Part 22 (1/2)

Lying in his pajamas atop his bed, really quite spectacularly alone, he realized that this mission for which he had volunteered, establis.h.i.+ng the ident.i.ty of the killer, had actually been a means of busying himself, of distracting himself from the dull aching void within him.

Was there really any likelihood that he could discover who was killing these women? He had spent, after all, an entire hour with that muddle of an old man, and learned nothing more substantial than that the dead woman had possessed red hair. A snippet of information so irrelevant as to be utterly useless.

Could he really credit von Hesse's theory-that one of the men on the tour harbored, without knowing it, a homicidal self? Earlier, the notion had seemed persuasive, so much so that Oscar had appropriated it, made it his own. But now, at the close of a long and dreary day, it seemed as hollow as Oscar felt.

A long and dreary day indeed. He and Henry had gotten drenched when they returned to the hotel. With the wind sweeping great hissing gouts of water around the snapping cover of the carriage, the journey back had seemed to take fully as long as Oscar's crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. At the hotel, his hair sopping wet, his clothes cold and sodden, he had stood elaborately dripping onto the front desk, a minor storm shower himself, to learn that Vail had in fact arranged a change of room for Henry. Afterward, he had dismissed Henry for the day and tramped upstairs, his shoes squeaking, to his own room. There he had stripped, showered, scented himself with rose water, donned dry clothing (gray trousers, powder blue s.h.i.+rt, vermilion cravat, the lune du lac coat) and gone out in search of Vail. It was time, Oscar decided, for a bit of bridge mending.

He had found the business manager in the bar downstairs, slumped in a chair at the corner of the room. A nearly empty bottle of whiskey stood on the table before him, and Vail, glaring glumly off into s.p.a.ce, appeared not to notice as Oscar sat down to his left. Vail's toupee was aslant, the halibut's head contemplating Vail's right eyebrow as though about to peck at it. Oscar found himself wanting to screw the thing round to the front; it was one temptation he was able to resist.

”Vail,” he said, ”I think we should talk.”

His head resting back against the flocked red wallpaper, Vail turned to Oscar an unblinking pair of gla.s.sy gray eyes. ”Have you come to attack me again?” he said in a low, resonant voice. ”Have you come once more to heap iniquities upon my head? To smother me beneath the weight of your scorn?”

Oscar felt a chill go fluttering down his spine. The voice was so unlike Vail's in timbre and tone that it seemed to be issuing from some sinister stranger buried deep within the business manager. He said, ”I beg your pardon?”

Vail blinked, frowned, sucked in his cheeks, and then smiled sadly. ”Oscar boy,” he said, his voice all at once Vailish again.

”What was that you were saying?” Oscar asked him.

Vail blinked again, like a man having difficulty awakening. ”Huh? Oh.” He spoke slowly, distractedly. ”Something from a play I was in. A real stinker.” He smiled sadly once more. ”You didn't know, did you, Oscar boy, that I used to be on the boards myself?”

”No,” said Oscar.

”No,” agreed Vail. His eyes misting over, he sat forward, lifted the bottle, poured the remaining whiskey into his gla.s.s. ”Course not. How would you know? Why would you care? Far as you're concerned, I'm just greedy old Jack Vail. Am I right? Sloppy old greedy old insignificant old Jack Vail.”

”Come now, Vail, I've never thought anything remotely like that. But I do think that we should-”

”You can't judge a book by its cover, ya know.”

Oscar smiled, sensing an opportunity. ”Actually,” he said, ”I've always maintained that a cover reveals more about a book than-”

”I had dreams once too, ya know,” said Vail to his whiskey gla.s.s. He turned to Oscar. ”I was young once too, ya know.”

”I've never doubted that for a moment.” Never having for a moment given it a thought.

Vail nodded. ”Yeah. Dreams. I wanted to play Hamlet. The Melancholy Dane.” He raised the gla.s.s to his lips, swallowed some bourbon. ”Alas, poor Yorick,” he said.

”You'd have made a capital Hamlet.”

”I would of been terrible,” Vail said. ”Fact is, I wasn't much good in the stinkers.” He looked at Oscar. ”But at least, ya know, back then I had my dreams. Dreams are important, Oscar boy. You got to hold on to them as long as you can.”

”Nicely phrased.”

Vail nodded and narrowed his eyes. ”You're okay. You're okay, Oscar boy.” His eyes misted over again. ”But really, ya know, you shouldn't ought to talk to me like you did before. I mean, what I did, I did it for the tour, Oscar boy. The tour's the thing, am I right?”

”Well, yes, up to a point.”

”Absolutely,” Vail nodded. ”I was only thinking of you, see, you and the tour. That's my job, isn't it? I didn't mean anybody any harm.”

”Of course not.”

”So're we friends again, Oscar boy? Huh?” Vail held out his right hand. Oscar took it, and Vail squeezed his hand and clapped him heavily on the shoulder. ”We friends again?”

”Of course we are. But don't you think you ought to get some rest? Tonight's the last lecture here in Denver. Come along, I'll walk with you upstairs.”

”Great,” said Vail. ”Great idea.” He released Oscar's hand, started to rise, then sat back and looked at him mournfully. ”Tell me one thing, though, Oscar boy.”

”What's that?”

”What you said. Upstairs in Henry's room. You wouldn't really of thrown me out the window, would ya? Not your old friend Jack. You wouldn't really of done that to old Jack, would ya?”

Oscar smiled. ”Well, yes, Jack, I'm afraid I would.”

Vail looked at him for a moment and then he laughed. He slapped his hand down on Oscar's thigh. ”That's what I love,” he said. ”That wit you got.”

And so Oscar had escorted Vail up the stairs to his room, the business manager cheerfully bouncing from time to time against the wall, then watched almost fondly as Vail toppled into bed and immediately began to snore. (So helpless and harmless did he seem that Oscar completely discounted the small frisson he had felt when a stranger's voice had rumbled from Vail's mouth.) Oscar had gone back downstairs to eat. After an extremely depressing meal of dismembered chicken drifting in a pasty gray gravy, he had gone to his own room to nap. But sleep did not come. His stomach gurgled and grumbled in protest at the swill fermenting inside it. His brain attempted, and failed, to visualize any of the people on the tour as a deranged murderer. And images of old men in tattered overcoats and of burly bullying giants in buffalo fur blended with the recurring image of a smiling Elizabeth McCourt Doe in nothing at all. Finally, at seven-thirty, he had arisen and returned to Vail's room. No one answered when he knocked, and the door was now locked, so Oscar had proceeded to the Opera House alone.

The lecture had been a disaster. His wittiest sallies stumbled into a blank wall of silence. His most profound observations met with uneasy t.i.tters or, worse, with the pachydermal trumpeting of some dunce emptying his sinuses into a pocket handkerchief. (Or more likely, given the caliber of the crowd, into his fingers.) Throughout the evening, Oscar was unable to prevent himself from glancing over expectantly at the box on his right, as though one of the two desiccated old harpies slumbering there, mouths agape, might magically transform herself into a regal presence swathed in ermine.

After the spotty and perfunctory applause, Oscar had left the Opera House and trudged back to the hotel. He had wanted to see, had wanted to speak with, no one. (Except of course Her.) But his stomach had recovered from its battle with the chicken-curious, and a bit vexing, how it could remain utterly indifferent to its owner's personal tragedy-and he had stopped downstairs for a bite to eat. There had been only a few customers in the bar, but one of them had been O'Conner, sitting with a bottle before him in the same chair that Vail had occupied earlier, and looking every bit as glum. Oscar had joined him.

”What do you recommend tonight?” Oscar asked him.

O'Conner, wearing the brown suit he had purloined from some scarecrow, looked at him balefully and said, ”The whiskey.”

When the waiter arrived a moment later, however, Oscar ordered the night's special, something called meat loaf. (They had no tea here; he had asked before.) As the waiter left, Oscar asked O'Conner, ”You've spoken with Marshal Grigsby?”

O'Conner made a sour frown. ”Yeah.”

”What do you think of all this? These women being killed?”

O'Conner raised his gla.s.s, drank from it. ”Some hookers got killed. Happens all the time.” He shrugged. ”It's a rough line of work.”

Surprised, Oscar said, ”You won't be writing about it, then?”

O'Conner shook his head. ”Not my kind of thing.”

”I should've thought that any reporter would've found the story fascinating.”

O'Conner shook his head. ”It's not my kind of thing,” he said again, then drank some more whiskey and stared off at the nearly empty room.

”What do you think of Grigsby's notion that it's one of us?”

O'Conner looked at him. ”Can you see any of us disemboweling a hooker?”

”No,” Oscar admitted. ”I can't.”

O'Conner shrugged.

Oscar said, ”Von Hesse had an interesting idea.”