“Wilco, my lamb.”
After-work traffic was thinning out as he drove out to the Parks home at Seascape Estates. The round sun was changing from yellow-white to orange as it slid toward the steel blue Gulf. The wind was from the east and the Gulf was flat calm. Dil Parks turned into the drive just ahead of him. They both got out of the cars at the same time. Dil came over, hand outstretched. “How the hell are you, Ben boy?”
As one of Lennie’s previous boy friends, Piersall had always received a shade too much cordiality from Dil. They always beamed at each other, shook hands too heartily, both aware of mutual dislike, but intent on being more than civilized. Piersal’s dislike was mixed with pity, because he, and most of the town, was aware that Dil Parks wore the most ornate set of horns in the area—large, curved, studded with brass and agleam with chrome.
They went into the house together and Lennie came in from the beach side to meet them in the living room. She wore a white sharkskin sunsuit, one cotton work glove, and she carried a red enameled pair of pruning shears. She looked industrious, plausible and glowing. Piersall found it hard to relate her to the cabana scene Halpern had indicated.
He had not counted on Dil being there. He had imagined his interview with Lennie alone. He sensed their curiosity as to why he had stopped in. They would know it wasn’t social. His social patterns were quite different. Dil went out to the kitchen to make drinks.
“What is it, Ben?” Lennie asked in a low voice.
He made his decision at that moment. He told himself that he was doing it for her own good. He told himself that his dislike for Dil had no part in his decision. “I want to talk to both of you.”
The drinks came. They sat out on the small patio. The rim of the red sun touched the edge of the Gulf. They sat in three chairs, three points of an orderly triangle.
They both looked at him expectantly. Piersall sipped his drink and looked at Lennie. “A lawyer has to do many awkward things, Lennie. This is as awkward as any of them. I’ll make it blunt. On Wednesday morning you took a man named Mooney, who works for Dil, to Doctor Tomlin’s home. Mooney met the doctor. On Wednesday afternoon sometime around three thirty, Mooney placed a call to Bud Hedges, the realtor. He placed it from a cabana he recently rented on South Flamingo Beach. You were with him when he placed the call. He imitated Doctor Tomlin and talked nonsense to Hedges. After the call Hedges started to spread the information that Tomlin was senile, had lost his memory. This afternoon around four Mooney made another call from the cabana. This one was to Dick Shannon. It was the same deal. Shannon thought it was Doctor Tomlin. You approached me early this week on the golf course and wanted to employ me to get Doctor Tomlin committed. I refused. Presumably other attorneys around town refused also. So you started this campaign to make Doctor Tomlin look ridiculous and incompetent.”
He had watched her carefully as he spoke. He did not look at Dil. In the beginning she had looked dazed, and then defiant. Toward the end her head drooped and she looked smaller in the chair, smaller and helpless.
Dil came out of his chair with bulky speed to stand over her, fists clenched. “You and Mooney. A great idea! My God, you’ve really torn it now. I told you you couldn’t work it. No. You have to be in a big hurry. Now you’ve spoiled the whole damn thing.”
Her voice like a bright sharp lash drove him back. “I’ve torn it. I’ve ruined everything. Is Jim Stauch holding a bad check of mine? Do I owe Jim Stauch four thousand dollars?”
The anger left Dil’s stance abruptly. “How … Look, it was just a …”
“Get the hell out from in front of me. I can’t see Ben and we happen to be talking.”
Dil walked back to his chair and sat down, his mouth working. Lennie said calmly, “Does Uncle Paul know about all this?”
“He suspected it. Today I wrote a new will for him. He was examined for competence by two doctors. Their reports are on file with the original of the will. He cut both of you out of the will completely until such time as your participation in this scheme could be disproved or verified, Lennie.”
“God damn it, Lennie,” Dil rumbled.
“Shut up. Are you going to tell him, Ben?”
“That’s up to you. I think you’ve been a fool, Lennie. Conspiracy is a nasty word. The courts don’t like it. I want you to give me your solemn word of honor that you will not continue with this scheme or anything remotely resembling it.”
“You have my word.”
“Her word of honor,” Dil said.
“In that case, I won’t tell Doctor Tomlin you didn’t do it. I’ll tell him we couldn’t find any evidence that you did. Then it will be up to him to add a codicil to the new will if he so wishes.”
Dil wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “How much did she lose for us?”
“I can’t tell you that,” Piersall said. “And please understand, Lennie. I should have gone to Tomlin. I didn’t go because I think you’re foolish and greedy—rather than vicious.”
“Isn’t it nice to play God?” Lennie said in a quiet voice.
“Don’t start that!” Dil said. “He’s giving you a break. Maybe you can’t get that through your head.”
“Don’t yammer at me. He’s playing God and enjoying it.”
Dil got up again, more pleading than angry. “Please stop it, Lennie. Don’t get him sore. He can tell Uncle Paul and then we’re cooked for good.”
“He won’t tell him. He couldn’t feel virtuous if he did. That’s Bennie’s fatal flaw, Dil. He likes to feel virtuous. And stop ranting at me. You’re the one who put us in the bag for four thousand dollars we don’t have. Your poker pal, Jim Stauch, came here today and gave me the news. He’s going to take this house. I guess you know that.”
“Lennie, honey …”
“Don’t Lennie me. Don’t honey me. Just keep your mouth closed.”
“I better be running along,” Piersall said uncomfortably.
“Life among the savages makes you uncomfortable?” she asked sweetly. “Then maybe you better leave.”
Piersall put his unfinished drink down and stood up. He said, “Dil, you better let Mooney go. You might tell him it’s time to head north.”
They were all standing, and as they moved through the big open glass doors into the house, Dil said, “I’ll sure as hell let him go and fast. I never liked him anyway, and …” His face changed, seemed to grow heavier as a new facet of the situation occurred to him. He turned slowly toward Lenora. His voice was thick. He pointed his finger at her.
“Wait a minute. From his cabana. That’s where you made those calls, the two of you. What the hell was in it for him? He’s sharp. What was in it for him?”
Lennie looked at him and smiled. Piersall was shocked by her smile. She moved her body in a way that was just faintly suggestive and said with clear and unmistakable emphasis, “What do you think was in it for Mooney, darling?”
Dillon Parks made an astonishing sound. It was like the harsh bark of a small dog. He sprang at her, swinging his fist. It clubbed her on the side of the head. She flew sideways, loose-jointed as a boudoir doll. She fell against a basket chair that stood on slim wrought iron legs and went over with it, and rolled and came to rest face down, blonde hair spilled. She looked small and broken.
They both ran to her. Dillon dropped on his knees beside her and turned her over gently. Her eyelids fluttered and she opened dazed eyes and made a low moaning sound. Dillon sobbed and gathered her into his arms and stood up with her.
Ben said, “Is there anything I can …”
Dillon held his wife in his arms and looked at Ben. “There isn’t anything you can do. This is between us. This is something we have to work out. I shouldn’t have done that, but she shouldn’t have done what she did, and we just have to work it out. Maybe there’s a hell of a lot of other things we have to work out, too.” His voice was unexpectedly steady and strong, his eyes agonized. “So all you can do for us, Ben, is just leave.”
At the doorway, l
etting himself out, Piersall looked back. Dillon had turned to go toward the back of the house, and Lennie had slipped her thin brown arm around his heavy neck.
It was nearly dark when Ben Piersall turned in at his own driveway. The kids were in the front room watching television. Joan came out to the kitchen to meet him. She had changed to the type of clothing that he liked best on her, a frothy white blouse that set off the contour and texture of her good brown shoulders and round brown arms, a flaring candy-striped skirt. She kissed him and her eyes were fond. With pirouette and half bow she presented him with a chilled martini from the deep freeze.
“I fed the starving animals,” she said. “We eat alone.”
“I would even take you out. You look take-outable.”
“And you look tired around the eyes, dear. Don’t make major sacrifices. Your day was bad?”
“Lurid. Melodramatic. Maybe a day movie lawyers have. All the base emotions.”
“I can hardly wait.”
The night was warm and still. They ate on the side porch, stars showing through the overhead screen, candle flames moving slightly. He told her the events of the day. She was awed, amused, appalled.
Long after he had finished she said, “Ben, do you ever think that everybody else in the world is slightly mad? That we’re the only sane ones? The only safe ones?”
“Sometimes. And then I feel superstitious about it. I want to knock on wood when I think about us.”
“And when I look at you.”
“The wench is bold.”
“But of course!”
“Bold and pretty aromatic.”
“This gunk is called ‘Tigress.’ And you’re downwind. I planned it that way.”
“Hmmm. I’m nowhere near as weary as I was, friend Joan.”
“I planned on that, too.”
They carried the dishes back into the kitchen. He went into the living room. Sue, on the floor, was making an intricate ceremony out of doing her nails, her history homework, and watching television.
“Where’s Toby?” Ben asked.
Sue looked around blankly. “I thought he was here. Maybe he’s in his room.”
Ben turned the volume down and opened the evening paper. Joan came into the living room twenty minutes later. “Where’d Toby go?”
“He’s in his room,” Ben said.
Joan came back a few minutes later. She said, “Not there. Did he go out?”
“He didn’t say anything about going out,” Sue said.
Joan sat with her sewing kit, doing some mending. Ben found that he couldn’t keep his mind on his reading. It wasn’t like Toby to take off without a word. When he looked over at Joan she looked up at him, frowning a little. He knew that her thoughts were the same as his. He left the room. Toby’s bicycle was still in the garage. He looked at the rack of fishing rods. They were all there. He went back into the living room and said, “Bike is there, and he isn’t fishing.”
“Maybe he went over to see Mike,” Joan said. She put the sewing aside and stood up. “I’ll give them a ring.”
Ben listened to her voice on the phone. Toby wasn’t with Mike. He heard her try another number, and then another. She came back into the living room frowning.
“I don’t understand it,” she said.
Ben left the house. He walked around the yard, walked down to the sea wall. The star reflections were steady on the still black water. A mocking bird down the street played infinite variations on a theme, his voice as silver as the star reflections. He stood in the night and called his son in a great voice, and listened to the stillness that answered him.
An hour later the last of his irritation and annoyance at the boy had vanished. It had been replaced by an odd fear. Both children were polite and obedient. It was Toby’s bedtime. He wore a wristwatch and used it. He knew enough to telephone.
He tried to reassure Joan, and knew that she was trying to reassure him. But there was a flavor of fear in the house. It had infected Sue, making her eyes wider. Joan had called every person she could think of.
By midnight it had gotten very bad indeed. He could no longer retain objectivity for more than a few moments at a time. It was a warm night. Toby had decided to take a swim in the bay. But his trunks were not gone. They could not find his clothing. And he did not like to swim in the bay.
There were other possibilities. As a lawyer he had seen some of the men who had drifted into town. Degenerates. As callous and thoughtless as any animal. Night creatures, reeking of evil.
They tried to maintain the pretense of reassurance, but it was no good. Sue had been sent to bed, but she had come out again in her robe and she sat in a deep chair in the living room, her eyes wide and her mouth tense. When she had tried to make a suggestion, they had both listened and then snapped at her. Her ideas were too far-fetched.
He had run away. But he had seemed all right. Joan said he had acted strangely the last two days. Yet he would have left a note. And he would have taken his bike, and the money from his box in his bureau drawer, and certain small treasures.
At a quarter after midnight Piersall called the police. Lieutenant Dan Dickson, an acquaintance, was on duty.
“Dan, this is Ben Piersall. My … my boy, Toby, is missing.”
“Missing? Did he go to the movies or anything?”
“No. He was right here after dinner. He walked out without saying a word to anybody. He hasn’t come back. He didn’t take his bike. He didn’t go fishing. He didn’t go swimming. Joan and I just can’t understand it, Dan.”
“Ten years old, isn’t he?”
“Eleven.”
“I imagine you’ve phoned his friends.”
“Every one we could think of.”
“What time did he take off?”
“Some time after eight.”
“Ben, has he wandered off like this before?”
“Never. It isn’t like him. It isn’t the sort of thing he’d do. That’s why we’re getting pretty … upset about it.”
“Better give me a complete description and I’ll relay it to the cars. Then dig up a recent picture and I’ll stop out and pick it up and talk to you some more, Ben.”
Ben gave the description. He hung up and turned away from the phone. He saw Joan’s face and saw that she was close to the edge. He saw that she would break very soon. He did not know what he could do about it. He held her in his arms and felt the trembling of her body. He looked over her shoulder and saw his daughter turn her eyes away from them with innate tact.
“Steady, Joanie,” he whispered to his wife.
Her voice was muffled. “I keep thinking. You said … about knocking on wood.”
“Forget what I said.”
“I can’t help thinking about it. We said it, but we didn’t knock on wood. Either of us. We could have and we didn’t.”
“He’s all right. It’s just something we don’t understand. He’s all right. Believe me.”
“I can’t believe you. I try to and I can’t.”
He could not tell her what he was thinking. It would deprive her of what little control she had left. He was thinking how he had played God that very day, how he had sat in judgment. Pride goeth before a fall. Things had been so good for so long. He had sat in judgment, in smugness and complacency, feeling superior to the troubles of others, convinced that his own star was soundly and properly placed in a sane known sky. This new black fear was the price he was paying for pride and for a certainty beyond that which any man was entitled to feel.
Dan Dickson, big, young, mild, florid and bald, arrived shortly before one, filling the entry hall, black leather belt creaking, shield and buttons aglow in the lights, black crosshatched pistol butt at his hip looking ominous and official. He did not bring any reassurance or lessening of tension. He underlined the knowledge that this was Trouble.
He selected two of the pictures, sat and talked about the boy in a low voice, made a cursory investigation of Toby’s room and left, telling them not to worry. It
was like telling them not to breathe.
It was some time after he had left that Sue fell asleep in her chair. Ben and Joan lowered their voices so as not to disturb her. Joan had turned out some of the lights. She had cried, but now she was calm again, the calm of emotional exhaustion. She sat in the chair, her legs pulled up, her face turned away from him. The lamplight modeled the hollow of cheek and temple, the delicacy of brow and jaw, the neatness of the way her head was mounted on neck and shoulders. She was utterly still. The candy-striped skirt was drawn tight across the roundness of her thigh. One hand clasped her ankle loosely. He looked at the picture she made there, and he felt a sudden harsh stir of desire for her. It shamed him to feel that way at such a time. It made him feel goatish, shallow and irresponsible.
The night was a great dark ship moving slowly by them, so slowly that motion was almost imperceptible.
He awakened with a start and saw that it was after three. His mouth was dry and sour. He got up and went outside. Joan gave him a weak distracted smile as he left. The coast was full of the stillness of the early morning hours. All the houses except his were dark. Earlier in the evening friends had phoned for news of Toby, but the calls had ceased. Friends had stopped by and stayed for a few moments and left. Ben would have encouraged them to stay for Joan’s sake, but she made it apparent that she too did not wish their vigil shared.
He went back in and stood over her. “You ought to lie down,” he said.
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“That doesn’t matter. Lie down. It will rest you a little.”
“If I should fall asleep …”
“I’ll awaken you the minute I hear anything.”
“Sue should be in bed too.”
He woke Sue up. Her face was stunned with sleep, tongue thick. He told her they had learned nothing yet. He led his groggy daughter to her room. She leaned on his arm. It made him remember all the times they, the four of them, had returned from vacation late at night, the kids—much smaller then—asleep in the back seat of the car. They would open the closed house and he would carry the kids in, one at a time, small furry animals who smelled of sleep and made odd mutterings. In the morning they would not remember having arrived.
April Evil Page 15
