Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 11

by Majic Man (v5. 0)

  “For shame.”

  “Shall I get us something? To drink?”

  “Please.”

  Then she was back behind there, calling out, “Coca-Cola or 7 UP?”

  “Coke.”

  “You know, I think I noticed an ice machine down the hall …”

  Soon I’d returned, handing Maria a brimming bucket of ice and a small plastic bag of toiletries.

  Accepting them like awards, she asked brightly, “What, are you a magician, Nathan?”

  Out in the hall, I’d intercepted the maid delivering the complimentary toiletries.

  “Yes,” I said.

  The ice was broken, or anyway cubes of it were floating in our respective glasses of Coke, and we returned to our seats in the warm orange glow of the fire, and I got out my spiral notepad and pen.

  “I’m not going to be shocked by what you tell me, Maria, and I promise I won’t be judgmental, either. I’ve already heard our mortician friend’s account, including what you told him at that officers’ club, over lunch, the morning after.”

  She smirked, humorlessly. “Over lunch is right … I couldn’t eat a bite. You know … it’s funny. I don’t think I’ve eaten right, or had a decent night’s sleep, since it happened.”

  “I need you to tell me about it, Maria. Tell me what happened at the hospital—on the evening of Saturday … July fifth, is it?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Day after Independence Day. But the Fourth of July couldn’t compare to those fireworks….”

  Maria Selff said that she had been performing perfunctory duties in the emergency room when she entered an examination room, to get some supplies from a cabinet, only to stumble onto a bizarre tableau. Two doctors were performing preliminary autopsies under rather makeshift conditions; she didn’t recognize either of the medics, and she certainly didn’t recognize the three bodies they were working on, “foreign bodies,” laid out on gurneys. But even before the strangeness of the corpses could fully register, the first thing that hit Maria was the overwhelmingly foul odor.

  “Such a horrible stench … you just immediately gagged. It was hot in there, because the air-conditioning had been turned off—the smell was so terrible, the doctors were afraid it might spread throughout the hospital. It was almost impossible to stay in that room and work … I didn’t last long, and some of the doctors staggered out of there, too—at least one passed out in the hall.”

  “You called them ‘foreign’ bodies, Maria … but you don’t mean they were foreigners, do you?”

  She frowned. “You know I don’t. Glenn told you.”

  “Please. Don’t think about Glenn’s story; give me your account of the events, as you remember them.”

  “I tried to turn around and run out of there—I don’t know what kept me from screaming, unless that stench immobilized me…. Then one of the doctors told me to stay and assist them, and take notes … but I didn’t take many notes. About all the doctors were saying were things like, ‘This isn’t like anything I’ve ever seen,’ and ‘There’s nothing in the textbooks like this.’”

  “What did the ‘foreign’ bodies look like, Maria?”

  “I never saw anything so gruesome in my life. Two were badly mutilated, mangled, dismembered, probably by predators … one was mostly intact; I think he may have survived the crash, but died of exposure—all three bodies were black, but it wasn’t pigmentation, I’d say prolonged exposure to the sun.”

  “What did they look like, Maria?”

  “I worked as long as I could, but finally it got the best of me, the nausea, that all-pervasive odor. The doctors were having as much trouble as I was; finally they put the bodies in body bags and packed them in dry ice for shipment to Wright Field. And that’s … that’s all I know.”

  “Maria—what did they look like?”

  Her eyes narrowed as she stared into her memory. “… Three and a half feet, four feet tall. Small, fragile, no hair. If they looked like anything human, it’d be an ancient Chinaman. Their heads were large for their bodies, larger than ours … noses didn’t protrude, more concave, with two little slits. Where the ears should be, just slight indentations, with little flaps, like lobes. Deep, sunken eyes—concave eyes. Slit for a mouth, no lips at all … one thing the doctors said, something I do remember writing down, was that there was heavy cartilage instead of teeth, like a … like a piece of rawhide. Their bones were like cartilage, too, pliable, the head like a newborn baby’s, nothing like the bone structure of a human being. Could I … could I please have some water?”

  “Sure.” I got up and went to the wet bar and poured her a glass of water over ice, brought it back to her, returned to my seat as she drank it as greedily as if she had been lost out in the desert.

  “Go on, Maria.”

  “There were some basic anatomy differences…. For example, the distance between wrist and elbow was longer than the distance between elbow and shoulder. Oh, and they didn’t have thumbs, but four fingers that were long and slender, almost like tentacles … and on the fingertips—they had no fingernails, by the way—on the fingertips were little hollowed pads, like suction cups.”

  “Did they have any sex organs? Were they men, or women, or something else?”

  “I think probably something else. There were no signs of sex organs, or secondary sexual characteristics, either. But then that’s the sort of tissue predators go after, first, and also the first thing that decomposes, so how can we be sure?”

  “Did they have any kind of clothing on? Had the doctors removed any garments …?”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t remember seeing anything like that, but frankly, it was all so horrible and gruesome, and I was so overcome with nausea, and the desire to get the hell out of there, I just didn’t pay the close attention I should’ve.”

  “I think you did just fine. You came out of there with more details than most people could ever have managed.”

  “Well … maybe my nurses’ training came through for me, a little. Nathan … are you humoring me?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Pretending to believe all this, while you think it’s nonsense?”

  “Maria, I don’t know what you saw, but I believe you saw something.”

  “Glenn thinks they’re from outer space. He thinks the debris he saw was from wrecked ‘escape pods.’”

  “What do you think?”

  She frowned, searching inside herself. “I try to make those bodies into humans, possibly human children … features distorted because of long exposure to the high desert … or maybe monkeys. There are rumors of missiles being shot off, at White Sands, with animals—dogs, monkeys….”

  I sat forward. “Could they have been monkeys, their hair burned off in a crash? I’ll bet dead monkeys that’ve been out sunnin’ in the desert could smell pretty ripe.”

  “I want to believe that’s what I saw. But the anatomy was all wrong … and it was consistent from corpse to corpse.” She shook her head, in frustration.

  “All I know for certain is it was the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen. Do you think I’m insane, Nathan?”

  “No.”

  “I wish I were as confident of that as you are,” she said, and collapsed into tears.

  I went to her, gathered her in my arms—she was trembling all over, bawling like a baby, and I cradled her in my arms, patted her back, rocking her, saying, “It’ll be all right … it’ll be fine … don’t you cry … shush … shush.” She whimpered and sobbed for quite a while, as I held her, and finally it abated, and she relaxed, face against my shoulder, as I kept rocking her.

  She was feather-light, when I carried her up the stairs like Rhett Butler whisking Scarlett O’Hara away, only my Scarlett was sleeping, snoring even, a very unfeminine snore that made me smile. The bedroom was decorated in an Early American style, centering around a four-poster double bed with a quilted comforter. I eased her onto the bed, slipped her black pumps off her tiny feet, made sure the pillow was cra
dling her head comfortably, then eased out of there, switching off the light, padding down the stairs.

  Since I hadn’t even bothered to take my bag upstairs, I camped out on a couch downstairs—a Duncan Phyfe number whose carved mahogany and light blue tapestry-style upholstery looked too elegant to be comfortable. I took off my shirt and my shoes, but decided to sleep in my T-shirt and trousers, for decorum’s sake. I threw some more wood on the fire, got it going again, then stretched out on the couch, whose plump cushions proved my expectations nicely wrong; on my back, elbows winged out, I watched the walls and ceiling where flames and shadows did a mocking dance.

  Was I just humoring her? For those blue eyes, what couldn’t I convince myself of? For that Dorothy Lamour figure, what wouldn’t I pretend to believe? I mean, could I really be taking seriously the prospect of outer space creatures with big heads and big eyes and tentacle fingertips, taking a right turn at Pluto and heading for Roswell, New Mexico? What, they could navigate all those asteroids and meteor showers, they could make it safely to earth from the other side of the Milky Way, but those Roswell July Fourth fireworks really threw them, and they panicked, and slammed on the brakes….

  Yet within a day or so of when the Army Air Force may have been out recovering those “foreign bodies” from some unknown desert crash site, Major Jesse Marcel was salvaging pieces of strange debris at a nearby ranch. Something had crashed in the desert; something important enough for Uncle Sam to go around scaring the bejesus out of those citizens unlucky enough to be witnesses, coercing those good Americans into a terrible silence.

  The fire was dwindling, and I was nodding off, when a tiny noise drew my eyes to the stairway and the ghostly figure coming down; in the faint dying glow from the fireplace, throwing long shadows, she moved slowly, as if in a trance, the powder-blue dress wrinkled from her sleeping in it, hiking up a little, her knees and even her thighs showing.

  She crossed tentatively toward where I lay on the couch, whispering, “Nathan? Are you awake?”

  “For a minute there,” I said, moving onto my side, leaning on an elbow, grinning, “I thought you might be Rebecca.”

  She sat on the edge of the couch; the raven’s-wing hair was fetchingly tousled, an improvement on the severity of her pageboy. “Who’s Rebecca?”

  “The ghost.”

  “What ghost?”

  “The one the restaurant’s named after—some chambermaid who was killed by her lover, years ago. This is supposedly her favorite room.”

  She smiled a little, but nervously. “You’re just saying that. You’re teasing.”

  “No. That’s the story. You know, it’s just nonsense to keep the tourists entertained.”

  She seemed oddly troubled by the silly tale, and began hugging her arms again. “That’s so bizarre….”

  “You’re cold—I’ll feed the fire.”

  Thinking that this girl had run into more bizarre occurrences in her time than a stupid ghost story, I went over and put a few more logs on, got some heat and glow going, then returned to the couch, where she was sitting, now; she’d left room for me, and I took the liberty of putting my arm around her.

  “We’ll warm you up,” I said, and she snuggled close. “I don’t mean to be fresh….”

  But she lifted her face up and her dreamy expression, and her parted lips, gave me permission to get a little fresh, anyway; specifically, to kiss her.

  It was a soft, warm, sweet, almost chaste kiss. Almost.

  She drew away from me, gazed at me earnestly. Her voice was husky as she said, “It’s so strange … I came down here because I thought … I thought I sensed something in that room up there. A presence. Maybe an …” She cut herself off, laughed ruefully. “Now you will think I’m crazy.”

  “What?”

  “… I thought maybe it was an … evil presence.”

  “I think Rebecca’s supposed to be a friendly ghost.”

  She shuddered. “Well, I don’t want to sleep up there.”

  “You want the couch? I’ll go risk the bed …”

  “No!” She hugged me tight. “Stay down here, Nathan. Stay with me—all night.”

  “Well …”

  “Maybe it was dredging up all those … awful memories, maybe that’s what’s got me spooked. But the one thing I know for sure is, I don’t want to be alone tonight.”

  “All right. You take the couch.” I gestured toward the easy chair by the fireplace. “I’ll pull a couple of chairs together and …”

  She patted the couch. “There’s room for us both, don’t you think? I’m not very big.”

  Some places she was.

  “Okay,” I said, and I lay on my side, against the back cushions, and she lay next to me, her back to me, and we were like spoons, as she nestled her bottom into my favorite place, and I looped an arm around her waist, held her next to me and she snuggled; oh how she snuggled.

  “Funny,” she said. Whispering. Maybe she didn’t want Rebecca to overhear. “When I first saw you, I thought you were a ghost.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Whose ghost?”

  She didn’t say anything. Then I realized she was crying again. Not bawling like before, no racking heaving sobs; just quietly weeping.

  Gently I turned her around to face me. “What is it, Maria?”

  Emotion tugged at her face. “You look so much like him.”

  “Who?”

  “… Steve.”

  Her husband. Late husband.

  Then she was crawling on top of me, kissing me with an urgency that was contagious, and I was on my back as she writhed around on me, the curves of her molding, pressing themselves to me, my hands moving across the back of her, over her rounded bottom, up the curve of her spine, to the buttons.

  “Undo me,” she whispered.

  With far less fumbling than you’d imagine, I unbuttoned the dress, and she sat atop me and peeled it off the upper part of her, the garment gathering at her tiny waist, revealing a formidable white bra into which considerable engineering had gone, and she asked me to undo that as well, and I did, and none of that engineering had been necessary because the full breasts were capable of standing up for themselves, large nipples dark against the pale rounded flesh, puffy soft nipples that got crinkly and hard under my kisses. I kissed her and kissed her, her salty face, her lips, her neck, her shoulders, and she let me do most of the kissing, as if basking in the affection; then she eased herself off me, and the couch, onto the floor, and stepped out of the dress, a pool of powder blue at her feet. She wore no nylons, no garter belt, no girdle, simply sheer panties, the pubic triangle vividly dark beneath the fabric.

  I managed to say, “I’ll … I’ll get something.”

  She shook her head. “No. It’s a safe time. It’s safe …”

  Maybe she was a Catholic at that, though the nun part was starting to sound doubtful.

  Then she tugged down the panties, and the blackness of the untamed tuft between her legs against the creamy flesh was startling. She was a stunning woman, petite but with that Botticelli body, and she stood there with the reflection of flames and shadows flickering crazily on her flesh, a campfire dancing around her.

  “Now you,” she said.

  I stood and yanked off my T-shirt, got out of my trousers, stepped out of my drawers. I started to take my socks off but she stopped me.

  “Leave them on,” she said, with a new wickedness. “It’s dirtier that way.”

  This nun concept was definitely flawed.

  We did it on the carpet, near the fire, with me on top, with her on top, and then she stuck that heart-shaped bottom in the air and had me finish her from behind, me saying “Oh God,” again and again, her saying “Yes” over and over, building from a whisper to a scream.

  And that was just the first time.

  “You were wonderful,” she said, as we lay on the couch; she was back in her bra and panties, and I was in my skivvies.

  “You … you’
re not so … bad … yourself.” I was pretty winded; we won’t go into our respective ages.

  “Of course, I don’t have much to go on,” she said, suddenly pixieish.

  “Oh? You seemed to know what you were doing.”

  “Really? Gee whiz. You’re only the second man I was ever with.”

  Then, having kicked me thusly in the head, or somewhere, she fell asleep, leaving me to ponder whether it bothered me or not, playing substitute for that late fighter pilot husband of hers. Had I taken advantage of her, in her distraught state? Gee whiz—was I the evil presence she sensed in the room?

  Had she mistaken my natural lechery for friendliness?

  “Naw,” I said to myself, and fell asleep with her in my arms.

  13

  If Norman Rockwell were looking for a classic American small town to represent the Southwest for his next Saturday Evening Post cover, he could do worse than Roswell. Under cotton-candy clouds and ball-of-butter sun in a sky so clearly blue that Hollywood simply had to be involved, Roswell and its thirteen or so thousand inhabitants (mostly white, maybe ten percent Mexican and Indian) nestled in a setting of sprawling desert and majestic mountains.

  Right down to the manure-rich aroma wafting in from surrounding ranchlands, this was a typical farm community, though distinctly modern, with wide paved streets and flourishing industry (meat-packing plant, flour mill, creameries), and oddly similar to the District of Columbia in its preponderance of shade trees, handsome public buildings and flower-filled parks. Of course in Roswell, it was not granite, but adobe; not cherry trees, but cottonwoods; not memorials, but playgrounds. There was even a Pennsylvania Avenue, with a few Federal-style houses, though mingled with Queen Anne, Tudor, Prairie and more.

  In fact, Maria her-Selff (who this morning I had dropped off at her car parked at the recreation area of Bottomless Lake) lived on Pennsylvania Avenue. But I had orders not to come around her place unless it was after dark and she knew I was coming and I left my car parked at least four blocks away and slipped in back. I knew an invitation when I heard one, and—what the hell—it wasn’t like this was the first time I was a back-door man.