After a long moment, Baker eased himself onto the three feet she'd left for him at the edge of the bed. He smiled, and lightly ran his fingers over her back and shoulders until her sleep was sound.
Now Baker sat against the two pillows in a darkened room, fully dressed but for his shoes. Feeling her warmth rising toward him, he reached across her body and folded the quilt over her. She twitched and was still.
Baker felt strangely at peace. Almost happy. The men outside seemed far away. It seemed as though there were more than before. There was a policeman. There was something about him. He thought of asking Charley, but he quickly put that thought aside. He did not want Charley here. Anyway, the men outside would keep. Until morning.
Tomorrow he would ask Charley why that one in the park seemed to know him. And how Tanner Burke just happened to turn up here. These questions bothered him, but they too could wait. For now he was warm and safe. And he wasn't lonely.
Baker yawned and looked down at the softly snoring shape beneath the quilt and shook his head in a kind of amused wonder. It seemed so unreal. A fantasy. Every man’s fantasy. Rescue the beautiful lady and she takes you gratefully to her bed. Sort of.
He made a face. He wondered how much Everyman would envy Jared Baker tonight if they also had to be Jared Baker tomorrow. Not many, he thought. Most might wish they could be like Abel from time to time. Sometimes even like Charley. But not like Jared Baker. Being Jared Baker was just too damned empty.
Tanner's body twitched and tightened. He could hear her fingernails scraping against the sheets. She was dreaming, he knew. And it was an action dream. A tense dream. Baker hoped it was not about the park and wondered whether he should wake her. Maybe stir her just enough that she could switch to another channel. He saw one hand rise and push from beneath the quilt. It was a motion of fending off. Better give her a nudge. He placed one hand on her shoulder and shook it gently. It seemed to work. The fending hand relaxed, then reached back and rested along his hip. Baker wanted to move it but he waited. It was too close to the puncture wound from Sumo's knife, the wound he deserved for interfering with Abel. The cut had closed, but it was not quite healed and was still tender to the touch. He had not been Abel long enough for it to heal.
Her fingers stiffened and her body followed, as if she knew suddenly that the body she was touching was not her own. Baker seized the hand too late. Her nails dug deep, tearing at the soft scab. She spun upright and lashed wildly at his face. Her lungs sucked in air.
‘Tanner, it's all right.” Baker struggled to keep his voice even. It didn't help. She was not yet awake, and Baker's voice was muffled by her own gasps and by the squeaking and knocking of the bed. She didn't know him yet. He brushed aside her biting fingers and grabbed her by the forearm. She drew in a new breath that he knew would come out a scream.
“Tanner!” He slapped her. The blow, reluctant and with little force, had an effect of less than a second. Again her free hand lunged at him and again another intake of breath. He seized her by the neck and threw her down on the pillow, knowing that he was Jace or Sumo in her mind and detesting the picture that must have been there. His body dropped across her heaving chest, and his hand clamped over her mouth as her fingernails tore at his scalp and neck. The nail of one thumb found the soft flesh above his collarbone and it hurt him. Abel sprung into his mind and he fought to send him away, lest the pain make him slip and say Abel's name. He lay there enduring it. Think of Charley. Charley would be better. Charley would accept the hurt and he wouldn't hurt her back. Baker winced and shook Charley away too. Charley would make her sick.
“Oh, my God!” she cried suddenly, going rigid. The clawing hand relaxed and flew to his cheek. “Peter . . . Oh, my God, I thought. . .”
“It's all right.” He tried to keep the pain from his voice. “Give yourself a minute. It was just a dream.” He eased her hand away and reached for the light on the nightstand.
“Oh, dear Lord!” She sat upright when she saw the row of bleeding welts that curved across his neck. The tears welled again. “Here,” she said, tugging at the arm that supported him. “Roll over onto your stomach. Let me see what I have to put on those.”
“I'd better get up,” he said, resisting her. “There's ... Don't get upset, but there's an old cut on my hip that opened up. I'll get blood on your quilt.”
Startled, Tanner pushed aside the quilt and saw the smear of blood between his fingers. She looked stricken.
“You didn't do it. It's a few days old. I knocked the scab off, that's all.”
“Let me get something.” She sprang from the bed and half-ran to the bathroom.
Baker watched her. He raised himself on both elbows and watched her reflection in the mirrored bathroom door as she rummaged through a leather kit. He knew that he was staring. Her body, what he could see of it beneath the robe, was smoothly muscled. An athlete's body. But there was more to Tanner Burke than that, he thought. She had a way of carrying her head high even while looking down. Graceful. Strong without being mannish. Like a dancer. Baker's eyes fell upon a breast that was partly bared. Buttons, those little looping kind, must have torn away as she struggled. He tried to look away but could not. And as he watched her, his admiration began to slide into an ache of longing. God, she was lovely. And so very nice. Oh, Baker, how do you know what she's like? You want her to be nice. You want her to like you a little. Then what? Baker shrugged, and his mouth relaxed into a tiny smile. It was only Baker talking to Baker. Sometimes he had to stop and think to be sure. But what's the matter with wanting her to be like me? And not just a little. It doesn't mean I'll do anything stupid. Charley? What does she think about all this? What does she think about me?
“Charley?”
“nothing.”
“How can she be thinking nothing? Look at her”
“nothing about you. she doesn't care about you.”
“Charley, why did you say that? Anyone can see that she's feeling something. Even if it's only pity or fear or maybe gratitude. Why would you say she doesn't care about me?”
Tanner's image ripped from the mirror as she appeared in the bathroom doorway. A dampened towel was in one hand and her travel kit in the other. She drew up, startled, at the sight of Baker's face now curiously slack and flaccid. Glazed eyes that seemed to be looking through her . . . She blinked and it was gone. There was only the gentle face she knew, shaking jerkily as one would clear away a daydream.
“Take off your pants,” she said, tugging at his pocket. “I'll run some cold water on the blood so it doesn't set. The shirt too.”
When Baker hesitated, she set her kit on the bed and reached for the buttons of his shirt. He closed his hand over hers and looked at her. Her hand tensed.
“Peter, I don't think . . .,” she stammered. “Tonight. . . all that's happened ... I just can't. . .”
Baker pushed to his feet, embarrassed. ”I didn't mean anything like that.” He blanched. ”I just meant I could do it myself.” He walked to the bathroom, stripping his shirt as he went, leaving Tanner Burke furious with herself for misunderstanding his touch, for making him say that he didn't want her.
Baker was at the sink. The lighter stains of his shirt washed out quickly. Next, he removed his trousers and, fingering the knife cut he didn't want Tanner to see, held the bloodstain beneath the running tap. The thinned blood flowed as if a vein had opened. But it went away. From the cloth and from his fingers, it mixed with the swirling water and rushed to the drain. Baker turned his head and shut his eyes. It was not the blood. It was the drain. Sometimes looking at a drain could make the iron door dissolve. Think of something else, Baker. Think of Tanner Burke. Think of how she could be here. Think of how, of all the people that might have been in the park, Abel led you to Tanner Burke. How could he have found her? She couldn't have been thinking your name. She doesn't know you. So, it was the other one. The one, Jace, who spoke your name. That's how Abel found him. But why? And still, why would Tanner Burke have been there? Abel
? What's going on, Abel? And why is Charley lying to me all of a ...
“Peter?” She was standing at his side, her fingers buttoning the Oriental robe. If anything, the act made her more alluring as the green silk tightened like a sheath over her body. “Peter, I'm sorry.” She let her eyes say the rest. “Come on.” She took his arm. “Let me clean you up a little.”
Soon it was Baker who drowsed under a light cool touch. Tanner had cleaned the wound that was just below his hip joint, and she soothed it with a layer of zinc oxide. This she covered with a fold of gauze bandage. Turning to the scratch marks, she softened them first with a hot, moist towel and then touched a styptic pencil to the places where the skin had been broken. The ridge of welts had already reduced, and those nerve endings too were drifting off to sleep.
“Peter?” She whispered the name she had chosen for him.
“Ummmm?”
“Isn't there anything you can tell me about yourself?”
Baker opened one eye. “You'd have trouble understanding, Tanner. We're both better off if you don't know much.”
“Would you be in danger if I knew more?”
”I think so. Yes.”
“Well, how about just personal things? You're not married, are you?”
”. . . No.”
“You hesitated just then.”
I'm not married, I promise.”
“Divorced?”
“No.”
“Never met the right girl?”
He rolled over and looked at her. ”I did. She was killed.”
“I'm very sorry.”
“I've gotten over it.”
“And whoever killed her, they're after you now? Or are you after them?”
“No, Tanner.” He turned to sit up. “It's nothing like that. There isn't any connection between that and anything else.” It was not quite a lie. Sarah's death had everything to do with what he'd become. But it was no more than the first link in a chain whose pieces seemed to form a circle going nowhere.
“But you loved her?”
“Yes, very much.”
“Is that why you were reluctant to stay with me? You thought I just wanted a body?” Baker put his fingers to her lips.
“She's dead and gone, Tanner. One thing has nothing to do with the other.”
Tanner Burke was silent for several moments, not thinking exactly, rather waiting for her emotions to settle and separate. The park was settling fastest. It seemed so distant. But this man .. . There was something familiar about him. Like they'd met, although she knew they hadn't. It was more as though they shared the same friend. An odd thought, she knew. No reason for it. And also, from someplace very far away, she felt another presence. A terrible presence. For a moment there, in the bathroom, she almost knew what it was. But then another man was listening to her... watching her ... a man she didn't know ... but he was familiar too. Peter? No, it wasn't Peter ... or Harold or whoever.
“Peter.” She touched him. “After you . . . leave in the morning, will I ever see you again?”
”I don't know. I hope so.”
“Do you feel anything for me?”
“Tanner.. ” The question thrilled Baker, but he could not show it.
“I'm sorry. Forget I asked you that.”
”I do feel something. You're a very special woman.”
“How?” she said, fishing.
“You're very accomplished, for one thing.”
She seemed disappointed by the answer. “You mean because I'm an actress? Peter, that doesn't make me special. I was just a skier who was asked to be in a commercial for ski clothes. That led to more commercials and then a small TV part and then some bigger parts. But what I am, still, is a woman and I'm still a skier too. A good one. If anyone's going to think I'm special, it ought to be for that.”
Baker let out a sigh. ”I wish you'd try to get over being hung up on that actress business.”
”I just didn't want it to matter. I want to see you again.”
“It matters, Tanner,” he said kindly. “If you were a waitress or a doctor or a plain girl skier, I know I'd try to see you. I'd try hard. But like it or not, you're famous. You attract attention.”
“Which you can't afford.” She dropped her eyes to his chest. Baker did not answer. “What you did,” she asked, “was it so terrible?”
“It was like tonight in some ways. I hurt someone. I didn't want any part of it, but it happened.”
She raised her eyes to his face and reached out to brush aside a curl that blocked part of it. It was a good face. Eyes that were kind and honest, with tiny lines of humor at their edges. She lifted off his aviator glasses. There was no enlargement when she did that. Glass, she realized. Plain tinted glass. It had no purpose other than to mute the vivid gray-green of his eyes. She studied the eyes. There was a scar near one and another near his chin. One was old, perhaps from boyhood. How hard it was to imagine this ghostlike man as a boy. The other scar was fresh. Perhaps from that other night he spoke of.
“I've been trying not to ask you about that,” she said. “About the park, I mean. Partly, I guess I just don't want to think about it. But there's more. I'm looking at a very gentle and sensitive man. What I see doesn't fit at all with the way you hurt those two.”
“That wasn't a time for being gentle. This is.” Baker could see that if the answer didn't satisfy her, the last part pleased her. For the moment. But tomorrow would be different. Tomorrow, she'd look in the New York tabloids for news of the two men and she'd know what Abel had done to them. The stories would use words like maim and impale and disfigure. The words describing him would be maniac or beast or animal. It's not that she'd feel pity for those two. Not with the memory of what they tried to do to her. What she'd feel would be shock and disgust. And she would be afraid of him. No, he would not try to see her.
“Will you promise that I'll see you again?”
Her question startled him. “I'll try,” he lied. “I'll look for a way.”
She looked deeply into him for a sign that he meant it. That he would really try. She saw, she thought, that he wanted to see her. But she knew he wouldn't try.
“Then I'll find you, damn it.” Tanner rose abruptly and stepped away from his reaching hand. She took three quick steps to the chair where his jacket was draped and snatched the American Airlines envelope from his pocket. She opened it with a flip of her thumb.
She sagged. “Philip A. Metzger,” she read. “That's not your right name either, is it?”
“No, it isn't.”
“Los Angeles!” She brightened. “This is a return connection to Los Angeles. My God, we're neighbors.”
“Tanner, that ticket means I'd planned to end up in Los Angeles. It doesn't mean I still will. Certainly not on the date you just memorized.”
“Shit!” Tanner Burke threw down the ticket. “How can you not trust me?” she flared. “How can you think I'll do anything to harm you after tonight?”
Baker rose slowly to his feet, glancing toward the trousers that hung on the bathroom door, drying. “Tanner, I'd better let you get some sleep.”
Tanner Burke stepped toward him and pressed a hand flat against his chest. “You're not going anywhere,” she said quietly, “and I want an answer.”
“For Pete's sake, Tanner.” Baker threw up his arms. “Think what you're asking. You're asking me to bet at least my freedom on the emotions of a badly shaken up woman who's known me all of four hours. You're already just a little bit afraid of me and by tomorrow night you might despise me.”
“Dumb again. To say nothing of sexist. What's ‘woman’ got to do with it?”
He shook his head helplessly.
“And, whatever your name is, I've known you a lot longer than four hours. I don't know how long, or how I know, but you do, don't you?”
Again, Baker was startled. He could only shake his head and hope that the confusion on his face would persuade her that she must be wrong. Abel kicked. Be careful, the kick meant. Get out of here
. You don't need her, Baker.
“And I'll never despise you,” she said, touching him. “I'm not afraid of you either.”
Baker didn't answer. She saw the tear in his right eye and thought it meant sorrow. ”I care about you, Peter,” she said. And I care about you, Baker thought. And God, I'd like to stay. But you just don't know what it could cost you.
“Will you promise,” she asked, “that you'll call me? You'll know how I feel if you call me.”
“Yes,” he answered. “Yes, I'll know.” Charley would know.
“You'll call?”
Baker nodded. She picked up the ticket envelope once more and groped for a pen in the desk. “Write your number backward,” he said. “Add any two digits to the beginning and the end.”
She studied him for a moment, then wrote her private number as he specified. “You really have to be so careful? In everything you do?”
“For just a while,” Baker lied. “Now get some sleep, Tanner.” He stepped toward the open bathroom door and lifted his still-damp trousers.
“Peter?” she called.
Baker turned.
“Please stay.”
“It's better if I...”
“Please stay.” Her fingers loosed the buttons at her throat. Then they moved slowly to those beneath.
“You don't have to do that, Tanner.”
”I want you to stay.” Her voice caught. Baker crossed to her and took her shoulders gently.
“We'll both just get some sleep,” he whispered.
The buzz of the Oldsmobile's radiophone shook Connor Harrigan from his train of thought. He heard sirens now too. And the klaxon of an ambulance. The shrieks from the park had weakened and stopped. Harrigan slid the microphone from its hook. “Yes, darlin',” he said.
“Mr. Harrigan,” came Kate Mulgrew's voice, “did you say that uniformed policeman was from the Sixth Precinct?”
“That's what his collar said.”
“You're not in the Sixth. That's way down around Greenwich Village. And there isn't any foot patrol either on Central Park South this late.”
Abel Baker Charley Page 11
