Kissing the Beehive (18 page)

"Take your natural disasters. Whenever a tornado or hurricane strikes, some church is destroyed with a hundred good people inside. There's no explanation for that, so what do we do? Assess the damage and say a hundred million dollars. Count two hundred and nine dead. Hooray for numbers!

Something we _can_ understand. They may not explain, but they do create an ordering that we need to bear it.

"My son and daughter-in-law died because they had a fight one night and the wrong person was watching. Now he wants us to know he was there."

The next week felt like I was on one never-ending plane ride. I spent three days in Big Sur, California, flew down to Los Angeles, then over to St.

Louis, where I rented a car and drove to Eureka, Missouri.

Durant had loaded me down with information. When I told McCabe his story, Frannie was ecstatic and went to work finding out more. I spent most of the time in the air reading their combined research.

How many other people had this man killed? What had he been doing all the years in between? I kept picturing an old thin electrician in a nowhere town. Drinking beer at night in a dumpy bar and then going home in a haze to look at his souvenirs and clippings. I'd watched documentaries on television about mass murderers. They're often abused as children or the father abandons them when they're very young. Was this guy one of those? All of his victims had been hit on the head and then thrown into water where they drowned. No sexual abuse. Nothing of importance taken, other than a pocket knife here and who knows what else there. Did the killer keep these things in a box, a drawer, a special bag hidden in a closet? How did he know I was writing the book about Pauline?

That last question was answered when I arrived in Los Angeles. In between sniffing around the death of David Cadmus, I stopped at Book Soup with an hour to kill. Browsing the magazine racks outside, I picked up a recent

_People_ and riffled through it. I hadn't looked at one in a long time, basically because
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Cassandra's mother read it religiously. Every time I saw the magazine I was reminded of the pit viper who'd once been my wife.

"I saw an article about you in there a couple of weeks ago."

I turned around and Ann English, the store's beautiful manager, was smiling at me. We kissed cheeks and I asked what she was talking about.

"You were in there, didn't you see?"

"This is news to me, Ann."

"I saved the article and put it up on the wall in the office. Come in, I'll show you."

We went into the store and climbed the staircase to the offices. Ann walked to a wall behind her desk and pointed. The date at the bottom of the page was two months past. In a section of the magazine I didn't recognize entitled "What Are They Doing Now?" there it was -- a large picture of me. I

read that Sting was about to release a new album, Producer Eric Pleskow was working on a film about Chernobyl, and bestselling novelist Samuel Bayer was writing a non-fiction account of the murder of a girl in his boyhood hometown, Crane's View, New York.

I swore loudly and then asked if I could use the telephone. In a few seconds there was the hale and hearty voice of my editor, Aurelio Parma.

"Aurelio, you hamster dick, did you tell _People_ about my new book?"

"How are you, Sam? Nice to hear your voice. It's been a long time, not that I mind your not returning my calls. Sure I told them. It's great publicity. Tell your fans what you're up to. Notice you were the only writer mentioned in the column?"

"I don't _want_ to be mentioned! I didn't want anyone knowing about the book. You have no idea how you've complicated things."

His voice jumped down the staircase to the cold and distant bottom. "I have a job to do. Part of it is keeping you in the public eye. If you don't want to tell me how the work is going, that's your choice. But I have to sell it when you're finished. This is how it's done.

Don't be naive."

Three days later back home in Connecticut, I hunkered down and returned to work on the book.

At first I thought it would be best to throw out everything I'd written so far and start again. This time tell the story of four murders and how they eventually connected.

I worked on that premise for a week but.grew increasingly more uncomfortable with the idea.

It's easy to lose sight of what you want when you think you want everything. Discovering the very real possibility that Pauline might have been "only" one of a series of victims threw me way off.

Her killer was still alive, taunting Durant and me to come find him. Was his story the one that needed to be told instead? And what about the other victims? Were they to be only footnotes?

Veronica had said Pauline was my mermaid, a radiant mythical creature I had pulled from the water too late to be of any help. If I had loved her from afar back then, that affection only increased the more I learned about her now. Mermaid, Beehive, cheat, femme fatale, tutor to the retarded . . . In the end, I realized I wanted to tell her story and in the process try to do her justice. It would also be Edward Durant's story, but he was the moon to

Pauline's earth: He may have affected her tides, but all of their light came from her.

I had a long talk over the phone with Durant Sr. about it.

"You're right, Sam. You either write about what you know, or what you _wish_ you knew."

I felt so good about this breakthrough that I called Cassandra to ask if she would like to go to a Yankees baseball game. Her mother answered the phone and filled my ear with her waxy woes.

Out of nowhere, a memory of an event in our marriage came and I laughed out loud in the middle of her whine.

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When Cass was a little girl, she had to do a report for school about Russia. Always the conscientious student, she came to us wanting to know if the citizens of Moscow were called Mosquitoes. The best part of the story was her mother looked at me for a few seconds and I _knew_ she was wondering if it was true. Great beauty is like a fat person sitting down on a crowded bus.

Everyone else has to shove uncomfortably aside to let this fatty in. Everyone else in this case meaning good sense, taste, intelligence . . . I married a beauty and would be forever grateful to her for giving birth to our daughter.

The rest was silence.

Cass was eventually able to wrestle the phone away and we made plans. We hadn't spoken much since I blew up at her for investigating Veronica. This conversation began edgily, but when she heard about the Yankees game she dropped her defenses and we were back on keel. Before we hung up, she hesitantly asked if Ivan could come. I said sure. I would have preferred just the two of us, but there was a man in her life now and she wanted him around.

I took the train into the city and met them at the Grand Central Station information booth.

When I walked up, they were having an animated conversation. Cass wore overalls and a Boston Red Sox baseball cap. Ivan had on a black T-shirt with the name THE EVIL SUPERSTARS

across it. On the back was the title of their album, _Satan Is in My Ass_. I realized they were speaking French. It was so impressive and flat-out cool that I couldn't resist putting my arms around both of them and moving us toward the subway.

The game was a pleasant bore and I spent much of the time watching the kids delight in each other. What is more exquisite than the first time you are in love? The first time you realize something this all-encompassing is possible and it's actually happening to _you_? The contrast between the kids was marvelous: Where Cass was all liveliness, Ivan was grave and thoughtful.

She was so different with him than with me. For years I had watched her tread the earth carefully, afraid of taking any wrong step or saying the wrong thing. How great to see her ignoring caution altogether now, exploding with happiness and all the things she had to say right this minute.

Naturally with

Pauline and Durant so much on my mind, I kept seeing parallels between the two young couples.

Had they gone to baseball games together? Flirted the same way? Her hand on his arm six times in thirty seconds. His eyes gulping her down, his body tensing with joy every time she touched him?

During the seventh-inning stretch I went to the bathroom and then to buy a beer. Standing in line at the counter, I was idly checking out a good-looking redhead nearby when I heard Ivan's voice.

"Mr. Bayer?"

"Hey, Ivan. Call me Sam. Wanna beer?"

"No thanks. I would like to talk to you for a minute. I didn't want Cassandra to hear. You know your friend Ms. Lake?"

"Veronica?" Our eyes locked.

"Yes. She called me. I don't know how to say this, so maybe I should just say it: She told me to stop bothering you."

The vendor handed me a beer but suddenly I wasn't thirsty anymore.

"Bothering me? How are you bothering me?"

"With your book. She said you didn't want me to help with the research.

That's fine with me, don't get me wrong, I just thought it was kind of queer _she_ was telling me and not you."

"She had no right to say that, Ivan. I never said I didn't want your help."

"She sounded adamant."

"Well, so am I. I need your help. There are some things I would appreciate your checking for
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me. I can't believe Veronica called you." We started back to our seats.

"She also said you didn't like my dating Cassandra."

"Look, forget what she said. I think it's great you two are together.

For whatever it's worth, you have my blessing. I like you and the way you treat Cass. I wouldn't just say that."

He stopped and stuck out a hand. We shook.

The telephone rang at two o'clock in the morning. Late-night calls mean only two things to me --

disaster or wrong number. I hate both.

"Hello?"

"With whom am I speaking?"

Confused, I said my name.

"I hope I'm not disturbing you --" Veronica's voice was nervous and stilted.

I hung up.

Hearing her voice at that empty hour threw a pan of cold water on me.

There was no way I'd get back to sleep for a long time. I would have roused the dog and invited him to go for a walk. But knowing my roommate, he would have ignored the invitation or farted

-- his one great talent. So it was just me in the dark with a lethal dose of adrenaline in my veins and too much

Veronica Lake in my head. Switching on the light, I sat on the side of the bed.

The middle of the night has its own song and it's not one I like to hear. In that deep silence, all your ghosts gather in a Greek chorus and each voice is brutally clear. _Why haven't you_? solos one. _Why did you? People think you're a fool. You're getting old. You haven't done it. You never will_.

Years ago I went to an analyst who told me not to worry, everything flows, nothing remains. If you don't like it today, tomorrow will be different. I laughed in his face and said, wrong --

everything _sticks_. These big fat bugs of memory and loss stick to us, some dead, most still very much alive, buzzing and squirming.

The silence was getting too loud. It was a nice night, so I decided to put on a robe and go sit in the backyard.

Why didn't it surprise me that Veronica was out there? Why did I do only a small double take, then walk over and lower myself tiredly onto the lawn chair next to hers?

"Did you call from your cellular phone?"

"Yes. I've been sitting here a long time, trying to get up the courage to call."

"What if I hadn't come out?"

"I would have stayed here awhile and then gone away."

"What do you _want_ from me, Veronica?"

"I want the same thing Pauline wanted! I want to live ten lives at once.

I've tried to do that, and I've tried to do it right, not hurt people, but --"

And then she wept. It went on and on. She cried until she was gasping for breath, like a child who knows it's no use crying anymore because nothing will change.

I was thunderstruck. Why hadn't I realized it before? Veronica _was_

Pauline! A grown-up, electrifying, confused woman with so much to offer but who kept putting it in the wrong places. How often had I _yearned_ to know what Pauline Ostrova would have been like if she'd lived. Here she was a foot away, crying herself inside out.

I went over and, kneeling down in front of her, put my head on her knee.

She put a hand on the back of my head and we stayed that way some time.

"I'm cold. I'm going into the house. Would you like to come?"

She looked at me with hope. I hesitated before smiling and nodding as if to say, yes, that's what I
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mean.

We stood up together. I started for the house but she stopped me. "I have something for you. It was going to be a surprise, but . . ." She reached into her pocket and took out a piece of paper. "This is the phone number of a man named Bradley Erskine. He's one of the men who shot Gordon Cadmus."

"How did you find him?"

"I did a lot of homework and called in a lot of favors. He said he would talk to you, but he'll arrange it. Just call that number."

"I don't know what to say. Thank you."

She waited for me to move. I took her hand and we went back into the house.

I called the number, half-expecting it to be a phony. The voice said to leave a message. I did and two days later a woman called back. There was a phone booth on the corner of Fifty-eighth Street and Lexington Avenue in the city. I was to be there at five o'clock the next day. Don't bring anyone, don't carry anything, just be there.

When I arrived, someone was in the booth using the phone. I tried to bribe him out but he told me to fuck off. At 5:07 he hung up and walked off wearing a spiteful smile. I waited another half hour but nothing happened. I

called the Erskine number again and left a message, saying I was at the booth and would wait another half hour. Nothing.

Another week passed while I fumed and tried to work on the book. I didn't tell anyone about Bradley Erskine because I was afraid McCabe or Durant might do something that would ruin it.