THE LADY KILLER: intense, suspenseful, gripping literary fiction

by LEE OLDS

  “Ah, pretty lady,” said Seligman with a half chewed cigar in his mouth as he stood up from his desk to greet her. For as I said she was a woman who no matter how hard she tried or how haggard she happened to appear couldn’t hide her beauty. “What can I do for you? Please sit down?”

  He listened to her story, which she recited seriously.

  “Five hundred thousand dollars is a lot of money,” the shyster began.

  Needless to say after he had initially scared or ‘tempered’ her as they say in that business and with no legal advice (who could afford an attorney?) she agreed to be assessed by what’s called a two percent borrower’s fee when the defendant was released, half of which was to be returned to her when his case was resolved. If, of course, he skipped bail, the struggling mother lost her house. The only thing she’d ever owned. It had to be put up as collateral.

  Sarah had no money to pay the borrower’s fee but since her house was owned free and clear J. T. Seligman sent her down the street to a friend of his, a loan shark, who was willing to give her a second mortgage on the house.

  “You mean I can have ten-thousand dollars for myself?”

  “Yes,” said the banker, “when your friend comes to trial. And your payments’ll be virtually nothing per month. They can come, ahem, out of your assistance.”

  Sarah, of course, paid little attention to the rules of the transaction. Her mind was concentrated on getting her lover freed. She’d never financed anything before. The house had been her settlement in the divorce. All she knew as she left the bank was that she had ten thousand dollars to be deposited in her meager account and she was on a bus to the jail to pick up her lover.

  “All will be arranged by the time you get there,” Seligman had informed her and so it was. She walked down Fourth Street through the throngs of the downtrodden of the cosmopolitan city intermingled with regular citizens in suits. A beggar woman held out her cup and Sarah put something in it. She was onto bigger and better things.

  Having taken another bus to the stadium like civic center, Barney came down out of the elevator in a respectable suit that had been available by donation. He met her in the lobby and the two hugged.

  “How … how’d you ever do it?” This cheerleader looked into her light blue eyes. She shrugged her shoulders. She honestly didn’t know and now that she’d seen him the thrill she’d expected at his presence left her almost entirely. His jaw looked OK. She knew it’d been wired shut but he’d been in there long enough for it to’ve healed and it had. The entire bus ride home, although the two held hands, she brooded over whether things’d work out better after all. Or even over what she was doing. Had it been worth it? One thing she knew for certain was her situation couldn’t get any worse. And that in itself brought hope, which is all that concerns most of us in nearly any crisis. We cherish it selfishly right up until the time of our death.

  It just so happened that this time the recalcitrant maverick was ready to supply it. After two days back you wouldn’t’ve recognized him.

  “You’re kidding?” Said Hammond. “What’d they do, replace his brain?”

  “No,” I said seriously, “but something in there seemed to’ve done it for him.” Stir can do that to people. It doesn’t always but … The man was in his early forties. He’d obviously lost credibility in the community for having been taken away and … he realized it. As I said, under his crudeness was an intelligent, sensitive person. It just seemed to me he’d given up, for if not he’d’ve tried to escape. On life if you must. And whether it was his swansong or not it was a pleasant change for all those who were exposed to it even though it didn’t last very long and in the end turned out to be self-defeating. His hearing wasn’t to come up for several months, which can be to some a long time; in this case an eternity. It almost seemed he attempted to atone for his wrecked life before his sentence began, cramming it all into one. A deed that was not only meaningless but unnecessary.

  The two entered the general store, Fred’s Superette, together for the first time in several months much to the owner’s and his employee’s surprise and chagrin. But the tall wiry superhero stood there with a smile framing his large jaw. He was free so they waited on him. Most persons in a case like that are so mentally confounded they don’t know what to do, so they do nothing, or rather react from habit. Then the trait of man to forgive his fellow is so overwhelming it’s easy to be over powered by it, especially if he’s behaving.

  The two bought their bottle and some foods, returned home, drank, ate, snuggled up and were apparently content.

  “It seems so long since I had a meal like that,” said Barney. “I’ve forgotten what it could be like and it’s only been several months, not even that.” And he told her about the life of some of the characters in there and a little of his own in the not so distant past that he’d never revealed before.

  “Things’ll get better,” said the beauty, “you’ll see.” For, although the conjecture made little sense, she didn’t know what else to say. He then asked her how the locals were behaving and about his friends on the lagoon.

  “And the pimp? (Hartwig) You haven’t been dancing with him?”

  “He’s still around,” Sarah made a little face and grimaced in dismay.

  “Well,” said the giant smiling and seeming to rise out of himself, “we won’t bother with him. He’s a nobody. Matter of fact, who’s anybody? You should’ve seen what I’ve seen in there.”

  “I wouldn’t’ve wanted to.”

  And just like the two’d walked into the general store and been waited on they approached Monahan, the owner and manager of the Windjammer. Barney apologized for his ruckus behavior and though the two weren’t reinstated there – because no one pulled a gun in Monahan’s establishment and returned to it – they were acknowledged and had a friendly chitchat, for Barney’d done some carpentry work for the man in the past. It was one step from there to the Sand Piper where they’d never caused any trouble though the owner there’d heard about the gun incident just as had everyone in town, both literally and figuratively. Sarah’d been in there constantly since her friend’s fall, so they were let stay.

  It certainly filled Barney with hope and cheer for when your entire life’s spent drinking in certain spots acceptance in them after being barred takes on an exaggerated meaning. A senator doesn’t like to be banned from the senate, no less the alcoholic from his favorite watering hole. It’s his own peculiar treasure chest, a matter of degree, which in a larger scope reduces itself to no degree whatsoever or zero, for in some bizarre way it’s true, all men are equal even if it’s only because they’re born.

  At any rate Barney was back home, he was out, he was happy. And Sarah, she cheered up fully after a couple of days.

  “Come on darlin,” he said to her one morning, and taking her hand the two went on a pilgrimage through town. They stopped by the older motel to visit the elderly lady who owned and ran it, whom Barney’d done some work for. And they asked her to dinner. She couldn’t come but nonetheless reestablishment crept along like a wave up the beach as the tide gets higher and higher. The two stopped into the artist’s studio on the coast highway to compliment the fine work. Barney informed the man and wife,

  “I … I’ve been away, you know.” And, of course, the tall wiry giant with the clean-shaven face made no excuses for his absence. The Adamses had both been there the night he’d gone overboard and been taken away. Matter of fact they’d been at Hartwig’s table. For some reason Edie (the portraitist) told them to return that afternoon. She wanted to sketch a convict. She laughed, so did Barney but maybe the artist in her noticed something there that other people wouldn’t and she hoped to bring it out. She certainly didn’t mind the carpenter’s gratuitous attention to her work. It was more fruitful than, for instance, Hartwig’s snide insinuations to the contrary. An attitude both she and her husband had been aware of but had tolerated for Sandy’s sake.

  That day, evidently, the two did a lot of visiting to the book
store and the surf shop included, neither of which they’d been in before. Barney even purchased a hat. Just the same, they stayed clear of the firehouse and the community center where prejudice’d just been too strong to overcome. The firemen had wanted to beat him up and were glad Hartwig had. Then, of course, no one can appeal to everyone and the two knew that and were willing to take it in stride. Who knew, maybe the judge or jury’d see things differently and this ‘new leaf’ or whatever it was wouldn’t’ve been in vain?

  “If, of course,” said Hammond, “we weren’t tried for our ineluctable pasts, which we always are for that’s the point. The offender could lead a perfect life after the fact and little it’d matter. That, naturally, is why it’s so difficult to forgive. No, it’s impossible. People have to be held responsible for what they do whether they actually are or not and are willing to reform completely. That’s society’s safeguard. It’s why we have one at all.”

  And the man even picked up what could’ve turned out to be a steady job. The school needed a maintenance worker and hired him. It appeared there weren’t too many skilled carpenters out there who were willing to do that sort of work. They actually hired him despite his record. Let me just say that it was a very independent community that’d do something like that for a man like him but even here, I believe, they had ulterior motives.

  “Ulterior mot… Over a guy like that? In a one horse town?”

  You remember the swamp people, who Barney’d virtually led like the Pied Piper his rats before his departure. It was because of him in essence, that they’d filtered up through the town and hence commingled among the residents who’d been intimidated and appalled by their crudeness. It seems Barney’d relegated his ‘new ideas’ to them also. There was still respect between them, a bond those sorts can never live down really because of their identities. It could be a group of priests all of different denominations or ballplayers from different teams. They’re associated by identity just like races and ethnic groups. In logic it’s called sets, in psychology, types, man’s simplest form of comparison. It’s the tunnel we dig ourselves by our desire to classify the world around us which also tends to guide our behavior.

  “I … I’m afraid Saturday’s are gone,” Barney’d informed a group of these large sloth like misfits as their women and children stood looking on and pretended to understand. “The misses will no longer allow it.”

  Of course, she would’ve if he’d asked but he hadn’t even consulted her. He’d come to the idea all on his own. Perhaps he too felt more comfortable in stepping up in class. The Saturday’s, of course, were the days he had let that clan visit the garage in back of the cottage where he’d installed his workshop. There they could have access to electricity and use his tools for free, bringing along whatever work they had that needed to be done and required that sort of machining.

  Those privileges he cut and in a nice way so as not to’ve broken off all bonds to the point of isolation and hatred like you so often see between countries and ethnic groups, who withdraw privileges from one another. The residents appreciated it. So did the school board. It kept the undesirables to their own side of town, the mosquito infested swamp. Those who before had considered Barney a pest, I’m sure came to look upon him a little differently.

  After all he was a vet, he’d fought in a war. And however meaningless or unjust it might’ve been most of them hadn’t. Laying your life on the line for anything has an essence all its own. One, of course, just hopes it’s for the right cause whatever that might be. It seems most of us know but don’t always use our good sense in applying the judgment. Or maybe the wave that carries us along is simply too big to struggle against, one or many.

  Several attorneys in the midst out there became interested in his case. One a well-known maverick who lived in Salinas and had built a reputation defending the criminal underdog. Sarah was certainly happy and with her enlightened attitude came the conviction that she’d done the right thing by freeing him. Dance nights and Hartwig were like lost souls in history. They wander around but are forgotten. Of course, they had to be for the Windjammer was off limits to them now but when one begins a new life in his old community his existence becomes more refined. You’re more insulated but at least you’re alive, well and kicking. Barney’s old white pickup was still parked on the street in front of the cottage though he couldn’t drive it since they’d taken his license. Yet who’s to say they weren’t the happier couple. They never fought now like Sandy and Hartwig and there wasn’t the web of duplicity about them that the latter couple seemed to share. Were they saints, by no means. They were just people like the rest of us struggling to climb the mountain of fate that shapes our destinies. Those, of course, who are stronger at feeling out the right path do better simply because they were made to.

  I looked to Hammond for a reaction but this time I got none. He was still attentive enough but as tenderized meat he’d been hammered by the story instead of any philosophy it might’ve contained.

  With his new mobility, despite having moved to Tiburon over the hill, Marcus spent most of his time after school at the beach, which was understandable for that’s where his friends were and where he’d grown up. He still had his mother living there but she was back with the maverick. He thought it a despicable thing for her to have bailed the miscreant out of jail and even when he’d been at the beach and his mother’d been alone the son had made no effort to contact her. He, naturally, considered her partially responsible for the beatings he’d received from her boyfriend. Any time the two ran into one another whether it was in the little market, at the post office, restaurant or just passing by each stiffened up, cast glances of hatred the other’s way and continued on as if to get away from the other as quickly as he could. As if the other carried some kind of vermin or contagious disease. And here they were just mother and son. I looked over, perplexed.

  “Oh, really,” said Hammond. “You must not’ve read any Chinese history. Whole families poisoned one another just to sit on a throne or next to it. It might’ve been over gold, emeralds, heritage but still… This sort of stuff you’re describing with such a universally disastrous appeal is really apple pie American. Half the relations in the country hate one another over inheritances. Who’s going to get what? What’s really new?”

  “Nothing, of course,” I said, “but the story, like the same name for different individuals. Though not enough different names for each individual every name nonetheless identifies one as Aristotle points out. Our stories too are like snowflakes. None are the same.”

  Marcus, of course, wasn’t merely a bookworm. He was also an actor, a quite good one. He’d taken parts in his school plays and he’d also been consigned a very minor role in one of the great thinker’s dramas. This was Othello. It was performed by a small troupe called Shakespeare at the Beach, and though the mainstays were seasoned actors, auditions had been opened to amateurs. Marcus’d tried out and won a tiny part, two parts in fact, both of which he was nonetheless proud.

  “A sensitive kid then?” Said Hammond.

  “Yes, a very sensitive boy indeed. And being a local and well known out there not only because of his mother, regardless of his minor role the locals looked forward to watching him.”

  “Christ, isn’t he good! One day he’ll be a great actor.” I don’t know who said that, but only that those sorts of things were said of him. When June, of course, heard this she couldn’t wait to witness him perform. And on one Saturday that was to take place. Not only she but her other adopted daughter Jennifer, were to meet at Sandy’s beach house and along with Hartwig the four were to attend the performance of Othello. You know, the black man who in white territory (Venetian) didn’t find a very gracious fit. He became an unwitting victim of circumstance and, of course, of his own strong passion.

  “Yes,” said Hammond. “That thing happens. The black man becomes very jealous over his white mistress. More so than his black counterparts. Even nowadays. That part of our history hasn’t caught up with
itself. It must be because they’re considered so ‘off limits’ to him.”

  “That might be part of it,” I said. But what about the randomness of being born a black in the first place. Or a Jew or an American, a cannibal in New Guinea. Or a regular limey in good old London or a Kraut in Swaziland? When brought together all have their foibles regarding the other. That some are more remarkable, so what. These are things we have to live with. I don’t really believe Shakespeare was attempting to make any judgment. He was just going by feel. A thing we all do. One hopes one day our feelings’ll more complimentarily coincide. I have no idea how that might come about or if it ever will.

  June and her daughter arrived at Sandy’s in the early afternoon. Remember though, nearing the end of summer the days were still long so the plays although held late, ended in broad daylight. And a quaint setup it was if you can imagine it. Like dances at the beach what’s more perfect than Shakespeare if you can find a theater. And they had, the locals’d made one. Barney’d actually worked on it.

  “Really, you’re kidding,” said Hammond. “A genuine replica of the Globe?”

  “No,” I answered, “but something nice, something American but nothing like Disneyland at all. This set had a different feel to it. It was redolent of our Victorian homes which, though funky compared to the European templates, you’ll have to admit really are exceptional.” Hammond nodded his head. Why shouldn’t he? He owned one.

  The theater itself was located in the enclosure of an abandoned nursery just off the main drag. This was essentially a large space with the tart smell of compost still in the soil. It was totally surrounded by a high board fence with an entranceway at the front and several fire exits to the rear. What the carpenters had erected was a poor man’s replica of a half hex façade of plywood to resemble the old globe. Windows and doors had been cut where they should be and the sashes and jambs painted on their fronts. You might say the affair resembled an old movie set or a dollhouse. The true molding, everything was painted on dark umber against light beige, Elizabethan coloring, balconies included. A sky had even been painted on several roof boards horizontal to the ground.