Skyscape (19 page)

Buck Patterson wore Levis and a romantic, sweeping dust-gray Stetson. He had a string of live-in ladies who made his coffee and shared his bed until the day came for every one of them when they remembered something that was demanding their speedy return. Buck Patterson had a saddle and he had a six gun, a forty-five that was not exactly authentic in the strictest sense, being a Depression-era copy of the real thing. It did shoot after a fashion, although you had to aim well to the right of anything you wanted to blow up, and stand pretty close.

And during the TV series there was that ranch on Catalina Island, if you could call a stand of cactus and a pair of geldings a ranch. It was a big house, though, and you could watch the water taxi out of San Pedro roll in every day, and the big white ship, too, and the plane that skimmed in and landed on the water near the casino, which by then was a museum of stuffed wild boar and old photographs.

His dad had never liked to watch himself on television, and on the rare moments when his father saw the tight-lipped marshals he so often portrayed, he would swear and turn the channel. And by such actions Red Patterson had learned that his father was not an aging idol, he was a part of a tradition, a phony tradition, but an honorable one. When he heard his father play the clarinet or the piano, or tap dance by himself in the kitchen waiting for the coffee to perk, Red Patterson sensed a tradition of cowboy showbiz that stretched from Annie Oakley and Wild Bill Hickok, people indistinguishable from the real thing because they
were
the real thing.

Or real enough. As an adolescent, Red Patterson had always found his father embarrassing. For a man who made millions, the actor was often amazingly short of money. They lived a splashy, casual life, a new car, new clothes, hamburgers for dinner. It was hard to bring friends around to visit a man who liked to play a steel guitar and yodel. But once there was a king snake on the front steps and Red Patterson was about to chop it up with a hoe, the way boys will, thinking, innocently enough, that killing something was the equivalent of popping a balloon. And his dad had plucked the glorious red and black reptile off the concrete and held it writhing and told his son, in a gentle voice, “This snake looks pretty so you can tell it won't hurt you.”

And then there was the time when the German-accented actress dropped by the duplex in Studio City. Patterson had been sure the woman had made a mistake. Nobody like that would be interested in his dad. But his father played an improvised suite from
Carmen
on the piano, and entertained the actress with some Texas swing, and then sang every single song the actress could think of. Buck knew them all, although in retrospect Red figured she must have been slow-pitching his dad, feeding Buck songs she figured he would know.

It was impressive, though, and when the boy had been sent off to bed with a bourbon-scented kiss from the blonde and a wink from his dad, he could hear them out there, romantically grown-up, their laughter out of another country, not so much in the past, but parallel to the one Buck Patterson's son was likely to know, a better, smokier, softer-lit world.

His father had not lived to see his son's career in full-flower. Buck Patterson had made a western or two in Italy, made a series of ads for “range-rugged, quarter-ton pickups,” which by themselves generated a trickle of unlikely sales in Japan. And then, as easily as a man falling asleep before television, his father had died, beside yet another new female friend in an apartment in Sherman Oaks.

Patterson had loved his father, and understood his impatience, as well as the romance his father felt for both the desert and for show business. To know how to soothe a skittish mount was as fine a skill as knowing how to act on no notice at all, called up because the man scheduled to play the wagon master had mumps.

Angie's hands were intelligent, knowing. “You're good at a lot of things, I bet,” said Patterson.

“I thought I got on your nerves,” said Angie.

“Then I certainly gave you the wrong impression,” he said.

Her lips tasted of sunlight—allspice, cloves. Christ, when was that carpet cleaner going to be done? He was right in front of the desk, now, the machine making a terrible racket. And of course you had to remember, Patterson reminded himself, that Loretta Lee was just downstairs and could walk in at any moment. Angie actually
did
get on his nerves, but nerves were complicated.

The man cleaning the carpet was familiar. The carpet machine he steered was a large disc that buffed the woolen rug. It wasn't much like the sound of a distant wind now. The noise was too loud, and Patterson was about to say something when he stopped himself. How could he complain when the man was doing exactly what he was supposed to be doing?

Patterson had never quite gotten used to servants, cooks, housekeepers, guards, gardeners. He had been raised around wealthy people who had been dishwashers, actors who found themselves playing Roman senators after years of cadging drinks in the sort of taverns that feature pink flamingo wallpaper. Patterson told himself that he should not let this black-haired, blue-eyed carpet specialist disturb the mood.

But, once again, Patterson
knew
this man from somewhere.

He was just a little too good-looking for such a menial job. He was foraging ahead with the carpet cleaner, and at his hip, pistol-fashion, the worker wore a portable vacuum cleaner, a Hoover Wet & Dry. There was eye contact.

It was the eye contact that started it, that glance, that mutual moment—this man resembled someone who had been on the show, but Patterson, with his inability to remember names, found himself fumbling mentally.

Angie had awakened to the fact that there was something wrong. It was not trouble, and certainly not danger. But Angie's job here was to make sure that Patterson was happy, and the psychiatrist was puzzled, concerned, trying to remember.

Patterson would remember this moment, too, how from the beginning the man had made one clumsy move after another.

The blue-eyed man unhitched the portable cleaner at his belt. It would not come free. When it did, he held the portable machine like a handgun, which is exactly what it resembled at the moment—a futuristic pistol, a ray gun from some old science fiction movie.

The blue-eyed man stepped away from the carpet cleaner, the big saucer of the machine continuing its blind buffing of the carpet, filling the air with the pleasing smell of artificial lemon.

The carpet machine bumped a wall, skittered with a certain dignity toward a bookcase. The machine plowed forward, like a carnival bumper car, and struck the bookcase. Books toppled to the floor.

Things happened slowly—the blue-eyed man could not get the device in his hands to work the way he wanted it to.

Angie put out her hands, took a step toward the man who by now had the Wet & Dry in both fists. Patterson played such games himself, even as an adult, pretending that a hair dryer was a death ray.

But he knew—in his gut he knew.

The front of the portable cleaner blew off. The sound killed all other noise. Patterson could hear nothing. Or, almost nothing. There was one blast, and then another.

Angie toppled back, flung farther backward by the force of each shot, as Patterson stumbled, holding Angie upright. He couldn't help it—it was an impulse. He was holding her as a shield, cowering, as her head burst.

Patterson was down, Angie sprawled on top of him, his face hot with something molten, a substance that flowed into his eyes, into his nostrils. He gagged.

They sounded like doors being slammed. Gunshots. He had a mental sense of what was happening, the carpet-cleaning man nailed against a wall by bullets, plaster and blood, things falling.

All of it falling, the entire room disintegrating, the match-head stink of gunfire suffocating. Patterson couldn't take a breath. He was drowning.

Hurt, he thought.

I can't feel it, but I'm hurt.

Loretta Lee was in the room, out of nowhere, standing in the middle of everything, emptying her gun into something on the floor.

Patterson turned his head to one side and vomited, or was it something worse—a convulsion? He retched, agonized, clearing his mouth, his throat, his being of the taste in his mouth, the stuff from the head of the dead woman in his arms.

21

There was a knock at the door, soft. Margaret wasn't even sure she heard it, a little tapping, persistent and timid.

Then, the doorbell, a set of chimes out of the bronze age, resounding and impossible to mistake.

It was Mrs. Wye. “I tried to call you, Margaret—”

Margaret put out her hand. “You'll wear yourself out,” she said, “running around like this—”

“Don't worry about me,” said Mrs. Wye, and the way she said it made Margaret unsteady.

“You should be resting,” said Margaret weakly. “Look at the time.”

The elderly neighbor was dressed in a flowing dressing gown, whispering satin and a hastily knotted sash. Mrs. Wye looked years younger, flushed and wide awake.

“Haven't you heard?” said Mrs. Wye.

The words were delivered with care, years of cinematic diction making each consonant count. The walking stick gleamed, white rubber tip lifted into the air. “It's terrible to be the first with bad news again,” said Mrs. Wye.

Margaret heard the news through a sudden haze. Her own body detached itself from her will. Her arms hung heavy, lifeless. Her brain told her that she must have misunderstood.

Margaret rejected the message as impossible: Dr. Patterson had been shot. Other people were shot, too.

Mrs. Wye's voice had a steady, lapping quality, impervious to Margaret's need to deny what was being said. It was a terrible scene, on Channel Five and Two, and possibly others, Mrs. Wye wasn't sure. She hoped Curtis was at home, and safe. “Because I worry so much about him,” said Mrs. Wye.

Curtis was running.

It was dark. He had been running for a long time, but he was not tired.

He had long ago shed his black leather overnight bag, and the cumbersome portfolio so he could make his way more easily through the streets.

As a boy he had marveled at the glow of brakelights, the way they gleamed, the essence of Christmas, of Independence Day fireworks, and not hidden away for a once-a-year festival—they were on display each night, every night of the year. Sometimes colors broke upon Curtis with an inner sweetness, a spice: headlights would dissolve on the tongue, powdered sugar, brakelights would be like red-hots, cinnamon and fire, and the proud green lights would chime in like lime sherbet, dignified and profound. Curtis had thought it was a pity Goya never had a chance to see the blaze of emergency vehicles around the metallic carnage of a crash.

Art is an afterthought, one of life's sweet by-products. It was time to do something that mattered.

What a grand, bitter joke it was. He had thought that the famous psychiatrist was the answer. He had been there when the shooting started, actually within the walls of the house.

There had been a long moment when none of it made sense. The sounds from the distant rooms had sounded like rude merriment. Then the men in suits, lounging about the living room, had stumbled over each other. Pistols had been tugged from recesses in clothing. The coffee table, the chairs on the margins of the room, had been knocked over in the haste.

My God
, a voice had cried,
they got the doctor
.

It was a male voice, one of the security men, the sound of his cry all the more searing because of its anguish, the men fighting each other unthinkingly in the corridor. And somehow, when he was aware of where he was and what he was doing, he was running. Someone had called out
stop him
, thinking, perhaps, that the artist was a part of the conspiracy. And he was, but an innocent part.

Curtis ran. The pace was starting to hurt. There was a stitch in his side. He told himself to think of pleasant thoughts, to drive the pain from his mind.

The first box of crayons—how well Curtis remembered, the waxy smell had been so promising. His days had been ladled, his childhood a series of caring homes, nourishment provided without much love but without much harm, older men and women motivated by unthinking kindness, as trees cast their shade in the heat without considering any alternative. Curtis did not hate life.

Was someone following him? He glanced back as he ran. Cars were low, sullen shapes. A bus was a source of tinny light, the passengers a few silhouettes of heads looking away, looking out, turning to look back at him—surely at least one, lifting a hand to speak into a transmitter.

He ran faster. Sweat made him blink. The night sky was clouded over, the low overcast lit by the city below it. The damp made his hair and clothing wet as he ran, the very slight mist darkening the sidewalk in the muddle of light under the streetlamps.

He could sense the command:
stop him
.

He was running past parked cars, his strides carrying him down-slope, toward the freeway, 101, the lanes of traffic he had re-created on canvas so many times.

He stumbled and fell against a curb, and slumped against a big metal tub corrupted with rust, an ancient mailbox. He was on his feet again at once.

Not far, he told himself.

Almost there.

He wanted to call out:
hey
—
look at this
.

He was about to do something they couldn't take away from him.

Curtis didn't know when he had begun to understand the way reality worked. There had not been a single moment. Gradually, over the years, he had begin to realize that his mail had been opened before he got it, and that his telephone conversations were accompanied by the slightest hiss of static, the result of an extra shunt fed into the line so that his calls could be recorded.

As he ran he became gradually aware that there was too much similarity in the anonymous men and women he saw on the street. These were, most of them, ordinary people out to buy beer and Band-Aids. But some of them, those turning away so you couldn't see them talking into their collar mikes, were Watchers.