Darkman (12 page)

The Party

W
ELL
,
THIS CERTAINLY
stinks, Julie thought, feeling guilty and confused. Louis Strack had called with an invitation to attend a swank private party, where she could chitchat with the upper crust and possibly ingratiate herself with some old cad who held the keys to, say, the district attorney’s office. “It never hurts to promote yourself,” Louis had said, and with the reassurance that there was to be nothing remotely romantic between them, Julie had agreed to go.

And so she was here on this balmy Saturday evening eight days after Peyton had blown himself and Yakky to kingdom come, wearing a slinky black dress that gave new meaning to the world
curves.
She was in the powder room of the ultraswank Condor Hotel’s grand ballroom, practicing phony smiles in the gigantic mirror. It wasn’t going very well. Her eyes seemed to have grown large purple bags in the last few days; in her mind her hair resembled a heap of straw, the dress a weary rag. She was tired and frazzled and sick of crying, because reluctantly she had acknowledged the simple fact that Peyton was never coming back, and that made it all the harder to bear.

There was a young woman seated beside her, smearing her lips with screaming red lipstick. Julie wished she would go away. Contact with other people, normal people, was an irritation she could do without. It felt better just to sit at home and swim in a sea of grief. It seemed it was the best way to keep Peyton’s memory alive. She had even sworn a private oath that she would remain celibate for the rest of her days.

“Super party, huh?” the young woman said, then clamped her lips over a piece of Kleenex. “Have you seen that movie-star guy yet?”

Julie shrugged.

“I can’t remember his name, but he used to be on one of the soaps. I can’t remember which one, but they told me he would be here. I haven’t seen him, though. Have you?”

Julie shook her head.
Please go away,
she thought.
Just go away.

“He’s cool, I think. I think he’s got blond hair like yours. Nifty hairdo you’ve got. I haven’t seen one like it in years. Maybe his is brown. Who knows?”

You certainly don’t, airhead.

“Well,” the woman said sprightfully as she shoveled the contents of her purse back inside, “gotta go!”

Do that. For God’s sake, do that.

She left. Julie blew a small sigh of relief. The party sucked. She felt worse. She believed she was shrinking, fading away. Soon all they would find of her would be her shoes, and they would be full of tears. Peyton had left a gaping hole in her soul, stripped her clean of confidence and the illusion that both of them were immortal. The facts were cold and hard: You live and then you die. What fun.

Another woman breezed in, high heels clicking on the terra-cotta floor. She proceeded immediately to start yakking. She went into a booth, clicked the door shut, and went on talking.

Julie tiptoed out, knowing that the only way she would survive this evening would be to get loaded and stay that way. But she had tried that once before, alone at home slugging down straight vodka and waiting for the relief it would bring. But the bottle dipped down to the halfway mark and she wound up crying, like a derelict wino blubbering about some ancient hurt that had never healed. Did she have a hangover the next morning? Goddamn right she had a hangover. She chugged a quart of V-8 for breakfast and swore off booze forever.

Like most brash resolutions, this one faded in only a few days. Now she walked down the marble steps, hoping no one would look at this specter of ruin and death floating toward them and scream. No one did. She headed off toward the bar, leaving behind the party area and the dancing couples. The band was cranking out some old Guy Lombardo tune full of horns and muted saxophones. Men in tuxedos and women in their finest swirled and smiled and even laughed. It made Julie feel vaguely ill.

She parked herself at the bar and was immediately the center of attention. One bozo hopped up and planted himself beside her. His ruddy complexion showed he had indulged in too much liquor and had drunk it too fast. He breathed on her and she thanked God she wasn’t smoking. The blast would demolish the building.

“How ya doon?” he said, leering at her.

“Doon fan,” she said with enough sarcasm to make most mortals cringe.

“Drowning your sorrows, are you?”

Julie gave a little shrug, relenting. “Just giving them something to swim around in.”

“Name’s Jimbo, pretty lady. What’s your pleasure?”

“I’m sure it wouldn’t involve you.”

He grinned. “Barkeep! Get the lady whatever she wants. Put it on my tab.”

The bartender ambled over. “Vodka and lime,” Julie told him, and he went away. Jimbo took the opportunity to put a warm hand on her thigh. Smooth devil, that Jimbo.

“Get your filthy paw off me,” Julie said, beaming.

Jimbo opened his mouth to reply when a hand clamped down on his shoulder. He spun around in his seat, already snarling.

It was Louis. “You’ve had too much to drink. Get out.”

Jimbo blanched. “Right away, Mr. Strack.”

He hurried off and was enfolded by the crowd. Louis turned back to Julie. “Glad to see you,” he said, smiling. In his well-fitted tux, Julie had to admit, the man looked like a million bucks. Maybe a billion.

“Thanks,” she said.

He raised a finger. “No thanking allowed on your part. I’m very glad you came. Have you been . . . waiting long?”

“Just got here,” she lied. In truth she had been in the powder room for almost forty-five minutes, unable to face this.

He seated himself as the bartender brought Julie’s drink. She gulped it down as fast as decency would allow.

“I haven’t bothered you over the last week or so because of what happened to Mr. Westlake,” he said. “I know it’s a tough period. But I have to know if you’ve come to a decision on the matter of the Bellasarious memo.”

She nodded. “In fact, Louis, the decision has already been made for both of us. The memo disappeared in the explosion. But I—I really don’t want to talk about it right now.”

Want to know why, Louis, you million-dollar man, you? Because if I talk about anything remotely resembling an explosion or fire, I think of Peyton and start to cry because I am so lonely and I hurt and
I
want him back and . . .

Louis touched her hand. “Julie, I am no stranger to the frustration and anguish that comes from the loss of a loved one. There’s no cure for grief.” He put her hand in his. “No cure, but there’s something that eases the symptoms. It’s called”—he swept her out onto the dance floor before she had time to react—“it’s called dancing.”

Her instincts told her it was absurd, but she had to smile at Louis’s overpowering self-confidence and charm. She let herself be led, making the steps mechanically, gradually getting into the mood for real.

“Julie,” he said, “I was quite impressed with your performance in the Von Holfenstein negotiations. I want you to think about something, think about it hard. I don’t need an answer right now. Just consider it.”

Oh, God,
she thought as a queer brand of terror stole through her veins,
the man is going to ask me to marry him.

“I want you to think about becoming a permanent member of my staff.”

She could breathe again. If he had proposed, she would have been shoved back into a past where Peyton handed out necklaces instead of rings and chased after her and begged her to marry him. And she would remember how crestfallen he looked, how puzzled and sad as the taxi drove away from Bowser’s because she had needed time to think it over. Now he was dead and she had all the time in the world. She would give anything, anything at all, to be able to do it all over again.

“That’s very flattering,” she said, consciously forcing her thoughts to leave her alone. “But I have commitments to Pappas and Swain.”

“I’ve already talked to Ed Pappas about it.”

She jerked back, a kernel of anger seeding itself in her brain. He had no right. “I’ll have you know I can deal with Pappas without help,” she said, glaring at him.

“Don’t be childish. I knew he didn’t want to lose you. In fact, he swore he would fight tooth and nail to keep you at the firm. ‘Good,’ I told him. ‘Good! I like a good scrap. If it’s not worth fighting for, it’s not worth having. Just consider that I won’t be outbid.’ ”

She frowned, staring blankly at his black bow tie. Pappas and Swain would fight for her? She had had no idea. It had occurred to her more than once that she was a glorified gopher and little else. “Well,” she said at last, “I’ll consider it.”

Louis gave her a fabulous, blindingly handsome smile. She felt herself wilting again, just as she had wilted at the Felix Heights Hunting Club so many lifetimes ago. This man had some kind of power inside, a tremendous magnetism.

“Say,” he remarked casually, “did I ever tell you about the time when my father, may he rest comfortably, forced me to work high steel when I was eighteen? Forty stories in the sky?”

“I don’t believe so,” she said.

He told her all about it. And as he spoke, Julie knew something was passing between them, and she wished to God it would go away.

But Peyton was dead, still dead, dead until the stars winked out and the universe vanished. He was dead but she was alive. So was Louis.

Another brash resolution began to swirl slowly down the tubes, despite her efforts to hang on to it.

Lifelong celibacy no longer seemed so attractive.

14

Night Sweats

T
HREE A.M.
J
ULIE
in bed. Replays of the evening drifted through her dreams: Louis so handsome and suave, so rich and so powerful. Images of Peyton intruded, Peyton before he died, grinning his off-kilter grin, picking a bunch of dandelions and pretending they were a bouquet, posing in a carnival photo booth.

Louis lying on her bathed in sweat and lust. The man had been good at everything. She should have told him yes the minute he proposed. In her dreams Peyton and Louis stood face-to-face, measuring each other, ready to do battle. Who would win? Peyton because he was good at everything or Louis because he was equally good?

She wondered what it would be like to make love to him. The thought almost woke her up. Something stealthy and black moved by her bed. It pulled a box from under the bed and quietly rummaged through it. The box was slid back into place, another withdrawn. More subdued noises, papers rustling, glassware tapping against itself.

The dark thing pushed the box back.

It stood over Julie as she slept. One claw reached out and touched her hair. Julie mumbled and drew away, still asleep, unconsciously recoiling from the claw and the shadow.

It left her bedroom and her apartment much as it had come, silently moving on shoes that were burned and twisted. It opened the door and went out.

In the morning she would discover that the front door was unlocked.

She would never notice that a small red plastic card was missing from one of the boxes under her bed. It was Peyton’s Midwestern First bank card, his code to the automatic teller machine, and his life savings.

He would never go anywhere without it.

15

Bosco Delivers

N
OW
B
OSCO WAS
not really named Bosco, and this Bosco business had nothing to do with a certain type of powder manufactured for the purpose of turning plain milk into chocolate milk. He was called Bosco by his fellow workers at Millings Business and Industrial Equipment Supply, where old Bosco had worked for the better part of thirty years, hauling every imaginable piece of business or industrial equipment known to man around the city and six Michigan counties. Once, in 1958, he had attempted to deliver forty barrels of live yeast broth to a huge bakery on the north side. The truck broke down. The refrigeration unit quit working. It was hot. This was his finest hour.

The yeast began to grow in its broth. One barrel blew its top with a noise like a bomb, then another, then all of them. The yeast began squirting out of every seam in the truck. Yeast has a tendency to smell bad; this load was no exception. As Bosco watched in alarm while holding his nose and hiding in a ditch, this Frankenstein batch hatched a diabolical plan. Because the seams in the truck bed were not sufficiently large to allow the overactive yeast a viable exit, it decided to explode, which would cause even the stoutest of men to quake and tremble.