Split Images (1981) (15 page)

Walter looked at the first two or three. "I don't know, Mr. Daniels. I can't tell from just the names."

"Look at the cities, where they're from."

"I don't know," Walter said.

"Well, they're quite likely to remember you, Walter." Robbie glanced at Bryan. "Call 'em, if you want. But I'll take an oath Walter left the house at nine-thirty and picked up these particular buyers."

"Quarter to ten," Walter said.

"All right, a quarter of ten."

"I didn't pick up any Jap. I know that."

Robbie said, "Sure you did. Namura. Little fellawith horn-rim glasses and buck teeth." He looked at Bryan and grinned. "No, I'm kidding. He wasn't especially oriental looking."

Walter said, "I know I didn't pick up any Jap."

"Well," Robbie said, "I could be wrong. We were coming and going all day."

"I saw those two Japs here," Walter said, "but I know goddamn well I never picked 'em up."

"All right! " Robbie said.

Bryan looked at Annie.

"I think you've made your point," Robbie said.

"Fine. You remember the ones you didn't pick up but not the ones you did. Anyway . . . take the letters and have 'em Xeroxed somewhere. I'd appreciate it."

Bryan said, "We can copy the names and addresses. Save some time."

It was all right with Robbie. "Fine, since you brought your secretary . . ."

"Miss Maguire's a sergeant." Bryan said, "A homicide detective."

Robbie grinned. "Well, Miss Maguire can get on my case anytime."

Annie said, "Okay," with a shy smile and looked at the twenty-two target pistol on the desk. "Do you keep that loaded?"

"Sure," Robbie said. "It's been lying around the office--I was taking it home. Since we're closing down. It's a nice little weapon."Annie said, "It's a gun till you shoot somebody with it. Then it's a weapon."

"I never thought of it that way," Robbie said. He picked up the target pistol, touched the safety with his thumb to release it.

Bryan thought, It's a show. Why he brought us here. He watched the way Robbie held the gun.

Robbie was saying, "This was dad's office for something like a hundred years. He used to sit here and stare through the glass partitions at me. Past his secretary's office, his sales manager's office, to the one at the end, without the window. That was my office when I started out. In fact it was my office until he died, nine years ago." Robbie raised the target pistol as he spoke. "Dad would sit here and stare. He was partially paralyzed from a stroke and never seemed to move. Just stared, wondering what was gonna happen to the business, I guess. I couldn't read a newspaper unless it was the Wall Street Journal." He was sighting now through the glass partitions to the bare wall in the last office.

Bryan watched him.

Robbie fired.

Bryan saw the first glass partition drilled, cracks flowering out from the bullet hole. He saw Robbie fire again and fire again and all three partitions dividing the offices exploded, collapsed in the sound of shattering glass to leave jagged ends in the wood frames. Bryan looked at the ejected casings on the carpet, green with a worn floral design. He wanted them.

Robbie said, "There." Then grinned. He said, "Before you call for an EMS wagon let me tell you I've been wanting to do that for as long as I can remember. There's something about those glass walls I've always resented . . ."

Bryan watched him stoop, pick up the ejected casings and drop them in his coat pocket.

"Like living in a goldfish bowl, someone watching you all the time." Robbie blew into the barrel of the target pistol for effect. "Well, they're gone now.

In fact this whole goddamn place is gone, but I had to do it." Smiling. "I feel a lot better."

It was not something Bryan had to accept or believe at this moment. He nodded in sympathy and let it go at that. The man was putting on a hell of a show. They would review it later--once they got the spent cartridges, the bits of lead that would be flattened and imbedded in the plaster wall. But as he thought this he was startled by a realization that was as sharp and clear-cut as the broken shards of glass.

He wants you to have the bullets.

But not the casings.

It was a game that both sides had to play, or pretend to play. Walter was not involved. Walter seemed lost.

Annie said, "I wonder if you damaged anything. I noticed some office machines . . ." Annie knew something. Her eyes made contact with Bryan and moved away.

He said, "You've been looking for a used typewriter, haven't you, Annie?"

Robbie said, "We still have a few around. If the Mexican didn't get 'em." He was looking out at the empty offices, cooperating. "You see one you like, Miss Maguire, it's yours. But listen. I got to get back down to the auction and look interested.

Okay? I'll see you a little later."

He's going to say ciao, Bryan thought.

"Ciao," Robbie said and headed for the stairs.

Annie walked out, began to roam after Robbie left. There were a few moments of silence before Walter said to Bryan, "The fuck you looking at me for?"

In the medium-blue unmarked Plymouth, moving up Riopelle to Jefferson, Annie opened her hand.

Bryan looked from the windshield to the flattened bits of gray lead, three of them, in Annie's palm.

She said, "What do you think?"

He said, "I haven't finished yet. Ask me later."

She said, "You must know something I don't."

He said, "Well, I think you'd be safe in throwing those out the window. But let's get a comparison anyway.""So you're sure it's not the same gun. Even though it's a twenty-two."

"No, but I'm pretty sure it's not the same barrel,"

Bryan said. "We could still make the gun if we had the casings, but he didn't let us have the casings, did he? He knows a few things about ballistics."

Annie said, "Wait a minute. Who are we talking about? I thought our guy was Walter. Like maybe he borrowed the gun and put it back and Daniels is a little weird but basically harmless."

"That could be," Bryan said, "but let's think it through again. After I make a phone call."

In the squad room he spoke to the Palm Beach chief of police, spoke to him for several minutes asking polite questions. He hung up and sat staring at nothing. Then rose to stand at the window, looking down at the Coney Island across the street, and began to feel tired again.

When Annie came in he knew by her expression what she was going to say.

"You're right. It's not the gun that did Curtis."

"At least not the barrel," Bryan said. "Though it probably doesn't make much difference. I just saw a hunch fly out the window. Palm Beach says the gun Daniels used on the Haitian burglar--justifiable homicide, the chief underlined that--was a Colt Python, three-fifty-seven."

"Maybe he has a collection," Annie said.

"That's a nice idea," Bryan said. "I like it."She said, "I still think we should stay close to Walter. I'll call some of the people he picked up Saturday, if you want me to."

"Call the Japanese guy too."

"Walter said he didn't pick him up."

"But if the guy came halfway around the world--you know what I mean? Went to all that trouble, then somebody picked him up. And if we don't ask, Inspector Eljay Ayres is gonna want to know why, isn't he?"

Annie brightened. With her nice teeth and complexion she always looked clean, healthy; she responded to what she felt and looked you right in the eye.

"Maybe what's his name, the Japanese guy, stayed at the Plaza and Walter doesn't want us to know he was there."

"Maybe," Bryan said. If she wanted to bet on Walter he'd let her. In fact, he'd give her a little more to make it interesting and said, "I'll tell you something else. Down in Palm Beach, guess who investigated Robbie shooting the Haitian?"

Annie said, "No!" She loved it.

"Yes. And right after that Walter goes to work for Robbie. What does that tell you?"

Annie thought about it. "Not much, really."

She had a nice mouth too. Very expressive blue eyes. Bryan said, "Angela asked me if I'd ever made the moves on you."Annie smiled but seemed embarrassed. "Did she? Why?"

"I think seeing us working together, the way we get along."

"Has she called you?"

"No."

"What're you gonna do about it?"

"Nothing. I'm going to Florida tomorrow. You guys are on your own."

Annie began to smile again. "But not the Ocean Pearl in Boca Raton this time?"

IN THE EARLY MORNING old people walked the beach looking for shells left by the tide. The women, in sleeveless shirts and kerchiefs covering their hairdos, studied the sand and seemed to have purpose.

The men followed, looking for something to happen. They wore adjustable nylon golf caps, many of them cocked in a recollection going back to world wars, sporty old guys who seemed lost. They poked at blue translucent balloons among the even line of seaweed washed up, dead Portuguese men-of-war, and that would be a high moment when nothing much was expected. There were people from Michigan, from Ontario, from Ohio and New York State. They wiped the sediment from their Buicks and big Oldsmobiles and talked about mileage; they went to the Early Bird dinner at five-thirty.

There were not as many families with children as there used to be. Once in a while a girl with a nice body would appear way off coming along the sand and Bryan would wonder about her; but not long,not interested enough to put the National Geographic aside and push up out of the beach chair and go through the ritual of making the moves. Not this trip. He would look from habit or because the sight of a girl with the nice body was an element of pleasure in his picture of a beach on the Atlantic Ocean in season.

He went to sleep in the sun, lying on his side on a Woolworth blue and white beach towel and woke up in shade, his shoulder cramped, looking eye level at sandpipers running on their stick legs, nervous, afraid of everything. He would rather be a seagull and dive for fish. He wondered where birds went to die. There were billions of birds but you didn't see many dead ones. He was reading an article about cranes and egrets getting messed up in the oil along the Texas coast. It was cool in the shade; late afternoon now.

The lone figure way down the beach was still in sunlight. A girl coming along the edge of sand left glistening by the surf. A girl in twin strips of red cloth. She came gradually away from the waves rushing at her ankles and as she reached the shade the gleam left her body, her slender arms and legs turning a dusty copper, the patches of red cloth faded, though highlights and something white remained in her hair. She came across the empty sand looking at him through round sunglasses, past the line of seaweed and up the slight rise to his chair. The low chair with aluminum arms was all that separated them.

He pushed up to prop his cheek on his fist, looking at her sideways. The white thing in her hair was a barrette.

"I was gonna come up behind you," Angela said, "but you caught me."

He said, "What were you gonna do then?"

There was time to play around. No hurry now.

She said, "Lie down next to you. Blow in your ear. Feel you up. Have my way with you."

"Then what?"

"Have a cigarette. Did you bring any?"

"In the room."

"I didn't see them."

Bryan said, "Come on--really? What'd you tell Mr. Ocean Pearl?"

"I said I was your missus, what do you think?"

"You put your things in there and changed?"

"I was afraid you were gonna come in. Yeah, I changed and then walked down the road. Came back up the beach and made my entrance. Did you like it?"

"Soon as I saw you I knew it was you."

"Yeah--you thought it was some young girl. I mean you were hoping it was."

"Happy birthday. How're you handling it?"

"Well, four days into it, not bad. You're getting tan.""How're your folks?"

"Okay."

"I thought you were gonna stay a week."

"I couldn't."

"Why, what happened?"

"Nothing. I missed you too much. So I called your office . . ."

"Well," Bryan said, "here we are."

They smiled, almost shy with one another. It was going to be something.

He said, "You want to be civil for a while or go crazy right away?"

She said, "Let's see what happens."

"Will you go with me to meet somebody at six?"

"Of course."

"Just for a drink. Then we're on our own."

"Fine."

He said, "Are we in the neighborhood of what you want most?"

She said, "We're right there. I think we've always been there, but I have to feel it. You don't have to say a word if I feel it."

"Start feeling," Bryan said.

They were in Number I facing the ocean, away from the rest of the units centered around the swimming pool and patio. Living room, bedroom, kitchen and the whole Atlantic right outside the windows. Angela showered and he showered. She stood in the bedroom in white bra and panties. Every boy's dream. He got a glimpse as he poured bourbon over shaved ice packed in smoke-colored glasses.