to see Gujilio later this afternoon.”
“You can still squeeze in Nyebern if he has time for you.”
Hatch’s father had been a tyrant, quick-tempered, shatongued, with a
penchant for subduing his wife and disciplining his son by the
application of regular doses of verbal abuse in the form of nasty
mockery, cutting sarcasm, or just plain threats. Anything at all could
set Hatch’s father off, or nothing at all, because secretly he cherished
irritation and actively sought new sources of it. He was a man who
believed he was not destined to be happy-and he insured that his destiny
was fulfilled by making himself and everyone around him miserable.
Perhaps afraid that the potential for a murderously bad temper was
within him, too, or only because he’d had enough tumult in his life,
Hatch had consciously striven to make himself as mellow as his father
was high-strung, as sweetly tolerant as his father was narrow-minded, as
greathearted as his father was unforgiving, as determined to roll with
all of life’s punches as his father was determined to punch back at even
imaginary blows. As a result, he was the nicest man Lindsey had ever
known, the nicest by light-years or by whatever measure niceness was
calculated: bunches, bucketsful, gobs. Sometimes, however, Hatch turned
away from an unpleasantness that had to be dealt with, rather than risk
getting in touch with any negative emotion that was remotely reminiscent
of his old man’s paranoia and anger.
The light changed from red to green, but three young women in bikinis
were in the crosswalk, laden with beach gear and heading for the ocean.
Hatch didn’t just wait for them. He watched them with a smile of
appreciation for the way they filled out their suits.
“I take it back,” Lindsey said.
“What?”
“I was just thinking what a nice guy you are, too nice, but obviously
you’re a piece of lecherous scum.”
“Nice scum, though.”
“I’ll call Nyebern as soon as we get to the shop,” Lindsey said.
He drove up the hill through the main part of town, past the old Laguna
Hotel. “Okay. But I’m sure as hell not going to tell him I’m suddenly
psychic. He’s a good man, but he won’t be able to sit on that kind of
news.
The next thing I know, my face’ll be all over the cover of the National
Inquirer. Besides, I’m not psychic, not exactly. I don’t know what the
hell I am-aside from lecherous scum.”
“So what’ll you tell him?”
“Just enough about the dreams so he’ll realize how troubling they are
and how strange, so he’ll order whatever tests I ought to have. Good
enough?”
“I guess it’ll have to be.”
In the tomb-deep blackness of his hideaway, curled naked upon the
stained and lumpy mattress, fast asleep, Vassago saw sunlight, sand, the
sea, and three bikinied girls beyond the windshield of a red car.
He was dreaming and knew he dreamed, which was a peculiar sensation.
He rolled with it.
He saw, as well, the dark-haired and dark-eyed woman about whom he had
dreamed yesterday, when she had been behind the wheel of that same car.
She had appeared in other dreams, once in a wheelchair, when she had
been laughing and weeping at the same time.
He found her more interesting than the scantily clad beach bunnies
because she was unusually vital. Radiant. Through the unknown man
driving the car, Vassago somehow knew that the woman had once considered
embracing death, had hesitated on the edge of either active or passive
selfdestruction, and had rejected an early grave water, he saw a watery
vault, cold and suffocating, narrowly escape:’…
where after she had been more full of life, energetic, and vivid than
ever before. She had cheated death. Denied the devil. Vassago hated
her for that, because it was in the service of death that he had found
meaning to his own existence.
He tried to reach out and touch her through the body of the man driving
the car. Failed. It was only a dream. Dreams could not be controlled.
If he could have touched her, he would have made her regret that she had
turned away from the comparatively painless death by drowning that could