Several Deaths Later (9 page)

    "You're the one who's drunk."

    "I am, true enough. But at least I admit it."

    "Well, when I get drunk, Tobin, I'll admit it too." At which point she knocked over her drink. "Don't say anything, Tobin."

    He didn't, and instead turned his attention back to Marty Gerber. As he watched, he got into one of his generous moods-certain nights riding high he felt positively Old Testament patriarchal, sort of like Pa in a biblical version of "Bonanza"-and started concocting all sorts of plans about how he'd write this column about this great young comedian and how, within twenty-four hours of the column appearing, Marty would be signing for his own HBO special.

    Then his good mood waned because he happened to see, far back in the shadows of the restaurant, the makeup girl, Joanna Howard. She sat alone at a tiny table and stared as much at the wall as at the stage. She ate her food quickly, as if she couldn't wait to jump up and leave. She wore a pretty, very formal long-sleeved white blouse and what appeared to be a rather gaudy pink skirt. Her hair was pulled into a severe bun and she wore glasses.

    He said, "You mind if I go say hi to somebody?"

    "Who?"

    "God."

    "What?"

    "That was just supposed to be a rhetorical question."

    "Huh?" She really was plastered. Kansas City was bombed out of her mind.

    "I was supposed to say, 'Do you mind if I go see somebody?' and you were supposed to say 'No, of course not.'"

    "I don't want you to leave me alone."

    "You'll be fine."

    "They'll all start looking at me again."

    "It's because you're so beautiful."

    "I'm not beautiful. I'm volup-" She couldn't say it. "You know what I mean."

    "Well, you are voluptuous, but you've also got a great face."

    "That isn't why they'll look at me. They'll look at me because the captain keeps telling everybody that I killed Ken Norris."

    "You'll be fine. I'll only be gone for a minute."

    "I'll count to sixty and you'd better be back."

    He rose, kissed her on the forehead, and then made his way through the tables.

    A few people gave him the "celebrity stare," one invariably tainted with disappointment. When you first meet someone who's on TV, that person assumes a stature he can't possibly have in reality. Tobin was this five-five guy with red hair-TV hid that fact, or at least made it more interesting than it was.

    When he reached her table and she looked up, she seemed almost frightened. He thought of Cindy and her body language theories. It did not take a Ph.D. in the subject to realize that the way Joanna Howard tried to shrink down meant that she did not want visitors.

    "Hi."

    "Hi," she said.

    "I just wondered if you'd like to join us." He waved in the general vicinity of Cindy. "Oh, no. That's all right."

    He was drunk enough to say it straight out. "You look so lonely."

    "I am lonely." She smiled. "But I don't think sitting at your table is going to help me." She paused. "I'm not trying to be rude."

    "Everybody's having so much fun."

    She shook her head. "Everybody's having so much fun-and Ken Norris is dead less than twenty-four hours." She stared at him in her unscrubbed, earnest way and he felt moved by her gaze at that moment, almost jarred by it. "We don't give a damn about each other. We really don't."

    Behind him now the laughter sounded hedonistic and pagan. He wanted to share her grief-whatever its source-for he recognized it as the same sort of grief he carried around. The difference was he had his writing and his drinking and his remorse to keep the grief at bay. She didn't seem to have much at all except the two cheap rings on her skinny fingers and the frilly blouse on her frail torso and the girly confusion in her eyes. He wanted to cradle her and violate her at the same time. My God, he was drunk.

    "Your friend," she said.

    "My friend?" He was confused.

    "Your dinner date." She pointed.

    "Oh. Yes."

    "She looks angry."

    "Oh?"

    "She's been glaring over here."

    "She's very drunk."

    "And you're not?"

    "Do I seem drunk?"

    "You're weaving."

    "Ah."

    "Did I insult you?"

    "No. I just got finished telling her she was wobbling. Now you're telling me I'm weaving."

    "She really does look angry. Maybe you'd better get back to her."

    "You're the smartest makeup person I've ever known." He wanted it to be a compliment. Instead he'd only sounded silly. But then he often sounded silly, didn't he?

    "See you in the morning on the set," Joanna said. "You're invited to join us. Just walk over any time."

    "Thank you."

    Then he turned-damn, he really was weaving- and started back through the obstacle course of tables. The least thing they could do-management, that is- was put the things in a straight line so a guy wouldn't have to bruise his hips by bumping into chair after chair and table after table.

    "You were gone over four minutes," Cindy said when he got back.

    "How would you know? You don't have a watch."

    "I counted the seconds."

    "So did I and I was barely gone three minutes."

    "You said one."

    "If the tables had been in a straight line, I would've been back much sooner."

    "Huh?"

    "You say that a lot, you know that?"

    "Say what a lot?"

    '"Huh." You say 'Huh' an awful lot."

    And then the slap came and it was loud as a car backfiring, so loud it broke Marty Gerber's rhythm completely, and he fell silent at once.

    The "Celebrity Circle" panel and their mates had all been dining at one long table to the right of the stage. Given their "star" status, the table was decorated with colorful flowers as well as long, tapering candles that seemed to imbue the darkness with a special glow. Invariably, their meal was interrupted by tourists stopping by like hungry animals to chat or joke or have their picture snapped with their favorite personality. When you haven't been on network television for a while, you're generally glad you get such treatment, even though you might pretend otherwise.

    But something had gone wrong.

    Cassie McDowell had slapped Todd Ames with a terrific left hand and now was on her feet. "At least don't be a hypocrite, Todd! You got his job! You can't be too unhappy he's dead-and anyway, every one of us wanted him dead. Every one of us!"

    Then she fell to sobbing. The dark-haired Susan Richards stood up and took the younger woman into her arms, letting her spill a considerable amount of tears on her naked shoulder-Susan wore a strapless white gown that even the unfashionable Tobin could see was a tad out of date.

    "God," Cindy McBain said. "She's really crazy. Cassie, I mean. Why would they all want him dead?"

    "I don't know. But in the morning I think I'll find out."

    From the stage, Marty Gerber was saying, "Hey, isn't that just like actors? Give us a show even when we don't want it!"

    The diners broke into applause for his clever ad-lib.

    Todd Ames kept his gray and handsome head down.

    Jere Farris and his wife, Alicia, looked humiliated. And the blond strongman Kevin Anderson gave everybody watching them a look at his capped teeth in a public relations textbook smile that tried to pretend everything was fine.

    But Tobin's attention turned quickly to the redhead and the man in the western suit.

    They'd quit talking and now simply watched the celebrity table. Obviously they were fascinated.

    Once again Tobin had the impression that they knew something special-something Tobin should know- but he had no idea what it was.

    Only that it undoubtedly involved the notebook Alicia Farris and the redheaded woman had been wrestling over outside his cabin door this afternoon.

    "Oh, no," Cindy said.

    "What?" Tobin said.

    "It's going to happen."

    "What's going to happen?"

    "When I have four drinks I get slightly drunk and have a very good time. And when I have six drinks my inhibitions sort of go and I-well, you know. I just sort of can't help myself. But when I have seven drinks…" Then she paused and shook her head.

    "Yes?" Tobin said. "Seven drinks and you do what?"

    "I," Cindy said, getting to her feet unsteadily, "barf."

    

    

    

    They made love of sorts (what would have been called third base back in high school, "I'm sorry, I just can't-you know, so soon after Ken and all, you know, don't you? Aren't you sensitive, Tobin, aren't you?"), this being after Cindy threw up three times and then began lamenting the death of her dog when she'd been eight and how her father had always traveled too much and really never
talked
to her about stuff that mattered and how she'd slept too readily with far too many men and how she really should read more and see a better grade of movies ("I really think Barbra Streisand's a great actress, I can't help it") and how she was two months behind on her Trans-Am car payments because she'd loaned this Kansas City Chief she occasionally dated $1,000 from her savings account so he could help out his brother who was in a jam, and then she told him about the one and only time she'd ever really been in love and how the guy just wouldn't make a commitment and how crazy that was with all the guys chasing after her virtually begging her to marry them and then the one guy she really wanted just really abused her ("But isn't that always the way, Tobin, isn't that always the way?") and some of it interested him and some of it he kind of dozed through and some he felt very sorry for her about and some of it made him feel truly superior to her and that of course made him feel like a complete shit and some of it made no sense at all ("I just keep thinking I'm from this other planet, Tobin; you know, like these aliens dropped me off here and forgot to come back and get me. Do you ever feel like that?"). And anyway what he was truly interested in was her neck (she had a wonderful, graceful,
chewy
kind of neck) and her delightful breasts and her lickable legs and finally, finally he started kissing her and she more or less responded and then they got seminaked on his bed and he liked the way the moonlight came through the louvered windows and the way the salt air smelled and the distant festive music and then kissing her breasts at last and then putting his hand against her warmest part and her saying, between kisses, "I just keep thinking about Ken and all and how promiscuous I've become. I wasn't always this way, I really wasn't, otherwise I'd do it, really, Tobin, I would," and then with that gentlest but most final of female gestures, pushing him away so he could not get inside and saying, "But I really like you, Tobin; you've been so great to me, and you're a celebrity and you don't have to be great to people or anything if you don't want to be." And then about two seconds later he was up like a teenager caught by a girl's enraged mom, up and jerking on his pants and stumbling to the door because somebody was pounding on it and finding there Kevin Anderson, blond and apparently still under the impression that he was a TV cop, saying, "You'd better come up to the deck, Tobin. Something really incredible has happened" and all the while peeking over Tobin's shoulder at the naked form of Cindy writhing about in the shadows back there trying to get dressed. "Something really incredible.”

    

    

    

    There were two of them in deck chairs side by side, the redhead and the man in the western suit. They might have been enjoying a view of the moonlit ocean swelling on the endless line of horizon. Or the clarity of the Big Dipper laced across the ebony tropical sky.

    Each of them had been shot several times in the chest. They were very bloody.

    They appeared, as dead people usually appeared to Tobin, to be playing a trick of some kind. Any moment now they'd be leaping to their feet and saying they'd only been trying to frighten people.

    He edged Cindy a little closer to the bodies. They did not seem to have been bound in any way. They just sat in their chairs with their eyes fixed in the general vicinity of the Big Dipper.

    A semicircle of passengers stared at the corpses with a mixture of awe, terror, and bewilderment. There were tears, of course-soft and childlike, without anger because apparently no one here had known these two people-and there were furious glances at Captain Hackett, who stood among a group of white-uniformed stewards whom he was dispatching to various tasks with an air of sweaty purpose that might soon become-unthinkable for the placid captain-real panic.

    The chairs in which the dead people sat were adjacent to one of the ship's three pools. The water was aqua. The tartness of chlorine was in the air. When Tobin looked back at the assembled passengers-some were in pajamas and robes and nightgowns and some still wore neckties or loud Hawaiian shirts from any number of private or public parties-he felt his first bit of sympathy ever for Capt. Robert Hackett. The ship was three days out with four more days to go before port. And now there could be no doubt about it. There was a killer on board and this time it would do no good whatsoever to point a finger at a beautiful secretary from Kansas City, Missouri.

    "There's that doctor," Cindy McBain whispered to Tobin.

    A stolid, brown-haired man in a white shirt and dark slacks and white deck shoes came up the steps from the deck below and walked over to the bodies. He nodded to several of the stewards and then started talking to the captain.