Rose Madder

Chapter VIII. VIVA ZE BOOL

1

He had felt as if he were floating above his own head, somehow, but when Dirty Gertie pissed on him, all that changed. Now, instead of feeling like a helium-filled balloon, his head felt like a flat rock which some strong hand had sent skipping across the surface of a lake. He was no longer floating; now he seemed to be leaping. He still couldn't believe what the fat black bitch had done to him. He knew it, yes, but knowing and believing were sometimes worlds apart, and this was one of those times. It was as if a dark transmutation had occurred, changing him into some new creature, a thing that went skittering helplessly along the surface of perception, allowing him only brief periods of thought and strange, disconnected snatches of experience. He remembered staggering to his feet that last time behind the shithouse, face bleeding from half a dozen cuts and scrapes, his nose stuffed halfway shut, aching all over from repeated confrontations with his own wheelchair, his ribs and guts throbbing from having about three hundred pounds of Dirty Gertie perched on top of him... but he could have lived with any of that-that and more. It was the wetness from her and the smell of her, not just urine but a woman's urine, that made his mind feel as if it were buckling each time it turned back that way. Thinking of what she had done made him want to scream, and it made the world-which he badly needed to stay in touch with, if he didn't want to end up behind bars, probably laced into a straitjacket and stuffed full of Thorazine-begin to fuzz out. As he staggered along the fence he thought, Get her, get her, you have to turn around and get her, get her and kill her for what she did, it's the only way you'll ever be able to sleep again, it's the only way you'll ever be able to think again. Some part of him knew better, though, and instead of getting her, he ran. Probably Dirty Gertie thought it was the sound of approaching people that drove him off, but it wasn't. He ran because his ribs hurt so badly that he could only draw half-breaths, at least for the time being, and his stomach ached, and his testicles were throbbing with that deep, desperate pain only men know about. Nor was the pain the only reason he ran-it was what the pain meant. He was afraid that if he took after her again, Dirty Gertie might do better than just fight him to a draw. So he fled, lurching along beside the board fence as fast as he could, and Dirty Gertie's voice chased him like a mocking ghost: She left you a little message... her kidneys by way of my kidneys... a little message, Normie... here it comes... Then one of those skips happened, a short one, the stone of his mind striking the flat surface of reality and flying up and off it again, and when he came back into himself, some little length of time-maybe as short as fifteen seconds, maybe as long as forty-five-had passed. He was running down the midway toward the amusements area, running as thoughtlessly as a cow in a stampede, actually running away from the park exits instead of toward them, running toward the Pier, running toward the lake, where it would be child's play to first bottle him up and then bring him down. Meanwhile, his mind shrieked in the voice of his father, the world-class crotchgrabber (and, on at least one memorable hunting trip, world-class cockgobbler, as well). It was a woman! Ray Daniels was screaming. How could you let your clock get cleaned by some cunt, Normie? He shoved that voice out of his mind. The old man had shouted enough at him while he was alive; Norman was damned if he was going to listen to that same old bullshit now that the old man was dead. He could take care of Gertie, he could take care of Rose, he could take care of all of them, but he had to get away from here in order to do it... and before every Security cop in the place was looking for the bald guy with the bloody face. Already far too many people were gawking, and why not? He stank of piss and looked as if he'd been clawed by a catamount. He turned into an alley running between the video arcade and the South Seas Adventure ride, no plan in mind, wanting only to get away from the geeks on the midway, and that was when he won the lottery. The side door of the arcade opened and someone Norman assumed was a kid came out. It was impossible to tell for sure. He was short like a kid and dressed like a kid-jeans, Reeboks, Michael McDermott tee-shirt (I LOVE A GIRL CALLED RAIN, it said, whatever the f**k that meant)-but his entire head was covered by a rubber mask. It was Ferdinand the Bull. Ferdinand had a big, sappy smile on his face. His horns were decorated with garlands of flowers. Norman never hesitated, simply reached out and snatched the mask off the kid's head. He got a pretty good handful of hair, too, but what the f**k.

"Hey!" the kid screamed. With the mask off, he looked about eleven years old. Still, he sounded more outraged than fearful.

"Gimme that back, that's mine, I won it! What do you think you're-" Norman reached out again, took the kid's face in his hand, and shoved him backward, hard. The side of the South Seas Adventure ride was canvas, and the kid went billowing through it with his expensive sneakers flying up in the air.

"Tell anybody, I'll come back and kill you," Norman said into the still-billowing canvas. Then he walked rapidly toward the midway, pulling the bullmask down over his head. It stank of rubber and its previous owner's sweaty hair, but neither smell bothered Norman. The thought that the mask would soon also stink of Gertie's piss did. Then his mind took another of those skips, and he disappeared into the ozone for awhile. When he came back this time, he was trotting into the parking lot at the end of Press Street with one hand pushing against his ribcage on the right side, where every breath was now agony. The inside of the mask smelled exactly as he had feared it would and he pulled it off, gasping gratefully at cool air which didn't stink of piss and pu**y. He looked down at the mask and shivered-something about that vapid, smiling face creeped him out. A bull with a ring through his nose and garlands of posies on his horns. A bull wearing the smile of a creature that has been robbed of something and is too stupid to even know what it is. His first impulse was to throw the goddam thing away, but he restrained himself. There was the parking-lot attendant to think about, and while he would undoubtedly remember a man driving off in a Ferdinand the Bull mask, he might not immediately associate that man with the man the police were shortly going to be asking about. If it bought him a little more time, the mask was worth holding onto. He got behind the wheel of the Tempo, tossed the mask onto the seat, then bent and crossed the ignition wires. When he bent over that way, the smell of piss coming off his shirt was so tart and clear that it made his eyes water. Rosie says you're a kidney man, he heard Dirty Gertie, the jiggedy-jig from hell, say inside his head. He was terribly afraid she'd always be inside his head now-it was as if she had somehow raped him, and left him with the fertilized seed of some malformed and freakish child. You're one of those shy guys who don't like to leave marks. No, he thought. No, stop it, don't think about it. She left you a little message from her kidneys, by way of my kidneys... and then it had flooded his face, stinking and as hot as a childhood fever.

"No!" This time he screamed it aloud, and brought his fist down on the padded dashboard.

"No, she can't! She can't! SHE CAN'T DO THAT TO MEI" He pistoned his fist forward, slamming it into the rear-view mirror and knocking it off its post. It struck the windshield and rebounded onto the floor. He lashed out at the windshield itself, hurting his hand, his Police Academy ring leaving a nest of cracks that looked like an oversized asterisk. He was getting ready to start hammering on the steering wheel when he finally got hold of himself. He looked up and saw the parking-lot ticket tucked under the sun-visor. He focused on that, working to get himself under control. When he felt he had some, Norman reached into his pocket, took out his cash, and slipped a five from the moneyclip. Then, steeling himself against the smell (except there was really no way you could defend yourself against it), he pulled the Ferdinand mask back down over his head and drove slowly over to the booth. He leaned out of the window and stared at the parking attendant through the eyeholes. He saw the attendant grab for the side of the booth's door with an unsteady hand as he bent forward to take the offered bill, and Norman realized an utterly splendid thing: the guy was drunk.

"Viva ze bool," the parking-lot attendant said, and laughed.

"Right," the bull leaning out of the Ford Tempo said.

"El toro grande."

"That'll be two-fifty-"

"Keep the change," Norman said, and pulled out. He drove half a block and then pulled over, realizing that if he didn't get the goddam mask off his head right away he was going to make things exponentially worse by puking into it. He scrabbled at it, pulling with the panicky fingers of a man who realizes he has a leech stuck on his face, and then everything was gone for a little while, it was another of those skips, with his mind lifting off from the surface of reality like a guided missile. When he came back to himself this time he was sitting barechested behind the steering wheel at a red light. On the far corner of the street, a bank clock flashed the time: 2:07 p.m. He looked around and saw his shirt lying on the floor, along with the rear-view mirror and the stolen mask. Dirty Ferdie, looking deflated and oddly out of perspective, stared up at him from blank eyes through which Norman could see the passenger-side floormat. The bull's happy, sappy smile had wrinkled into a somehow knowing grin. But that was all right. At least the goddam thing was off his head. He turned on the radio, not easy with the knob busted off, but perfectly possible, oh yes. It was still tuned to the oldies station, and here was Tommy James and the Shondells singing

"Hanky Panky." Norman immediately began to sing along. In the next lane, a man who looked like an accountant was sitting behind the wheel of a Camry, looking at Norman with cautious curiosity. At first Norman couldn't understand what the man was so interested in, and then he remembered that there was blood on his face-most of it crusting now, by the feel. And his shirt was off, of course. He'd have to do something about that, and soon. Meanwhile... He leaned over, picked up the mask, slipped one hand into it, and gripped the rubber lips with the tips of his fingers. Then he held it up in the window, moving the mouth with the song, making Ferdinand sing along with Tommy James and the Shondells. He rolled his wrist back and forth, so Ferdinand also appeared to be sort of bopping to the beat. The man who looked like an accountant faced forward again quickly. Sat still for a moment. Then leaned over and banged down the doorlock on the passenger side. Norman grinned. He tossed the mask back on the floor, wiping the hand that had been inside it on his bare chest. He knew how weird he must look, how nuts, but he was damned if he was going to put that pissy shirt back on again. The motorcycle jacket was lying on the seat beside him, and at least that was dry on the inside. Norman put it on and zipped it up to the chin. The light turned green as he was doing it, and the Camry beside him exploded through the intersection like something fired from a gun. Norman also rolled, but more leisurely, singing along with the radio:

"I saw her walkin on down the line... You know I saw her for the very first time... A pretty little girl, standin all alone... Hey, pretty baby, can I take you home?" It made him think of high school. Life had been good back then. No sweet little Rose around to f**k everything up, cause all this trouble. Not until his senior year, at least. Where are you, Rose? he thought. Why weren't you at the bitch-picnic? Where the f**k are you? "she's at her own picnic," ze bool whispered, and there was something both alien and knowing in that voice-as if it spoke not in speculation but with the simple inarguable knowledge of an oracle. Norman pulled over to the curb, unmindful of the NO PARKING LOADING ZONE sign, and snatched the mask up off the floor again. Slid it over his hand again. Only this time he turned it toward himself. He could see his fingers in the empty eyesockets, but the eyesockets seemed to be looking at him, anyway.

"What do you mean, her own picnic?" he asked hoarsely. His fingers moved, moving the bull's mouth. He couldn't feel them, but he could see them. He supposed the voice he heard was his own voice, but it didn't sound like his voice, and it didn't seem to be coming from his throat; it seemed to be coming out from between those grinning rubber lips. "she likes the way he kisses her," Ferdinand said.

"Wouldn't you know it? She likes the way he uses his hands, too. She wants him to do the hanky panky with her before they have to come back." The bull seemed to sigh, and its rubber head rocked from side to side on Norman's wrist in a strangely cosmopolitan gesture of resignation.

"But that's what all the women like, isn't it? The hanky panky. The dirty boogie. All night long."

"Who?" Norman shouted at the mask. Veins stood out at his temples, pulsing.

"Who's kissing her? Who's feeling her up? And where are they? You tell me that!" But the mask was silent. If, that was, it had ever spoken at all. What are you going to do, Normie? That voice he knew. Dad's voice. A pain in the ass, but not scary. That other voice had been scary. Even if it had come out of his own throat, it had been scary.

"Find her," he whispered.

"I'm going to find her, and then I'm going to teach her how to do the hanky panky. My version of it." Yes, but how? How are you going to find her? The first thought that came to him was their clubhouse on Durham Avenue. There'd be a record of where Rose was living there, he was sure of it. But it was a bad idea, just the same. The place was a modified fortress. You'd need a keycard of some sort-one that probably looked quite a lot like his stolen bank card-to get in, and maybe a set of numbers to keep the alarm system from going off, as well. And what about the people there? Well, he could shoot the place up, if it came to that; kill some of them and scare the rest off. His service revolver was back at the hotel in the room safe-one of the advantages of traveling by bus-but guns were usually an ass**le's solution. Suppose the address was in a computer? It probably was, everyone used those pups these days. He'd very likely still be f**king around, trying to get one of the women to give him the password and file name, when the police showed up and killed his ass. Then something came to him-another voice. This one drifted up from his memory like a shape glimpsed in cigarette smoke:... sorry to miss the concert, but if I want that car, I can't pass up the... Whose voice was that, and what couldn't its owner afford to pass up? After a moment, the answer to the first question came to him. It was Blondie's voice. Blondie with the big eyes and cute little ass. Blondie, whose real name was Pam something. Pam worked at the Whitestone, Pam might well know his rambling Rose, and Pam couldn't afford to pass something up. What might that something be? When you really thought about it, when you put on that old deerstalker hat and put that brilliant detective's mind to work, the answer wasn't all that difficult, was it? When you wanted that car, the only thing you couldn't afford to pass up was a few extra hours at work. And since the concert she was passing up was this evening, the chances were good that she was at the hotel right now. Even if she wasn't, she would be soon. And if she knew, she would tell. The punk-rock bitch hadn't, but that was only because he hadn't had time enough to discuss the matter with her. This time, though, he'd have all the time he needed. He would make sure of it.

2

Lieutenant Hale's partner, John Gustafson, drove Rosie and Gert Kinshaw to the District 3 police station in Lakeshore. Bill rode behind them on his Harley. Rosie kept turning in her seat to make sure he was still there. Gert noticed but did not comment. Hale introduced Gustafson as "my better half," but Hale was what Norman called the alpha-dog; Rosie knew that from the moment she saw the two men together. It was in the way Gustafson looked at him, even in the way he watched Hale get into the shotgun seat of the unmarked Caprice. Rosie had seen these things for herself a thousand times before, in her own home. They passed a bank clock-the same one Norman had passed not so long before-and Rosie bent her head to read the time. 4:09 p.m. The day had stretched out like warm taffy. She looked back over her shoulder, terrified that Bill might be gone, sure in some secret part of her mind and heart that he would be. He wasn't, though. He shot her a grin, lifted one hand, and waved at her briefly. She raised her own hand in return. "seems like a nice guy," Gert said.

"Yes," Rosie agreed, but she didn't want to talk about Bill, not with the two cops in the front seat undoubtedly listening to every word they said.

"You should have stayed at the hospital. Let them take a look at you, make sure he didn't hurt you with that taser thing." "shit, it was good for me," Gert said, grinning. She was wearing a huge blue-and-white-striped hospital bathrobe over her split jumper.

"First time I've felt absolutely and completely awake since I lost my virginity at Baptist Youth Camp, back in 1974." Rosie tried for a matching grin and could manage only a wan smile.

"I guess that's it for Swing into Summer, huh?" she said. Gert looked puzzled.

"What do you mean?" Rosie looked down at her hands and was not quite surprised to see they were rolled into fists.

"Norman's what I mean. The skunk at the picnic. One big f**king skunk." She heard that word, that f**king, come out of her mouth and could hardly believe she'd said it, especially in the back of a police car with a couple of detectives in the front seat. She was even more surprised when her fisted left hand shot out sideways and struck the door panel, just above the window crank. Gustafson jumped a little behind the wheel. Hale looked back, face expressionless, then faced forward again. He might have murmured something to his partner. Rosie didn't know for sure, didn't care. Gert took her hand, which was throbbing, and tried to soothe the fist away, working on it like a masseuse working on a cramped muscle.

"It's all right, Rosie." She spoke quietly, her voice rumbling like a big truck in neutral.

"No, it's not!" Rosie cried.

"No, it's not, don't you say it is!" Tears were pricking her eyes now, but she didn't care about that, either. For the first time in her adult life she was weeping with rage rather than with shame or fear.

"Why won't he go away? Why won't he leave me alone? He hurts Cynthia, he spoils the picnic... f**king Norman!" She tried to strike the door again, but Gert held her fist prisoner.

"Fucking skunk Norman!" Gert was nodding.

"Yeah. Fuckin" skunk Norman."

"He's like a... a birthmark! The more you rub and try to get rid of it, the darker it gets! Fucking Norman! Fucking, stinking, crazy Norman! I hate him! J hate him!" She fell silent, panting for breath. Her face was throbbing, her cheeks wet with tears... and yet she didn't feel exactly bad. Bill! Where's Bill? She turned, certain he would be gone this time, but he was there. He waved. She waved back, then faced forward again, feeling a little calmer.

"You be mad, Rosie. You've got a goddam right to be mad. But-"

"Oh, I'm mad, all right."

"-but he didn't spoil the day, you know." Rosie blinked.

"What? But how could they just go on? After..."

"How could you just go on, after all the times he beat you?" Rosie only shook her head, not comprehending. "some of it's endurance," Gert said. "some, I guess, is plain old stubbornness. But what it is mostly, Rosie, is showing the world your game-face. Showing that we can't be intimidated. You think this is the first time something like this has happened? Huh-uh. Norman's the worst, but he's not the first. And what you do when a skunk shows up at the picnic and sprays around is you wait for the breeze to blow the worst of it away and then you go on. That's what they're doing at Ettinger's Pier now, and not just because we signed a play-or-pay contract with the Indigo Girls, either. We go on because we have to convince ourselves that we can't be beaten out of our lives... our right to our lives. Oh, some of them will have left-Lana Kline and her patients are history, I imagine-but the rest will rally round. Consuelo and Robin were heading back to Ettinger's as soon as we left the hospital."

"Good for you guys," Lieutenant Hale said from the front seat.

"How could you let him get away?" Rosie asked him accusingly.

"Jesus, do you even know how he did it?"

"Well, strictly speaking, we didn't let him get away," Hale said mildly.

"It was Pier Security's baby; by the time the first metro cops got there, your husband was long gone."

"We think he stole some kid's mask," Gustafson said.

"One of those whole-head jobs. Put it on, then just boogied. He was lucky, I'll tell you that much."

"He's always been lucky," Rose said bitterly. They were turning into the police station parking lot now, Bill still behind them. To Gert she said, "You can let go of my hand now." Gert did and Rosie immediately hit the door again. The hurt was worse this time, but some newly aware part of her relished that hurt.

"Why won't he let me alone?" she asked again, speaking to no one. And yet she was answered by a sweetly husky voice which spoke from deep in her mind. You shall be divorced of him, that voice said. You shall be divorced of him, Rosie Real. She looked down at her arms and saw that they had broken out all over in gooseflesh.

3

His mind lifted off again, up up and away, as that foxy bitch Marilyn McCoo had once sung, and when he came back he was easing the Tempo into another parking space. He didn't know where he was for sure, but he thought it was probably the underground parking garage half a block down from the Whitestone, where he'd stowed the Tempo before. He caught sight of the gas gauge as he leaned over to disconnect the ignition wires and saw something interesting: the needle was all the way over to F. He'd stopped for gas at some point during his last blank spot. Why had he done that? Because gas wasn't really what I wanted, he answered himself. He leaned forward again, meaning to look at himself in the rear-view minor, then remembered it was on the floor. He picked it up and looked at himself closely. His face was bruised, swelling in several places; it was pretty goddam obvious that he'd been in a fight, but the blood was all gone. He had scrubbed it away in some gas-station restroom while a self-serve pump filled the Tempo's tank on slow automatic feed. So he was fit to be seen on the street-as long as he didn't press his luck-and that was good. As he disconnected the ignition wires he wondered briefly what time it was. No way to tell; he wasn't wearing a watch, the shitbox Tempo didn't have a clock, and he was underground. Did it matter? Did it-"Nope," a familiar voice said softly. "doesn't matter. The time is out of joint." He looked down and saw the bullmask staring up at him from its place in the passenger-side footwell: empty eyes, disquieting wrinkled smile, absurd flower-decked horns. All at once he wanted it. It was stupid, he hated the garlands on the horns and hated the stupid happy-to-be-castrated smile even more... but it was good luck, maybe. It didn't really talk, of course, all of that was just in his mind, but without the mask he certainly never would have gotten away from Ettinger's Pier. That was for damned sure. Okay, okay, he thought, viva ze bool, and he leaned over to get the mask. Then, with seemingly no pause at all, he was leaning forward and clamping his arms around Blondie's waist, squeezing her tight-tight-tight so she couldn't get enough breath to scream. She had just come out of a door marked HOUSEKEEPING, pushing her cart in front of her, and he thought he'd probably been waiting out here for her quite awhile, but that didn't matter now because they were going right back into HOUSEKEEPING, just Pam and her new friend Norman, viva ze bool. She was kicking at him and some of the blows landed on his shins, but she was wearing sneakers and he hardly felt the hits. He let go of her waist with one hand, pulled the door closed behind him, and shot the bolt across. A quick look around, just to make sure the place was empty except for the two of them. Late Saturday afternoon, middle of the weekend, it should have been... and was. The room long and narrow, with a short row of lockers standing at the far end. There was a wonderful smell-a fragrance of clean, ironed linen that made Norman think of laundry day at their house when he was a kid. There were big stacks of neatly folded sheets on pallets, Dandux laundry baskets full of fluffy bathtowels, pillowcases piled on shelves.Deep stacks of coverlets lined one wall. Norman shoved Pam into these, watching with no interest at all as the skirt of her uniform flipped up high on her thighs. His sex-drive had gone on vacation, perhaps even into permanent retirement, and maybe that was just as well. The plumbing between his legs had gotten him into a lot of trouble over the years. It was a hell of a note, the sort of thing that might lead you to think that God had more in common with Andrew Dice Clay than you maybe wanted to believe. For twelve years you didn't notice it, and for the next fifty-or even sixty-it dragged you around behind it like some raving baldheaded Tasmanian devil. "don't scream," he said. "don't scream, Pammy. I'll kill you if you do." It was an empty threat-for now, at least-but she wouldn't know that. Pam had drawn in a deep breath; now she let it out in a soundless rush. Norman relaxed slightly.

"Please don't hurt me," she said, and boy, was that original, he'd certainly never heard that one before, nope, nope.

"I don't want to hurt you," he said warmly. 7 certainly don't." Something was flopping in his back pocket. He felt for it and touched rubber. The mask. He wasn't exactly surprised.

"All you have to do is tell me what I want to know, Pam. Then you go on your happy way and I go on mine."

"How do you know my name?" He gave her that evocative interrogation-room shrug, the one that said he knew lots of things, that was his job. She sat in the pile of tumbled dark maroon coverlets just like the one on his bed up on the ninth floor, smoothing her skirt down over her knees. Her eyes were a really extraordinary shade of blue. A tear gathered on the lower lid of the left one, trembled, then slipped down her cheek, leaving a trail of mascara-soot.

"Are you going to rape me?" she asked. She was looking at him with those extraordinary baby blues of hers, great eyes-who needs to pu**ywhip a man when you've got eyes like those, right, Pammy?-but he didn't see the look in them he wanted to see. That was a look you saw in the interrogation room when a guy you'd been whipsawing with questions all day and half the night was finally getting ready to break: a humble look, a pleading look, a look that said I'll tell you anything, anything at all, just let off me a little. He didn't see that look in Pammy's eyes. Yet.

"Pam-"

"Please don't rape me, please don't, but if you do, if you have to, please wear a condom, I'm so scared of AIDS." He gawped at her, then burst out laughing. It hurt his stomach to laugh, it hurt his diaphragm even worse, and most of all it hurt his face, but for awhile there was just no way he could stop. He told himself he had to stop, that some hotel employee, maybe even the house dick, might happen by and hear laughter coming from in here and wonder what it meant, but not even that helped; in the end, the throe had to pass on its own. Blondie watched him with amazement at first, then smiled tentatively herself. Hopefully. Norman at last managed to get himself under control, although his eyes were streaming with tears by that time.

"I'm not going to rape you, Pam," he said at last-when he was capable of saying anything without laughing it into insincerity.

"How do you know my name?" she asked again. Her voice was a little stronger this time. He hauled the mask out, stuck his hand inside it, and manipulated it as he had for the ass**le accountant in the Camry.

"Pam-Pam-bo-Bam, banana-fanna-fo-Fam, fee-fi-mo-Mam," he made it sing. He bopped it back and forth, like Shari Lewis with f**king Lamb Chop, only this was a bull, not a lamb, a stupid f**king fagbull withfiowers on its horns. Not a reason in the world why he should like the f**king thing, but the fact was, he sort of did.

"I sort of like you, too," Ferd the fagbull said, looking up at Norman with its empty eyes. Then it turned back to Pam, and with Norman to move its lips, it said:

"You got a problem with that?"

"N-N-No," she said, and the look he wanted still wasn't in her eyes, not yet, but they were making progress; she was terrified of him-of them-that much was for sure. Norman squatted down, hands dangling between his thighs, Ferdinand's rubber horns now pointing at the floor. He looked at her sincerely.

"Bet you'd like to see me out of this room and out of your life, wouldn't you, Pammy?" She nodded so vigorously her hair bounced up and down on her shoulders.

"Yeah, I thought so, and that's fine by me. You tell me one thing and I'll be gone like a cool breeze. It's easy, too." He leaned forward toward her, Ferd's horns dragging on the floor.

"All I want to know is where Rose is. Rose Daniels. Where does she live?"

"Oh my God." What color there still was in Pammy's face-two spots of red high up on her cheekbones-now disappeared, and her eyes widened until it seemed they must tumble from their sockets.

"Oh my God, you're him. You're Norman." That startled and angered him-he was supposed to know her name, that was how it worked, but she wasn't supposed to know his-and everything else followed upon that. She was up and off the coverlets while he was still reacting to his name in her mouth, and she almost got away completely. He sprang after her, reaching out with his right hand, the one that still had the bullmask on it. Faintly he could hear himself saying that she wasn't going anywhere, that he wanted to talk to her and intended to do it right up close. He grabbed her around the throat. She gave a strangled cry that wanted to be a scream and lunged forward with surprising, sinewy strength. Still he could have held her, if not for the mask. It slipped on his sweaty hand and she tore away, fell away toward the door, arms out to either side, flailing, and at first Norman didn't understand what happened next. There was a noise, a meaty sound that was almost a pop like a champagne cork, and then Pam began to flail wildly, her hands beating at the door, her head back at a strange stiff angle, like someone staring intently at the flag during a patriotic ceremony.

"Huh?" Norman said, and Ferd rose up in front of his eyes, askew on his hand. Ferdinand looked drunk.

"Ooops," said the bull. Norman yanked the mask off his hand and stuffed it in his pocket, now aware of a pattering sound, like rain. He looked down and saw that Pam's left sneaker was no longer white. Now it was red. Blood was pooling around it; it ran down the door in long drips. Her hands were still fluttering. To Norman they looked like small birds. She looked almost nailed to the door, and as Norman stepped forward, he saw that, in a way, she was. There was a coathook on the back of the damned thing. She'd torn free of his hand, plunged forward, and impaled herself. The coathook was buried in her left eye.

"Oh Pam, shit, you fool," Norman said. He felt both furious and dismayed. He kept seeing the bull's stupid grin, kept hearing it say Ooops, like some wiseass character in a Warner Bros cartoon. He yanked Pam off the coathook. There was an unspeakable gristly sound as she came. Her one good eye-bluer than ever, it seemed to Norman-stared at him in wordless horror. Then she opened her mouth and shrieked. Norman never thought about it; his hands acted on their own, grabbing her face by the cheeks, planting his big palms beneath the delicate angles of her jaw, and then twisting. There was a single sharp crack-the sound of someone stamping on a cedar shingle-and she went limp in his arms. She was gone, and whatever she had known about Rose was gone with her.

"Oh you dopey gal," Norman breathed.

"Put your eye out on the f**king coathook, how stupid is that?" He shook her in his arms. Her head flopped bonelessly from side to side. She now wore a wet red bib on the front of her white uniform. He carried Pam back over to the coverlets and dropped her there. She sprawled with her legs apart.

"Brazen bitch," Norman said.

"You can't even quit when you're dead, can you?" He crossed her legs. One of her arms dropped off her lap and thumped onto the coverlets. He saw a kinky purple bracelet around her wrist-it looked almost like a short length of telephone cord. On it was a key. Norman looked at this, then toward the lockers at the far end of the room. You can't go there, Normie, his father said. I know what you're thinking, but you're nuts if you go anywhere near their place on Durham Avenue. Norman smiled. You're nuts if you go there. That was sort of funny, when you thought about it. Besides, where else was there to go? What else was there to try? He didn't have much time. His bridges were burning merrily behind him, all of them.

"The time is out of joint," Norman Daniels murmured, and stripped the key-bracelet off Pam's wrist. He went down to the lockers, holding the bracelet between his teeth long enough to stick the bullmask back on his hand. Then he held Ferd up and let him scan the Dymotapes on the lockers.

"This one," Ferd said, and tapped the locker marked PAM HAVERFORD with his rubber face. The key fit the lock. Inside was a pair of jeans, a tee-shirt, a sports bra, a shower-bag, and Pam's bag. Norman took the bag over to one of the Dandux baskets and spilled out the contents on the towels. He cruised Ferdinand over the stuff like some bizarre spy satellite.

"There you go, big boy," Ferd murmured. Norman plucked a thin slice of gray plastic from the rubble of cosmetics, tissues, and papers. It would open the front door of their clubhouse, no doubt about that. He picked it up, started to turn away-"Wait," ze bool said. It went to Norman's ear and whispered, flower-decked horns bobbing. Norman listened, then nodded. He stripped the mask off his sweaty hand again, stuffed it back into his pocket, and bent over Pam's bag-litter. He sifted carefully this time, much as he would have if he had been investigating what was called "an event scene" in the current jargon... only then he would have used the tip of a pen or pencil instead of the tips of his fingers. Fingerprints certainly aren't a problem here, he thought, and laughed. Not anymore. He pushed her billfold aside and picked up a small red book with TELEPHONE ADDRESS on the front. He looked under D, found an entry for Daughters and Sisters, but it wasn't what he was looking for. He turned to the front page of the book, where a great many numbers had been written over and around Pam's doodles-eyes and cartoon bowties, mostly. The numbers all looked like phone numbers, though. He turned to the back page, the other likely spot. More phone numbers, more eyes, more bowties... and in the middle, neatly boxed and marked with asterisks, this:

[image of a spotted bow tie, an eye, an asterisk, the numbers 0471, an asterisks, an eye and a spotted bow tie]

"Oh boy," he said.

"Hold your cards, folks, but I think we have a Bingo. We do, don't we, Pammy?" Norman tore the back page out of Pam's book, stuffed it in his front pocket, and tiptoed back to the door. He listened. No one out there. He let out a breath and touched the corner of the paper he'd just stuck in his pocket. His mind lifted off in another one of those skips as he did so, and for a little while there was nothing at all.

4

Hale and Gustafson led Rosie and Gert to a corner of the squadroom that was almost like a conversation-pit; the furniture was old but fairly comfortable, and there were no desks for the detectives to sit behind. They dropped instead onto a faded green sofa parked between the soft-drink machine and the table with the Bunn-O-Matic on it. Instead of a grim picture of drug addicts or AIDS victims, there was a travel-agency poster of the Swiss Alps over the coffee-maker. The detectives were calm and sympathetic, the interview was low-key and respectful, but neither their attitude nor the informal surroundings helped Rosie much. She was still angry, more furious than she had ever been in her life, but she was also terrified. It was being in this place. Several times as the Q-and-A went on, she came close to losing control of her emotions, and each time this happened she would look across the room to where Bill was sitting patiently outside the waist-high railing with its sign reading PLOICE BUSINESS ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT, PLEASE. She knew she should get up, go over to him, and tell him not to wait any longer-to just take himself on home and call her tomorrow. She couldn't bring herself to do it. She needed him to be there the way she'd needed him to be behind her on the Harley when the detectives had been driving them here, needed him as an over-imaginative child needs a nightlight when she wakes up in the middle of the night. The thing was, she kept having crazy ideas. She knew they were crazy, but knowing didn't help. For awhile they would go away, she would simply answer their questions and not have the crazy ideas, and then she would catch herself thinking that they had Norman down in the basement, that they were hiding him down there, sure they were, because law enforcement was a family, cops were brothers, and cops" wives weren't allowed to run away and have lives of their own no matter what. Norman was safely tucked away in some tiny sub-basement room where no one could hear you even if you screamed at the top of your lungs, a room with sweaty concrete walls and a single bare bulb hanging down from a cord, and when this meaningless charade was over, they would take her to him. They would take her to Norman. Crazy. But she only fully knew it was crazy when she looked up and saw Bill on the other side of the low railing, watching her and waiting for her to be done so he could take her home on the back of his iron pony. They went over it and over it, sometimes Gustafson asking the questions, sometimes Hale, and while Rosie had no sense that the two men were playing good-cop/bad-cop, she wished they would finish with their interminable questions and their interminable forms and let them go. Maybe when she got out of here, those paralyzing swoops between rage and terror would abate a little.

"Tell me again how you happened to have Mr Daniels's picture in your purse, Ms Kinshaw," Gustafson said. He had a half-completed report in front of him and a Bic in one hand. He was frowning horribly; to Rosie he looked like a kid taking a final he hasn't studied for.

"I've told you that twice already," Gert said.

"This'll be the last time," Hale said quietly. Gert looked at him.

"Scout's Honor?"

Hale grinned-a very winning grin-and nodded. "scout's Honor." So she told them again how she and Anna had tentatively connected Norman Daniels to the murder of Peter Slowik, and how they had gotten Norman's picture by fax. From there she went to how she had noticed the man in the wheelchair when the ticket-agent shouted at him. Rosie was familiar with the story now, but Gert's bravery still amazed her. When Gert got to the confrontation with Norman behind the comfort station, relating it in the matter-of-fact tones of a woman reciting a shopping list, Rosie took her big hand and squeezed it hard. When she finished this time, Gert looked at Hale and raised her eyebrows.

"Okay?"

"Yes," Hale said.