The Resort (36 page)

“Come on, jewbaby,” he said, “let’s have the knife.” He held out his left hand for it, keeping the muzzle of the gun pointed in her direction. Were the others watching from a distance?

“Sure,” Phyllis said. “If you promise not to shoot.”

“Why would I shoot you, baby? You know what I want to do to you. How can I do that if you’re dead?”

Phyllis made as if to lay the knife down in Clete’s outstretched palm, moving two steps closer to do so. She’d noticed that Clete didn’t have as much knowhow in handling a gun as some of the men she’d known; he was pointing it at the sky, not at her. With a determination born of her lifetime of grievances, she suddenly thrust the knife at Clete’s chest.

Clete’s instinct was to block her arm the way he’d been taught, but the upraised palm of his left hand put him in the wrong position, and as he brought his gun arm slamming around it was too late, he felt the puncture in his chest, my God, she had the strength of a man as she shoved the blade all the way in. He looked down and saw the handle protruding grotesquely and felt himself falling forward as she stepped back to be out of his way. It was important, he thought, not to fall face down on the handle, and, as if everything were working in slow motion, he found the strength to turn as he fell, falling on his side, then rolling onto his back, looking for Phyllis
Minter through the haze of his eyes. The bitch he
had wanted to get more than any other was standing not four feet away. In the distance people were running away from the barrier at the road, scattering everywhere, and what was that up in the air, helicopters? It was all the fault of the Hebewoman, distracting him, tempting him to murder as she had tempted him to sex. He raised the gun, holding it in both hands so his aim wouldn’t shake, though he knew he was shaking, and though Phyllis Minter stepped back and instinctively ducked her head, that wasn’t where Clete was aiming when the gun roared.

*

Henry, Margaret, and Shamir had come from around the corner of the buildings in time to see, at a distance, the barrier at the road, with several bodies lying on the ground nearby like a scene from a war newsreel. They saw the row of armed staff members, all looking in the direction where Clete was fighting with a woman Margaret immediately recognized as the one she’d played basketball with.

Henry saw clearly, in a way he would never forget, the woman push the knife into Clete’s chest as if all the strength in the world were suddenly hers. He was halfway there, sprinting, by the time Clete, on his back on the ground, raised the pistol at the woman.

“Clete!” Henry shouted with all his might, hoping to distract him, but Clete, on the ground, heard nothing but the inside of his own head saying, “Fire.”

The bullet shattered Phyllis’s pelvis, plunging into her intestines. She thought of her father, as she fell, who had not been shot in the war and had then received his fatal bullet in a Manhattan taxicab. Her vision was blurred, strangely, as were her thoughts. She had no heir to mourn her, she thought. Perhaps she would not die. Oh God, she didn’t want to die.

Henry kicked the gun out of Clete’s hand, but it hadn’t been necessary. He was unconscious. When Margaret caught up, she knelt by Clete’s side for a moment and saw what had to be done. Mustering strength, she pulled up as much of Clete’s T-shirt as she could get in her hand and pressed the wad of cloth against the hole in his chest. It was probably no use unless he could be gotten to a hospital right away.

“Please, Margaret,” Henry was saying, “the woman.”

Of course, the woman. She should have tended to her first. “Hold this,” she instructed Shamir, showing him how to press down on the wad of cloth to stem the blood flow.

“If we put a tourniquet around his neck, the blood would stop,” Shamir said, but his remark went unheard.

Shamir held the blood-soaked cloth tight against Clete’s chest with his left hand and with his right fished into Clete’s pockets. He found what he was looking for in the first one, a yellow-and-blue plastic Cliffhaven tag with Clete’s passkey. Now they could open the rooms that still had residents behind locked doors.

Kneeling next to the Minter woman, Margaret noticed two things. How beautiful her face was, despite the pain, and how desperate her condition seemed. There was obviously a great deal of internal bleeding. She guessed, and she was given to correct guesses in
matters of this sort, that the bullet had shattered
bone, and the bone fragments had in turn become multiple bullets, tearing her lower abdomen as if she’d been hit with a bursting shell. What good was it to be a doctor now, without morphine, without surgical equipment, or blood to replace the blood that was staining the ground?

Margaret did what she could for Phyllis Minter. The rest needed to be done in an operating room by a surgeon very soon. In dreams you ran away from terror but your legs wouldn’t move fast enough, and you wondered could you get away in time. In life the future was more precise. Within ten or fifteen minutes this woman would die, she was already on her way to death, and nothing available could stop it.

A familiar sense of despair crowded Margaret’s mind as she stood up slowly. She looked at Phyllis Minter’s face. At least, she wasn’t conscious.
Good-bye
Margaret said in her mind.

Then, remembering the rest of the world, she looked about. A staff member she recognized as Charlotte was bending over Clete.

“Is he dead?” Charlotte asked Shamir.

“No,” Shamir said, “but he will be. Here, you hold his T-shirt against the wound. I’ve got something to attend to.”

When Shamir raised the red-soaked cloth slightly, the wound spurted. Charlotte straightened up. She hated the sight of blood, but even worse was the shattering effect of seeing the man she’d spent more time with than any other man in her life lying there, his eyes glazed with a prescience of death. He would never fuck her again, her or anybody.

“Come on,” Shamir shouted at her. “He’s one of yours.”

Charlotte took several steps backward, then turned and started to walk toward her quarters, which Clete would never visit again, wondering how quickly she could pack. She had to get out of this place before the Jews turned on her.

Shamir saw Charlotte break into a trot. “Hell,” he thought. “Henry! Come here, hold this. I’ve got some doors to open.”

22

Blaustein was glad to have gotten away from the
meshugganer
and his Gentile wife. That man puffed himself up with hope like a balloon. Who did he think he was, Moses?

Keeping in touch with reality had kept him alive for six months in this place, Blaustein thought. Henry Brown was a man to keep away from. He was going to get himself killed, by one of Clifford’s people, by the police, by someone.

From a distance Blaustein saw that, despite the heat, which was getting worse by the minute, people were swarming out of the swimming pool. Some of them were heading for the road. The fools would be stopped. Then he saw the small group gather around someone he recognized. Dr. Goodson was not one of Blaustein’s favorite people. He thought Goodson’s so-called experiments nonsense. You didn’t need to be deprived of essentials to know that they were essential.

Squinting, Blaustein could see that they were beating the shit out of Dr. Goodson. You see, he thought, the Jews are going to end up killing each other. Some of those who had grudges against him were in that group. He’d better get to Mr. Clifford fast.

The curtain across the big glass window was drawn; he couldn’t see whether Mr. Clifford had anyone with him.

Blaustein didn’t go to the front door. He was no fool. He went around to the back door that led into the kitchen. It wasn’t locked. If he were Mr. Clifford, he would lock all the doors!

In the kitchen his eye caught first the long row of copper pans, gleaming as if they were decorations instead of utensils. What waste! thought Blaustein the accountant, who had kept his wife sensibly to two pots, one big and one small.

He heard the footsteps. A voice snapped, “What are you doing here?”

“Oh, Mr. Clifford,” Blaustein said, his body scrunched into obeisance.

“What do you want?” Clifford said.

“I had nothing to do with it.”

“Do with what?”

“The fire,” Blaustein said. “Henry Brown started it. I tried to warn the staff but he tied me up.”

It always put the other person at a disadvantage when Mr. Clifford employed his technique of coming very close to the person he was speaking to.

“You helped him set those fires, Blaustein,” Mr. Clifford said.

Blaustein stepped back.

“He made me do it.”

“You’re a jellyfish, Blaustein. Get out of here.”

“I was one of your first trusties, Mr. Clifford, don’t
you remember?”

“You’d have been dead long ago if I hadn’t picked you.”

“Yes, I worked for you hard.”

“You owe your life to me,” Mr. Clifford said. “And then you go help that son of a bitch burn the place down. Is that gratitude?”

“They forced me to do it,” Blaustein whimpered. “I was only following orders.”

Mr. Clifford laughed.

Blaustein said, “I came to tell you who did it as soon as I could.”

Mr. Clifford opened the kitchen door. “Get out of here before I kill you, Blaustein. Go down to the pool, maybe the others will kill you.”

When Blaustein scampered off, Mr. Clifford closed and locked the door, then, hearing what he thought to be the distinct sound of helicopters, went to the phone to try Abigail again.

*

Replacing the Bell Ranger piloted by Buzz Ballard, Buddy Arnold’s Helitac chopper, hanging high above Cliffhaven, reported developments to his headquarters in Monterey.

Buddy watched the first three Coast Guard rescue choppers, much smaller than his, come in high and then let themselves down carefully past the great circle of flame and smoke into the center of the compound. He could see the last people skittering out of the swimming pool, running toward the choppers. People were heading toward them from every which way. Buddy hoped they’d keep their distance. Rotor accidents can be nasty.

An ensign from the first chopper had his hands up, stopping people from getting closer. He appeared to be asking questions, gesturing at the buildings. Someone pointed to the locker-room building. Buddy could see the ensign run in the direction of a far building, followed by two of the people he’d been talking to. The ensign was in the building four or five minutes before he came running back to his chopper. Buddy picked him up op the radio instantly. “This is Charley two-five-oh on the ground.”

“Receiving,” Buddy said. The ensign’s voice sounded husky, choked up.

“This is no resort,” the ensign said. “This is something else. Put medical on alert. I reckon thirty or more bad cases requiring attention.”

“Cases of what?” Buddy asked.

“Look, I don’t know. That building, inside’s the worst I ever saw in my life. A whole bunch of empty lockers, and a roomful of filthy sick people most of whom are afraid to leave the building because they think they’ll be killed. You better get some federal law-enforcement people down here, too. We’ll need all the help we can get. Meantime, I’ll try to get priorities organized for lifting people out four or five at a time. We’ll need stretchers for some. We’ve only got eleven men down here.”

Buddy thought he heard the ensign trying not to cry. Must be one of those newly commissioned kids who’s never seen combat.

“I’ll relay all,” Buddy said.

“Thanks.”

*

MONTEREY, California (AP): Another forest fire
was
reported
today in the Ventana Wilderness, where
thousands of acres of redwood forest burned in 1977. Early reports indicate the fire started in the periphery of an isolated resort halfway up the coastal mountains in the Big Sur area of central California. The U.S. Forest Service says it is preparing to bomb the fire with ammonium nitrate, a substance that has proved effective in the past, according to a spokesman. Trained fire fighters from other states have been summoned. Meanwhile, Coast Guard rescue helicopters from Monterey and helicopters at the Fort Ord military base have been summoned to help the Helitac crews evacuate the people trapped in the mountainside resort. The first rescue teams are already on the ground. No word has been received yet on casualties, or the number of people at the resort at the time the fire broke out. The resort, named Cliffhaven, is only six months old.

TO ALL EDITORS…URGENT…UPDATE VENTANA WILDERNESS FIRE STORY…FIRST RESCUERS REPORT NATURE OF CLIFFHAVEN RESORT UNUSUAL…MAYBE MUCH MORE CONSEQUENCE THAN FIRE…FIRE MAY HAVE BEEN ARSON SET BY RESORT RESIDENTS…REPORTER FLYING IN WITH HELITAC CREW…MORE

*

The ensign and three corpsmen separated the people in the lockers into four categories. Two of the women were found unconscious, their breathing shallow. They would be evacuated first. About ten others, mostly men, were in bad shape, some with high fevers, some still retching, all filthy from their own body wastes. The place stank to high heaven. The people the ensign assigned to the third group were clearly in pain from being in cramped quarters for a long time. Some of them could barely shuffle. Eight or nine others must have been placed in the lockers recently. They were ambulatory in minutes. It was to this group that the ensign addressed his question.