The Eighth Circle

by Stanley Ellin

  “Now what?” she said, and peered through the tangle of hair at Murray. Then she slung the hair back to her shoulders and smiled up at him, a surprisingly young girl with wise, cat-green eyes and a childishly pretty face. “Hey,” she said, “you’re cute.”

  The old man seemed indifferent to this. He went up behind her, took a wad of absorbent cotton from the table, dipped it into the fluid, and suddenly dug it into her scalp. She yelped and grabbed at his wrist, and he slapped her hand away.

  “See that?” he said to Murray, hefting the weight of hair. “Costs eight bucks to do in one of them there beauty parlors. Costs me one buck if I do it for her right here. Takes a fool woman not to know how much seven bucks is worth in your pocket.” He applied the cotton vigorously, and the girl yelped again.

  “Take it easy,” she said. She looked coyly at Murray. “I’m really a natural redhead, but sometimes it needs touching up, and he does it real good.”

  The old man wheezed loudly. “Ought to open up a regular beauty parlor all my own. Make a million dollars easy.”

  “Go on,” the girl told him, “you got a million already.” She reached for a cigarette on the table and lit it, the bath sheet slowly, inexorably slipping downward. The old man, dabbing steadily away with the cotton, saw it, glanced slyly at Murray, and then did nothing about it.

  “Slut,” he said. “You won’t get a penny of that money. Not a cent.”

  “Bow-wow,” the girl jeered.

  “Not a cent. Give it to my poor old sister, that’s what. Treated her bad all my life, and it’s time for a change.”

  “Not with my money,” the girl said.

  “Give her the house, too. Been in the family a hundred years. Ought to stay in the family.”

  The girl reached out behind her and caught his wrist, and this time he could not shake her off. “Daddy-o,” she said gently, “remember me? I’m the family now.”

  “You’re a slut.”

  “I’m all the family you got now, daddy, and don’t you forget that. And don’t talk so much. You’re blowing down my neck.” She released his arm and he went back to work, clucking and muttering to himself. “Never mind him,” she told Murray; “he don’t know what it’s all about. You got any business here, I’ll take care of it.”

  “I’ve got business,” Murray said. He took one of the cigarettes from her pack and lit it, watching her closely. “I’m handling a law case for somebody named Arnold Lundeen. You know him?”

  “Know him! Are you kidding?”

  “No.”

  “Mister, Arnie’s my boy friend. As soon as daddy here kicks off he and I are getting married. You mean, you’re handling his case, and you don’t know that?”

  The flame of the match he was holding suddenly stung Murray’s fingers. He dropped the match, and then with great care ground it out under his heel.

  “No,” he said, “I don’t. But you can see why he didn’t want to talk about you. I guess he’d do anything to keep you from getting involved in this mess.”

  The girl’s eyes shone. “That’s Arnie, all right. Isn’t he the sweetest man thing you ever met up with? I even told him I’d stand right up in court for him, but he said that was O-U-T, out. But anything I can do to help, mister, you can count on me, all right.”

  “You mean,” Murray said, “you’d be a witness for him in court?”

  “Sure I would. Why not?”

  It was wondrous to contemplate. It would be a three-ring circus for everybody concerned. If she didn’t testify, there were twenty great big unexplained minutes in Arnold Lundeen’s life that would hang him; if she did, Ruth Vincent was in for the shock of her life right there in open court. But was the courtroom the place to strip Lundeen naked for Ruth’s benefit? With the wheels within wheels spinning fast now, it was something to be thought out very carefully.

  “What’s on your mind?” the girl said. “Do I look funny to you or something?”

  “You look fine to me. Say, do you know this Ira Miller, this bookie who’s supposed to have paid off Lundeen?”

  “No, I don’t, and that’s all right with me. I wouldn’t waste my spit on his kind.”

  The old man tossed the cotton on the table and then thrust the girl’s head over the bowl. “Bookies,” he said. “They’re all bums. Cops are different. You’re smart, you get close to cops. Then you got no violations in your house. Save plenty of good money that way. Just got to be smart, that’s all.”

  “Ah, shut up,” the girl said. She twisted around to see Murray. “Look, next time you talk to Arnie, mister—hey, what’s your name, anyhow?”

  Murray handed her his card, and she took a long time to read it, her lips silently framing each syllable. “What’s this investigations stuff? I thought you were his lawyer.”

  “I’m working with his lawyer.”

  “Oh. Well, anyhow, Murray, when you see Arnie you tell him to keep on writing me, even if I ca—even if I don’t write back. You tell him I got all his letters saved up, and I read them all the time for kicks. You do that, huh?”

  “And have him jump on me for bothering you with this? You know how he is, Helene; he’d worry himself sick about it. He’d be sore as a boil.”

  The girl thought that over happily. “He would, too, the doll. He can be real worrisome sometimes.”

  “You see? Best thing right now is to keep it to ourselves. Don’t tell him anything about it. When we need you in court I’ll get in touch with you.”

  He went out through the dark corridor unaccompanied. At the curb before the house a truck was parked, its trailer bundled high with Christmas trees, the first he had seen coming into the city this season. The air all around the truck was permeated with the spicy scent of resin and green, and he stopped to take a long breath of it.

  It was a good, clean smell.

  6

  Didi barged into his apartment the next day at noon, magnificent in mink.

  She said: “Sweetie, if you’re going with me, you simply cannot sit there all day over breakfast or whatever it is. Now be a lamb and get all shaved and prettied up, and I’ll have a cup of coffee meanwhile. How can they always make such wonderful coffee here, and no matter what I do with mine it’s practically obscene. And a piece of toast, please. No, wait a second, what are those things under the napkin?”

  “Bagels,” said Murray. “Want one? And where am I supposed to be going with you?”

  “No, they look like plastic doughnuts. And today is Alex’s opening, of course. It’s the preview.” Alex was the Accidentalist painter. “Oh, Murray, don’t tell me you didn’t get my invitation. I know you’d be lying.”

  “All right then, I got it,” Murray said equably. “Say, come to think of it, I did get a card from some gallery during the week. Was that about Alex?”

  “Of course it was. And I wrote a perfectly beautiful note on the back of it that you never even read. Sweetie, why do I have anything to do with you when you can be such a gargantuan stinker?”

  “Because I appreciate you. And I think you look like the Empress of All the Russias in that coat. What is it, another love token from Alfred?”

  Didi raised her eyes to heaven at the thought of the unlamented Mr. Donaldson. “It is. Isn’t it just scandalous how that man keeps courting me all around town lately?”

  “Ever think of remarrying him?”

  “Why? So I can go back to being little old Dorothy who waits around the house until he gets tired of chasing the fancy ladies? He hasn’t changed any, sweetie. He’s just interested because I’m one of the field now. He never could resist playing the field.” She carefully dripped a spoonful of marmalade on her toast. “But don’t you fret about that any. All you have to do is get dressed up and come along before I get a ticket for double parking.”

  “Sorry I can’t oblige. I’m all tied up with work this afternoon.”

  “Murray, you’re just saying that to get out of it. You know if it was any other kind of painter, you’d be glad to go. And nobod
y works Saturdays any more, do they?”

  “Wait and see. Ten minutes from now I’ll be holding down that phone on a highly important case. I’ll meet you there later, if you want.”

  “That won’t do. Murray, you have got to be right along with me when I walk into that place. I mean, you’ve got to.”

  “I do?”

  “Yes, you do.”

  He laughed. “But why?”

  “It’s not funny,” she wailed. “You know the kind of people that’ll be there. They’ll talk and talk, and I won’t understand a thing they’re saying. All about Jackson Pollock and tonality and linear rhythm and God knows what else. But if you’re there, I can talk to you and not look like a total idiot. You’re very comforting to have around at times, honey.”

  “So are you. But what about Alex? He’ll be there, won’t he?”

  “Yes, but when he’s in company he’s just like the rest of them. It’s different when we’re alone. He doesn’t want to talk about painting then.”

  “I suppose not,” said Murray, and then happened on a pleasant notion. “Look, I really do have some business to clear up, but I’d just as soon do it in person. If you drive me over and stand by, I’ll rush things along and go the rest of the way with you. Is that a deal?”

  “I don’t know. It can be awful tiresome sitting out in the car and waiting for you to remember I’m there.”

  “You won’t be waiting outside; you’ll come right in and meet these people,” Murray said. “I want to show you off to them.”

  Not only were all the Harlingens there, gathered in the living room, he discovered, but Ruth Vincent was there as well. She sat straight-backed in her chair, pale and beautiful and remote, and the sight of her hit him like a finger driven hard into his diaphragm. As Harlingen made hostly small talk, putting everyone on a first-name basis, he watched her, seeing the color tinge her cheeks, the small pulse flicker at the hollow of her throat, knowing that even in his waking dreams she had never been lovelier than this. When she suddenly turned her face away from him he realized that he had been unabashedly staring, and didn’t care. Let her know, he thought. Let her pile the furniture of her conscience against the door and think she was safely barricaded behind it. He had enough on Lundeen already to blow apart her tie to the man whenever the time was right.

  Dinah Harlingen said brightly: “Ruth’s been rehearsing Megan for a little play they’re going to do at school. One of those old moralities about Goodman Willing and Goodwife Ready, and so quaint and charming. Isn’t it, dear?”

  Megan plopped down on a hassock, locked her hands over her head, and slowly pulled back until her face was turned toward the ceiling. “No,” she said in a sepulchral voice, “it is deadly, deadly, deadly.”

  “Megan,” said her father, “don’t be difficult. And stop twisting your head like that.”

  Megan pulled her head back to normal. “I am not being difficult. Why does something have to be good just because it’s old? When Grandfather talks like that he’s so stuffy. But everybody else talks like that, and it’s terribly heroic and adult. You listen to them sometime, and see for yourself.”

  “Well, you recite some of it for us, honey,” said Didi. She sank back in the couch and threw her coat open, prepared to be the good audience. “Anything’s got to do with theater I just eat it up.”

  “Thanks a lot,” Megan said loftily, “but no thanks. Anyhow, Good-wife Wanton is the only real part in the whole thing, and Evvie Tremayne’s got it. And,” she said pointedly in Ruth Vincent’s direction, “she only got it because she’s overdeveloped.”

  “She got it because she took an interest in the play,” Ruth said. “You know that as well as I do, Megan.”

  “And it is perfectly charming,” said Dinah Harlingen nervously. “At least, what I heard of it. The background music is all done on a single woodwind recorder, too. So medieval. Who is that little boy who plays it, Megan? He looks like a miniature faun.”

  “That’s William Hollister Three,” said Megan. “And he’s a total neurotic.”

  “He is not,” said Ruth. “And I wish you and everyone else in the Thespians would stop calling him Three, Megan.”

  “If he doesn’t want people to call him that he should stop putting it down on all his papers,” Megan said. “He’s going to be a total neurotic, too. He said so himself. He said learning to play the recorder is enough to make anybody a total neurotic. No matter what you do with it, it sounds sick.”

  “You know, Ruth,” Dinah Harlingen said, “perhaps this play wasn’t the wisest choice after all. If the children—”

  Harlingen stood up abruptly. “Drinks, anyone? Didi? Ruth? Murray? No, well I suppose it is pretty early to start lubricating. So if you’ll excuse us now, Murray and I have important things to talk over. We won’t be long.”

  Behind the closed door of his study he said to Murray: “I wish Dinah wouldn’t interfere like that. Ruth’s got her hands full with that gang of demons as it is, and don’t think every word said here won’t get back to them. Not that I entirely disagree with Dinah, mind you. That is, on a pearls before swine basis. Giving those kids pre-Elizabethan drama is sheer waste. Tennessee Williams is their speed.”

  Murray laughed. “Goodwife Wanton and William Hollister Three on the recorder sound tempting, though. I’d like to see them in action.”

  “Don’t say that in front of Dinah, or you will. She happens to be chairman of the ticket committee. Say, your friend is a remarkably attractive woman, isn’t she? Do I know her from somewhere? She seems vaguely familiar.”

  “If you hang around the Stork or 21 you’ve probably seen her there. She’s done a couple of bits on TV, too. Earl Wilson wrote her up last year.”

  “I can see why he would. Yes, it was probably 21. Dinah and I are there now and then.” Harlingen sat down, found a pencil, and toyed with it while they talked about nothing consequential. Then he abruptly asked: “Well, did you have any luck with our friend Helene? Did she have anything to do with Miller?”

  “No. Nothing at all.”

  “Are you sure? I could have sworn—”

  “Dead sure. Her business was strictly with Lundeen.”

  “But how could you verify that? How do we know she isn’t keeping Miller her secret? Just talking to her wouldn’t settle the matter, would it?”

  “It would in this case. You’ll have to take my word for it that she wasn’t Miller’s motive, that he didn’t frame Lundeen out of jealousy, or anything like that.”

  “Well, exactly what did you find out from her?”

  Murray smiled. “I’ll have to pass on that one. Any information not related to the case is for Lundeen alone. It’ll be in the file, waiting for him.”

  “Yes,” said Harlingen, “I can’t argue with that.” He tossed the pencil on the desk, then watched dispiritedly as it rolled off at an angle to the edge, teetered there, and fell to the floor. “I don’t know. I just don’t know. Is there any chance that the time he spent with that woman might be overlooked during the trial?”

  “There’s a chance, but I wouldn’t bet on it.”

  “God Almighty,” said Harlingen. “And if she does testify, can you see what it means? An officer on duty taking time off to go to a whorehouse?”

  “It isn’t exactly a whorehouse.”

  “That makes it even worse. Anyhow, it means that no matter what happens at the trial Lundeen and Floyd will have to go before the commissioner afterward for dereliction of duty and a dozen other things. That’s what Floyd’s been terrified about.”

  “Too bad about him,” Murray said. “He should have thought of that before he started to cover up for Lundeen. He and Lundeen both turn my stomach. They want to play by their own rules, and when they’re caught at it they yell their heads off. All right, let them yell. Your job is to defend Lundeen in court, not to hold his hand and tell him what an unfortunate case he is.”

  “Yes,” Harlingen said thoughtfully, “I know what you mean. That’s been y
our attitude from the start, hasn’t it, Murray?”

  “I’ve never made any secret of it. I took the case with that understanding. Why?” Murray asked flatly, and he had the electric feeling of holding the image of Lundeen in his hand, waiting for the signal to close his fist and crush it to a pulp. “Do you have any objections? Is this where I get off?”

  “No, Ruth’s told me all about your talk with her. About your attitude toward the case. I don’t agree with it, but it doesn’t matter as long as you’re willing to work with me the way you have been working. What I don’t understand though, is that—well, it’s hard to put into words—that contempt, I suppose you’d call it, for someone who’s been knocked down by circumstances and is looking for help. Not that Lundeen is crying for help the way you put it, mind you. He’s accepted me as his lawyer and friend, because I convinced him he should. And it wasn’t easy. He’s a man with a great deal of pride, and, I’m afraid, with the same innate suspicions of the human race that you seem to have.”

  “I’m not under discussion,” Murray said. “All I want to know is whether you have the same holy faith in him even after finding out about this woman and the way he tried to cover up about her.”

  “He was doing that for Ruth’s sake. You’d have to know his feeling about Ruth to appreciate that, Murray. He venerates that girl. He acts as if she were some sort of sacred treasure put into his keeping, and he can’t get used to the idea that he’s worthy of it. It’s amazing, really. You don’t see much of that attitude nowadays. It’s the kind of thing that lets a man risk a jail sentence, rather than allow an affair with a passing tramp to become public property.”

  “But the tramp comes in handy, doesn’t she?” Murray said. “As long as she’s around, Ruth is safe from a fate worse than death. Let’s not forget that.”

  “That’s a cheap way of looking at it.”

  “It’s calling a spade a spade, mister. What the hell else is this whole fine attitude built on except a tramp off somewhere to take care of the manly impulses while milady keeps her drawers buttoned up tight? Not that this particular tramp needs any worrying about. She can take care of herself and Lundeen and anybody else who comes her way. But if there’s any pity required, I’ll give mine to her, not to Lundeen.”