by Alan Russell
“Why this hurry?” asked Hiroshi, clearly alarmed. His inquiry was voiced just before they took the Ardath exit going eighty miles an hour. Between them and a long drop to some intersecting freeways below was a guardrail, one they came perilously close to slamming into.
Am answered the question after getting Annette more centered on the asphalt. “Marisa is talking with Lady Death,” he said.
The Fat Innkeeper had no idea what Am was talking about, looked at him as if he had lost his mind. “My reporter friend is interviewing Angela Holliday,” Am said. “The murderer. At least I think so.”
“Ah,” said Hiroshi. He didn’t relax, but at least seemed to understand.
Lady Death had told Am that she had filled out one of Kingsbury’s questionnaires, had even described how they had gotten together for drinks before the conference so that they could talk. Her questionnaire hadn’t been among those in Kingsbury’s room. For some reason, she must have retrieved it. For likely the same reason, she had also murdered Dr. Kingsbury. The doctor had even made a reference to his meeting with Angela Holliday. He had told Skylar he had “a date with deceitful destiny.” What did that mean? As for the supposed break-in of her room, Lady Death had probably seen Am and Marisa drinking in the Lobby Lounge and been curious.
Marisa, he thought, more alarmed than ever.
Annette was losing power on the ascent up Ardath. “Come on,” said Am, “come on.”
She pushed up and over the rise. Glistening far below was the ocean and La Jolla Strand.
“Hold on,” Am warned Hiroshi.
The descent into La Jolla is often backed up with traffic. As Ardath merges with Torrey Pines Road, there is the inevitable gridlock. Neither Am nor Annette were going to be denied on this day, though. They didn’t slow up, found open spots where none seemed to exist. Am knew the illegal shortcuts and used them, sailed through a gas station’s parking lot and then through an alley behind a restaurant. Hiroshi’s eyes were closed. He was holding the dashboard very tightly.
Am was afraid of more than crashing. What if Marisa had mentioned to Lady Death that he was searching for their B-positive murderer? It seemed unlikely. Marisa hadn’t been looking forward to the interview, had probably kept the casual conversation to a minimum. He doubted it was the kind of thing she would volunteer anyway, but he was still afraid for her. It was a hell of a time, Am thought, to learn just how much he cared.
He sailed through a red light, then, to the loud blaring of horns, turned west toward the ocean. It wouldn’t do to park in front of the Hotel, not when every moment might count. The fastest way to the Crown Jewel Suite called for an unusual route.
On the south side of the Hotel is a boat-launching area that’s open to the public, where four-wheel-drive vehicles pull their boats out to the water. It’s the only place on the La Jolla Strand where it is legal to drive onto the sand, and even at that, the course is very regulated. Am had another path in mind.
His turn into the boat launch thruway was too wide and too fast. In desperation, Am slammed on the brakes. Annette fishtailed, spinning out to a gravel pathway. The woody’s gymnastics spared her a collision into a boat trailer by inches. Hiroshi tried to say something to Am, but he wasn’t listening. His only focus was on swinging Annette’s wheel around and pressing forward again. The Fat Innkeeper had apparently had enough. He opened the door and jumped out.
Squeezing by the boat trailer and truck, Annette shot ahead toward the sand. The ride rapidly got bumpy. The beach was covered with seaweed. Too late, Am realized the reason. The tide was high. Very high.
He steered Annette toward the seawall, but not in time. A wave crashed into Annette’s side. Her beloved ocean pushed into her. For a moment, Am let up on the gas pedal, and that was a mistake. The water pooled around the wheels, and Annette sank into the La Jolla Strand equivalent of quicksand. Am pushed hard on the gas, but her tires only dug deeper holes.
Am jumped out of Annette, gave her one last forlorn look. She reminded him of something. Then he remembered. She looked like another beached whale.
Chapter Forty-Eight
The interview had gone far better than Marisa had expected. Angela Holliday had opened up to her, had given her more than sound bites. She hadn’t pulled out her damn hourglass, and hadn’t acted as if Marisa were just one in a line to get a few quotes out of her. They had far exceeded the half-hour time limit, but weren’t close to running out of things to say. Their talk wasn’t a one-way conversation. Angela asked questions of Marisa, learned about her life outside of her stories (“Sometimes,” Marisa had said, “I wonder if there is one”), and her goals.
By mutual consent, the two women had decided to watch the sunset together. It was, said Lady Death, her favorite time of the day.
“Anthropologists say that among tribal people the twilight is a time for quiet,” Angela said. “When the sun is setting, there is a melancholy that comes over them. The term for it is ‘Hesperian depression.’ It is a time they think about their mortality.”
“You’ve thought about that more than most,” said Marisa.
“Yes.”
The congruence of water and sun, of boiling horizon, was still a few minutes away. “Would you like a drink?” asked Lady Death. “I’ve recently become enamored of this rather exotic schnapps called Goldschlager…”
“I tried it for the first time last night!” said Marisa. “I’d love one.”
The drinks were served, and a toast was made: “To new horizons,” said Lady Death.
Marisa had never learned to shoot drinks. She sipped hers, and watched the sunset. The two women were contemplating those thoughts that sunsets bring when the interruption occurred. One moment their attention was on the ethereal, and the next it was on a woody being wildly driven along the beach. A woody. Marisa got up and looked for a camera crew. Sometimes Hollywood comes to San Diego’s beaches to do filming. But there were no cameras, just a chariot of the surf-gods mired in the sands.
The driver jumped out of his wood-paneled wagon, and gave it a desperate look. Marisa had expected a teenager, but this was no youth. Even from seven stories up, the figure looked familiar. When he turned around, Marisa knew who the crazy driver was. “Am,” she shouted, “Am!”
He yelled up to her, screamed, “Don’t,” but she couldn’t be sure of what else he said. He shouted a second time, but she still couldn’t make out his words. Then he yelled, “I’m coming up,” vaulted up the beach stairs, and passed from her sight.
“Did you hear what he was yelling?” asked Marisa.
“He said he was coming up.”
“No,” said Marisa. “Before that.”
“I think he yelled, ‘Don’t drink.’ “
“Don’t drink?” Marisa was puzzled at the words.
“I guess I won’t offer you a refill then,” said Lady Death.
Marisa’s glass was empty.
“I wonder what he meant by that,” said Marisa. She was still looking down at the beach. The waves were crashing into the abandoned woody. “Poor car,” she said.
Lady Death cleared the glasses.
The fastest way to the Crown Jewel Suite was a service elevator on the south side of the Hotel. Am desperately pushed 7, then, breathing heavily, tried to think about what to do next. The only thing on his mind had been to get to Marisa. It was still difficult to think beyond that. He had been the dog chasing the bus. Now he was about to catch it.
The elevator doors opened. Am ran across a walkway to the Crown Jewel Suite and remembered too late that he didn’t even have a pass key on him. He knocked on the door, decided if it wasn’t opened within three seconds he would grab an entry key from one of the maids. That, or break it down.
The door opened almost immediately. “Am,” said Marisa.
She looked bewildered, but he didn’t care. Am reached out and hugged her, which might have confused her even more, but not so much that she didn’t return the hug.
“Aren’t you supposed to sa
ve the embracing until after you’re out of danger?” asked Lady Death.
It was a good question, especially as she was pointing a gun at them. She motioned the two of them away from the door, directed them with the gun to sit down on the sofa, then closed the door behind her.
“What’s going on here?” asked Marisa. Her question was more rhetorical than not. Guns have a way of saying a lot.
“Your boyfriend went mad,” Angela said. “Probably a hundred people saw that. He drove his car on the beach and started shouting like a crazy man. Then you opened the door and he pushed his way into this room. The rest, I’m afraid, is going to be an awful blur. And an awful mess.”
“Too many people know about B positive,” said Am.
“That’s not what Marisa said.”
Am turned to her, in a quick look confirmed his fears.
“You know what the worst thing is?” said Lady Death. “I don’t even know my blood type. I threw away my medical questionnaire without even taking notice of it. I think it’s rather rare, Mother said something about it once, but I’m not even sure. Can you believe that? A half hour ago Marisa told me about your theory. She swore me to secrecy, of course. Since that time I’ve been going crazy trying to remember what my blood type is. And wondering what I’d have to do, if necessary, to keep it a secret.”
“You don’t want to kill again,” said Am.
“No,” she said, “I don’t. But this isn’t a time for rational thoughts. My wagon isn’t hitched to a rational star. It is a time to dream. I am on the verge of everything I have ever hungered for. Do you think I can just walk away from the adulation and riches? No, not even walk away. I’d be led off in shackles.”
“It,” Am said, purposely not elaborating on what “it” was, “wouldn’t be worth it.”
“I think we disagree.”
Marisa had to ask the question that journalists always ask: “Why?”
Lady Death didn’t answer, but her eyes grew more focused and her trigger finger grew whiter. Am decided to answer, decided he better keep the conversation going. He had figured out why she wanted her medical questionnaire back.
“The reports of her death,” he said, “were greatly exaggerated.”
The Twain quote had been floating around in his head waiting and wanting to come out. He had known it, and not known it.
“She overstated the extent of her injuries,” Am said. “She had no idea that Dr. Kingsbury would be requesting medical reports and examining her records. My guess is that Angela had serious injuries, but not life-threatening. Her near-death experience was likely just a hallucination brought on by the pain medication. Or wishful thinking. Or was it greed?”
“It was none of those things,” she said. “It was the real thing. I died.”
“Did your doctor think so? Was there any medical corroboration?”
“The medical community is often blind.”
“Including Dr. Kingsbury?”
Lady Death smiled or, more accurately, pantomimed a smile. “He was not so blind,” she said. “And he was no saint. He wanted me exposed in more ways than one. The doctor wanted to make an example of me, and at the same time he wanted to bed me. Without saying it, he implied that if I was amenable to his attentions, matters would go easier on me. When I went to his room the night before last, he thought I was his lamb for the slaughter. He never suspected it was the other way around. I brought two drinks, his and mine. He swallowed his in a gulp.”
She didn’t continue. But Am needed to keep her talking. “And what about you?” he asked. “Did you finish your drink?”
“Yes,” she said. “The knocking at the door frightened me, of course, but it wasn’t totally unexpected. I left with the glasses as soon as the hallway was clear. The doctor was almost dead. I actually wanted to stay to see him die, but I knew I couldn’t.”
“If I had been a fraud like you,” said Am, “I probably would have wanted to see a firsthand death, too. Grist for the mill, right?”
His remark stung, made her angry, which is what he wanted. He had kept her occupied while the Fat Innkeeper silently opened the door and crept up behind her. For a big man, Hiroshi was agile and fast. He grabbed the gun, wrenching it from her. During the quick tug of war he said, “Please.” Then, with the gun in his own hand, he said, “So sorry.”
Polite even to a murderer.
Lady Death collapsed on the floor, and there, she cried for a minute. If Hiroshi sympathized, he did it with the gun pointed at her. It was a good thing the suite had two phone lines. Am called the police with one of the telephones, and Marisa called the paper with the other.
With the necessary phone calls made, everyone gathered again in the sitting room. The silence, and the waiting, grew more uncomfortable. Lady Death spoke first, her voice small and tremulous.
“May I watch the sunset?” she asked.
Hiroshi and Marisa looked to Am for an answer. “From inside,” he said, “not from outside.”
He was afraid of her leaping. “Thank you,” she said quietly, then walked toward the floor-to-ceiling window and looked out. She stood there and stared for a minute, then broke the silence again.
“May I have a drink, please?” she asked. She made her request to the window, didn’t turn back to them.
Am hesitated. “I’d like the gold,” she said, “to toast the dying of the light.”
There was another ocular consultation between the three of them, then Marisa quietly said that both of them had already had a glass of the Goldschlager. Deciding that there was no harm in her request, Am poured from the opened bottle at the bar and brought Lady Death her potion. “Thank you,” she said.
The sky was mostly red, but there were many colors tinting the horizon, subtle hues radiating out of the clouds. “It’s beautiful,” she said.
Lady Death raised her glass to the sunset. “Be positive,” she said. She turned to them, smiled, then shook her head and added, “Damned if I really know.”
Later, Am would wonder about her reference. Was she musing about life after death, or her blood type?
She swallowed her drink Kingsbury-style, with one gulp. A few moments later, she started convulsing.
“There must have been two bottles,” shouted Marisa. She was right, but it was too late to be right.
They watched her die. It wasn’t seppuku, but it was close enough.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Am didn’t feel much like a hero, even if Marisa’s articles made him sound like one. What seemed to be forgotten among all the PR was that Am had done just about everything wrong. It was Hiroshi who had remembered about the high tides, who had been smart enough to jump out of Annette and get a pass key so that he could walk into the Crown Jewel Suite unobserved. And though Am had figured out who the murderer was, and why she had killed Kingsbury, and even how she had murdered him, he was dissatisfied with how he had reached his conclusions. It was like getting the right answer to a math problem, but solving it the wrong way. His answers had resulted from using the wrong formula. They worked, but they shouldn’t have.
“Damned if I really know,” Lady Death had said. And damned if he did. As it turned out, her blood group was AB, the rarest of the four blood types. So much for his inspiration, his clue from beyond the grave. Lady Luck had delivered him Lady Death. There was bitter poison to consider, and bitter irony to swallow. But still, he reminded himself, for having gotten everything wrong, there were still things that had turned out right.
Between Am, Hiroshi, and Marisa, a triangle of understanding had emerged. Am wasn’t sure which of them had suggested the ceremony, but they had all known it was the right thing to do.
A day after Angela Holliday’s death, the three of them walked in procession from the central Hotel gardens to Am’s (and Hiroshi’s) special place. It was twilight when they started, but the sky grew progressively darker. Hiroshi led the way with a lantern. What they were doing was somewhat eastern, and somewhat western, but it was mostly Californ
ian.
Hiroshi had told him that during the Festival of the Dead, during Obon, family members led the dead forward with lanterns to the temple graveyard. Hiroshi, with his lantern, was leading Dr. Thomas Kingsbury and Angela Holliday to their place of rest. The dead were supposed to be appeased by members of the household. The three of them were that household. The Hotel had always been generous that way with extended family. Hirsohi considered what they were doing was more than ceremonial. He thought of it as insurance of sorts, a way to ameliorate the curses and placate the gaki at the Hotel California. Maybe they should have included Stan the ghost in the ceremony, but he seemed to be having too good a time haunting the place.
Am had never been to his special place at night. It was even quieter than he expected. Hiroshi’s lantern illuminated the setting, but around them was more shadow than not. The three of them stood in front of the rock. They had brought nothing with them, no memorial markers, carried only their feelings. Without having discussed it, Am knew he was to be the speaker for the dead.
“Thomas Kingsbury’s last words were ‘Be positive,’” Am said. “I’d like to believe that he didn’t die angry, that he had a last momentary glimpse of insight and found his dying peace in that. His words are best accepted at their face value. It is not necessary to interpret them as the words of an afterlife, for they work just as well as being wonderful advice for the here and now. It would have been better had Thomas Kingsbury and Angela Holliday come to this revelation earlier rather than later. Let us hope they have both found this peace now.”
Brother Howard wouldn’t have given a similar talk, thought Am, but the words seemed right for everyone, and everything, there.
Hiroshi extinguished his lantern. He didn’t want the spirits to follow him. They were home. The three of them found the path through the light of the moon, walking in silence and contemplation. No one spoke until they entered the lobby of the Hotel.
“I need a minute of your time, Am-moo,” said Hiroshi.
