A shadow fell across Annie’s face. She thought how much Lola would have enjoyed being here.
She said so and added, “We can’t forget her. And all those other women. We can’t just walk away.”
Sean turned and gave her a sharp look. “Nobody’s walking away from this, Annie.”
She was embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I know you’re doing all you can.”
“Yes,” he agreed, mollified. Then added, “But it’s never enough until we stop him. He could be at it right now.”
“What?” Quynh asked.
“Nothing, baby,” Annie answered.
Quynh shot her a disbelieving look. You couldn’t hide horror from a child who had been weaned on it.
Tom had a question too.
“Who are you talking about? The Mt. Diablo killer? Or that strangler?”
“The Strangler,” said Annie. “The one in the city. We keep running into dead ends.”
“We!” Tom exclaimed. “What do you mean we? What do you have to do with this?”
“You’re in for it now, Sherlock,” Sam said, then looked out the window, trying to pretend she wasn’t there.
And in for it Annie was. Tom wouldn’t be put off with excuses and demurrals. He wanted the whole story—and he wanted it right then.
Driving toward the little town of Sonoma, Annie and Sam told it all.
Tom was even less pleased than Sean had been with their snooping.
“Goddammit! I can’t believe this. Skulking around. Following people. You’re poking your noses into some very serious stuff here, ladies. This man is a murderer. This isn’t the amateur hour. If I’d known, I’d have locked you in your apartment and thrown away the key.”
That’s exactly what I thought he would do, Annie reminded herself. I was right not to tell him. And, thank God, here they were in Sonoma. A reprieve.
Situated at the foot of the wine-rich Valley of the Moon, little Sonoma was rich with history. They poked around for a bit, Sam searching for the ghost of the nineteenth-century fief lord, General Vallejo, whom she fantasized she was related to in a previous life.
Annie led them to a French bakery, a sausage factory, two cheese makers, and a hot dog shop that understood about chilidogs with mustard and onions. Quynh had two and saved a bite for Hudson, slavering in the car. They ended with a stop at an old-fashioned drugstore soda fountain that served up real chocolate malts.
Not bad for a town of six thousand, Annie thought. Might be a pleasant place to retire to. But not today. “On to Nick’s Cove!” she announced.
Sam groaned. Nick’s meant barbecued oysters and beer.
They took it easy, meandering through the back roads toward the coast. They all ganged up on Annie when she tried for one more detour to the Rouge et Noir cheese factory.
Her cries of “I need to do a story on this place” fell on deaf ears.
It was a lovely drive. The winter rains had kissed the rolling hills. Sheep, goats, and cows munched on grass green as shamrocks. In summer and fall the hills were golden but dry, and fire was a constant worry. But not today.
Today was hill and dale from Petaluma, the chicken capital of the world, to Marshall, a couple of stores and cafés holding on by their toenails to the rocky cliff above the cold blue Pacific. A couple of miles north of Marshall was Nick’s, where they would while away the afternoon on a sunny oceanside deck with barbecued oysters, French fries, and beer.
Neither Sean nor Tom had been to Nick’s before. It didn’t take long for its magic to capture them. Quynh considered the oysters gravely. Hudson, secured by a leash, sat on the railing overlooking the water and dared sea gulls to come his way.
Sam and Annie had been here together and with other men, other times.
Annie was reaching for the catsup when a voice from one of those other times sneaked up behind her.
She turned, and there in the blaze of white that was his smile stood Harry. She hadn’t seen him since before he had stood her up for Sam’s party. But there he was, smiling as if he had just taken her for a soda yesterday. His arm was thrown casually over the shoulder of a milk-skinned redhead, as casual and studied as the blue cashmere sweater about his neck.
“Hey, author,” he boomed.
How long had it been since she’d heard him call her that? Him, whom she’d obsessed over for weeks, months?
He enveloped her in his huge hug and assessed Tom over her shoulder. He murmured into her ear, “Looks like your ship came in.”
“Not tied up, but at the dock,” she answered.
He released her and there was a flurry of introductions and handshakes. Then, as quickly as the squall of activity had begun, it blew over. Harry and his redhead were on their way, then gone.
Annie was flustered. She couldn’t look Tom in the eye. As she leaned toward the catsup, he stopped her hand and raised it to his mouth.
He knew. He remembered about Harry.
“It’s okay, sweetie,” he said.
He was right. It was okay. Harry was then and Tom was now. She answered him with a kiss.
Quynh rolled her eyes and Hudson yowled at a rude bird.
*
Much later, on the drive back home, with the sunroof snugly shut against the cold evening air, Annie began to sing.
This is number one, and the fun has just begun,
Pull me down, roll me over, and do it again.
“Where did you learn that,” asked Tom, “in Girl Scout camp?”
“Exactly. My counselor, who was about seventeen, brought it from Pat O’Brien’s. She’d been sent to New Orleans to ‘get away from a young man,’ if you know what I mean. I was about twelve, a little older than Quynh.” She smiled down at the sleeping little girl, her cat blissed-out belly up atop her.
By the time the toll taker had reached out his hand at the San Francisco end of the Golden Gate, it was dark, the moon high, and they had learned twenty-seven verses with twenty-seven choruses of “Roll me Over in the Clover.”
So had Quynh, who had been faking slumber all along.
*
Before they fell asleep that night, Tom turned to Annie and asked her once again, “Promise?”
“Promise,” she said. “I’m leaving it to the cops. I’m out of it, completely.”
*
Eddie Simms began that same Saturday morning by rolling over and frowning at his alarm. He didn’t work on weekends. Why was he awake so early?
Then he remembered. This was the day to begin.
He lay in bed for a few minutes thinking about her face, her ass, idly scratching himself.
How would Miss Tannenbaum look as his cock slipped into her? Would she moan? Would she smile? Gasp with pleasure? Pain? She was his new favorite fantasy. He tightened his grasp on his penis.
And then he remembered last night. And the nigger on the bus.
“Motherfucker!” he cursed in the empty apartment. Rage made his head buzz. He could smell the hot vomit again and he retched.
He stumbled out of bed toward the sink, but there was nothing left in his stomach.
Then he rested, naked, on a kitchen chair for a few minutes before he got up to fill the coffeepot with cold water.
The night before replayed in his mind.
After he got off the bus the bastard had disappeared. Eddie had hailed a taxi and tipped the cabbie to put up with his stink. Once home, he had stripped outside his door and dumped his clothes in the garbage. He’d showered in water as hot as he could stand and then smoked a joint. Slowly—after a little target practice into the bull’s-eye he nailed against one wall—he’d calmed down and was able to sleep.
If it hadn’t been for her. It was all the bitch’s fault.
That was okay. Her time was coming. He’d get her back for this one. He reached for his knife and a honing stone.
FORTY-ONE
There was no better way to spend a Sunday. After the big pot of coffee Tom had made while she was still asleep they devoured bagels, lox, and cream chees
e in bed. Then they turned to one another, and it was noon before Tom pulled on his pants to walk over to Fillmore for The New York Times and four in the afternoon before they got around to the Examiner-Chronicle.
Tom was deep in the sports section, plotting strategy against his father in the basketball betting wars. Annie was reading a competitor’s food column with a very critical eye. Tom rubbed absently on her thigh. Then a little higher.
“Come here,” he said as he leaned down and started blowing softly on her toes.
“I swear.” She laughed as a sudden flush of blood turned her fair skin to rosy red.
*
The phone rang and rang and rang. Annie and Tom couldn’t hear it because the night before, looking forward to a long, lazy, uninterrupted Sunday in bed, she had unplugged it.
To Eddie Simms, on the other end of the line, it rang as if the apartment were empty.
He was just checking. But it didn’t really matter where she was this weekend. Her last weekend.
He smiled.
It was weekdays she had to watch out for. That was when he did his best work.
FORTY-TWO
A truck is going to run over me. My teeth are going to fall out. I am going to die, Annie thought. God didn’t let you get away clean with this much happiness.
Millie, her agent in New York, had called shortly after she had kissed Tom good-bye and wished him a happy Monday morning. He looked as if he might even have one, a big smirk hovering on his face.
And her Monday? She couldn’t believe it. Millie loved the first three chapters and outline of her book, and so did two editors. There might even be the tiniest of bidding wars. But the book was a go!
“I told you this topic was hot!” Millie had said. “We’ll do ‘Today,’ we’ll do ‘Donahue.’”
Was Millie crazy? She’d only written three chapters and now TV! She had nothing to wear.
Millie had chattered on with the cheerleading and motherly clucking that made her so valuable as an agent and long-distance friend.
“Just go sit at the typewriter,” she had signed off. “I’ll take you shopping when you get to New York.”
Annie couldn’t contain herself. She called her parents, Sam, Tom, Quynh, Angie and Frank. She called almost everyone she’d ever known. By the time she was done her long-distance bill would be bigger than her advance.
When she finished the calls nobody was available to play and she couldn’t just stay home. So she took herself downtown and bought something short, black, and slinky. In Magnin’s she ran into her writing student, Eve Gold, and flung herself on Eve’s bosom with the good news.
Mrs. Gold grabbed her hand and marched her straight into a cab, over to Nob Hill and Fournou’s Ovens at the Stanford Court Hotel.
“My friend, the famous author, needs a snack,” she said to the waiter. “A bottle of your best champagne and four ounces of Beluga caviar—for now.”
*
Annie was happily drunk by the time she arrived home. A message from Tom awaited her.
“Sorry about this damned meeting tonight. I’d love to be with you. But tomorrow night we’ll celebrate. Get dressed up pretty, and be hungry and ready to go at eight.”
That was easy. She held up the new, slinky black dress against herself in the mirror.
And then she gave in to the champagne whirlies. It was time for a nap. A well-deserved, very long nap.
*
“Toot-toot!” The raspy bleats of children’s party horns heralded the arrival of the three musketeers at her door. Along with a shower of confetti and a bouquet of balloons.
Sean poured a round of champagne and, after toasts to the book, to friendship, to love, they were ready to step out for the evening.
Almost.
“Not quite so fast there, little lady,” Tom said. “Close your eyes. This is really going to be a surprise!” And with that he slipped a blindfold over her eyes.
“Trust me,” he said, “you’re in good hands.”
*
It was thrilling, this fantasy of abduction, even if she did know she was in the back seat of a sedan with Sean, a policeman, at the wheel. Her other senses heightened, she was aware of her slip of a black satin dress sliding against the leather seat. Samantha’s laughter from the front seat was silvery. Tom’s after-shave, cigarette smoke, the zing of a breath mint. The tires whooshed on the pavement and she leaned heavily into the hard, woolly warmth of Tom’s body.
They drove for maybe ten minutes. Then she heard brakes, the voice of a valet attendant. Hands helped her out. A burst of laughter, a few steps, and they were inside a space crowded with noise and people.
“Surprise!” The blindfold came off and she was awash in the sparkles of revolving ballroom lights.
“I’m your lifeguard. May I help you to your seat?” asked a tall man in red swim trunks and T-shirt.
It was her favorite cabaret—Beach Blanket Babylon. She’d seen many versions in its seven-year run, but not this latest: BBB Goes to the Stars…and the Beach!
She clapped her hands with delight. Tom, Sam, and Sean smiled. It was the right choice for her celebration. With food flown in from New York: Sabrett hot dogs, knishes, egg creams, and the famous Madison Avenue Greenberg’s brownies. Who could ask for anything more?
The cabaret was loonier and tunier than ever. It was the quintessential San Francisco show—funny, camp, magical, fantastic. A dancing box of Tide rushed in and kissed the shore. An Academy Awards envelope belted “There’s No Business Like Show Business.” The headdresses of Cuckoo Racha, the matchmaker, grew more bangled and bananaed with each costume change as she tried to help the innocent Snow White in her search for Prince Charming.
There were razzmatazz, fancy hoofing, and ridiculous puns that had them pounding on one another with helpless laughter.
In among all the silliness, the lyrics spelled out the show’s theme.
Someday he’ll come along, the man I love.
On stage, Snow White burst out of her shell, opened her heart, strutted her stuff, and discovered the man she loved in “a very pretty little city without pity” San Francisco, right in her own backyard. Annie’s eyes filled with tears.
Her book, her friends, Tom—it was too much. She thought her heart would burst.
FORTY-THREE
Across from Annie’s apartment, Eddie Simms watched and waited. He’d been following her routine for three days now. A pile of stubbed-out Picayunes grew at his feet as he watched Annie Tannenbaum come and go, her apartment lights flick on and off.
It had been difficult at first. She had no regular pattern: no nine to five, exercise classes at odd times of the day, her boyfriend in and out and overnight. Eddie’s hours at the flower market were three to eleven in the morning. He couldn’t afford to miss a day of work.
But then it dawned on him. The one constant in her schedule. Of course. He had known it all along. Her Monday- and Wednesday-night classes. He had dropped out, but she had always been there. He could depend on that.
So it would be a little different from the rest of them, maybe a little harder. But the prize would be worth it.
*
“And then,” Eve Gold was saying, “I add a little allspice, my secret ingredient.” She was sharing her recipe for chili with Annie as they walked toward their cars in the parking lot after class.
“Sounds great. I’ll have to try it for Tom. He’s mad about chili.”
“Looks like that’s not the only thing he’s mad about.” Eve beamed at her. “You’re simply glowing.”
“Does it show that much?”
“My dear, love always shows in a woman’s face. Just like pregnancy. Five minutes later, I can tell.”
“Five minutes? You under the bed?”
Mrs. Gold waggled a finger at her. “You know what I mean. Anyway, I’m so happy for you. I was beginning to worry.”
“About me?”
“Of course about you. A smart, nice-looking girl like you, you should be married.
”
“Eve, you sound like my Aunt Essie.”
“Obviously your Aunt Essie is a smart lady. She knows what’s good for you too.”
Annie laughed and buttoned her blazer. It was cold out here near the ocean. She should have worn a heavier sweater.
“Did it ever occur to you that I might not want to get married again? That I like living alone? Just the other day I read something Katharine Hepburn said about marriage being overrated. Maybe I agree with her.”
“Katharine Hepburn is an old lady. Besides, Spencer Tracy was already married.”
“That doesn’t mean she was wrong.”
“Doesn’t mean she was right either. And she’s a movie star. You’re not.”
At Eve’s car, they continued to talk.
“Take my advice. If this nice man who makes you look so happy asks you to marry him, do it. I look around me in this city. I know what’s going on. It’s not as if most men I see are even interested in women. You’re not going to get an offer every day.
“Now,” she reached in her bag for her keys, “you want to go for a drink?”
“I’d love to, but I’m a little tired after last night. Have to get my beauty sleep if I’m going to look pretty for my…beau.”
“That’s the spirit! Maybe next Monday. And,” she shot Annie a cautionary look, “you keep thinking about what I said. A hard man is good to find.”
Annie laughed. “You mean a good man is hard to find.”
Eve Gold winked. “That too, dear, that too.”
FORTY-FOUR
Driving home from class, Annie tuned in KFAT, her favorite country and western station. It broadcast from Gilroy, garlic capital of the world.
The DJ was playing one of her all-time top ten—the name of which she could never seem to remember. Nor did she ever get to it in time to tape it. It started like an ordinary C&W song, but broke in the middle with a verse that tried to wrap up the entire C&W experience:
I was drunk the day my ma got out of prison
And I went to pick her up in the rain
Before I got to the station in a pickup truck
She got runned over by a danged old train
Impersonal Attractions Page 20
