Laughing Man (14 page)

She thought she had never seen so much with such startling clarity.

She thought she had stumbled upon some great hidden talent.

She heard movement nearby.

Her breathing stopped.

Who's there?
her brain demanded.

A shadow appeared not far away. It was a little darker than the snow, and it was tall. It moved toward her with deliberation. In a man's voice, it said, "You're a damned fool!"

Go away!
her brain screamed.

"A damned fool!"

"I have Mace!" her mouth screamed.

"Use it, then!"

She took a very quick glance behind her at the stone fence. It was right there, at her heels; she needed only sit on it, tumble backward, do a little reverse somersault back into the city's spaces, out of the park.

"Use it!" the man demanded again.

But she did not do a reverse somersault.

And the man came quickly at her.

"Y
ou look pretty much like shit, Jack," Patricia David said. Erthmun was seated at his desk, opposite hers; it was the first day of his reinstatement.

"Uh-huh," Erthmun said. "I wish I felt as good as I looked."

"Maybe you should go home. What is it—the flu?"

"The flu? Who knows?"

She told him that the mayor's nephew had been murdered two nights earlier and that they might be assigned the case. He said, "The mayor's nephew?" and Patricia gave him the man's name.

"I am not one of the mayor's fans," Erthmun said, and Patricia told him that the remark was a non sequitur; "What does it matter if you're not one of the mayor's fans?" she asked.

He said that he didn't know what difference it made, then asked, "Do you want to hear a joke, Patricia?"

She smiled at him across her desk. "A joke? This is a first."

"It's not a good joke. But it's mine."

Patricia was a little surprised at how earnest he seemed, and at how urgently he needed to tell his joke. She said, "Sure. Tell me your joke."

He told it to her. He delivered it haltingly, as if he were devising it all over again, and when he was done, Patricia looked blankly at him and said, "I don't get it."

He sighed. "I told you it was a bad joke. Let's go to work."

"No, no. Please. Explain it. 'How rhyme flies when you're having sons.' I think that I
should
get it, Jack, but I don't, and it makes me feel stupid. I don't like to feel stupid the first thing in the morning."

"You're kidding, right?" Jack said.

She smiled.

"Right?" he said again.

"Yes," she admitted. "I am. I mean, one bad joke deserves another, right?" She passed an 8x10 photograph across the desk to him. "This is the mayor's late nephew," she said. "As you can see, Jack, he's been cannibalized. It's not in the papers, yet, but it appears to be working into something of a trend."

D
og walking was a very pleasant early morning occupation, the old man thought. If the dog was well trained, as his as, then it was not strenuous exercise, but it
was
exercise. It wasn't dangerous either, because people stayed away from big dogs on stout leashes, and so he—the old man—could content himself with whatever daydream was current.

He was walking in Central Park, on a path that wasn't often used because it wound into a thick stand of trees. He had used this route often, however, and no one had ever bothered him because of his dog, whose name was Friday. The dog was as gentle as a baby's laugh, but looked very fierce and wolf-like.

The old man's head moved a lot as he walked, not because of a nervous condition, but because he liked to see what was going on around him. Usually, on these walks, there was very little to see that he had not seen a thousand times before, but he looked anyway because he liked catching a glimpse of the occasional squirrel or chipmunk or cardinal, and because he was interested in more than simply the narrow dirt path and his dog's rear end beneath its upturned white tail.

The bright morning sunlight reflected off the new snow and into the old man's eyes, which made him squint. When he walked into shadow, out of the bright sunlight, and no longer needed to squint, the world around him darkened, then brightened slowly, and images shimmered.

He thought at first, seeing this way, that the man sitting up against a tree not far off the path was wearing a rust-colored jogger's uniform, but then the old man's eyes adjusted and he saw that the man sitting against the tree was naked, and that he was covered with blood. He saw also that the man's mouth was wide open and that something dark had been stuffed into it. The old man could smell the stuff—he was not far off.

He stopped walking, whispered a curse, realized what he was looking at. Friday tugged very hard at the leash in his frantic efforts to get at the man sitting against the tree. The smells were so delightful—blood, chocolate.

"Damnit, dog!" the old man shouted. But it was no use. Friday was simply too strong for him.

S
he was blue-eyed and auburn-haired, her name was Greta, and she had been having strange and confusing lapses of memory in the past couple of months. She remembered leaving her apartment the previous evening on some odd mission to discover Central Park at night, but remembered nothing concrete beyond shutting her door behind her.

And now there was a rust-colored residue in her bathtub, her beautiful green leather coat was missing, and her boots were smeared with blood. And as she peered out her studio apartment window at Central Park five stories below, she could see flashing lights. She knew that they were cop cars. She knew, also, that they were there, in the park, because of something
she
had done.

She was fascinated.

A memory came to her all at once. It was a memory from her childhood, and it bore a wonderful mixture of pleasure and pain; she saw the face of a young boy in it. He had dark eyes and tousled red hair, and she thought that she had heard him running toward her through tall grasses. Then he was simply . . .
there
,
looking down at her. She thought that, in her memory, she could hear a stream moving close by. And she could smell the tangy odor of the earth, and could see the face of a doll lying in her lap. It was a very strange face. It had no eyes, only crumpled pieces of brightly colored paper where the eyes should have been, and mud had been stuffed in the mouth.

"Why'd you do that?" she remembered the boy asking.

Then the memory was gone, and try as she might—because it gave her so much delicious pleasure and pain—she could not get it back.

P
atricia David, driving, exclaimed, "Jack, you look positively
bilious
," and then gave him a worried grin.

He leaned forward a little, adjusted the rearview mirror so he could see his reflection, and sat back without saying anything.

Patricia said, "I think I should take you home."

"Home," he said, and it sounded to Patricia like a question, though she guessed that it wasn't.

She said, "I think you should rest, Jack." She stopped at a red light. "Shit, why don't I turn here, go back down Lexington, and take you home."

"Home?" Jack said, and this time Patricia recognized that it was a question.

"Home, yes," she said. "To your little apartment."

"Apartment," he said.

The light changed; Patricia made a left on her way to Lexington, made a quick stop for a lanky, hollow-faced jaywalking man in an army coat and blue knit cap, swore beneath her breath, then got going again when the man had crossed. She said, "Apartment, yes. Home. The place you live. The place you hang your hat. The place where you eat and do all your little personal things."

"No," he said.

"No? No what?" She grinned at him again. He was huddled against the door, legs up, knees together, arms across his chest. His eyes were all but closed, and his mouth was shut tightly. He looked cold.

She said, "Are you cold, Jack?"

"Yes," he whispered.

"Do you want me to turn the heater up?"

"Heater up? Yes."

"Jack, Christ"—she turned the heater up—"I'm worried about you. Maybe instead of taking you home I should take you to the hospital."

"Hospital. No," he whispered.

She pulled over so she was double-parked in front of a deli called Sam's. She put the car in park, leaned over the seat, laid the back of her hand gently against Jack's forehead, and held it there a moment, surprised that Jack was making no protest. She withdrew her hand. "You don't seem to have a fever, Jack."

"No," he managed. "I'm just damned cold."

"I turned the heat up."

He said nothing.

"Do you want me to turn it up more?"

"Turn it up more? No. Thanks. Just take me . . . to my apartment."

"Right away," she said.

Thirty-four Years Earlier

In the House on Four Mile Creek

T
homas Erthmun maintained that fear from his children was more important than love, because love was a fuzzy, undependable emotion. He was saying, "Jack, if you don't obey your mother, then it will be a very hard night for you when I return, do you understand?"

Jack's three-year-old eyes looked up at the man and Jack thought, not for the first time, that the man was bigger than trees, or mountains, and scarier than anything, and he wasn't easy to fool either, because he seemed to know everything that Jack thought, as if he had thought it, too. Jack nodded, wide-eyed, open-mouthed, and said, "Yes, Daddy."

The man said, "Of course you do, son," and then leaned over and briefly kissed his wife, who was holding Jack, which provided the boy a whiff of the man's aftershave, and of the man's recently eaten breakfast—oatmeal, a generous slice of ham, a glass of orange juice and a cup of coffee—and then Jack felt the man lay a hand gently on his cheek. Jack winced in anticipation.

Jack's mother said, "Have a safe journey, Thomas."

"I will," the man said.

And he lifted his hand and pinched Jack's cheek hard enough that it hurt. Then he said, smiling, "And if you do not obey your mother, son, then that will be the least of your pain, do you understand?"

"Understand?" Jack echoed. "Yes, Daddy." He knew enough not to touch his throbbing cheek; that would show weakness. He felt his mother back a step away from her husband, who turned quickly, and was out the door a moment later.

Jack looked at his mother. He read several emotions in her, some of which he felt himself—fear, gratitude that the man was gone—but loneliness, too, which Jack had yet to feel. There was another emotion in her that Jack didn't understand; he sensed only that it made his mother look at herself as if in a mirror and see a stranger there.

He sensed, also, that she was going to set him down and tell him to go outside and play. He did not want this. He loved being close to her, loved being held by her, loved following her about the house as she tended to chores, loved her voice, even when she was scolding him, loved her eyes on him, her smell, her whispers, her smiles.

And then she set him down, despite his protests, leaned over, kissed him gently on the cheek that his father had pinched, and told him he could go and play.

Jack looked pleadingly up at her.

"Go ahead," she coaxed.

"I don't want to," Jack said.

"It's a beautiful day, Jackie. The sun is warm. Go outside and play." An edge of impatience had crept into her voice, and he knew that if he didn't do as she'd asked, the air around her would grow dark, and he would hardly recognize her as his mother.

"Okay, I will," he said, and there was the hint of defiance in his voice. He went to the front door, glanced back, saw that she was smiling, but knew it was the kind of smile that accompanied her need to be free of him. So he went out to the yard, where his sisters were playing hide and seek among the hydrangeas.

He saw his oldest sister, Jocelyn, first. She had taken up a position behind a very tall hydrangea near the picket fence that Uncle Jack had built. When she saw her brother, she put her finger to her lips to tell him not to give her position away to his other sisters, who were nowhere in sight.

He only looked at her.

She made pushing motions with her hand to tell him to go away.

This was all right; he had no need to play with his sisters—he preferred playing alone. But, at that moment, he most wanted to be with his mother, in the house. He wanted her to kiss his cheek again, where his father had pinched it, and he wanted to follow her around and smell her sweet smell and watch her do all the things that she did during the day. But he knew that she didn't want him in the house with her, and it was something he understood and accepted, in his child-like way. But he didn't know what else to do.