Лоуренс Блок - Random Walk - A Novel for a New Age

Instead, he drove her all the way into Columbia and dropped her off at her dormitory, then found his way back to I-70 and continued toward St. Louis.

If he’d found her before he found Bethany, he would have done her without a moment’s hesitation. Or, if she’d been irresistibly attractive, he might not have let the episode with Bethany keep him from having her, too. But she just wasn’t that appealing, and he wasn’t that ravenous.

In St. Louis he checked into a motel out toward the airport, unpacked and took a shower. He called a couple of realtors and made appointments for the next several days. He spoke to a man at the firm he used to manage his rental properties in the area, and handled some business over the phone. He relaxed awhile in front of the television set, then put on a tie and jacket and drove downtown for a big meal at Tony’s. He drank a half bottle of wine with his veal and had coffee and a brandy in the lounge. After dinner he walked for a couple of blocks to clear his head before collecting his car from the attendant and driving back to the motel.

In the morning he saw one of the realtors he had called, and then dropped in on his property management people just because he was in the neighborhood. He had a light lunch with the man he’d talked to on the telephone the previous afternoon, learned more than he cared to know about a local political scandal, and didn’t discuss business at all.

In the afternoon he went to a supermarket and pushed a cart up one aisle and down the next. He took something off a shelf every now and then and put it in the cart, but he wasn’t really shopping. He was looking at women. It was a wonderful place to observe them because they were remarkably unselfconscious, totally absorbed in the business of shopping and unaware that anyone might be looking at them. There were several very nice women in the supermarket, and he walked the aisles in a constant state of physical excitement.

When he’d spent as much time there as he wanted he abandoned his cart in the dairy section, picked up a couple of items he needed — a tube of toothpaste, a pack of six disposable razors, a box of Nutter Butter cookies — and hand-carried them to the checkout counter. The girl on the register (Sandy, according to her name tag) had a sunny smile and a pretty face. Her fingertips grazed his palm when she gave him his change.

“Have a nice day,” she said.

He had dinner at a Pizza Hut not far from his motel. His waitress was darling, and so were two or three of the other waitresses, and several of the customers. Afterward he sat in his car for half an hour with the motor off and the lights out, waiting to see if anyone interesting came out alone, but no one did and he tired of the game. He went back to the motel and called Marilee. Both kids were home, and he talked to them, talked some more to Marilee, had another shower and went to sleep.

The following morning he saw another of the realtors he’d spoken to the first day. He wound up going around with her to look at a couple of properties. Her name was Janet, and he had always found her quite attractive, but he knew her professionally and had never allowed himself to entertain fantasies about her. By now he knew her too well; even if there were no risk, he wouldn’t have been interested.

Nor was he much interested in either of the properties she took him to inspect. That was all right, he liked to look at property, you always learned something that way. She drove him back to her office and he picked up the Lincoln.

He drove around. The streets were full of women; the city was full of women. At a stop light, the car next to his was a Dodge convertible with the top down; the driver had a tight sweater and a pouty, sullen mouth. Country music blared on her radio. He let her pull ahead when the light turned and followed her for a dozen blocks until she sailed through an amber light that was red when he reached it. He didn’t want to run the light, and by the time it changed she was gone.

He headed back toward the motel, but stayed on Lindbergh Boulevard past Florissant and parked at the Jamestown Mall. All of the stores were full of women and a remarkable proportion of them looked good to him. It was crowded everywhere, you couldn’t even think about doing anything.

A salesgirl in a gift shop asked if she could help him. “Just looking,” he said.

In the Waldenbooks store, he browsed the shelves and studied the other customers. One book caught his eye, a paperback, and he carried it up front to the register.

The cashier was a woman about his age with a receding chin and a barbed Ozarks twang. She rang the sale and said, “ Men Who Hate Women . Well, I met a few of those and I sure hope you’re not one of them.”

“Not me,” he said. “I love women.”

He left the mall and drove into Florissant, cruising up one suburban street and down the next. He stopped on a block of brick-fronted ranch houses set on quarter-acre plots. Each house had a young tree planted on the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street, and most of the trees still had their trunks wrapped with tape. A large proportion of the cars parked in the driveways were either station wagons or hatchbacks.

He parked his car at the curb, got a clipboard from the trunk, and put a couple of pens into his shirt pocket. He crossed the street and walked up to the door of the first house he came to. He rang the bell.

The woman who answered it was middle-aged. She wore a patterned housedress and was smoking a cigarette.

He said, “Water company. Did you report a drop in pressure?” She said she hadn’t. “Sorry to bother you,” he said, and turned away from her.

There was no one home at the house next door. The woman at the third house was pregnant, and carrying a whining infant. He asked her the same question, and she too denied having reported problems with the water pressure, and he thanked her and left. The woman in the fourth house was pretty — light brown hair, dark brown eyes. He said, “Water company. We’ve been having problems with the water pressure in your area. Have you had any difficulty?”

“No,” she said. “It seems okay.” She turned from him, called back into the house. “Adam, you stop your fussing. I’ll just be a minute.”

He thanked her and left. At the house after hers, he waited a long time before the door was answered. The woman was in her late twenties, and the minute Mark saw her he was glad her neighbor had had a child in the other room. Otherwise he’d have missed out on this one, and she was much too good to miss. She was just a little thing, barely over five feet tall, with a lovely figure and deep dark blue eyes. Oh, wonderful, just wonderful.

“Water company,” he said. “We’ve been having some problems in your area. Have you had any difficulties with the pressure?”

She thought about it. “Uh, no,” she said. “Not really.”

“How about the appearance and flavor of the water?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “The coffee was all right this morning. I don’t know as I drank any water, not just plain by itself.”

“I see,” he said. “Is it all right if I come in? I’m not interrupting anything?”

She shook her head. “I was just watching TV is all.”

“You’re not busy with the kids then?”

She shook her head. “Still in school.”

Wonderful. He drew the door shut after him. “Now if I could just check the water in the kitchen taps first,” he said. “Which way’s the kitchen, if you don’t mind?”

She led the way. She was wearing khaki slacks and he watched her rear as she walked. He caught up with her at the threshold to the kitchen, clapped a hand over her mouth and wrapped her in a choke hold, her throat caught in the crook of his arm. She struggled, but she was just a little thing and he was much too strong for her. Her struggles ceased and she slumped unconscious, limp in his grasp.