Hard Rain (32 page)

“Careful,” said the man, “with that razor.”

Jessie lowered her hand, stuck the razor in the pocket of the terry cloth robe. “How many stitches did I get?”

“Not too many. Twenty-five or thirty, I think.”

The room wobbled slightly, as if about to go into the tilting routine.

“Are you all right?” the man asked.

“Fine, thank you,” Jessie said, a little icily, to counter any helplessness he might see in her eyes.

“You're welcome,” said the man. “Why don't you sit down?”

“I like standing.”

Jessie watched him watching her. He had gray eyes to match his iron-gray hair. Was there something familiar about him? “Are you with Mr. Mickey?” she said. The words were out before she'd given them any thought.

“Mr. Mickey?”

“Or it might be his first name. I don't really know.”

If Z-man thought these remarks nonsensical, he didn't let it show. “Why would I be with him?” he asked.

“I don't know. It was just a thought.” Maybe the two men were connected in her mind by their size and the strength they exuded; this man was not as tall as Mr. Mickey, but much broader.

“A thought springing from what, exactly?”

“I don't know. I don't know what I'm saying, exactly.” The man's expression, until now neutral, shaded toward the unfriendly, without any physical change Jessie could identify. “Who are you?” she asked, this time aloud.

“I told you my name.”

“I didn't catch it.”

“My name doesn't matter.” There was a pause. Then the man said, “I think I'll sit, even if you don't.”

“Make yourself at home.”

“Why not? It's my room.”

He sat in the soft chair on the other side of the bed. His movements were easy and economical; they might have been called graceful in a smaller man.

“And this is your robe?”

“Yes.”

“Where are my things?”

“Next door. In your room.”

Jessie opened her mouth to say something, stopped herself.

“Go on,” said the man.

“I—I'm a little confused, that's all.”

He nodded. “A blow on the head will do that,” he said and in the same relaxed tone, added, “Who gave it to you?”

“I—how did you know it was a blow?”

“A glancing one,” the man said. “But with something heavy. You're lucky to be alive.”

“Is that what the doctor said?”

The man shook his head. “He thinks you hurt yourself in a fall.”

“Why?”

“Because that's what I told him. Of course, any good doctor would have known it was a lie. But, as I explained—”

“He wasn't a very good doctor.”

The man smiled, very quickly. It was gone in a moment.

“Why did you lie to him?”

“Because it made no difference in terms of your treatment. X-rays. Stitches. Tetanus shot. Painkiller. And blows on the head lead to questions, the police, etcetera. I wasn't sure you wanted all those complications.”

Jessie gazed across the room at the man, trying to see through to the meaning behind his words. She couldn't. The room wobbled again.

“Why don't you sit down?”

“I'm fine.”

“The doctor thought you should spend the day in bed.”

“But you said he was a lousy doctor. You can't play it both ways.”

He gave her a long look. “Suit yourself.”

But all at once the idea of sitting was irresistible, perhaps because she was elongating again, and the room was turning white. Jessie took a few steps forward, controlled, balanced steps, she thought, and sat on the edge of the bed, not too heavily. She waited for the man to say, “That's better.” He didn't. He didn't say anything at all. His gray eyes had an inward look, as though they'd gone behind the clouds.

Jessie took a deep breath. Colors flowed back into the room. “Did you find me in the tunnel?” she asked.

He nodded. The clouds in his eyes drifted away.

“Are you a policeman?” Something about him reminded her of DeMarco—DeMarco was about the same height, although not quite as wide.

“No,” he said.

Like DeMarco, but less aggressive, she decided. So she asked, “Are you with campus security?”

He smiled his quick smile. “Security in general.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I'd like you to tell me what you were doing down in the tunnels.”

“And if I don't?”

“Then I'll have to fill in the blanks myself. That'll waste time, and worse than that, I might not be able to do it.”

“What were
you
doing in the tunnels?”

“Looking for you. What do you do for a living by the way?”

“Why do you want to know that?”

“No reason.”

Jessie told him.

“I'd never have thought of that,” he said. He shook his head, smiling to himself. Then he asked, “Who hit you on the head? Pat Rodney?”

“How do you know Pat?”

“I don't.”

He didn't know Pat. He didn't know Mr. Mickey. “How do you know about him, then? I don't understand your interest in all of this.”

“All of what?”

Jessie said nothing.

The man rose, walked to the window, parted the curtains. Light rain dripped from a low gray sky. “When I was a kid I had a book,” the man said, still looking out the window. “It was the story of two coal miners. Bazak and Vaclav. They don't know each other. They're from different villages and work in different mines. Then one day they both swing their picks, and the wall between them falls down.” He drew the curtains, turned to Jessie. “It was a picture book. I still remember the look on their faces.”

“Is that supposed to be a parable?”

“Just a memory.” He reached into the pocket of his corduroys. “Here's your mail. It came while you were asleep.”

He leaned across the bed and handed Jessie an envelope. It had Appleman and Carr printed in the top left-hand corner and was addressed to her at the 1826 House. It was also torn along one side.

“It's been opened,” Jessie said.

The man gazed at her unblinking and didn't speak.

“You had no right to read my mail.”

He sat down in the chair. “You might as well read it too,” he said. “Otherwise we can't discuss it.”

Angry thoughts shot through her brain, but none of them translated themselves into effective language. Jessie opened the envelope. Inside was a letter from Dick Carr, enclosing a money order for five hundred dollars. “In going through Barbara's papers,” he wrote in the last paragraph, “I found a file labeled with your name. It contained a memo written by Barbara on the day of her death, raising the possibility of applying for a court order to examine your ex-husband's bank records, in hope of tracing him through recent transactions. I took the liberty of so applying, and aided by Lieutenant DeMarco's warrant of the twentieth, was successful. Enclosed please find a copy of all Mr. Rodney's savings and checking transactions for the past two years, as well as the contents of his safety deposit box. I hope this will be of some help.”

Jessie hadn't known that Pat kept a safety deposit box. Now she examined what Dick Carr had found in it.

On top was a clipping, slightly yellowed, from
The New York Times
, January 6, 1971:

HARTLEY FRAME

The Pentagon announced today that Hartley E. Frame, son of Sen. Edmund S. Frame (D. Va.) and Alice Frame, has been removed from the Missing-in-Action list and declared dead. The action resulted from an inspection tour of North Vietnamese prison camps by a Red Cross delegation.

Pfc. Frame was born on October 4, 1947, in Sweet Briar Va. He attended the Hill School in Pottstown Pa. and Morgan College, Morgantown Mass. He is survived by his parents.

The second enclosure from the safety deposit box was a sheaf of counterfoils, stapled together. Each recorded a ten-thousand-dollar payment to Eggman Cookies; each was dated March 18. They were annual payments from 1971 to last year.

Jessie looked up, into iron-gray eyes. “I need to know what side you're on,” she said.

“What sides are there?”

“I don't know.” Jessie realized the truth of her words as she spoke them and suddenly knew the helpless look was in her eyes. “I don't even fucking know that,” she said. And then she was crying, uncontrollably, in front of a stranger, the way she had cried “Daddy, Daddy” in her dream. The room began to tilt and spin. Jessie rolled over, buried her face in the sheets.

She was half-aware of the man moving across the room. Then she felt him bending over her, sensed his hand moving toward her.

But he didn't touch her.

He moved away. Water ran in the bathroom. He returned.

“Here.”

He held out a glass of water and two vials. Jessie wiped her face on the sheet and sat up. “What are those?”

“Amoxicillin,” he read from the label. “One every four hours. And painkillers. As needed.”

Jessie took the antibiotic, drained the glass. She was very thirsty.

“What about the painkillers?”

“I'm okay,” Jessie said, returning them unopened. Her head was hurting, but she needed to think clearly. The man was watching her very closely, almost as though he could gauge her pain just by looking. “It says ‘as needed,' right?” she asked.

“Right.” He took the empty glass, holding it in both his broad hands like a thing of value.

“You might as well talk to me,” he said. “I already know you're looking for Pat Rodney. I know he's your ex-husband. I know he's got your daughter. I know he's with another man. I know you're interested in Hartley Frame. I know you tried to trace him at the Alumni Affairs Office and that you questioned Alice Frame about him, not too successfully.”

“How do you know all that about me?”

He looked surprised. “I didn't think you were trying to hide your movements.”

Jessie stared at him for a moment. Then, despite the tears on her face, despite the pounding in her head, she laughed. Not loudly, not long, but a real laugh. He smiled again. “You must think I'm pretty stupid,” Jessie said.

“I don't.”

“Try your name on me once more.”

“Just call me Ivan.”

“That's a funny name for an FBI agent.”

“What makes you think I'm an FBI agent?” There was a new tone in his voice; if she had had to guess, Jessie would have said he sounded insulted.

“Doesn't the FBI guard senators and that sort of thing?”

“I don't guard senators.”

“Then why are you interested in me?”

“Fill in the blanks. Then I'll know.”

Jessie made a decision. She made it on the basis of little things, because she didn't know enough about the big things to form an opinion. Little things. The glass of water. Reaching out to touch her and then not. The quick smile. The thoughtful look that had drifted across the gray eyes. It wasn't logical. It was impulsive, intuitive, feminine—all those things that hadn't made America great.

“All right, Ivan,” Jessie said, “where do I start?”

“Where you like,” he said.

Jessie started on a Sunday afternoon in Santa Monica, with the sun a strange white ball low in the sky and a long wait for a blue BMW that never came. She told Ivan about the message on Pat's phone, about Blue, and Spacious Skies. She told him about Pat's blackboard, Mr. Mickey, the house in Malibu. She left out nothing—not Gato's record store, not Philip, not DeMarco. Not Barbara. He brought her suitcase from next door so she could show him the broken barrette and the Reeboks with the blue stripes. Zyzmchuk had to get a key from the office; Jessie couldn't find hers.

She also showed him the picture of Kate at the beach, standing like a stork. He put on glasses to look at it. “Just for close-up work,” he muttered, so low and quick she hardly heard him. Then he studied the picture for a long time—much longer, she thought, than necessary for just the memorization of Kate's image. He handed it back without a word and took off his glasses.

At the end, Jessie was exhausted. Her head ached; she didn't have the strength to get off the bed. But she felt a strange relief. She had emptied her mind into his.

Ivan sat for a while, the thoughtful look in his eyes. Then he said, “Was Mickey, or Mr. Mickey, the man in the tunnels?”

“I don't think so. The man in the tunnels wasn't big enough. And Mr. Mickey's not bald. But who else would have been trying to kill me?”

“Whoever it was didn't try to kill you.”

“Why do you say that?”

Zyzmchuk thought of her bare torso, the sweater pulled up over her breasts. He probably should have had the doctor examine her for signs of sexual penetration, probably still should. But he just said, “Because you're not dead.”

She was watching him. She had eyes he didn't want to lie to. “Is that the whole reason?” she asked.

“What else would there be?” It was an evasion, not a lie, but it brought the helpless look briefly to her eyes, and he wasn't happy with himself for that.

“I don't know,” she said.

Zyzmchuk rose briskly, rubbing his hands, trying to kindle optimism in the air. “Tell me about the words on the blackboard.”

“They said ‘Make hay while the sun shines.' In phonetic Arabic.”

“But what were the exact words?”

What were they? Jessie remembered Philip, thinking they were French: You something the you. “Toi giet la toi.”

“Spell it.”

She did.

“What makes you think that's Arabic?”

“Mr. Mickey told me.”

“It's not Arabic.”

“What is it?”

“Let's find out.” Ivan picked up the phone, dialed. “Hello, Grace,” he said. “I need a translation.… The phrase is ‘toi giet la toi.'” He gave the spelling and hung up.