He put the muzzle in his mouth. It had an oily taste. The metal touched his teeth. It gave him a crawling feeling, the same feeling that certain sounds gave him, such as a knife scraping along a chipped place on the edge of a plate.
He felt irritated. Indignant. He stood up very quickly and jammed the muzzle against the side of his head above his ear and pulled the trigger. The sound of the shot astonished him. In the open, shooting at cans, it had been a snapping sound, a flat crack. Here in the room it was a vast resounding bam that filled his right ear with a great, dulled ringing. His head felt seared and he smelled burned hair. He wondered why he was standing. He fingered his head, turned and looked to his left and high and saw the torn mark, a pale mark torn into the paneling close to the ceiling where the slug had gone.
He heard the rumble and pop of the tires on the gravel and the car stopping and the shutting of car doors and Bess talking to David in that special voice she used for him. The way nurses talk to you in the hospital.
He put the gun up quickly again and yanked on the trigger again. The noise did not seem as loud. He guessed that was because he was partially deafened from the first shot. There was a silence outside. Bess called to him. The burn had hurt his head again. He looked for the slug. It had gone into the ceiling this time.
He heard Bess running into the house.
He went over quickly and sat on the couch. “You can’t even do this,” he told himself hopelessly. “Not even this.”
And he thought of the way all inanimate things seemed to have always banded themselves together in conspiracy against him—nails bent, pliers slipped, knives wouldn’t cut, cars wouldn’t start. She was coming quickly, calling to him.
If the damn thing kept flinching up so that you kept missing, then find some way to steady it. He socketed the muzzle in his deafened ear, pushing it tightly against his ear, the front sight gouging him a bit, and he pulled the trigger carefully.
A great blinding sheet of purest white filled the whole world. He had a fraction of a fraction of a second in which to feel satisfaction that he had been able to do it, after all. The sort of satisfaction you feel when the starter on the car, after grinding dismally and too long, makes the motor catch and roar. And just as the feeling of satisfaction began, by micro seconds, to change into something else entirely, to change into a dreadful regret, he became nothing.
Chapter Sixteen
Ben turned into his drive, heavy and quiet with the feeling of Sunday, hunger turning slowly in his belly, sonorities of the morning sermon fading in his ears. As he got out of the car, he heard the screaming. He turned and looked at Wilma. Her lips were pulled back tightly against her teeth, flattened against them in the effort of listening and understanding.
“Bess!” she said.
And he went, running, wishing fleetness, conscious of the thickened slowness of his running, aware that Brock was coming along behind him, gaining on him.
The screams were short and sharp and piercing, coming with each drawn breath, and all Ben could think of was that she was on fire and he remembered you had to roll them in something. A rug, a blanket.
He stopped in the kitchen, breathing hard, orienting the direction of the sound. “Study,” he gasped and hurried on.
He went through the door and stopped and saw it then, saw in a half second exactly what it was. Quinn toppled on the couch, with the death-slack face, the gun between slack thighs, pointing at his crotch, a smell of powder and burning in the room. Bess stood with her back turned toward the body, eyes squeezed tightly shut, fists tightly shut, arms a bit out from her side as though she balanced on a wire, legs spread, feet planted, screaming with each breath. He reached her in two long steps and, in his nervousness, slapped her much harder than he intended, slapped her so strongly that she toppled back and would have fallen onto the body had he not snatched at her wrist, caught it, pulled her away. The screams stopped with the slap and her eyes were wide and dazed with shock. David stood silent and goggling, his face gray and his underlip falling loose away from his large, yellowish teeth.
“Get her out of here and phone Endermann,” Ben said. He had directed the request at Brock, planning to get David out himself. But to his astonishment, David moved toward his mother and put a long awkward arm around her shoulders and said, “Come. Come … on,” guiding her toward the door and giving Ben a look in which there was defiance and even a certain pride. She went willingly with her son.
“You phone,” he said to Brock. And Brock went to the desk and picked up the phone book as Ben, starting to turn toward Quinn, heard Wilma in the house, calling him. Heard Ellen’s softer voice.
He went out into the hallway and they came toward him, eyes wide with identical concern so that they looked more alike than at any other time in his memory. “Don’t come in,” he said bluntly. “Quinn killed himself. Go take care of Bess, Wilma. You go tell George, Ellen.”
“Oh, dear God,” Wilma whispered. “Oh, dear God.”
Ellen’s face turned to chalk and she turned and ran.
“Dr. Endermann. Just a moment, sir.”
He took the phone from Brock and saw Brock look toward the body and look away quickly. “Ralph? This is Ben. Trouble up here. Yes. No … not an emergency. Quinn … shot himself. Dead. Yes. I don’t know. Bess is pretty—Yes, of course. Thanks a lot. You’ll phone them then.”
He hung up, turned with reluctance toward the body, feeling the sick weight of guilt. “Dad,” Brock said, “there’s notes there. One to you.”
Ben tore his note open with a hand that trembled. The incredible words blurred and then came clear. And he felt the lifting of that oppressive weight, but immediately felt shamed within himself that he could feel a lessening of sadness merely by learning that the cause of suicide had been other than what he had so grimly suspected. He folded the note quickly into his pocket, picked up the other one, saw that it was sealed, tapped it on the back of his hand for a moment, then opened it, avoiding Brock’s eyes. The other note made no mention of the girl.
“Do you think she saw the notes, Dad?”
“I don’t think so.” He knew what his son was thinking and liked him for thinking it. “Cleaning the gun?” He went over to the body, forced himself to look at it, looking for the wound, saw the blackened pit of the ear. “I’m afraid that would be pretty difficult, son.”
“Look, Dad. Up there. That hole.”
“There’s another one in the paneling. At least three shots. No, we can’t make it work at all. I’ll leave the note to her on the desk.”
“What about the note to you?”
He looked at his son. “There wasn’t any other note.”
Brock looked startled and then nodded. “Okay.”
They could hear, in the distances of the house, a woman crying. George came walking somberly into the room. He stood and looked at the body, his face unchanging. Ben handed him the note. He read it slowly, handed it back.
“Hell!” he said. It was a sound of protest, of indignation, and also of disgust.
“Anything I can do, Ben?”
“They won’t want him touched. Let’s … get out of here.” They went to the doorway. Ben was the last one out. He pulled the study door shut. “George, Endermann is coming. He’ll give Bess a pill or a shot or something. He’ll phone the sheriff’s office and I guess they get hold of the coroner. There’ll be an inquest, but it will be routine. I’ll get hold of Durr and Commings. They can pick him … it up after the officials are through.”
George scuffed one foot, said meaningfully, “Any chance of—–”
“Not a chance. He missed twice, at least. Then took it in the ear.”
George’s face darkened. “Isn’t that just like him! Wouldn’t he crumb it up so there’s no chance at all. That son of a bitch never drew a single unselfish breath the longest day … Hell, I’m sorry, Ben. I’m sorry I said that.”
“It’s okay. How about Alice?”
“Your girl was smart. She got me alone. I
got to go back and tell her.”
“It’s going to hit her hard, George. Being a twin. Want me to come along? Or I could tell her myself.”
George sighed. “Thanks. No. I’ll do it. It has to be done. I’ll do it. I’ll stay with her. Tell Ralph to stop over after he gets through with Bess, will you?”
George walked away, head bent. Ben said to Brock, “I’ve got to make that call. Do you think you could go over and tell Robbie and Susan? I mean quietly, without a lot of—–”
“Dad!”
“I’m sorry, boy.” His smile was tired. “Go ahead now.” Brock started away and Ben called him back. “As soon as the routine is over with, I have to go into town. I’m not going to tell your mother in advance. After I get away, you tell her I told you I had to check something at the plant, something plausible, connected with this … mess.”
“I’ll do that.”
Brock walked down to the second house and tapped at the private entrance to the guest annex.
“Who is it?” Susan called, her voice cheerful.
“Me. Brock.”
“Just a minute, huh?”
He waited and soon she opened the door. She wore a blue robe and her hair was tied back. She smiled at him. “Come on in, Brock. I had to get some lipstick on. Robbie’s wallowing around in the shower. Making mooing sounds. He thinks he’s an operatic baritone. Listen to him!”
Brock made himself smile. His mouth felt unused to smiling. “Sit down, Brock. The place is a mess. We’ve been dreadfully lazy this morning.”
“I guess you were tired from the trip and all.”
“What’s wrong, Brock? What is it?”
“I … I better wait until I can tell Robbie too, Susan.”
She gave him an intent look and then went to the bathroom door and knocked. “Robbie! Please hurry.”
“Okay, okay,” he called. In a few moments the sound of the water stopped.
“Brock is here,” she called. “Come right out.”
He came out quickly, belting his robe, dark hair damp, bare feet making marks on the rug, yellow towel over his shoulder. He looked curiously at their still faces. “Hi, Brock boy. What goes?”
Brock had the feeling his voice was going to break. He made it deeper and kept it firm. “It’s Quinn. He … he shot himself this morning. He’s dead. He … did it on purpose.”
Susan made a small sound and put the back of her hand to her mouth.
Robbie looked as if he was trying to smile, as if he didn’t quite get the joke. And then his face changed and he sat down. “Why in the wide world would he—–”
“I don’t know. I just don’t know,” Brock said.
“What a mess!” Robbie said. “What a damn stinking mess!”
“How is Bess?” Susan asked.
“She was in pretty bad shape. Mother and Ellen are with her. The doctor is coming.”
“How is Alice?” she asked.
“I don’t know. George is telling her, I guess.”
Susan bit her lip and then walked swiftly to the connecting door and opened it. “I’ll see what I can do for Alice,” she said, and pulled the door shut behind her.
“I can’t believe it,” Robbie said.
“It’s true all right. I saw him. I mean I didn’t see him do it. I …” He swallowed hard.
It was nearly three o’clock before Ben was able to get away. Endermann had knocked out both Bess and Alice with heavy sedatives. The sheriff himself had come, a tall wide man named Harley with blunt eyes and a small, skeptical, puckered mouth. After the coroner was through, the slack thing that had been Quinn Delevan was wrapped in coarse cloth and strapped in a wire basket and carried out to the waiting vehicle by the employees of Durr and Commings.
Harley sat in Ben’s kitchen, accepted a cigar. “Now, why’d he do it? The note doesn’t say anything about why.”
“I really don’t know why, Sheriff.”
“Health, money, or love. Those are the reasons. Take your choice.”
“I really don’t know.”
“I’ll tell you something, Mr. Delevan. You better know. Because the papers are going to be on your neck and you’ve got to have some kind of a statement to make, and it has got to satisfy them or they’ll build it into some kind of big mystery, so as to help ’em sell their papers. If there’s a reason they’ll buy, they’re usually pretty decent about a thing like this. But you tell them what you’re telling me and you’ll get yourself some page one stuff about mystery surrounding suicide of prominent businessman sort of thing.”
Ben knew he was right. And he was highly conscious of the folded note in his pocket. Bess, in her life, had had enough of violence. Enough of shame.
He leaned toward Harley and made his voice confidential. “I’l have to pledge you to secrecy, Sheriff. In order to give you the facts.”
“I can’t promise anything. You know that.”
“I’ll tell you. I guess I have to. But if the news gets out it might make things financially embarrassing. You see, the firm hasn’t been doing too well. Last Thursday we had an offer of a merger. It would be advantageous to the stockholders. But the executive staff would be out, of course. I talked it over with my brother. That was Thursday. I guess I indicated to him that I look favorably on the merger. I didn’t realize it might hit him so hard. He hasn’t any savings to speak of. And he’s a comparatively … he was a comparatively young man. And the family firm … well, it meant a lot to him. Maybe more than it does to me. You know. Tradition. He acted strange and depressed ever since I told him. Everybody noticed it. He took off last night, right during a sort of family party. He got drunk and drove away. He got into trouble down in Stockton. The police picked him up. He was booked and I bailed him out and he was supposed to stand trial Monday. I’m not saying he’d kill himself over a little thing like that. But he never did that sort of thing before. But you can understand why … for business reasons, I don’t want this to get out. Why, he never came to work on Friday or Saturday morning. I think it was because we are … to his way of thinking, losing the mill.”
Ben leaned back and watched Harley’s face intently. The big features slackened. “That would seem to fit. Depression. Toomey is hanging around out there. Good man. Journal-Times. I’ll get him. You sit still. Let me do the talking.”
Toomey was a little, slow-moving man. He looked to be on the verge of yawning. But his eyes had a terrier alertness.
“Sit down, Rog,” Harley said. “You know Mr. Benjamin Delevan.”
“Seen him around. What’s the score?”
“Quinn Delevan, the fellow killed himself, did it on account of business worries. Financial reverses, you might say. Been depressed now since Thursday last. These people are having a hard enough time, Rog. Think you can keep the other boys off their neck?”
“Nothing worth holding an exclusive on here. Sure, Sheriff. I’ll spread it around. Now if you can fill me in on the obit, Mr. Delevan.”
Harley got up to go and Ben thanked him and then gave the bored little man with eyes that were no longer alert the information he wanted. As Toomey left he said, “I’ll phone it around. Nobody’ll bother you.”
“Thanks,” Ben said. And he had the sour knowledge that when the sheriff and the reporter learned what he had in his pocket, they would be merciless. He saw no chance of keeping it quiet. Maybe one chance in five thousand. But worth taking for Bess’s sake. For the sake of the living.
He drove toward Stockton, full of apprehension and impatience. He found himself driving too fast, and then too slow. There was a Sunday afternoon sleepiness in the city. He cruised slowly down Fremont and spotted the number and parked. The old house looked quiet, dingy, drowsy. No official excitement. So either the excitement was over, or the body had not yet been found. He looked around warily, sensing that had the body been found, the vacant-minded curious would be standing and looking at the house, as though the sight of it would satisfy some strange craving, establish some twisted identification. Thus, w
ere it as yet unfound, there might be some chance of removing any evidence of Quinn’s visit. And without too much danger to himself, as the time of death once established would rule him out.
He heard the ringing of the doorbell, deep in the dusty house. A woman waddled heavily to the door, with a piece of the Sunday paper in her hand. “You want something?”
“I’m looking for a Miss Doyle.”
“You go around that side a the house. The door on the side. I don’t know if she’s in or not. I don’t keep track a her. I got enough to do.”
“Thank you. Thank you very much.”
“Doan mention.”
He walked around the house. He raised his hand and hesitated, then knocked on the door. He could not see through the curtained windows. He knocked again and waited. The city sounds were sleepy. Children whined at play. “It is not yours—It is so—It is not—It is so.”
He took a deep breath and reached for the knob. Just as he touched it the door opened inward and stopped with a clink of the night chain. No one stood in the crack of the door. “What do you want? Who is it?” Girl voice, mumbled, distant.
“Are you Bonita Doyle?”
“Yes.” His heart seemed to jump upward, land safely in a higher place in his chest. “Who are you?”
“Quinn’s brother.”
There was a long silence. “Just a minute.”
The door closed and he heard the chain rattle. It swung wide. “Come in.”
He went in, closed the door behind him. Her face was shocking. Her left eye was puffed shut, hard, shiny skin, eggplant color, shading off to the misshapen cheek. Fat broken lips protruding, too swollen to close across the teeth. Clumsy bandage along the line of the jaw. He could tell that she was young, that she might have been pretty. But nothing else. Facial tissue was too bloated to show expression. She moved oddly, as though her neck was stiff. She sat down with her hands in her lap and looked at him from the single expressionless eye.
“Yes?”
“Have you seen a doctor?”
“I thought I would go in the morning.” It was difficult for her to articulate clearly. “Did he tell you why he did it?”
Contrary Pleasure Page 26
