"Give it until six tonight. If you haven't
heard, then let me know. I'll handle it from there. I'll be back up
at the estate by then."
"Mister Wolfe I'd feel better if we could just
check out the situation."
"You do as I say."
Marco walked out of Wolfe's office with a
greater apprehension than when he walked in.
The hotel lobby smelled of damp musty wool and
stale cigarettes. A man wrapped in a large tattered olive green
coat, cradling a brown paper bag in his arms, was asleep on the
sofa. The pouring rain outside was a dismal reminder of the tightly
clenched jaws of Clarissa's trap and the pay phone on the wall
beckoned and teased her unmercifully.
She stood with her arms folded protectively
around her as she watched the rain through the hotel's front door.
As long as Phillips was in the hotel she could not go back to her
room. She was restless and nervous with inactivity and apprehension
and she prayed for an end to the storms and return of clear autumn
skies and warmer weather.
She thought about changing her looks and her
name, pan handling on the streets during the day up in Hollywood
for some change. Hugo would be back in Los Angeles after his grand
opening. He had rescued her from the streets once. He would do it
again. He could find her another place to hide, give her a job,
until she got back on her feet. She would somehow get her life
together. All she needed was a sunny day, and she could just walk
out there and start over, as long as Hugo was there to catch her.
He would be, she told herself. He would be.
Nothing meant more now than survival and
keeping out of Morgan's reach. It was not impossible if she kept
her head and did not let the ever present fear and terror dictate
her movements. Clarissa had the makings of a plan and she felt
relieved. There was hope. Slim and fleeting, but hope none the
less.
Lightning split the dark sky and a clap of
thunder cracked almost overhead. The intensity of the rain
increased, bouncing hail with a vengeance off the roofs of the
parked cars out on the street. Clarissa turned away and started
back toward the stairs. On an impulse she checked the coin return
on the pay phone. It was empty.
She heard their voices just before she mounted
the first riser. Dusty and Phillips. They were on the floor above
her in the stairwell. There was little point in letting herself be
seen. The first floor hallway was empty and Clarissa pressed
herself against the wall behind the stairs where she could still
see the front door. She needed to see her leave, to know that she
was out of the building before she felt safe.
Phillips hesitated at the front door, talking
to Dusty in a low voice. Clarissa could not hear what was being
said but from time to time Phillips looked around the lobby and
back up the stairs. Dusty shook his head and said something in
reply that seemed to make Phillips angry. The inspector shouldered
her way out the door and opened the umbrella. Clarissa smiled with
relief.
She did not hear the approaching footsteps on
the carpet behind her. The lean arm slipped around her waist and
jerked her off her feet. A hand clamped solidly over her mouth
before she could let out a scream.
Clarissa fought and scratched as the assailant
dragged her backward down the hallway. She watch helplessly as
Dusty disappeared back into his office. She kicked the wall to make
some kind of noise but her attempts were drowned by the fury of the
storm. The doors in the hallway did not open, and the sleeping man
on the lobby sofa never stirred.
A door opened behind her and she was pulled
into the darkness. The door slammed shut and she felt stairs under
her feet. She clawed frantically at the hand over her mouth as they
descended the wooden steps into the gray shadows of the basement
but could not budge the vise-like grip. He half dragged half
carried her through a maze of boilers and water tanks, under low
pipes, and past stacks of boxes, crates and assorted piles of
cobweb shrouded debris.
He kicked open a termite rutted door and
pushed Clarissa into a small dimly lit room. He kicked closed the
door and stood in the room holding her until she stopped
struggling. Then he stepped away until his back was against the
door. He watched her with his intense eyes, arms folded across his
chest.
Clarissa whirled to confront him and
immediately drew back as far as she could into the tiny room no
larger than her own. He no longer had the length of rope in his
hands but the young man unnerved her beyond panic. He made no move
toward her but he never took his eyes off of her.
"Who are you?" Clarissa screamed at him. "Why
are you doing this?"
His faced remained a stoic mask. There was no
hint of any emotion, no anger, malice, no passion. Only his eyes
seemed to be alive. They were expectant, patiently waiting for
Clarissa to do something, as if he thought she could read his
mind.
Clarissa scanned the room for a weapon,
anything that she could use if he decided suddenly to come at her.
Yet, he made no move.
"Who are you?" she ventured carefully. "What
do you want with me?" There was no response. His expression never
varied. "Can you hear me? Do you speak English?”
There was no way to tell if she was getting
through to him. He was a statue, mute and lifeless. The longer he
stood still, the more she allowed herself to relax, to think, to
try and find a way to escape.
She ventured a quick look around. The tiny
room was dark and gloomy with one window high in the wall near the
ceiling at side walk level. Under the window was a sink and
counter. A small old battered refrigerator hummed softly to one
side of the sink and a two burner hot plate sat on the counter. A
plate, a cup, and a bone handled carving knife newly washed, rested
in a plastic drainer on the other side of the sink. A cot with a
worn brown blanket was along one wall and an old portable radio,
some books, and a model race car missing a wheel sat on planks
supported by bricks that served as shelving.
"You can hear me," Clarissa said as she
pointed to the radio. "Can you speak?" The teenager did not respond
but his eyes seemed to soften slightly. Clarissa's gaze drifted
back to the knife in the drainer and she edged closer to it,
keeping her eyes on him for any sudden move. When he took a step
toward her she backed away toward the shelves.
She glanced down and examined the four books.
They were old and tattered but all of them were about photography.
Some envelops laying on the corner of the top shelf were addressed
to Randy Misko. When she looked up, his eyes seemed to be smiling
at her even though he had not moved a muscle. Then she noticed the
walls. They were covered with photographs, most torn from old
magazines, some were original photographs of the Hempstead Hotel
and the surrounding neighborhood.
Between a black and white photo of Elizabeth
Taylor in a perfume ad and a cover of People Magazine with Mick
Jagger, her own face stared back at her. It has been the Vogue
cover she had done in the red wide-brimmed hat, the one in Rome
when she first met Morgan Wolfe. There were other photo, mostly in
black and white. Homeless people, neighborhood toughs, shopkeepers.
But the photography was exquisite, haunting. Clarissa was
captivated.
"I'm Clarissa Hayden," she told him and put
her hand on the Vogue cover. His eyes said that he knew. "Are you
Randy? Maybe you can't speak. That's okay. I...I would like to go
back to my room. I know that you won't hurt me but I'd like to go
now. Please, Randy."
He moved slowly away from the door and toward
the shelves. Clarissa thought that he had understood her and took a
couple of steps toward the door. He caught her by the arm and swung
her around forcefully. She landed seated on the cot. He let go of
her and she bolted for the door. He grabbed her around the waist
and she fought and kicked as he set her back on the cot. She
crawled as far away from him as she could. The knife in the dish
drainer was a few feet away. She gaged the distance. She could
never reach it before he could stop her.
Clarissa watched as Randy pulled a shoe box
from under the shelf and opened it. He took out a black hair brush,
yanked Clarissa to her feet, and pulled her out of the
room.
"Randy," she cried as she struggled to break
the grip on her wrist. "What are you doing? Please, don't." Her
pleas were ignored as he pulled her farther into the basement.
"Please, let me go."
Clarissa was sobbing with terror when they
reached a dead end. The corner of the basement was sealed off by a
brick wall and the area was free of debris. Two high windows at
street level threw gray shadows on the cement floor and soot
stained brick walls. Clarissa squinted in the glare as Randy pushed
her back toward the wall. He thrust the hair brush into her hand
and stood a few steps away from her, staring intently. When
Clarissa backed into the corner, he pulled her out and pushed the
brush up into her hair.
She stood frozen, unable to comprehend his
motions, too frightened to do anything but stand there. Her eyes
darted about the corner of the cellar for any means of escape. The
windows were far too high out of her reach. She doubted that she
could get past Randy without him grabbing her. There was nothing
she could use as a weapon against him. There were no other halls or
doorways, only a recess into the brickwork covered by a wooden door
padlocked with what looked like a brand new lock.
Again, Randy approached her and bent her wrist
with the hair brush toward her head. "Please, don't," she
whimpered. "I don't know what you want."
He snatched the brush out of her hand and
tugged it through his hair once, then held it out to her. When she
did not take it immediately, he grabbed her hand and pushed the
brush into it. He stepped away and watched her.
She willed her hand to move, to drag the
bristles through her tangled hair. She hoped that whatever thrill
he got out of women brushing their hair would satisfy him enough to
let her go. Clarissa took her time, fighting down panic and the
thought that he wanted something else from her. Why drag her this
far into the bowels of the cellar to simply watch her brush her
hair? If he was planning to rape her he could have easily done it
in his room where there was some semblance of a bed. Why bring her
to an empty corner where there were windows?
Clarissa's hands shook as she pulled through
tangle after tangle. Randy watched her with his unnerving gaze, not
moving, his eyes showing nothing. Then, without warning, he pulled
the lock off the wooden cabinet and threw open the door. Clarissa
dropped the hair brush and shrank back into the corner. She stared
fixedly at his back, her mind a jumble of horrors at what the boy
possibly had in mind to do to her.
She groped on the floor for the fallen hair
brush, a pitiful weapon at best, but she needed something in her
hands. Clarissa held it above her head, ready to throw it at him
and run. When he turned toward her, to her utter surprise, he held
the battered old camera.
Randy crossed to her in two strides, pulled
Clarissa to her feet and pulled her under the light from the
windows. Then he stepped back and made some adjustments to the
lens.
"Randy," Clarissa's voice was a thin and
shaky. "Is that what you wanted? You scared me half to
death."
Randy paid little attention to her as he
focused and shot. He shoved her up against the wall where shadows
from the rain spattered windows made an eerie pattern on her face.
Then he photographed her from another angle. She seemed to sense
what he wanted. Slowly, she overcame her terror. She played to his
camera, stiff at first, then as she relaxed, she started to enjoy
it.
When he stopped to reload new film from his
stash in the cabinet, she fixed her hair and straightened her
clothes. His frightening strangeness bothered her less and less as
she gave him her best poses as if the olive drab work shirt and
paint-stained jeans were haute-couture fashion from Paris. It felt
good to work again even if it was for free in a dank cellar in a
homeless shelter, with the oddest photographer of any she had
known. Clarissa had not realized how much she had missed working
until Randy and his unorthodox manner brought her to his private
studio. There were no lights except from the window, no make-up,
only her natural beauty. There were no designer clothes, just
Virginia's old discards, but two hours later, when Randy had run
out of film, Clarissa felt exhilarated. She gave Randy a kiss on
the cheek. He had no reaction except to pull an object from his
pocket and press it into Clarissa's palm. When she opened her hand,
there was a quarter.
"Randy, I can't take this," she protested but
he had already turned away and was walking back through the maze to
his room. She had no choice but to follow him, or she would be lost
in the cellar.
Clarissa followed Randy as far as the stairs.
He disappeared into his room and she was left alone. There was a
reluctance to go back upstairs to the coldness of her own lonely
cell. The joy and elation she had experienced in front of Randy's
camera still lingered and she did not want to lose that precious
feeling. She sat on the bottom basement step and let the memories
of years past flood her like a warm fountain. Modeling had been her
very own dream and, despite the protests from her mother and
Andrew, she had made that dream come true.