Tengu by Graham Masterton Page A

Flowers”
somewhere outside, and he raised his eyes and looked out of the kitchen window
toward the street.
    A man in a
white wide-brimmed hat and a white suit was standing not far away from Jerry’s
gate.
    Spanish, maybe, or Mexican. Although the shadow of the
midday sun obscured his face, the man appeared to be looking up toward the
house. His hands were pushed deeply into the pockets of his coat, and he was smoking
a cigarette. There was something about him that was oddly unsettling, as if he
were a leftover from some black-and-white private-eye movie of the 1950’s.
    Jerry watched
him for a minute or two. He couldn’t understand why the man’s appearance
disturbed him so much. The man stood quite still, his cigarette between his
lips. Then he crossed the street and walked downhill toward the corner of La
Sonoma Avenue. In a moment, he was gone.
    Jerry looked
down at his hands. His fists were clenched so tightly that his knuckles showed
white through the tan.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    B y four that afternoon, Eva Crowley was quite drunk. She was lying
on the white leather couch of her tenth-floor apartment in the better part of
West Los Angeles, wearing nothing but her black silk underwear, her hair
tousled into a fright wig and her face flushed.
    A bottle of
Tanqueray gin stood on the glass-topped Italian table beside her, and it was
two fingers away from empty. Eva’s black maid Matilda had put her head around
the door at about two o’clock that afternoon, but Eva had sent her away. This
particular pain she wanted to nurse on her own. She wanted no sympathy, no
help. She was determined to fight for Gerard, and she was determined to win him
back. But just for a few self-indulgent hours, she needed to wallow in her own
sense of loss.
    She sat up. Her
head felt like a hot-air balloon. All around her, the stylish living room
tilted and swayed. She picked up the gin bottle, frowned at it, and then
emptied the last dregs into her lipstick-smeared highball glass. She wished she
didn’t feel so suffocated and sick.
    After this
morning’s row, the opulent decor of their apartment seemed even colder than
ever.
    She had always
thought Gerard’s taste was sterile. He chose tables made of chrome and gray
smoked glass, tapestries woven in bland abstract patterns, and chairs
upholstered in neutral-colored leather. There was no emotional commitment in
Gerard’s surroundings. No warmth. He was an empty man with an empty mind.
    She wondered,
as she swallowed the oily-smelling gin, why she loved him at all. She only knew
that she did, and that she didn’t want to lose him. To lose Gerard would mean
the loss of her dignity, her femininity, and her pride.
    To lose Gerard
would mean that her mother had been right all along, that Eva was “born to be
unlovable.”
    She climbed
unsteadily to her feet and balanced her way across the polished parquet floor
to the liquor cabinet. There didn’t seem to be very much left. A bottle of tequila. A bottle of strega.
    Quarter of a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. Maybe she ought to mix
herself a combined cocktail out of all of them and drink herself into total
unconsciousness.
    She was just
trying to focus her eyes and her brain when there was a soft chime at the door.
She stood up straight, one hand on the cabinet for support. It must be the
twins, back from school.
    She stared at
her Cartier wristwatch. They were at least twenty minutes early.
    “Coming!” she
said, in a husky, high-pitched voice. She made her way out into the
cream-painted hall with its bonsai plants and Spanish rugs, and unlocked the
safety chain on the door.
    ‘‘You’re
early,’’ she said, opening the door and turning back into the hall. “How did
you...”
    She paused.
Something was wrong. It wasn’t the twins at all. Standing in the cool darkness
of the hall was a swarthy, smartly dressed man in a white suit and striped
maroon tie. He took off his hat and inclined his head slightly. He didn’t
attempt to come in.
    “You