Perchance to Dream (20 page)

    "You are too powerful, Randolph, he can't touch you. No one can. We can go on with our life as we have."

    Simpson gazed at him like the extras in ill-fitting sandals and moth-eaten robes would have looked at God in the B-movie. He drank some of the reddish liquid from his glass. Carmen scooped some rice and fruit off the platter with the first three fingers of her right hand and shoveled it into Simpson's mouth. He swallowed most of it, let a little of it dribble onto his shirt. Carmen wiped it away with a cerise silk napkin. And fed a crumb to the eager kitten.

    "He won't stop," Simpson said. "He keeps coming around, asking questions. He found the old mine."

    "He's a little man," Bonsentir intoned, "a little man. We will simply swat him, the way flies are swatted."

    I felt a small catch in my throat. They were talking about me.

    Simpson's high voice was a little shaky. He stared at Bonsentir, leaning a little toward him. Carmen ran her hand along his thigh and took a single grape from the platter and popped it in her mouth. She chewed it slowly while she rubbed her cheek against Simpson's left arm. The kitten meowed.

    "He found the mine. He and that nosy old woman at the newspaper."

    "He found nothing that matters. You have the force, Randolph. You have the power and I know it and can bring it out of you."

    "And the plan," Simpson squeaked. "He's been up to Neville Valley and he's been to the Springs. He knows."

    Bonsentir took Simpson's right hand in both of his and squeezed them.

    "I'll have him removed, Randolph. He annoys you. I'll have him removed."

    "What if he told?"

    "Who would he tell? The police? We own the police, Randolph. We own the mayor and the governor and the legislature. This is ours, Randolph. California belongs to you."

    They were silent, Bonsentir holding Simpson's hand.

    "Yes!" Simpson's voice lost its squeaky plaintive trill. Carmen rubbed her cheek against his arm and her hand along his thigh. The kitten meowed again. Simpson glanced at it with irritation.

    "When you sent the men," Simpson said, "you told me they'd make him stop." The voice began to slide back up to whiny again. "And he didn't. And you sent the men to Vivian and she said he didn't even work for her and even when they were hurting her she said that. And he wouldn't stop. I don't like that!"

    "What did they do to Vivian?" Carmen said and giggled again, the bubbling corrupt giggle that sometimes I still hear in my dreams. Neither Simpson nor Bonsentir paid her any attention.

    "He'll not disturb you further," Bonsentir said.

    Carmen stopped running her hand along Simpson's thigh and put her peculiar little thumb in her mouth and began to suck it turning it a little, this way and that, as if to get all the flavor out of it.

    "Is it that you are going to kill him?" she said, her head still pressed to Simpson's shoulder.

    Simpson smiled at her like he was her grandpapa. "Would you like to help us?"

    Carmen's bubbly giggle erupted and sustained as she nodded her head, quite solemnly, her thumb still in her mouth, her big eyes as empty as a haunted house.

    "Carmen likes that," she said and opened her mouth and displayed her sharp little shiny teeth.

    "I know," Simpson said, his voice now low and calm. "And I like Carmen."

    She got up then and kissed him on top of his head.

    "Carmen has to go to the little girls' room for a minute," she said and flitted gaily out of the stateroom, as carefree as a monarch butterfly. Simpson watched her go and then looked at Bonsentir. The kitten meowed and rubbed along Bonsentir's thigh. He stared at it for a moment with distaste. Then he stood suddenly and picked the kitten up by the neck. The kitten screeched. Simpson took one long-legged stride across the room and threw the kitten out the open porthole. Then he turned back and sat down.

    "Soon," he said, his tone dark and very guttural. "I feel it coming on. Soon it will be Carmen's time."

    "She has lasted longer than many," Bonsentir said.

    "I like to think-" Simpson said, the words oozing out of him like some viscous effluent. "I like to think of her face the first moment when she knows, when she realizes what will happen to her."

    Both men were silent, admiring the thought. Then the door opened and Carmen floated in again.

    "All done," she announced and plumped herself back down beside Simpson, and leaned her head against his fleshy shoulder. He tilted her chin up with one hand and kissed her hard on the mouth. She wriggled her little body, excitedly, like a fish on a hook.

    I got down from my chair and moved to the door and opened it a crack. It was time to take her out of there. The corridor was empty. I opened the door wider and stepped through. I took the three steps down to the next door and put my hand inside my coat for my gun. Suddenly a steel cable, thicker than the ones on which they hung the Brooklyn Bridge, went around my neck, and a vise clamped on my gun hand. I could smell the owner, it was the Mexican. And it wasn't a steel cable, it was his forearm. I tried to stamp on his instep but the cable around my neck kept tightening. I jammed my left elbow back into his ribs. It had as much effect as if I'd slugged him with a marshmallow. I could feel the pressure build in my head. I couldn't see anything but a reddish haze. My gun and gun hand were still immobile under my coat. I tried to bend forward and throw him but it was like trying to bend an oak tree. I couldn't breathe. The reddish haze got darker and redder and finally enveloped me and I plunged into it and disappeared.

    

    

    I woke up sitting on the floor in a bright little room with no furniture. I closed my eyes for a moment and opened them again. There was a strong light shining in my face. My neck hurt, my head throbbed, I was aware that the reassuring weight of my gun was gone from under my left arm. I squinted past the light and could make out forms, not very clearly. One of them was surely the Mexican with his huge upper body and long arms. Others I couldn't make out. My mouth felt as if I'd eaten a blotter.

    "He appears to have regained consciousness." It was the voice of Dr. Bonsentir, descending from the clouds. "How convenient of you, Mr. Marlowe, to have come to us, just when we had decided we must find you."

    I braced my feet and edged my back up the wall and got myself standing. The Mexican moved out from behind the light and stepped closer to me. I could see my gun stuck in his belt. At least he hadn't tied a knot in the barrel.

    "Why don't we just kill him right now." Simpson's voice came deep and thick from the darkness. "Then we won't have to think about it anymore."

    I heard Carmen's suppurating giggle.

    "I think it would be better," Bonsentir said, "to wait until we put out to sea again. It will make disposal of the body safer and less troublesome."

    "I don't like to sail at night," Simpson said. His voice was back up again. It had the petulant ring of a kid who didn't want to go to bed early.

    "I know, Randolph. It's all right. We'll keep him here until we get under way in the morning."

    "It's too late," I said. "Too many people know."

    "Who knows?" Simpson said. "I told you, Claude, he told people. Who knows? What do they know?" His voice went up and down like a piccolo solo.

    "He would say that, Randolph. He's in profound jeopardy and he knows it. He would say that and hope it would save him, but it won't."

    "The DA's chief investigator, Bernie Ohls, knows it," I said. "And the DA, Taggert Wilde, and the San Bernardino DA's office, and a Missing Persons' cop named Gregory, and a hard case named Eddie Mars who right now is maybe a hundred yards away with a boatload of tough boys who are ready to come over here and shoot your ears off."

    "I know Eddie Mars," Carmen said excitedly. Oh boy! A familiar name.

    Simpson came around into the lamplight. His soft face was red.

    "Stop it," he said, his voice fluting down the scale as he spoke. It was eerie to hear, and at another time it would have been an interesting phenomenon. "You're trying to frighten me. Nobody knows. They can't. I'm too powerful. No one can know about me. So just shut your mouth, because you're going to be killed." The last sentence bottomed off into darkness.

    My head felt like it was ready to rupture and my neck hurt and my throat was sore and I was a little dizzy, and sick of the light in my eyes and sick of being yammered at by an oversized brat. I hit him. It was a pretty good punch given the shape I was in. I felt his nose flatten and saw blood come. He screamed with a sound like glass shattering and stumbled back with his hands to his face and the blood running between his fingers, and kept screaming in high sharp bursts, like a European fire engine: whoop, whoop, whoop! I turned toward the Mex and something hit the side of my head and I went back once again to a place I'd been spending too much time in.

    

    

    This time when I came around I was alone. The only light came from a small bulb in the ceiling. All the parts that had hurt before hurt worse, and in addition I had an aching bruise on the left side of my jaw just in front of my ear. I sat for a while, fighting nausea. There was no movement in the yacht other than the slight toss of the easy swells on which we rode. Through the porthole I could see that it was still dark. Time to stand up. I could do it. Six feet tall, 190 pounds. In top condition. I could just stand right up. I tried to get my legs under me and they felt like seaweed. I compromised by inching over against the wall and slowly sitting up with my back supported by the wall. Even the dim light hurt my eyes. I squinted. Maybe I wouldn't get up just yet. Instead I'd survey the room, while I rested. There wasn't much to survey. Whatever light had shone in my eyes was gone, as was all the furniture. There was another flowering tropical plant growing in a big pot in the corner, and two throw pillows that might have been on a couch at one time. Other than that I was in an empty steel room painted ivory, with a porthole too small to squeeze through.

    My watch was broken, probably smashed when I fell, I didn't know which time. I'd been falling so much that it could have happened anytime. There was a smear of blood on my shirt that must have gushed from Simpson's nose when I'd hit him. I took some satisfaction in that. Painfully, with rest stops often, I got to my feet. The room spun. I hung there for a moment, teetering over the void. Then it stabilized. I was up. I edged along the wall to the door and tried it. It was locked. Surprise! There was no other way out. I looked at the potted plant. It was real, growing in dirt. With a big purple trumpet-shaped flower on it. If you were as rich as Randolph Simpson you could have flowering plants grow anywhere you wanted.

    I looked at the plant for a minute and then sat down on the floor again, and held steady until the room stopped spinning, and took off my right shoe and sock. I put the shoe back on my sockless foot and slowly got to my feet again. I was getting the hang of it. Someday I'd probably be able to do it whenever I wanted to. If there was going to be a someday. Carefully I filled the sock about two-thirds full of dirt from the pot. Then I tied a knot in it and slapped it gently across my hand.

    It felt about right. I walked to the porthole and opened it and took a couple of deep breaths of cool sea air. Then I went back and stood against the wall next to the door where it latched and with my left hand began to bang on the door.

    "Let me out," I hollered as loud as I could. "Let me out of here!"

    I had to holler it several more times and keep banging on the door before I heard footsteps in the corridor and a jangle of keys and the door swung open. The Mexican came in with my gun still stuck in his belt and I laid the dirt-filled sock carefully against the side of his head back of his left ear. Very hard. He grunted and stumbled forward and went to his knees and I hit him again with my homemade sap, square across the back of the head this time, and he sighed and pitched face forward onto the floor. I kicked him hard in the head and then crouched beside him and got my hand under him and pulled my gun loose from his belt. The keys he'd used to open my door were sprawled five feet in front of his outflung hand. I picked them up and went into the corridor and locked the door behind me. I had the reassuring weight of the gun again, and this time I kept it in my hand. So many people had taken it away from me, I barely recognized it.

    The corridor was empty and silent. The doors that lined it were closed. I went along the corridor, listening at each door. There were no sounds except snoring in one cabin. There was no way to know who was snoring. I continued along, and at the last door on the port side I heard the familiar giggle. I tried the door. It was locked. I looked at the lock and tried a key that looked like it would match from the key ring Fd taken from the Mex. It fit and I opened the door gently.

    Carmen was there all right, and Simpson. The lights were on. He was handcuffed to the bed, facedown, and Carmen, in a condition I was beginning to tire of, was naked as a minnow. She stood over Simpson, giggling her giggle and spanking him with a gold-inlaid ivory hairbrush.

    I closed the door softly behind me and stepped into the room. Carmen looked up with her big eyes all iris and smiled.

    "I know you," she said. "You've got the funny name."

    "Doghouse Reilly," I said.

    Simpson turned his head to look at me and I smiled at the thick white tape over his nose and the beginnings of a wonderful pair of shiners starting to darken under his eyes. He opened his mouth and I stepped over and put the gun barrel into it.