Koko

by Peter Straub

  “Well, you can fly from Singapore to Bangkok in about an hour,” Maggie said. “Eat your soup and stop worrying.”

  Pumo tried his soup. Like everything really funny-looking that Maggie urged on him, it did not taste at all the way it looked. The soup was not at all creamy, but tasted of wheat, pork essence, and something that tasted like cilantro but couldn’t be. He wondered if he could put a variation of this soup on the new menu. He could give it some name like Strength to Carry Two Oxen Soup, and serve it in little cups with lemon grass. The Mayor would love it.

  “Last fall, around Halloween, I saw the wonderful Harry Beevers,” Maggie said. “I did this stupid thing, just to get him worked up. He was following me around a liquor store, and he was so arrogant he thought I didn’t see him. I was with Perry and Jules, you know, my downtown friends.”

  “Roberto Ortiz,” Pumo said, having finally remembered the detail that had nagged him since seven o’clock. “Oh, my God.”

  “They’re nice, they’re just perpetually out of work, which is why you can’t stand them. Anyhow, I saw Harry gloating around after me, and when I knew he was looking I stole a bottle of champagne. I was feeling nasty.”

  “Roberto Ortiz,” Pumo repeated. “I’m sure that was the name.”

  “I’m almost afraid to ask what you’re talking about,” Maggie said.

  “When I looked up the newspapers in the Microfilm Room, the librarian told me that all those files had already been assembled for someone else who was researching a book about Ia Thuc. I think the librarian said the man’s name was Roberto Ortiz.” Tina looked virtually bug-eyed at Maggie. “Get it? Roberto Ortiz had already been dead for something like a week. I have to call Judy Poole and see if she knows where Michael is.”

  “It still doesn’t exactly make sense, Tina.”

  “I think Koko killed the last journalist, and then I think he got on a plane and came to New York.”

  “Maybe it was Roberto Gomez at the library, or Umberto Ortiz, or some other name like that. Or maybe it was a reporter like Ernie Anastos. J.J. Gonzales. David Diaz. Fred Noriega.” She tried to think of other Hispanic reporters on New York City television, but couldn’t.

  “Looking up articles on Ia Thuc?”

  Pumo nervously finished his soup.

  As soon as he had hung up his coat in the loft he switched on the lights and went up to his desk. Still wearing her down coat, Maggie trailed into the room after him.

  This time Pumo asked Information in Westchester for Judith Poole’s listing in Westerholm, and was given a number that did sound to him gloomily like the alternate number on Michael’s recorded message. Pumo dialed it and Judy answered after a few rings. “This is Mrs. Poole.”

  “Judy? This is Tina Pumo.”

  Pause. “Hello, Tina.” Another deliberate pause. “Please excuse my asking, but would you mind my asking why you’re calling? It’s getting very late, and you could leave a message on Michael’s machine if it’s for him.”

  “I already left a message on Michael’s machine. I’m sorry it’s late, but I have some important information for Mike.”

  “Oh.”

  “When I called him at the hotel in Singapore, I was told that they had checked out.”

  “Yes.”

  What the hell is going on here? Pumo wondered. “I was hoping that you could give a number for where they are now. Michael’s been in Bangkok for two or three days now.”

  “I know that, Tina. I’d give you his number in Bangkok, but I don’t have it. We didn’t have that sort of conversation.”

  Tina groaned silently. “Well, what’s the name of his hotel?”

  “I don’t think he told me. I’m sure I didn’t ask.”

  “Well, could I give you a message for him? He has to know some things I’ve discovered in the past few days.” When Judy said nothing, Pumo went on. “I’d like you to tell him that Koko’s victims, McKenna and Ortiz and the others, were the journalists at Ia Thuc, and that I think Koko might be in New York, calling himself Roberto Ortiz.”

  “I don’t have the faintest idea of what you’re talking about. What’s this about victims? What do you mean, victims? What’s this Koko stuif?”

  Michael looked over at Maggie, who rolled her eyes and stuck her tongue out.

  “What the hell is going on here, Tina?”

  “Judy, I’d like you to ask Michael to call me as soon as possible after he talks to you. Or give me a call and tell me where he is.”

  “You can’t say something like that to me and then just hang up! I want to know a thing or two, Tina. Suppose you tell me who’s been calling me up at all hours and not saying anything.”

  “Judy, I don’t have any idea who that could be.”

  “I suppose Michael didn’t ask you to do that now and then, just to check up on me?”

  “Oh, Judy,” Pumo said. “If someone is bothering you, call the police.”

  “I have a better idea,” she said, and hung up.

  Pumo and Maggie went to bed early that night, and Maggie wound her arms around him, hooked her feet around the back of his legs, and held him tight. “What can I do?” he asked. “Call all the hotels in town and ask if Roberto Ortiz is registered?”

  “Stop worrying,” Maggie said. “Nobody’s going to hurt you as long as I’m here.”

  “I almost believe you,” Pumo laughed. “Maybe I was wrong about the name. Maybe it was Umberto Diaz, or whoever you said.”

  “Umberto wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  “Tomorrow I’ll talk to that guy at the library,” Pumo said.

  Maggie fell asleep after they made love, and for a long time Pumo tested his memory without shaking his conviction that the name spoken by the librarian had been Roberto Ortiz. He finally fell asleep.

  And woke all at once, as if prodded by a sharp stick, hours later. He knew something horrible, knew it absolutely and with the total unblinking certainty with which the worst things are embraced in the dark of the night. Pumo understood that when daylight came he would begin to doubt this certainty. The worst thing would no longer seem rational or persuasive once the sun came up. He would be lulled, he would accept Maggie’s comforting explanations. But Tina promised himself that he would remember how he felt at this moment. He knew that it was not Dracula or any other criminal who had broken into his apartment. Koko had come into his apartment. Koko had stolen his address book. He needed their addresses in order to hunt them down, and now he had them.

  Then another section of the puzzle slotted into place for Pumo. Koko had called Michael Poole’s number, been given Judy’s number by the answering machine, and promptly dialed it. And kept on dialing it.

  Pumo did not get to sleep for a long time. Eventually a thought even he knew was paranoid joined the others, that Koko had murdered the investment banker, Clement W. Irwin, in the airport, and this thought, for all its obvious irrationality, kept him awake even longer.

  3

  After breakfast, Maggie went off to Jungle Red to have her hair trimmed and Pumo went downstairs to talk to Vinh. No, Vinh had not seen anyone hanging around outside the building during the past few days. Of course with all the workmen he might have missed something. No, he could not remember any unusual telephone calls.

  “Were there any calls from people who hung up as soon as you answered?”

  “Of course,” Vinh said, and looked at Pumo as if he had lost his mind. “We get those calls all the time. Where do you think you are? This is New York!”

  After he left Vinh, Pumo took a cab up to the 42nd Street library. He went up the wide steps, through the doors, past the guards, and returned to the desk where he had begun his research. The stocky bearded man was nowhere in sight, and a blond man half a foot taller than Pumo stood behind the desk holding a telephone up to his ear. He glanced at Pumo, then turned his back to continue his conversation. When he set down the telephone he came slowly toward the desk. “May I help you?”

  “I was doing some research here two d
ays ago, and I’d like to check on something,” Pumo said. “Do you know the man who was on duty then?”

  “I was here two days ago,” the blond man said.

  “Well, the man I spoke to was older, maybe sixty, about my height, with a beard.”

  “That could be a million people in here.”

  “Well, could you ask someone?”

  The blond man raised his eyebrows. “Do you see anyone here besides me? I can’t leave this desk, you know.”

  “Okay,” Pumo said. “Then maybe you could give me the information I was looking for.”

  “If you want a particular microfilm and you’ve been here before, then you know how to fill out the forms.”

  “It’s not that kind of information,” Pumo persisted. “When I requested some articles on a certain subject, the man who was working here told me that someone else had recently requested the same information. I’d like the name of that man.”

  “I can’t possibly give you that information.” The blond man arched his back and looked down at Poole as if he were standing above him, on a ledge.

  “The other man did, though. It was a Spanish name.”

  The blond man was already shaking his head. “Not possible. It’s not like the old slip in the back of the book business.”

  “You don’t recognize the description of the other clerk?”

  “I am not a clerk.” There was now a straight red line across each of the blond man’s cheekbones. “If you do not wish to request microfilms, sir, you are wasting the time of several people who do.”

  He looked pointedly over Pumo’s shoulder, and Pumo, who for some time had experienced the sensation that someone was staring at him, looked back too. Four people stood behind him, none of them looking anywhere in particular.

  “Sir?” the librarian said, and tilted the tip of his chin like a baton at the man immediately behind Pumo.

  Pumo wandered away toward the carrels to see if the bearded man would appear. For twenty minutes, the blond man either attended to researchers, talked on the telephone, or preened at the desk. He did not once look at Pumo. At twenty minutes past eleven he consulted his watch, raised a flap in the desk, and strode out of the room. A young woman in a black wool sweater took his place, and Pumo returned to the desk.

  “Gee, I don’t really know anyone here,” she said to Pumo. “This is my first day—I only passed my internship two weeks ago, and I spent most of the time since then in Incunabula.” She lowered her voice. “I loved Incunabula.”

  “You don’t know the names of any well-dressed sixty-year-old men with beards in this library?”

  “Well, there’s Mr. Vartanian,” she said with a smile. “But I don’t think you could have seen him at this desk. There’s Mr. Harnoncourt. And Mr. Mayer-Hall. Maybe even Mr. Gardener. But I don’t know if any of them ever had Microfilm, you see.”

  Pumo thanked her and left the room. He thought he might see the bearded man if he wandered through the library and poked his head into offices.

  He set off down the corridor, looking at the people who filled the upper floors of the great library. Men in cardigan sweaters, men in sports jackets, moved from the elevators to office doors, women in sweaters and jeans or in dresses hurried down the wide corridor. A wonderful dandy in a resplendent suit, a bristling beard, and gleaming eyeglasses swept through a door, and all the other staff members nodded or said hello. He was taller than the librarian Pumo had spoken to, and his beard was glossy red-brown, not salt-and-peppery black.

  The visitors to the library carried their coats like Pumo and looked less certain of their destinations. The dandy passed through them like a steamship pushing through a crowd of row-boats and strode down the corridor and turned a corner.

  Just as Pumo reached the corner he had the same sensation of being watched he’d had in the Microfilm Room. He looked over his shoulder and saw the crowd of visitors dispersing, some going into the Microfilm Room, others into other rooms. Still others boarded the elevator. The library staff had all gone through office doors, except for two women on their way to the ladies room. Pumo turned the corner and thought he had lost the tall dandy before he had quite realized that he’d decided to follow him. Then he saw a glossy black shoe flicking around another corner.

  Pumo jogged down the hallway, hearing the soles of his shoes click against the brown marble. When he came walking fast around the corner the dandy was nowhere in sight, but a door marked STAIRS was just closing halfway down the otherwise empty hallway before him. Then from down at the far end of this corridor came a pair of young Chinese women, each carrying two or three books bristling with marker slips. As he watched them come gliding toward him across the marble floor, one of the women glanced up at him and smiled.

  Pumo opened the door to the stairs and stepped onto the landing. A large red numeral 3 was painted on the wall before him. As soon as the door closed behind him, he heard footsteps, softer than his own, coming down the corridor from the same direction he had taken. The dandy’s footsteps sounded on the cement stairs above. Pumo began to go up the stairs. It seemed to him that the footsteps in the corridor paused at the staircase door, but he could be certain only that he heard them no more. Footsteps climbed the stairs toward the fifth floor.

  The door below him clicked open. Pumo did not look down until he was at the landing where the stairs changed direction. He went to the railing and bent over to see the person who had just come onto the staircase. He could see only the railing and a wedge of stairs twisting around and around beneath him. Whoever was down there stopped moving. Pumo could still hear the tall dandy’s steps ticking hollowly upward.

  He moved a step away from the railing and looked up.

  The footsteps from below began to ascend toward him.

  Pumo took the step back to the railing and looked down, but at once the ascending footsteps stopped again. Whoever was coming toward him had moved back under the protection of the staircase.

  Pumo’s stomach went cold.

  Then the third-floor door opened again, and the two Chinese women entered the staircase enclosure. He saw the tops of their heads and heard their clear emphatic voices, speaking Cantonese. Above, the door to the fifth floor slammed shut.

  Pumo unfroze and left the railing.

  He opened the door marked PERSONNEL ONLY on the fifth-floor landing and stepped into a vast dark space filled with books. The tall dandy had disappeared into one of the aisles between the stacks. His quiet footsteps came as if from everywhere in the enormous room. Tina could not hear any noises from the other side of the staircase door, but had a sudden, urgent image of a man creeping up the last few steps.

  He stepped quickly into the stacks and found himself in a long empty aisle perhaps a yard wide between towering steel bookshelves. Far above, low-wattage bulbs beneath conical shades cast dim but distinct pools of illumination. The tall man’s footsteps were no longer audible.

  Pumo forced himself to move more slowly. Just as he reached a wide middle aisle, he heard the clicking of the door which opened onto the staircase. Someone slipped inside and closed the door behind him.

  He could virtually hear the person who had just entered, wondering which aisle he had gone down. Pumo could not help feeling a prickle of fear.

  Then he heard slow footsteps far off to his left. Pumo began to move toward the dandy, and heard the person who had just entered the stacks start down one of the narrow aisles. His feet hushed along in the soft, slow rhythms of the good old Jungle Walk.

  Either he was going completely paranoid, Pumo thought, or Koko had followed him into the stacks. Koko had stolen his address book and discovered that the other men were out of town, and he was going to begin his excellent work all over again in America with Tina Pumo. He was all stoked up from reading about Ia Thuc, and Tina was next on his list.

  But of course it would turn out that the person who had just come into the fifth-floor stacks was a librarian. The door said PERSONNEL ONLY. If Pumo turned down an aisle and
ran into him, he’d turn out to be a fat little guy with Hush Puppies and a button-down shirt. Pumo went as noiselessly as possible down the wide middle aisle, doing a pretty fair Jungle Walk himself. Three aisles from the end, he stopped to listen.

  From off to the left came quick faint footsteps that must have been the dandy’s. If anyone else moved through the stacks, he was walking too quietly to be heard. Pumo peeked down a long aisle. Pools of light lay between columns of shelved books. He ducked into the aisle.

  It seemed as long as a football field, narrowing, a tunnel seen through the wrong end of a telescope. Pumo moved quietly down the long tight aisle. In a queer hallucinatory trick of vision the spines and titles of books seemed to creep by him as they moved while he stood still. W.M. Thackeray, Pendennis, Vol. 1. W.M. Thackeray, Pendennis, Vol. 2. W.M. Thackeray, The Newcomes. The Virginians. The Yellowplush Papers, ETC., bound in pink cloth board with gold lettering and published by Smith, Elder & Co. Lovel the Widower, ETC., in matching pink and gold from Smith, Elder.

  Pumo closed his eyes and heard a man cough softly into his fist one aisle away. Tina’s eyes flew open, and the titles of the books before him melted into a single gorgeous Arabic scrawl of gold over a pink background. He supposed he nearly fainted.

  The man who coughed took an almost silent step forward. Pumo stood still as a statue, afraid to breathe even though the man in the next aisle could only be the librarian in Hush Puppies. Whoever it was took three swift, gliding steps down the aisle.

  When Pumo thought that the other man had gone far enough up toward the middle aisle, he began to move toward the door.

  In that instant, as if Tina had given a cue, someone whistled the beginning of “Body and Soul” far away toward the left side of the room—an ornate performance full of scoops and trills and vibrato.

  Pumo heard the man in the next aisle begin to move less cautiously toward the whistler. Someone off that way slid several books off a shelf—the dandy had found what he had been looking for when he came into the stacks. The man in the next aisle turned into the middle aisle. Pumo realized that if he had parted the Thackeray volumes in front of him, he would have seen the face of the man in the next aisle. His heart began to pound.