A long, lean, grey cat appeared out of the shadows and swaggered along the splintered railing of the porch waving his tail contemptuously. Charlotte reached out her hand to stroke him. He spat at her and leaped off the railing, vanishing in a spidery tangle of geraniums.
“This is a waste of time,” Lewis said. “No one’s home.”
“We could try the back door.”
“Why bother, if nobody’s here?”
“There’s a light in the attic, and other people live here besides Voss and Eddie—the old Italian that I told you about. Probably others, too. It’s supposed to be a rooming house.”
“God,” Lewis said.
Charlotte’s eyes had adjusted to the dark and she could see quite distinctly as she went down the porch steps and around to the side of the house. Here, the stench of decaying garbage fought and overpowered the fragrance of night-scented jasmine.
The path that led to the backyard was tangled with weeds and littered with rubbish. It was as if every roomer and tenant and owner who had ever lived in the house had flung his debris haphazardly out of doors and windows. There were piles of newspapers and empty bottles and rusted foul-smelling cans; a legless chair, two tarnished picture frames lying across the corroded springs of a bed, an old automobile headlight with the glass shattered, and an abandoned wardrobe, its cardboard belly bulging with age. There were even evidences of children; the frame of a box kite, a doll—the glass eyes sunk into its head as if pushed by exploring, curious fingers—and a wicker baby carriage with the front wheels gone, so that it seemed to be down on its knees praying.
All the broken, useless things, the scraps and parings and rinds of living.
“God,” Lewis said again. “Have you had enough?”
“I—guess so.”
“Then let’s get out of here.”
“All right.”
She turned to go back, and in turning, she looked up at the window in the attic with its flickering light. A woman’s face was pressed against the pane, contorted, weirdly white and luminescent like a fish in the blue-black depths of the sea.
There was a sudden smash of glass, followed by a series of silvery tinkles as the fragments struck the roof of the porch.
The woman began to scream. “Help, help! Let me out of here, let me out!”
“We’re coming,” Charlotte answered. “It’s all right, Mrs. Voss, stop screaming.”
“Let me out! Let me out! Let me out! Let me out!”
Two boys passing on the street turned their heads briefly and then walked on. Screaming women were common on Olive Street; the boys knew better than to interfere, to be around if and when the police arrived.
The back door of the house was half open. Lewis went in ahead, fumbling his way along the wall until he found the switch and turned on the lights. The kitchen table bore evidences of a drinking party—three empty bottles of muscatel and four smudged glasses and half a bag of potato chips. A number of potato chips were scattered over the floor as if someone had become drunkenly playful and started throwing them around like confetti. The table and the drainboard of the sink were silvered with cockroaches.
Mrs. Voss’s screams continued, muted by the massive old walls.
The attic was four flights up. At some time it had been partitioned to serve as a separate apartment; Mrs. Voss was locked in the tiny room that had once been the kitchen. The key was in the lock, turned sideways so that Mrs. Voss couldn’t push it out with a hairpin and maneuver it through the crack at the bottom of the door.
Charlotte opened the door. Mrs. Voss stopped in the middle of a scream, her mouth gaping, both hands clutching at her throat. She was sitting on the floor with her legs sprawled out in front of her. Her skirt was slit to the hip where she’d torn at it in her frenzy. A little red Christmas candle was burning in one corner of the room—the light bulb had been removed from the ceiling months or years ago, and tiny house spiders lived like kings in the empty socket.
“I didn’t have nothing to do with it!” Mrs. Voss shrieked. “I didn’t have nothing to do with anything! I didn’t even hear nothing. I didn’t, I didn’t!”
“Of course you didn’t,” Charlotte said. “Of . . .”
“They wouldn’t let me go along, they wouldn’t take me, they locked me here to die!” She began beating the floor with her fists and shaking her head back and forth. The candle flame flickered, leaning away as if in fright. “They said I talked too much, I can’t keep my mouth shut. They said I got hysterical alla time. Me, me, me, hysterical!” She drew a long shuddering breath. “They wouldn’t take me along.”
“I can’t understand you when you shout like that,” Charlotte said softly. “No one’s going to hurt you. Take it easy.”
“They said I got hysterical alla time. I don’t, I don’t! I never did!”
“Easy now.” She turned to Lewis who had remained outside the door. “There’s some brandy in my car. Would you get it?”
“And leave you here alone with . . .”
“Of course. Mrs. Voss realizes that I’m her friend, I’m going to help her.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Voss sobbed. “Yes, yes! You’re my friend! You’re my friend!”
Tears spurted out of her eyes as if something had suddenly smashed inside her. Charlotte knelt down and put her arm around the woman’s shoulders. She could hear Lewis going down the stairs, very swiftly, as if he was glad to get away.
“I didn’t have nothing to do with it, I didn’t.” She dabbed her eyes with the hem of her torn skirt. Even after all her shouting and weeping, her face was still white. “They can’t put me in jail. I’d die if I was put in jail. I’m sick anyways, I’m sick.”
“I know.”
“You can see in my face I’m sick. Maybe I’m going to die, anyways.”
“That’s nonsense. You need some good, nourishing food, and a nice rest in the hospital.”
“No, no, I’m scared of hospitals. I never been in one.”
“That’s why you’re scared. . . . Here, hold onto my arm and we’ll go downstairs.”
Mrs. Voss was still breathing heavily and rapidly, but she was no longer hysterical. She had enough presence of mind to remind Charlotte to blow out the candle before they went downstairs.
In the huge barren living room Mrs. Voss lay down on the couch and Charlotte took off her coat and wrapped it around Mrs. Voss’s legs.
“What happened that you had nothing to do with?” she asked.
“I don’t know nothing.”
“Yes, you do. I can’t help you if you won’t tell me anything.”
“They was fighting, they was all arguing down in the kitchen after I went upstairs.”
“Who was?”
“Eddie and Clarence and the old man.”
“Tiddles?”
“Yes, Tiddles.”
“What were they arguing about?”
“A purse. Something about a purse.”
Lewis returned with the brandy and Charlotte mixed an ounce of it in half a tumbler of water. She wasn’t sure what effect brandy would have on Mrs. Voss; too much, undiluted, might send her back into hysterics.
“They were arguing,” Charlotte said, “and then what?”
Mrs. Voss began to cry again, softly, exhaustedly. “Oh. I can’t tell. I don’t know.”
“Something happened.”
“I think—I think Tiddles—died.”
“Do you mean they killed him?”
“No—oh, I don’t know. I didn’t see. I just know there was blood, a lot of blood. I heard Eddie on the porch talking about it, he’s ascared of blood. He kept saying they got to wash it off. I started to come downstairs to see what’d happened, only Clarence saw me. That’s when they took me up to the attic and locked me in. They wouldn’t take me along, they said I couldn’t keep my tonsils from flapping. ‘Goo
dbye, sweetheart,’ Clarence says, ‘goodbye sweetheart, it’s been hell knowing you.’ ” She turned her face away and pressed it against the brown mohair upholstery to hide her shame and humiliation.
Lewis had gone out into the hall again. Charlotte could hear him walking around on the creaking floor, walking and walking, like a man exploring the possibilities of escape from a cell.
Charlotte said, “What makes you think Tiddles is dead?”
“The quiet. They was all arguing in the kitchen first, afterwards on the porch. And then suddenly there was a quiet, a long, dead quiet before Eddie started to talk about the blood and washing it off with a hose. That’s when I started to come downstairs and Clarence heard me. ‘Something has come up,’ he says, ‘Eddie and me are going on a little trip.”’
“Where do you think they went?”
“Somewheres in Eddie’s car, I don’t know where. Maybe they took the old man away.”
“Maybe.”
“I’m tired, I’m so tired.”
“I know. I’ll see what can be done.”
She found the phone in the dining room and dialed the County Hospital. When she had finished talking she went out into the hall. Lewis was sitting on the bottom step of the staircase rolling an unlighted cigarette between his fingers. He looked grimly amused, as if it had just occurred to him how funny it was that he, Lewis Ballard, should be in such a place.
“Now what?” he said.
“I thought you could drive Mrs. Voss out to the County General. They’re expecting you . . .”
“Why me?”
“I have to go to the police. I think there’s been a murder and it’s better if you stay out of it entirely.”
He was no longer amused, no longer anything but frightened. He said, “Christ,” and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.
“You needn’t come into the picture at all,” Charlotte said, keeping her voice low so that Mrs. Voss wouldn’t overhear. “I’ll tell them that I came here alone and found Mrs. Voss locked up and hysterical and that I phoned a friend to come and drive her to the hospital.”
“Your story’s not going to match hers.”
“She’s confused. She may not even remember that we came here together.”
“I hope to God not.”
“Take her around to the back of the hospital—there’s a door with ‘emergency’ printed on it. The doctor on duty is a friend of mine. I told him what to do. Just drive her there. Don’t stay, get home as fast as you can.”
“Christ.”
She went back into the sitting room and told Mrs. Voss that she was going to be driven to the hospital.
“I don’t want to go,” Mrs. Voss moaned. “No. I’m scared.”
“There’s nothing to be afraid of. You’ll have a good sleep tonight and tomorrow morning I’ll come in to see you. We’ll try and get you back to normal again.”
Lewis brought his car around to the front of the house and he and Charlotte half carried Mrs. Voss out and put her in the back seat.
Mrs. Voss was weeping again, hiding her face with her hands. Goodbye sweetheart.
11
When the car was out of sight she went back into the house and called Easter. The phone rang eight or nine times before he answered.
“Mr. Easter?”
“Yes.”
“This is Charlotte Keating. I don’t know if you remember . . .”
“I remember.”
“I’m down at 916 Olive Street. Something pretty bad has happened. I don’t know exactly what. Could you come and have a look around?”
“I’m in bed.”
“You can get out of bed.”
“If I had a reason.”
“One reason is that I’m asking you to.”
He was there in ten minutes. She couldn’t force herself to stay alone in the house, so she was waiting for him on the porch when he arrived.
He crossed the front yard slowly, taking his time, looking up at the windows of the house, the shattered glass on the roof of the porch. In the half-dark his eyes looked peculiar, intensely penetrating, as if they could see more than eyes were meant to see.
“What’s up?”
“I’m not sure, but I think the old man, Tiddles, has been murdered.”
“Why didn’t you call headquarters and tell them instead of me?”
“I couldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“I—well, I didn’t like the way the policeman sounded over the phone.”
“Then you did call headquarters?”
“No—I mean I called earlier. About a different matter.”
Easter leaned against a pillar, attempting to look casual, but his eyes betrayed him. “What matter?”
“It has nothing to do with—with this. Why do you stand there asking me such silly questions?”
“Because I’m getting such silly answers.” He glanced at the front door of the house where the big wooden numbers 916 had been nailed. “This is where Violet O’Gorman lived. What are you doing here?”
Her hesitation lasted only a fraction of a second, but he noticed it. One eyebrow shot up in an amused, skeptical way.
Charlotte said, “I came to see if there was anything I could do for Violet’s relatives.”
“It’s after eleven o’clock. Do you always get your charitable impulses at such awkward times?”
“I get all kinds of impulses at all hours of the day or night.”
“Sounds inconvenient.”
“I didn’t ask you to meet me here so we could discuss my impulses. In fact I’m sorry now that I called you at all.”
“Are you?”
“Naturally. I didn’t expect you to go into that hammy tough-cop routine. I’m not on trial for anything.”
“Then why the lies?” Easter said, gravely.
“Lies?”
“You called the police earlier but on a different matter. You hung up because the policeman’s voice wasn’t pretty enough. Then you came here to offer your help to Violet’s relatives. I’ve met Violet’s relatives, O’Gorman, and Voss and his wife, and the only kind of help anyone would offer them is help to drop dead. Now let’s be more reasonable, Miss Keating. Whatever’s going on around here, you’re mixed up in, perhaps innocently, perhaps not so innocently. I don’t know much about you. When I came to your office this afternoon I was impressed. I thought you were a remarkable woman. But that may have been simply because you look like my kid sister.”
“You’re very frank.”
“Setting a good example.”
“I don’t know whether I can trust you.”
“You can try,” he said. “I’ve never met anyone I can trust completely, but maybe you’ll be luckier.”
“I came to—because Voss wanted some money from me.”
“What for?”
“He has some information I don’t want generally known.”
“A man.”
“Yes.”
“Married.”
“Yes.”
“How much? Not how much married, how much blackmail?”
“Three hundred dollars.”
“Cheap enough.”
“I wasn’t going to pay him. And my relationship with this man isn’t what you’re thinking, Mr. Easter.”
“It’s pure as the driven snow.”
“Yes.”
“Good.” He smiled at her suddenly, a very warm and friendly smile. “You know, I believe you. Lying doesn’t come natural to you. You have a lot of guts.”
The praise was so unexpected and so sincere that she felt herself blushing. She turned away, annoyed at herself, and at Easter, too, for the easy way he’d gotten the information he wanted. Yet there had been nothing else for her to do but tell him. Someone had to know the truth. Better Ea
ster than another policeman less intelligent and less honest.
“All right,” he said. “You came to see Voss and then what?”
“No one answered the door. Mrs. Voss was locked in the attic. She broke the window with her shoe to attract our attention.”
“Our?”
“Mine.”
“Editorial our, eh?”
She didn’t answer.
“When you were a kid,” he said, smiling, “did you ever have to write fifty times on the blackboard, Charlotte Keating told a fib?”
“No.”
The lean, grey cat had returned. Charlotte could see his lustrous green eyes staring at her between the leaves of a hibiscus bush no more than a yard away. He began to wash himself, very fastidiously, as if he was showing his contempt for the squalor in which he lived and meant to rise above it. Both of his paws were black with blood.
“The cat,” Charlotte said.
“Where?”
“Under the bush. He has blood on him.”
“May have caught a rat.”
“He wouldn’t get in such a mess just killing a rat.”
Easter went to his car and brought back a flashlight. A trail of bloody paw prints led to the side of the house, vanished in a clutter of broken bottles and appeared again across the top of the discarded wardrobe with its bulging sides.
She saw then what she had missed before. Behind the wardrobe, half-hidden by weeds, was the foot and part of the leg of a man. The shoe was black, newly polished but split across the instep, the sock striped with yellow, the trouser leg green splattered with red; gay Christmas colors.
She thought of Tiddles in all his borrowed finery, anxious to show the police that he was no bum, but a solid, respectable citizen. Tiddles was dead now. It no longer mattered to him what he had been in life and what people thought, or that he was lying in a foul pile of rubbish and a cat had walked in his blood.
Charlotte picked her way through the rubbish and leaned over Tiddles. He was lying on his back staring up at the sky, his eyes fixed in terror, though the terror had long since passed. He was covered with blood, so much blood that it was impossible at first glance to tell where he had been wounded or how. It had squirted from his nose and gushed from his open mouth, smelling sour of vomit.
Do Evil in Return Page 7
