up inside him like a ton of wet gravel. He opened his eyes and realised he was lying in a strange, narrow bed, and that sunlight was slanting across the ceiling at an unaccustomed angle. His eyes felt swollen and he had a headache that was pounding at so deep and low a frequency that it was hard to recognise just where the pain was coming from.
The first things he remembered when he sat up were that Vicki was really dead, and that he was sitting in bed in Room 21 of an apartment hotel on Franklin Avenue, in Hollywood. Mel had driven him there last night in his borrowed Lincoln Capri, and then gone out to the supermarket at the corner of Franklin and Highland to bring back two bottles of Jack Daniels and a six-pack of Old Milwaukee to wash it down with.
They had drunk a lot, talked a lot, argued, wept and grieved. At two in the morning, sick and dizzy, and so drowned in whisky that he didn’t know what was real any more and what wasn’t, John had collapsed on the floor, and Mel had put him to bed.
He swung his legs around, and put his feet on the shag-pile rug. The apartment was small and neat, with a simulated-log fireplace, a table and two chairs in dark Mexican wood, and a sliding picture window that gave out onto a balcony. All he could see through the window was the back yard of the house next to the hotel, with flowering vines, a chicken coop, and a few stunted palms. He stood up, his head swimming, and shuffled into the kitchenette.
Mel, with his usual forethought and consideration, had remembered to buy Alka-Seltzer and coffee. John filled the kettle, put it on the stove, and searched through the kitchen cupboards for a glass. While the Alka-Seltzer fizzed, he kept his hand clamped over his eyes, and wondered if Vicki’s death would have been easier to take if he had stayed sober.
‘Good morning, John,’ came Mel’s voice.
He peeked through his fingers. Mel looked as rough as John felt, and without his glasses he appeared oddly vulnerable and unfamiliar. He came into the kitchen, shook out a couple of Alka-Seltzers himself and dropped them into a glass.
‘How do you feel?’ asked Mel.
‘Like hell. How do you feel?’
‘Like hell.’
‘I’m making coffee,’ said John. ‘Do you want some?’ Mel shook his head. ‘No, thanks. I think I’d puke if I drank any coffee.’
‘Maybe it would do you good.’
Mel pulled out a chair and sat down at the table. He said, ‘I woke up and couldn’t believe it had really happened. I kept thinking that it had to be a dream.’
‘Me too,’ said John. ‘But it isn’t. She’s actually dead.’ They drank their Alka-Seltzer in silence for a while, and then Mel said, ‘What are you going to do now?’
‘I don’t know,’ said John. ‘I haven’t even buried my father yet, and now this. My house, everything I ever owned, my furniture, my paintings. And, more than anything, Vicki.’
‘It wasn’t your fault, John. You had some real mean guys after you, whoever they were. You couldn’t have done anything to stop them.’
‘I could have gone to the FBI, like Vicki wanted. I could have asked for police protection. But oh, no, I had to be a goddamned one-man detective bureau. I had to be a great hero. What I didn’t realise was that heroes are always heroes at someone else’s expense.’
‘John,’ insisted Mel, ‘it wasn’t your fault.’
John slid aside the picture-window and stepped out onto the balcony. The sky was beginning to lighten, and the morning air had an uncomfortable chill to it.
‘Are you going to the FBI now? You’ve got some pretty good information to go on, and you know that I can back you up.’
John shrugged.
‘You can’t handle this on your own,’ protested Mel. ‘If you keep on crowding these people, they’re going to kill you, too.’
‘And if I don’t crowd them? How many more people are they going to do away with?’
‘John, it isn’t up to you to track down these killers. It’s not your job. It’s up to the police and it’s up to the FBI.’
‘Except that they think he’s a Freeway Fruitcake. A lone psycho. And I think that there’s somebody out there who’s organizing these killings for a purpose. Somebody who’s doing it for their own very good reason.’
Mel sighed. ‘You’re getting ahead of yourself, John. We haven’t even established that there’s any kind of sensible connection between the victims yet, let alone that somebody has a reason for killing them, and certainly let alone a very good reason.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong. There is a connection, and that’s their political point of view.’
‘Most of them didn’t have a point of view.’
‘That’s exactly it. They’re middle-of-the-roaders, slightly tending to the left. But if they were offered the right kind of options at an election, they could go either way. They would have voted for Kennedy, but they would also have voted for Eisenhower.’
Mel said, ‘John, I don’t get this. We don’t have an election for years.’
‘Sure we don’t. But remember what Pickaway was talking about, how you can draw up demographic curves to predict how people are likely to vote in future years. And remember what he said about politically influential people not necessarily being politically active people.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘But nothing. That’s the whole point. All of these people who died were nice people. Ordinary, friendly, nice people. They were influential because people liked them, and come election time, whatever they thought about the candidates, their friends would have felt the same way. Or tended to, at the very least.’
‘Okay,’ Mel said, ‘it’s a good analytical theory. But you’re forgetting what Doctor Pickaway said about that magazine of his. Only a few thousand people read it, and I bet half of them don’t understand it.’
John shook his head. ‘He said the article had stirred up a lot of interest, and that makes it likely that people outside of medical circles got to hear about it.’
‘But who?’ said Mel. ‘And even supposing they did, would it occur to them to go around knocking people off?’
‘It might. That’s what I want to find out.’
Mel scratched at his beard. ‘It seems way off target to me. I mean, what kind of person systematically shoots down ordinary people just to influence a political trend?’
‘It’s been done before, and it’s being done now,’ said John. ‘Maybe it’s more blatant in places like Uganda, but why should the minds of men who want to seize power and keep power be any different here than they are in Africa?’
Mel was silent for a long time. Then he said, ‘John, do me a favour, please.’
‘What is it?’
‘Call the FBI. Don’t get involved. I don’t want to see you hurt.’
John said, ‘I’m sorry, Mel, I can’t.’
‘John, it’s your, duty.’
‘Duty? Duty to whom?’
‘It’s your duty as a citizen. You can’t catch these people. The FBI can.’
‘What about my duty to my father? And what about my duty to Vicki?’
Mel banged his fist against the wall. ‘And what about your duty to yourself? The only surviving member of your family?’
‘I’ll take my chances. My father had to, and Vicki, too.’
‘They didn’t walk into it with their eyes open, like you’re doing. They never knew what hit them.’
‘Nor will I, if I can’t get to the bottom of this.’
‘So what are you going to do?’
John sat down at the table, and rubbed his eyes tiredly. ‘I’m going to buy myself a gun, first of all, because I think I’m going to need one. Then I’m going to go have a talk with Professor Aaron Sweetman.’
‘Don’t you think that’s dangerou
s?’
‘I think it’s dangerous if I don’t.’
Mel regarded him carefully for a while. Then he said, ‘Well, I can only say this once, because you seem to have made up your mind. But you and Vicki were always my best friends, and now Vicki’s gone, there’s only you. I wish you wouldn’t, that’s all.’
‘I have to,’ said John.
Mel nodded. ‘I know.’
BOOK TWO
THE FALLEN
One
She had once been described (by People magazine) as a ‘marriage between Charlie’s Angels and the Ride of the Valkyries.’ She was nearly six feet tall, with blonde hair swept away from her face in a Farrah style that was at least two years out of date. Her shoulders were as broad as a man’s, and she wore tweed hacking-jackets and corduroy pants tucked into high leather boots; yet her wrists jangled with bangles, and her fingers were covered in rings with huge amethysts, sparkling diamonds, and tiny gold bells.
Her face was sharp and square, and her chin was always raised high. She possessed those pale blue eyes that could pierce through everybody around her like lasers. Her belt buckles could have kept the gates of Bel-Air locked together, but under the tweed jacket she always wore floating filmy chiffon blouses through which (as she walked, or postured, or pranced) you thought you might be able to see the nipples of her very small breasts, although you never actually could. Hilary Nestor Hunter, thirty-seven years old, honours graduate in law, president of the Women’s Liberation League, did not believe in giving anything away to men, not even a glimpse of her body.
She appealed to women because she frightened men. Yet she also appealed to men because she frightened men. As her friend and patron Carl X. Chapman had often told her: ‘Too many politicians make the mistake of being nice guys, and then get hurt because nobody loves them. The only way to make people love you is to scare them to death. Then you’ll have them running around in circles, looking for where your ass is, so they can kiss it.’
She appeared at the fifth Women’s Liberation Conference, which was held at the L.A. Convention Centre on Figueroa Street, to a flashing accolade of press photography, stalking across the sidewalk with her sulky escort of beautiful but consciously unkempt girls, all unplucked eyebrows and home-cut hair. She didn’t disappoint the photographers as she turned at the entrance and raised her hand in clenched-fist salute.
The hall was already crowded, and the air was buzzing with women’s voices, a nest of bees eagerly awaiting their queen. But they had to wait a little longer while television reporters crowded into the convention centre lobby and surrounded Ms. Hunter with microphones.
She turned and faced the glare of television lights with a remote, condescending expression. One reporter asked her, ‘Ms. Hunter, you’ve been under a lot of pressure from your gay supporters lately – mainly to have the Women’s Liberation League take a firm stand on lesbian rights. What are you going to say to those ladies today?’
In a clear, penetrating voice, Hilary Nestor Hunter said, ‘I’m going to remind them that the Women’s Liberation League is a sexist movement, but not a sexual movement. We are concerned with women’s political and social inferiority, not with their personal problems.’
‘That sounds kind of unsympathetic, doesn’t it?’
‘Women don’t join this movement for sympathy. They join it because they want to achieve the kind of political dominance that so far has been the sole prerogative of men.’
A leading female TV reporter pushed forward with her microphone to ask the most crucial question of all, and the rest of the microphones followed Hilary Nestor Hunter’s lips like a shoal of pilot fish.
‘Ms. Hunter, it seems to me that you’ve got one or two pretty determined opponents out there today – ladies who think that your movement is too politically extreme. What do you think about them?’
Hilary raised one of her perfectly-plucked eyebrows. ‘There are always dissident voices to every great idea. There are always moderates who want to dilute the essence of originality and genius. But I don’t mind about that. A great social idea like female dominance should stir women up. It should make them think. It should even make them angry. I’m pleased that women are dissenting. It’s the measure of the greatness of everything I stand for.’
‘You’re aware that some of your moderate opponents are trying to oust you from leadership?’ the reporter asked.
‘Of course. But they don’t worry me. They’re my children, and I expect my children to squabble and fight and challenge authority. All they have to remember is that I have their best interests at heart, and I’m going to make sure that they get what’s best for them, whether they like it or not.’
‘How are you going to do that?’ asked another reporter, a man. ‘Slap their tushies and send them to bed without any supper?’
Hilary Nestor Hunter brushed back her Farrah curls and looked down at him with utter disdain.
‘I’m an influential woman. I’m not an oddball liberationist turning out cyclostyled newsletters about baby-minding facilities and lesbian bridge parties. I have the backing of people of considerable power, and I am convinced that many of my ideas are going to be made law in future years.’
‘Would you consider public office, Ms. Hunter?’ asked the female reporter. ‘That’s if you were offered one, of course.’
‘The question isn’t if, but when,’ Hilary said archly, arid then beckoned her aides and supporters to gather around her. As a last word, she turned and said to the microphones and the cameras: ‘I always bet on certainties, ladies and gentlemen, and right now it’s a certainty that a little sanity is going to return to the administration of this country.
Then, closely surrounded by her bevy of lady bodyguards, she pushed through the crowds and the lights, and entered the auditorium. The buzz rose to a high-pitched scream, washed along on a roar of applause, and she walked down the aisle towards the stage with both hands held high in the clenched-fist salute as adoring women stood on their seats clapping and shrieking. The television cameras followed her as she stepped up on the stage, and stood there alone in a brilliant spotlight, her head thrown back and her arms wide, the applause rising like an ocean up to her feet.
‘Domination!’ she called, through the booming, echoing microphones. ‘Domination 1’
And back came the scream of: ‘Domination!’ from every side of the hall, and thousands of clenched fists, most with braceleted wrists and painted nails and rings, rose up and proclaimed their loyalty to Hilary Nestor Hunter.
From the lobby, now almost empty and littered with crumpled programmes and cigarette butts, Perri Shaw watched this Messianic entrance and felt as weak and transparent as a ghost. She turned to Father Leonard, who had been observing her closely. He was dressed up today, in his best sport coat, and he had slicked down his hair with water. He looked like a small boy who had been smartened up for a Sunday visit with his rich aunt and uncle.
‘Frightened?’ he asked Perri.
She nodded. ‘I guess I shouldn’t be. But they think she’s the greatest woman who ever lived. How can you fight that?’
‘With God’s help,’ said Father Leonard. ‘And with your own courage.’
‘I never did anything like this before.’
He took her arm, and pressed it affectionately. ‘You’ll get through. You’ll come out of there and they’ll be applauding you the way they did for Hilary Nestor Hunter when she walked in. You’ll see.’
‘I wish I could believe you,’ she said.
‘You think a priest would lie?’
She turned and looked at him gently. ‘I think a priest would lie to encourage someone he was fond of.’
He didn’t say anything for a while, but then he bent forward and very softly kissed her on the forehead.
‘Yes,’ he said quietly, ‘I am fond of you. I will ask God to aid and protect you today. I will also ask Him to give us both strength to fulfil our allotted tasks.’
There was another roar from within t
he auditorium, and Perri looked inside to see Hilary Nestor Hunter with her arms wide, as she made her opening speech. Women were rising to their feet to applaud her, and cameras were flashing in a crescendo of flickering blue light.
‘They’ll be asking for motions soon,’ said Father Leonard. ‘You’d better get in there.’
‘Will you say a prayer for me?’ she asked him.
He smiled. ‘I’ll say a prayer for all those men and women who would benefit from political enlightenment.’
‘And for me, too?’
‘Yes, Perri,’ said Father Leonard. ‘For you too.’
She kissed him, with lightness and tenderness, on the cheek. Then she turned and walked down the aisle into the auditorium, just as the magnified voice of Hilary Nestor Hunter was demanding: ‘A committed acceptance of women as political candidates… a committed acceptance of women as administrators and leaders…’
Perri found her seat, next to Ann Margolies from the Chicago branch of the Women’s Liberation League, who had been pressing for months for a moderation of the league’s political views. Ann Margolies was a plain, long-haired girl with thick-lensed eyeglasses and a seemingly inexhaustible wardrobe of beige and black turtlenecks. Perri had met her at a regional conference in Phoenix once. ‘I’m glad you could make it,’ Ann said as Perri sat down. ‘We’re in for a tough time today.’
Hilary Nestor Hunter finished her opening speech to screams and whoops and almost five minutes of solid applause. Then the chairperson, Agnes Frohauer, a middle-aged Republican lady who had buried three husbands and vengefully divorced two more, lifted her short arms for silence.
‘We have some motions before us,’ she said, looking down at her papers through half-glasses on golden chains. ‘We don’t have time to discuss them all today, so we have selected some of them out of a hat. The first is a proposal from the Idaho branch that we produce some kind of guidelines for women living on their husbands’ farms and holdings in rural areas, where it is difficult for them to escape male domination, or assert themselves politically or economically. The second is a motion from New York that we should affiliate ourselves openly with a political party. The third is a call from the Los Angeles delegates for what they describe here as ‘moderation of the league’s political aims.’ In other words, they want equality rather than domination.’
The Sweetman Curve Page 20
