And I went in.
8
I walked directly across the bedroom and sat down on her dressing table bench heavily, so heavily some of the bourbon slopped out onto the back of my hand and wrist.
“Lover boy is gone,” I said.
She peered at me. “What do you mean, gone?”
“Did you expect him to stay?”
“He’s too sick to go. Where’d he go? Wha’d you do with Vince?”
“Took him to the airport.”
“Where is he going?”
“I didn’t ask. You want to follow him?”
“I might just as well follow him as stay here. With a damn sneaky sneak.”
“I tell you I did not sneak.”
She sat on the foot of her bed, facing me. “You did so sneak. I would have heard the car. I was listening.”
“I ran out of gas about two blocks away.”
“A likely story. A very likely story!”
“You can ask Irene. I met her while I was carrying gas back to the car. I drove her back to the main bus stop.”
She squinted her eyes at me. “You really ran outa gas?”
“Yes.”
“Then it was just bad luck. Just stinking bad luck, thass all.”
She looked like a guilty and rebellious child. “Lorraine.”
“Yeah?”
“Lorraine, honey, why do you make such a mess of everything? Why do you drink yourself stupid? Why did you do that today with Vince?”
She made a helpless gesture with her free hand. “Why do people do anything? It wouldn’t hurt anything, would it? He wouldn’t say anything. I wouldn’t say anything. So what’s the harm in a little fun?”
The bourbon had made me feel very solemn, quite pontifical.
“That is an immoral attitude,” I said.
“You’re a stuffy bassar, aren’t you?”
“Why do you drink so much?”
“Because I like to drink so much. That’s why I drink so much. And what’d you send Irene home for? I’m hungry.”
“Lorraine, honey, we ought to try to understand each other better.”
“Go ahead. Understand me. Tell me what I’m like. You caught me, didn’t you. Gives you a big free ticket to give me a big free lecture. Go ahead. You caught me. It makes me feel kind of ashamed you caught me, but you ought to feel good. Forgive the poor sinner. Say prayers maybe. Like Irene.”
“Don’t be so defensive. I’m trying to talk calmly.”
“Be calm and superior.”
“That’s the point. I’m not superior. I … I haven’t been faithful either.”
“Now you admit it! That washed-out Liz Addams. I knew it all the time, but you kept denying—”
“Not Liz Addams, Lorraine. Your friend Tinker.”
“Tinker!” she gasped. “Where? When?”
“Last Sunday. After dark. In her house.”
She looked at me with complete shock and consternation. I expected her to break into tears. And she broke into an uncontrollable fit of giggling.
“Oh my God. Tinker! Oh, brother. Oh, the fun I’m going to have with her.”
“Shut up!” I yelled at her. “You’re not even human!”
She stood up, wavering and snickering, and headed for the bathroom. I ran after her and caught her by the arm at the doorway. “What’s wrong with you?” I yelled into her face. “You ought to see a psychiatrist. You’ve got some kind of a disease. You act as if … adultery was some kind of a game.”
She wrenched her arm free and looked up at me. “Well, of course,” she cooed. “Of course, darling. It is a game. A wonnerful, wonnerful game.” She unbelted her robe so that it hung apart, did an ugly parody of a bump and grind and said, “Soon’s I see a dog about a girl, we’ll make ourselves comfy and exchange names. I bet I win. I got a hell of a long list. Ooooh, brother, have I ever got a long list.”
I looked down into the filth of her face and the filth of her smile and the filth of her eyes. And called her the foulest name that came to mind. She raked my face with her nails. I put my right hand on the side of her face and thrust her into the bathroom with all my strength.
It was a floor-length robe when it was belted. It hung longer at the sides when unbelted. I believe that the first involuntary step she took, the first sideways step was onto the hem of the robe. It tripped her perfectly so that she left her feet completely, turning in the air slightly toward her own left so that she had no chance of getting her hands in front of her. The tub is in direct line with the doorway. Her head struck the tub with such a terrible force that it rang like a great muffled gong. She lay on her back with her head turned too far to the side, at a sickening and impossible angle. Her nails scrabbled listlessly at the tiled floor. Her body tensed in a great rippling shudder, then collapsed into a stillness and smallness. Her eyes were half open. She looked small as a child. And with a dreadful stillness. The bright fluorescence of the bathroom lights made it all a special horror. My only instinct was to turn the light out. The last gray of the day was at the window.
I went back into the bedroom. I sat at her dressing table and looked in the mirror. I was breathing with great shuddering breaths and suddenly I could hear in the room the rasping noise of my own breath. I saw the three scratches on my cheek. The middle one was longest and deepest. A single drop of blood ran from the middle gouge down to the angle of my jaw. It clung there, drying. In the mirror I saw the drink in my hand. I set it aside.
Then I knew that of course I had been wrong. Knocked her out. That’s all. In a little while she’d come wobbling out, cursing me.
So I went into the bathroom and knelt carefully on the tile and laid my ear on her chest, knowing I would hear the slow thump of her heart. And heard a monstrous silence.
I went back into the bedroom and snatched up my drink, then put it down again. I crossed to the bedroom phone on her night stand and sat on her bed and picked up the phone. I heard the dial sound. I listened to it for several seconds. You dialed zero. Then you asked for the police. Then you said, I just sort of pushed her a little.
I hung up the phone and dried the palms of my hands on her bedspread.
Think, damn it! Pull yourself up out of the liquor stupor and the shock and start thinking. She is dead. Gone. Finished. Muerto. A stiff, a cadaver—something for the meat wagon, the embalming fluid and some organ music.
Take your choice, Jamison. Phone the cops right now and take a chance on some justice and mercy and maybe a minimum of three years for manslaughter. Or bitch up the evidence and take a chance on getting out whole.
And how about the money under the wood pile?
And what about the questions that are going to be asked about Vincente Biskay?
Get cold, Jamison. Get cold and logical and objective. And think. Think of all the angles.
Bar of soap on the floor. Rub some on the bottom of her foot. Press it against the tile and make a long smear of soap. Leave water running in the sink. Get the hell out. Establish an alibi. Come back and find her.
But they’d have some cute ideas about the angle of the fall, the force, the way the soap should have skidded. Might be worth a try if she hadn’t gouged you. They’ll clean under her fingernails, dig out the little flecks of tissue she tore out of your cheek, and find enough blood to type.
Start the big run tonight. Take the cash and start moving fast.
And then they’ll really be after you. No, you have to leave clean. Be trouble enough without that kind of pressure.
Be so much better if she could leave.
And that idea had a curious flavor of plausibility about it. I turned it around and around to see where and how it would fit.
And made it fit.
A big affair with Vince. A quarrel. (That was when she gouged me.) And then the two of them ran away together.
It would fit Vince’s history. And her reputation.
But I couldn’t go off half cocked. I had to sit and go over every aspect, and build a plan
, and check the plan from every direction, from every angle.
And as I was beginning to sell myself on it, I happened to remember something that would make it perfect. Might make it perfect. If I could find it. If the wording was right. If it was the way I remembered it.
Way back in the marriage when the quarrels had been violent, when it had hurt when she had savaged me, before our scenes had become routine, there had been one particularly unpleasant quarrel. I could not even remember what it was about but she had left me forever. When I came home from work I had found her note. She had scrawled it on the flyleaf of a book I had been reading, had left the book propped open in the middle of the living room rug for me to find.
I went downstairs. It took a few minutes to find the book. I remembered that after we had made our fragile peace, she had wanted to cut the flyleaf out, but I had decided to keep it. I remembered having the vague idea that it might become useful ammunition in the event of another quarrel.
I took the book over to the lamp and read in her slanty green-ink scrawl, the i’s dotted with little circles: “Jerry—This is no damn good for either of us. I’m leaving for good this time. Don’t try to find me. I won’t be back.” It was signed with one initial, a sprawling L.
I could not remember that anyone else knew of the note. I remembered that I had read of scientific methods which could determine the age of ink. This had been written over six years ago. But it looked crisp and fresh.
I heard footsteps on the front porch and slapped the book shut, slid it into its space on the shelf. My heart was beating heavily.
I went to the door. I did not turn the porch light or hall light on. I was relieved to see that it was a woman silhouetted against the street light.
“Jerry?”
“Hi, Mandy.”
“Lorraine around?”
“No, she isn’t.”
“Our damn phone is out of order again. That’s the third time this month. Know where I can find her?”
“She didn’t say where she was going. She didn’t take her car, so she’s probably somewhere in the neighborhood.”
“Well, I don’t feel like tramping all over looking for her. If she gets back before ten have her try to call me and if it’s still out of order maybe she could drive over for a couple of minutes.”
“I’ll tell her.”
“Thanks, Jerry.”
I watched her go down the steps. I went back and got the book and took it upstairs and got a razor blade and ca the flyleaf out neatly. I took the book back down and replaced it. Back in the bedroom I propped the note up against her dressing table mirror. It looked plausible, and it was entirely accurate. She wouldn’t be back.
I went down to the storeroom in the cellar. The lawn chairs were stacked there. They hadn’t been put out yet. They were covered by a tarp. I pulled it off and held it up. It was big enough, a khaki tarp with a few tears and grease stains.
I took the tarp and some heavy twine up to the bathroom. I turned on the light. I had expected her to look different, somehow but she looked the same. I spread the tarp out on the tile floor beside her. I sat on my heels and wiped my palms on the thighs of my slacks. It was several moments before I could make up my mind to touch her. Then I reached over and grasped her by the left shoulder and the hip and rolled her onto the tarp. Her body had changed. She was not cold, but neither did she have the warmth of life. It was a middle temperature, queasy and unlikely. I rolled her over one more half turn so that she was once again on her back. I put her arms at her sides and her ankles together. I folded the tarp up over her legs and down over her face. Then I tucked the tarp around her. I passed the twine under her and tied the bundle firmly at ankles, knees, thighs, waist, bust and throat. When I stood up my knees were trembling. Only then did I realize that I had somehow managed it all without once looking directly at her face.
I picked the long bundle up awkwardly. I had heard that the dead are unexpectedly heavy. But she was no heavier than on the many other occasions when I had had to carry her after she had passed out. I half stood her against the wall as I had done so many times before, then bent over, put my right shoulder against her belly and grasped her around the knees, straightening up as the upper part of her body fell forward against my back.
As I stood up she made a ghastly croak of complaint.
I felt an instantaneous cold sweat on every part of my body. I stood with the weight of her on my shoulder and told myself that it was merely the captured air being forced out of dead lungs. I took her down the dark stairs and out to the kitchen and lowered her to the floor, easing her down gently. I locked all three outside doors and ran back upstairs. I mopped the bathroom floor, and then did all I could to make the gouges on my right cheek less conspicuous, finding and using the pancake makeup Lorraine used to cover blemishes.
Just as I had finished the phone rang. I hurried into the bedroom, sat on the bed, let it ring twice more while I brought my breathing under control.
“Hello?”
“Jerry, Mandy again. Sorry to be a nuisance. Lorraine in yet?”
“Not yet.”
“Well, tell her our phone is working again.”
“I … I have to go out in a few minutes, Mandy. I may be late getting back. But I’ll leave her a note.”
“How about me coming over and staying with your sick friend if you’re both out?”
“No need of that. Anyway, Vince is asleep. Thanks, Mandy.”
“Is he receptive to blondes?”
“Very. And brunettes and redheads.”
“You wouldn’t be just a teeny weeny little bit receptive to redheads yourself, would you, Jerry dear?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I heard that you and … a mutual friend were observed having a very torrid little time in a deck chair recently. And then you both slunk off into the bullrushes.”
“A case of mistaken identity.”
“I’m sure it must have been. Well, you leave that note, dear.”
“I will.”
I hung up. I went down to the living room, sat at the small desk and wrote, “Lorrie—When you come in Mandy wants you to phone her. The patient is sound asleep. I’m going out. I don’t know when I’ll be back. That nasty little threat of yours has made me restless. I keep hoping you didn’t mean it.”
I signed it. I took it into the dark kitchen, put it on the edge of the breakfast booth table, weighted it down with a salt shaker. I looked at the shadowy bundle on the floor near the door and said, “Mandy wants you to phone, darling.” And then I laughed, and stopped abruptly. It was a creaky laugh, twisted and nervous and horrible.
I went to the garage, put a shovel in the back of the wagon, backed it out, turned around, backed it into the driveway and lowered the tailgate. I waited for several moments in the darkness. The neighborhood was quiet. I looked at the luminous dial of my watch. Twenty minutes to ten. I could hear no car coming, no pedestrian sounds. I went and got her. I picked her up as before and ran heavily with her to the station wagon. I sat her on the tailgate, pushed her over backward. Her head thumped hard. I picked up her legs and slid her in beside the shovel, and covered the tell-tale shape of the twine-wrapped bundle with the old army blanket I keep in the back of the wagon. The shape was still too evident. I pulled the blanket off, laid the shovel across her and covered her again. It made an awkward and meaningless bundle.
I locked the house and drove carefully into the city. I parked the wagon on a quiet side street behind the Hotel Vernon and locked it. I went into the bar. It was a quiet evening. Four or five couples and three men at the bar. I sat on a stool. Timmy came to my end of the bar and said, “Good evening, Mr. Jamison.”
“Is it?” I said, scowling at him and slurring my words. “Gimme a bourbon mist, Timmy.” I put a five on the bar.
When he brought it I said, “Hellova world, Timmy. Can’t live with ’em and can’t live without ’em.”
“That’s the way it goes sometimes, Mr. Jamison.�
��
Lorraine had made a spectacle of herself just often enough in the Hotel Vernon bar so that Timmy had a look of genuine compassion.
“I’ll be damned if I’ll go home. Maybe I’ll get a room here.”
“These things blow over,” he said.
I drank my drink and left him a dollar tip. I wanted him to remember me. I lurched into the door frame with my shoulder as I left. I walked quickly to the car and drove to our new development, Park Terrace. And for once I had cause to be thankful for E. J.’s marble-headed stubbornness. Time after time I had pleaded with him to employ a night watchman. I had pointed out that petty pilferage off the job and malicious damage by kids was costing us more than a watchman would cost. But he would say that the men could lock up their tools in the shacks, and you couldn’t keep kids from stealing scrap lumber.
I knew that on the following morning the transitmix trucks would be out to pour footings, foundation walls and the carport slabs for the next ten houses. The forms were in. I parked beside a high stack of cinderblock. I walked around until my eyes were used to the night light. I had to make certain our development hadn’t been chosen on this night of a half moon by anybody with romance in mind. The nearest occupied houses were a quarter of a mile away. I watched a commercial airliner settling toward the airport, running lights blinking. Two distant cats were enchanting each other with horrid sounds.
I got the shovel and stepped over the taut string and the edge of the form for a slab and picked a place about three feet from the edge. The drain would go in the middle. I had selected a house where the slope of the lot had caused us to use fill on the carport side of the house, so the digging was relatively easy. I worked hard and fast. My wind went rapidly and my back and shoulders began to ache. Though I had intended to go deeper, when I was down about four feet, I quit.
With the lights out, I backed the wagon as close as I could. I lowered the tailgate, pulled on her ankles, then pulled her up into a sitting position and took her on my shoulders again. In length and width the hole was a tight fit. I consciously tried to dull my awareness of what I was doing as I shoveled the dirt back in. Once the mound was high over her, I had to force myself to the point where I could endure stamping it down. I thought of her in the sun by a poolside, thought of her in a formal dress, her shoulders bare. I saw her walking and running and laughing.
Soft Touch Page 9
