Walking down the sidewalk, away from Mary Anne"s apartment, Jason Taverner said to himself, My luck has turned. It"s all come back, everything I lost. Thank G.o.d!
I"m the happiest man in the whole f.u.c.king world, he said to himself. This is the greatest day of my life. He thought, You never appreciate it until you lose it, until all of a sudden you don"t have it any more. Well, for two days I lost it and now it"s back and now I appreciate it.
Clutching the box containing the pot Mary Anne had made, he hurried out into the street to flag down a pa.s.sing cab.
"Where to, mister?" the cab asked as it slid open its door. Panting with fatigue, he climbed inside, shut the door manually. "803 Norden Lane," he said, "in Beverly Hills." Heather Hart"s address. He was going back to her at last. And as he really was, not as she had imagined him during the awful last two days.
The cab zoomed up into the sky and he leaned gratefully back, feeling even more weary than he had at Mary Anne"s apartment. So much had happened. What about Alys Buckman? he wondered. Should I try to get in touch with General Buckman again? But by now he probably knows. And I should keep out of it. A TV and recording star should not get mixed up in lurid matters, he realized. The gutter press, he reflected, is always ready to play it up for all it"s worth.
But I owed her something, he thought. She cut off those electronic devices the pols fastened onto me before I could get out of the Police Academy building.
But they won"t be looking for me now. I have my ID back; I"m known to the entire planet. Thirty million viewers can testify to my physical and legal existence.
I will never have to fear a random checkpoint again, he said to himself, and shut his eyes in dozing sleep.
"Here we are, sir," the cab said suddenly. His eyes flew open and he sat upright. Already? Glancing out he saw the apartment complex in which Heather had her West Coast hideaway.
"Oh, yeah," he said, digging into his coat for his roll of paper money. "Thanks." He paid the cab and it opened its door to let him out. Feeling in a good mood again, he said, "If I didn"t have the fare wouldn"t you open the door?"
The cab did not answer. It had not been programed for that question. But what the h.e.l.l did he care? He had the money.
He strode up onto the sidewalk, then along the redwood rounds path to the main lobby of the choice ten-story structure that floated, on compressed air jets, a few feet from the ground. The flotation gave its inhabitants a ceaseless sensation of being gently lulled, as if on a giant mother"s bosom. He had always enjoyed that. Back East it had not caught on, but out here on the Coast it enjoyed an expensive vogue.
Pressing the stud for her apartment, he stood holding the cardboard box with its vase on the tips of the upraised fingers of his right hand. I better not, he decided; I might drop it like I did before, with the other one. But I"m not going to drop it; my hands are steady now.
I"ll give the d.a.m.n vase to Heather, he decided. A present I picked up for her because I understand her consummate taste.
The viewscreen for Heather"s unit lit up and a female face appeared, peering at him. Susie, Heather"s maid.
"Oh, Mr. Taverner," Susie said, and at once released the latch of the door, operated from within regions of vast security. "Come on in. Heather"s gone out but she--"
"I"ll wait," he said. He skipped across the foyer to the elevator, punched the up b.u.t.ton, waited.
A thoment later Susie stood holding the door of Heather"s unit open for him. Dark-skinned, pretty and small, she greeted him as she always had: with warmth. And-- familiarity.
"Hi," Jason said, and entered.
"As I was telling you," Susie said, "Heather"s out shopping but she should be back by eight o"clock. Today she has a lot of free time and she told me she wanted to make the best use of it because there"s a big recording session with RCA scheduled for the latter part of the week."
"I"m not in a hurry," he said candidly. Going into the living room, he placed the cardboard box on the coffee table, dead center, where Heather would be certain to see it. "I"ll listen to the quad and crash," he said. "If it"s all right."
"Don"t you always?" Susie said. "I"ve got to go out, too; I have a dentist"s appointment at four-fifteen and it"s all the way on the other side of Hollywood."
He put his arm around her and gripped her firm right b.o.o.b.
"We"re h.o.r.n.y today," Susie said, pleased.
"Let"s get it on," he said.
"You"re too tall for me," Susie said, and moved off to resume whatever she had been doing when he rang.
At the phonograph he sorted through a stack of recently played alb.u.ms. None of them appealed to him, so he bent down and examined the spines of her full collection. From them he took several of her alb.u.ms and a couple of his own. These he stacked up on the changer and set it into motion. The tone arm descended, and the sound of _The Heart of Hart_ disc, a favorite of his, edged out and echoed through the large living room, with all its drapes beautifully augmenting the natural quad acoust-tones, spotted artfully here and there.
He lay down on the couch, removed his shoes, made himself comfortable. She did a d.a.m.n good job when she taped this, he said to himself, half out loud. I"m as exhausted as I"ve ever been in my life, he realized. Mescaline does that to me. I could sleep for a week. Maybe I will. To the sound of Heather"s voice and mine. Why haven"t we ever done an alb.u.m together? he asked himself. A good idea. Would sell. Well. He shut his eyes. Twice the sales, and Al could get us promotion from RCA. But I"m under contract to Reprise. Well, it can be worked out. There"s work in. Everything. But, he thought, it"s worth it.
Eyes shut, he said, "And now the sound of Jason Taverner." The changer dropped the next disc. Already? he asked himself. He sat up, examined his watch. He had dozed through _The Heart of Hart_, had barely heard it. Lying back again he once more shut his eyes. Sleep, he thought, to the sound of me. His voice, enhanced by a two-track overlay of guitars and strings, resonated about him.
Darkness. Eyes open, he sat up, knowing that a great deal of time had pa.s.sed.
Silence. The changer had played the entire stack, hours" worth. What time was it?
Groping, he found a lamp familiar to him, located the switch, turned it on.
His watch read ten-thirty. Cold and hungry. Where"s Heather? he wondered, fumbling with his shoes. My feet cold and damp and my stomach is empty. Maybe I can-- The front door flew open. There stood Heather, in her cheruba coat, holding a copy of the L.A. _Times_. Her face, stark and gray, confronted him like a death mask.
"What is it?" he said, terrified.
Coming toward him, Heather held out the paper. Silently.
Silently, he took it. Read it.
TV PERSONALITY SOUGHT IN CONNECTION WITH DEATH OF POL GENERAL"S SISTER
"Did you kill Alys Buckman?" Heather rasped.
"No," he said, reading the article.
Popular television personality Jason Taverner, star of his own hour-long evening variety show, is believed by the Los Angeles Pol Dept to have been deeply involved in what pol experts say is a carefully planned vengeance murder, the Policy Academy announced today. Taverner, 42, is sought by both
He ceased reading, crumpled the newspaper savagely.
"s.h.i.t," he said, then. Sucking in his breath he shuddered. Violently.
"It gives her age as thirty-two," Heather said. "I know for a fact that she"s--was--thirty-four."
"I saw it," Jason said. "I was in the house."
Heather said, "I didn"t know you knew her."
"I just met her. Today."
"Today? Just today? I doubt that."
It"s true. General Buckman interrogated me at the academy building and she stopped me as I was leaving. They had planted a bunch of electronic tracking devices on me, including--"
"They only do that to students," Heather said.
He finished, "And Alys cut them off. And then she invited me to their house."
"And she died."
"Yes." He nodded. "I saw her body as a withered yellow skeleton and it frightened me; you"re d.a.m.n right it frightened me. I got out of there as quickly as I could. Wouldn"t you have?"
"Why did you see her as a skeleton? Had you two taken some sort of dope? She always did, so I suppose you did, too."
"Mescaline," Jason said. "That"s what she told me, but I don"t think it was." I wish I knew what it was, he said to himself, his fear still freezing his heart. Is this a hallucination brought on by it, as was the sight of her skeleton? Am I living this or am I in that fleabag hotel room? He thought, Good G.o.d, _what do I do now?_ "You better turn yourself in," Heather said.
"They can"t pin it on me," he said. But he knew better. In the last two days he had learned a great deal about the police who ruled their society. Legacy of the Second Civil War, he thought. From pigs to pols. In one easy jump.
"If you didn"t do it they won"t charge you. The pols are fair. It"s not as if the nats are after you."
He uncrumpled the newspaper, read a little more.
believed to be an overdose of a toxic compound administered by Taverner while Miss Buckman was either sleeping or in a state
"They give the time of the murder as yesterday," Heather said. "Where were you yesterday? I called your apartment and didn"t get any answer. And you just now said--"
"It wasn"t yesterday. It was earlier today." Everything had become uncanny; he felt weightless, as if floating along with the apartment into a bottomless sky of oblivion. "They backdated it. I had a pol lab expert on my show once and after the show he told me how they--"
"Shut up," Heather said sharply.
He ceased talking. And stood. Helplessly. Waiting.
"There"s something about me in the article," Heather said, between clenched teeth. "Look on the back page."
Obediently, he turned to the back page, the continuation of the article.
as a hypothesis pol officials offered the theory that the relationship between Heather Hart, herself also a popular TV and recording personality, and Miss Buckman triggered Taverner"s vengeful spree in which
Jason said, "What kind of relationship did you have with Alys? Knowing her--"
"You said you didn"t know her. You said you just met her today."
"She was weird. Frankly I think she was a lesbian. Did you and she have a s.e.xual relationship?" He heard his voice rise; he could not control it. "That"s what the article hints at. Isn"t that right?"
Tlie force of her blow stung his face; he retreated involuntarily, holding his hands up defensively. He had never been slapped like that before, he realized. It hurt like h.e.l.l. His ears rang.
"Okay," Heather breathed. "Hit me back."
He drew his arm back, made a fist, then let his arm fall, his fingers relaxing. "I can"t," he said. "I wish I could. You"re lucky."
"I guess I am. If you killed her you could certainly kill me. What do you have to lose? They"ll gas you anyhow."
Jason said, "You don"t believe me. That I didn"t do it."
"That doesn"t matter. They think you did it. Even if you get off it means the end of your G.o.dd.a.m.n career, and mine, for that matter. We"re finished; do you understand? Do you realize what you"ve done?" She was screaming at him, now; frightened, he moved toward her, then, as the volume of her voice increased, away again. In confusion.
"If I could talk to General Buckman," he said, "I might be able to--"
"Her _brother?_ You"re going to appeal to him?" Heather strode at him, her fingers writhing clawlike. "He"s head of the commission investigating the murder. As soon as the coroner reported that it was homicide, General Buckman announced he personally was taking charge of the incident-- can"t you manage to read the whole article? I read it ten times on the way back here; I picked it up in Bel Aire after I got my new fall, the one they ordered for me from Belgium. It finally arrived. And now look. What does it matter?"
Reaching, he tried to put his arms around her. Stiffly, she pulled away.
"I"m not going to turn myself in," he said.
"Do whatever you want." Her voice had sunk to a blunted whisper. "I don"t care. Just go away. I don"t want to have anything more to do with you. I wish you were both dead, you and her. That skinny b.i.t.c.h--all she ever meant to me was trouble. Finally I had to throw her bodily out; she clung to me like a leech."
"Was she good in bed?" he said, and drew back as Heather"s hand rose swiftly, fingers groping for his eyes.
For an interval neither of them spoke. They stood close together. Jason could hear her breathing and his own. Rapid, noisy fluctuations of air. In and out, in and out. He shut his eyes.
"You do what you want," Heather said presently. "I"m going to turn myself in at the academy."