Belinda (28 page)

"What if you're right," I said, "and they are keeping it from Bonnie but Belinda doesn't know?"

"It's possible."

"Bonnie would call the cops, wouldn't she? Bonnie would call the goddamned FBI to find her daughter, wouldn't she? I mean, there must be a bond between mother and daughter here that's closer than just about anything else in this woman's life."

"Could be."

"And what if Belinda thinks her mother doesn't even care? I am telling you that would explain a lot of things, Dan. It really would. I mean, here is this kid and something bad happens with this guy Marty and what do they do-they try to pack her off to Switzerland and she runs. And then she realizes her mother isn't even looking for her. No police, no nothing. I mean, this is bad. Here she makes her big gesture, and these guys write her out of the script."

"Maybe. Maybe not. She may know everything, Jeremy. I mean, the girl can put two quarters in a telephone, can't she? She could call this Bonnie." Didn't she call George in the middle of the night? "Could she get to Bonnie?"

"Hell, she could call Jeremiah. She could call the next door neighbors in Beverly Hills, if she wanted to. She could call somebody! No. If you want my guess, your Belinda's hip to everything that is going down. And just decided she'd had it, that's all."

"OK, look. As I told you, I'm splitting tonight. I'm going far away from here, and when you hear from me again, it will be by phone-"

"For God's sakes, be careful. You know how the Enquirer operates. They'll give you some bogus reason for the interview, then run upstairs and photograph her clothes in the damn closet."

"Nobody's interviewing me these days for any reason, believe me. I'll be in touch. Oh, and Dan. Thank you. I really mean it, you've been great."

"And you're being stupid. They'll crucify you if this hits the papers, I mean it, they'll make Texas Uncle Daryl and Stepdaddy Moreschi look like saints who found her in the Child Molester's Den."

"Goodbye Dan."

"They'll come to court with the canceled checks to prove what they paid the detectives, they'll say the cover-up was for her own good."

"Take it easy-"

"And you'll get fifteen years for molesting her, goddamn it."

"And what about Moreschi?"

"What about him? There's nothing on record says he touched her. She's living with you!"

"Bye, Dan, I'll call you."

I CHECKED and double-checked the house. Everything locked up tight, windows, doors to the upstairs deck, dead bolt on the attic, dead bolt on the darkroom downstairs.

All paintings, photographs, cameras, clothes loaded in the van.

Except her suitcases sitting there on the white counterpane of the brass bed.

Please come home, my darling, please.

I'll tell her everything at once. All I know, even about Bonnie maybe not knowing. Then I'd say: Look, you don't ever have to talk about it, it doesn't make any difference, but I want you to know I'm on your side, I'm here to protect you, I'll protect you from them if it comes to that, we're in this together, finally, don't you see?

She'd see. She'd have to. Or would she just gather up those suitcases and carry them downstairs to the cab she had waiting for her, saying as she went past me: You betrayed me, you lied to me, you lied all along.

If only she were a child, if only she were a "little girl,"

"just a kid," a "minor." Then it would be so much easier.

But she's not a child. And you've known that from the start.

Four thirty.

I sat in the living room, smoking one cigarette after another. I looked at all the toys, the carousel horse, all the trash we were leaving behind.

Should call Dan and tell him to sell this stuff better yet, donate it to some orphanage or school. Didn't need it anymore, this lovely rubbish.

What I'd been feeling with her for the last three months was what people call happiness, pure and sweet.

And it struck me suddenly that the misery I'd felt last night was almost equal in intensity to the happiness I'd known before. These feelings had a searing heat to them that was like the desire I felt for her. And these were extremes I hadn't known for years before she came.

In my mind they were connected with youth really-the awful storms before success and loneliness became routine. I had not known how much I missed this.

Yes, it was like being young again, just that bad and just that magical. And for one moment I found myself thinking of it all from an unexpected distance and I wondered if I would miss this in the years to come, this second chance at joy and misery. I was so alive at this moment, so alive with love and foreboding, so alive with terror. Belinda, come back.

When the grandfather clock struck five, she had still not come home. I was getting more and more frightened. The house was dark and cold, yet I couldn't bring myself to turn the lights on.

I looked outside, hoping, praying to see her coming up the street from the metro.

No Belinda.

But the limo was still there. The driver was standing beside it, smoking a cigarette as if he had all the time in the world. Now what would that thing be doing here?

Rather ominous it seemed suddenly. Downright sinister. Maybe those cars always are.

Throughout my childhood they carried me to funerals, sometimes two and three times a year. They had meant death then exclusively. And it had always seemed an irony that these same luxurious black monsters carried me to television and radio stations, to newspaper offices and literary luncheons and bookstores, to all the inevitable ordeals of the standard publicity tour.

Didn't like the look of them, their heaviness, their darkness. Rather like coffins or jewel boxes they seemed, all padded and silent.

A chill came over me. Well, that was stupid. Detectives didn't stake you out in limousines.

Six o'clock came and went. California daylight outside.

I was going to give it one more hour, then track down George Gallagher somehow. George was the only one who could have tipped her off.

Nothing respectable in the refrigerator to ear. Get some steaks. One last meal together before the road. No. Stay here. Don't leave this house till she comes.

The phone rang.

"Jeremy?"

"Belinda! I've been out of my mind. Where are you, baby darling?"

"I'm OK, Jeremy." Shaky voice. And noise surrounding her as if she were in an outdoor phone booth somewhere, a dim rolling sound like the ocean behind it all.

"Belinda, I'll come get you now."

"No, Jeremy, don't do it."

"Belinda-"

"Jeremy, I know you went into my closet." Voice breaking. "I know you looked ar my tapes. You didn't even rewind them-"

"Yes, it's true, I'm not going to deny it, honey."

"You knocked my things all over the floor. And-"

"! know, darling, I did, I did. It's true. And I did other things, too, to find out about you. I asked questions, I investigated. I admit it, Belinda, but I love you. I love you and'you have to understand-"'q never told you any lies about me, Jeremy-"

"I know you didn't, sweetheart. I was the one who told the lies. But please try to listen to me. We are OK now. We can leave tonight for New Orleans, the way you wanted to, honey, and we will get far away from the people who are looking for you, and they are looking, Belinda, they are." Silence. And a sound that I thought was her crying.

"Belinda, look. My things are all packed, all the pictures are loaded in the van. Just give me the word and I'll load your suitcases. I'll come and get you. We'll get right on the road now."

"You have to think it over, Jeremy." She was crying. "You have to be sure because-"

"I am sure, baby darling. I love you. You are the only thing that matters to me, Belinda-"

"-I'm never going to talk about them, Jeremy. I don't want to ever explain it or drag it all out or answer questions, I won't. I just won't."

"No, and I don't expect you to. I swear it. But please, honey, realize, on account of what I did, the mystery can't divide us anymore."

"You still have to make your decision, Jeremy. You have to forget about them. You have to believe in me!"

'q have made it, baby darling. I believe in both of us, just the way you wanted me to. And we're going where this guy Moreschi and this uncle of yours, this Daryl, will never track us down. If New Orleans isn't far enough, we'll leave the country, we'll go to the Caribbean. We'll go as far as we have to go." Crying.

"Where are you, honey? Tell me."

"Jeremy, think it over. Be real sure."

"Where are you? I want to come get you now."

"I will tell you, but I don't want you to come until morning. You have to promise me. I want you to really really be sure."

"You're in Carmel, aren't you?" That sound was the ocean. She was in one of the phone booths on the main street just a block from our house.

"Jeremy, promise me you'll wait until morning. Promise me you'll think it over that long."

"But honey-"

"No, not tonight. Promise me not tonight." Crying. Blowing her nose. Trying to get calm. "And if you still feel that way in the morning, well, then come and we'll go to New Orleans and everything will be OK. Just fine."

"Yes, honey. Yes. At the crack of dawn, I'll be at the door. And we'll be on the way to New Orleans before noon." Crying still.

"I love you, Jeremy. I really really love you."

"I love you, Belinda."

"You'll keep your promise-"

"At the crack of dawn." Cut off. Gone.

Probably already walking off from some phone booth on Ocean Avenue. Because the little hideaway had no phone.

Oh. ache for Belinda. But it was all going to be OK.

I sat down heavily at the kitchen table and for a long time didn't do anything except feel the relief course through me. It was really going to be OK.

WELL, the next few hours wouldn't be so hot, but the battle was over, and the goddamned war had been won.

I should stop sitting here, shaking with relief, and get up and go out and get something to eat now-that would kill a little time. I'd go to bed early, set the alarm for four o'clock, and be down there before six. OK. It's OK, old buddy. It's really OK.

Finally I did get up, and I put on my tweed coat. I combed my hair.

THE air was bracing outside. Immediate slap of fresh wind.

The streetlamps had just come on, and the sky was fading from red to silver. Lights twinkling on the surrounding hills.

"Take a good look," I said to myself in a whisper, "because it might be years before you come back here." And that feels soooo good!

Limousine still there. Now that is really strange. I gave it the once over as I moved towards Noe. The driver was back inside.Could it be someone watching for her?

Well, you are too late, you son of a bitch, because she's two hundred miles south and I'll shake you off on the highway within five minutes-Come on, Jeremy, this is pure paranoia. Nobody stakes out a house in a limo. Stop.

But just as I reached the corner of Noe, the engine of the limo started, and the big thing moved up to the corner and stopped.

I felt my heart tripping. This was mad. It was as if my staring at it had moved it.

I crossed Noe and walked towards Market, feeling a funny weakness around the knees. Wind stronger, cutting through the fatigue that had set in while I was waiting at home. Good.

The limo had also crossed Noe and was moving alongside me over in the right-hand lane. The sweat broke out under my shirt. What the hell is this?

Twice I glanced at the back windows, though I knew perfectly well I couldn't see through the tinted glass. How many times had I seen people on the sidewalk staring at my limo that way, trying to see in? Stupid.

It would go on at Market. It had to. It couldn't possibly turn left and follow me up Castro. That was illegal and perfectly absurd besides. A steak. Bring it home, throw it in the broiler. A little wine. Just enough to make you sleep.

But I had forgotten about Hartford, the little street that intersects Seventeenth just on one side. My side. The limo made a big awkward left turn and pulled into Hartford and stopped right in front of me as I reached the curb.

I stood still looking at it, at the blind glass again, and thinking, this makes no sense. Some dumb chauffeur is going to ask me directions. That's all.

And he's been waiting over three hours out there just to ask me personally? The chauffeur was looking straight ahead.

There came the low electric hiss of the rear window being lowered. And in the light of the streetlamp I saw a dark-haired woman looking up at me. Big brown eyes behind enormous horn-rimmed glasses. In a dozen films I'd seen the same faintly imploring expression behind those lenses, same rich wavy hair brushed back from the forehead, same red mouth. Beyond familiar.

"Mr. Walker?" she asked. Unmistakable Texas voice.

I didn't answer. I was thinking in this strange hazy calm, with my pulse thudding in my eardrums, she really is beautiful, this lady, really beautiful. Looks just like a movie star.

"Mr. Walker, I'm Bonnie Blanchard," she said. "I'd like to talk to you, if you don't mind, before my daughter, Belinda, comes along."

The chauffeur was getting out. The lady slipped back into the shadows. The chauffeur opened the back door for me to get in.

[24]

I DIDN'T look directly at her. That was out of the question. I was too stunned for that.

But I'd glimpsed a soft clinging beige dress and a loose cape of the same color over her shoulders. Cashmere it probably was, and all her jewelry was gold-layers of it around the high-rolled neck of the dress and on her wrists. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her hair was loose. Scent of dark, faintly spiced perfume filled the car.

The limousine turned right onto Market and went back towards downtown.

"Could we go to my hotel, Mr. Walker?" she asked unobtrusively. Thick mellow Texas accent. "There everything would be very quiet."

"Sure, if that's what you want," I said. I couldn't hear any anxiety in my voice, just the sharp edge of suspicion and anger. But I could feel the fear in my head.