The Price of Murder

by John D. MacDonald

And they had done that thing to him.

  They had all done it. The Bronsons and Judson and Talliaferro. The G.I.s in that stockade had done it too, and answered for it in yelps of anguish as the billy stick splintered shin bone.

  Keefler warred against all the foulness in the world, against everyone who had helped hold the knife that had spilled Mose onto the dirty sidewalk of the Sink. In his mind, even Lee Bronson had helped hold that knife.

  When he got off the bus his lips were moving and there was a quiet madness in his eyes. And he hit the artificial hand against his thigh so as to feel more clearly the aching and the pain.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Lucille Bronson

  She paused in the living room, head tilted to one side, and tried to hear what that man named Keefler was saying to Lee, but the man kept his voice too low. In the silence of the small house she could hear the excited beat of her heart, the heavy high-placed thudding. There was no way of knowing how much or how little Keefler knew. She had not liked the look of him. He had mean, wise little blue eyes, and he had looked at her in a way that was too knowing.

  She went back through the living room and into the bedroom, shrugged out of the beach coat and flung it on the chair. Her suit was nearly dry. She stepped out of her clogs, peeled her suit down and stepped out of it, walked through into the bathroom and hung it over the edge of the tub. She paused briefly in front of the mirror over the sink and looked at the puckered marks the tight bra built into the suit had made on her breasts.

  When she walked back into the bedroom, she went to her bureau to get clean underthings, and then changed her mind as she realized that some slight tactical advantage might be obtained by remaining naked. That is, if Keefler knew anything and had told Lee. But she didn’t know how Keefler could know anything.

  It had only happened twice. But if Lee found out, it wasn’t going to make him feel any better to know it had only happened twice, and the first time it was really sort of like an accident. One of those things that can happen and it’s really nobody’s fault. The only thing to show was from the first time, and that had been her lip swollen and the cut inside it where this tooth back here is turned a little crooked, the one the dentist said didn’t matter because it didn’t show and it would be hard to try to straighten it. The front ones had always been straight so there never had to be any of those braces.

  She sat on the bench in front of her dressing table and put her heel up on the bench, soaked cotton in nail polish remover and began to take the old cracked nail polish from her toes.

  There was no way that Mr. Keefler could possibly know she had seen Danny twice. Once about two weeks ago—no, it was a little more than two weeks because it was on Friday, on Friday in the morning and that would make it two weeks ago yesterday. He hurt her mouth and when Lee saw it she told him the thing she made up about it, about how she was getting the hat box down off the top shelf of the closet and it slipped and hit her in the mouth.

  It was one of those things that just happened. It hadn’t been meant to happen either time, either fifteen days ago or Thursday, the day before yesterday. But maybe he meant for it to happen Thursday because he didn’t leave his car in front like before.

  She remembered how it was when Danny stopped on that Friday morning. She remembered she’d set the ironing board up and she was ironing the candy-striped skirt, the one with the tricky little pleats that you had to be careful about. And the television was on in the living room. You could sort of follow what was going on by listening, even if it was kind of hard sometimes, and then if it sounded exciting, you could hurry in and look at it and then come back out when it got dull again. She remembered she had been ironing the candy-striped skirt on account of Ruthie was going to come by about two and they were going to go down to the matinee of that new Bill Holden one. She wanted to wear it on account of it was a stinking hot day and it was a cool skirt and, because Lee had the car, they were going to walk to the bus and once you got downtown it was another four blocks nearly to the State. So she had decided to wear the candy-stripe with just a half slip. The white rayon blouse was thick enough and full enough so she was going to get away without wearing a bra no matter if Ruthie did make some smart crack about her bobbling all over the place. Ruthie made those cracks on account of if she didn’t wear a bra she’d be all hanging down to her belt practically. It was funny Earl didn’t pick up a good buy in a used car for Ruthie, seeing as how he worked at that business and could get a good one, but it looked like he was as stingy as Lee almost.

  Anyway, it had been something after eleven, maybe a quarter after, and the skirt was nearly done when she heard the familiar creak of the middle step of the three steps up to the small back porch and then a big man just outside the screen door with the sun behind him so she couldn’t tell who it was, even when the man said, “Hi, Lucille.”

  When she started to the door he pushed it open and came in and she saw it was Danny, Lee’s brother. She didn’t know him well, having seen him only two or three times and then Lee had been there and a lot of the time the two of them had talked about people she had never heard of. It felt kind of funny to be alone with him, because she couldn’t keep from thinking about how he’d been in jail three times and he was really a kind of a gangster. She remembered how Lee had told her parents about his brother Danny and how they’d been so upset about it they’d practically wanted to call the whole thing off. Lee could have kept it to himself and saved all that trouble, but that was Lee for you. He always had to go ahead and do just what he thought was the right thing to do, no matter what it cost people.

  She remembered the first time she had met Danny and how he was so different from what she had thought. She had thought maybe he would be sort of like George Raft or maybe the other type like Ernest Borgnine, but actually you couldn’t have told about him, hardly. In one tiny little way he was a little like Van Johnson, but older and heavier and just a little bit beat-up looking.

  So when he came in, she told him Lee wasn’t home and he wouldn’t even be home to lunch on account of he didn’t have enough time on Fridays on account of his schedule to come home. But Danny kind of ignored that and sat on one of the kitchen chairs and told her to go right ahead with her ironing.

  He was quiet and kind of funny-acting, and it made her feel funny to just keep right on ironing. She had felt conspicuous in that tight old pair of blue-jean shorts and the skimpy yellow halter and barefoot and all. She tried to make conversation with him, and went in and turned off the television and saw his car out there at the curb and came back and tried to talk some more, but he just sort of grunted and kept frowning and didn’t seem to pay much attention. He was wearing a wonderful looking pair of slacks, pale gray with sharp creases and black stitching down the sides and on the pockets, and a blue cotton shirt with a white horizontal stripe, and short sleeves. His arms were big and brown, and his hands made his cigarette look small and very white.

  She finished the skirt and put it on the hanger and she half expected him to jump up and try to help when she folded up the ironing board, but he just sat there, not watching her at all, but watching the pattern in the linoleum.

  “Would you like a beer?” she had asked. “Or some coffee maybe?” You certainly couldn’t tell he’d been in jail any three times, but you could tell he was worried about something.

  He seemed to make up his mind, and he didn’t even answer about the beer or the coffee. He snapped his cigarette all the way across into the kitchen sink and he looked right at her and he said, “I got a problem, Lucille, and maybe you’re the answer, but I don’t know. Anyway, you’re the only one I’ve been able to think of.”

  “Well, I …”

  “Don’t try to give me any answers until I tell you about it. But first I’ve got to ask some questions. Can you keep something from Lee?”

  She couldn’t understand what he was driving at. “I … I guess so.”

  He looked at her keenly. “Is there anything you do keep from him? Is
there anything you’ve kept from him?”

  She felt her face get sort of hot and she said, “Yes.”

  He stood up. “I’ve cut myself a piece of something, and I’ve got to have some protection.” He took an envelope out of his hip pocket. It was a long envelope, sealed and folded double. He slapped it against the knuckles of his other hand. “I want this in a safe place. I can’t give it to Lee. I know him too damn well. He’d open it and tell himself it was for my own good and he might do something stupid. You think you can hide this where he won’t find it, and keep your mouth shut about it?”

  “Y-Yes, Danny.”

  “It’s insurance against anything happening to me. But suppose I’m dealing with somebody that gets too mad to be smart. Then something happens to me. As soon as you find out, then you take this to the cops. It will make good reading. You can open it and read it yourself before you take it. But don’t you open it unless I’m dead.”

  “All right.”

  “I mean that. I don’t think I’ll get hurt so long as I got this kind of insurance, though. If everything goes just like I want it to go, I’ll be back one of these days to pick it up. Will you do this for me?”

  “Yes. I’ll do it, Danny,” she said and held out her hand, but he didn’t give it to her.

  “I want to know where you’re going to put it, Lucille. Show me the place first.”

  She remembered the hiding place she used, the old brown shoulder bag that hung on one of the back hooks of the closet. Danny followed her into the bedroom and she showed him the purse. He shook his head. “I don’t like it. Suppose you’re out and you get a guy working in here. Maybe he takes it, or looks in it.”

  “Under the mattress? Lee wouldn’t find it there.”

  He looked at her almost with contempt. “I’ll look around, honey. I’ll find a place.” She followed him as he went through the house. They ended up back in the kitchen. On the counter top under the cabinets was a row of graduated metal containers, yellow with a design on each of three ducks on a pond, and each one labeled. He took the top off the largest one the one that said flour.

  “I don’t imagine you do much baking.”

  “Not very much.”

  “This ought to do,” he said. It was more than half full. He took it over to the sink. She stood a half step behind him and watched him work the envelope down until it must have been near the bottom of the can. He dusted his hands over the sink. “Okay,” he said. “Put it back.”

  She carried it over and put it with the others. He gave her a cigarette and lit it. He looked down into her eyes and it made her feel uncomfortable. “Don’t open the envelope.”

  “I won’t. You told me already.”

  “And I’m telling you again. You’re my brother’s wife, but this is important to me. It’s more important to me than you are, honey. If I should come back for it, and it might be any day from now on, and it’s been opened, I’m going to work you over a little. You understand?”

  “First you ask me to do you a favor and then you start talking about beating me up.”

  “I just want to make sure you understand. I’m … glad you’ll do it. You’re the only one I could think of. I’ve sort of … cut loose from old ties.”

  She looked up at him and thought about how he had been in jail, and looked at how wide his shoulders were, and how he had a kind of nice, reckless, wild look, not like Lee. It was funny two brothers could be so different. It wasn’t that anything should happen, but it just did. She knew that it started right there while they were looking at each other. The house was so quiet. And they didn’t say anything. And she knew she should look away, but she just kept looking at him and he kept looking back. She felt her breath get shallower and her breathing get quick. She saw his chest lift as he breathed. In the socket of his throat, above the blue and white shirt, there was a curl of harsh blond hair. There was no sound but the buzz of the refrigerator and some distant traffic and the noises of small kids playing in one of the back yards.

  When he took hold of her she expected it, but not the quickness and the roughness of his grasp. She started to squirm and fight him, scared then, and thinking of Lee and of marriage and all that. She writhed away from him and half fell back and her shoulders crashed against the cabinets and she heard a dish fall inside. That was when he hit her with the back of his hand across the mouth and she made a kind of moaning sound and fell into his arms. He half carried and half dragged her into the bedroom and she could not stop making that moaning sound, and her body felt all loosened as if all the tight muscles had come untied. He was rough and harsh and contemptuous with her, rougher than Lee had ever been. It was like being punished. But, when she could have sworn that she could not respond to treatment like this, her response came in a quick upward blinding spiral.

  She lay there too exhausted to move and, with her eyes half shut, watched him fix his clothing, latch his belt tight, turn and stand over her and light another cigarette. He cursed her and he cursed himself. He labeled their foulness with words she had never heard before. He cautioned her about the envelope and he left. She heard his heavy step in the kitchen, the bang of the screen door, and a few seconds later, the slam of his car door and and the angry roar of the engine, the sudden yelp of tires as he started up.

  A long time later she got up and put on her robe and phoned Ruthie and said she had a headache. She took a hot bath, and then put on different shorts and another halter and fixed the rumpled bed and got the board out again and did some more ironing. Every once in a while tears would start to run down her face. She didn’t feel as though she was crying. It wasn’t like crying. All of a sudden the tears would run again. It was like, long ago, when the dog, Taffy, was killed by a car. She wouldn’t even be thinking of Taffy. She would be doing her homework or she’d be talking to a friend on the phone and the tears would come out of no place and it was the tears that would make her remember Taffy.

  After that she thought about Danny so much that it seemed to her that she thought about him every minute of the day. When she remembered what he had called himself and what he had called her, it gave her a hollow-tummy feeling of excitement.

  But when he came back, the day before yesterday, came back while she was sitting on the front porch in the early afternoon reading a magazine, he nearly startled her out of her wits. He had come in the back and he came through the house without the slightest sound to the open front door and spoke her name. Her heart fluttered and felt as if it were trying to jump out of her chest.

  She went in, and felt too shy to look directly at him. He said, “I should have known it when I got my first good look at you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean. Of all the guys in the world, he’s the one who has to hook up with you, Lucille.”

  She looked at him then. He was grinning at her, but it wasn’t a warm grin. “You made me do it.”

  “That’s right, Lucille. I made you do it.”

  “Why don’t you get your envelope and get out?”

  “I don’t want it yet. I want you to keep this, too.” He handed her an unsealed envelope. “Go ahead. Look in it.”

  She looked at the packet of fifty-dollar bills, then stared at him, her eyes wide. “What’s this for?”

  “They’ve changed the name of the game on me. I got parole trouble. I’ve got to move a little different on my deal than I planned. There’s a thousand there. Sort of a down payment like. It’s traveling money, and the best place for it is here, I think. Here’s what will happen. If things go perfect for me, I’ll be back to pick up that other envelope and you can keep this one. If things go sour, I’ll be back to get both envelopes and I’ll be in a hurry. Put that one in that purse in the closet you showed me. If things go really sour, I’ll be dead. Then you keep the grand and give the other envelope to the cops.”

  She told him she understood. She went into the bedroom. He followed and watched her hide the second envelope. She turned around and looked a
t him. She saw the contempt on his face. She jumped forward and locked her arms around his neck. He flung her about trying to shake her off, but she held tightly to him. And knew the instant when he changed his mind. It was just like the other time, only this time he didn’t say anything. He didn’t stand over the bed when he lit his cigarette. He turned when he was in the bedroom doorway and lit it there and looked at her nakedness the way a man would glance at dirt in the street, and then he was gone and this time the screen door closed quietly and she heard no car motor. After she had her tub and fixed her bed and put on fresh clothes, she took the money and arranged it on the bed, arranged the twenty bills in all kinds of different patterns, hummed softly to herself and played with the money until it was nearly time for Lee to be home. This time there weren’t any tears, and she had the warm and satisfied little feeling that she had gotten even with Danny in some way, but she couldn’t understand just how that could be.

  Now, with all the polish removed, she began to paint the toenails of her right foot, starting with the little one. She sat in a limber way, without strain, the inside of her sharply crooked knee warm against the side of her face. Her dressing table had a center mirror as well as two side mirrors at an angle. She heard him and glanced into the side mirror on the right and saw him in the doorway, leaning against the frame, hand in the pocket of the faded khakis, his expression cold and thoughtful.

  She looked back down at her foot and started on the nail of the third toe, working carefully. “It looks like your brother is in some kind of trouble,” she said.

  “He’s got trouble. Maybe we’ve got trouble, too.”

  “How could we have trouble?”

  She heard him cross the room behind her, heard the sound of the bed as he sat on it. When he spoke the harshness of his voice startled her. “Stop that damn nonsense and turn around. I want to talk to you.”

  “Just a minute till I finish.”

  “Now, damn it!”

  She put the brush back in the bottle, sighed audibly, swiveled around so that she faced him. “I don’t know what you got to get so hot about,” she said, keeping her face still but searching his face for proof that Keefler could have told him anything.