The Four Johns (13 page)

John Viviano's was spiky Gothic, bold, striking, handsome.

John Pilgrim printed a harsh, firm block. Superficially it most closely resembled the printing of the anonymous notes, although …

Mervyn kept sipping his drink, prepared for a closer analysis. But then he frowned and looked at the dew-beaded highball glass. His tongue felt peculiar, oily and heavy. There was a strange aftertaste in his mouth. He sniffed the highball. Its smell was funny, too, although faintly familiar—an odor with an unpleasant association.

Mervyn's stomach suddenly rumbled, rebelled. He went over to the sink, wildly studied the label,
JIM BEAM
. He smelled the contents of the bottle. The same odor, only stronger: a heavy, bitter, oily reek.

His stomach quivered, his throat burned. Bending over the sink, he vomited. For a moment or two he leaned on the drainboard, gasping. He was about to draw a glass of water to rinse out his mouth when his stomach lurched and he fell over the sink and vomited again.…

When he staggered to his phone his only coherent thought was:
Poison
!

The doctor was a brisk, natty man of middle age with every hair intact and the bloom of prosperity. He smelled the bourbon, gingerly tasted it, examined the mess in the sink, took Mervyn's pulse, put the stethoscope to his chest and back, examined his tongue, throat and eyes, took his blood pressure. He kept
hmmmm
ing and nodding to himself. Mervyn tried lamely to say something about his mischievous little nephews and all, but finally he gave up; the doctor was not listening to him.

At last the doctor straightened up. Mervyn thought he looked disappointed. “I don't think you're in any trouble, Mr. Gray. You've ingested very little of the stuff, and most of it you got rid of.”

“What do you think it is?” Mervyn asked weakly.

“It smells like oil of valerian. It acts more like tincture of ipecac. Maybe a mixture, I can't be certain. If it's nothing worse, you're quite safe. Go to bed, rest. If you feel pains, dizziness or numbness in your hands or feet, call me right away. But I think you're all right. Just somebody's idea of a practical joke.”

Practical joke, my eye, Mervyn thought as the doctor departed. He took a few steps and decided that he felt better, although he was still shaky. What if he had swallowed the whole damn highball?

His enemy grew bolder.

Mervyn examined the samples again.
All
looked sinister.
All
now seemed to resemble the hand-printing of the two notes.

His stomach gave an angry grumble of hunger. He boiled two eggs, made toast, poured a glass of milk, wolfed the food down with the voracity of a man who must reassure himself that he is indeed still in the land of the living.

Afterward he poured the doctored whiskey into the sink, fighting his stomach's twitching over the odor.

Then he went to bed.

The next morning Mervyn waited grimly for the mail. When it arrived he took the plain, cheap envelope back to his apartment and ripped it open impatiently.

The third message read:

CONFESS OR YOU
'
LL BE SORRY
.

CHAPTER 9

Mervyn took Telegraph Avenue to the campus. It was Friday, the day John Thompson performed his weekend disappearing act. As he walked through Sather Gate, Mervyn cased the library.

John Thompson could use any one of three or four exits on his way to his car. Unless Mervyn were parked nearby, the librarian could drive away without Mervyn's being aware that he had left.

Deep in thought, Mervyn trudged out onto the mall in front of the Student Union. He almost bumped into Oleg Malinski, who greeted him cordially.

“You're working too hard. You look dreadful, Mervyn. Is it the thesis?”

“No,” muttered Mervyn. “It's personal. If I had any sense, Oleg, I'd leave town.”

“My philosophy precisely,” Malinski declared. “When annoyances press in upon you—flee! Depart! Evade! Escape! Why fight the city hall? Did King Canute find satisfaction in defying the tide?”

“You're so right,” Mervyn said mournfully. “Oh, incidentally, I visited your friend Viviano yesterday.”

“Indeed? Surprising!” The little optical engineer's bushy mustache quivered with interest.

“Why surprising?”

“I should never have expected you to become friendly with Viviano.”

“Right again,” Mervyn said. “I went to ask him where he spent last Friday night.”

Malinski laughed. “What did he tell you?”

“Nothing. He denied knowing anything about Mary.”

“Ah, now I understand. It is Mary who worries you.”

“The absence of Mary. She hasn't even communicated with Susie.”

“Hm.” Malinski looked speculative, and Mervyn felt a sudden alarm. Eventually Mary's disappearance would come to the attention of the police, and someone would be certain to remember his investigations. One thing at a time, he admonished himself. “Oleg, would you happen to know where Viviano spent Friday night?”

But Malinski had been distracted by the contours of a girl in tight pink shorts. She passed, her brown ponytail twitching in tempo with her nubile bottom; Malinski's head swiveled like a compass needle. “Ah, youth,” the little man sighed. “When I walk through the campus among so many beautiful girls, a hopeless sensation overcomes me—all those precious commodities going to waste! Beauty evaporating by the instant!”

Malinski's regret evaporated, too. He said briskly, “Ah, well. You were inquiring about John Viviano?”

“Yes.”

Malinski chewed thoughtfully at his mustache. “Let me ask you a question, Mervyn. When you visited the Viviano studio, how were relations between John and his brother Frank?”

“Well, Frank spoke of joining the Peace Corps.”

Oleg nodded. “And with Frank would go the Viviano photography business.”

Mervyn expressed surprise.

“John Viviano's vanity is colossal,” said Malinski. “Or perhaps you were aware of it? John can never admit a deficiency, a lack of skill in himself. It's almost pathological. I will tell you a secret which I believe he keeps even from Frank—I learned it purely by chance. Since it was not a confidence I feel free to repeat it to you. John poses as a photographer, but the fact is that he knows nothing of darkroom techniques. To remedy this he is quietly taking instruction.”

“No!”

“But yes. John is excellent with models. He has a fine eye for pose, lighting, composition. Any dolt can read exposure and snap a shutter. But the darkroom is as much a part of the creative process as the picture-taking itself, possibly more. And Frank is a darkroom genius. From a Brownie snapshot negative Frank can produce a salon print.

“John would like to become as proficient. So that someday, when Frank displays a beautiful print on which he has labored three hours, John can point out some trifling flaw and with the most negligent ease proceed to correct it. Frank will then either become hopelessly insane, or run out of the studio never to return.”

Mervyn swallowed a yawn. “That's very interesting. But what does it have to do with where Viviano spent Friday night?”

“On Tuesday and Friday nights John pursues his darkroom studies at the San Francisco Recreation Center. His tutor is George Szano, one of my friends, from whom I derived this information.”

“Oh,” said Mervyn.

“Odd that you should be so interested,” Malinski said, inspecting Mervyn blandly. “Is not—how shall I put it?—is not your primary attention focused upon Susie?”

“Well, more or less.”

Malinski beamed. “That is as it should be. Mary is an unattainable ideal, Susie is flesh and blood. Living, breathing, aching, yearning.”

“That's certainly a dramatic way of describing the Hazelwood sisters.”

“Is it possible you do not know that drama, excitement and sensation are all around us? We become so callous, so numb, that only the extraordinary arouses us from our torpor. Drama! One must live it!”

As Oleg Malinski spoke he went through a series of vehement gestures, raising a finger, pointing, extending his hand palm upward, hand clenched. His eyes suddenly focused over Mervyn's shoulder and Mervyn, looking around, saw the girl in the tight pink shorts returning. To Mervyn's horror, Oleg reached out as she passed and patted her straining, jiggling bottom. The girl whirled, staring. Oleg gave a cry of dismay. “Good heavens! A dreadful mistake. I thought you were someone else. Please, please accept my apologies?”

The girl's mouth moved in an uncertain smile. “It's all right.”

“Permit me to buy you a hot chocolate. Please? I must redeem my
gaucherie
in some way,
Mad'moiselle.…
”

As Malinski nudged the girl off down Telegraph Avenue, chattering charmingly, Mervyn watched in wonder. If he had tried that, the girl would have screamed bloody murder.

Behind him the campanile chimed eleven times. Four hours to wait—four hours wasted. He became infuriated. Time gone forever which he should be giving to research, translation or, if nothing else, simply the atmosphere of Old Provence.

He looked for Oleg Malinski and the girl in pink shorts, but they were gone, lost among the people strolling in the street. Something in Mervyn's mind shifted, refocused. Twelfth-century poetry as a way of life suddenly seemed ridiculous.

He walked slowly along, pondering the hows and whys of his existence.
Was
he a fugitive from reality? Not necessarily. After all, what could be less real than mesons; invisible galaxies that had outrun the speed of light, or, for that matter, the Antarctic? Yet these were foundations for respectable, even acclaimed careers. What were a mere eight centuries of past time in the infinite schedule of nature? And who knows? Mervyn thought. Maybe the troubadours are on the way back. All these guitar-twanging folk singers … And drama was more than taking care of itself in this Mary business.…

But somehow these optimistic reflections did not lighten his spirits. He turned into a restaurant and ordered a sandwich, still gloomy and dissatisfied, still conscious of the tenderness in his stomach. Mervyn chewed, speculating on his invisible enemy. Suppose he properly identified “John”? What then? He stopped eating. What then indeed?

John Thompson lived in a tan stucco early-California-style apartment house on College Avenue, four blocks from the campus. At two o'clock Mervyn parked his Volkswagen across the street and settled down.

But a little, thought made him get out of the car. If Thompson secluded himself in his apartment for the weekend, well and good. But if he was headed somewhere, he would have to use his car, presumably parked nearby. Possibly around at the side of the apartment. It might be smart, then, to check.

Mervyn crossed the street. About where he had figured, a registration form on the steering wheel identified a scarlet MG roadster as the property of John Thompson. Reassured, Mervyn returned to his Volkswagen.

John Thompson appeared at a quarter to three, moving so self-effacingly that Mervyn almost missed him. The library stack superintendent shot one quick glance up and down the street and slipped into the apartment building.

Mervyn waited. It would be a long wait if Thompson spent weekends incommunicado in his own apartment. But no, twenty minutes later he suddenly reappeared, now wearing suntans and a long-sleeved green plaid shirt.

He looked more like a construction worker or a surveyor than a librarian. Again Thompson looked up and down the street; apparently reassured, he went quickly around the corner. A few moments later the MG slid out and turned into College Avenue.

Mervyn gave him a hundred-yard lead, then followed with what finesse he could contrive. John Thompson never turned his head. But Mervyn had the unpleasant feeling that he was being watched in the rear-view mirror. Nevertheless, he clung to the scarlet car's tail.

Thompson bowled briskly south for a mile or so. Then, to Mervyn's consternation, he swung the MG smartly into the parking lot of a supermarket.

Mervyn parked at the curb, fuming.

The librarian presently emerged carrying three large bags bulging with groceries. He loaded them into the MG, made a left turn on College Avenue and headed back the way he had come, his blunt profile as he passed perfectly placid.

Mervyn followed sheepishly. What if Thompson should stop and walk back to demand what Mervyn thought he was up to? He winced. Then he remembered his troubles, and he kept doggedly following.

He was soon glad he had persisted. For it developed that John Thompson was not going home after all. The MG turned right into Ashby Avenue, proceeded east, then swung onto the Contra Costa Freeway. Traffic was heavy and Mervyn edged closer; one of an army of Volkswagens, he was in little danger of being spotted.

Thompson suddenly accelerated, as if he could not wait to get where he was going. The MG began to gain, snapping from lane to lane, dodging around trucks and big cars. Mervyn barely managed to keep him in sight.

The suburban communities of Orinda, Lafayette, Walnut Creek, Pleasant Hill fell away. At Concord, Thompson turned right and drove two miles past a succession of housing tracts:
RIVERVIEW ACRES
,
FAR HILLS
,
MOONRISE MANOR
,
ESQUIRE COUNTRY CLUB ESTATES
. At the last one,
ENCHANTED MEADOWS
, he turned into Madrone Road, made a left into Willow Lane, then a right into Cottonwood Drive, and finally swung neatly into the driveway of 1315 Bramble Way.

It was a ranch-style bungalow with redwood board-and-batten front and side walls of pale-green stucco.

John Thompson stopped the MG alongside a planter built of used brick, with a quadrangle of bright-green lawn just beyond. The front door burst open and two little girls plunged out, shrieking with joy, followed more sedately by a strapping woman of about thirty-five with a pleasant face and a rather untidy abundance of sand-colored hair.