Frenzy Read online

  And downstairs, the man who calls himself Spain sits quietly in the shadows.

  "Are we really going to leave? I just can't believe it," she had asked Greg, her cat's eyes blinking as she looked at her white knight.

  "Believe it," he told her, starting to load the car. Are we really gonna turn out a sweet little pussy like this? Does a snake have lips? he thought to himself, grinning and whistling softly as he packed the last of their meager belongings in Roger's car. He'd put this little fox to work for him.

  Within twenty-four hours of the kids' departure everyone involved in the respective families knew they'd left together, including Pat and her insurance lothario, not to mention the cops. Too many people were involved in this. Whole families had suddenly been turned upside down. Spain had ended up having to talk to the police several times, which to him was the equivalent of repeatedly plunging his hands into boiling water, but anathema or not, his daughter had disappeared. He had to find her.

  "They'll catch them before the day is out," Roger Nunnaly's father had assured everyone, "that car will stand out a mile."

  The private Spain had suddenly become very public, sharing secrets with perfect strangers, not to mention the cops, all of whom were now involved in his personal decision-making.

  People he'd never seen in his life were seated in his living room telling him ridiculous things about runaway hotlines and dope and how young girls can use sex to ensare a poor, innocent boy like Greg Dawkins, whom Spain had nailed for what he was first time he saw him, and some kid named Roger who sounded like a crackhead known to everyone but his own parents. And Spain sat there letting it all lap over him as they talked about how his wife and daughter had both run away from him, and almost overnight life had become a steamroller that was crushing the shards of what remained of his shattered ego.

  But there was no loving wife to take him aside and say, There, there now, honey, it's going to be all right. You tried your best, Daddy. You just forgot that fathering is a skill as well as an art. And it's a skill that demands practice as well as good intentions. And nobody was there to tell him that Tiff was hurting too. That when you're fourteen years old, frustrations and humiliations are deep knife wounds. Wounds that can be fatal if not treated in time.

  He was alone to take it all and deal with it. And that next night, after all the Dawkinses and Nunnalys and police and juvenile authorities had cleared out, he sat there in the dark feeling like he was having a heart attack, and it all came to sit on him with its enormous weight of guilt, and he sat there sobbing and hurting in the darkness of his fine home and began paying dues with currency he didn't even know he had.

  And he was still there the next morning, sitting there on the carpeted stairway, racked with the dry heaves, on the edge of breakdown, consumed with guilt, nailed by despair, and absolutely, painfully, heartbreakingly alone.

  And half of him was sorry for himself and the other half wasn't, and slowly, like the hard, seemingly stout heart of a diseased gum tree, he began to crack apart deep inside.

  So Spain sits there on the edge of his reality, in the gathering debris of his life, well and truly screwed, blued, and subdued.

  And the shadow of death edges closer.

  Eichord fingered the edges of a few cards and scowled slightly. Christian's Cards and the ritzy mall in which it was situated — both brimming with purposeful, moneyed Californians and a smattering of ordinary commoners like himself — were as far removed and remote as the constellation of Andromeda. Another distant and far-removed spot on the planet, Chicago by name, kept nudging him.

  He felt totally out of place in the shop, among genteel, immaculate women clerks and genteel, immaculate customers who regularly frequented such a place. Eichord stood looking at humorous greeting cards in the midst of the L.A. work day, such as it was; a homicide cop feeling the proverbial bull-in-china-shop as he sweated through his short-sleeved shirt, handgun harness, and stylish polyester.

  The weight of the heavy revolver in the shoulder rig, the incongruity of the surroundings, the knowledge he was looking at cutesy cards with all that bad steel under his arm, made him feel ludicrous, out of place, quite uncomfortable. A trickle of perspiration trailed down his spine as a small and perfectly coined woman with a slightly rodentlike face asked him pleasantly, "Can I help you with something?"

  He smiled automatically as he shook his head. "Just looking. Thanks." Brilliant. She would never have guessed you were looking. He was standing there trying to figure out which of the crazy cards a little girl would like. He was trying to recall what her age was now. He had her birthdate written down somewhere, but he'd forgotten where. He looked at another card and it made even less sense than the last one.

  What would a little girl like to get in the mail? He'd tuck a twenty in there. Kids that age (what age?) would like money better than anything else. But would she be uncomfortable getting money? Would she remember him?

  And what would her mother say when Lee Anne asked her who this man was?

  "Oh, you remember Jack, Uncle Jack the cop?

  What kind of a favor would he be doing a little girl whom he never saw anymore. Somebody into whose life he'd insert himself once or twice a year with a phone call where neither party had anything to say. Somebody growing up so fast. She'd been what? Fifty inches tall when he'd seen her last. A year ago when he'd called she told him how big she was, and she seemed to have sprung up a couple7 of feet overnight. They'd be unrecognizable if they saw each other again. But he couldn't let go.

  He pulled another card from the rack, a ridiculous-looking caricature saying "You know there's nothing I wouldn't do for you. So this year, when your birthday rolls around again ..." And you opened the accordion fold and the caricature assured the recipient, "... that's what I'm going to do for you: NOTHING." He sighed and pulled the card and its envelope off the rack and went over to pay the lady.

  Eichord thanked her and put his change in his pocket and walked out into the sunlight. He opened his car door and pitched the sport coat onto the back of the seat next to him. He was already drenched. Why was he so hot? It was just a card.

  He wondered what Edie would say or what she would think when she saw a letter from him to her daughter. He thought about how she'd react to the twenty and he decided against sending any money. He'd write a note instead.

  He was going to lose them, he knew. He was losing that sweet little girl too. The distance and time would do it, if nothing else. Life can be a bitch, he thought, wondering what would happen to him next. Would the fault crack open swallowing the shopping mall, the cars, him, the rat lady — all of us? Would the whole fucking thing fall into the ocean?

  Eichord took the transmission lever out of Park and drove out of the expansive and posh shopping center, and as he drove by a metal trash barrel, he lowered the window and threw the card, envelope, and the sack into the trash and drove slowly out into the traffic, shaking his head as he shivered in the icy blast of AC.

  What he ought to do was, he should go back and pluck that card out of the trash. But in that half-second he felt the chill of the eyes of the man at the airport. The man looking at him over the top of a greeting card. A wise guy's eyes. And Eichord shivered again, sweat chilling on him like the foreboding of death frightening the soul of some fey visionary. And the case intruded on the flash of imagery, as he realized he was leaving L.A. knowing less than when he'd started.

  Somebody once asked Eichord, "What do you do? I mean, you know, what does a detective do?"

  And Eichord said, "You look for footprints in the cottage cheese." It got a laugh at the time, but hell, who's kidding who? There it was.

  The "Eyeball Murders" were anybody's guess. Unrelated kills except for the assassin's trademark. The victims had their eyes shot out. It could be the old mob-style punishment hit. Or one of those and a couple of copycat kills. Or any damn thing. Whatever it was. Jack hadn't even a glimmer of a clue. It was, by the looks of it, another fine fucking mess and he couldn't wa
it to be away from Lala Land, and back to Buckhead, where NOBODY knew who the fuck John Frankenheimer was.

  She had inherited her mother's skin, the kind of pigment that tanned to a golden coppery lustrousness, skin so smooth and pliant as to bedazzle and cause grown men to get a little catch in the throat at the sight of it when it appeared in any degree of expanse, such as displayed in a string bikini or a tiny halter top and short shorts. And that was Greg's next move, to get as much of that lovely skin showing as possible.

  She had her father's eyes of many colors. Slate-gray to blue-green depending on the light. Greg gave her eyes his biggest smile and a wide sparkle of Hollywood white gleamed in his dark, beautiful face.

  "Ummmm." He nuzzled her, roughly licking at her like a big puppy, leaving little love marks on her neck and moving down the side of her throat as he gently eased the little top off. "I could eat you up, you know that?" he said.

  She made a contented murmur as he ran the tip of his tongue across her chest and down toward the still-rather-flat breasts and small nipples. He said something softly to her, but it was muffled in her chest and she said, "What?"

  "I said you know where I want to take you?" he repeated, looking up at her as his tongue flicked out at her in little darting moves like a bullfrog after June bugs.

  "Where? To bed again?"

  "Of course. For sure. But I want to take you to one of those great ski places like Vail or Aspen. You know — get a little cabin of some kind all alone up there where the powder is really bitchin'. Like on the advanced slope and like, uh, you know, just kick back."

  "Oh, Greg," she purred, "it's just like I thought it would be between us." He nuzzled her again and she gazed down at him with her wide-set cat's eyes and let her hand tangle in his curly hair.

  "Do you know I love you?"

  "Yes," she breathed. "And I love you, too."

  "Ummm." He nuzzled and kept talking into her body and she laughed softly. God, how she adored him. It was working out, after all. It was so good, and he was gentle and considerate, and she knew it was going to be wonderful between them now.

  "What?" She laughed.

  "Can't you understand English, girl?"

  "No. Not when you're talking into my belly button, I can't."

  "Hello," he said. "Anybody home?" he said to her navel.

  "Yeah, I'm home."

  "Uh huh. Me too." He kissed her stomach tenderly and along her tanned rib cage.

  "Ah! That tickles."

  "Hah," he said, licking her side and making her laugh. She couldn't believe how beautiful he was.

  "You're my movie-star hunk, you know that."

  "I've got a hunk for you, all right."

  "Now be a good boy and don't talk dirty," she said as he started working his way up her chest again. Nuzzling, chewing, licking, taking her in his teeth very gently. Blowing his hot Hollywood breath over her, bewitching her with his soap-opera eyes and his magic tongue. Working her. Playing her the way you tire a fish before you net it, keeping his rod stiff and high, taking his time, playing it out, never losing his patience, making the act a little art form all its own.

  "Ummmm." He kissed her hard on the mouth and said softly in his super-con voice, "Oh, baby, we could like be skiing the advanced slope and then we go back to our little ski chalet, our cabin on the mountaintop, a Swiss lodge like in the movies, and like we get snowbound and just make love for weeks on end. Lay in a nice supply of goodies and get in a big old fur coat or some-thin' and snuggle down in front of the fire" — and she kissed him on the mouth as he spoke "— get logs once in a while, and sip some brandy and toot a little stuff and, um, you know, just watch the snow fall."

  "Watch the snow fall," she said, a twinkle in her eye.

  "Does that sound good?"

  "It sounds wonderful, Greg."

  "Yeah. It sounds good to me, too." He kissed her very gently, kissing the corners of her mouth and then below her nose, then in the hollow of her chin, then in her dimples, and then boxing the compass around her lips and then letting his long, Harry Hollywood tongue dart between those lips, and even her mouth tasted wet and hot like a warm honeypot.

  "Oh, Greg — I want you now." She was breathing her hot breath against his throat and cheek and her eyes were closed.

  "Oh, yeah? Let's just see about that." And he touched her. "Baby. Ouch. You burned my hand." And she said something he couldn't catch and he let his hand go back in again and said, "Hey, you're all wet down here. Did I tell you to get all wet like that?"

  "I couldn't help it. You make me that way."

  "Do you really want me, Tiff?" He was watching himself now as he always liked to do, chumping some little bitch off with his slick-stud number, not looking in a mirror but going off somewhere in his head and watching his performance. Pimping a girl off. Getting her off with his Charlie Charm shit. Smooth as stuff and double tough as Memphis Garrett Snuff. Run that game right down her throat, understand? Oh, he liked it when it was like this, when he could play the girl like a musical instrument, make her hum and sing. Make her jump and shout and knock herself out. It was making him so hard to watch himself inside his good-looking head and he held himself on his elbows right over her. "You really want me, baby?"

  "Yes. Yes. YES."

  "Ask me nice, then. Beg me for it if you want it."

  "Please."

  "What?" He let the head go in, it was already slick and it seared him with her cherry-red fire.

  "YES, YES, YEEEESSSSSS."

  Don't ever doubt there are some boss players out there who know how to take a little girl and make her a love slave. Just 'cause a few of 'em are thirteen, fourteen, don't think they don't got the ole diamond-cutter's touch for the big O. Cold got to be. Down, Jim. He could see himself getting her off now and hanging in there where a lesser stud would let 'er buck and kick loose. Hanging in and gritting his pearly whites in concentration, Stayhard Incorporated, and if you think I'm sexy, if you really, truly DO want my body, come on, girl, and tell me about it. Tell me more. Work with me, Annie.

  "Nnnnnnnn," she responded to Dr. Feelgood's teen romance.

  "Yes," he said, twenty-four hours a day and we're up all night.

  "Uh." Slick as seals.

  "Yeah." Fall in love with some of this. And Fourth of Julysville.

  Oh, my. This is what they were talking about at school. Oh. No wonder. God. Oh. Oh, yes. Greg. Oh, you sweet, you perfect . . . oh . . . OH GOD . . . OOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHH!

  It's all he can do to make himself stay in her and keep the kisses going, a little soft reggae posturepedic boom-chickaboom-chickaboom-and TCOB, the doctor is still on the job, a few little gentle nuzzlings into the sweaty shadows, an endearment or two. Nice J.O.B., he thinks, and he's up and away and off chopping up some Hollywood high on the Formica.

  "Let's do some lines, angel." Superstud.

  Spain's first nightmares are gentle and deceptively lacking portent.

  Even though it was only a nightmare, he saw it clearly, brightly, transcribed lucidly on the dream screen of his mind, a vivid and incredible scenario that was remarkably detailed and agonizingly real. And because of the absence of threat, it was all the more frightening to him. Unlike a dream where you're pursued by bad guys through a temple, jump into a waiting car, and just as you speed off down the hill, you run out of gas, and the nightmare comprises those seconds of fear as you hope the car's momentum from the downhill slope will carry it over the top of the hill to safety, but as it reaches the last few inches, the car begins to inch to a stop then starts rolling backward and the dream is your struggle to get out of the car as it rolls back toward them . . . unlike that sort of a dream, the nightmare he sees carried no overt threat. And later, when the violent dreams begin to assail him, he will remember this dream as benign and harmless, but when he has this dream, one of his first bad nightmares, it shakes him to the quick.

  Here is the dream: it is afternoon. He is the sports-caster on a local radio station. No, he doesn't know why eit
her, he was never on the air in his life and has little interest in sports. He is the color man, half of a famous color-and-play-by-play team, and the radio station is in the basement of a large metropolitan bank. The walls of the studio are lime green. He is quite successful and popular, and he enjoys a reputation for being adept at baseball, excellent at basketball, and the number-one color man for football games. These are all well-delineated details.

  He is on the air. It is halftime at a big game. Saturday afternoon, and he can smell the smoke there in the hot, sweaty pressbox of the ball club.

  The roar of the crowd.

  "Unitas drops back," his play-by-play man says, "he's going to throw the bomb! Three seconds to half-time on the clock, Frank."

  He responds without a trace of a lisp or hint of a stammer as he says, "That's right, Gil, three seconds and Unitas is in trouble, he's got to let it go now or — WOW! There it goes! What a cannon! Johnny Unitas gets off a perfect, textbook-classic spiral, what a gorgeous ball, and . . . unbelievable, Raymond Berry's got it in the end zone! A ninety-five-yard bullet out of the Unitas rifle and the Baltimore Colts end the half with a six-point lead over the Green Bay Packers as the gun sounds, twenty to fourteen."

  "Into the spot, and you guys are sounding good in the truck," the voice says over the nightmare intercom. Dream logic confuses television and radio, but Spain is unaware of this and dreams on.

  "Telegram, Frank," an engineer says, handing him the yellow Western Union envelope. He opens it and reads:

  FRANK YOU ARE A WORTHLESS PIECE OF SHIT. I WISH YOU WERE DEAD. And it is signed Sylvester P. Landis III, and there is an address.

  "Gil," he asks his phantom colleague, "who is Sylvester P. Landis the third?"

  "Never heard of him. What's the matter, Frank?"

  "Here," he says, "read this."

  "Damn," the man says. "And you don't know this guy?"

  "Never saw the name before. What ya think? Think this might be a prank?"