Valentine, page 13
She smiled and pressed closer against him.
Three hours and several drinks later, he was in bed with her. He followed her in his car, and by the time she opened her apartment door they were half undressed.
They made love twice. Then, when he was certain she was asleep, he slipped out of her bed and stole away, carefully propping the valentine card on the pillow next to her. Inside the card he’d written a note that read: Mr. Avnet has an early meeting, but he requests the pleasure of Ms. Williams’s company on a Valentine’s Day picnic. Be ready at noon. Bring this invitation—and your best screenplay. N. His phony last name was the name of an actual entertainment mogul.
At nine o’clock that morning, he called her. She sleepily accepted his invitation. He hung up and drove to a spot high in the hills above the city, an isolated country road beside a forest. He parked beside the road, took a shovel from the trunk of the Mercedes, and hiked up to the tiny clearing in the woods he’d discovered shortly after his arrival in Los Angeles. Among the trees near the clearing, he went to work. He dug a hole six feet by three feet, four feet deep. He propped the shovel against a nearby tree and walked back down the hill to his car.
He went back to his room, showered, and changed. Then he drove to a nearby mall. In the trendy gourmet shop he bought a basket filled with country paté and Cajun chicken sandwiches and strawberries and champagne. In the record store he bought a portable cassette player and one tape. In the sleep shop he bought a large blanket. His last stop was the candy store.
She took a last look at herself in the mirror: yes, she was ready. She’d thought about calling her parents, but then decided it could wait until after the picnic. Perhaps by then she’d have some news for them. If Neil liked the screenplay as much as she thought he would . . .
He drove up in his Mercedes just as she arrived on the sidewalk outside her building. When she got in beside him, he leaned over and kissed her. She handed him the valentine card.
“My invitation,” she said, affecting a formal tone.
He laughed. “Thank you, ma’am.” He took the card and put it in his pocket, and they were off. She sat with the screenplay on her lap, smiling over at him as they headed for the freeway.
It was a beautiful day, warm and cloudless, and it seemed to get better as they left the freeway and drove up the winding roads into the hills. She had no idea where they were going, but she relaxed in her seat and left the details to him. She asked about his early meeting at the production company, and he smiled and said it had gone well. He named a famous director and told her that they were working on a possible deal.
At last they arrived on a small road high in the hills. There were trees above them, and the city lay far below. A few more miles, and then he slowed and parked by the side of the road. They got out, and Neil reached into the backseat for a large basket and a blanket.
“My, you seem to have thought of everything,” she said.
He grinned, took her by the hand, and led her up into the trees. A few minutes’ walk and they emerged into a small clearing. The sun bore down on the almost perfect circle of bright green grass.
“Well, here we are,” he said.
“Oh, Neil, it’s lovely! How did you ever find this place?”
He winked and began laying out the blanket.
First, he served the champagne. Then he brought out the paté and the sandwiches and the strawberries. They ate together in the clearing, talking and laughing comfortably, more like lovers of long standing than new acquaintances. After lunch, they made love on the blanket. It was perfect, just the way he’d dreamed about it all through the years in prison.
Later, Sharon sat up on the blanket, adjusting her clothes. She turned her head and smiled down at the handsome man who lay beside her. His eyes were closed, his face to the sun, and there was the hint of a smile on his lips. For a moment she thought he was asleep. Then he opened his eyes and gazed up at her.
“Hello,” she said,
“Hi.”
She found their discarded glasses and poured the last of the sparkling wine. He sat up on the blanket and took his glass from her. They toasted.
“To Dangerous Curves,” she said, laughing.
Neil laughed, too. “Are you referring to yourself?”
“No, darling, it’s the title of the movie we’re going to make together.” She reached down beside her, picked up the manuscript, and held it out to him. He took it from her, glanced down at the title page for a moment, then set it aside on the blanket.
“Ah, yes,” he said. “But first, I’ve got something for you.”
“Oh?” There was a provocative lilt in her tone.
Sharon watched as he leaned over and reached into the wicker basket on the other side of the blanket. He rose to his knees and turned back to her. He was holding out a pink, heart-shaped candy box, and there was a small cassette recorder in his other hand. She smiled dreamily up at him, took the candy box, and looked down at the recorder.
“What’s this?” she giggled.
“Background music,” Neil said, leaning forward to kiss her. In the middle of the kiss, he pushed the play button. The soft piano intro reached her ears, followed a moment later by the low, clear voice of Sarah Vaughan.
“My Funny Valentine.”
Sharon stared down at the device in his hand, then up at him. “Why, that’s one of my favorites! How did you know?”
Neil continued to smile at her, but she noticed the subtle change that crept into it. The gleam, the sudden look of triumph in his eyes.
“You don’t get it, do you?” he whispered. Then he put down the recorder, brought up his arm, and smashed his fist into her nose.
The candy box skittered away as Sharon’s head flew back onto the blanket, and for a moment she couldn’t see. Something had hit her, she thought, and something was trickling from her nose, but nothing was registering. Then her vision cleared, and she looked up at the handsome face grinning down at her. She blinked as she became aware of the throbbing pain below her eyes.
“What. . .?” she began, her speech slurred by pain and surprise. “Wha . . . happened . . .?”
He leaned down and took the sides of her face gently in his hands. Gazing directly into her uncomprehending eyes, he said:
“I’m Victor Dimorta. Happy Valentine’s Day!”
She stared up, unsure that she had heard him correctly. Victor? she thought as her mind began to function again. Did he say—
Then the music reached her ears again, and she remembered. Victor Dimorta. Victory over death. Hartley College.
Panic possessed her. Victor Dimorta! She shot up from the blanket raising her arms in automatic self-defense, opening her mouth and filling her lungs to scream.
His fist smashed into her mouth, and she fell back on the blanket. Oh, God! her mind said over and over. Oh, God! She attempted to get up again, but she didn’t get far. This time he punched her in the stomach. She lay back on the blanket, the hot California sun bearing down on her, slowly becoming aware of the horrible pain. That, and the voice: the odd, high-pitched laughter from the figure above her. And the monologue that accompanied it as he struck her again.
“. . . thought you were all so much better than me . . . ugly, creepy Victor . . . not so ugly now, am I! Am I, bitch? Cunt! You’re gonna die now . . . die . . . and die . . . and die. . . .”
She tried once more to rise, but he was sitting on her chest now and she couldn’t move. Through her panic and her fear and her pain, she felt the pressure as he took her arm in his powerful hands. She heard the snap as he broke it at the elbow. Then the pain flooded up through her and she fainted. She regained consciousness slowly, feeling the slap against her cheek as he coaxed her back into wakefulness. She couldn’t move her arms, and the excruciating pain informed her that he had broken the other one. The laughter continued from somewhere above her, and the words.
“. . . like that, Sharon? Miss high-and-mighty Sharon Williams? Does it hurt, bitch!? Like you hurt me?! Well, does it, Mother?”
The words swam away from her, and everything began to fade. Mother? she wondered as the pain and the fear were replaced by the last phase, hallucination. Did he say Mother? . . . whose mother? Oh, Mother! Daddy! . . . Help me . . . help me . . . please, God, somebody . . . help me. . . .
It took a long time for Sharon Williams to die: he made sure of that. When it was finally over he knelt above her, smiling down, allowing the exquisite, unutterable sense of victory to surge through him. Then he raised his arms above his head and howled his triumph to the sun.
One down, he told himself. Three to go.
Afterward, he carried her body into the trees, dumped it in the makeshift grave, threw the screenplay in after it, and filled the hole. He covered the turned earth with leaves and a large dead branch. He collected the shovel and the picnic things and the candy box and made his way back down to the car. An hour later, the picnic things were in a dumpster across town.
Two hours later, Victor Dimorta was on a plane to Pittsburgh.
Jill
7
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 5
Jill had to write again. The need had been building up in her for days now, ever since she’d discontinued work on the novel. It was most apparent to her now, in the early morning, when she had conditioned herself through long custom to go into the office and turn on the computer. Within an hour after breakfast, she was usually well into the day’s output.
She hadn’t eaten breakfast this morning. The queasiness in her stomach was really what had awakened her in the first place, a full half hour before her alarm went off. She sat on the couch in the living room clutching a throw pillow to her body, feeling the chills of nausea course slowly through her. This made her think of Dr. Chang, her obstetrician, and the pills she concealed in the drawer of her night table. If she kept them in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, Nate might see them. . . .
Dumb, she told herself. This is the worst time to be so up in the air. The worst time not to have something to write, some regimen in the mornings, when work would be the best thing. For several reasons.
She tossed the pillow aside and stood up. Enough, she told herself. Take the medicine and go into the office. Write something. Write anything.
Barney Fleck’s first telephone call was placed at ten in the morning. He sat at his cluttered desk with a cheese Danish and a large plastic cup of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, courtesy of Verna in the outer office, who had a cinnamon donut and tea with lemon. Just like every morning in their eight years together. He lit one of the Viceroys he sometimes smoked when nobody was around and dialed the number Verna had magically produced for him from Vermont information.
“Hartley College,” said a woman’s voice on the other end of the line.
“Hello,” he said. “My name is Barney Fleck. I’m a private investigator, and I’m looking for one of your former students. Whom do I talk to about that?”
“Well, let’s see . . . you want admissions, down the hall. Let me connect you.”
“Thanks.” There was a click, followed by a second ring.
“Admissions. Ms. Cooper speaking. May I help you?”
He smiled. Everybody in places like Vermont was so polite! Try getting a greeting like that from a New York college. . . .
But she couldn’t help him. Not yet, anyway. It seems Hartley was a very small school, and they’d only introduced computers there about eight years ago. All records of students before that were in some file room somewhere. He gave her the name and the date of admission, and—when she asked what this was about—a cock-and-bull story about a recently deceased distant relative who’d mentioned the student in his will. She promised to call him back just as soon as she could get out of the office and find the file. He gave his phone number, hung up, and inhaled half the Danish in one bite.
Ms. Cooper called back an hour later. By this time, he was wadding notepaper from his desk drawer into balls and shooting at the wastepaper basket he’d placed on the other side of the room. This was his favorite timekiller when waiting for important information. And he had every intention of solving Jillian Talbot’s problem as soon as possible.
“Mr. Fleck? I found the file, but there’s not much here. The student was only here for one full semester and a month of the second. Then he—well, it appears he was expelled.”
“Oh? Why?” he asked. Because he tried to rape three co-eds, he thought.
“I don’t have that information. There’s just a stamp across the record, TERMINATED. That usually means expulsion . . . oh, well, here’s the address and phone number we had for him sixteen years ago. . . .”
Jill stared at the computer screen. It stared back.
She’d been sitting here for a full hour now, ever since staggering from the bathroom, where she’d been sick. Physically, she now felt better. The prescription medicine the obstetrician had given her was doing its job. But she wasn’t; the screen was still blank.
How about the rape thing? she thought. A vague story was in her mind, based on an actual recent incident involving a jogger in Central Park. What if they hadn’t caught the gang of teenage boys? What if they were still at large, knowing that their victim had managed to retain some incriminating evidence? What if they were tormenting her . . .?
No. That was too close to her own situation.
Okay, how about the haunted house thing? Again, a story she’d heard once, about a house in upstate New York that seemed to have a mind of its own. No fewer than three sets of tenants had hastily vacated the place after about a month. . . .
No. She’d never dealt with the out-and-out supernatural, and she’d probably end up attaching some prosaic, earthbound solution to it. Dull, dull, dull. She admired Stephen King and Anne Rice and Dean Koontz enormously, but she knew she didn’t think like them.
Oh, come on, she told herself, grateful that her stomach was feeling better but frustrated by her own lack of concentration. Come on. . . .
When the phone rang, Dr. Philbin almost didn’t answer it. Then, remembering that she hadn’t switched on the answering machine, she glanced at her watch, found that she had five minutes before her first client of the day was due to arrive, and picked up the receiver on her desk.
“Dr. Dorothy Philbin,” she murmured.
“Umm, doctor? Umm . . .”
She leaned forward in her chair, immediately curious. A male voice, youngish, clearly nervous, or upset, or both. Now she heard ragged breathing.
“This is Dr. Philbin,” she said. “Can I help you?” Dumb, she thought. What a dumb thing for an analyst to say. . . .
Another pause. Then the man said, “Umm, I’m having a little trouble, and I was wondering . . .”
She waited. “Yes?”
“Well, I—I’d like to talk to you if—”
“Excuse me, did someone refer you to me, Mr. —?”
“No, no, nothing like that. Umm, you see, I live near you, and I pass your building every day, and I noticed that brass thing on your door, and—well, I think I’d like to talk to someone. I’ve never done this, but . . .”
Oh, she thought. An immediate, pressing problem. Someone who has no experience with analysts.
“I see,” she said. “Would you call this an emergency, Mr.—?”
Pause. Then, “I guess so.” After that, she thought she heard the soft sound of weeping.
She glanced down at her schedule for today, noting the red line she’d drawn through Mrs. Schwartz, who was entertaining relatives. “It happens that I have an opening at four o’clock this afternoon. Could you be here then?”
No pause this time, but the distinct sound of relief. “Oh, yes! Yes, that would be fine, Dr. Philbin.”
She picked up her pen, “Okay. I need your name, address, and telephone number.”
“Of course. It’s Miller. Franklin Miller. 147 East Tenth Street, apartment 3B.” He added a phone number.
This street, she thought, about two blocks east of here. “Very well. I’ll see you at four, Mr. Miller.”
“Thank you,” the man said, and he hung up.
The computer screen was still blank.
With a long sigh, Jill switched off the machine, picked up a yellow legal pad and a pen, and went out into the living room. She threw herself down on the couch and began to scribble every idea she had in her head.
Jogger rape victim. No.
Haunted house. No.
Policewoman blackmail victim. No.
Prostitute/Mafia don/presidential assassination conspiracy. NO!!!
Oh, God! What the hell was she going to write?!
Staring down at the coffee table, she slowly became aware of the manila envelope. Oh, yes, she remembered: the magazine interview. She dropped the pad and pen, picked up the envelope, and opened it. As she read the double-spaced, typewritten transcript, she shook her head in wonder, nearly laughing at the irony of it.
The projected title of the piece was “Ms. Mystery,” and the subheading that would accompany the first, full-page photo read, “With her fourth novel, The Mind of Alice Lanyon, JILLIAN TALBOT renews her claim to the throne as America’s Queen of Suspense.” The article that followed was similarly gushing.
“So, where does a nice New York girl come up with such violent ideas?”
“Well, I start by reading the New York newspapers. . . .”
“How does it feel to win an Edgar Award?”
“Very nice, thank you. . . .”
“Tell me about Nathaniel Levin, the hot new artist who is the current man in your life. . . .”
“Oh, he’s wonderful . . . great artist . . . we both love to dance . . . we both love the Mets . . . and we both hate giving interviews. . . .”
(Laughter.)
“Oh, that’s marvelous, Jill! Now. Your home is lovely. What made you choose Greenwich Village . . . ?”
She stared down at the words, wondering whom they were discussing. Who was this charming, carefree, talented woman the journalist so obviously admired, with the wonderful home and the wonderful lover and the marvelous sense of humor? Now it all seemed so macabre. She knew, even as she read the article, that her life would now be forever separated in her mind into two distinct categories: B.V. and A.V. Before Valentine and . . .
