Chapter 4

Although she wasn't pushy about it, Janis watched him closely for the next few days. The first morning she reminded Wade of the pills Dr. Hunter had given him. "I didn't see you take one last night. Did you?"

"I forgot."

"Then don't forget again, Bart. The doctor said they would help you."

She stood over him while he took one after breakfast, after lunch and after dinner. Wade suspected the pills were either strong tranquilizers or mild sedatives. After taking one he felt listless, about as energetic as a neutered cat, inclined toward napping.

Janis was brisk, business-like, always finding something to do around the apartment. She wore no makeup, had on a loose housedress about as sexy as a potato sack, and seldom lit long enough to speak two words. When she was forced to talk to him, she was twitchy, fingers plucking at her dress, eyes darting about nervously, looking everywhere but at him. It gradually dawned on him what was bothering her. She was embarrassed about last night! Which was another thing (soon he'd need a tabulator to keep tally) that didn't make any kind of sense. She was supposed to be his wife, wasn't she?

And yet, that next night after he was in bed, she came to him, feverish and wanton as a mink, making love with an overpowering urgency that took his breath away. The lethargy induced by the pills left him under her skilled ministrations and his desire soon matched hers.

She wouldn't let him turn on a light. Which made him wonder. Did she have some kind of unsightly blemish she didn't wish him to see? If so, it certainly wasn't noticeable to the touch, for by the time she'd left his bed that second night he would have been willing to swear there wasn't a micro-inch of her body he hadn't touched.

They made love in straining silence. Every time he opened his mouth to speak, she closed it with her lips. Only at the peak of her climax did she take her mouth away and let her stuttering cry of completion sound in the room. The instant it was over and they were untangled, she got up and left the room, again without a word, leaving him with the impression she was ashamed of losing control of herself, ashamed of the need that had spurred her into his arms. And when Wade got up to smoke a cigarette by the window, there was the shadow by the palm tree, the cigarette coal a red dot in the night.

He decided to play her game to the hilt. He took the pills on schedule, napped, didn't leave the apartment, and ate three meals a day. The latter wasn't hard to take; Janis was a fine cook. And at night she visited his bed for as long as it took, which wasn't hard to take, either. She was as expert at lovemaking as she was at cooking.

But after four days, it began to pall. He knew he would soon be climbing the walls unless he got out for a little while. None of his questions had been answered and it didn't seem-likely they ever would be in the apartment. Janis was visibly less nervous around him now, although pumping information out of her was like dipping soup with a fork. The only strange thing about her behavior was the fact that she never once mentioned in daylight what went on between them at night.

After breakfast on the fifth day, Wade said casually, "I think I'll take a walk today. I'm going whacky cooped up in here."

She gave him a long look, her face very still. Then she smiled slowly. "All right, Bart." That was another small change in their relationship. Since their first heated coupling, she hadn't once called him baby. "The fresh air might do you good. You can't stay penned up in here forever, that's for sure."

Having expected opposition, he was taken aback. He was tempted to tell her he was going down to the bank and cash a check, as well as check on his purported stocks and bonds. He wondered if the bank would honor his signature on one of the checks he'd seen in the desk drawer, personalized checks on the joint account of Bart Evans and Janis Evans. The balance showing in the account was quite heavy. Wade hadn't found any of the stock certificates, but one drawer of the desk was always locked and he hadn't asked Janis for the key. He assumed that the certificates, if there were any, were locked away in the drawer.

Outside the apartment building he breathed deeply a few times, stretching his arms until the joints popped. It was like being let out of prison. His glance jumped to the palm tree. The shadow had been there every night, but he'd never seen anyone in the daytime. Before walking off he looked up at the window to the apartment. He wondered if Janis lurked back out of sight, spying on him. He couldn't see her, but he would have wagered she was there.

As he walked away, he kept looking back to see if he was being followed. He saw no one. After turning a corner at the end of the block, he leaned against the building and smoked a cigarette. Five minutes passed and nobody came around the corner. Either the nightly figure was a product of his imagination or he wasn't the subject under surveillance.

He didn't go anywhere in particular. He just strolled aimlessly. It felt so damned good to be outside again. It was very pleasant and he enjoyed it immensely. Until he heard the siren. Instinctively, he whipped into a doorway, cowering in numbing terror. People passing by swiveled white faces to stare at him. Then a city ambulance screamed past, and Wade shakily emerged from the doorway, feeling reduced to midget-size under the gaze of those people watching him. He went directly back to the apartment, the ghost of his terror yipping at his heels all the way.

Janis greeted him cheerily. "Did you have a nice walk? You weren't gone long."

He forced a smile. "I'm like a man just up out of a sick bed, I guess. Get tired easily. I'll try again in a day or two. I'll stay out longer next time."

He went to his room, took a pill, and stretched out on the bed. He looked at it from all angles, those angles that he could see. Most of it was murky, hidden, like a giant iceberg with ninety percent of its forbidding bulk buried beneath chill water.

Oddly enough, he felt safe back here. The apartment and Janis was like being caught in a scented, nylon nightmare. He could stay here and grow fat from her cooking, contented from the erotic offerings of her lush body, like a sacrifice being fattened for the kill, like a death row prisoner being granted his every wish. Because there had to be a deadly purpose behind it; Janis had a reason for having him here. He couldn't see the shape of the danger, yet he knew it was there.

He had two choices. He could remain here until the axe fell, and then it would be too late, or he could get out and try to track down his old identity. There had to be some evidence of his old existence. A man just didn't vanish overnight, then wake up another person without some trace of the old one being left behind. He would use the apartment as a base of operations, of course. If he couldn't find proof of Wade Carson ever existing, he would have to wait for whatever fate Janis had planned for him and face it.

Dr. Hunter and Janis could be right. His personality could have divided and he could be two people. If that were true, nothing really mattered. It would only mean he was crazy. He might have fooled Dr. Hunter but he certainly hadn't fooled himself in that respect. If he was a whack, he was still as crazy as he had been a month ago.

After Janis left his bed that night Wade fell into a troubled sleep and dreamed of Jocko's smile, of barred windows, of needles, of electroshock treatments, of straitjackets binding him.

The next day he found thirty dollars in his (Bart Evans') card case. He was reasonably sure it hadn't been there before; Janis must have slipped the three tens inside the case. He didn't mention it and neither did she. Yet it was curious, another small thing that didn't make sense.

That day he didn't leave the building, but he did wander through the building. He managed a few words with the janitor in the basement, with the manager of the building, and with two of Janis' neighbors on the same floor. He made it all as casual as possible, telling all those he talked with that this was the first opportunity he'd had to get acquainted. They were wary of him, undoubtedly suspicious of his motives. When he was done, one glaring fact stood out: not one had ever seen Bart

Evans face to face. Bart and Janis had lived in the building three months and in all that time not a soul had glimpsed the man. They all knew, vaguely, that he traveled a lot and assumed he spent most of his time out of town. Contact with the manager-rent paying, et cetera-had all been made by Janis.

Two mornings later, Wade started out immediately after breakfast. He walked up to Sunset Boulevard and took a bus into Hollywood. Insofar as he could tell, he wasn't followed. He got off the bus two blocks from his old address. He held his breath as he turned the corner, then let it go with a sigh. In this, at least, his memory hadn't failed him. The building was there; a two-story structure still badly in need of paint. A sign in front said: NO VACANCY. He was strongly tempted to go right up to his old apartment on the second floor. But he didn't have a key. If he tried to break in, he could easily end up in jail.

He rang the manager's doorbell. He had seen the woman twice, once when renting the apartment, once when he'd complained about a plumbing failure. He remembered her as a woman of sixty with a sour-apple face, ill-fitting dentures, and the disposition of an evil witch. She was addicted to television. Wade recalled that her TV set had been going every time he passed her door.

And now, as he stood before the door, he heard the blare of the set, heard the sound of soap-opera sobbing, and felt an inward relaxation. How could he know this if he hadn't once lived here?

The door cracked enough for him to see the familiar sour countenance. "What is it? No vacancy. Can't you read?"

Wade shaped his face in what he hoped was an ingratiating smile and said, "You remember me, Mrs. Lang? Wade Carson. I used to have Apartment 206."

"Don't remember you." The door opened wider. "Nope, never saw you in my life."

Wade scrubbed at his chin with the back of his hand. "Well, maybe you don't remember my face. I only saw you twice. The thing is, I had an ... accident and have been in the hospital. Now I've come back for my things."

The door opened all the way and the woman glared at him venomously. "Your things? You accusing me of stealing your things? I've never seen you before, you've never lived here, and you say you've come for your things! What kind of a racket is this?"

"But I did live here, Mrs. Lang," he said desperately. "Only for a little while but I did live here. You must have my name on your records somewhere. Wade Carson."

"You say you lived here. Show me the canceled check you paid the rent with."

"I paid cash. I didn't have a checking account," Wade explained as patiently as possible.

"Then where's the receipt?"

"I don't have it...." He thought back, frantically searching his memory. "It was among my things, the things I left in the room."

"A-likely story!" The bird-black eyes blazed. "There are no things, as I keep telling you."

"But you must have kept some sort of record. Please, Mrs. Lang, it's very important to me. Surely you remember me. Forget about my things. The important thing is for you to remember my living here, remember my name. Wade Carson."

"You never lived here. And I don't know any Wade Carson." She started to close the door. "I don't know what your game is, young man. Probably some confidence game, like they're always showing on the TV. Whatever it is, I'm not having any."

The door was closing fast. "Please, Mrs. Lang...." He tried to get his foot in the door. He was too late; it slammed shut in his face. He stood for a little, staring at the closed door, the idiotic chatter from the television set pounding against his ears. Despair shrouded him like a fog. Slowly then, he turned and trudged outside. She had to be lying. She must be lying! Yet what reason could she possibly have? Unless she had been paid to lie. But why would anyone go to all that trouble? Another explanation occurred to him. She could have found the fifty-odd dollars he'd left in the bureau and pocketed it. That seemed the most likely. In that case it was only his word against hers. And even if it was safe for him to go to the police, they would want to know where he'd been the past month. And who could he get to back up his story? Janis?

He laughed without humor and started up the street. The casting agency whose responsibility it was to handle the checks for the extra work he'd done was only a few blocks away. The young lady there was very helpful but she could find no record of any checks being issued to a Wade Carson. And that could only mean that Sylvester hadn't deposited the vouchers in the boxes. Without much hope, he asked her if any checks had been issued to Russell Sylvester. She went through the files again and returned with a negative report. Wade thanked her and left the building. At the corner he sank down onto a bus-stop bench and lit a cigarette. He looked at what he had. He had nothing. A big fat nothing!

And now, thinking back, he realized just how little he knew about Sylvester. He didn't know where the man lived, he didn't know what he did for a living, he hadn't seen any papers verifying the fact that his name actually was Sylvester, and he had certainly revealed nothing personal about himself. He had seemed knowledgeable about extra work. Wade closeted himself in a public phone booth. First, he looked in the S columns. No Russell Sylvesters listed. He spent an hour calling all the casting agencies with no results. He finally called the union. Nobody would admit to knowing a Russell Sylvester.

After leaving the booth a grim thought struck him: Apparently Sylvester was also two different people. A split personality? Schizophrenia? A case for Dr. Hunter's files? His laughter was high, scratchy. A sick joke. A very sick joke indeed!

He took a bus downtown to the building housing the largest Los Angeles newspaper and got permission to go through the morgue files. He went through the issues starting back with the night he had found Claire dead. And in the afternoon edition of the day following he found what he was searching for: "Claire Duncan Murdered!" There was no mention of a Lieutenant Brewer. Claire's body had been found by a cleaning woman at ten the next morning. Everything else was as Wade remembered it. She had been naked, her skull crushed, and she had been clutching a huge pink Easter bunny. The follow-up stories tagged it the Easter Bunny Murder.

For a few days after the murder, the police had searched for a man who had been seen with Claire early the evening before in a Hollywood restaurant. The description vaguely fitted Wade, but could equally have described thousands of men. Within two weeks, coverage of the story slackened off. At first the police had reported progress but soon they were at a dead end. No important clues had been found; at least the police admitted none. The case was still unsolved.

But what had happened to Lieutenant Brewer? Why hadn't he reported the murder? Was it a lie about the cleaning woman finding the body, a red herring tossed out by the police in the hope of trapping her killer? Or was there really a Lieutenant Brewer? But if he, Wade, had dredged the man up out of some sick imagine, how could he know the details of Claire's death? There was one explanation. He could have read about it in the newspapers. It was all there, even down to detailed photographs of every room in the apartment. And the mysterious man in the restaurant. ... Had he read about that, too, and put himself in the man's place, dreamed up the rest of it, the meeting with Claire, et cetera, to fit the pattern?

After all, why would a woman like Claire Duncan have been working as an extra? According to the newspaper reports, her career had been over but she had been far from destitute. Shrewd investments by a business manager when she had been in the big money had left her more than solvent.

It was mid-afternoon by the time he left the newspaper building; he was little wiser than when he'd left the apartment that morning. He knew there had been a Claire Duncan and that she'd been murdered, but he'd found no evidence that Wade Carson had ever existed. Or, for that matter, Russell Sylvester.

He stepped into a phone booth and dialed police headquarters. He made no effort to disguise his voice. He asked for Lieutenant Brewer. He was passed along to different people. Finally the third person, a man, said, "Lieutenant Brewer? of Homicide? Just a minute, please, while I check."

The man returned within a few minutes. He had sounded bored the first time. Now his voice was more alert. "There is no Lieutenant Brewer on the LAPD."

"Are you sure? I could be mistaken about his rank...."

"I'm sure. There is no one named Brewer of any rank. I've checked carefully." The voice took on an edge of suspicion. "Just who is this, please? And what is your business with...."

Wade hung up and left the booth. He walked away quickly, his shoulders hunched, expecting the wail of a siren behind him any second. That took care of another name. No Wade Carson. No Sylvester. And now no Lieutenant Brewer. A few blocks away he boarded a bus for Hollywood.

He stood across the street from Claire's apartment building for a long time. He knew he was taking an awful risk. But something had drawn him here. This building, the Duncan apartment, represented his last real contact with reality. Almost against his will he walked across the street and inside the building. He didn't take the elevator, but walked up the stairs. He didn't see anyone on the stairs or in the hall on Claire's floor.

He thumbed the doorbell and waited, his heart thudding in his chest. Then his pulse seemed to stop as he heard light footsteps inside. The doorknob turned, the door swung open, and he stared down into Claire's solemn gray eyes.