THE LADY KILLER: intense, suspenseful, gripping literary fiction

by LEE OLDS

  “You know, I’m not off.” Her eyes’d wander away from his demonic stare. “I’m working.” Then he’d follow her back to the restaurant next door and sit down where Ted the German, who was no wow with women himself, would give him a dirty look. He was tired of the kid coming in, sitting there and ordering nothing. Lingering was what he was doing. He saw what was going on but didn’t want to lose his best waitress. Finally after work he had a talk with her.

  “You, you just can’t have that fellow around so much. You must tell him.”

  He didn’t threaten her directly. That wasn’t the German’s way. He threatened her indirectly but she understood.

  “So,” said Hammond. “What’d she do?”

  “What else could she do?” I said, “but talk to the kid.” It was that very afternoon when she got off and Johansson was waiting for her. You know that place opened early at six a.m. in the morning. It closed at two p.m. She naturally waited until the two got home in the privacy of her room before confronting him. For her landlord worked daytimes. There she laid down the law.

  “You’ll have to stay out of the restaurant from now on.” Emee leveled with the impetuous young man.

  “Me? Why? Who says so?” He replied.

  “My boss.”

  “Your boss? Why that slimy no good kraut, I suspected something like that. The looks he gives me. I’ll kill him.”

  The two got into a verbal altercation when the kid, realizing she meant what she said (what other choice really did she have), began to slap her around. Lucky for her she was a big, strong girl and could fight back which she did. The two knocked over tables and chairs. The framed picture of her son was broken in the melee and the one room apartment pretty much turned into a shambles before Johansson left her a crying wreck.

  But, you know Emee. After he left she set to work cleaning the mess. She dressed her bruises as best she could and barricaded herself in her place praying the night through that the maniac wouldn’t suddenly turn up again. And she’d actually been starting to love him. Her landlord’s footsteps overhead were to her like the padded feet of a lion guarding her door. The last thing she wanted to do was call the police. It always is in cases like that, but nine-tenths of the victims end up having to anyhow.

  “And this one!”

  “Johansson got drunk. He didn’t come back that night for some reason. I know he was down at the café raving about his ordeal. While we didn’t know what happened to Emee either we, of course, felt sorry for the kid but none of us wanted to get involved for it really wasn’t our problem. None of us except Hartwig the Good Samaritan and he didn’t say much.”

  “Hartwig you say?”

  “Yes, he walked by the kid’s table. His head was down, hidden by his arms.”

  “You’ve got to take it easy, kid. No woman’s worth the grief.” Of course, the rake would say that.

  “So, what was the kid’s response?”

  “His head popped up like a jack in the box, his eyes rolled and he glanced at Hartwig like he wanted to kill him right then and there on the spot.”

  “Why don’t you mind your own fucking business?” He began to rise. But then he looked askance as Hartwig walked off. Something must’ve registered, however. For the very next day Johansson gave up his surveillance and quit going into Ted’s. Instead he went into the Harbor Light down the street for his coffee and donuts.

  “So, Hartwig’s done some good for someone in his life after all?” Said Hammond.

  “Not entirely,” I said, “but sometimes a vital concern by a rival who never seems to’ve had such problems can do a person some good.” Like Gloria, Emee also had to get a restraining order on the Swede but by then he was far more tractable. He obeyed it. He must’ve realized something he was doing in his life wasn’t quite right. He let Emee alone, talked to his mother and she let him move back home, at least into the basement, which would be as the kid assured her,

  “Very, very temporary.” This proved to him that at least he wasn’t afraid to deal with his father if it came to that. But sleeping out in the park with vagrants wasn’t any solution either. They’d also been dragging him down for most of them really had nothing to look forward to and nothing else to do. Some of them even sanctioned beating their women as though it was an atavistic tendency. With them like the swamp people in Oceanview it was a way of life. That’s why the wealthier people, who weren’t supposed to resort to such behavior, disdained being around them. And when you have money, education, jobs you like instead of merely tolerate, it’s true you don’t become so readily victim to your primitive emotions. The kid needed help obviously but at least he’d regained some control over his emotions if not to the extent of us so-called normal people.

  Emee showed up at work too, the very next day after her beating. She resembled one of those maids you see in pictures, with long sleeves and stockings, a scarf tied down low over her forehead and pancake makeup to hide the bruises. He body was fine. She moved as deftly as ever, carrying and setting the heavy plates on tables. No one said a word about her but everyone saw it. She recovered as though nothing’d happened, at least on the outside but you knew she was hurting inside.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Now although Sylvia, Hartwig’d mother, the attorney, had specifically given two tickets to the opera house to Gloria for safe keeping to make certain her son took her to the performance, as soon as this trusting soul’d turned them over to Hartwig I don’t believe he had any real idea who he’d take to the affair or if he’d go at all, even though the two, Gloria and he, had been a pair at the time. He didn’t like that extreme sort of social function though Gloria’d mentioned it several times in expectancy since. That, of course, was before Barth whom Hartwig despised, and he and Gloria’d had their differences. All this and Hartwig had a real reason to take Gloria, and at his mother’s bidding.

  “Why on earth was that?” said Hammond.

  “A matter of reward she’d promised him if he’d behave himself which, of course, meant to her doing the right by her and marrying Gloria as the two’d planned. That even in her life’d please her something wonderfully she reasoned. If that … she could die happily sort of thing. Maybe not to such an extreme for she was a healthy woman, but you know what I mean.”

  At any rate the mother was expected to make a court appearance in Munich. Her client, a large corporation, was picking up the fare and all expenses for two. The companion was to be Hartwig if he behaved. I know he was enthused about going. He’d told us all about the promised trip and then he’d never been to Europe before as had several of us.

  “But” Barry the wisecracker among us had told him. “You don’t win anything from us for that, remember. It’s Sandy, who has to take you; not your mother.” Which, of course, brought a guffaw from us at Hartwig’s expense. But perhaps he saw another way. Did he see another way? You know destiny’s a funny thing If you hang onto the right notion long enough despite the whirlwind of circumstances you’re exposed to, it almost seems like you’ve predicted it or at least had a hand in guiding fate to bring it about. Which, though impossible, for only someone like a God could do that, nonetheless becomes possible. Hear me out on this one and see if you can’t find a little bit of truth in the import of what I’ve just said.

  Just like that, one Saturday, all of a sudden after breakfast at the beach house with his lady and not before, Hartwig announced.

  “I want you to wear your very best dress tonight. We’re going to the opera house. I have tickets. It’s really something you’d like. The program is a Night In Old Vienna. It’s devoted strictly to the waltz, a little polka and fox trot. The Strausses, the Landler, Mozart, even Liszt. We’ll hear all.”

  “What?” Said the socialite who, wearing her smock, was doing dishes and preparing to clean the house. She always did her son’s room before sweeping the sand from the deck. She looked up at him.

  “Why didn’t you tell me before? I can’t go. I’m too tired. Besides I haven’t been to the op
era house in years. The last thing I heard there was Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker when I was a little girl,” she waxed nostalgic.

  “You’re kidding?” Hartwig was amused. Then in another breath. “You’re going.”

  I think, believe me, I think he had something else in mind though he swore the events were purely coincidental and cropped up objectively one by one. No matter, at the end of the night he’d earned himself a trip to Europe, or at least a promise of one and this was definite without contingencies.

  That and the two argued back and forth all day with Sandy’s ass dragging and her claiming her energy’d vanished. Hartwig made her take a nap in which, of course, she turned and tossed and couldn’t sleep, but at the appointed time he aroused her.

  “Here,” she said, her naked form pulling him towards her, “why don’t we just stay here? Eat dinner and have a nice fire going?”

  “Get up,” ordered the harsh taskmaster, “we’re going to have to dress you.” A conflict they’d obviously had before and he’d won. So, this time she complied docilely. Perhaps she thought fixing her gown and primping herself in the mirror wouldn’t be such a bad idea. They’d meet some of her old friends and she’d be on the arm of a trophy male to display before them. ‘Look who I’m with. Can’t you see? Are you blind? He’s single. He’s in love with me. Isn’t he handsome? He’s my lover, I love him and perhaps we’re soon to be married’. So must’ve gone her dim witted thoughts. Not unlike those of a heroine of a nineteenth century novel. Yet still as reasonable today as they will be ten thousand years from now, if there is such a thing, and if … men are still men, women, women.

  So Hartwig in his finest blue worsted suit with shining black oxfords and Sandy the petite figure now in the comely white dress with laced trim and black pump shoes, wearing a pearl necklace and earrings which, trusting soul, she kept around her house, two odd figures for the beach, got into the Mercedes, left the dogs barking in their wake and Hartwig drove to the city. The event began at eight, it was just turning dark as they crossed the bridge with its expansive view of the open ocean where it was once thought if you sailed too far west you’d fall off the earth.

  “Ah, those were the days,” said Hammond as if there’d been something to that sort of thinking, a notion I certainly couldn’t understand but presumed him to be kidding.

  It was a gala event, unlike opening night where the opera swells appear in their finest apparel bedecked with expensive jewelry, each attempting to outdo the other in opulence. Ordinary citizens, of course, can’t get in there. They either can’t afford it or they’re not on the list. Even at an event like this, however, enough of the elite showed – but it was a hardier mix.

  Hartwig behind the wheel of his mistress’ Mercedes joined the procession of vehicles, some black limousines the length of two cars that were lined up before the old style Romanesque building with its low-pitched granite steps and curbside awning that led up to the entranceway. The globe lights were just coming on.

  On the one side of the opera house stood the old war memorial building and on the other the new concert auditorium. The large dome of the city hall lit by floodlights was just across the street. It bordered the civic center and the temple like library, all in an old area of town from which the city’d sprawled outwards.

  When their turn came in line, a man in an old fashioned livery outfit let Sandy out on her side of the car while Hartwig turned the keys over to a parking attendant in a white smock. He received a ticket and crossed the youngster’s hand with a twenty-dollar bill.

  “This’ for a clean job,” he said to the valet parking attendant. “I want this car returned without any dents or scratches.”

  “Yessir,” said the counterpart in age though obviously not wealthy. Hartwig was good at handling situations that made him feel needed. Sandy’d provided him with pocket money for the expenses so he’d at least appear like a man of substance.

  “And why not?” He’d told me. “She has so much money she doesn’t know how to spend it. Having someone else do it for her makes her feel better. If I don’t do it, who will? Some hustler?”

  He obviously couldn’t see himself but perhaps he was right. She’d always been loose with her money and she seemed to enjoy spending it. After all in the last resort, what was money for if not to spend?

  The crowd of mixed finery funneled into the old structure like fans entering a stadium only to filter through the various archways where they handed their tickets to the attendants before entering the large colonnaded lobby with marble floors and upright wall lamps. At either end, under a barrel-vaulted ceiling, staircases led up to the theater’s second tier. The first thing Hartwig did, of course, was to take Sandy down the carpeted staircase to the basement bar, an enclave of glass mirrors set like tiles along the walls and ceiling, which made you feel you were inside a diamond where each facet contained your image. It was lit by crystal chandeliers that hung overhead.

  “You remember the place. You’ve been there, perhaps dozens of times.”

  “I do,” said Hammond, “that part of it never fails to impress me. The other features I’m used to”

  “Well,” I said, “it evidently impressed Sandy. She’d never seen the entire opera house. And with the pearls and white dress she was wearing she definitely added to the glitter. Hartwig said he observed not a few glances sent her way. Remember, although a perfect scatterbrain to talk to, this was a very good-looking woman. Hartwig knew it and appreciated it.”

  After a few drinks and the sound of the warning bell he and Sandy joined the crowd to take their seats. They were in the center floor section halfway forward where they could look up into the sloping boxes on either side. The stage darkened, the conductor appeared and the program began. The orchestra played from the pit while the dancers in their own costumes appeared onstage in the quasi opera affair.

  “So,” said Hammond. “How’d the socialite enjoy this new transition for her?”

  According to Hartwig, after falling asleep on his shoulder and waking up she was thrilled like a little girl watching her first ballet. Remember, it wasn’t at an age so much older that Sandy’d rebelled against her own parents’ social designs and had refused to attend any of these functions, no matter the punishments imposed upon her. At her age the possibility opened that she might be able to fully adopt her vintage after all. I imagine as the orchestra struck up the Blue Danube or something of that nature those memories began to vanish; new ideas took their place. She actually found herself taking a willful part in the routine. Unlike the cotillion ball she’d considered artificial and phony and had refused to attend. You can imagine her mother’s reaction and the trouble she’d had raising that child. With Hartwig I know she felt secure. Completely secure. That, of course, was the tragedy of it.

  “I’ll say,” said Hammond wrinkling his forehead to resemble an old man’s.

  And for the first part of the evening Sandy did extremely well on the arm of her escort. The occasion of the beautiful old building with its Doric columned facade, the starry pendulum that hung from the enormous rotunda like an oversize mace about to fall, the magnificent drop curtained stage with its frieze of cupids above and the tiered boxes on either sided mesmerized her. I can only imagine she’d entered a different world even though it had once been a distant part of her past. For some persons time kills all memory of a haunt. Then this might well have been a conscientious effort on her part for she was very unhappy with her past life and wanted to enter the new untrammeled. It was much like the delusion people entertain when they start the new-year. Well meaning, but whew! At halftime the two even met a couple they both knew in the lobby and after a short reunion there they followed John and Deidre Rosenblatt to their box above the stage. In other words, except to get in, they hadn’t even had to use the tickets Hartwig’s mother had provided in all her good will and trust that he’d take Gloria to the event.

  “That,” said Hammond, “must’ve relieved his conscience right then. I imagine he too fe
lt more at ease before the spectacle.”

  “Do you?” I said. “For one thing, at the second intermission Sandy’d informed Hartwig, after he’d pressed her,

  “Just where to you know John from anyhow? And how well?” That she’d once been his prom date. They’d done it in the back seat of the limo after they’d left the dance while John’s brother and his date were making out in the front.”

  “You’re kidding?” Said Hammond. “Did she really tell him that? So there is a reason why she got her rep? How‘d Hartwig react? And then he saw the man He was right there?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But evidently this John was some man. He was six-four, weighed well over two hundred pounds and had once played in the line for Stanford. He’d naturally gone into his father’s brokerage firm with his two brothers. Not only was the man well off, he was a quite good-looking fellow as I remember him. He had a solid shock of dark brown hair, the chiseled features of a movie star and the women adored him. His wife, Dierdre, a natural blond was considered one of the best-looking women in the city. Who knows what Hartwig thought? Maybe he was proud his girlfriend could attract someone that desirable to begin with although he’d heard stories of others she’d had who weren’t so desirable. One of whom, of course, was Brochowitz. One thing about her, it seemed Sandy was brutally honest about her affairs over which she seemed to have no shame. She slept with her men, she claimed, because it helped them. Now does that make sense? I suppose if you look upon sex as handing out food to the starving it does. Not all persons think of it like that. There are some who consider it far more personal and sacred like the Hindu rituals suggest. I can only say what it seemed to’ve meant to her. This didn’t state, of course, she couldn’t love. She was in love with Hartwig because it was convenient. It hadn’t been with Rosenblatt. That didn’t mean she still didn’t like him but she hadn’t seen him around long enough for him to’ve subdued her nature. And that, of course, is what loving someone’s all about when, of course, yours is subdued in return.