by John Farris
“I think we need a drink,” he said then.
“Let’s have a drink,” I agreed breathlessly.
There was a bar in the living room, with a small refrigerator. We went there. He mixed the drinks and made them strong. We sat in two stylish chairs, facing each other uncertainly. Macy lifted his glass to me.
“You’re right, Pete,” he said. “I don’t know when it started. Maybe as far back as six years ago. It hasn’t been anything sudden. A little ground lost here and there, not recovered. Some cheating overlooked because it wasn’t quite so important at the time. Things got loose. I didn’t stay around town enough. It was better down here. Last year I moved. I stay here all the time now. With Aimee.
“I wasn’t completely unaware of what was happening, Pete. I thought I could step back in any time I wanted. Give the orders. Clean things up. Then one day it was too late. It didn’t even seem to matter much. I knew then how old I was getting. I tried just to hold things as they were. Tell myself it really wasn’t as bad as it looked, that nobody realized. But everybody knew. My own boys knew first. A few of them left. They went over to Maxine. The others got sloppy. Now Maxine’s getting ready to make his bid. It’s not worth fighting back.”
“What are you going to do when the showdown finally comes?”
“There won’t be any showdown,” he said, but his eyes were evasive. He had something in mind but wasn’t ready to talk about it. “Tell me what happened today, Pete. Everything.”
I told him. “Both Gilmer and Carla Kennedy are important,” I finished. “When I find either of them I may know who’s been sending you fan mail.”
“Rudy doesn’t sleep any more,” Macy said reflectively. “I look at Rudy and say that it doesn’t bother me like that, but it does.” He swirled ice in his glass, drained the last of the whisky. “I ought to tell you to go home, Pete,” he said without shame, “but I’m afraid to. I want you around.”
He frowned, hearing what I had been hearing. It was a woman’s hard ugly scream mixed with a man’s thick-voiced, shouted curses. Macy sat up straight in his chair. “What the hell is that? They’ll wake Aimee.” He ran heavily from the living room and I followed, wincing at the searing, uncontrolled hate underscoring the shouts.
In the wing of the house where my room was, I saw Owen Barr wrestling, bearlike, with a woman. It was Diane. She hit him in the face, the fingers of her hand slightly curled and stiff. He was having a hard time with her. He bounced her off a wall and she tried to kick him between the legs. He lowered one shoulder, dug it into her stomach, brought it up hard to smash across one breast.
Diane spat at him. She spat until her mouth was dry, and clawed at the top of his head. Hair hung down on her face. She tried to thumb his eyes, but he kept his face down. One of her feet kicked through a pane of the French doors and blood gleamed at her ankle. The raw animal fury in her face slowed my step for an instant. There was a dribbling of saliva from her mouth. She screamed hoarsely, over and over. Owen muttered guttural curses.
His hands closed over the blouse she wore and there was a sharp ripping noise. Diane was suddenly still. Owen grabbed her by the neck and threw her into his room, catching her wrist as she stumbled. Diane searched for the tear, found it under one arm. A bit of her skin showed through the frayed material at her armpit. She tried to kick Owen but he kept out of her way. She wasn’t screaming any more, but breathed with a slight snarl, like a cornered lioness. There was a chilling blank look in her eyes, as if she saw nothing.
Macy went into the bedroom. I stood in the doorway.
“Look at it!” Owen screamed. “Look at it! You ruined it! Bitch. Bitch!” He lunged forward and his small fat palm flew upward in a big arc to crack across her face with a nasty meaty sound. It snapped her head back and knocked her halfway around. She would have fallen if Owen hadn’t held her wrist. There was blood on his lower lip where he had bitten it in rage.
“She slashed my painting,” Owen sobbed indignantly, jerking at the moaning Diane. “She—”
I heard someone behind me but had no chance to move before a big hand shoved me out of the doorway. I pitched inside and Taggart shouldered past me. “He hit her!” Taggart groaned. He reached for Owen and threw him against the wall. Diane slumped to the floor. Taggart put his economy-sized hands around Owen’s throat. Tendons stretched like cables as the fingers squeezed. I saw helpless fear widen Owen’s eyes as his mouth spread open.
I wedged myself between Owen and Taggart, shoved his powerful arms up and apart, then pushed my neck and shoulders hard into his stomach, bracing myself with a foot against the wall. I sensed the hands coming loose from Owen’s throat and threw myself against Taggart. We hit the floor together. I was on top. He pushed me away, got up slowly, one knee down. I belted him in the gut. It stopped him for maybe a couple of seconds. Then he pulled the other leg up and started for Owen, who gibbered with fright at the approach of the big man.
“He hit her,” Taggart said. “I’ll kill him!” He got one of the hands around Owen’s throat again. He used the other to hold me off.
“Stop it,” Macy said. “Diane, tell him to stop it!”
“Tag,” Diane said weakly. It was a small sound but he heard it. He eased his hand away and Owen slid to the floor. He put his head down and crawled away from us into the hall.
Taggart looked at me for a few charged seconds, then made a gesture that indicated I was of no consequence. He glanced at Diane. I thought he was going to go to her but he just watched her get off the floor.
“What is this?” Macy said. “What the hell happened here?” He looked from Owen to Diane.
Owen leaned against the doorframe, sobbing for breath. “I caught her coming... out of my room,” he said. He pointed to one of the many oil paintings on the wall. “She... slashed it. The dirty goddam bitch slashed my... painting.” He started to cry.
We looked at the picture he was talking about. It was a seascape. Somebody had taken a knife or razor blade to it. The canvas was in tatters.
“You come in here and do that?” Macy said threateningly.
Diane turned her head to look at the picture. Her face was beginning to get that smooth motionless look. Owen’s slap had snapped her loose from something that had been building up within her. “I came in here. I just wanted to look at them. I wasn’t going to hurt anything.”
“She cut it!” Owen blubbered sickeningly, hanging on to the doorframe.
I saw Charley Rinke standing behind him in the hall, watching with an oddly fascinated expression.
“I didn’t touch your picture,” Diane said, with a trace of contempt. “I don’t have anything to cut with.” Her voice was becoming remote. She looked at the blood on her ankle.
“You gonna believe her? I caught her coming out! She did it! Shediditshediditshe—”
Macy walked up to his brother and hit him across the face with the back of his hand. Owen shut up. There was a look of bewilderment in his eyes. He put out a hand, gropingly.
“Macy...”
“Shut up, you fool,” Macy said in a deadly calm voice.
Owen’s face changed gradually, stiffening into hate that was deep and aching. He straightened up and his breathing slowed. He looked coldly at Macy. It was a look that had taken him all his life to achieve, and in a way it was a frightening thing. He saved some of it for Diane. She looked back without flinching. Owen turned and walked down the hall, his body stiff, his legs wobbling slightly. He looked straight ahead. In a few seconds the front door slammed, but not loudly.
Macy’s gaze shifted to the ruined painting, and his mouth softened. “Goddam fool,” he muttered almost tenderly. “All right,” he said, looking about him. “What the hell are you all standing around for? Clear out. You, Taggart, get out of here. Rinke, get back to the books.”
They drifted away slowly, and the knotted tension slackened. Diane didn’t move until the others had gone.
“You get, too,” Macy said to her. “Clean yourself up. You l
ook like you been raped in a telephone booth.”
Diane didn’t look at either of us. She went out, taking care not to step too hard on the ankle that had been hurt. The cut didn’t look deep. I could see through the tear in her blouse at the armpit. She held that arm close to her side.
Macy looked at the torn painting again. “Now what the hell got into that crazy dame?” he said.
“You think she cut it?” I asked him.
“Sure I think she cut it.” He made a fist and put his other hand over it. “Oh, well. They ain’t worth nothing anyway.”
“Owen seemed pretty upset.”
“My little brother,” Macy said scornfully. “Aw, he’ll get over it. I guess I’d better go upstairs and see if the ruckus woke Aimee up. She ain’t feeling so good. Come on.”
Chapter Seventeen
Aimee was lying awake in bed when we came in. She blinked at the sudden light. There were drying tears on her cheeks. The bed sheets were twisted.
“Was Diane yelling?” she said, and began to cry again. Macy picked her up and held her gently.
“It wasn’t anything,” he said. “Diane’s all right. She’ll come upstairs and go to bed with you pretty soon.”
“I can’t sleep,” Aimee moaned.
“Your stomach still upset?”
Aimee nodded. She chewed on the knuckles of one fist.
Macy looked at me. “Get her some water, will you, Pete? There’s some capsules in there, too. Bring one.”
I went into the bathroom. I could hear him talking to her, soothingly, in a voice I had rarely heard him use. I ran water into a glass and picked up one of the capsules.
Macy put it between Aimee’s stiff lips, gave her some water. She swallowed dutifully. “That’ll help,” Macy said encouragingly. “Your tummy will feel better.”
“Are we going to go boat riding tomorrow?” Aimee whimpered.
“Well... I don’t think so, baby. Daddy’s still busy. I’ll tell you what. One day soon we’re going to go on a long boat ride. For months and months. Would you like that?”
I hoped the boat ride he had in mind wouldn’t be across the Styx.
She nodded enthusiastically. “Where we goin’, Daddy?”
“I’m not sure yet. But we’re going. I promise you that. We’ll go places we’ve never been to, and we’ll have a good time together.”
“Can Diane go, too?”
“Sure,” Macy said, after a quick pause. “Diane can go, too.”
He put Aimee back into bed and tucked the sheet around her. He took a book from the bedside table and began to read to her. He had to hold the book fairly close to his face so he could see the print. I hung around feeling useless until Diane came in. She had washed her face and combed her hair, but the blouse was still torn. There was a puffiness about her eyes. She took a clean blouse from her dresser and went into the bathroom to change.
Aimee went to sleep in the midst of a sentence and Macy put up the book with some reluctance; he was enjoying the story.
We went downstairs. “Let’s go to the garage,” he said without hesitation. “Something you ought to see.”
I followed him outside to the garage. At the rear of the building he pointed to a large wooden box, about four feet long, filled with old tires and odds and ends of junk.
“Pull it this way,” he said. I put my hands on the box. It moved with astonishing ease, soundlessly. The frame of the box was mounted on rollers. Under it was a flight of steps. Two small square lights studding the concrete sides of the staircase provided illumination.
We descended. I went first. Macy reached up and pulled the box back over the entrance. It bumped snugly against the back wall of the garage. I stooped to go through a doorway at the base of the steps, found myself in a good-sized room with a low ceiling. It was air conditioned. The walls were lined with some kind of acoustical material, tinted pastel yellow. There were fluorescent lights screwed to the ceiling. Charley Rinke worked at a long table, his shirt sleeves rolled up. He was surrounded by stacks of account books, papers held together with rubber bands, boxes, a filing cabinet drawer. He looked haggard, glanced up quickly when we came in, then went back to work with an adding machine. Paper littered the floor. There was a full ashtray beside Rinke’s elbow, and a pitcher of water.
“This is what you might call the nerve center, Pete,” Macy said quietly. “I hate all this bookwork, but it’s necessary.” He walked quickly to a large safe with a formidable gray steel door. The safe was embedded in concrete at the back wall of the room. He swung the door open, gestured toward the safe.
“Better to have all this here than in town,” Macy explained. “Any trouble at the gates and I can seal this room up with a couple tons of broken concrete. Take a steam shovel to find anything, even if somebody wanted to go to the trouble of ferrying one out here.”
Rinke made a final calculation on the adding machine, yawned, threw down his pencil and got up to join us.
There was a lot of cash in the safe. Enough to make me wonder what it would be like to own that much, at one time, to be able to pick it up in neat packages, stack it, look at it.
“How much?” I said.
“I’m not sure,” Macy said. “It would take two large suitcases to hold all of it, and most of the bills are hundreds. A few fifties, some twenties. Altogether, about three quarters of a million dollars. I’ve got more, of course. Stashed in three banks. The money I pay tax on.” He shut the safe, pushing with both hands against the door.
“He’s giving it all up,” Rinke said, in a nervously high voice. He cleared his throat. “He’s giving all of it to Maxine. All of it.”
“That’s right,” Macy said, not looking at Rinke.
Rinke gave me a guarded look, wondering what I thought about it. His lips were thin with anger.
“Maxine’s coming here tomorrow night,” Barr said lightly. “I’m telling him then.” He looked around the room. “I don’t want it no more. None of it. I’m taking what money I can and I’m leaving the country.”
“Macy — ” Rinke said tenaciously, as if he were preparing to reopen an argument that had flourished for days.
“I don’t want to hear no more,” Macy said. “You got your work to do. Just do it and don’t bother me. Don’t give me any pep talks. Don’t try to talk me into something I don’t want to do. I just want out. That’s all.”
Rinke took a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. He lit one, steadying his hand. “Okay, Macy,” he said. “Okay, I won’t try to say anything to you.” He walked to the table, then turned suddenly, pointing with the cigarette, words tumbling.
“But he’s coming here. He’s coming here tomorrow night, and he’s walking right into our hands. Maybe two or three men, that’s all he’ll bring with him. Can’t you see it? It’d be so easy then to get rid of him—”
“Shut up!” Macy rasped. Then, more quietly, “Shut up, Charley. Don’t try to put ideas in my head I don’t want to hear.” He snorted. “Charley, sometimes I think you want to run this outfit.”
Rinke turned away, tapped a couple of keys on the adding machine. “Okay,” he said, resignedly. “Forget it.” I sensed again a silent appeal from him, from the staring magnified eyes. When I didn’t respond he sat down and went back to work, doggedly, flipping the stiff pages of a ledger with competent fingers, making notations with his pencil. I wondered if he still nourished the rebellious thoughts far back in his mind, where they wouldn’t get in the way of the precise click of integers.
Chapter Eighteen
Later that night I awakened sitting straight up in bed, muscles tense. For a few seconds I had no idea where I was. I felt a sense of dread, as if I were being watched from the sable darkness around me. I breathed deeply, ridding my throat of deep panic. I stood up and walked to the windows, looked out. It was after one o’clock.
I dressed, putting on the shoulder holster over my shirt, and went into the hall. The door to Owen’s room was open, but he wasn’t inside. I we
nt upstairs. There were no lights on, but moonlight thinned the darkness. At Macy’s room I tapped softly on the door. There was no answer. I listened closely, heard him breathing in sleep.
At the end of the hall a door was open and I saw Mrs. Rinke inside, standing in front of a window, looking toward the sea. She had been in bed. The other bed hadn’t been touched. Apparently Rinke was still working.
As I turned to walk away my shoe bumped the doorframe. It was a small noise, but Evelyn Rinke turned, a hand at her throat, a flat cry on her lips.
I stepped inside the bedroom so she could identify me. She was wearing the same nightgown she had had on the night before.
“Pete?”
“Yes.”
“You — startled me.” I saw the movement of her throat muscles.
“I was just looking around,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t go,” she said quickly. “Please don’t go, Pete.”
“Maybe it would be better if I did.”
“No — I wanted somebody to talk to. I can’t sleep. It’s useless, trying to sleep. Please, Pete — a cigarette?”
I took a pack from my shirt pocket, shook one free for her. I lit it for her.
“Thanks, Pete.” She turned toward the windows again, her cheeks flattening as she drew on the cigarette. There were tired lines under her eyes. “I’ve lived through another day,” she said with a tone of wonder. “Now I have to face another. Tell me, Pete, was it that way with you? Did you hate to see another day coming?”
“Usually.” My voice was rough with a sympathy I couldn’t conceal.
“I slept this morning,” she said. “Two whole hours. That’s really... a triumph, you know. The rest of the day, I sat and let my nerves fight it out. I wondered what it would be like to kill myself. I wondered if I would feel any regret, in that last tenth part of a second.”
“How long has this been going on?”
“About four years. It didn’t come all at once. It was like a slow tightening. Days when I didn’t feel quite right. Then one day it seemed as if I was hit by a big fist. Some of the nerves came loose. There’s one now, twisting down my side until I think I’ll go crazy.”
