The gun came clear, stood out, only after his arm had clamped down on it like an indicator pointing it out. My own did the same thing instinctively, but a second too late; my hand came down on his wrist instead of the gun. The crash of a pair of toppled chairs in the background was inconsequential, as was her belated shriek of baffled fury: “Give it to him now, you! Give it to him quick—or we’re sunk!” Whatever else there was in that hell-howl, there wasn’t fear. Any other woman would have fainted dead away; you don’t know Thelma.
The cry, though, was like cause and effect; he didn’t need to be told. The gun was already being lifted bodily between us, by the two pressures counteracting each other—mine pushing it away from me, his pushing it toward me. Neither of us trying to push it up, but up it went in an arc, first way over our heads, then down again to body-level once more. Outside of our flailing left arms, which had each fastened on the other’s, I don’t recall that our legs or the rest of our bodies moved much at all.
She could have turned the scales by attacking me herself with something, from behind. It was the one thing she didn’t do—why, I don’t know. Subconsciously unwilling to the last, maybe, to raise a hand to me in person.
After about thirty seconds, not more—but it seemed like an age—it finally went off. Just past my own face, over my shoulder, and out somewhere into the passageway behind us. Then it started turning slowly between us, desperately slowly, by quarter-inches, and the second time it went off it had already traveled a quarter of the compass around. It hit the side-wall, that time, broadside to the two of us. It went on past that point, turning laboriously in its double grip, and the third time it went off right into his mouth.
He took it down with him—it was his hand that had been next to it, not mine—and I just stood there with both arms out—and empty.
I suppose I would have given it to her next if it had stayed in my own hand. She expected me to; she didn’t ask for mercy. “All right, I’m next!” she breathed. “Get it over as quick as you can!” And threw up both forearms horizontally in front of her eyes.
I was too tired for a minute to reach down and get it. That was what saved her. I don’t remember the next few minutes after that. I was sitting slumped in one of the chairs. I must have uprighted it again, and she was saying: “The ten grand is yours now, Cookie, if you’ll use your head.”
The way it sounded she must have been talking for several minutes, talking herself out of what was rightfully coming to her. What she’d been saying until then hadn’t registered with me, but that did.
“Get out,” I said dully. “Don’t hang around me. I may change my mind yet.” But the time for that was over, and she probably knew it as well as I did. The room had come back to its regular colors by now. Only the tablecloth was red any more; that and a little trickle that had come out of his open mouth onto the linoleum.
She pointed at him. “That’s you, down there. Don’t you get it? Readymade.” She came a little closer, leaning across the table toward me on the heels of her hands. “Why pass a break like this up, Cookie? Made-to-order. Ten grand. Play ball with me, Cookie.” Her voice was a purr, honey-low.
“Get ou—” I started to mutter, but my voice was lower now too. She was under my skin and working deeper down every minute. I was wide open to anything anyway, after what had happened.
She held up her hand quickly, tuning out my half-hearted protest. “All right, you caught me red-handed. You don’t hear me denying it, do you? You don’t see me trying to bellyache out of it, do you? It muffed, and the best man won. That’s giving it to you straight from the shoulder. But the policy I slapped on you still holds good, the ten gees is yours for the taking—” She pointed down again. “And there’s your corpse.”
I turned my head and looked at him, kept staring thoughtfully without a word. She kept turning them out fast as her tongue could manage.
“It’s up to you. You can go out to the phone and turn me in, send me up for ten years—and spend the rest of your life straightening the pants on guys at thirty per week. Have it that way if you want to. Or you can come into ten thousand dollars just by being a little smart. The guy is dead anyway, Cookie. You couldn’t bring him back now even if you wanted to. What’s the difference under what name he goes six-feet-under? He even gets a better break, at that; gets a buggy-ride and a lot of flowers instead of taking a dive head-first into Potter’s Field!”
I hadn’t taken my eyes off him, but I already wanted to hear more. “It’s wacky; you’re talking through your lid,” I said hopefully. “How you gonna get away with it? What about all the people in this town that know me? What about the guy that sold me the insurance? What about the bench down at the store where I work? I no more look like him than—”
“If it’s his face got you stopped, we can take care of that easy. And outside of a phiz, what’s so different between one guy and the next? Stretch out a minute, lie down next to him—I wanna see something.”
I wasn’t hypocritical enough to hesitate any more. She already knew I was with her anyway—she could tell. I got down flat on the floor alongside him, shoulder to shoulder. He wasn’t laid out straight by any means, but she attended to that with a few deft hitches. She stood back and measured us with her eyes. “You’re about an inch taller, but the hell with that.” I got up again.
She went over and pulled down the shade to the bottom, came back with cigarette-smoke boiling out of her nose. “It’s a suicide, of course, otherwise the police’ll stick their noses into it too heavy. A farewell note from you to me ought to hold them. Run up and bring down one of your other suits, and a complete set of everything—down to shorts and socks.”
“But what’re we going to do about his map?”
“A bucketful of boiling lye will take care of that. We got some down the basement, haven’t we? Come on, help me get him down there.”
“Where does it figure, though? You want ’em to believe he had guts enough to stick his face in that?”
“You went down there and bumped yourself through the front teeth with the gun, see? You keeled over backwards and dumped this bucket on top of your face in falling. A couple of hours under that and he’ll be down to rock bottom above the shoulders; they won’t have much to go by. His hair’s pretty much the color of yours, and you haven’t been to a dentist in years, so they can’t check you in that way.”
“It’s still full of holes,” I said.
“Sure it is,” Thelma agreed, “but what reason’ll they have to go looking for ’em, with me there screaming the eardums off ’em that you were my husband? And waving your good-bye note in their faces! There won’t be anyone missing from this town. He was a vagrant on his way through. This was the first house he hit for a hand-out when he came out of the woods. He told me so himself, and he never got past here. The police’ll be the least of our worries, when it comes to it, and as for the insurance investigator, once I get past the first hurdle I know just what to do so there’s no chance for it to backfire: send him to the crematorium in a couple of days instead of planting him in the cemetery. Fat lot of good an order for an exhumation’ll do them after that!”
I said about the same thing he’d said, this dead guy, only a little while ago. “You’re good—damn your soul! I think we can pull it at that!”
“Think? I know we can!” She snapped her cigarette butt at the side of his face—and hit it! “Always remember—if you can get away with anything, it’s worth doing. Now let’s go—we haven’t got much time.”
I picked him up by the shoulders and she took him by the feet, and we carried him out of the kitchen and down the cellar stairs and laid him down temporarily on the floor there, any old way. The gun had gone right with him the whole way, at the end of his dangling arm.
The laundry was down there, and the oil-burner, and lines for hanging up clothes, and so on. There was a gas-heater for boiling up wash. She lit that, then she filled a pail half-full of water and put it on to heat. Then she dumped lye into it
for all she was worth until there wasn’t any more left around. “As long as it takes the skin off his face,” she remarked. “Go up and get the clothes now, like I told you, and doctor up a suicide-note. Better take something and get those slugs out of the kitchen-wall; it went off twice, didn’t it, before it rang the bell? Rub ashes in the nicks, so they won’t look new. Let me know when you’re ready.”
But I wasn’t Ben Cook the slough any more. “And leave you alone down here with that gun? It’s still got three in it. You’re so full of bright ideas, how do I know you won’t go back to your original parlay after all?”
She threw up her hands impatiently. “Forget it, will you! It’s got to stay in his mitt like it is; you can’t take it up with you. We’re both in this together, aren’t we? We either trust each other the whole way, or we may as well call it quits right now!”
She was blazing with an unholy sort of enthusiasm. I could tell by looking at her I had nothing to worry about as far as she was concerned any more. It was contagious, too; that was the worst part of it—greenback-fever. I turned around and beat it upstairs to the top floor. There were spots in front of my eyes, ten-spots.
I got him out a complete set of everything. For an artistic finishing-touch I even threw in a spare truss like I wore. That had figured in my examination for the insurance. I took a razor with me and a pair of clippers that I’d been in the habit of using to save myself the price of a haircut. I chased down to the desk in the living-room, got out paper, and wrote:
Thelma my darling:
I’ve thought it over and I guess you’re right. I’ll never amount to anything. I haven’t had the courage to tell you yet, but Grierson turned me down last month when I asked him for a raise. I’m just a millstone around your neck, just deadweight; you’ll be better off without me. When you come home tonight and read this and go looking for me, you’ll know what I’m driving at. Don’t go near the basement, honey; that’s where I’ll be. Goodby and God bless you.
Ben
Which I thought was pretty good. She did too, when I went down and showed it to her. She flashed me a look. “I think I’ve been underestimating you all these years.”
Clouds of steam were coming from the pail of lye. “Beat it up and attend to the bullet-holes, and the blood on the kitchen-floor,” I said, “while I go to work on him—”
I could hear her footsteps pattering busily back and forth over my head while I was busy down there.
I gave him a quick once-over with the razor and a cake of yellow laundry soap, clipped his neck a little, so we wouldn’t have to count too much on the lye.
I piled his own worm-eaten duds into a bundle and tied it up, then outfitted him from head to foot.
It took plenty of maneuvering to slip his arm through the sleeves of the shirt and jacket without dislodging the gun from his hand.
I tied his tie and shoelaces for him as if I were his valet, and filled his pockets with all the junk I had in my own, down to the crumpled pack of butts I was toting. I strapped my wristwatch on him, and then I straightened up and gave him the once-over. He looked a lot more like me now than he had before I’d begun.
She came trooping down again, with her hat on for the movies. “Slick,” she breathed. “Everything’s all set upstairs. Here’s the two wild bullets. What’re you doing with his stuff, putting it in the furnace?”
“Nothing doing.” I said. “That’s muffed too often. All they need’s a button or a strand of hair left over in there and we go boom! I’m taking it with me when I go and I am getting rid of it someplace else.”
“That’s the ticket!” she agreed. She handed me a pair of smoked glasses and an old golf cap. “Here, I dug these up for you, for when you light out. Anyone that knows you will know you anyway—but in case anyone passes you while you’re on the lam, they’ll do.
“Steer clear of downtown whatever you do. Better powder about ten minutes after I do; take the back door, cut through the woods; stay away from the highway until you get over to Ferndale—somebody might spot you from a passing car. You can hop a bus there at midnight—to wherever you decide to hole in, and better make it the other side of the State-line. Now we gotta finish up fast. I phoned the drug store to send over some aspirin, told ’em you felt kinda low—”
“What’s the idea?”
“Don’t you get it? I’m leavin’ just as the errand-boy gets here; he even sees you kiss me good-bye at the front door. Hold him up a minute hunting for change, so that he has me walking in front of him down the street toward the show. I don’t want to get the chair for something I didn’t do, Cookie! Now, what name are you going to use and where’ll I reach you when the pay-off comes through?”
I laughed harshly. “You’re pretty anxious to see that I get my cut.”
“I’m glad you used that word,” she said drily. “It’s my favorite little word. Nuts! You can’t come back here; you know that! I’ve gotta get it to you. What’re you worrying about? We’ve got each other stopped, haven’t we? If I try to hog the dough, all you do is show up, it goes back where it came from, and we both land in clink. On the other hand, you can’t get it without little Thelma—”
“We split it seventy-five, twenty-five, and little Thelma’s on the short end for being such a smart girl,” I growled.
Something gave one corner of her mouth a little hike up. “Done,” she said. “Now hurry up, give him his facial. Measure the distance off.”
We stood him upright on his feet, then let him down backwards in a straight line toward the heater on which the pail of lye was sizzling. The back of his head cleared it by two, three inches.
“Move him in a little closer.” she said. “His conk’s supposed to tip it over as he goes down.”
“All right, stand back,” I said, “and watch your feet.”
I took it off the stove, turned it upside down, and doused it on him, arched as far away from the splash as I could get. It dropped down on his head like a mold; only a little spattered on his body below the shoulders. Just as the pail dropped over his head like a visor, the front doorbell rang.
The last thing she said as she went hustling up was, “Watch out where you step—don’t leave any tracks!”
I caught up with her halfway down the front hall. “Whoa! Pass over that hundred-seventy-five you were going to stuff into my pocket. I can’t live on air the next few weeks!”
She took it grudgingly out of her handbag. “It comes off your share, don’t forget,” she let me know.
“All right, and here’s one for your memory-book,” I whispered. “I’m Ned Baker at the Marquette Hotel over in Middleburg. Don’t put it on paper, but see that you hang onto it. It’s easy enough—Cook, Baker, see?”
The bell rang a second time.
“About three weeks, the minute I put the check through,” she promised. “All set? Here goes! Loosen your tie—you’re staying in and you’re in a hari-kari mood. Play up!”
I stayed where I was. She went to the door squalling, “G’by, hon! Sure you won’t change your mind and come with me?” She opened the door and an eighteen-year-old kid named Larry whom we both knew by sight said, “Package from the drug store, Mrs. Cook. Thirty-five cents.”
Again she shook the house to the rafters. “Here’s your aspirin, dear!”
I shuffled up acting like a sick calf. I separated one of the tens she’d just given me from the rest and offered it to him. He said he didn’t have that much change. “Wait a minute, I think I’ve got it inside,” I said. Meanwhile, she was sticking her snoot up at me. “G’by, dear. You won’t be lonely now, will you?”
He was facing my way, so I tried to look tragic. “Enjoy your show,” I murmured bravely, pecking at her with my mouth. I walked down the steps with her and part of the way toward the sidewalk, with my arm around her waist. She turned back to wave a couple times, and I waved back at her. The kid was taking it all in from the doorway.
“They got a revival of Garbo tonight,” he remarked when I came
back. “Don’t you like Garbo, Mr. Cook?”
I sighed. “I got too much on my mind tonight, Larry,” I told him. I let her get to the first crossing, then I brought out the thirty-five cents and gave him a dime for himself. He thanked me and started off after her.
I locked the door (she had her own key) and then I bolted back to the cellar-stairs and took a last look down from the head of them. Threads of steam were still coming out from under the rim of the lye-pail, upturned there over his face.
I picked up his bundle of clothes, which I’d left at the top of the stairs, and wrapped them in good strong brown paper. The two bullets were in there with them, and the scrapings from his jaw and neck on scraps of paper. The brownish rag, too, with which she’d scoured the little blood off the linoleum.
The latter didn’t have a mark left on it to the naked eye—and there was no reason for them to give it a benzidine test. The bullet-holes were okay too; she’d spread them to look like knotholes in the wood and dirtied them with ashes. She’d even washed and put away the used coffee-cup, and the note was in place on the desk.
I left my own hat up on the rack, and put on the cap, pulled it well down over my eyes.
I left the lights just the way they were in all the rooms, then I went up to the rear room on the second floor, which was dark, and stood watching for a long time. There weren’t any houses in back of us, just a big open field with the woods off to the right.
In the daytime, crossing the field to get to them, I might have been spotted from one of the houses farther down, but not at this hour. It was a clear night, but there wasn’t any moon.
I went downstairs, opened the screen-door, pulled the wooden one closed behind me, let the screen one flap back in place, and jumped away in a hurry from the square of light that still came through the oblong pane in the wooden one. We would have locked that on the inside if we had both left the house together, but staying home alone the way I was supposed to tonight, it could very well stay unlocked without arousing suspicion.
FOUR NOVELLAS OF FEAR: Eyes That Watch You, The Night I Died, You'll Never See Me Again, Murder Always Gathers Momentum Page 6
