Marilyn K - The House Next Door

by Lionel White

  I left Columbia when I pulled a ligament in my right ankle and couldn’t make the varsity football squad; I left the Marines when my enlistment period was up, and I left Havana when Castro took over and kicked out the Americans. I had recently left Florida. I was on my way back home to New York.

  I was driving a Pontiac convertible and I carried my worldly possessions in the tonneau in two Gladstones. A sheaf of American Express money orders in the inside breast pocket of my sports jacket established that I was worth something under two thousand dollars in hard cash and I had my health and a clean record.

  I had an overriding sense of ennui, a lot of soiled linen, a couple of dozen books and a portable phonograph. I had an illegal. 38 automatic which I had taken away from a drunken Cuban in a brawl in a dockside brothel in Key West, a slightly twisted nose which had not been broken playing football, but was the result of a sassy remark to a Havana cop, and I had a tremendous desire to do something to break the streak of utter boredom which had engulfed me during the last three months of loafing.

  I had a hangover which I had picked up the previous night in a dismal after-hours ginmill in Alexandria, Virginia, which had made my sleep so restless that Id gotten on the road around three-thirty in the morning. Four cups of black coffee on the outskirts of Washington had done something for the hangover, but it hadn’t done much for a state of chronic depression and so I was driving along, just at daybreak, some thirty miles north of the Bay Bridge, when I first saw her.

  She was on the right hand side of the road, standing there all alone, the suitcase beside her. It was one of the few high points in the road, where the ribbon of asphalt crossed over a small ravine.

  At first I thought it was a child, but as I instinctively slowed down and the figure grew larger, I could see that it was a girl or a woman.

  She wore a small turban on her head and dark chestnut hair escaped around its edges. She wore a light suit, severely cut from something which was probably raw silk, a knee-high skirt and sheer stockings above tiny shoes with Cuban heels. There was a silk scarf around her throat. One white gloved hand was partly raised, tentatively, as though not quite sure of itself.

  I was driving almost due east at the moment and the sun, just peeking above the horizon, was behind her so as to silhouette her tiny figure. The details were not clear, but the fact that she was young and attractive and beautifully built, was quite clear.

  There was no sign of a car, there hadn’t been a house in miles. She was utterly and completely alone.

  The Pontiac’s tires screamed and even before I had pulled to a stop some fifty yards ahead of her, I had already lost my overwhelming sense of ennui. I backed up fast and made my second stop opposite her. Reaching for the door handle, I knew I had seen her before; was sure I had seen those heavy lashed, gray-green eyes somewhere. They were eyes no man would ever forget.

  She took a tentative step toward the car, looking at me with a peculiar, almost frightened expression. Her face was dead white and even as I started to smile and speak, I realized that something had happened. Something terrible.

  She made a tiny gesture, sort of half nodding, and then spoke in a low, barely audible voice.

  I ve had an accident,” she said. “Please help me.”

  She stood there, making no move to get into the car, and so I got out.

  A lift? I asked, pointlessly.

  “Yes,” she said, her voice soft, husky. “Yes, please, I need help.” starte to reach for her arm, to help her into the car, but she stepped back

  and sort of half nodded with her head, looking over at the culvert.

  „ e car, s e said. You had better look at the car. He might still be liv-

  My eyes opened wide. I had seen no car.

  "Over there,” she said, pointing.

  I didn’t wait for her to show me, but stepped to the side of the road and looked down into the culvert. I saw it at once.

  A large, midnight-blue Cadillac Eldorado. It had apparently skidded off the side of the road and crashed down the bank, ending up against the concrete of the culvert. It was well out of sight of anyone driving along the road.

  I could see the still figure of the man between the wheel and the dashboard, his head hanging at an odd angle. When I clambered down the bank, the shattered glass of the windshield told me what had happened. He must have hit the glass with his head and had probably broken his neck. I didn’t have to examine him to know that he was dead. He looked dead.

  The door at the side opposite him had been sprung open and she must have been sitting next to him and been thrown out. She’d been lucky; she seemed neither bruised nor were her clothes tom or rumpled.

  I held his wrist in my hand, feeling for a pulse that wasn’t there. But the wrist was still warm. The accident couldn’t have happened more than a few minutes previously.

  It took only a moment to realize that the Caddie was pretty badly smashed. He must have been doing about sixty or better when he had skidded and gone off the road.

  I circled the car, saw that it carried New York license plates.

  There didn't seem to be much I could do about the dead man behind the steering wheel and there was certainly nothing I could do about the car itself. So I climbed back up to the road.

  She was sitting quietly in the front seat of the Pontiac, holding a small fragment of handkerchief to her mouth.

  “Good God,” I said, “What happened?”

  She looked over to me, lifting her large, blue-green eyes and staring, a sort of odd, dazed expression on her face.

  “I don't know,” she said. “I must have dozed off. All I know is that I was in the car and then suddenly I seemed to be rolling on the ground. When I came to I was lying in the soft grass down in the ditch and the car was next to me, all smashed up. I got up and brushed myself off and went to the car and he was in it and he looked dead.”

  She sort of half sobbed as she finished speaking.

  He is dead,” I said.

  "Oh!”

  Must have hit his head on the windshield. It is shattered, but it didn’t give and I guess he broke his neck. Who was he?”

  She blinked her eyes several times and gave an odd little shrug.

  “His name is Marcus,” she said. “He...” she stopped and started to sob.

  I got the pint flask out of the glove compartment and poured her a stiff shot in a paper cup. I held it out and she looked at it for a moment and then took it without a word and downed it, making a face and shuddering.

  “Sorry,” I said. "No chaser. But try a cigarette.”

  I lighted it for her and held it out and she took it. She still seemed badly shaken.

  “Please take me somewhere,” she said. "I feel sick.”

  “I’ll get you to a doctor,” I said. "I guess the best bet would be to turn back. Head for—”

  But she quickly shook her head, reached for my sleeve with her hand.

  “No,” she said. “No. I’m not hurt. Really I’m not. I just want to go some place where I can lie down and rest and collect myself.”

  “You sure—”

  “Please,” she said, looking full into my eyes. “Please.”

  She didn’t have to add the second please. I knew, the minute she looked at me like that, that I would take her any place she would ever want to go. That I’d take her through hell, if she asked me to, kicking the flames out of the way with my bare feet.

  I gestured toward the culvert.

  “I better get to a phone,” I said. “Call the police. They want to know about these things as soon as possible.”

  The small, almost transparent hand holding my coat sleeve suddenly tightened on my arm and she shook her head violently.

  “Do you have to report it?” she asked. “Can’t you just take me some place, a motel or somewhere? Can’t we just go. I don’t want to—”

  “Good Lord,” Isaid, “don’t you understand? You’ve been in an auto accident and your friend has been killed.”

 
“I know,” she said. “He’s dead. No one can help him now.”

  ‘ But the police...” I began.

  I don twant to see the police,” she said. “There is nothing at all I can tell them. He was driving and I guess he skidded or something and he’s dead now and there is nothing...”

  Where were you coming from?” I asked, trying to collect myself and just talking to gain a little time while I tried to figure it out. “Where were you headed and where—”

  Marcus, she said, interrupting me. “His name was Marcus, and we were coming from Miami and going to New York.”

  Marcus,” I began, but again she interrupted me.

  , • * ' Уп’ s^e sai<^' You can call me Marilyn K. Mrs. Marcus lives in Hol

  lis—that s on Long Island.”

  “Oh.”

  I was begging to understand.

  “Please,” shesaid. “Someone will be along and I...”

  I circled the Pontiac and climbed behind the wheel, reaching for the starter key.

  “If you turn around and go back,” she said. “I think you will find a motel just before the bridge.”

  “I was heading for New York,” I said.

  “It would be better to go back,” shesaid, again turning those lustrous eyes опте. “I really should lie down. I feel very faint. I guess I must have...”

  I made a U-turn, returning southwest. I remembered having passed a fancy new motel some twenty odd miles down the road.

  She wasn’t the sort of girl who needed to ask me twice to take her to a motel.

  “I feel just a little faint myself,” I said. “I wonder if you would mind pouring me a shot of that stuff. I put the flask in the glove compartment and you’ll find a paper cup...”

  She nodded, saying nothing, but reaching for the glove compartment.

  I took my eyes off the road long enough to look at her for a second. I saw that she had placed the small suitcase on the floor of the car, between her feet. I was suddenly remembering something.

  I was remembering that there had been no signs of skid marks on the highway. I was remembering that the road was bone dry and I was wondering how in the world he had managed to drive off a perfectly smooth, straight highway and wreck his car. I really needed that drink.

  Of course, he could have fallen asleep at the wheel.

  I was remembering something else. I was remembering where I had once before seen this girl who called herself Marilyn K.

  And I suddenly knew exactly why she was so anxious that I didn’t call the state police and report the accident.

  She handed me the paper cup, half filled with Scotch, and I took it in my right hand, holding the wheel with my left and slowing down slightly while I put the rim of the cup to my lips.

  If I’d had a brain in my head I would have slowed down all the way: pulled on the brake and opened the door of the car and dragged her out and left her there at the side of the road while I got out of Maryland and as far as I could drive, without stopping.

  I would have left her, asking no questions, and I would promptly have forgotten that I had ever seen her or seen a wrecked Caddie Eldorado with a dead man behind the shattered windshield, piled up against a stone culvert off a lonely stretch of Highway 301.1 would have forgotten that such a man as Au-relio Marcus ever existed, or that I had ever seen him or even knew who he was.

  Because by now I knew exactly who Marcus was and I had a pretty fair idea of why he was on his way from Florida to New York. Anyone who ever read a newspaper or listened to a radio or watched television knew who Marcus was.

  But I didn’t want to think about Aurelio Marcus. I wanted to think about this girl, this Marilyn who was sitting hunched down in the seat of the car beside me. This girl who had seemed familiar and whom I now remembered from that one time I had seen her.

  It was the day before I was to leave Florida to start back to New York. I had been standing out on the dock at Baker’s Haulover, in north Miami, waiting for the charter boats to come in from the day’s deep-sea fishing. I didn’t have anything else to do.

  I always liked to watch the boats come in, watch the mates take the catch out of the fish boxes and hang the dolphins and the big sails and bonitas on the hooks of the frame at the end of the dock while the fishermen stood proudly beside them and had their pictures taken to show to the folks back home.

  The first half dozen boats were already in and it had been a pretty disappointing day. No flags up indicating sailfish; no big ones at all. Just a few bottom grouper and trash fish, a stray sand shark.

  And then the IDA pulled up and the mate tossed a line to the dockmaster. She was an old Mathews, about fortyeight feet, and she carried twin engines and a pulpit and outriggers. I had often watched and admired her.

  She carried three small flags in her rigging, showing she’d taken three sail-fish aboard. She only carried one fisherman. One was all she needed.

  I guess everyone on the dock that afternoon turned to stare at the girl in the Bermuda shorts, barefooted and with her breasts covered only by a twisted, polka dot bandanna, stepping over the rail, still holding her heavy fishing rod. No one really noticed the rod.

  She stood just a little over five feet two and she had the sort of figure that made you instinctively lean forward. She was blonde and her skin was tanned a sort of golden rust color, evenly and beautifully. Just looking at her, a man would suddenly get ideas that he could be arrested for. No one feature really stood out, but you were vaguely aware of perfect, dazzling white teeth, small upturned nose, a firm little chin and broad forehead under the curly, chestnut hair. But it was the eyes which were really arresting. Great blue-green eyes shaded by the longest black lashes I had ever seen.

  God, she was something. Miami is a town where you often see beautiful women and spectacular women, but this girl made them all look sick by comparison.

  She was grinning, facing into the late afternoon sun and with her eyes squinted as the mate tried to help her ashore. She ignored his outstretched hand and leaped sure-footed, laughing as she landed.

  She was the fisherman all right and she had really turned the trick. Three sailfish, all good-sized, a half dozen dolphin, a bonita and four or five great amberjack.

  She didn’t look a day over eighteen, but she had a face and a figure that any woman of any age would have given her right arm to have and any man would have given both arms to hold.

  She laughed aloud when the mate began to hang up the fish and you could see how proud she was of the catch.

  She wore no lipstick or make-up and she needed none. She didn’t need anything.

  It was about the prettiest picture I had ever seen, even without the fish, and I am a guy who likes my fishing.

  I knew just what she would look like in a cocktail dress and I could see what she would look like in a Bikini. She was ravishing.

  She was Marilyn K.

  Chapter Two

  I spoke, keeping my eyes on the road, wanting to look at her but hardly daring to.

  “Do you want to tell me about, it?” I asked.

  She turned and was watching me closely.

  “Tell you about it?”

  “About the accident.”

  She hesitated for several moments and then spoke very slowly, her voice showing her inner tension.

  "It is like I said. We were driving up to New York. Marcus was going pretty fast. Maybe he fell asleep, or maybe he had a sudden heart attack or a stroke or something. Anyway, I was dozing and then the next thing I knew was when the car hit the culvert and I fell out of the opened door and came to lying on the grass. I got up and went to the car. He was still inside and I could see that he was probably dead.”

  She stopped talking and I didn’t say anything for several minutes.

  And then you came along,” she said.

  20

  “And then I came along. And now you want me to take you to a hotel and not say anything to the police.

  “To a motel,” she said, again searching my fa
ce.

  “To a motel. But perhaps you would like to tell me why I shouldn’t get in touch with—”

  “I want you to help me.”

  “I want to help you,” I said, and, at the moment, I meant it; I wanted to help her more than anything else in the world.

  "I want to help you, but don’t you think maybe, ifwejust reported the accident...”

  She reached over, again taking my arm by the sleeve.

  “You don’t understand, ” she said. “ I don’t feel well; I'm not really hurt, but

  the shock and all...”

  "I understand,” I said, “but sooner or later...”

  “I have to have time to think,” she said. “You see, Marcus—Aurelio Marcus...”

  "That’s who I thought he was,” I said.

  She again stared at me for several moments before going on.

  “You know about him?”

  “Yes, I know about him; or at least what I read. Big-time gambler, supposed to be connected with the Syndicate, supposed to be the contact man between the important money and the front men who ran the Cuban casinos. Ex- mobster, ex-union racketeer, ex-professional killer. You came up from Florida with him, you were saying? ’ ’ I couldn’t help the note of sarcasm. You don’t expect a girl like that to take up with a guy like Marcus.

  “Yes,” she said simply. "I came up from Florida with him.”

  I thought for a second she was going to cry and I felt like a murderer. Instinctively I took one hand off the wheel and patted her small, soft hand.

  You don’t have to explain to me, ’ ’ I said. “ It’s О. К. I can see why you might not want to go to the—”

  Her hand turned under mine and I felt the pressure as she squeezed.

  I can explain everything,” she said. “But I don’t want to have to do it to the police. The publicity. You know what the papers would say; what people would think.”

  I nodded. I knew all right.