Life Expectancy

  Zip, zero.

  A man appeared out of the darkness in front of the Explorer, breath smoking from his open mouth. He carried an assault rifle, and he wasn’t me.

  Her heart swelled painfully, and hot tears rose in her eyes, for the arrival of this gunman seemed to suggest that I must be dead or at best badly wounded.

  Superstition gripped her, and she thought that if she simply refused to grieve, then I would not be dead, after all. Only when she accepted the loss of me would that loss become true and real. Call it the Tinkerbell-resurrection strategy.

  She fought back the tears. Her vision cleared.

  As he drew closer, Lorrie saw that he wore a pair of peculiar goggles. She guessed, correctly as it turned out, that these were night-vision goggles.

  He stripped them off and stuffed them in a coat pocket as he approached the front passenger’s door.

  When he tried the door, he found it locked. He smiled at her through the window, gave her a little wave, and rapped his knuckles on the glass.

  He had a broad, bold-featured face, like a clay model for a new Muppet. She didn’t think she had ever seen him before, yet something about him was familiar.

  Leaning close, voice muffled by the glass but easily understood, he said with a friendly lilt, “Hello there.”

  As a young girl searching for order in a world of snakes and tornadoes, Lorrie had read Emily Post’s famous book on etiquette, but nothing in that thick volume had prepared her for this bizarre encounter.

  He rapped on the glass again. “Missy?”

  Intuition told her that she should not speak to him. He needed to be handled in the same way that children were taught to deal with strange men offering candy: Don’t talk, turn away, run. She couldn’t run, but she could refuse to be engaged in conversation.

  “Please open the door, missy.”

  She faced front, looked away from him, remained silent.

  “Little lady, I’ve traveled a long way to see you.”

  Her hands had fisted so tightly that her fingernails gouged her palms.

  “Is the baby coming?” he asked.

  At the mention of our baby, Lorrie’s heart broke from a canter into a full gallop.

  “I don’t want to harm you,” he assured her.

  She searched the gloom in front of the Explorer, hoping that I would appear, but I did not.

  “I don’t want anything from you except the baby,” he said. “I want the baby.”

  34

  * * *

  Trash container, hand lotion, chewing gum, Life Savers, lip balm, change purse, Kleenex, packets of moist towelettes…

  Even seized by a passionate, urgent desire to become a killing machine, Lorrie could not see any previously overlooked deadly edge to any of the items through which she had earlier sorted. A simple length of rope could double as a garrote. A fork could serve either as an eating utensil or as a weapon. But she didn’t have rope or a fork, and she couldn’t lip-balm a man to death.

  At the window, the rifleman’s voice sounded neither accusing nor hateful, nor hostile in any way. He was twinkle-eyed and smiling, and he spoke in a teasing, you’re-naughty-and-you-know-it tone: “You owe me one bouncy baby, one cute itsy little baby.”

  Although he was not a dwarf, he was deformed in mind and spirit, which caused Lorrie to think Rumpelstiltskin. He’d come to collect her end of some monstrous bargain.

  When she didn’t answer him, he started toward the front of the Explorer, and she knew he would go around to the driver’s door.

  This Rumpelstiltskin had never taught her how to spin flax into gold, so there was no way in hell the son of a bitch would get her firstborn.

  Leaning across the console between the seats, she switched on the headlights.

  Thus illuminated, the steeply ascending forest, stark black trunks and silhouetted foliage, seemed as unreal and as stylized as a stage setting.

  Brightened by the beams, Rumpelstiltskin paused in front of the Explorer and peered at her through the windshield. He smiled. He waved.

  Flurries of snow found their way through the thick canopy of interleaved branches. They swirled like celebratory confetti around the grinning, waving man.

  Never had Death looked so festive.

  Lorrie didn’t know whether the headlights could be seen all the way up on Hawksbill Road. Probably not in the storm, perhaps not even on a clear night.

  Still leaning toward the steering wheel, she blew the horn. One long blast. Then another.

  Rumpelstiltskin shook his head sadly, as if he were disappointed in her. He sighed out a long plume of breath and continued around the Explorer to the driver’s door.

  Lorrie blew the horn again, again.

  When she saw him draw back the assault rifle, she let up on the horn, turned away, and protected her face.

  He smashed the driver’s-door window with the butt of the weapon. Wads of gummy, prickly safety glass sprayed over Lorrie.

  He popped the lock and settled in behind the wheel, leaving the door open.

  “This sure hasn’t gone anything like I planned,” he said. “It’s one of those cursed days makes a man believe in bad mojo and the evil eye.”

  He switched off the headlights.

  When he put down the assault rifle, laying it across both the console and Lorrie’s lap, she twitched with fear and tried to shrink from the weapon.

  “Relax, little lady. Relax. Didn’t I already say I wouldn’t do you any harm?”

  In spite of having spent time in the cleansing wind and the freshening cold, he reeked of unwholesome things: whiskey, cigarette smoke, gunpowder, and gum disease.

  Switching on an interior light, he said, “For the first time in a long while, I’ve got hope in my heart. It feels good.”

  Reluctantly, she looked at him.

  He had a kindly and happy expression, but it was so utterly unrelated to the torment in his eyes that the smile might as well have been painted on his face. Anguish issued from his every pore, and chronic anxiety was the underlying smell of him. His eyes were those of a trapped animal, full of throttled fear and yearning that he strove to conceal.

  Sensing that she saw the suffering at the heart of him, he let his expression falter, but then painted it on twice as thick. His wide smile grew impossibly wider.

  She would have pitied him if he hadn’t terrified her.

  “Just because it’s on your lap,” he said, “don’t make a move for the gun. You don’t know how to use it. You’d hurt yourself. Besides, I don’t want to have to punch you in the face—you being the mother of my boy.”

  Lorrie’s maternal alarm had gone off when this man had first spoken of the baby through the closed window. Now her mind filled with uncountable steeples full of bells ringing out a tocsin.

  “What are you talking about?” she demanded, dismayed to hear a tremor in her voice.

  When only her own life was at risk, she could maintain a pose of fearlessness. Now she carried in her womb a hostage to fortune, and she could not hide her fear for that innocent.

  From a coat pocket, he extracted a small black leather case and worked the zipper around three sides of it.

  “You took my son from me, my only child,” he said, “and I’m certain that if you search your heart, you’ll be the first to admit that now you owe me yours.”

  “Your son? I don’t know your son.”

  In a voice of reason and sweet good will, he said, “You sent him to prison for life. And your husband, the ungrateful progeny of Rudy Tock, rendered him…unable to procreate.”

  Stunned, Lorrie said, “You’re…Konrad Beezo?”

  “The one and only, for many years on the run and often denied a spotlight to display my talents, but still a clown at heart and full of glory.”

  He opened the black case. It contained two hypodermic syringes and a vial of amber fluid.

  Although he had seemed familiar to her, he didn’t much resemble the photos in the newspapers that Rudy had kept from Aug
ust 1974.

  “You don’t look like you,” she said.

  Smiling, nodding, his voice chirrupy with inexplicable bonhomie, he said, “Ah, well, twenty-four years takes a toll of any man. And as a fugitive of some notoriety, I spent a long holiday in South America with my little Punchinello, where I had just enough plastic surgery to restore anonymity.”

  He unwrapped one of the hypodermic syringes. The point of the needle gleamed with unnerving brightness in the dim light.

  Although Lorrie knew that reasoning with this man would be no more fruitful than discussing the music of Mozart with a deaf horse, she said, “You can’t blame us for what happened to Punchinello.”

  “Blame is such a harsh word,” he said with great geniality. “We don’t need to talk of guilt and blame. Life is too short for that. A thing was done, for whatever reason, and now in all fairness a price must be paid.”

  “For whatever reason?”

  Smiling, nodding, insistently cordial, Beezo said, “Yes, yes, we all have our reasons, and surely you had yours. And who am I to say that you were wrong? There’s no need for judgmentalism, nothing to be gained by ugly accusations. There’s always two sides to every story, and sometimes ten. It’s just that a thing was done, my son was taken from me and rendered incapable of giving me grandchildren, heirs to the Beezo talent, and therefore it’s only fair that I be compensated.”

  “Your Punchinello killed a bunch of people and would have killed me and Jimmy, too,” Lorrie declared, stressing every word, unable to match Beezo’s unshakable cheerfulness.

  “So the story goes,” Beezo said, and winked. “But let me assure you, missy, nothing you read in a newspaper can be trusted. The truth never makes it into print.”

  “I didn’t read about it, I lived it,” she said.

  Beezo smiled and nodded, winked, smiled and nodded, let out a little laugh, nodded, and returned his attention to the hypodermic.

  Lorrie realized that his fragile self-control depended upon maintaining an air of cheerful amiability, regardless of the fact that it was patently insincere. If that facade slipped at all, it would collapse entirely; his repressed self-pity and rage would then explode. Unable to control himself, he would kill her and the baby that he so much wanted.

  Under these smiles and chuckles was not a lovelorn Pagliacci but a homicidal bozo.

  Eyeing the contents of the vial, she asked, “What is that?”

  “Just a mild sedative, a little dream juice.”

  His hands were large, rough, but dexterous. With the practiced efficiency of a physician, he tapped the vial and filled the syringe.

  “I can’t take that,” she protested. “I’m in labor.”

  “Oh, worry not, dear, it’s very mild. It won’t much delay the baby.”

  “No. No, no.”

  “Dear girl, you’re only in first-stage labor and you will be for hours yet.”

  “How do you know that?”

  With a mischievous chuckle and a wink and a twitch of his nose, he said, “Darling, I must confess to being just a little bit naughty. A week ago, I planted a listening device in your kitchen, another in your living room, and I’ve been monitoring them ever since from Nedra Lamm’s house across the highway.”

  Lorrie felt dizzy. “You know Nedra?”

  “I knew her for a few minutes, the poor dear,” Beezo revealed. “What are those totems with antlers all about, anyway?”

  Wondering whether Nedra lay at rest among the cords of dry pine in her woodshed or in her basement freezer, Lorrie put one hand on the assault rifle.

  “That’s not friendly, missy.”

  She took her hand off the weapon.

  Beezo put the open hypodermic kit on the dashboard, placed the prepared syringe atop it. “Be a lamb and take off your parka, roll up a sleeve, and let me find a vein.”

  Instead of obeying, she said, “What are you going to do to me?”

  He surprised her by affectionately pinching her cheek as if he were a maiden aunt and she were a favorite niece. “You fret too much, missy. Too much worry only makes the most-feared thing come true. I’m going to sedate you a little to make you cooperative and pliable.”

  “And then?”

  “I’ll cut the lap and shoulder belts from this vehicle, fashion them into a sling, and pull you up this slope to Hawksbill Road.”

  “I’m pregnant.”

  “As anyone but a blind man can see,” Beezo replied, and winked. “There you go worrying again. I won’t secure the sling in any way that would harm you or the baby. I can’t carry you up that incline. Too hard. And dangerous.”

  “And when we reach the top?”

  “I’ll load you in the Hummer and drive to a nice cozy private place. When the time comes, I’ll deliver your adorable baby.”

  Appalled, she said, “You’re not a doctor.”

  “Don’t you concern yourself. I know the procedure.”

  “How would you know?”

  “I’ve read an entire book about it,” he said cheerily. “I’ve got all the necessary supplies and instruments.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “There you go, fretting again,” he said. “You really do need a better attitude, dear. Attitude is the secret to a happy life. I can recommend some excellent books on the subject.” He patted her shoulder. “I’ll tie everything off just right and leave you where you’ll be safe until you’re found. Then the boy and I will be away on our great adventure.”

  Speechless with horror, she stared at him.

  “I will teach him everything I know, and though he doesn’t have Beezo blood in his veins, he will become the most acclaimed clown of his century.” An ironic laugh bubbled from him like gas from a swamp. “I learned with my Punchinello that talent doesn’t always travel from generation to generation. But I have so very much to share and such a passion for sharing it that I have no doubt I will make him a star!”

  “It’s going to be a girl,” she said.

  Smiling, always smiling, he wagged a finger at her in gentle admonishment. “Remember, I’ve been listening for a week. You didn’t want the doctor to tell you the sex of the baby.”

  “But what if it is a girl?”

  “It’ll be a boy,” he insisted, winking, winking, winking again until he realized that the wink was about to become an uncontrollable tic. “It will be a boy because I need a boy.”

  She was afraid to look away from him but could barely tolerate the rage and misery in his eyes. “Why? Oh. Because no girl has ever been a famous clown.”

  “There are female clowns,” he acknowledged, “but none of great merit. The merry kingdom of the big top is ruled by men.”

  If her baby was a girl, he would kill them both.

  “It’s cold in here now,” Beezo said, “and getting very late. Be a sweet thing and take off your parka, roll up your sleeve.”

  “No.”

  His smile grew fixed, then sagged. He forced the curve back into his lips. “It would grieve me to have to knock you unconscious with a punch or two. But I will if you give me no choice. A thing was done, for whatever reasons, and in your heart you know fairness requires that I be compensated. You can always have another baby.”

  35

  * * *

  The door hung open. I had a rock the size of a small grapefruit in my right hand. I leaned into the Explorer, and as the rifleman became aware of me and turned his head, I slammed the rock into his left temple, hard but not as hard as I would have liked.

  He regarded me with the surprise that anyone might have shown at the sight of a shot-and-drowned pastry chef miraculously returned to life.

  For an instant I thought I would have to hit him with the rock again. Then he slumped into the steering wheel, blowing the horn with his face.

  Pushing him back against the headrest, silencing the horn, I looked past him at Lorrie, inexpressibly relieved to see that she appeared to be unharmed.

  She said, “I never again want to hear that song ‘Send in the Clo
wns.’”

  Not for the first time, I stood uncomprehending before her.

  Indicating the man slumped in the driver’s seat beside her, Lorrie said, “Punchinello’s daddy.”

  Amazed, leaning into the SUV, I pulled off his toboggan cap to examine him. “I guess he looks a little like Konrad Beezo….”

  “Twenty-four years and plastic surgery,” she explained.

  I put my chilled fingertips to his throat, feeling for a pulse. His heartbeat was slow and steady.

  “What’s he doing here?” I asked.

  “Soliciting donations for UNICEF. Plus he wanted our baby.”

  My heart dropped, my stomach turned, something seemed to be wringing my bladder: a major rearrangement of internal organs. “The baby?”

  “I’ll tell you later. Jimmy, the contractions aren’t more frequent but they sure are a lot more painful, and I’m way cold.”

  Her words scared me more than gunfire. Beezo had been subdued; but we were a long way from a hospital delivery room.

  “I’ll shackle him with the tow cable, put him in the backseat,” I told her.

  “Can we drive out of here?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Neither do I. But we’ve got to try, don’t we?”

  “Yeah.”

  She probably wouldn’t make it to the top on foot. Too far, too steep. In her condition, if she slipped and took a bad fall, she’d probably start to hemorrhage.

  “If we’re going to drive,” she said, “I don’t want him in here with us.”

  “He’ll be restrained.”

  “Famous last words. He’s not just your ordinary maniac. If he was your ordinary maniac, he could sit on my lap and I’d feed him Life Savers. But he’s the great Beezo. I don’t want him in here.”

  I could sympathize with her position. “All right, I’ll shackle him to a tree.”

  “Good.”

  “As soon as we reach the hospital, I’ll inform the police, and they can come