Эд Макбейн - Snow White and Rose Red

Her eyes were wide. In the glow of the headlights they seemed entirely white. No pupils. Wide and white and unseeing.

She was moving toward me now.

“Snow White,” I said quickly, “give me the—”

“Oh no,” she said, “no, my dear, it’s Rose Red, didn’t you know? Rose Red !” she screamed, and came at me with the knife.

I had never known such brute strength in my life.

I do not know how long we struggled there in the crossed beams of the headlights. I heard — and this time it was not imagined — the shrieking of birds in the mangroves, Sarah’s own shrieking as she tried repeatedly to plunge the knife into my chest, my hands locked onto her wrist, fitful shadows flitting over the ground and onto the branches of the trees, “Blood red!” she screamed, “Rose Red!” she screamed, the knife going for my throat, my face, my chest again, “Rose Red, Rose Red !” she screamed again and again, and moved against me with such force that my right hand momentarily lost its grip.

We stood locked in a deadly, one-armed embrace in the crossed beams of the headlights, my left hand clamped onto her right wrist as she flailed at me with the knife, raw power trembling through her right arm, her lips skinned back over her teeth. Our eyes met. I was staring into the face of a madwoman.

“Yes, die,” she said, and more strength than I thought she had left surged through her arm as the knife came at my throat.

I punched her in the face.

I hit her as hard as I’ve ever hit anyone in my life.

It was the first time I had ever struck a woman.

She collapsed with a small whimper.

I stood over her, breathing heavily.

And then I began to cry.

Technically, it was not a Q and A.

There were no questions.

Only answers.

I would have been enormously disappointed in Bloom if he had begun asking questions of Sarah just then.

They had taken her to the police station because she had to be charged with two counts of aggravated assault, a second-degree felony punishable by a term of imprisonment not exceeding fifteen years. But now they were merely holding her for the medical men, and the medical men weren’t yet there when I arrived at the Public Safety Building.

The medical men, thank God, were at Good Samaritan when the ambulance arrived carrying Joanna and me. Bloom had found us at the bird sanctuary and had immediately radioed for a meat wagon. He told me that the moment he walked into that empty house on Stone Crab and saw blood on the carpet, he knew damn well where I’d headed. He found me sitting on the ground there with Joanna in my arms, sobbing. He handcuffed Sarah’s hands behind her back, and then went into the car to radio for the ambulance.

The emergency-room doctors at Good Samaritan told me that Joanna would be all right. Apparently she had not been hit with as much force as had Christine Seifert, who was still lying in a coma in the intensive-care unit. Moreover, perhaps because Joanna was shorter than Sarah, the blow had struck her on top of her head, where the skull was more protective than it was at the temple. She would have a hell of a headache in the morning, the doctors told me, but she’d be fine. Or at least as fine as anyone could be after getting hit on the head with a three-inch heel.

Sarah was in a holding cell at the Public Safety Building.

She did not know where she was.

She thought she was at Southern Medical, being observed by a team of doctors there.

She did not recognize me.

She thought I was one of the examining physicians.

She seemed to have no memory of what she’d done and tried to do that afternoon and this evening.

At one point, when Rawles came downstairs with several containers of coffee, she insisted that the Black Knight be removed from the premises.

No questions, then.

Only answers.

All of them supplied by Sarah in a scattered monologue that shifted person and tense at will: Sarah talking to the physicians at Southern Medical, pleading her case; Sarah talking to herself; Sarah talking to God knew what demons raged in her mind.

It was the saddest recitation I’d ever heard in my life.

...and of course he didn’t know I was listening on the telephone, how could he know? There was no one in the house when I got home that day, he must have figured it was safe to call his little bimbo. An accident, pure and simple, my finding out about him, my hearing what she said to him on the telephone, oh, the horror of it, my own father! I had put down my parcels — I love the word parcels , don’t you love that word, so British, so unlike the crude American packages , ugh, packages, enough to make one barf, my dear — put down my parcels , then, on the hall table, no one in the house, the house still and silent and golden-dazzled with dust motes, all so still, little did the maiden know what was in store that sunny August day, oh little does she know, the pure white virgin. Put down my parcels and remembered that I was supposed to take the Ferrari in for service, well too late then , of course, supposed to be in at nine that morning, and went into the library to call the people who run the foreign car place, though they’re not foreigners themselves, poor souls, and picked up the receiver and heard them speaking.

Heard voices.

My father and a woman.

Oh my oh my oh my, the things they were saying.

I stood aghast, as well I might have, such obscenities falling upon my maiden ears, oh the horror. Snow White blushes, actually feels the rush of blood red to her maiden cheeks, the same blush of course as when he unzippered his pants to reveal himself to me, but that was in another country, and besides the wench is dead. I never did like horseback riding, that was his idea, of course, Daddy’s , dear Daddy with his marvelous ideas, like putting me on a horse and hiring the Black Knight to teach me, oh, he taught me all right, gonna teach you, li’l darlin’.

I stood there aghast and abashed and astonished and all things maidenly as mentioned before, have I mentioned earlier the shame I felt while listening to those hot August words? If not, you must consider it a mere oversight, doctors, learned physicians, because as you can readily discern I am some-what confused as to why I was incarcerated in the Tomb of the Innocent in the first place, when all I did — well, what I did... well, why was I there? I was as innocent as the driven snow. I got on my knees only because he forced me to. Take it, darlin’, he said, patting me on the head, I before him on my knees, black boots polished to a high black sheen, oh the horror, that woman saying such things on the telephone, those voices on the telephone.

Well, you know, my father said, it’s not that I’m a jealous man, and she says, Oho he’s not a jealous man, or words to that effect, mocking him. A young voice. He calls her Tracy, he calls the Harlot Witch Tracy, but he doesn’t mention her last name, it is Tracy this and Tracy that, oh the trouble that gave me later on, the trouble finding her after he was dead, after she gave him the heart attack, all those things she said to him on the phone.

Snow White gathers, in her role as Inadvertent Eavesdropper, that Daddy Dear is upset because Little Bimbo Tracy has taken a trip to Los Angeles to visit an old friend without advising Poor Rich Daddy of her departure. She is back now, Little Tracy Bimbo, and she is telling Daddy he is a jealous old man who doesn’t even trust her to go to the bathroom by herself. Oh such intimacies. Toilet talk on the telephone while Snow White blushes and creams in her unmentionables.

Have I mentioned my unmentionables?