Chase

9

The tavern decor was supposed to be reminiscent of an Alpine Inn: low beamed ceilings, rough white plaster walls, a brick floor, heavy darkpine furniture. The six windows that faced onto the mall promenade were leaded glass the color of burgundy, only slightly translucent. Around the walls were upholstered booths. Chase sat in one of the smaller booths toward the rear of the place, facing the bar and the front entrance.

A cheerful apple-cheeked blonde in a short brown skirt and lowcut white peasant blouse lit the lantern on his table, then took his order for a whiskey sour.

The bar was not especially busy at six o'clock; only seven other patrons shared the place, three couples and a lone woman who sat at the bar. None of the customers fit the description that Brown had given Chase, and he disregarded them. The bartender was the only other man in the place, aging and bald, with a potbelly, but quick and expert with the bottles and obviously a favorite with barmaids.

Blentz might not frequent his own tavern, of course, though he would be an exception to the rule if that was the case. This was largely a cash business, and most saloon owners liked to keep a watch on the till.

Chase realized that he was tense, leaning away from the back of the booth, his hands curled into fists on the table. He settled back and forced himself to relax, since he might have to wait hours for Blentz.

After the second whiskey sour, he asked for a menu and ordered a veal chop and a baked potato, surprised to be hungry after the meal that he'd had at the drive-in joint earlier.

After dinner, shortly after nine o'clock, Chase finally asked the waitress if Mr. Blentz would be in this evening.

She looked across the now-crowded room and pointed at a heavyset man on a stool at the bar. "That's him."

The guy was about fifty, weighed well over two hundred and fifty pounds, and was four or five inches shorter than the man in Franklin Brown's description.

"Blentz?" Chase asked. "You're sure?"

"I've worked for him two years," the waitress said.

"I was told he was tall, thin. Blond hair, sharp dresser."

"Maybe twenty years ago he was thin and a sharp dresser," she said. "But he couldn't ever have been tall or blond."

"I guess not," Chase said. "I guess I must be looking for another Blentz. Could I have the bill, please?"

He felt like Nancy Drew again, rather than Sam Spade. Of course, Nancy Drew did solve every case — and generally, if not always, before anyone was killed.

When he went outside, the mall parking lot was deserted but for the cars in front of the tavern. The stores had closed twenty minutes before.

The night air was sultry after the air-conditioned tavern. It seemed to press Chase to the blacktop, so each step that he took was flatfooted, loud, as though he were walking on a planet with greater gravity than that of earth.

As he was wiping sweat from his forehead, stepping around the front of the Mustang, he heard an engine roar behind him and was pinned by headlights. He didn't turn to look, but vaulted out of the way and onto the hood of his car.

An instant later a Pontiac scraped noisily along the side of the Mustang. Showers of sparks briefly brightened the night, leaving behind a faint smell of hot metal and scorched paint. Although the car rocked hard when it was struck, Chase held fast by curling his fingers into the trough that housed the recessed windshield wipers. If he fell off, the Pontiac sure as hell would swing around or back up to run him down before he could scramble away again.

Chase stood on the hood of the Mustang and stared after the retreating Pontiac, trying to see the license number. Even if he had been close enough to read the dark numerals, he couldn't have done so, because Judge had twisted a large piece of burlap sacking over the plate.

The Pontiac reached the exit lane from the mall lot, took the turn too hard, and appeared in danger of shooting across the sidewalk and striking one of the mercury arc lights. But then Judge regained control, accelerated, went through the amber traffic light at the intersection, and swung right onto the main highway toward the heart of the city. In seconds, the Pontiac passed over the brow of a hill and was out of sight.

Chase looked around to see if anyone had witnessed the short, violent confrontation. He was alone.

He got down from the hood and walked the length of the Mustang, examining the damage. The front fender was jammed back toward the driver's door, though it hadn't been crushed against the tire and wouldn't prevent the car from being driven. The entire flank of the vehicle was scraped and crumpled. He doubted that there was any serious structural or mechanical damage — although the body work would cost several hundred bucks to repair.

He didn't care. Money was the least of his worries.

He opened the driver's door, which protested with only a thin shriek, sat behind the wheel, closed the door, opened his notebook, and reread his list. His hand trembled when he added the ninth, tenth, and eleventh items:

Third alias — Eric Blentz

Given to rash action in the face of previous failures

Pontiac, second car (stolen just to make the hit?)

He sat in the car, staring at the empty lot, until his hands stopped shaking. Weary, he drove home, wondering where Judge would be waiting for him the next time.

The telephone woke him Saturday morning.

Rising from a darkness full of accusatory corpses, Chase put a hand on the receiver — then realized who might be calling. Judge hadn't phoned since early Wednesday night. He was overdue.

"Hello?"

"Ben?"

"Yes?"

"Dr. Fauvel here."

It was the first time that Chase had ever heard the psychiatrist on the phone. Except during their office sessions, all communications were through Miss Pringle.

"What do you want?" Chase asked. The name had fully awakened him and chased off his lingering nightmares.

"I wondered why you hadn't kept your Friday appointment."

"Didn't need it."

Fauvel hesitated. Then: "Listen, if it was because I talked to the police so frankly, you must understand that I wasn't violating a doctor-patient relationship. They weren't accusing you of any crime, and I thought it was in your best interest to tell them the truth before they wasted more time on this Judge."

Chase said nothing.

Fauvel said, "Should we get together this afternoon and talk about it, all of it?"

"No."

"I think you would benefit from a session right now, Ben."

"I'm not coming in again."

"That would be unwise," Fauvel said.

"Psychiatric care was not a condition of my hospital discharge, only a benefit I could avail myself of."

"And you still can avail yourself of it, Ben. I'm here, waiting to see you"

"It's no longer a benefit," Chase said. He was beginning to enjoy this. For the first time, he had Fauvel on the defensive for more than a brief moment; the new balance of power was gratifying.

"Ben, you are angry about what I said to the police. That is the whole thing, isn't it?"

"Partly," Chase said. "But there are other reasons."

"What?"

Chase said, "Let's play the word-association game."

"Word association? Ben, don't be-"

"Publish."

"Ben, I'm ready to see you anytime that-"

"Publish," Chase interrupted.

"This doesn't help-"

"Publish," Chase insisted.

Fauvel was silent. Then he sighed, decided to play along, and said, "I guess… books."

"Magazines."

"I don't know where you want me to go, Ben."

"Magazines." "Well… newspapers."

"Magazines."

"New word, please," Fauvel said.

"Contents."

"Oh. Articles?"

"Five."

"Five articles?"

"Psychiatry."

Puzzled, Fauvel said, "You're not managing this correctly. Word association has to be-"

"Patient C."

Fauvel was stunned into silence.

"Patient C," Chase repeated.

"How did you get hold of-"

"One word."

"Ben, we can't discuss this in one-word exchanges. I'm sure you're upset; but-"

"Play the game with me, Doctor, and maybe — just maybe — I won't make a public response to your five articles and won't subject you to professional ridicule."

The silence on the other end of the line was as deep as any Chase had ever heard.

"Patient C," Chase said.

"Valued."

"Bullshit."

"Valued," Fauvel insisted.

"Exploited."

"Mistake," Fauvel admitted.

"Correction?"

"Necessary."

"Next?"

"Session."

"Next?"

"Session."

"Please don't repeat your answers," Chase admonished. "New word. Psychiatrist."

"Healer."

"Psychiatrist."

"Me."

"Sonofabitch."

"That's childish, Ben."

"Egomaniac."

Fauvel only sighed.

"Asshole," Ben said, and he hung up.

He hadn't felt so good in years.

Later, as he was exercising the stiffness out of his battered muscles, he realized that making the break with his psychiatrist was a stronger rejection of his recent despair than anything else that he had done. He'd been telling himself that when Judge was located and dealt with, he could then resume his sheltered existence on the third floor of Mrs. Fielding's house. But that was no longer possible. By discontinuing all psychiatric treatment, he was admitting that he had changed forever and that his burden of guilt was growing distinctly less heavy.

Chase's pleasure in Fauvel's humiliation was tempered by the daunting prospect of having to live again. If he forsook the solace of solitude — what would replace it?

A new, quiet, but profound anxiety overcame him. Embracing the possibility of hope was far riskier and more frightening than walking boldly through enemy gunfire.

Once Chase had shaved and bathed, he realized that he had no leads to follow in his investigation. He had been everywhere that Judge had been, and yet he had gained nothing for his trouble except a description of the man, which would do him no good unless he could connect a name with it.

While eating a late breakfast at a pancake house on Galasio Boulevard, he decided to return to the Gateway Mall Tavern and talk to the real Eric Blentz to see if the man could put a name to Judge's description. It seemed likely that Judge had not just chosen Blentz's name out of the phone book when he'd used it in the Student Records Office at State. Perhaps he knew Blentz. And even if Blentz could provide no new lead, Chase could go back to Glenda Kleaver at the newspaper morgue and question her about anyone who had come into her office on Tuesday — which he hadn't done previously, for fear of making a fool of himself or pricking the interest of the reporters in the room.

From a phone booth outside the restaurant, he called the newspaper morgue, but it wasn't open for business on Saturday. In the directory he found a listing for Glenda Kleaver.

She answered on the fourth ring. He had forgotten how like music her voice was.

He said, "Miss Kleaver, you probably don't remember me. I was in your office yesterday. My name's Chase. I had to leave while you were out of the room getting information for one of your reporters."

"Sure. I remember you."

He hesitated, not certain how to proceed. Then he blurted out a request or an invitation; he wasn't sure which it was. "My name's Chase, Benjamin Chase, and I'd like to see you again, see you today, if that's at all possible."

"See me?"

"Yes, that's right."

After a hesitation, she said, "Mr. Chase… are you asking me for a date?"

He was so out of practice — and so surprised to discover that he did, indeed, want to see her again for reasons that had nothing to do with Judge — that he was as awkward as a schoolboy. "Well, yes, more or less, I suppose, yeah, a date, if that's okay."

"You have an interesting approach," she said.

"I guess so." He was afraid that she would turn him down — and was simultaneously frightened that she would accept.

"What time?" she asked.

"Well, actually, I was thinking today, this evening, dinner."

She was silent.

"But now," he said, "I realize that isn't much notice-"

"It's fine."

"Really?" His throat was tight, and his voice rose toward an adolescent pitch. He amazed himself.

"One problem, though," she said.

"What's that?"

"I've already started marinating a lovely sea bass for dinner. Started preparing other dishes too. I don't like wasting any of this. Could you come here for supper?"

"Okay," he said.

She gave him the address. "Dress casually, please. And I'll see you at seven."

"At seven."

When the connection was broken, Chase stood for a while in the booth, trembling. Into his mind's eye came vivid memories of Operation Jules Verne: the narrow tunnel, the descent, the awful darkness, the fear, the bamboo gate, the women, the guns… the blood. His knees felt weak, and his heart beat rabbit-fast, as it had done in that subterranean battleground. Shaking violently, he leaned against the Plexiglas wall of the booth and closed his eyes.

Making a date with Glenda Kleaver was in no way a rejection of his responsibility in the deaths of those Vietnamese women. A long time had passed, after all, and a great deal of penitence had been suffered. And suffered alone.

Nevertheless, he still felt that making a date with her was wrong. Callous and selfish and wrong.

He left the booth.

The day was hot and humid. His damp shirt clung to him nearly as tenaciously as guilt.

At the shopping mall, Chase browsed in the bookstore until shortly after noon, then walked up the carpeted slope of the main promenade to the tavern. The bartender said that Blentz was expected at one o'clock. Chase sat on a stool at the bar, watching the door, and nursed a beer while he waited.

When Eric Blentz arrived, wearing a rumpled white linen suit and a pale-yellow shirt, looking even heavier than he had appeared the previous night, he was friendly and willing to chat.

"I'm looking for a guy who used to come here," Chase said.

Blentz overwhelmed a bar stool and ordered a beer. He listened to the description but claimed that he didn't know anyone who fit it.

"He might not have been a customer. Maybe an employee."

"Not here, he wasn't. What do you want him for, anyway? He owe you some money?"

"Just the opposite," Chase said. "I owe him."

"Yeah? How much?"

"Two hundred bucks," Chase lied. "You still don't know him?"

"Nope. Sorry."

Disappointed, Chase got up. "Thanks anyway."

Blentz turned on his stool. "How did you go about borrowing two hundred bucks from a guy without learning his name?"

Chase said, "We were both drunk. If I'd been half sober, I'd have remembered it."

Blentz smiled. "And if he'd been half sober, he wouldn't have made the loan."

"Probably not."

Blentz raised his glass and took a swallow of beer. Light sparkled on the polished edges of his silver ring. A double lightning bolt.

As Chase walked across the tavern and out the door into the mall, he knew that Eric Blentz was still twisted away from the bar, watching.

Aryan Alliance. Some sort of club, like the Elks Club or the Moose Lodge, for God's sake, but for a bunch of white supremacists who had perhaps grown tired of running around the countryside in hooded white sheets and were looking for a more modern, urban image.

But why the hell would they want to kill a high-school boy like Michael Karnes? Why would one of these fanatics — Judge — be engaged in a campaign against promiscuous teenagers, ranting on the phone about sin and judgment? What did that have to do with making the world safe for the white race? Michael Karnes had been a white-bread boy — not a natural target for something like the Aryan Alliance but a potential recruit.

The blacktop in the parking lot was soft in places.

The summer sky was gas-flame blue. And as blind as a dead television screen, offering no answers.

Chase started the car and drove home.

No one shot at him.

In his room, he turned on the television, watched it for fifteen minutes, and turned it off before the program was finished. He opened a paperback book, but he couldn't concentrate on the story.

He paced, instinctively staying away from his window.

At six o'clock he left the house to keep his date with Glenda Kleaver.

To avoid leading Judge to the woman and perhaps endangering her,

Chase drove aimlessly for half an hour, turning at random from street to street, watching his rearview mirror. But no tail stayed with him along his circuitous route.

Glenda lived in an inexpensive but well-kept garden-apartment complex on St. John's Circle, on the third floor of a three-floor building. There was a peephole in her door, and she took the time to use it before answering his knock. She was wearing white shorts and a dark blue blouse.

"You're punctual," she said. "Come in. Can I get you something to drink?"

As he stepped inside, he said, "What're you having?"

"Iced tea. But I've got beer, wine, gin, vodka."

"Iced tea sounds good."

"Be right back."

He watched her as she crossed the room and disappeared down a short corridor that evidently led to the dining room and kitchen. She moved like sunlight on water.

The living room was sparely furnished but cozy. Four armchairs, a coffee table, a couple of end tables with lamps. No sofa. There were no paintings because all the walls without windows were covered with bookshelves, and every shelf was crammed full of paperbacks and book-club hardbacks.

He was reading the titles on the spines of the books when she returned with two glasses of iced tea. "You're a reader," he said.

"I confess."

"Me too."

"See any shared interests?"

"Quite a few," he said, accepting the tea. He pulled a volume off one shelf. "What did you think of this?"

"It reeked."

"Didn't it?"

"All the publicity, but it's empty."

He returned the book to the shelf, and they adjourned to two of the armchairs.

"I like people," Glenda said, which seemed an odd comment until she added, "but I like them more in books than in real life."

"Why's that?"

"I'm sure you know," she said.

And he did. "In a book, even the real bastards can't hurt you."

"And you can never lose a friend you make in a book."

"When you get to a sad part, no one's there to see you cry."

"Or wonder why you don't cry when you should," she said.

"I don't mind living secondhand. Through books."

"It has big advantages," she agreed.

He wondered who had hurt her, how often, and how badly. Beyond doubt, she had suffered. He could sense a depth of pain in her that was disturbingly familiar to him.

Yet there was nothing melancholy about her. She had a sweet, gentle smile, and she virtually radiated a quiet happiness that made him more comfortable in her living room than he had been anywhere since he'd left home for college seven years ago.

"When I returned to the reference desk at the morgue and you'd gone," she said, "I thought you were angry about being made to wait."

"Not at all. I just remembered… an appointment I'd forgotten."

"I'll be back on duty Monday if you want to stop around."

"You like working there?"

"It's nice and quiet. Some of the reporters can be too flirty, but that's the worst of it."

He smiled. "You can handle them."

"Reporters all think they're persistent and tough," she said. "But they're no match for a newspaper-morgue librarian."

"At least not for this one."

"Where do you work?" she asked.

"Nowhere right now."

"Waiting," she said, instead of anything that anyone else might have said. "Sometimes waiting is the hardest thing."

"But it's all you can do."

She sipped her iced tea. "One day there'll be a door like any other door, but when you open it, right in front of you will be just the thing you need."

"It's nice to think so," he said.

"Then you forget the pain of waiting."

Chase had never been party to a conversation half as strange as this — yet it made more sense than any conversation that he'd ever had in his life.

"Have you found that door?" he asked.

"There's not just one. A series of them. With spells of waiting in between."

Dinner was delicious: tossed salad, potatoes and pasta layered with spinach and basil and feta cheese, zucchini with slivers of red pepper, and marinated sea bass lightly grilled. For dessert, fresh orange slices sprinkled with coconut.

When they weren't talking in that strange shorthand that came naturally to them, they fell into silences that were never awkward.

After dinner in the dining area off the kitchen, she suggested that they adjourn to the small balcony off the living room, but Chase said, "What about the dishes?"

"I'll take care of them later."

"I'll help, and we'll get them done twice as fast."

"A man who offers to wash dishes."

"I thought maybe I could dry."

After the dishes, they sat on a pair of lawn chairs on the balcony in the warm July darkness. The garden courtyard was below. Voices drifted to them from other balconies, and city crickets made a sound as lonely as any made by their country cousins.

When at last it was time to leave, he said, "Is this a magical apartment — or do you make it peaceful wherever you go?"

"You don't have to make the world peaceful," she said. "It is to begin with. You just have to learn not to disturb things."

"I could stay here forever."

"Stay if you want."

The balcony had no lamp, only fireflies in the night beyond the railing. In such deep shadows, Chase couldn't read her face.

He thought of dead women in a tunnel, half a world away, and the weight of guilt in his heart was immeasurable.

He found himself apologizing to Glenda for what she might have thought was a pass. "I'm sorry. I had no right, I didn't mean-"

"I know," she said softly.

"I don't want-"

"I know. Hush."

They were silent for a while.

Then she said, "Being alone can be good. It's easy to find peace alone. But sometimes… being alone is a kind of death."

He could add nothing more to what she'd said.

Later she said, "I only have one bedroom, one bed. But the armchairs in the living room were all bought secondhand, here and there, and one of them is a lounger that pretty much folds into a bed."

"Thank you," he said.

Later still, as he sat in the lounger, reading a book from her shelves, she reappeared, dressed for bed in a T-shirt and panties. She leaned down, kissed his cheek, and said, "Good night, Ben."

He put down his book and took her hand in both of his. "I'm not sure what's happening here."

"Do you find it strange?"

"I should."

"But?"

"I don't."

"All that happened is — we both found the same doorway from different sides."

"And now?"

"We give it time, enough time, and see if this is what we need," she said.

"You're special."

"And you're not?"

"I know I'm not," he said.

"You're wrong."

She kissed him again and went to bed.

And later still, after he had converted the chair into its fullest reclining position, turned off the lamp on the end table, and settled down, she returned in the darkness and sat across from him. He did not hear her coming as much as feel the serenity that she brought with her.

"Ben?" she said.

"Yes?"

"Everyone is damaged."

"Not everyone," he said.

"Yes. Everyone. Not just you, not just me."

He knew why she had waited for darkness. Some things were not easily said in the light.

"I don't know if I can ever… be with a woman again," he said. "The war. What happened. No one knows. I have this guilt… "

"Of course you do. Good men wear chains of guilt all their lives. They feel."

"This is… this is worse than what other men have done."

"We learn, we change, or we die," she said quietly.

He couldn't speak.

From the darkness, she said, "When I was a little girl, I had to give what I never wanted to give, day after day, week after week, year after year, to a father who didn't know the meaning of guilt."

"I'm so sorry."

"You needn't be. That's long ago," she said. "Many doors away from where I am now."

"I should never touch you."

"Hush. You will touch me one day, and I'll be happy for your touch. Maybe next week. Next month. Maybe a year from now or even longer. Whenever you're ready. Everyone is damaged, Ben, but the heart can be repaired."

When she rose from her chair and returned to the bedroom, she left a place of peace behind her, and Ben found a sleep without nightmares.

Sunday morning, Glenda was still sleeping soundly when Ben went to her bedroom to check on her. He stood in the doorway for a long while, listening to her slow, steady breathing, which seemed to him to have all the subtle power of a gentle tide breaking on a beach.

He left her a note in the kitchen: I've got some business to take care of. Will call soon. Love, Ben.

The morning sun was already fiercely hot. The sky was gas-flame blue, as it had been the previous day, but it no longer seemed like a flat, blind vault. It was a deep sky now, with places beyond.

He returned to his apartment, where he encountered Mrs. Fielding in the front hall.

"Been out all night?" she asked, eyeing the rumpled clothes in which he'd slept. "You didn't have an accident, did you?"

"No," he said, climbing the stairs, "and I wasn't bar hopping the topless joints either."

He was surprised that he had been able to be brusque with her, and she was so startled that she had no reply.

After a shower and a shave, he sat with his notebook of clues, trying to decide what his next step should be.

When the telephone rang, he hoped it was Glenda, but Judge said, "So you've found yourself a bitch in heat, have you?"

Ben knew that he hadn't been followed to Glenda's apartment.

Judge could be aware of nothing more than that he'd been out all night; the bastard was just assuming that he'd been with a woman.

"Killer and fornicator," Judge accused.

"I know what you look like," Ben said. "About my height, blond, with a long thin nose. You walk with your shoulders hunched. You're a neat dresser."

Judge was amused. "With that and the entire U.S. Army to help you search, you might find me in time, Chase."

"You're part of the brotherhood."

The killer was silent. This was a nervous silence and therefore different from his usual judgmental silences.

"The Aryan Alliance," Ben said. "You and Eric Blentz. You and a lot of other moronic assholes who think you're the master race."

"You don't want to cross certain people, Mr. Chase."

"You don't scare me. I've been dead for years anyway. You've got a dead man looking for you, Judge, and we dead men never stop."

With sudden anger hotter than the July morning, Judge said, "You don't know anything about me, Chase, not anything that matters — and you're not going to get a chance to learn anything more."

"Whoa, easy, easy," Ben said, enjoying being on the delivery end of the needle for a change. "You master-race guys, you come from a lot of inbreeding, cousins lying with cousins, sisters with brothers, makes you a little unstable sometimes."

Judge was silent again, and when he finally spoke, he sounded as if he was shaking with the effort to control his anger. "Do you like your new bitch, Chase? Isn't that the name of the good witch in the land of Oz? Glenda the good witch?"

Ben's heart felt as if it had turned over. He tried to fake bafflement: "Who? What're you talking about?"

"Glenda, tall and golden."

There was no way that he had been followed to her apartment.

"Works in a morgue," said Judge.

He couldn't know.

"Dead newspapers. I think I'll send the fornicating bitch to another kind of morgue, Chase, a morgue where the dead have some real meat on them."

Judge hung up.

He couldn't know.

But he did.

Suddenly Chase felt pursued by a supernatural avenger. Justice had come for him at last. Out of those faraway, long-ago tunnels.