The Brass Cupcake

by John D. MacDonald

  She slipped her foot into it “Now you know about me,” she said hopelessly.

  “What do I know?”

  Her smile was crooked. “I can play a good defensive game in a car or even on the beach, but anything remotely resembling a bedroom and I’m licked.” Her breath caught in a sob. “Hell, hell, hell, hell,” she said tonelessly.

  “Now I know why you were nervous,” I said, trying to keep my tone light.

  “I thought it would happen this way.” She stood up. Her shoulders sagged. She yawned heavily, covering her mouth with her hand.

  “No harm done,” I said.

  She nodded. “I know. You were the one who stopped. I couldn’t have stopped. That’s what I didn’t want you to know about me. I guess I should be grateful or something. But I want to kick you and hit you with my fists. I want to yell bad words at you, Cliff. I suppose you stopped because of those scruples like Frenchmen have. You know. Bad form if the girl’s a virgin.”

  “That isn’t why I stopped. I didn’t know you were.”

  “I am,” she said dully. “And I’m twenty-three. Maybe they should give me a medal. If they do, I’ll hand it over to you, Cliff.”

  “I stopped because I had the funny idea I’d be losing something instead of gaining something. Maybe you know what I mean. Maybe you don’t.”

  We were at the door. She patted my cheek awkwardly. “I’ll try to figure it out sometime. Anyway… thanks, I guess.”

  She jumped as the thunder came crashing on the heels of another bolt of lightning. The rain came, roaring in the distance, louder and louder, then smashing down all around.

  “You can’t go out in that.”

  “I think I better had, Cliff. I think it would be a good thing.”

  She went slowly down the steps. The rain was so heavy that it was like a curtain. By the time she reached the last step I could barely see her. And then she was gone.

  I went into the kitchen and poured my glass half full of bourbon. She hadn’t replaced the tray of cubes. They had shrunk away from the metal in the heat. I put three of them in the whisky and swirled the glass a few times. The next flash and crack of thunder had a wider gap between them. The storm was passing over.

  I drank what was in the glass, the ice cubes hitting my teeth. I hadn’t waited long enough. It was tepid. I gagged over the last swallow. There was barely time to get to bed before the numbness crept across my mouth. I lay naked in the darkness and the faint scent of her was on the pillow. I wondered if the day would ever come when I would understand myself, and know why I did things, or why I kept from doing other things. I tried to drown the wanting for Kathy by thinking of Melody. It didn’t work, but it reminded me of unfinished business. I called Tony and asked him to tell her to phone me before she tried to leave. He was still annoyed with me. Then I slept.

  12

  SUNDAY MORNING I woke up shivering in a gray and frigid dawn, suffering from the false idea that I felt pretty good. Once I got on my feet I learned better. For some reason every tooth in my head felt loose in its socket. My joints felt aged and rusty and my head ached, not on the surface and not inside, but oddly about three feet behind me, every place I stood.

  Kathy’s cigarette butt, smudged with pink, was mashed in the ash tray near where she had sat. Beside the ash tray was the glass, with a faint pink smear at the rim, a half inch of stale melted ice in the bottom of it. The room felt as though the water should have frozen again.

  I washed the body and husked it down with a towel until there was a faint glow. I scrubbed the green brass off my teeth. With the windows closed and the heater going, the place felt less like a tomb.

  When the organism is at a low ebb, morale demands more care in adorning it. After the closest shave I could give myself, I broke a pair of new shorts out of a cellophane wrapper, added an imported shirt, British Daks in gray flannel, dark wool socks, cordovan loafers, and one of Bronzini’s quieter ties, and topped it off with the old tan-brown Harris jacket, the hound’s-tooth one. Keys, money, cigarettes, change, pocket knife. Anything else, Bartells? Come on, think.

  You’ve got the jitters. You’re trying to keep yourself from thinking this out. Where does Trumbull fit? Who killed Franklin? How can you tie Trumbull and Franklin and the obvious pros who have contacted Johnny up into one neat package, wrapped for delivery?

  And who are you going to cross, Bartells? You know you’re going to cross somebody. Maybe even just for the hell of it. Just to blow the lid off this pat little life, this neat little Florence City existence.

  Problem one, Melody. I stood by the heater and nibbled on my knuckles and thought about Melody. The reasoning that seemed so clear yesterday was no longer so good. In the morning light the idea of Trumbull killing Melody seemed absurd. But Tony had bought it. He’d bought it strongly enough to protect me on the very clear assault charge that could have been brought in the affair of the murderous Cadillac.

  I’m a neat housewife. I emptied the ash trays, washed the glasses, and made up the bed. It didn’t help me think any more clearly.

  Thankful that my pet diner is a twenty-four-hour deal, I walked over and had a Sunday breakfast. I was ahead of the church group. Juice, waffles, sausage, toast, and three cups of coffee.

  Then I drove to the Kit-Kat. The gate was chained and there was no watchman. I parked my car outside the gate, picked a good spot, and went over the ornamental fence. The Cadillac was where I had left it, but with the top up to keep out the night dew. An early charter boat chugged down the bay, heading for the channel, heading out for the big ones. I looked over at the bridge I had just crossed as I walked across the parking area. Three fishermen stood motionless on the bridge, like stuffed dummies. Decoys.

  Mist was clinging to the bay shore line, made by the cold air and the heat still in the ground and shallow water. Two cars rattled over the bridge plates. I knocked on the side door, waiting a long time, knocked harder. No answer.

  I heard the scuff of gravel and turned. Melody came smiling toward me. I didn’t really know how worried I had been about her until I saw her.

  She had a fresh bright morning face. “Hello!”

  “Hello to you!” We spoke in early-morning voices.

  “The clothes,” I said.

  She looked ruefully down at the too-short skirt. The pink cashmere sweater was too tight, the tweed jacket that matched the skirt too small across her shoulders. “Awful, isn’t it? I woke up about an hour ago. I found the note to call you, with a room key on top of it. I decided you’d be pretty savage at this hour. These clothes were in the closet, so I borrowed them. I sneaked out and found, after the outside door latched behind me, that the fence presents a problem. So I’ve been sitting by the pool pretending I own the place.”

  “Funny game for you. You could own a place like it now.”

  The breeze was crisp. She turned toward it, her hands jammed into the jacket pockets. I wanted her carved on the bow of my next clipper ship, but it would have to be a good guy to capture the way that silvery hair moved in the wind.

  “Hungry, I suppose?”

  “I had my eye on a sea gull, but he didn’t come close enough.”

  “You know what I like?”

  She moved closer. “What?”

  “You’re not wringing your hands and telling me how sorry you are you made such a horrid, nasty display of yourself yesterday afternoon.”

  “That was three other girls. Silly girls. Emotional types. Now, take me. I’m sound. I’m there. I’m with it.”

  “No more problems?”

  “Problems, sure. But today is the day I could have been dead. But I’m not. So every moment is clear profit, Cliff. Thank you for today, and for all the rest of my days, every one.”

  “Then you’re sold on that idea I had?”

  “I keep thinking about Furny. Murderers are people in the tabloids, or in the movies. Never anybody you know. So I pretended that this was a movie I was watching. Silly, isn’t it? And Furny is a character
in that movie. Then I thought of this character and how he wants things, and how badly Furny can want things. He is nice-looking, you know, and poised and all that, not sinister in any way—except that wanting, and knowing that somehow he’ll get what he wants. Looking at him that way, I can make myself believe that he wouldn’t really let anything stop him. Whether or not he would stop at murder, Cliff, is something I don’t know and you don’t know. So I must tell myself that he wouldn’t, and then I’m being smarter than if I went around saying that life is neither a movie nor a tabloid.”

  “I agree. You’re sound. Now leave us leap gaily over the fence.”

  I walked her to the spot where I had crossed. I boosted her up to where she could stand with her feet on the crossbar, between the iron spikes. I had her bend over and hold onto two spikes for balance, then turn one foot around carefully, then the other, and, still holding the spikes for balance, jump down backward. She landed off balance, took three steps backward, and sat down hard, grunting with the impact, rolling back onto her shoulders so that for a second or two her slim legs bicycled in the air.

  I dropped on the far side of the fence just in time to give her a hand up. Then, still holding hands, laughing though there was nothing to laugh at, we ran to my car and I took her back across the bridge into the city, took her back as though she were a prize that I had won through some feat of arms.

  After breakfast in a diner we drove out to the Coral Strand and I parked beside the upright Chevvy. As she went inside to change into her own clothes I looked the car over. Most of the oil had run out and the left fenders and door were dented, but not badly. At the most a fifty-dollar repair bill.

  I glanced down the line of doors just in time to see the landlady yank her head back in like a turtle retreating into its shell.

  Melody came out wearing a tailored suit in a fawn shade of soft flannel, with a blouse that was pale green, a froth of ruffles at her throat, a green barrette clamping her hair in an unsuccessful attempt at severity. The over-the-shoulder alligator bag was gleaming, enormous, and new.

  The sun appeared for a little time and then retreated behind the overcast. On the way to Tampa I tried to explain Johnny Alfrayda to her, and explained why I would have to leave her at the hotel while I talked to Johnny.

  She sat close to me, and she said, “But after you find out and come back and get me, you’ll know about Furny, won’t you?”

  “I’ll have some better ideas about Furny.”

  “Today I’m not me. This is all festive. I’m brand-new. Today I was never married, and I’ve never had an Aunt Elizabeth, and Furny is somebody in a Dick Tracy sequence. I’ll wait for you in the hotel and I’ll pretend all kinds of things as I wait. Hurry back to me, Cliff.”

  “Rainey’s still in town?”

  “Yes. He’s made arrangements for Aunt Elizabeth to be cremated. There was a letter he showed me where she said that was her wish. It sort of surprised me. It will be done Monday, and then he’s taking the ashes back with him on the plane for burial in the family plot. When I get up there I’ll make the arrangements for a memorial service for her in her church. He seemed to think that’s the way to handle it.”

  “There are other things to be done, I suppose.”

  “He has the car to dispose of, and then there’s all her personal effects that she brought down with her. I suppose the best thing to do with the clothes is give them to some local charity. I can go through her things with Letty and…”

  “Letty isn’t available.”

  “I forgot that. How awful! Can you take me to see her when we get back? Could you get her out, Cliff?”

  “I can make a try at it. They’ll have had one of the county psychiatrists look her over by now. If they want to be decent about it, they’ll mark it off as shock, temporary insanity, and let her go. I won’t press charges.”

  “When are you going to tell me how you were to blame for his being killed, Cliff?”

  “Did I say I’d tell you?”

  “No. But I’d like to think that you will tell me—sometime.”

  “I’ll tell you now. I gave everybody a different figure on what I’d pay for the stones. When the figure came back to me it was the same one I’d told the Franklins. It could have been coincidence. I got Letty alone and convinced her Horace was working with the crooks. So she promised to keep her mouth shut, but instead she popped off to him, I guess. He got scared and contacted the ones who did the job. With murder hanging over their heads, they could risk a second one to be safer as far as the first one was concerned.”

  Her voice was odd as she said, “Then you gave me a different figure too. What would you have done if the amount you told me had been the one that—that came back to you?”

  “I would have considered you as a possible bird dog.”

  “Bird dog?”

  “One of those greedy little people who point out the big chance, then step aside to let the pros handle it.”

  I could feel the quick change of mood. All the unforced gaiety of the morning had left her.

  “Can you ever take anyone on trust, Cliff? And don’t try to tell me that was trust, that first night you took me put. Don’t lie to me. That was a little act of yours, wasn’t it?”

  “Of course.”

  “I… don’t think I like that.”

  “Suit yourself. I’m being honest with you now. Right now, in my mind. I’ve dealt you out of it. Not on faith. Not because for the first time in too long I’ve found a woman I can think of as a person and talk to as a person. No, honey. Because I’ve fed you the right words and you’ve reacted the right way. You’re out of it. The lush blondes who can sucker the investigator are a movie cliché. Any investigator or ex-cop who has got beyond the diaper stage knows that the lusher they are, the more larceny they have in their hearts. You know why? Because pretty girls go through life with people bowing and scraping on all sides. They can’t help thinking and believing they’re very special people. And, as special people, the laws and rules don’t apply. So please don’t give me the trembling lip and the wide, wide hurt eyes, just because I didn’t take you on faith from the first glance. That would have been something you could call pelvic reasoning. Feather-bed philosophy.”

  “Oh, you’re a roughie, aren’t you?” she said bitterly. “Skinned knuckles and a chip on your shoulder. Take a good close look at yourself sometime. You think you’re being objective. Nuts! You’re all twisted up inside. Women are your prize suspects just because they are women. I get so damn tired of this emotional double standard—this little-boy attitude that men are the only people in the world and women are some sort of annoying and interesting gadget. You make me sick.”

  She flounced over into the corner. When I glanced at her she was looking out her window at the flat countryside, at the desperately dull landscape of all parts of Florida more than a mile from the water.

  “The little woman,” I said. “Meet the wife. The brave little helpmeet standing shoulder to shoulder with her man. Mom. All men are little boys at heart.”

  “Now I have to run into an amateur Philip Wylie,” she said acidly.

  “I was just pointing out, friend, that an emotional double standard cuts both ways. You don’t want to be a gadget for work and pleasure. And I don’t want my head patted. I don’t want to be the great American Dagwood, the fumble-puppy snuffling what’s cooking on the stove, cute as a button.”

  “Nobody’s trying to hog-tie you. Cliff.”

  “Nobody’s going to,” I said.

  She turned and gave me a look of bright, almost lewd amusement. “Stick to gadgetry, son,” she said.

  “You can come back now.”

  She moved closer than before, so that the long line of flank pressed warm against me. She put her arm inside mine so that her fingertips rested on the inside of my wrist. She leaned her head back. “Tell me about my walk again.”

  “The exciting walk? That long-legged lilt? It’s only exciting because it’s a funny mixture. Enormou
s restraint and a promise of abandon. From the waist up you’re carrying a candle down the center aisle. From the waist down you’re Salome working loose from that last veil. It’s schizophrenic.”

  “That’s me. Split personality. Shall I tell you about my affair?”

  “Sure.”

  “In ’45. Two years after Dave was killed. Boy, was I sly! I worked on the guy for about a month. I thought he was shy. He came into the bookstore. Very distinguished Boston type. Taught mathematics at M.I.T. We dated a few times. I moved from my room to a little apartment, setting the stage. Came the evening. A dinner cooked with my own little hands. Wine. Candles. Perfume. Even a white birch fire in the grate. He brought flowers and another, mysterious package he didn’t give me. I guess the lady had made herself too obvious—a very fatal flaw. Everything went quite swimmingly, as we old courtesans say, until I found out that he had his pajamas, a toothbrush, and a bottle of Alka-Seltzer in the package. It was too, too typically professional. And I remembered that he had told me once that he’d been an eagle scout. I was an utter failure. I got the giggles and I couldn’t stop. He left in a great huff and he never came in to buy any more books. After he stalked out with his little bundle I locked the doors, drank all the rest of the wine, and laughed myself to sleep. End of romance. So I decided right then that I wasn’t the cold-blooded type.”

  I was still grinning as we drove into Tampa. I dropped her at the hotel and told her to wait in the lobby. I went out to see Johnny. He was alone at the big table in the dining room, a baronial hall with a dark beamed ceiling. The Sunday papers were a litter around him. His man brought me some coffee.

  Johnny sighed. “Read the papers. The country full of punks. Crazy kids running in wolf packs, beating up people. A hell of a thing.”

  I sipped the coffee. “Take a bow, Johnny. Those kids have read the papers too. They know that people like you have been making monkeys of the law ever since the old prohibition days. Every ratty little punk wants to be a big brave hood. People like you made a joke of the law for too long, and now it’s beginning to show. They all want to be such big shots they can buy Hollywood houses and stock the bedrooms with actresses. So they start by beating the bejesus out of anybody who walks around alone at night.”