“Tomorrow morning. Ten. Eleven.”
Fletch said, “You’ll live.”
Creasey said, “Yeah.”
He went back up the beach and over the sea wall.
Fletch had had concussions before, and he had suffered shock before, and he had spent nights on the beach before. He dreaded the hours before sunrise. They came. He remained on the beach, overviewing Vatsyayana’s lean-to. He forced himself to remain awake. The dew came. His jeans, his shirt became heavily wet. Even the inside of his nose became wet. He was horribly cold. He shivered violently, continuously. Staying awake was then no problem.
He thought of Alan Stanwyk’s wanting to die in a few days. His wife, his daughter, his mansion. It was possible, but Fletch had not yet proved it. He had not yet checked everything. Not all the way. He had a good sense of the man, but not yet a complete sense of the man. He tried not to speculate. He went over in his mind, again and again, what he would say into his tape recorder next time. What he knew. What he had checked absolutely. He reviewed all the things he did not know yet, all the facts he had not checked absolutely. There were many such facts. He reviewed his sources. There were not many fresh sources left. He counted the days—four, really, only four—he had left.
Sometime, he would have to sleep. He promised himself sleep. Sometime.
Light came into the sky.
Throughout that night, with the exception of Creasey, who was clearly carrying nothing, no one approached Vatsyayana’s lean-to. Fat Sam did not leave the lean-to.
By eight forty-five, Fletch was sweating in the sun.
People drifted onto the beach. Bodies that had remained on the beach all night moved. Some wandered down to the dunes to relieve themselves. Some did not bother to go to the dunes. No one spoke. They looked into each other’s eyes and got the message that Fat Sam had not yet received delivery. For a while, Fat Sam sat cross-legged in the opening of his lean-to, taking the morning sun. No one approached him. To a stranger, it would all look like young people sitting silently, half asleep, on the beach on a Sunday morning. Fletch saw the fear, the anxiety, the desperation in the darting eyes; the extraordinary number of cigarettes being smoked; the suppressed shaking of the hands. He heard the shattering silence. Some of these people had been hanging fire two or three days.
At ten-thirty Gummy returned to the beach. He sat alone. Over his long jeans he was wearing a Hawaiian shirt like a tent. His shoulders seemed no wider than the back of his neck. His face in profile was hawkish. He sat absolutely still, staring straight in front of him.
Bobbi came to the beach, and Creasey, and Sando, and July. They sat close to Fletch. No one said a word.
Fat Sam had moved back into the shadow of his lean-to. He had withdrawn.
“Jesus,” Sando said.
People began to move toward the lean-to. People in shorts, jeans, shirtless. Bikinis. People carrying nothing but money. The store was open. Fletch had not perceived a signal of any sort. First Creasey. Then Bobbi. They stood around outside the lean-to, not speaking, looking at their feet, their hands, not at each other, ashamed of their desperation. July, Bing Crosby, Gummy, Florida, Filter-tip, Jagger. Fletch stood with them. Milling. In and out of the lean-to. Somebody must have dropped something. There was a supply. Everything. Fat Sam was dealing. People who had been served began to hustle off the beach. Squirrels with nuts to store. They were going to stash. They were going to relieve their tensions. They were going to shoot up.
Fletch backed away, imitating the face of someone who had bought. Who was all right. Bobbi had scurried.
Down the beach, Fletch jumped into the ocean. The morning-cold salt water helped glue the separated parts of his head together. The blood was too congealed to wash out of his hair.
Walking back to his pad, past the Sunday-morning-closed stores of ordinary commerce, he heard the church bells ring. It was Sunday noon and everyone was shooting up.
Fletch slept past midnight.
17
When Fletch woke at a quarter to three Monday morning, he found Bobbi lying in the sleeping bag beside him. He had not heard or felt her come in. It took him a moment to realize she was dead.
The back of his scalp tingling, he scrambled out of the sleeping bag.
As he knelt in the moonlight beside her, his scream choked with horror.
Her eyes appeared to have receded entirely into her head. Her left arm was puffy at the elbow and shoulder. She showed no vital signs.
He guessed she had overdosed.
He spent until dawn ridding the room of every sign of her.
Until eleven o’clock, then, he sat cross-legged on the floor in the center of the room. Rock still. Thinking.
18
Early Monday afternoon, Fletch spent forty minutes under a warm shower in his own apartment. He had driven up from The Beach at about the pace of a hearse. Bobbi was dead and sort of buried. He washed his hair five times. Finally, the blood, the sand, the congealed mess was gone. A crooked, narrow abrasion under his hair was sore to the touch of his fingertips.