Magician's Wife

by James M. Cain

  “Who mentioned something like that?”

  “You did, Clay. You warned me.”

  She whispered it reverently, and he went over and kissed her. She pressed his hand and then in a moment went on: “And there’s still another angle. Clay, I know you hate it whenever I talk about money, and I glory in you for it. But money figures in this and can’t be disregarded. He’s a millionaire now—the picture has changed overnight. And from where he sits, to get rid of me he’ll have to pay me, plenty. Well? Wouldn’t burying me be cheaper? Especially when all it takes is magic.”

  “Magic? Hey, there are limits to everything!”

  “Clay, what do you know about magic?”

  “Not much. Just the same—?”

  “It’s based on illusion, isn’t it?”

  “I—suppose so. And?”

  “If he can make hundreds of people think they saw me floating through the air when it’s really just a dummy, he can make a dozen think they saw me around the house, after he drove off to work, and before my body was found, curled up in my car, a rubber hose running in from the exhaust. By magic is how it can be done!”

  “If you mean what I think you mean, they burn you for it in Maryland—and I don’t like it one bit.”

  “Nobody’s asking you to.”

  He had hoped, perhaps, that she didn’t mean what he thought, and her answer unsettled him badly, so he didn’t speak for some minutes. At last he asked: “Do you mean to do it by magic?”

  “I’m not a magician, Clay.”

  “But you must have something in mind.”

  “Yes—you sit on the porch of a beachhouse, watching divers at work, looking for stuff to bum you, you think of all kinds of things.”

  “Then you do have something in mind?”

  “It’s my lookout; it doesn’t concern you.”

  “If I love you, it has to.”

  “That touches me, but if this is good-by, why do we louse it with stuff that has no meaning? Why can’t we have our evening, kiss, and part? I’ve already told you too much.”

  “But why must this be good-by?”

  “You said so! You said it had to be!”

  “Sally, when did I say such a thing?”

  “You said come with you now or—don’t come.”

  “But that was before! We’ve been all over that!”

  “We have, but I can’t come with you till—!”

  “... Yes? Till?”

  “I started to say, ‘till it’s done’—but of course that’s out of the question. You’re not with it, you don’t like it—Clay, will you leave me alone!”

  She was suddenly emotional, and seemed to be verging on crack-up. He calmed her, then said: “I’m not trying to plague you, Sally—I know the hell you’ve been through. But I’ve been through hell, too—and I love you. And I’m entitled to know more than you’re telling me.”

  “Such as what?”

  “Such as what you’re fixing to do!”

  “I’ve told you it’s none of your damned business.”

  “O.K., we skip that part—just forget it. But I am entitled to know, and it’s plenty of my damned business, why this must be the end. Will you kindly explain that to me? If you can?”

  “All right, then, I’ll try.”

  She stared out at the stars, breathed deeply a few times, and presently had control. Then: “First of all,” she began, “what I have to do, I have to.” But “have to” came out hafta, sounding much more intense that way. Pausing to let it sink in, she went on: “So, let’s suppose it’s been done. It was an accident, say the reports, but you have a different idea. O.K., then what?”

  “... Well, I don’t quite know.”

  “That’s why it’s good-by.”

  “Hey, Sally! Not so fast, not so fast!”

  “Take your time, Clay. Think it over. Then what?”

  “... You don’t hafta do this thing!”

  “I’m sorry, I do. And I’m gonna.”

  “God, but you make things tough!”

  “I’m trying not to. I’m saying good-by.”

  He walked around in agony, rubbing his hands on his T shirt to dry his damp palms. Then, in a weary, moaning tone, he wailed: “Sally, I may as well tell the truth—we’re up tight, why fiddle and foodle and faddle? I could tell myself I couldn’t stand for it—I could swear up and down before God I’d never see you again—but two weeks after it happened I’d be calling you up. We’ve been all over that—I love you! Does that answer you, Sally? I’d break!”

  “The question is, would I?”

  “Now, what do you mean by that?”

  “All right, Clay, so it’s done. But it won’t do itself—I did it. Walked into the Valley of the Shadow and then walked out again—as we hope. But then lo and behold, who’s there, galumphing up real fast? Why, it’s you, chortling in your joy! ‘And has thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to my arms, my beamish girl! Oh, frabjous day, calloo, callay’—and whatever the rest of it is! Well, my handsome young friend, when Jabberwocks get slew, someone who just took a walk, who did not even hold the horses, watch for the Bandersnatch, or do anything at all for his beamish girl, may not please her as much as she thought he did before. If she’s still going to love him, I really couldn’t say—all girls are dumb, especially beamish ones, and she could eat her heart out. I wouldn’t say she had more sense. But if she hasta, she hasta—and will.”

  “You’re saying I have to help.”

  “Can’t you understand English? I’m saying good-by.”

  “It’s not all you’re saying, Sally.”

  “I know what I’m saying, I think.”

  “Maybe—but I know the insinuendo.”

  “Which is, Clay?”

  “That I’ve mock-orange juice in my veins.”

  “Oh, that. I’m glad you brought it up.” She reflected, or appeared to, then told him: “I shouldn’t have said it, and I apologize. For the rest of what happened that night, perhaps I ought to apologize too, but I don’t. When I’m put upon, I have to do something back—I can’t help it, it’s how I am. I was grievously hurt that night, horribly disappointed—and so I wrecked your place, and ought to regret it, but don’t. I’m even glad, if you have to know. I might be glad of what I said except that I can’t be, and for a very good, simple reason: it wasn’t true. You don’t have mock-orange juice in your veins or anything like it. You’re a fine, upstanding guy, and brave, according to your way of doing. Unfortunately my way of doing is different, and that’s what it comes down to. So, I not only apologize for all that I said, but take it back. It was mean and did me no credit. And—I might as well say it all. I don’t like saying good-by—I mortally hate it. And my heart will start getting eaten the second I go out that door. So now you know, but what has to be, hasta.”

  He tramped around some moments, then went to the arch, leaning his elbows on it, and dropping his face in his arms. Then he faced her and said: “I’m in.”

  “You’re— What did you say, Clay?”

  “You heard me.”

  “... This room is spinning around.”

  “You’re mistaken. It’s standing on its head.”

  “And things are happening inside of me. Thrills and—”

  “Sally, you do have a scheme?”

  “I have—and it’s going to work!”

  “O.K. What is it?”

  “Do we have to go into it now?”

  She got up and turned on the floor lamp back of her chair, standing before him naked. “Can’t we just have our beautiful hour?” she asked softly. But her eyes did not correspond with her voice or, for that matter, with her white, childish loveliness. They were cold, hard, and crafty.

  He went over and gathered her into his arms.

  “What in the hell has she got you into? Why did you let her do it? Lockwood, she didn’t—you did it yourself, single-handed. You’re a noble volunteer. And with your eyes open yet—you’ve known all along what she meant. On top of that, however she
fooled the cops, you know she killed that old man. You know everything, and yet you dealt yourself in. So cut out the whats and whys—you are in and that’s all that matters. You know you have to have her, and this is the way you get her—and the only way. So get going. So do it. And see that you do it right.”

  That vanity was his trouble, inflamed by obsessive desire; that his great source of strength, the element in his nature that drove him ahead in business, riding all obstacles down, could also be his weakness; that this giddy twin sister of pride could have a soft underbelly, loving praise above everything else, especially this girl’s praise, and dreading her phony scorn—none of this could he have thought of or believed if he had thought of it. To him, it centered on love and a Jabberwock to be slain—a quarry as unreal, as queer, as insubstantial as something in a dream, but a Jabberwock, just the same, to be slain.

  14

  BUT HAVING REACHED HIS dreadful decision, he entered a new phase, with qualms pushed aside, and no thought in his mind but the deed he intended to do—and, in fact, was as detached about it as he might have been about a campaign to sell meat. By day he talked with Hal, Miss Helm, and Pat, in long phone conversations. By night he drove with Sally, listening as she prattled, as devoid of guilt as he was, of the enormous estate the Gorsuch will had disclosed when filed for probate after the funeral, and of the adventure they had embarked on. Her scheme, as she explained it the next evening they had, was a car crash they would contrive, which would take Mr. Alexis’ life but at the same time “look perfectly natural.” They could take advantage, she thought, of a quirk in his driving taste, which led him to use an old road, a black-top long since condemned, one of the old original routes from the time of Governor Crothers, which he preferred “for its peace and quiet, as there’s no traffic on it, especially in early morning, when he comes home from work.” So together they had a look, entering the stretch in question a few miles south of Baltimore, ‘at their own risk,’ as a big sign informed them. For some distance it ran through meadows that showed green on both sides, being almost on a level with them. But then it began to rise, over a considerable fill, as it passed over a marsh, with water backed up on each side. Then it popped on a bridge, an iron thing over a slough, that rattled and clanked and shook from the weight of the car. Then more marsh, more meadow, and the outskirts of Channel City.

  Her idea was a roadblock “that we make by parking the car, at the top of the fill near the bridge, but not a full roadblock, just kind of half-and-half, so instead of stopping dead, he pulls out enough to pass. But the condition that shoulder is in, it could give way under him and spill him down in the water. And so—that would be it.” He considered this, parking up near the bridge, examining the fill with a flashlight, and in all ways being thorough. At last he said: “No—it’s too risky and has too little chance of succeeding. In the first place, he could stop dead, recognize us, and be warned from then on, so there’d be no way to get him. Or he could pull out and the fill not give way—it doesn’t have to, and we can’t be sure it will. Or it might give way and he might go down with it, but not till he banged this car, and then we would be in it. Sally, what’s basically wrong is it doesn’t have audacity. It lacks that one thing that could let us win, the means of achieving surprise, which is what a thing of this kind has to have.” She drank all this in, doting, for she detected not a case of cold feet but hardening resolution. But, winding up their evening’s work, he observed: “This stretch of road, though, could win for us. Let’s work on it, think—see what use we can make of it.”

  Next night, crossing the bridge southbound, he stopped, and then suddenly cut his lights. When his eyes were used to the dark, he told her: “Something occurred to me: that we could come up on his flank, creep up without being seen, bang our horn, and make him cut his wheel. If surprised, he has to cut—it’s an instinctive thing—and his regular driving speed will carry him out on the shoulder before he can brake to a stop. It’s a matter of two or three feet. But we have to run dark—unless we cut our lights they’ll show in his mirror, and surprise will get knocked in the head. And the question is, Can we run without lights without landing ourselves in the ditch? Well, nothing beats a trial. Are you game?” She whispered she was and he pulled into gear. By that time the stars were brightly visible, as well as various lights, particularly the bright red sign of Chanciteco, as the Channel City Electric Company was called, which glowed in the sky dead ahead. He let in his clutch and started rolling along, while she gripped her arm rest, tense but silently acquiescent. Their progress was bumpy, as the road was full of potholes, especially out toward the side, but they stayed on it, and gradually he increased his speed. Back in civilization again, he pulled over and stopped. “What do you think?” he asked.

  “It can be done,” she whispered.

  “Then, that’s how we set it up.”

  He made his U-turn and started back for another practice run, quickly discovering the thing was impossible northbound, as no pattern of lights would help him. “So what do we care?” he snapped. “Southbound is how he goes, so southbound is how we rehearse.” They practiced again and again, until he was fairly confident and could get himself up to forty, “which is average driving speed,” he said, “at least on this road.” But when she blandly observed, “Then we’re set,” he cautioned: “Not quite. There’s more to it than learning to drive by that sign, and the better we lay it out, the better our chances are. Remember that gang robbing a bank. They take months laying it out—casing the joint, as they call it—running the roads, timing all the details, so nothing is left to chance, and everyone’s caught by surprise except them. That’s why they’re so seldom caught.” The next thing, he said, was to find out if without running their lights they could follow a car and then come up beside it. Occasionally cars did appear on the road, and these they began closing in on, making the pleasing discovery that this feat was somewhat easier than running the road in the dark. “Their lights show you the way,” he whispered to her delightedly. “There’s nothing to it if you’re willing to take the chance.” He pulled up beside some of these cars, and she became greatly excited. “They don’t see you!” she told him. “None of them do—I can tell from the way they drive.”

  And then one night they pulled up behind a car, a small blue coupe, and suddenly he whispered: “O.K., I’m going to pull it—see whether this thing works, here where the bank’s not high and nobody’s going to get killed. Watch this guy now—I can’t. I must keep my eye on the road. Watch him and see what he does.”

  Driving by the taillight ahead, he ran up close and pulled left. Then, steering by the other car’s headlights, he slipped up beside it. Then, pressing the horn, he let go a dreadful blast. The headlights whipped off to one side, then went out. There came a loud clanking, as of metal banging on metal. A furious yell cut the dark. He stamped on his brake, stopping, as the lights’ disappearance left him suddenly blind. But in a moment he started creeping forward and at the bridge put on his lights. “O.K.,” he whispered. “What did he do? What happened?”

  “Went off, that’s all.”

  “Down the bank, you mean?”

  “Down on the grass. That’s right.”

  “And? What else?”

  “What do you mean, what else?”

  “Is he there, or what?”

  “Well, do we care?”

  “You bet we care—if someone’s killed, it’s investigated. If not, it’s just one of those things. Is he there? Sally, I asked you to look!”

  “Well, I did look. Yes, he’s there!”

  “Doing what?”

  “Cursing at us! Can’t you hear?”

  “God, what a help you are!”

  “You stop godding at me!” And then, as he sniffed at an odor that filled the car. “Yeah, Clay, that’s it—you smell something, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I do. What is it?”

  “Adrenaline—from me. Little oversecretion I’m subject to occasionally. Things affect me that wa
y sometimes. Like the bang I got, Clay, when that jerk went down off the road, and I knew it was going to work, this thing we’ve been fixing up. You’ll never know what you did to me. ... Gives me a funny smell—like a rattlesnake, kind of. Want some nice rattlesnake love?”

  “Sally, quit talking like that!”

  “Can I help how I feel?”

  “Ask how I felt, why don’t you? I was scared blue.”

  “Oh, no, Clay, not you!”

  “Oh, I was. My mock-orange blood, no doubt.”

  “Now you quit talking like that!”

  He talked like that quite volubly, but had no will to resist her, and drove to the apartment, though they had made it a rule these nights to meet out on the street at some prearranged point, she jumping into his car and later jumping out—lest, without knowing it, she was under surveillance.

  It was now the middle of August, with the calendar forcing their hand, for not only would Mrs. Granlund shortly return, bringing the child with her, but also the nightclub would change its bill the night after Labor Day, so the victim-to-be would be later starting for home. So they had to make things definite and, when they did, found forced upon them change from the original plan. They had assumed they would do it together, but one night he told her: “If something goes wrong, Sally, and I’m in my car alone, it could still be an accident, couldn’t it? A traffic-court case, no worse. But if you’re in there with me, nothing can possibly save us. It’ll be prima-facie premeditation, and what we get will be plenty. So, I have to go it alone.” After studying him and deciding it was not a case of cold feet, she said: “O.K.” But that brought up the related question of alibis. “If you’re not coming with me,” he argued, “then you ought to go further, and fix yourself up with witnesses who can prove you were home all the time and couldn’t have been in it at all.” She asked about his alibi, and he assured her: “I’ll have one, never fear. But my alibi is easier—I live in an apartment house where a switchboard girl is on duty, and all I have to do is have her see me come in, maybe play a scene with her, to fix the date in her mind, and then slip out the back way, so no one knows about it. Of course I’ll slip in the back way too when it’s over. My problem is simple, if anything ever is. But yours involves people who’ll have to swear they saw you that night, at the time when it’s to happen. It means, I would say, you have to invite them in and keep them there somehow, so they’ll be able to clear you.”