by Dean Ing
Douglas Isaacs paused in his furiously whispered conversation with the FBI agent, whose cursory glance ended when those C cups registered. "Just a routine matter, ma'am," he said to the back of the head of the lady with the blonde hair and the funny little hat, and resumed whispering. The agent set off down the hall again. Andy shrugged, swayed his hips in a flirt of bogus irritation, and filed out with the others into the warm afternoon.
He couldn't believe his Pinto would not be under surveillance and, spotting a gray four-door Chevy with the keys still in it, Andy slid inside, giving a little twiddle-fingered wave to the tour-group women, just in case he was being watched.
Beneath that fall of blonde hair, Andy's forehead was damp with sweat as he accelerated slowly from the parking lot. Very soon now, if not already, agents would be dismantling the little garage apartment, finding his weapons, his notes, and the remains of those two kittens which would tell more about Andy's problems than any outright confession could say.
They wouldn't find the real contraband he had stolen because he had given it all to Romana. He wondered if she had made her escape. But who could have known of those stolen lab assets? Isaacs or Lockhart, the punctilious creeps, would have blown their whistles long before this if they'd known. Which left just one person - the one who, he suddenly perceived, could have burned him as part of some deal and might not have to escape at all. Mom had said, if they ever came for him, it would most likely be FBI. Mom had known, all right. Of course Mom had known. . .
Andy's mind leaped from point to point at fever pitch, not pausing to consider how unlikely his suppositions had become. Stepping-stones of hard logic remained, the first one being his need to ditch the car he had stolen and then to hot-wire another car downtown.
And that is why the Fresno police found Wade Eckert's government-furnished Chevrolet sedan after it was towed from a parking lot off Divisadero near the city's center, wiped of any useful prints. That matched up perfectly with the auto-theft report from a woman whose Oldsmobile had been stolen from that same parking area.
34
JUNE 1994
Among the best places to ditch one car and hot-wire another in broad daylight is a private parking area without an attendant, but emblazoned with terrible warnings to the trespasser. Andy chose one such area, reserved for staff, behind a clinic. He wasted no time on recent makes, which were harder to hot-wire and more likely to have alarms. He lay down in the seat of the first old American sedan he found unlocked. Its bumper sticker proclaimed: LOVE A NURSE. STAT! After scaring himself witless by grounding the wrong wire for a brief blurt of the Oldsmobile's horn, he found the right connections beneath its steering column. Once he had driven the car away, he calmed down enough to check himself in the rearview. The room for cosmetics in his purse was minimal so, as a woman, he was the frazzled wrath of God. As a white male fugitive, he was well disguised. At the moment, his mind was ablaze with juggled priorities.
First he must remove that package he had left in his refrigerator before the apartment was searched, if indeed it hadn't been already. He could not say why, but he would rather be sought as a violator of federal laws than as - as whatever he had become when in desperate need. The car he was driving would do for the moment, particularly since he could approach his apartment as a woman and perhaps spot stakeouts in time to walk away. But the car might be reported stolen at any time, so he needed safer wheels. He checked into his purse quickly, and, on his key-ring, found the key he had duplicated to Aletha McCarran's Taurus. If Aletha was out as he hoped, please, please let her be driving her little Fiero. He could leave a note and, with any luck, keep her from reporting the Taurus for twenty-four hours. He did not want to meet Aletha now. He liked her.
And if Aletha were home, he must sweet-talk her into lending him a car. He would not be seeing her again and that was a shame because some of his most briefly satisfying fantasies in recent weeks had featured her, but there must be other Alethas in the world. He had more pressing priorities centering on Mom - Mom the Empress, Mom the Treacherous - the only person alive who could have known he had stolen those things from the lab. The only person alive. The phrase stung him, but he could turn that sting around.
He parked the Olds around the corner from his apartment and became his brisk female, wishing now that he had shaved his legs more recently, knowing also that some women didn't. First he would get a change of clothing, and then do what had to be done. He consulted his purse and paused to look at his own address numerals, just in case he was under surveillance, then trotted, with hips swaying, remembering to take one riser at a time, up to the landing.
He opened his purse for his keys and then saw the numerals on the clock inside, and was not certain whether he was an hour off, that was possible; but not two.
Someone had been inside already, and Andy heard the roaring of blood in his ears as he trotted down those steps again. He kept the purse unsnapped, focusing on the derringer, determined not to draw and fire it until he was approached at point-blank range. He was truly astonished when he reached the Olds without a hint of pursuit. Well, he had more clothing at The Place.
He made several switchbacks, watching for a tail, and once he stopped the car to listen for helicopter surveillance. There was one chance in ten thousand that the Olds had been bugged during the few minutes he had left it, and that slender thread of chance seemed to be choking him as he sped toward the midtown freeway, a hair-triggered bomb wrapped in skin, yet still in tenuous control.
He left the Olds, wiping it clean of his prints with the edge of his skirt, not far from the McCarran place. The Taurus was in Aletha's driveway, and he used his key to enter it, moving quickly, rummaging among her scuffle of papers and ballpoints so that he could write the note that, with luck, might buy him a day. He felt a mixture of emotions now at the idea that he would not have to face Aletha. Relief, yes, but in his present state of mind, a black frustration as well. There was much unfinished business there. . .
"Excuse me? What are you doing in - " a familiar voice inquired in no-nonsense tones. He turned to see Aletha McCarran, in red shorts and white halter and deck shoes, standing nearby with a gardener's trowel in hand. She was sweaty and smudged and haughty, and altogether fetching.
"Oh, Jeez, am I glad to see you!" Andy whipped off the hat with its wig. "I was writing you a note," he said.
"My God!" Aletha's eyes widened; then she began to laugh. "Andrew, you would not believe the things that flashed through my mind! But what on earth? Weren't you going to the playhouse?"
The dramatiste in her was never long in surfacing, and Andy realized suddenly that it was her way of maintaining superiority in her world. He wondered how Mr. McCarran dealt with that. In the bedroom, for example. Because, in any game she played, Aletha was certainly a woman who would want to be the dealer. In that, Aletha was a lot like Mom. Too goddamned much like Mom.
One brow arched, bringing up the corner of Aletha's mouth as though they were linked by wires. "Well, they say cross-dressers are usually straight," she said. "I do hope they're right, Andrew."
He could have proven her correct by lifting his skirt to show the erection that he had grown upon seeing her. The momentary temptation was almost irresistible, but sanity intervened. He clapped the hat and wig back on, stepped from the Taurus, and struck a model's stance with a smile he hoped was just winsome enough for Aletha. "Do I pass?"
"As a woman? Um," she began, and was overtaken by giggles. She stepped nearer; moved a tendril of hair from his eyes; shook her head. "I suppose that depends on the effect you want. You wouldn't exactly prod my lust, if I were a man. Luckily, I'm not." Then: "Damn, I thought I'd locked that car. Well! As long as you're here, come on in. I was just going in for limeade, it should be cooling off, but it's hot as Romeo's codpiece out here."
She kept up her banter while leading him through the house to the kitchen, a vast airy room in which blinds kept the windows protected from Fresno's late-afternoon brilliance. Mostly her jabber
consisted of questions he scarcely heard and did not bother to answer - like did he like his drink with ice, and why wasn't he at the playhouse, and what would his note have said. Something told him she wasn't so much full of questions as full of nerves. Well, he had cut loose from his pursuers for the time being. Another ten minutes or so wouldn't matter.
He improvised. He had always wondered how it would feel to wear women's clothes, he said, and was finding that it was more titillating in public. Men sometimes waved, or honked, he added.
"Does that excite you?" She handed him his limeade and the question at the same moment.
"Kind of, but not the way you think. It's even better when women make eye contact and smile."
"A wonder they don't laugh. You need to do some things." She sipped her limeade, set it down, stepped so near that he was immersed in the musk of her sweat. She took his chin between gentle fingers, tilted his face for a profile. The little finger of her free hand traced a small scar on his cheek. "A bit of concealer here, first. You don't need much, with that lovely gypsy skin. Then a good foundation; we call it 'blush' - it's really rouge in a powder form. It takes a very good brush to apply perfectly; not many women seem to understand that. And some liquid eyeliner is more dramatic to the folks in the cheap seats, or in the next lane of traffic. If you're going to do this, do it right. You need to be taken in hand," she murmured.
He found his tumescence going away now as Aletha took charge of the moment, handling him.
Mommying him. He allowed it, while she told him things he had picked up long ago as he watched Mom and, later, had watched Aletha herself prepare for a performance.
Finally she took him by the hand. "Andrew, darling, come upstairs and let me show you how it's done."
"Wait, I don't know," he said. "What will Mr. McCarran think?"
"Frank? He will think" - she tugged as she led him upstairs - "that he should push Nike and Bell Atlantic, or whatever they tell him to think. By now he has left that fey oak-paneled whorehouse they call a brokerage downtown, and he will not think about things he doesn't know about. Capisce?”
"But if he comes in unexpectedly," Andy said, topping the stair behind her.
"Not until after his visit to the club while afternoon traffic dies away, and that means seven-thirty on the dot after three slow martinis. My dear husband does nothing unexpectedly. Ever. There are times when I honestly believe he will drive me up the wall." Now they entered a room that might have been staged as a set in Manon Lescaut, draperies on the four-poster in bordello crimson and white that matched her outfit and, its mirror surrounded by lights, a table with a huge disarray of cosmetics and sable-tipped brushes. He knew those brushes; they were outrageously expensive. It was an Aletha room, he thought: melodramatic, but with nothing missing, and a class act all the way.
"That's some vanity," he said as she snapped on the lights.
"When you're this serious about hiding nature's oversights, you call it a makeup table," she replied, smiling. "Now sit down, Andrew."
Something in her tone was just that faint shade too peremptory for him to accept. "Maybe some other time, Aletha." Because her hand was pressing on his shoulder, he laid his own hand atop hers, smiling at her in the mirror, feeling himself hardening again. "There are other things I'd rather learn from you."
"I'm flattered," she said, "though I doubt I have much else to teach you. Perhaps we could discuss this at your apartment sometime soon."
"I've got another place. Bet you didn't know that." He turned to face her; wondered why he was telling her this but a part of him knowing, all right. He was probing the edge of the envelope by sharing his secrets, but that wouldn't matter because he would not have that secret for long anyway. "A really nice place in the country."
"I didn't know," she said. "On your salary? Don't tell me you're one of those kept men." Her smile was provocative.
"No. I've never, uh, done that." It sounded timid, spiritless; the pendulum of their relationship was swinging to her and to shift the balance he tried a deeper tone. "It's on the Yomo reservation. You'll probably find out about it anyway, sooner or later." Sooner than you think, and on the front page.
"It sounds nice, Andrew. Was that - is that the real reason you came here today? To talk about us?"
"Not to talk." He was empowered, seeing the uncertainty in her eyes. "We've done too much talking, too many times. I'm going to do something about it."
It was true; if he were ever to learn those delicious secrets of mutual pairing that all lovers share, this would be the time, and the woman, and the chance for him to share them in traditional ways. He tossed his purse ten feet to her bed.
She stepped back, and he snapped off those pitiless lights that showed the tiny wrinkles at her throat.
"Andrew, until now I never really thought," she began, taking another step back, one hand touching her own cheek. She seemed hesitant, vulnerable, and now his erection could have scratched crystal.
"What didn't you think, Aletha? Every time you teased me with words, you must have thought." He took a step toward her, and she moved back as if doubtful. Ohh, and it was fine. "When you reminded me of your body, reciting your measurements, and then told me you didn't mean anything by it, you were thinking."
"You have a wonderful memory for dialogue," she marveled.
"A wonderful memory for Aletha McCarran," he corrected her softly and let his skirt slide away. "It's not as if I had memories of other women, you know. I want my first memories of that sort to be of you."
She saw his maleness fully ready as he pulled his briefs to one side, to brandish his threat. "You're really a virgin, darling, in this day and age? And you're offering yourself to me." Her eyes grew moist. "And why shouldn't you, after all?" Something almost coy surfaced in her gaze but, as if abandoning one interpretation of a role for a better one, she became forthright, her voice husky. "I admit I've thought of you, of us together. I'm more than flattered, Andrew. More than touched. I believe I am" - she smiled again - "persuaded." And with this, her hand on her breast, that hand began to undo the knot that held her halter together. Her breasts, he saw, were ripe, not yet pendulous, with a tan line that stopped near nipples that seemed to be staring at him. They were magnificient.
They were daunting.
She readied herself with a sinuous wriggle, letting her shorts and panties fall to the floor, and removed the deck shoes quickly. Then she took him by the hand again, leading him to the bed. Controlling him.
Mommying him. He saw her lick her lips, head back, with a voluptuary's smile. And he felt himself ebbing now, knowing at last that he would not be able to take her - or any woman - this way.
As she sank onto the bed before him, deliberately sensual and tempting, the roaring began in his ears again, and beneath it a litany of despair. He could not be a man for her because her consent unmanned him; and when she realized his failure, she might try to console him, even hold him. And later, after he had gone, she would laugh.
But she would not laugh if he took her without consent, the way he had taken his other darlings, the way he had fantasized taking her recently. It would be far better than any previous sex he had ever known because while he indulged his fantasy it would be real; was already real. His erection was becoming resurgent as he grasped the purse lying near her; unsnapped it; withdrew the knife he had modified and honed for similar purposes on lesser darlings.
"Andrew? What the hell!" Her protest had grown almost to a scream as she saw his intent, and the upcurved eviscerating tip of the blade. Legs scissoring wildly, she rolled away before he could find her center with it, the blade slicing harmlessly into bedding. "What's wrong with you?" Standing on the floor now, the bed between them, she pulled a corner of a sheet up to cover her as if hiding her nakedness was somehow proof against him. He was wonderfully functional, potent in his mastery of the situation. "Listen, buster, you're scaring the shit out of me!" she yelled. "If you're not out of here in five seconds, I'm going to bring the neigh
bors!"
"Scream like you did before." He moved around the end of the bed, bringing a frilly edged pillow with him as she dropped the sheet and moved another step backward. "Go ahead, Mrs. Glamourpussy."
"That was a scream? This is a scream!" she raged, and unleashed a shriek that set her chandelier to tinkling in the closed room. Ears ringing, he knew capitulation when he heard it. He smiled and she saw her obliteration in it, and her throat worked convulsively without result.
There was going to be a lot of blood, he realized, but he could wash his shirt out before he left. Despite the thudding pulse in his head, he felt that his mind had never been so sharply focused. "But I promise you won't feel anything but a nick at your throat. Really," he insisted. He honestly and truly did not want Aletha to feel pain. After she had bled out unconscious, what he needed would remain warm. He would still have plenty of time.
He did not have as much time as he thought, however, as Aletha backed against her ridiculous spindly legged little bedside table and, fumbling at its single drawer without looking, produced a businesslike and definitely nonridiculous .380 automatic. He paused, judging his options, and she might have brought it off had she not begun to fumble again in that drawer.
He was only six feet away when he saw that she had kept the weapon separate from its magazine of heavy-caliber rounds. And as their gaze met, they both knew he was not going to give her time to shove that magazine home.
35
JUNE 1994
Gary let the time get away from him and did not leave the office until nearly six, driving directly to Highway 99, giving more time to his thoughts as traffic lightened south of Fresno.
Perhaps he should have checked more thoroughly on Anderson, Virgil Pease, after a single call on Monday afternoon had verified that young Anderson had graduated from Cal-Tech and was now, they believed, with Hughes-El Segundo.
Even CalTech's records clerks were high-tech, he had found. Because Anderson's course records showed he had been "heavy" in computerized visual display, the young woman suggested that Anderson's work at Hughes might be involved with Hughes's parent company, GM, developing virtual-reality maps for automobiles. That was not military work, so Mr. Garrett should have no difficulty in contacting Mr. Anderson.
