Эд Макбейн - Privileged Conversation

He leaves the apartment without saying, “I love you,” gently closing the door behind him for the very last time.

He is at LaGuardia by eight-fifteen.

They are already boarding his flight.

He looks for the scrap of paper on which he wrote Jacqueline Hicks’s number in East Hampton. The sun is still shining above it. He hesitates a moment, and then dials it. This time, she picks up. He apologizes for calling so early in the morning and then explains that a woman named Kathryn Duggan stopped by for a consultation while he was in the city this week...

“Is she all right?” Jacqueline asks at once.

“Yes, she’s fine, fine. But she mentioned that you’d treated her...”

“Yes, I did,” Jacqueline says.

“And since she’s considering analysis again...”

“Oh?”

“Yes, I wondered if you could tell me a little about her.”

“David, I have a houseful of people just now...”

“Yes, but...”

“...and we’re just sitting down to breakfast. Can you possibly call me...?”

“Jackie...”

“...after the weekend? On Monday? I’d be happy...”

“Can you just tell me...?”

“Yes, but then I really must go, really . Call me Monday, okay? I love her, I’d be happy...”

“I will. What was the nature of...?”

“She was suicidal.”

“I’ll call you Monday,” he says.

He looks at his watch. Eight-twenty. He wonders if he has time to call Kate. He wants to warn her not to do anything foolish. He wants to assure her that he’ll be contacting Clancy again on Monday. He wants to tell her everything’ll work out all right for her.

But just then they announce final boarding for his flight.

And he hurries toward the gate.

Her telephone rings at twenty-five minutes past eight, awakening her.

David, she thinks. From the airport.

She fumbles for the receiver. Picks it up.

“Hullo?” she says.

A furious voice shouts, “Get him off your machine, cunt! ”

There is a click on the line.

She slams down the receiver at once.

My home number! she thinks. He has my home number!

Naked, she pads into the living room, and stands trembling before the answering machine, obeying his command at once, pressing the ANNOUNCEMENT button, holding it down, “Hi,” her voice quavering, “at the beep, please,” removing David’s offensive message from the tape. I have to get out of here, she thinks. He’s too close. He has my number.

Hannah the cat rubs against her naked leg.

“Not now, Hannah,” she says, and rushes back into the bedroom. She crosses to the dresser, fumbles open the top drawer, finds a pair of white cotton panties, steps into them, I’ll go to Clancy, pulls them up over her thighs and her waist, I have to put an end to this, crosses to the closet, hurls open the door, we have to get him, takes a pair of blue jeans from a hanger, we have to stop him, and is about to put them on when all at once she wonders if the front door is locked.

Did David lock the door when he left?

But how? There isn’t a spring latch, the door can’t be locked by simply pulling it shut.

Then...

Did she get up to lock it?

She lets the jeans fall to the floor. Barefoot, wearing only the white panties, she runs out of the bedroom and toward the front door — “Not now , Hannah!” — feeling a sudden urgency to get to that door and lock it, he knows where she lives, he has her number, “Goddamn you, Hannah, not now! ”

She is reaching for the thumb bolt on the top lock when the door opens, almost knocking her over. She backs away, and all at once he is in the room, the door slamming shut behind him.

“Hello, Puss,” he says.

She has never seen this man before in her life.

He is a total stranger, a thin balding man wearing rimless eyeglasses, and blue jeans, and white sneakers, and the black “Cats” T-shirt with the yellow eyes on it, yellow against black, black dancers in the yellow eyes, she cannot breathe. He is holding in his right hand a two-foot section of wood cut from a green broom handle, its end splintered and jagged as though while sawing it off he’d lost patience with the task and simply ripped it free, the naked wood showing raw and white beneath the bilious green paint. Before she can scream, before she can beg him to leave her alone, before she can utter a single sound, the short green club lashes out and strikes her across the bridge of her nose. She feels only blinding pain at first, and then everything in her field of vision goes red.

His fury is monumental.

She cannot imagine what she has done to provoke such rage.

Hands flailing, she keeps backing away from him as he strikes at her soundlessly, incessantly. Bleeding, trying to see through the blood, her eyes swollen, trying to speak, her lips swollen, she says, or thinks she says, Please, don’t hurt me, please. But he has already hurt her, he has hurt her seriously, and he is still hurting her, and she knows he will hurt her even more severely than he already has, knows he will not stop hurting her till he has killed her.

Do it to her, she thinks.

“Do it to her! ” she screams, or thinks she screams.

But there is only Hannah the cat in the blood-spattered room.

Wet with blood, slippery everywhere with blood, drifting in and out of whiteness, she knows he will kill her, knows he has already killed her, knows she is dead, knows she is not yet dead, knows she is dying, hopes he will kill her, has already killed her, but, no, she’s still alive. And she thinks perhaps God, who knows how to get unlisted phone numbers, who knows how to get inside buildings and inside apartments, God in all His infinite mercy and splendor will spare her after all. In which case, why is He hurting her so?

And where is David, she wonders, why isn’t David here to save me, where are you, David? And where’s my vain and glorious mother on this blood-drenched night in this steamy bathroom, how was the fucking movie , Mom? Where’s vainglorious Fee when there’s real trouble? Do you know I’m dying, Mom, do you know I’m dead? I truly beg your pardon, but if I’m dead then please end the pain, please stop hurting me this way! I’m sorry I let him do it, really, I should have locked the door, I should have, I know I should have in some way, but you see, I’m sorry but I simply couldn’t, I was just a kid , you see. So... so please... I... I... I beg you to... to... bess me... to bless me... to forgive me, truly, I’m very sorry, Bess, forgive me, Bessie, please forgive me, only stop it, just, please, stop it!

In the instant before she dies, she understands with blinding clarity that doors can’t be locked against monsters.

David places his call at twelve noon that Monday.

He knows by then that Kate has been murdered. He has read about it in the New York Times and has also seen the news on local television and on CNN.

“I was just trying to locate you,” Clancy says. “Where are you calling from?”

“Martha’s Vineyard.”

“I got the package. Thanks.”

“Will they help?”

“Working on them now.”

There is a silence on the line.

“How well did you know her?” Clancy asks.

“Just casually,” David says.

“But well enough that she could ask you to send that stuff to me, huh?”

“Asked me to take it to you, actually. But you were away.”

“Well enough for that, huh?”

“It wasn’t much to ask.”

“So you sent it FedEx. Cause I was away.”