“Well, that’s the idea,” he said. “But I also have one of those metabolisms.”
“Huh?”
“I burn up a lot of calories in nervous energy.”
“You? Nervous?”
“Jumpy as a Siamese cat.”
“I don’t believe it. I bet there’s nothing in the world could make you nervous,” she said.
She was a good-looking woman, about thirty years old, ten years younger than he was, and he figured he could have her if he wanted her. She would need a little wooing, but not much, just enough so she could convince herself that he had swept her off her feet, playing Rhett to her Scarlett, and had tumbled her into bed against her will. Of course, if he made love to her, he would have to kill her afterward. He’d have to put a knife through her pretty breasts or cut her throat, and he really didn’t want to do that. She wasn’t worth the bother or the risk. She simply wasn’t his type, he didn’t kill redheads.
He left her a good tip, paid his check at the cash register by the door, and got out of there. After the air conditioned restaurant, the September heat was like a pillow jammed against his face. As he walked toward the Dodge van, he knew that Helen was watching him, but he didn’t look back.
From the diner he drove to a shopping center and parked in a corner of the large lot, in the shade of a date palm, as far from the stores as he could get. He climbed between the bucket seats, into the back of the van, pulled down a bamboo shade that separated the driver’s compartment from the cargo area, and stretched out on a thick but tattered mattress that was too short for him. He had been driving all night without rest, all the way from St. Helena in the wine country. Now, with a big breakfast in his belly, he was drowsy.
Four hours later, he woke from a bad dream. He was sweating, shuddering, burning up and freezing at the same time, clutching the mattress with one hand and punching the empty air with the other. He was trying to scream, but his voice was stuck far down in his throat; he made a dry, gasping sound.
At first, he didn’t know where he was. The rear of the van was saved from utter darkness only by three thin strips of pale light that came through narrow slits in the bamboo blind. The air was warm and stale. He sat up, felt the metal wall with one hand, squinted at what little there was to see, and gradually oriented himself. When at last he realized he was in the van, he relaxed and sank back onto the mattress again.
He tried to remember what the nightmare had been about, but he could not. That wasn’t unusual. Nearly every night of his life, he suffered through horrible dreams from which he woke in terror, mouth dry, heart pounding; but he never could recall what had frightened him.
Although he knew where he was now, the darkness made him uneasy. He kept hearing stealthy movement in the shadows, soft scurrying sounds that put the hair up on the back of his neck even though he knew he was imagining them. He raised the bamboo shade and sat blinking for a minute until his eyes adjusted to the light.
He picked up a bundle of chamois-textured clothes that lay on the floor beside the mattress. The bundle was tied up with dark brown cord. He loosened the knot and unrolled the soft clothes, four of them, each rolled around the other. Wrapped in the center were two big knives. They were very sharp. He had spent a lot of time carefully honing the gracefully tapered blades. When he took one of them in his hand, it felt strange and wonderful, as if it were a sorcerer’s knife, infused with magic energy that it was now transmitting to him.
The afternoon sun had slipped past the shadow of the palm tree in which he had parked the Dodge. Now the light streamed through the windshield, over his shoulder, and struck the icelike steel; the razor-edge glinted coldly.