Split Images (1981) (28 page)

Walter snugged the camera to his shoulder, pressed his eye to the viewfinder and turned it on.

He heard Robbie yell something. Robbie had spotted her. The white figure was in the sea grape, moving across Walter's tiny rectangular field of vision from left to right, looking back as she angled to-ward him head turned the other way. He panned the camera on the white figure. He heard the hard little pops of sound, Robbie opening up. He saw leaves flying apart. He saw the figure in white closer, looking back, no idea where she was going, then looking this way and he saw the awful expression of terror on Angela Nolan's face--not the other one, Angela.

It was like he was looking through the slit window of a tank and she was out there and wanted to get in, coming toward him to get inside with him where it was safe. He saw her face and heard those hard grunting pops and saw leaves flying, snipped off, and that was the end of it for him. Walter raised the camera in both hands above his head and threw it as far away from him as he could. Threw it and turned to get out of there and felt the cables still attached to the camera pull tight and now he was dragging the camera, unable to detach himself from it until he untangled the equipment straps, lifted them over his head. Robbie was calling something now, but he couldn't see him. Walter dropped the battery pack and the VCR. Then stopped and went back to hunch down over the recorder and yanked the cassette out, wanting it and not wanting it and not having time to think. Reacting then, rather than making a decision, he threw the cassette away from him hard overhand, and began running again--past the swimming pool. Where the littledog sat at the edge and the gold robe floated in the water, stretched open like wings, ran into the scrub on the north side of the house, all the way through the trees to the access road. Walter got in the Mercedes and took off.

He was on Sample Road moving west toward the Interstate before he realized he had a cassette in his jacket. The first one, the one that would show Chichi Fuentes in his robe. Walter pushed a button.

The window next to him slid down into the door.

He drove perhaps another mile staring straight ahead at the road. He pushed the button again and the window slid closed.

Give it a little more thought. Soon as it was dark enough he'd stop somewhere and dump the bale of wet grass. But the tape of the rich guy doing the playboy--that was something else.

SHE WASN'T AT the airport to meet him.

He hung around the front of the Delta terminal, walked over to Eastern and looked around there just in case, head raised moving through the crowd, all the last-minute vacationers down for Easter, then walked back to Delta. He had to keep moving.

Goddamn it. He wasn't mad at her. He was mad at standing here watching people throwing their arms around each other, pretty soon standing alone with his canvas bag but without a sense of the policeman's patience. He wasn't aware of being a policeman. He wasn't too aware of himself, for that matter. He wanted the sight of her. He was on the edge of feeling what he would feel when he saw her, ready to turn it loose, and she wasn't here.

The taxi took Southern Boulevard over, followed the right-hand curve coming to the beach and passed along the wall of the Daniels estate. It was dark. The place felt dark. Bryan sat in front with the driver but they didn't talk much. Big cars pokedalong in front of them. There was nothing you could do.

Finally Bryan said, "There it is. On the left."

The driver said, "Villas Atlantis," like he was making an announcement.

They had to wait for a stream of oncoming cars.

As the last of them crept past and the taxi turned in Bryan saw the police car. He paid the driver and got out. He didn't see the brown Buick Century anywhere in the parking rows.

The Palm Beach City police car was parked in front of the first unit, the office, where a neon sign said No Vacancy.

He went up the walk with his canvas bag, past the swimming pool where the underwater lights were on and kids were splashing around, their parents sitting with drinks, watching. They said good evening leisurely, with all the time in the world, waiting to see if he would stop and talk. He had never seen them before. He nodded once and said good evening. He kept walking, the line of cement villas leading to the ocean. Anywhere along here he could cut through to Number 16, over in the third row of villas. Or he could go all the way up the walk to the seawall . . .

He saw the uniformed officer, hatless, coming across the front walk from the left, out of darkness.

He knew the uniform would be brown and beigewhen they were closer, when they met at the point where the walks intersected . . . But the uniformed officer was shortcutting, not hurrying, almost taking his time, but still he was shortcutting across the grass now, past the aluminum lawn chairs in a row, coming toward him at a slow walk.

He knew who it was.

"Lieutenant? . . ."

Bryan said, Oh, Jesus . . .

He knew who it was and knew what his expression would be like. From the tone of that one word he could look at the ocean or up at the sky and he would still see that solemn-neutral cop expression and know what it meant.

"Lieutenant? . . ."

See? Nothing else. Nothing more to expect or hope for in just that one word.

He said, "Gary, get away from me. I mean it. Get the hell away from me."

Bryan refused to look at him. He kept his eyes on the impersonal ocean and continued to the end of the walk until Gary was no longer in his vision.

Gary Hammond followed as far as the pipe railing. He put his hand on it and watched Bryan go down the seawall steps to the beach, becoming a small dark figure out there alone. He watched the figure walk into the surf to stand where the ocean reached land and came exploding around him. Heheard him scream something. He heard the homicide cop standing out there in his good suit scream something that was maybe a word, two words. But he wasn't going to outscream the ocean. Nobody was going to do that.

GARY HAMMOND PICKED HIM UP the next day. They drove down to the Broward County Sheriff's Office in Fort Lauderdale. They wanted to ask him a few questions and show him something. He had already identified her body.

There were people here from the Florida State Police and the Drug Enforcement Agency as well as Broward deputies, most of them in plainclothes.

The meeting was in a cement-wall conference room with fluorescent lights above a long table. A television set had been placed at the end of the table away from the door; a videotape recorder was hooked to the set.

A girl by the name of Dorie Vaughn was here when he arrived but left shortly after. She was the one who had discovered the body of Mr. Rafael Fuentes in the swimming pool and called the operator who contacted the Broward County sheriff. The Palm Beach Police were alerted because Mr.

Fuentes lived in their city. In the meantime theBroward crime-scene people had discovered a second body, a camera bag full of blank video cassettes and, partly hidden in the scrub among the matted, dead leaves, one video cassette with something on it. No weapon or videotape equipment was discovered at the scene, but it became obvious both had been used. The crime scene people collected seventeen nine-millimeter shell casings which they believed had been fired from an automatic weapon. Very possibly a submachine gun.

And once again Bryan thought of the Mickey Mouse gun that might cost fifteen hundred dollars.

He said nothing about it to the law-enforcement officers.

He was asked to describe Miss Nolan's activities in Florida; they wanted to know specifically what she had been up to. He told them she was writing an article on rich people and had gone to see Mr.

Fuentes to interview him.

A DEA agent lounged half-sitting against the conference table, wearing a straw cattleman's hat over his eyes, a creased, outdoor look about the man, asked Bryan if Miss Nolan knew Chichi Fuentes was a drug dealer. Bryan said yes, she did.

Roy Spears was the DEA agent's name. He said, when you run with that crowd anything can happen to you.

Bryan told him she wasn't running with anybody, she was on an assignment. Well, how come they didn't meet at one of his clubs or some Palm Beach cocktail lounge? Roy Spears asked. How did she know about the place in Hillsboro? That was supposed to be a regular love nest, he'd heard, where Chichi kept his broads and they had all kinds of orgies there and apparently, it seemed, shot some pretty weird films. Was that a possibility? If she was that close to Chichi, Roy Spears wondered if she might not've been working for him, or at least fucking him.

Bryan hit Roy Spears across the table. He went after him but the Florida cops came alive, swarmed all over Bryan and finally sat him down. They helped Roy Spears out of the room to have a paramedic look at his mouth. They remained cordial to Bryan and seemed more relaxed after Spears was gone. One of them leaned close to Bryan and said don't worry, enough guys here would swear Roy Spears provoked him, if it ever came to that.

They asked him if Miss Nolan had contacted or interviewed anyone else in Palm Beach. Bryan said none that he knew of. He gave Gary Hammond a look.

They said they would inspect her personal effects later on. Bryan nodded. He had already gathered her notes, her typewritten sheets and her cassette interviews with Daniels and put them in his suitcase.

They said they were sorry they had to show himthe one videotape they'd found; it wasn't pretty.

But since he knew her, and especially since he was a police officer, maybe it would tell him something that would be of help to them. They turned on the machine.

The picture on the TV screen was of trees, dense growth, brief glimpses of the beach and the ocean, the picture jumping erratically as it moved, a camera looking for something but without a plan, never holding still.

Until Bryan saw the white linen sundress, not seeing it at first as a woman in a dress but knowing it was and who it was.

He saw her twisting through the trees like someone in pain and realized she was barefoot. He saw her clearly now. He saw her eyes pleading. He saw her eyes close and open, her expression change, her mouth stretch open in a silent scream and saw the red splotch appear on the front of the white dress.

He saw another red splotch and another red splotch and another red splotch and another red splotch and red strings coming out of those red splotches pulling her, yanking her off her feet, and then leaves flashing across the screen round green sea-grape leaves filling the screen and then a pattern of mechanical lines jumping until the screen went gray and then went black.

They waited.

They said, Lieutenant Hurd?He shook his head.

They asked him if he would look at it again.

He shook his head. He got up and walked out without saying a word, without ever mentioning the name Robbie Daniels.

He accompanied Angela's body to Tucson, remained for the funeral and flew home to Detroit that evening.

Annie Maguire called him the next day. It was in both papers, a two-column story with a smiling shot of Chichi, "the playboy of the western world," and a brief reference to the other victim of the apparent drug-related double homicide. Annie said everyone was worried about him and stumbled over her words until Bryan said he wasn't going to talk about it right now if she didn't mind. He would, pretty soon, but not right now.

WALTER STAYED AT his sister's house on Belmont in Hamtramck. For three days he didn't leave the house. He drank. Finally he got in his sister's Monte Carlo and drove over to a bar on Jacob just off Joseph Campau. Lili's.

He wanted it to be like a homecoming. Walk in and the guys at the bar see him. "Hey, look who's here!" . . . "Walter, where you been? How the fuck are you?" And he would see if he could slip back into another time, back around '57, '58 when they'd come in after a softball game, CYO League or Catholic War Vets--fast pitch, none of this blooper-ball shit--and drink Stroh's and play the juke box and argue about American League batting averages and ERAs. Now there was a kid named Art he had never seen before working the bar and Lili wasn't around. Four o'clock in the afternoon Art said she'd gone to have her dinner. Her dinner?

What was going on here? The place had a strange feel to it. It was different. The only thing thathadn't changed, Kessler's was still fifty cents a shot.

Walter said they used to call it Polish Canadian Club. Art said they still did.

"Don't anybody come in here no more?"

Art looked at him like, what kind of a question is that? Though right now there were only two others in here, an older couple at the other end of the bar.

Art said, "We do more business'n this place ever did since it opened."

"Everybody must be out taking a leak," Walter said, " 'cause I don't see 'em."

"Stick around," Art said.

Walter wasn't going anyplace. He ordered upand-downs, Kessler and Stroh's, looking at all the strange fruit-flavored brandy on the back bar, the-Christ--egg-nog punch. He sat sideways to the bar, comfortable, looking around and not remembering much. The place seemed darker: a long narrow storefront-type bar with windows painted over and a small neon Lili's the only identification. He had been drinking all day for three days. He might be shit-faced, but he was vaguely confident he had his head on straight.