April Evil

by John D. MacDonald

  The men moved quickly and silently. Mullin’s steps were soundless on the grass. After the house lights he could not see well. He saw the shadow move quickly away from the window. He heard Ace grunt, heard a shrill yelp cut off suddenly. There was a scuffling and the thick meaty sound of an open palm against flesh. He moved closer and saw that the Ace held a motionless figure.

  “It’s a kid,” Ace said.

  “Bring him in the house. Don’t let him yell.”

  They took him in through the back door, into the bright kitchen. The boy’s head lolled loosely and Ace had to support him on his feet. In the white fluorescence the smear of blood on the boy’s chin was dark and theatrical. He was a lean brown big-headed boy of about eleven. He needed a haircut. He wore a T-shirt and khaki shorts and sneakers. He became steadier on his feet and his eyes cleared. He looked at them. His eyes were a vivid astonishing blue.

  “You didn’t have to hit him,” the woman said indignantly. “He’s only a little kid.”

  “Shut up!” Mullin said.

  “The little son of a bitch tried to bite me,” Ace said.

  “It’s the same kid was on the dock the other day,” Mullin said. “What’s this with looking in windows, kid?”

  The boy backed a half step so that his thin shoulders were against the broom closet. “I was just walking around,” he said too defiantly.

  “Where do you live, kid?” Mullin asked.

  “That’s none of your business.”

  The Ace backhanded the boy across the mouth, knocking his head back against the broom closet door with a hollow thud. The boy’s face twisted up and he began to cry.

  “Where do you live?”

  Before the boy could answer, the Ace slapped him again, harder.

  “Where do you live?”

  “N-next door.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Toby Piersall.”

  “You’re a wise kid, going around looking in windows. What’s on your mind, kid?”

  Mullin noticed that the boy was staring at his left wrist, at the scar there. The boy looked from the wrist into Mullin’s eyes. He pressed himself back against the door and he turned pale. Mullin looked down at the scar.

  “Learn something, kid?” he asked, his voice very soft.

  “N-no sir. I … I …”

  Mullin moved forward and caught the slim brown arm, twisted it in a cruel, punishing grip. As the boy started to scream, Ace clamped a big hand across his mouth. The two men stood close over the boy, staring down at him. Mullin nodded and Ace took his hand away. The boy was snuffling.

  “You know who I am, don’t you? Say the name, kid.”

  “M-Mullin.”

  “You’re a smart kid. I bet you get good marks in school. So who else did you tell?”

  “Nobody.”

  Mullin exerted pressure again. Ace muffled the shrill yelp. They kept at it for some time. Finally they stepped back. The boy slid down and sat on his heels, all curled up, head against his knees, shoulders shaking.

  “Okay,” Mullin said. “I’m satisfied. It was his own idea. His people don’t know where he is. He didn’t tell anybody. We’re still all right.”

  “What are you going to do to him?” the woman asked.

  “Glad to oblige,” Ronnie said in a voice curiously high, tense and strained.

  “Hell no!” Mullin said harshly. “We won’t get cooperation if it starts off that way. Christ, who would get out on any kind of limb for us any place in the world if you start off killing a kid. Ace, go get one roll of that wide tape I had you buy. Pull those drapes across the windows in my room and put him in there. Tape him and gag him. Make sure he can breathe all right. Sal, after Ace tapes him, it’s your problem. Check on him every once in a while. Listen, kid. You hear me? Lift your head.”

  The boy looked at him.

  “We’re leaving here tomorrow. We’re leaving you in the house. They’ll find you later. You got a big nose and it got you in trouble. But the trouble won’t be any worse than it’s been already if you don’t try to get wise again.”

  After the Ace said the boy was all set, Mullin went into the bedroom and checked him. The boy was on his back on the floor in front of the closet door. He lay grasping his own elbows, forearms taped together from wrist to elbow. He could not reach the tape with his teeth and there was no way he could exert pressure against it. Tape encircled his ankles, and his legs just above the grubby knees. A wide piece of tape was pasted across his mouth. The eyes, full of tears, glinted in the light of the bed lamp. Mullin checked the tightness of the tape and grunted approval.

  He went back out into the kitchen.

  “I don’t like it,” Ace said.

  “It isn’t good. But there’s no harm done,” Mullin said.

  “Sure,” Ace said. “No harm. That’s a big house next door. The kid doesn’t come home all night. By tomorrow there’ll be a big yell about kidnapping. Maybe there’ll be road blocks.”

  “So there’s a road block. The car isn’t hot. My papers are all okay. We’ve got no kid with us.”

  “I don’t like it,” Ace said, his voice louder. “I didn’t feel right about it at first. I don’t like it. Let’s get the hell out of here now.”

  Ronnie was leaning against the sink. He laughed. It was a bright boyish laugh. It broke the sudden tension between Mullin and the Ace. Both men looked at him in annoyance.

  “Ace,” Ronnie said, “you’re getting old and soft and fat and slow. You should maybe get a new start selling brushes from door to door. Your brain is getting as soft as your gut. You’re in bad shape.”

  Ace’s face darkened. “Bad shape! Look, I …”

  “Sure you’re in bad shape. Look at the gut on you. Try this, Ace.” Ronnie bent over and touches his knuckles to the waxed floor, not bending his knees, doing it easily, lithely, coming up smiling.

  “I don’t want to play games,” Ace said in a sullen tone.

  “You can’t do it. So you won’t try.”

  The Ace glared at Ronnie, and then he bent over, straining to reach the floor with his fingertips. He strained, getting a little closer each time. The other three watched him. Mullin, puzzled and frowning. Sally with blank face. Ronnie with a half smile. With a movement as quick and practiced as a dance step, Ronnie took the short paring knife from the drainboard and moved close to the Ace. As the Ace, alarmed by the movement, started to straighten up, Ronnie plunged the knife blade into the nape of the big man’s neck.

  There is no death more instantaneous when the thrust is perfect. The spinal cord is completely severed. All motors cease in that instant. The heart stops. The lungs stop. No dying messages can be given the great muscles of the body. It is as final as decapitation. The blade was at right angles to the spinal column, and the thrust was exact. Ace went from full-bodied life into the formlessness of one long dead. Perhaps the only awareness was a white flash behind the eyes, awareness gone forever before he struck the floor.

  He raised himself not one fraction of an inch beyond the point where the blade struck him. He fell at once, sprawled, heavy, meaty face slapping the waxed floor. He did not move, twist. He was clay. Ronnie stood over him and did not breathe. Then he turned and tossed the knife into the sink. It clattered and came to rest.

  “God damn it!” Mullin whispered. “God damn you!”

  The girl was biting the back of her arm. Her eyes said nothing. She could have been stifling laughter.

  “He was going to bitch it up,” Ronnie said. He was breathing deeply, slowly.

  “I needed him.”

  “You don’t need him. You never needed him. Two can handle it. The old man will open the box for you.”

  “God damn you, Ronnie!”

  “I was sent here to do it. That answer your questions?”

  Mullin stared at him. “The Ace? Why?”

  “One of the usual reasons. What difference does it make? We can handle it. The cuts will be fatter. He was about to crack up. It was nice a
nd quiet, wasn’t it?”

  Mullin stared at the body. He sounded bemused “Yes, it was quiet. It was that, all right.” Ronnie knelt and worked the Ace’s wallet out of his hip pocket. It contained a few dollars. He felt the thick dead waist, took the bloody-bladed knife and after pulling shirt and trousers out of the way, he cut the money belt loose. Mullin counted the money.

  “Twenty-two hundred,” Mullin said. “Cut it?”

  “Give the girl the deuce, and it’s ten bills apiece for us, if that’s all right.”

  The woman was taking great pains not to watch them or look at the body. She took the two hundred, folded it twice and put it down the front of her blouse.

  “Go in with the kid,” Mullin ordered. “Take your radio along if you want to.”

  The woman left the room. They discussed where to put the body. Ronnie emptied the rest of the pockets. Then he linked his arms around the big ankles, and, bending low, dragged the body out to the utility room. He worked it behind the water heater and the water softener tank. He found an old grass rug in the corner. He unrolled it and tossed it over the body and tucked it around the exposed legs. Ronnie felt very tired. It was a warm comfortable tiredness. He couldn’t stop yawning. He knew that his sleep would be deep and safe and perfect this night, like the dreamless sleep of childhood. It was always that way.

  Toby was startled when the woman came in. She turned on another light. She had a small radio with her. She plugged it in and tuned it to quiet music. She stood over him, looking down at him. He looked up at her. She seemed very tall. Her face was in shadow.

  She knelt beside him and put her fingertips on his forehead and smoothed his hair back. “Can you breathe okay, kid?”

  He nodded. The act of casual kindness made tears come to his eyes again.

  “You shouldn’t have messed around those fellas, kid. They’re too rough. I guess you know that. Your arm hurt?”

  He nodded again.

  “It’ll be okay. Your ma and pa are going to be awful upset about you, but it’s going to come out all right. I won’t let them hurt you.”

  She got a blanket from the closet. She folded it double on the floor and moved him over onto it. She took a pillow and got it under his head. She patted his cheek and then lay down on the bed, her head close to the radio. The music was quiet. By turning his head he could see her round arm and one upraised knee.

  It hadn’t been anything like he thought it would be. They hadn’t acted the way he thought they would act. He had been scared when the big one had caught him. He had been hit and then it had been like being in a funny dream and waking up from the dream in the bright kitchen with them all looking at him.

  It wasn’t at all like television. Kids never got hit on television. Something always made it come out all right. The kids could be in danger, but nothing bad ever happened. Nothing like this. Somebody always came through the door with a gun.

  He had felt grown-up and responsible, watching through that window. He had felt as though he were protecting something pretty important. But in the kitchen he hadn’t been grown-up at all. He felt about six years old. Crying like a baby. If they were mad at you and hit you because they were mad, that was one thing. But these men hadn’t been mad at all. They’d just done it. They didn’t look as though they were even thinking about it.

  It was Mullin all right. In the kitchen he had prayed that it wouldn’t be. But it was. And Mullin had seen him find out and had understood.

  He wondered what would happen to him. He wondered what they would do at home when they started to worry. He wondered what that funny noise had been, like somebody falling, and then a lot of whispering. Why were these men down here in Flamingo? Maybe they were going to rob the bank. He knew he’d been wrong about the other two. They were as bad as Mullin. They didn’t look it until you saw them close, and then they looked even worse. He tried to get his fingers on the tape. He couldn’t reach it. And then, with sudden knowledge, with a heartbreaking awareness of self, too adult for his years, he knew that even if he could manage to touch the tape, he would not try to unwind it. He would not try anything. Like a small wary animal, he would merely try to endure.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  At five-thirty on that Thursday, Ben Piersall received a phone call in his office.

  “Ben? Dave Halpern. I think I’ve got a little on that item we talked about this noon.”

  “So soon? Good Lord!”

  “It isn’t conclusive, but it adds up to a little. Want me to come up?”

  “I’ll wait for you.”

  Lorraine Bibbs said good night and left. Ben waited in the outer office, the door open. Dave Halpern came down the hall and came in, smiling. Dave was a small gray man in his late forties. He had been a detective lieutenant on the Minneapolis force and had moved to Flamingo five years before because of his wife’s poor health. He made an adequate living doing private investigation work and credit work. He was calm and experienced and reliable.

  They went into the inner office. Without preamble, Halpern began his report. “J. L. Mooney sells cars for Dil Parks. Dil hired him about Christmas time. He’s a drifter. Yesterday or the day before he gave up his room in town and moved into a cabana out at South Flamingo Beach. Yesterday morning he visited Doctor Tomlin along with Lenora Parks. Today Lenora Parks left her home before three and drove to Mooney’s cabana. I parked down the road. Mooney arrived about five minutes later. The two of them stayed in the cabana until about twenty of five. There was no time to rig a phone tap. The woman left first. Mooney left five minutes later. I let myself in. They’d been playing house. That was pretty obvious. There was a pad by the telephone. Here’s the number that was written on the pad. 8-6861. Maybe it’s nothing. I didn’t check. I didn’t hang around long. My status wasn’t exactly legal. I couldn’t find out if she’d been there yesterday at the time that call was made.”

  “Let’s check it right now.”

  Halpern leaned back and Ben dialed the number. A girl answered and said, “Flamingo Builder’s Supply.”

  “Oh … Is Mr. Shannon in?”

  “He’s just leaving. I think I can catch him.”

  Ben held his hand over the mouthpiece. “Dick Shannon. It would be a good choice. Dick talks almost as much as Hedges. Hello? Hello, Dick? This is Ben Piersall. Say, I want to ask you something that may sound strange. Did you get a call from Doctor Tomlin today?”

  “I sure as hell did.”

  “What time did you get it?”

  “I’d say about four, maybe a little later. Ben, he’s a sweet old guy, so they tell me, but they better come after him with a net.”

  “What did he want?”

  “Wanted a hell of a lot of native stone. Said he was going to build himself a big house way out on Richmond. That’s where his house is. I thought he was going to build another, and then he said he was going to get Tom Lowell to design it for him. Tom died back in forty-six. You know, damn it, he was talking about the house he’s already got. When I got the point I sort of kidded him along. But I’m certainly not going to order that stone.”

  “Dick, this is a pretty delicate situation. I can’t explain all of it. But you would be doing me a personal favor if you mention this to nobody.”

  “Why not? If the old guy is …”

  “I’m morally certain that Doctor Tomlin did not make that call.”

  “Listen, I know his voice over the phone.”

  “Somebody was imitating him.”

  There was a long silence. “You sound as if you mean it, Ben. What is it? Legal stuff?”

  “I may be able to tell you later, Dick.”

  “Okay. I’ll forget it happened.”

  Ben Piersall hung up and nodded at Halpern. “Mooney made the call. It’s conclusive enough for me. I think that’s all we need, Dave.”

  “If you want, I can go put the fear of God in Mooney. It would be a pleasure.”

  “No thanks. This is enough. You’ll mail me a bill.”

  Halpe
rn got up. “Sure thing. Sorry it didn’t last longer. And I’m sorry I’m ethical too. I could stretch this one out. I could go to Parks and sell him the idea of buying a little evidence against his wife. Say, I heard you used to go with her a long time ago.”

  “I nearly married her.”

  “Wow! You sure landed on your feet. Give my best to Joan and the kids.”

  Piersall sat alone in his office after Halpern had left. He wondered what he should do with the information. Dr. Tomlin was paying for the information and he had a right to know how it had checked out. But it was a serious responsibility to take. Tell Dr. Tomlin the story and the will would remain the way it had been signed at three o’clock that afternoon. From the icy point of view of impartial justice that was entirely correct. Lennie deserved no share of Tomlin’s wealth. But Piersall understood her. She was not thoroughly evil. She was thoughtless and greedy and ruthless—in the same way a child is. She expected her world to be sequins and bangles.

  He began to realize that he could not handle it impartially. He would see Lennie. Faced with exposure, she would stop. In a few days he would tell Dr. Tomlin they could find no evidence that Lennie had done it. Then the decision would rest with Dr. Tomlin as to whether to add a codicil reinstating the trust funds for his nearest relatives.

  He phoned his home and got Sue on the line and asked to speak with Joan.

  “Honey, I’ve got an errand. I’m going to be a little late. Okay?”

  “It’s chops. I can put them on when you get here, dear.”

  “And have a big fat dry martini in the freezer. This has been one of those days.”