Toll Call Read online

Because she was up to something I withheld my concurrence. “What’s going to happen in that hour, Peggy? What makes you think it’s going to rescue us?”

  Her look was stiff and circumspect. “You’ll find out soon enough.”

  I was worried, and was forming a blunt demand that she let me in on what she was up to, but ten seconds later she brightened, her aspect much less worrisome. “In the meantime, what shall we talk about?” she asked cheerfully.

  “Whatever you want.”

  “Okay. Let’s talk about why you’re not married.” The statement was perky, the hyper-happy prattle of psychotherapists and tour directors.

  “Why would you want to go into that?”

  “Because I’m interested and you never bring it up. I tell you all about my involvements, tacky though they are. You never tell me anything. You’re an attractive man. Most attractive men are married, or at least have been. Why not you?”

  “Are you serious, or should I try for a one-liner?”

  “I think I’m serious.”

  I grinned. “By any chance does this mean that you think we ought to get married?”

  “No. Not necessarily.”

  “Okay. Just checking.”

  This time her smile was wry. “Not that I’m not willing to discuss it.”

  “Of course.”

  Our looks were sly and bordered on the provocative.

  “Marriage,” Peggy prompted.

  I sighed. “Well, I came close a couple of times. The girl who gave me my office chair was the closest.”

  “What happened?”

  “She traded me in for a concept.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “She decided she wanted to be rich and famous, and that I was an encumbrance since I didn’t share her dream.”

  “Do you see it as a failing? That you’ve never married?”

  “Well, it doesn’t seem like an accomplishment, so I guess if it has to be something it has to be the opposite.”

  “Why were you the closest with the one who gave you the chair?”

  I had asked myself that question a hundred times, but had answered it only to myself. “I think it had to do with the date.”

  “What date?”

  “The chronological date. It was a good year for love.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  I caught myself smiling. “Those were beguiling times. It was 1969. The world bulged with diversions. Everyone was in love in the sixties. There was always somewhere to go, something to see or hear or do that was new and different and just a little naughty. We were never home, never watched TV, never sat around feeling bored or frightened or inadequate or any of the other states of being that rear their ugly heads when there’s too much time to think. We wandered North Beach and Haight Street and the park for hours on end, went to rock concerts, art happenings, street dances, the whole thing. We were together more than a year before we slowed down long enough to realize we weren’t meant for each other. Nowadays, we would have realized it in a week.”

  “Why?”

  “Because these days the most exciting thing in town is a restaurant menu, or at least it seems that way. So everyone concentrates on their bodies and their relationships, and not many of either can stand up to continual scrutiny.” I sighed. “Basically, it came down to this. For a while what we had between us was the most important thing in either of our lives. For a while we would have given up anything we had or were trying to get rather than give up each other. Then one of us wanted something more than to be married to the other, and the whole thing fell apart.”

  “Where is she now?” Peggy asked softly.

  “I haven’t the faintest idea. She called me once, about four years ago. She was living in Santa Monica with a self-styled movie producer. I gathered things weren’t going well with him, but we didn’t have anything much to say to each other. At one point in the conversation we both apologized, but we weren’t sure quite why.”

  “And she’s the only one you’ve felt that way about?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Why do you think that is?”

  “I don’t know. I think you have to be able to live with yourself before you can live successfully with someone else, and by the time I got to where I could live with myself I decided I kind of liked it.”

  “With you and the girl with the chair,” Peggy said. “Who found something they wanted more than they wanted the other? You or her?”

  “Both, I guess.”

  “What did she want?”

  “A Jensen Interceptor and a house at the beach.”

  “How about you?”

  “All I wanted was some peace and quiet.”

  Peggy started to say something else but turned toward the door. A sound had worked its way to us from the hallway, and a moment later a shadowed silhouette passed beyond the glass, a large and human shadow. It tapped lightly on the door, then moved on.

  Peggy looked at me and smiled. “Richard,” she said. “He’s such a nice guy. He’s been checking on me every hour or so since you put the speaker system in. That was his sign that he’s leaving for the day. After today he won’t have to worry about me anymore,” she added, a blithe and specious afterthought.

  I felt a muscle harden. “What the hell are you talking about? What are you going to try to do?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “When?”

  She looked at her watch. “In a minute. What else shall we talk about?”

  “I don’t know. What?”

  “Let’s talk about sex.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s what’s wrong between us, isn’t it? I mean, if John was calling me and asking me about my views on modern poetry you wouldn’t be upset, would you?”

  “I don’t know. It depends on what you think about John Ashberry, I guess.”

  “Now, Marsh. You know what I mean, don’t you?”

  I nodded, and decided to fill some time. “You want to hear my theory about sex?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, I think the reason we’re all screwed up about it, the whole world is, I mean, is that it’s so unnatural, our attitudes. And here’s why. A long time ago, when a girl hit fifteen and a boy seventeen or so, the neighbors would have thrown a big party. And after the party the boy and girl would have held hands and smeared themselves with mud and jumped over a rope or something, and then they would have gone off to a tent and screwed till dawn. And the neighbors would have sat around getting drunk and rooting them on. And if a baby resulted, fine. The old people in the neighborhood would have helped the young kids raise it, and everything would have been great. But then one day one of the boys had been such a jerk all his life he couldn’t get anyone to go off to the tent with him. And when he heard from the other guys how much fun the sex thing was he got pissed off and decided, Shit. I’m going to put a stop to that. I’m going to grow up and be a priest, and then I’m going to say that the gods told me to put a stop to all that fornicating. I’m going to tell everyone it’s wrong. It’s a sin for boys and girls to have that much fun so early in life. I’m going to make them wait. Wait for years. Maybe ten. And I’m going to say that if any of them get caught doing it in the meantime they have to be called names. Like slut and stuff. And if a baby is born it’ll be called a bastard. And I’m going to declare it shouldn’t be fun, and if it is you should feel bad about it. And lo and behold this kid did what he threatened to do, and here you and I are a couple of thousand years later, looking at each other with the evil eye because that snotty little kid couldn’t get a girl to go off to the tent.”

  By the time I was finished, Peggy was laughing. “Where on earth did you read that?”

  “I just made it up,” I admitted. “Now when is your little plan going to spring into action?”

  Peggy looked at her watch again. “Right now.”

  I leaned back in the chair. “I’m waiting.”

  She shook her head. “You have to go b
ack in your office. And not come out till I tell you. No matter what you hear happening out here.”

  “What am I going to hear?”

  “It’s not important. Just go in there and hide, and wait till I call you.”

  “What’s Ruthie got to do with this? Why’s she supposed to telephone here in a half hour?”

  “You’re just delaying things, Marsh.”

  “Should I get my gun?”

  “I don’t think you’ll need it.”

  “I think I’ll get it just the same. You’re not going to do anything stupid, are you?”

  She shook her head. “I’m going to do the only thing that will put an end to it. The only thing that will let you and me trot off to that silly little tent ourselves some day. If we decide we ever want to.”

  The set to her jaw was a bar to further discussion. I took my two hundred pounds of concern and disbelief into the private office.

  “Close the door,” Peggy ordered.

  I did as she asked, but not quite all the way.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Despite Peggy’s disclaimer, I got out my weapon. It smelled of oil and benign neglect. The barrel was clean, but not clean of the psychological residue left from the times I’d used it. I spun the empty cylinder, loaded it except for the chamber beneath the firing pin, placed the gun on the exact center of my desk, and contemplated it as I would a miracle medicine, wondering if it would perform as advertised or would create more problems than it cured.

  “John?”

  The voice was Peggy’s, but I hadn’t heard anyone enter the office. I tiptoed to the door and looked through the crack.

  She was still alone, apparently talking to herself. For a moment I feared for her sanity, but then I understood. In her effort to end the nightmare, Peggy had seized upon the one established link between her and the spider: the bug he’d planted in the picture behind her desk. She must have taken it from my drawer and was using his own device to talk to him, to lure him to her once again, this time on her terms. I returned to my desk, looked down at my gun, then picked it up.

  “John? It’s Margaret. Margaret Nettleton. I know you can’t speak to me, but if you can hear me I wish you’d listen. I want you to come to the office. Now. I’m alone. Marsh has gone for the evening. So we can talk.… I suppose it’s stupid of me to do this, but I can’t deal with the situation impersonally, the way everyone wants me to. I have to talk to you about it. To explain and to get an explanation.… I know there’s more to this than people think. And I want to understand. And I want you to understand me. So would you please come down here? So we can talk? It will be much better in person, John. Really, it will.”

  I stuck the gun in my belt, eased my chair away from the desk, and stood up. I didn’t know whether Peggy’s plan would work, or how long it would take him to get here—I didn’t even know whether the spider was monitoring the receiver. If he wasn’t, Peggy was speaking only to me and to the ghosts in her imagination, but if he was listening, and if he responded to her invitation, he wasn’t going to get away from me again.

  I had edged around the desk and started to tiptoe to the door when I noticed something that brought me to a stop. The bottom desk drawer was open, and I could see that the bug, the little transmitter young Manchester had dug out of the picture frame behind Peggy’s desk, was still in the vitamin bottle where I’d tossed it on the day of its discovery. Powerful as it was, it couldn’t possibly be picking up Peggy’s soft soliloquy. Which meant the mystery was solved, and Peggy had narrowed the field to one.

  “John? I recognized you in the park last night. When you ran away. I didn’t know it was you when I went up there, or I wouldn’t have let Marsh try to trap you. I would have waited till we talked, until you had a chance to explain. I want to know why you’ve been doing this to me, John. I know there’s a reason. A reason I can understand. So please. Come talk to me. I think I deserve that much, John. After all you’ve done.”

  A minute wriggled by, then another. I took the bug out of the bottle, tossed it in the air and caught it, and wondered all the while if Peggy could possibly be as commiserating as she sounded.

  “John? I’ll only stay two more minutes. If you’re not here by then I’ll have to assume you don’t want to talk, and I’ll have to go to the police. I can’t live the way I have been since you started calling me, John.… That doesn’t mean I want to stop our talks. I mean, I think maybe we could keep on. Maybe. But we have to put them on a different basis. No more threats; no more vulgarity. And I have to know when they’re coming. I have to be able to sleep at night. Surely you understand. If you’ve been watching me all these weeks, you must have seen how exhausted I’ve become. So I have to have some sort of agreement from you. You have to promise to take my needs and my schedule into account.… The terrorism has to stop, John. Today. If you tell me it will I’ll believe you, but I have to see your face, to know if I can trust you. If I can’t trust you, I’ll have to go to the police and I don’t want to do that. Not unless that’s the only way to get you to stop driving me crazy. So come down here. Please. Let’s do it this way, just between the two of us.”

  I didn’t know whether I wanted her to succeed or fail. I was tempted to get on the second line and summon Charley Sleet and have him put the arm on the spider the minute he stepped out his door. But Peggy had a method to her madness, or I had to assume she did, a method she thought would reassemble her scattered life, and I had to let her work it to its end.

  It took four minutes. I had about decided to call a halt, to tell Peggy her gambit had misfired, when the door to the hallway opened with its characteristic squeak. Much as I wanted to join the party, I hurried to a place where I couldn’t be seen from the outer office.

  Footsteps sounded, each more vivid than the last, until they were joined by a voice. “So you know.”

  Peggy didn’t answer immediately. I envisioned the’encounter, each inspecting the other’s aspect, searching for auras of threat or trick. “Yes,” she said finally. “I know.”

  “Only since last night?”

  “Yes.”

  “And your proof is your own eyesight? In the middle of the night? Through thick woods?”

  She hesitated. “Not just that.”

  “What else then?”

  “Something you dropped when you ran away.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not telling you. Not yet.”

  “I see,” he said, still assured, still the manipulator. “And what do you intend to do with this so-called evidence?”

  “I don’t know yet. It depends on what you have to say for yourself over the next few minutes.”

  “So you have not yet called in the authorities.”

  “No.”

  “And you may not, if I satisfy you in some particular during this conversation. Is that your position?”

  “Yes.”

  He paused. “What about your employer?”

  “What about him?”

  “He seems to fancy himself a rather righteous individual. What if he overrules you? What if he decides I deserve to be punished. As if my whole life has not been punishment.” His voice broke for an instant, and he coughed to cover it.

  “He won’t call in the police unless I ask him to,” Peggy said.

  “You are certain of that.”

  “Yes.”

  She was far more certain of it than I was.

  “You say you are alone,” he went on. “I’m afraid I don’t believe you. Unfortunately, you have a recent history of resistance in this matter, of enlisting aid. Even though you had no need to.”

  “Not this time,” Peggy protested, but casually, the spider’s suspicion of no concern. “If you don’t believe me, look around. There are only two rooms, this one and that one. Marsh has gone home—he plays poker on Fridays and tonight he has to bring the beer. He gets it from a former client in Mill Valley, so he had to leave early. But go ahead and look. I’ll wait as long as you want.”

  I wa
s considering a series of imperfect hiding places when the phone rang. After the second ring I looked at my watch. Five thirty on the dot. Ruthie, by prearrangement. I heard Peggy pick up the receiver.

  “Hello. Yes, Marsh. Yes. It’s in the mail. No. He said to call him next week. Okay. Have a nice weekend. You, too. I will. Don’t be such a worrywart. Five more minutes. And don’t draw to an inside straight. ’Bye.”

  She hung up. A whoosh of air told me the spider had abandoned his inclination to search the office and had taken a seat on the couch across from Peggy’s desk. “So?” he began, the word smug and self-important. “What do we do now?”

  “I ask some questions.”

  “I’ve told you many times, Margaret. I ask the questions. You answer them.”

  Peggy’s voice stiffened. “If you’re going to be like that I’m going to call the police.”

  “Why?”

  “Because from now on it has to be different. If you don’t do what I say, I’ll file charges against you, no matter what you threaten to do to me.”

  The spider hesitated. “What is your question?”

  “I have many. The first one is, why me?” The words were earnest, the question genuine.

  “For several reasons,” the spider said abruptly. “Because you were nearby and I could observe you closely, to compare your answers with my observations. And because you are beautiful. And intelligent. And have lived life the way it has come to be lived in this day and age. You should feel complimerited that you were the one selected, Margaret. Believe me, I gave the matter much thought. I considered many possibilities before selecting you.”

  Peggy’s laugh was as edgy as my forebearance. “If you think my life is some sort of a model, then you don’t know me at all.”

  “Come now. You have married, and had a child. You have a skill that pays you a living wage. You see men. Several of them. You’ve been divorced along with half the others in the land. You have several women friends and you work for a man you respect and who respects you. In sum, when I formulated my plan you seemed quite typical of the type of woman a man like myself can expect to encounter these days. Typical enough to teach me.”

  “Teach you what?”