Irresistible Impulse (39 page)

“Oh, God, Harry, thank you!” she sighed. “This will earn you three hundred years’ remission in purgatory.”

“
I
need it. How do you feel?”

“Oh, I bet I feel a lot better than I look, and I feel like shit,” she said. They both smiled. She drank some more and felt humanity flooding back into her. “How’s Wolfe?”

“Cut. His arms’re cut, his chest. Lots of stitches but nothing seriously wrong.”

“That’s terrific! And … I presume Herr Stolz is no longer with us?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Harry. “I think you got the whole five quarts.”

“Did you see it go down? It’s still a blur to me.”

“Yeah, more or less. The whole thing took five seconds. Stolz charged, waving that machete. By the way, he’d been working there three months. Phony name. He really was a groundskeeper, in Germany. Fucking Griffin—”

“Forget it, Harry. Then what?”

“Okay, as soon as he made his move, Dane picked up Speyr and started running with her toward the car. It was incredible. He practically tucked her under his arm, like he was going for a first down. Wolfe knocked you out of the way with his forearm and climbed all over you to get to Stolz. Fucker missed his first shot, and then came backhand and cut Wolfe up, and then Wolfe grabbed his arm and popped him one in the face, but he tripped over you and dragged the both of them down on top of you. Then they rolled off and wrestled for the thing, and Stolz got his throat cut. Wolfe can’t remember doing it.”

Marlene’s beeper went off. “Oh, Christ, that’s my husband,” she moaned.

“The fucking blade was sharp enough to shave with,” Harry finished.

Karp calmed down appreciably when he understood that she was not hurt. Then he got mad.

“I can’t stand this, Marlene.”

“I know.”

“I
love
you!”

“I know. I love you too, but it’s not enough.”

“What do you
mean
, it’s not enough? I don’t love you enough?”

“No, I mean you hate what I do. And I want to keep doing it.”

A long silence. Marlene disliked talking this way on the phone, and being covered with congealing blood did not help.

“How’re Lucy and the babies?” she asked.

“They’re fine, Marlene.” Tightly.

“I need to go wash myself, Butch. And take a rest. I’ll be at Edie’s. Call me there.”

“Is that guy still bothering her?”

“Not lately. But he’s probably there.”

“Who, Robinson? Where?”

“On the island. Her sister has a house there and she parties with her pals, and he’s one of them.”

“
Oh, shit, Marlene!
” A wail.

“I’ll be fine, Butch. I have a gun and a big dog, and after tomorrow I’ll have Wolfe.”

Another silence. When Karp spoke again it sounded as if he was struggling for control. “Let me understand this. You’re guarding her, he’s there, and clearly, you don’t expect him to hold off just because you
are
there, or else you wouldn’t
be
there, right out front. So … you expect him to try to get to her right through you. Is that what’s happening, Marlene?”

“Yeah. I think he loves getting through opposition. It’s part of the thrill for him. He’ll make a move.”

“That’s great,” Karp said. “Terrific! The guy’s a
killer
, Marlene.”

“That’s okay,” she said, almost giddily, “so am I. Tell Lucy to call me at Edie’s tonight, okay? Bye, Butch.”

As she hung up she was reflecting about what she had just said about opposition whetting the thrill for Robinson. It certainly fit with what she already knew about his personality, if that was the word. She thought that if stalking had an NFL, the late Manfred Stolz would be a lot lower draft choice than the Music Lover.

NINETEEN

T
hey let Marlene take a shower in the hospital. She spent three-quarters of an hour in it, and washed and rinsed her hair thrice. When she emerged, she found that her bloody clothes had been removed and replaced with a blue T-shirt printed with a picture of Montauk Light, white jeans, and a bra and panties. Everything fit. Harry clearly, and Marlene smiled at the idea of Dead Harry Bellow buying undies in some tony Southhampton shop. Her bag, a zip-up canvas number, was there too, with Dane’s gun and holster in it. She picked it up and went to visit Wolfe.

He was lying in bed with an IV running into his arm, looking pale and younger than he had before. Dane was there with him, but clearly about to leave.

“Take care, Wolfie,” said Dane. “Some stuff, huh, Marlene?”

“Some stuff is right,” said Marlene.

“How’s that piece working for you?” asked Dane.

“The gun? It’s fine, Dane. I love it. I want to marry it,” replied Marlene snappishly, and regretted her tone when she saw the man’s boy-handsome face stiffen. She sighed and touched his arm. “No, really, Dane, I like it. It’s real light for a .45, and I realize I should be carrying something with more stopping power anyway.”

Dane smiled, and the gun-nut lights flicked on in his eyes. “Yeah, you got one-shot knockdown with that thing. I loaded 185 grain Silvertips in there. I like them better than the old 230 grain round. Better velocity, better expansion.”

“I feel the same way, Dane,” said Marlene with an utterly straight face. “Expansion is the key. I can’t wait to try it out on the range.”

Dane left, a happy man. Marlene pulled up a straight chair and sat down next to Wolfe’s bed.

“How’re you feeling?”

“Okay. They just have me in here for observation. I lost a lot of blood, they tell me.”

“Not as much as Stolz,” Marlene said, and then, when she saw the expression on his face, “Oh, shit! I’m sorry, Wolfe. I can’t seem to control my mouth today.”

“That’s okay. I just never killed a guy before. I mean, in civilian life. ’Nam was different, you know?” She didn’t, but nodded anyway. “I thought it would be, you know, like in the movies, you walk away kind of macho and say some cool shit. But …” He seemed sad to have learned that he was not the sort of person portrayed in the movies.

Marlene patted his arm. “Yeah, I know. Meanwhile, you saved my life. I wanted to thank you.”

He looked her in the eye, and Marlene was surprised by what she saw in his: pain, confusion, some unbearable longing. She wondered briefly if he had a thing for her personally, or for what she represented. Then, in what appeared a conscious effort, he gathered up this potent mixture and stuffed it away behind his bland and phlegmatic daily mask.

“Well, you know, you’re a nice person,” he said with as much of a shrug as a prone person could manage. “You were decent to Dane just now. He’s kind of boring about guns and all, and you kind of made it all right for him. Not many bosses give enough of a shit to do that.”

They must have given him some dope, Marlene thought as she heard this uncharacteristically sensitive remark. There was clearly more depth in the man than she had imagined.

“And if I were a bitch, you would’ve let Stolz chop me up?”

“He wasn’t after you. He was after the client,” Wolfe said, and then, after a moment, “What do you think makes a guy like that tick? I mean, travel all that distance, twist his whole life into a knot, just to kill some tennis-playing girl.”

“Oh, it’s love, without a doubt,” answered Marlene confidently. “In the wrong channel, needless to say, but still love. It’s the only thing powerful enough to make people do stuff that crazy.”

“Love? But he wanted to kill her.”

“Oh, yeah, but what’s weird about that? It’s classic stranger stalking. Look, put yourself in Manfred’s shoes. He’s a simple guy, not much going for him, no talent, no outlet for what’s got to be a passionate nature. One day he sees her, in a photograph or on TV. He’s smitten. Now there’s a channel for his love. Maybe it starts small—he’s a regular fan, like ten thousand others. He collects pictures, souvenirs of Trude Speyr. But that’s not enough. The channel gets deeper, starts to wear away at the banks of his regular life. He starts going to her tournaments. He gives up his job, his friends, assuming he had any, his family. His fantasy life gets richer. He’s only really alive when he’s thinking about her, looking at her. In his mind they’re together. But of course, in real life she doesn’t know he’s alive. After a while this becomes intolerable. He begins writing to her, trying to get close to her physically. Maybe he invades her space, steals little things, makes demands. She’s terrified, naturally, but he reads this as rejection. In his mind, she was always nice as pie. Now the river is raging. It washes away the rest of his life. He’s got nothing left but her, and she rejects him, worse, ignores him. He’s got to make her notice him, or die. So he attacks. When he’s killing her,
then
maybe she’ll notice him.”

She was watching Wolfe while she spun this out. He was following it all with more intelligence than she had seen in him before, or maybe she hadn’t looked in the right places.

“It sounds like the Music Lover,” he said in a quiet voice.

“No,” said Marlene with absolute confidence. “The Music Lover’s completely different. The Music Lover is a sadist named Vincent Robinson. What he wants is to control and torment his victim. No love involved. He’s got some crazy sado-mas thing going with the target’s sister too, which I’m not even going to try to figure out. Basically, he’s
aping
a stranger stalker to scare the vic and get his rocks off. He
feeds
off her terror. The psychology is completely different, and my feeling is, if I catch this guy in the act and dance on his head for a while, he’ll back off and find someone else to play with. That type of guy is relatively easy to chase away from a particular individual. True obsessives are nearly impossible to discourage.”

“Can’t be cured, huh?”

“Oh, I said discouraged, not cured,” said Marlene. “I’m a firm believer that if you want to change your life, you can. Most people don’t. Obsessives rarely do, sadists never do. In my experience anyway. You know, how many shrinks does it take to change a light bulb? One, but the light bulb—”

“Has to want to change,” supplied Wolfe.

They smiled at each other.

“You have a nice smile, Wolfe,” said Marlene. “You ought to crank it up more.”

He blushed, much to her surprise, and then she checked her watch and stood up. “I got to go out to Edie’s. You’re sure you want to come to work tomorrow?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Really.”

“Can I send you anything tonight? Your motivational tape?”

She grinned. He reddened again. “No, thanks. I’m fine.”

“Okay. Thanks again for saving my life. Now you’re responsible for me forever, lucky you.” She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, which she found remarkably warm and dry, like a hot roll.

Marlene arranged for her VW to be towed to a garage to have its alternator replaced, and had a quick meal with Harry at a local clam bar. Then he drove her to the Sag Harbor marina and its informal ferry.

She found Edie Wooten and the dog in the grand, nicely shabby, dark-beamed living room of the rose-colored house. Sweety rose from his puddle of drool and came to greet her.

“How did you get along?” Marlene asked Edie.

“Oh, great, super,” said Edie. She was sitting in a bluish chintz Windsor chair by the fireplace, which was filled with a bouquet of dried flowers. On the round coffee table before her were spread piles of music manuscript. “He followed me around all day like a lamb. I tried to feed him little treats from lunch, but he wouldn’t take them.”

“He doesn’t take food from anyone but me, except from his dish at home. It’s part of being a guard dog.”

Edie smiled and patted the dog’s flank. “He doesn’t seem much like a guard dog. He seems like a big lovable lunkhead.”

“And you can’t tell that you’re a world-famous cellist except when you’re playing the cello. You can only tell he’s a guard dog when he’s guarding.”

Marlene sat down in the wing chair opposite and eased off her new sneakers, which pinched. Oddly, she felt entirely at home here; she decided it was the absolute unpretentiousness of the unassailably rich.

Marlene asked, “Anybody come by today?”

“No. They keep pretty much to themselves in Ginnie’s house. I saw Ginnie at the pool today with Vince, though. We didn’t talk.” She seemed sad for a moment as she said this. “The pool is neutral territory. Technically, it belongs to me, but I let them use it as long as they behave themselves when I’m there.”

“How did they seem?”

“Oh, you know—hungover, druggy. Look, I hate to be rude, but I have some arranging to do and some more practice …”

Marlene stood up. Yes, and you don’t want me to pump you about your sister and her boyfriend. “That’s okay, Edie. Can I call my daughter from here?”

Of course it was all right. There was a phone in her room.

Lucy answered, for which Marlene was grateful. She did not particularly want to speak to Karp at this juncture. Lucy had reached the age when speakng on the phone was a treat and not a burden. New York Telephone was considering a new substation for her and her gang of preadolescent girlfriends. She was full of chatter about the end-of-school party (for which her suspension had been mercifully rescinded), about which boys were particularly annoying and how they had been put in their place, the doings of the various little Chins, Woos, Mas, and Lees with whom she consorted, this mixed in with flashes from the front—there was a perpetual mob of newsies at the door, who had lately been joined by black pickets carrying signs about Daddy, and no, Daddy wasn’t a racist, then on to her plans for the summer (she wished to attend Chinese day camp) and finally, “When are you coming home?”

“Soon, kid. When this business is over out here.”

“Daddy said you’re living on an island.”

Marlene agreed that this was the case, and described the many glories of Wooten I.

“Can I come out there? With Daddy?”

“Well, Daddy’s pretty busy now and so am I. I still have a couple of more days of guarding Ms. Speyr. The tournament isn’t over yet.”

“But after,” Lucy pressed, “after, can I come out?”

“Sure, Luce. I’ll have to ask Ms. Wooten, but I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

“Would you
really
ask her?”