Down inside her closed eyes, she was wondering, Is he telling the truth? But he wouldn’t wait all that time, would he, knowing what the situation must be here now? He had to be just saying that, to lull the people he knew would be listening in. She said, “Well, if that’s the earliest—”
“Eleven tomorrow night.”
His voice is very dear to me, she thought, and was surprised at the tenderness she was feeling toward him. She usually considered both of them to be remote individuals, whose connection with one another was a convenience that fulfilled many needs, physical, emotional, psychic, but who were not sentimental about one another, any more than they were sentimental about themselves or anything else. And yet now she found herself reluctant to end the conversation with him, even though there was nothing more to be said, and it wasn’t only because his voice was a symbolic lifeline to safety, though that was part of it, too. But the rest of it was tenderness, an outward flow of feeling toward him that the emotional onslaught of her situation had buffeted to the surface.
I have to hang up now, she thought. A secretary only, a passer-on of messages.
“Well, goodbye.”
“Tomorrow night,” he said. There was nothing in his voice, but that was all right. If she was doing things right, there was nothing in hers either.
“Yes, tomorrow night. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye.”
She kept her eyes squeezed shut, she continued to hold the phone to her face with both hands, and she listened to the click as he hung up, and then the furry silence of an open line. A second smaller click told her the listener in the bedroom had hung up.
It was time to get her report card, to find out whether or not this deception had earned a passing grade.
She opened her eyes at last, wearily, to put the phone down, and a round fat sunlike childish face was inches from hers, smiling broadly at her, the eyes bright and demented.
She screamed, and leaped backward along the sofa, throwing the phone at him without thinking. It missed his head and fell over his shoulder, the cord getting tangled in his right arm. He had been squatting in front of the sofa, grinning into her face, and now, with a comically blank surprised expression, he fell backward and bumped to a sitting position on the floor. He sat there, legs bent awkwardly in front of him, hands resting on knees, and gave a surprised laugh as he looked at her.
Her first terror ended quickly, and Claire looked more closely at him. This was Manny, who had been lying on the bed the last two hours. His face looked both guileless and mindless, as though he were a very happy moron. Could that be true, would the other one be traveling with somebody retarded?
Now the other one came into the living room, and said, “What the hell’s going on?”
Manny was picking the phone cord away from his arm as though it were imaginary and he were suffering from the d.t.’s. His voice happy and surprisingly light, he said, “She threw the phone at me.”
“What was the scream about?”
“I’m sorry,” Claire said. The scream had rattled her, and she was very afraid again, as much so as when she’d first seen these two in her house. “I didn’t—I had my eyes closed, and I didn’t know he was there.”
Manny had finally freed the phone, and now, hanging it up, he said, “She looked just as nice. You wouldn’t believe it, Jessup, she looked lovely. Like she was dead and all laid out.”
“Christ, Manny,” Jessup said, “when do you come down?”
“Never, baby. I like it up here.” Manny grinned at Claire, and suddenly his expression became much more adult. Reaching out, he put the palm of one hand on the inside of her left knee, then slid his hand halfway up her thigh. “You gonna come up with me?”
Jessup had come closer, and now his mouth moved in an expression of distaste. He said, “Forget it, Manny. She’s off limits.”
Manny pouted, like a sulky child, and looked around and up at Jessup. His hand stayed where it was, between her thighs. He said, “How come? Where’s the fun in that?”
“You better get your hand out of there, or you’ll get clap of the fingernail.”
Manny frowned, like a stupid child laboriously learning multiplication tables, and looked again at Claire. “A pretty lady like this? I don’t believe it.”
“Go ahead, then.”
Claire waited, tensed, looking back at Manny, watching his mind deal with the problem. Jessup was intricate himself, the intricate could fool him. But Manny was direct.
And he asked her, directly, “You got something bad?”
Stupid; she felt embarrassed at lying to him. “Yes,” she said, and had to look away. More and more stupid; tears were on her cheeks.
“Aw, hey.” His hand slid away, and Manny clambered up from the floor to sit beside her on the sofa and awkwardly pat her arm, to comfort her. “Don’t feel bad about it. That could happen to anybody.”
She didn’t trust herself to answer him, the situation was too confused and unlikely. Her shoulders twitched and she shook her head and continued to face away from him.
“Listen,” he said. “You wanna play Surrealism? You know how you play that?”
Now she did turn, and looked at him, and found his childlike face twisted with sympathetic concern. “No, I don’t,” she said.
“You pick somebody famous,” he said. “Like Humphrey Bogart or W. C. Fields or somebody. And then you say, if this person was a car he’d be such-and-such a kind of car. Or such-and-such a color. Or what season this person would be if they were a season. See, not what car would they like, what car would they be. Surrealism, see?”
“Yes, I think so.”
Manny turned his eager face. “Jessup? You wanna play?”
“I’m hungry,” Jessup said. “I want to get something to eat.”
“Why not have her get it?”
“I don’t want her to touch my food. You want anything?”
“What for? You mean to eat? What for?”
Jessup shrugged. “Keep an eye on her,” he said, and walked out of the room.
Manny turned back. “Okay, I got somebody. Ask me a question. You know, like what car would I be or what color, or make up something.”
Claire tried to concentrate her mind. She was distracted by fear and uncertainty, and now she was supposed to think about a game. She rubbed her forehead and said, “What car? I guess, that’s what I want to know. What car would you be?”
“A Datsun,” he said promptly, and from the way he grinned this was a person he had used in this game before. “You tell me when you think you know who it is,” he said. “Give me another question.”
Like she was dead and all laid out. That sentence of Manny’s circled in her mind now every time she heard his voice. Was he a possible ally to be cultivated against Jessup, or was he the true danger?
“Come on,” he said, a happy impatient child. “Come on.”
“What, uh—what color? What color would you be?”
6
When the doorbell rang, a little before nine, the three of them were eating dinner at the kitchen table. Jessup had insisted on preparing the meal himself, and then had insisted on Manny and Claire eating it with him, though neither of them had much appetite.
Claire found Manny both fascinating and terrifying. There was a temptation to react to him as though to a willful but charming child, but Manny was no child; he seemed, in fact, to be not human at all, and Claire found she was treating him finally like a charming but unpredictable animal, a pet that might or might not be domesticated. As with an animal, the reasoning processes in Manny’s head seemed both primitive and incomprehensible. And, as with an animal, Claire understood there would be no arguing against him if he should turn on her; as much argue with a leaping mountain lion. The strain of watching his volatile moods and trying to keep out in front of him was fraying her nerves, but distracting her from the larger problem of Jessup, who was after all the leader, the man with the reins of the situation in his hands.
Whatever Man
ny was high on—and it was clear he’d been taking some sort of drug—the peak had apparently passed during his time in the bedroom, leaving him now in a pleasant cloudy afterglow, his mind turning slowly and coming up with strange materials from the bottom of his skull. The game of Surrealism had been full of a kind of morbid beauty, Manny’s images sometimes being very odd and personal and irrational, but frequently they contained touches of poetry and at times were amazingly indicative of the person he had in mind.
But always dead people. They had taken turns asking the questions, and when Claire had chosen a living woman senator, it had taken Manny a long time to guess who she meant, and then he was angry and upset. “No fair, she’s still alive!”
“You didn’t tell me we were—”
“You can’t use live people! They don’t have any aura!”
So they had remembered only dead people after that.
Jessup had refused to join in the game. Now that his larger game, whatever it was, had moved into a phase of waiting—he expected to have to wait thirty-one hours from Parker’s phone call to Parker’s appearance here—Jessup was surly and uncommunicative. The sparks and flashes of light were deep in his eyes, but they showed as irascibility and bad temper now.
Somehow the meal he’d prepared reflected his mood. It was vaguely Mexican, full of tomatoes and peppers, very hot, and lay in an unappetizing mass on the plate. But Jessup watched the two of them with narrowed eyes, demanding that they eat, and they both ate, Manny making a game out of this too, joking with Jessup about the meal looking like dead people’s stomachs, while Claire mechanically moved the fork from plate to mouth, plate to mouth.
The doorbell both shocked and relieved her; she had no idea who it could be or what it could mean, but it made it possible, at least for the moment, to stop eating. She put the fork down at once, and looked across the table at Jessup.
Jessup was looking twice as irritable as before. He said, low-voiced, “Who is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t expect anybody?”
“No. Really.”
“If you’re trying something—”
“I’m not,” she insisted. “Really.” She felt she was going to cry; to get away with so many lies, and then to have him about to do something to her for something she hadn’t done—it wasn’t fair.
Jessup got to his feet. “We’ll be close enough to hear,” he said. “Manny, come over here with me.”
The two of them went into the front left corner of the kitchen, where they would be out of sight of anyone outside the doorway. “Answer it,” Jessup said. “If it’s somebody that has to come in, we’re friends, we dropped in for a Mex dinner.”
Claire went to the door and opened it. One of the few things that had bothered her about this house when she’d first seen it was the lack of an entrance foyer, the main door opening from the driveway directly into the kitchen. She wondered now if that would have made any difference, if a foyer or entranceway would have given her a few seconds in which to whisper a warning to whoever was at the door.
There was no way to tell, and in any case there was nothing but the door. She opened it and a youngish man was standing there, his hair moderately long in what used to be called a pageboy style. He was wearing a sheepskin jacket, his hands were in the jacket pockets, and he was smiling. “Hello,” he said. “My name is Morris. I’m looking for a fellow called Parker.”
Morris. She remembered the name from Parker’s description of the robbery; this was the man who’d stood on watch on the roof. “Mr. Parker isn’t here,” she said, suddenly very nervous, wondering how much Parker had told Morris, wondering if Morris would expose her lies now.
And at the same time she was speaking, she heard Jessup, low-voiced, saying from the corner, “Invite him in.”
“Won’t you come in, Mr. Morris?”
“Well, it’s Parker I’m looking for. He isn’t here?”
“Not right now. Come in, let’s not stand in the doorway.”
“Thanks.” Morris came through the doorway, still smiling, saying, “You expect him back—”
Jessup and Manny were walking forward, both of them smiling. “Hi,” Jessup said. “I’m Jessup. We just stopped in for some Mex dinner.”
Morris kept the smile on his face, but his eyes were suddenly watchful, and his hands came out of his jacket pockets. “Jessup? You a friend of Parker’s?”
“We’re more friends of Mrs. Willis here,” Jessup said.
Morris looked at Claire, who strained to be natural in her appearance and the sound of her voice, saying, “That’s right, they’re old friends of mine. They knew I was all alone here, so they dropped in. That’s Manny.”
Manny grinned happily and said, “Hi, baby. Did you say your name was Morris?”
“That’s right.”
Manny giggled, and poked Jessup. “That’s a coincidence, ain’t it?”
“That’s right,” Jessup said, though he didn’t sound happy about Manny’s saying it. He explained to Morris, “We were looking for a guy by that name a while ago. We were supposed to do a job with him, but we couldn’t find him. Down in Oklahoma, around there.”
“In Oklahoma.” Morris turned his head and said to Claire, “You expect Parker back soon?”
“Well, Mr. Parker doesn’t live here,” she said. If he knew the truth, she hoped he was fast enough to adjust. He looked as though he probably was. “But I do expect to see him—”
“Later tonight,” Jessup said. “In fact, we figured we might play a little cards later on, when he got here.”
“Or Surrealism,” Manny said. To Morris he said, “You ever play Surrealism?”
“Once.”
“Really? Isn’t it great? This lady here is great at it, ain’t you?”
“Not as good as you are,” Claire said. She even managed a smile.
Jessup said, “Hey, why don’t we eat? Morris, you hungry? You like Mex?”
“I could eat.”
“You all sit down,” Claire said. “I’ll set the place.”
She tried to maneuver herself into a position where neither Jessup nor Manny could see her face, so she could signal Morris somehow, but Jessup kept turning around in his chair, watching her, asking brightly if he could help. She saw that Morris watched Jessup and Manny with slightly narrowed eyes, suspicious in a small way, but not at all sure something was wrong.
Food was dished out for Morris, and then they all sat down again, Claire facing Morris, Jessup to her left, Manny to her right.
Jessup said, “How come you’re looking for Parker? Business?”
“In a way,” Morris said.
Jessup gave Claire a brief noncommittal glance, then said to Morris, “I guess everybody knows to come here if they want to see Parker.”
“Not exactly,” Morris said. “I got the address from a friend.”
“A friend?”
“A fellow named Keegan.” Morris looked around pleasantly. “Any of you people know him?”
Claire recognized the name as the man Parker had gone to see, the one who had gotten the phone number here from Handy McKay. The one who had died a painful death.
Jessup was saying, “Keegan? Keegan? I don’t think so.”
Manny said, “I knew a Keeler once.”
Jessup said, “Where’s this guy Keegan live?”
“He doesn’t,” Morris said. “He’s dead. Say, this stuff is pretty good.” Meaning the plate of food in front of him.
Jessup had just taken a big second helping for himself. “Yeah, it is,” he said. “One of my favorites. You say this guy Keegan is dead?”
“Well, I’ll tell you what the situation is,” Morris said, “and maybe you might be able to help me out. See, Keegan and Parker and another fellow and I were together last week, but then we went our separate ways. Then I heard from a friend of mine that Keegan had been asking around for me, trying to find me. So I knew where he was, so I went to see him. And damn if he wasn’t dead. So
mebody had nailed him to a wall.”
The phrase was so absurd that it skimmed the surface of Claire’s mind at first, and it was only when Jessup repeated it, in tones of shock, that she really heard what had been said: “Nailed him to a wall!”
“It seemed like a hell of a thing to do,” Morris said. “I always thought Keegan was kind of grumpy myself, but I think that was probably more than he deserved.”
Manny said, “Gee. Nailed him to a wall. How about that?” He wasn’t as good an actor as Jessup, who gave him a hard look to shut him up.
“I searched the place,” Morris said. “Somebody else had searched it, but I did anyway, and I found Parker’s name on a sheet of paper with a phone number in New Jersey. So I took it along, and I went looking for a fellow named Berridge.”
Jessup said, “Berridge? Who’s he?”
“He’s somebody else that’s dead,” Morris said, and looked at Claire. “I hope you don’t know any of these people, Mrs. Willis. I’m sorry to be talking about death so much at your table.”
“No, that’s all right,” she said, stumbling. “I mean, I don’t know them.” She didn’t know Berridge.
Morris said, “Berridge is an old man who was going to work with Parker and Keegan and that other fellow and me, but he decided he was too old, and then he got killed. I figured maybe, since Berridge had been the first one killed, maybe somebody that knew Berridge would know what was going on. So I went and talked to some people who knew Berridge, and I found out Berridge had been having a lot of trouble with a grandson of his. The grandson had been hustling him for money. Apparently he’s an acidhead of some kind.”
The air in the room had suddenly changed. No one was eating, or even pretending to eat. Morris was talking calmly, as though there were no tension in the air at all, but Claire could see in his cheekbones, in the way he moved his eyes, that he too was tense.
She shifted her gaze without turning her head—she was almost afraid to turn her head—and saw Manny looking sullenly at Morris, his head down like a bull when frustration is about to make it charge.
Deadly Edge: A Parker Novel Page 12
