Ashes To Ashes Read online

  I left the door wide open.

  She closed it.

  I kept on my feet and moving, trying to maintain a safe distance between polarized bodies.

  She kept moving, also, continually closing that distance.

  This was the mode of physical action during the ensuing conversation.

  She: "Where the hell have you been? I've been waiting for damned near thirty minutes."

  Me: "Sorry, I didn't know. I would have rushed right back. Uh, did we have an appointment?"

  She: "Don't get cute. This is no time for cute. I want to know where you've been."

  Me: "Not that it is any of your business, but purely because I have nothing to conceal, I have been with my client. Karen is my client. She is the sole reason—"

  She: "Everything that goes on in this house is my business. Karen is my business. That girl is sick. Sick, sick. She's just so much raw meat for bastards like you. I want you out of here. And damned quick."

  Me: "There seems to be a conflict here. Your husband has ordered me to stay for dinner. And I have been retained by the lady of the—"

  She, furiously: "That bastard! Can't you see what he's doing? He's setting you up, asshole! Setting you up!"

  I got back to the door and opened it, pointedly. "Let's continue this at dinner."

  She hit the door with a straight arm to send it banging shut again. "We'll continue it right here! Did Terry offer you a contract?"

  I was getting steamed. I went to the bar, found and lit a cigarette, only then noticed the half-empty fifth of Jim Beam and equally half-empty tumbler of booze-rocks. Hers, no doubt. The lady was deep into the cups, which perhaps explained her behavior.

  I turned to her with a new try at patience only to find her pelvis riding my hip, and the balance of the conversation took place in that attitude.

  Me: "You're right. It's no time for cute. Terry did not offer me a contract, no, he conferred one upon me. I gather it is the same type of indentured service conferred upon everyone who stumbles into this spiderweb. I'll bet that you are under a marital contract with identical provisions. How much free and clear per day are you getting, Marcia?"

  She: "Not nearly enough. But that is all going to come tumbling down next week, so don't lose any sleep over it. I still want you out of here."

  Me: "Not nearly as much as I want me out of here, lady. So don't you lose any sleep over that. Why will it tumble down?"

  She: "The ride is over, that's all, the end is here. And I say thank God to that. But I'll still scratch your eyes out if you try moving in on that girl."

  Me: "Look again, Marcia, that girl is no longer a girl. She's a bona fide woman, certifiably so, with a right to choose her own company. But if your concern is real, then that makes us allies, sort of. What sort of sick is she?"

  She: 'The sort of sick that makes her a natural for con men like you. Sick between the thighs, or hadn't you noticed, and don't try to say you haven't."

  Me: "What you call sick others would call a basic human need—or don't you have those kinds of needs too?"

  She: "Sure I have that kind of need. So what are you—a superjock? Big lover? Think you can handle eight to ten tussles a day?"

  Me: "Do it right the first time, Marcia, who needs the other seven to nine?"

  She: "I don't know. When do you want to show me?"

  Me: "Well, there probably would not be time before dinner."

  She: "Keep your dance card open, lover. Meet you back here at ten."

  She snared her drink and headed for the door, opened it, turned back to say, "I can hardly wait."

  I asked her, at that distance, "What is he setting me up for, Marcia?"

  She giggled, waved the drink at me, and replied in departure, "Tell you at ten."

  It would have been a great seduction routine if she had been wearing leather and dragging a whip—and certainly there had been an element of seduction to that entire encounter—but I had to vote for it as only a secondary motive for that visit to my bedroom.

  The whole thing was beginning to spin around in my head, but without any clear vortex. Oh, sure, you are way ahead of me and thinking how obvious it ought to be by now. There have been forty thousand B-movies and God only knows how many television melodramas built around identical situations. We all must surely know, at this point, that Kalinsky has been looting the estate and milking the trusts for all they are worth and that, with Karen about to come into her own, she is probably also coming into mortal danger.

  But I was immersed in a real-life situation and I have discovered that real life is not as malleable as fiction.

  No one is that much in charge here. There's no script to follow and no director shouting instructions to a cast that is willing to blindly follow. Real life is not scripted, it is usually played by ear, and few of us ever know exactly why we do what we do or say what we say.

  Fiction is economical, has to be, everything pointed toward a desired effect. Real life is luxurious, no matter what your station; the options are endless and occurring moment by moment, and very damned few things in the individual lifestream seem pointed toward anything in particular.

  I cannot approach real life with fictional devices and neither can you.

  So bear with me, here, and do not leap ahead to a synthetic conclusion. I could not afford to, even though everything inside of me was yelling at me to get the hell out.

  What was the real reason behind Marcia's visit?

  Was she really concerned for Karen or was that just a smoke screen—and, if a smoke screen, why would she feel it important to lay one around me?

  Did she let it slip that big changes were arriving in the coming week, or had it been her intention all along to drop that information on me?

  Had she really been trying to drive me away—or had she merely been manipulating me into a challenge to stay?

  What was the personal relationship with her husband—and was the sexplay just another smoke screen of some type, or was she really all that contemptuous of her marriage?

  What, exactly, was "sick" about Karen—and, to whatever extent she may be so, how much of that was being deliberately engineered into her by this very strange household?

  Why had a shrink been brought aboard? Out of genuine concern for an ailing heiress?—or as part of an elaborate plan to certify her as mentally incompetent and thus forestall a turnover of power?

  And, if I could take Marcia at face value, exactly what was I being "set up" for?

  I haul all of this out for inspection here so that you may consider the same puzzles that I had to consider at that moment and so that you may understand the frame of my mind while I was getting into a tuxedo that had been tailored for me during the hour or so before that moment, upon the orders of a man whom I had first met maybe two hours earlier and who, ironically enough, was married to a lady who had just metaphorically invited me to screw her brains out immediately after dinner.

  I also give it to you here lest it all be lost sight of in the rapidly cascading developments of that evening at the Highland estate.

  It was only about twenty minutes past seven, but I dressed early to check the fit. I was standing at the mirror inspecting same when I suddenly became aware of eyes upon me. My gaze went straight to the French doors. The sun had set and the balcony outside was cloaked in deep shadows, but I saw her as clearly as if she had been dipped in luminous paint.

  It was Karen's ethereal companion and the expression on that tormented face was clearly pleading with me for something.

  The apparition turned, showing itself in clear three-dimensional profile, to gaze down upon the patio, back to me, then once again onto the patio, as though summoning my attention to something there.

  I did not give it a second thought nor a moment's hesitation but moved quickly to the balcony. The apparition had winked out with my first step forward, but I could still sense presence out there.

  That particular presence, however, was not now the focus of my attention.

/>   The focus was immediately below. Two men stood at the patio bar in twilight, a woman in an evening dress was walking toward the pool—and in the pool, submerged in deep water, a nude female figure floated facedown.

  There are moments in the stream when the thinking mind stands aside and something deeply human yet more than human takes over the motor nerves to send a living creature sprawling into personal peril with no thought whatever for the self. I believe that such moments explain those singular, selfless acts of human heroism.

  Of course I was thinking no such thoughts at that moment, and I am laying no claim to heroism. Quite the reverse, I am merely explaining a really stupid action. I have never been big on watersports, naval experience notwithstanding, and had never shown any particular form as a diver. I do not recall gauging the distance or extrapolating angle for depth; I remember only pushing with all the leg I had against the railing of that second-story balcony and launching myself headlong toward that floating body, the initial shock of penetration and a weird wandering apology to God knows who for immersing the tux, then the warm-cold naked flesh of Marcia Kalinsky as I fought the limp form toward a living environment.

  Chapter Nine: Mirror Image

  A woman was screaming and the patio area was filling rapidly with excited people in formal attire.

  The guys in dinner jackets were standing by at poolside with hands outstretched to offer help at a distance and a third, whom I recognized a moment later as one who had been stocking the inside bar when I went through earlier that day, jumped in with more direct assistance. He groaned, "Oh no, it's Mrs. Kalinsky," as we hoisted her onto the deck.

  The guy just stood there, fully clothed in waist-deep water, and watched with horror as I pulled myself out and went to work on the victim.

  Someone brought a stack of towels and someone else yelled, "Get Powell—get the doctor!"

  I had cleared Marcia's throat and produced a gush of water from the air tract when I became aware of the arrival of Kalinsky on the scene. I guess I half expected the guy to start moving among the guests and reassuring them because I was really surprised by his reaction. He came totally unglued, trying to get into the action and fighting me for position on the body.

  I growled, "Cool it, Terry, she's okay!"

  Someone wrestled him away, but still he lay there beside her, stroking her forehead while she coughed and gasped into the resurrection.

  Carl Powell made the scene then, and smoothly took over. I was impressed by the guy's professionalism and situation management. He had her blanketed and stretchered and moving away from there before I could get my breathing under control.

  Someone handed me a lighted cigarette and someone else put a glass of whiskey in my hand. There was a lot of crowding around and congratulating and slaps on the back, and I overheard one awed voice exclaim, "Yeah, they say he dove off of that balcony over there!"

  I looked, myself, at the balcony under discussion and shuddered at the height and distance.

  It was at about that moment that I became aware of a pain in the leg and a burning sensation inside the sodden dinner jacket. The tux was a disaster, split and scraped at several points; it was then I realized that I hadn't gotten off quite as cleanly as I'd thought. A finger was beginning to throb like hell and a warmth inside the trouser leg told me I was oozing blood somewhere.

  Then Karen appeared, calmly beautiful in a chiffon-and-lace dinner gown. She took my hand without a word and led me through the crowd and into the house and up the stairs to her apartment, quietly and carefully undressed me to the skin and toweled me dry, applied stinging antiseptics to what turned out to be minor scrapes—apparently I had either touched bottom or grazed the side of the pool as I went in—then she put me to bed, pulled the sheet up over my chest, gently kissed me on the lips, and went away.

  Without a single word between us, all that.

  But, at the risk of sounding nerdy, words had not been necessary. Some sort of nonverbal communication had been passing between us all that while—from which I received sympathy, gratitude, admiration, concern, love—all of that.

  I had felt neither the need nor the desire to resist the sweet ministrations. Actually, I felt like hell. There had been damned little sleep the night before, the day had begun early and with a bang, and it had been constant stress without letup ever since. I had eaten, during the preceding twenty-four hours or so, a raisin Danish and two cold chicken legs, and I guess I had used all the steam I had left on that twilight dunk in the Highland pool.

  So I am not overly ashamed to admit that I simply let it all go and went to sleep in Karen's bed. I learned later that she had gone below and rescued the dinner party—which may seem a bit coldblooded but, what the hell, that's the way things are done in high society—the show must go on, and all that.

  Besides which, Marcia was apparently none too much the worse for her misadventure. She was "doing fine" and "resting comfortably," or so I was advised by Carl Powell when he roused me from my nap at about nine-thirty.

  "You undoubtedly saved her life, though, you know," he told me soberly. "It was a real stroke of luck that you spotted her from your window. The lights had not been turned on yet in the pool area, so fifty people could have been standing around down there and never noticed her. Actually I understand that several guests were on the patio and thought it was just some kind of stunt when you came sailing overhead fully clothed. That was a hell of a nervy thing to do, I have to tell you."

  He was inspecting my hurts during that little monologue.

  "Damned lucky, I'd say, that this is all you got out of it. One inch less stretch and you would have ended up a leaky bag of bones at poolside."

  I winced at that analogy, but let it pass without comment.

  He flipped the sheet back over me and repeated, "Damned lucky."

  I asked him, "Are you finished?"

  He sighed as he replied, "Yeah. Just wanted to check you out, firsthand. Don't get much chance to play doctor around here, you know."

  I sat up and reached for the cigarette he was then lighting. He passed it over and lit another for himself. I said, "Thought doctors are against smoking."

  "Sure we are," he replied. "Damned things will kill you. But then so will sex, booze, airplanes and automobiles, and just plain food if you eat too much. Actually we start dying at conception. It would be just as valid to describe living as controlled dying. It's always in process."

  "Matter of spatial relationships," I suggested.

  "More or less," he agreed.

  I asked, "Why was Marcia in the pool? I saw her at about a quarter after seven, at which time she had not yet dressed for dinner. Thought that's where she was headed when she left me."

  He said, "Too much to drink, no doubt. Happens every week. Probably wanted to take a little dip and sober up. Guess she just passed out in the pool."

  I reminded him, "She was naked."

  He informed me, "Nothing unusual about that. Soon as the sun goes down ... Marcia prefers nature in the raw."

  I said, "She was wearing half a bikini and a hip- length robe when I saw her earlier."

  "Yes. We found them in a chair on the patio. Also the dregs of pure whiskey in the bottom of a water glass."

  I made a guilty face and told him, "It was still half full when she carried it away from my room. And a fifth of Jim Beam was half empty."

  He asked, casually, "Did you two get it on?"

  I replied, "Not at all. She was in my face over Karen. Called me a bastard and a con man, ordered me out of the house."

  Powell grinned. "Well, that's Marcia."

  I asked, casually, "What is Karen?"

  The grin faded. He took a thoughtful pull at his cigarette and told me, "I studied your portfolio quite thoroughly, you know. I recommended your contract. You should accept it. I feel that you can be very helpful with Karen, maybe decisively so, lord knows more helpful than I have been."

  I grunted.

  He continued without pause: "I like
your background, Ash. Nicely rounded, and you've gone into areas I've only recently begun to think about. I believe that could be Karen's out, perhaps her only out."

  "Out of what?" I wanted to know.

  He ignored my curiosity. "Indirectly, at least, I suppose I'm responsible for you two getting together in the first place. I sent her to Zodiac."

  That one surprised me. I told him so.

  He ignored that too, went on to say: "Reality can be very elusive any time you try to pin it down. I have spent the past twenty-two years studying the mind and, hell, I still usually feel like a blind man trying to lead the blind."

  The guy was reaching me. I found myself wondering more about him than about my client. I asked him, "Is that why you sold your soul to the Highlands?"

  The grin came back as he inspected that query. "Don't make the mistake of thinking that your soul is an island, Ash. It's as much a part of the continent as your body is. It is immune to being bought and sold because the original owner will not release the title."

  Well, anyway, that was an alternate point of view to the one offered by Kalinsky. Or was it?

  I said, "Which original owner is that?"

  He said, "Good and evil are mere states of mind, aren't they? I know I don't have to tell you that because I know where you've been, but just so you'll understand that we are more or less on the same wavelength. They are simply alternate views of the same reality."

  "We live in an asymmetrical universe," I pointed out, testing him.

  "Ah yes," he replied instantly, "but it was pure symmetry before the bang."

  I thought, bingo, but said aloud, "Which side of the mirror image do you suppose we inhabit?"

  "Does it really matter?"

  I replied, "Maybe not."

  "Suppose for the sake of argument," he said soberly, "that both God and Satan do indeed exist, co-equals, each ruling his own half of the image. We, you and me, do not know which side of reality we inhabit. Do we not run a hell of a risk, then, in choosing sides?"