“I think I’ve seen it before,” I said, “though I don’t remember the chip out of the handle.”
Hovde covered it again with the cloth and looked at Mike. “You can wait outside.”
Mike went out.
He inhaled and blew his breath out audibly. “What a man has to deal with in this job.” The neck rub, and looking up at me. “We’ll pretend you’re actually bright, and damned lucky. We’ll pretend you get something connected with this kill, or these kills; then what?”
“I tell you. I’m no cop. I’m not that bright.”
“No, you’re just lippy. What if the finger points at your boss, at Mr. Nicholas Arapopulus?”
“I tell you. He’s not my boss—yet.”
“Yet.”
“All right. He offered me a job, a partnership, in a legitimate promotion that’s going to be capitalized at a half million. What if he offered it to you, Sergeant?”
“I’d look for the hook.”
“Would you? I’m taking up your time again, I guess. And as a taxpayer that hurts. So long, Sergeant. Thanks for the kiss-off.” I started to turn again.
“Stand where you are,” he said quietly. “I’ll tell you when you can go.”
“I think,” I said, “you’d better lock me up again. And bring whatever damned charges you want. I don’t like your lip any more than you like mine, Sergeant.”
He didn’t say anything, the frozen eyes quiet and thoughtful without evident animosity.
I said, “Yesterday you wanted me to work for Nick. When I said I wouldn’t, you were hot about it. Now that Nick wants me to, now that I’m temporarily working with him, you get just as hot about that. I phoned you and Nick knows I phoned you. I can’t figure what you want, Sergeant. I don’t think anybody can.”
He put both flat hands on top of his desk. “You sure can spout, can’t you?” Now he smiled. “It’s a lucky thing for you I didn’t go to UCLA. All right, halfback, stay with it. And keep in touch with me.”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “Yes, chief.”
I could feel his glance follow me out of the room.
I didn’t think Mike would still be out there, but he was. Sitting behind the wheel of the black car, smoking a cigarette, and looking straight ahead.
Continuing to look straight ahead as I climbed in, as I closed the door. The Lincoln coming to life, and two words: “Where next?”
“You can drop me off at my place. And then run and cry on Nick’s shoulder. I want to be alone for a while.”
“Some day,” he said, without looking at me, “Nick’s going to get fed up with you. And then Mike Kersh is going to find out if you’re really rough, or if you just talk rough.”
“I’m not rough,” I told him tiredly, “but I’m rougher than your dreams, Mike. Relax, and remember your age.”
Nothing from him all the way to my apartment. Nothing from him as I climbed from the car. I watched him drive off, and went in and up the stairs, remembering that flash in his eyes, that flash of recognition.
That damned dryness was back; this was ridiculous, the way the desert wind persisted. Dryness was supposed to be good for the sinus, but it wasn’t for mine, not this practically zero humidity, this dryness that makes your trousers feel gritty on your legs, that makes your teeth itch. Maybe the dryness was a partial cause for the resentment bubbling in me.
Ache behind my eyes and a lassitude in the knees and the urge to swing on anybody handy. Damn it, this was setting a record; it couldn’t keep up. The skin on my hands was like blotting paper.
I stripped down and took a shower, a too hot shower that turned me red, that filled the bathroom with steam. I kept the door open to the other room, letting the steam drift in there.
Some of the ache went away, but none of the lassitude.
I stretched out on the studio couch and considered the ceiling. The image of the bone-handled knife began to form there, and I turned over. I turned over and saw the upholstered chair and started to turn over the other way and didn’t.
I didn’t want to turn my back to the chair.
Nerves, Pete Worden. It’s nerves, when a chair frightens you. Or an old yak artist like Mike Kersh. Or a world that creates Lilys. Nerves, that’s all. Headlines and picket lines and looming bread lines and the lines of demarcation. Between the black and the white, the poor and the proud, the mute and the articulate, the hungry and the greedy.
Words, from the radio next door, soap opera. Had Marconi foreseen this, and De Forest and those bright ones? The mechanical and the scientific world is too much with us, late and soon, but don’t blame the bright boys, Peter Worden.
They gave us the contrivance; they bestowed the radio on us. But they didn’t invent Red Skelton. What had Woollcott said? The people of Chicago are just as responsible for the Tribune as the people of Germany are for Hitler. Or was it vice versa?
It doesn’t matter; this is your world, Mr. Worden, and you had an infinitesimal but definite part in creating it. Take a good whiff of your handiwork. How do you like what you smell?
Lines running on the ceiling, like a television set out of focus, and I closed my eyes. I closed my eyes and fell asleep.
“His mother’s favorite,” Dad was saying to some man outside my range of vision. “Not that she didn’t love John, of course, but Pete could just wrap her around his finger. I’ll admit I’ve favored John, probably because of that. But John is more—oh, manly.”
The man out of view said, “Fine boy, John. Straight, fine boy. He’ll amount to something, that boy.”
I turned over, half asleep. And saw Lily in my mind, who’d been promised a trip. Saw Al Calvano in the chair, facing the door, saw Mike’s eyes gazing at the hunting-knife. And saw my love.
Go in with Nick all the way and marry the girl, Mr. Worden. And then I thought, if Nick had wanted to kill Al Calvano, or send somebody to kill Al Calvano, he would be smart to pick a spot like this. For I’d slugged Al. And Nick had Mike with me to keep me away from the apartment.
If Tommy hadn’t died, I’d probably be a partner right now in the Arnold Sporting Club. But Tommy had died.
My phone screamed at me and I got up, hoping it was Ellen.
It was Nick. “Giving my boy a bad time, Pete?”
“He likes to throw his weight around,” I said. “He’s got the idea God gave him a brain.”
A chuckle. “Hovde seems to think it’s a bad move, doesn’t he? And maybe it was.”
I said nothing, waiting.
“Maybe we’d better forget it,” Nick said after a second.
“Okay,” I told him. “I’ll send the money back, Nick. I’m staying with it.”
“Don’t be simple,” he said. “You don’t have to send any money back. What’s got into you, boy?”
“A friend of mine’s been killed. That’s something you can understand, isn’t it, Nick? You’ve a reputation for loyalty.”
A silence, quite long, though not necessarily pregnant. “All right. I’ll talk to Mike. I’ll cool him off. You can get along with him, can’t you, if he knows his place?”
“I can get along with anybody who doesn’t keep flexing his muscles,” I said. “Mike’s got the idea he’s still in Chicago and full of beans.”
Another chuckle, and then, “I’ll send him back any time you want him.”
“Make it tomorrow morning if he’s got some place he wants to go. I can’t think of anybody, but I haven’t your sources of information.”
“Tomorrow morning then.” A pause. “Have you heard from Jake Schuster, today?”
“I haven’t.”
“Can’t seem to locate him. Have him call me if he calls you, will you?”
I said I would and hung up. I looked at the upholstered chair, but it had no comments. Jake Schuster wouldn’t be likely to call me so soon after the cinch he’d given me yesterday. They all worried about Jake. And Jake seemed to worry about nothing, even his beloved Vicki, though Mike assured me he did.
I phoned
Ellen but she didn’t answer.
Had I ever been at Vicki’s place? I seemed to remember a party at the apartment of one of Jake’s girls, long ago. But had that been Vicki? Or one of the previous Vickies?
I looked her up in the phone book but didn’t phone her. I dressed in the new sport jacket and a presentable pair of slacks and went out to the Merc.
The Merc had some complaint in her carburetors as she started because I’d been neglecting her. A dry, clear afternoon and I pointed her toward Hollywood.
At a drive-in I stopped for two barbecued beef sandwiches and coffee. With sauce, pickles, relish, and potato chips. With a neat and firm blonde to wait on me, a smiling girl, undoubtedly from Iowa and seeking the Celluoid dream. Biding her time.
This lovely was only one of many; it’s a great town for young men on the prowl and old men on the make. They can’t hold out forever.
I had a second cup of coffee and drove on, the memory of the blonde lingering and the flavor of the barbecue sauce. Grrrrrrrr. Burp.
A triplex, just before the start of the Hollywood Hills section, with some view of the mountains. Three units staggered to the right as one went back, a coral stucco structure with a well-kept lawn.
The one farthest from the street was Vicki Lincoln’s.
Somewhere within the chimes sounded because of my pressure on the button here, and I saw a shadow moving behind the window to my left.
Then the door opened, and Vicki Lincoln stood there. She was wearing a hostess gown of black velvet, its only ornament a zipper. She smiled and said, “Pete,” making two syllables out of it.
Below the plaster face there was a body I’d overlooked before because of the face. I said, “Expecting someone, Vicki?”
“No, why?” And then a shred of meaning to the smile. “Do you mean Jake, you bad boy?”
“No. I meant—because of the—the gown.”
“Kidder, aren’t you? Come in, Pete.” A short pause. “Jake’s out of town.”
The living-room was almost square, furnished in a honey-tone provincial with Chinese hooked rugs, with a brightly printed and capacious davenport.
On which I sat. She sat at the other end.
“Has Nick called you?” I asked. “He’s been looking for Jake.”
“Nick phoned this morning. I guess he didn’t believe me when I told him Jake was out of town. Isn’t it awful about these murders, Pete? You must be worn to a frazzle.”
“Just about,” I said. “It’s awful. I wonder—” I shook my head. “Everything seems to point toward Nick.”
“Doesn’t it, though? Would you like a drink, Pete?”
“I would, thanks.”
She rose slowly, making a rumba of the act. “Bourbon and Seltzer?”
“Fine, thanks.”
I lighted a cigarette and looked for an ash tray. There was one on the table to my right. And one of Jack Woodford’s reprints. And another two bit novel by a man called Shadow. Pecos Pals by Arthur Shadow.
“Jake read Westerns?” I asked her. She was in the kitchen.
“That’s all he reads,” she said. “Isn’t it a shame?”
“You can pay more and get less,” I told her. “Woodford one of your favorites?”
“Number one. He knows what’s going on in the world.”
That he did. I looked the length of the living-room, past the section devoted to dining, into the kitchen. How was it I had never looked below that plaster cast?
“Do a lot of reading?” I asked.
“Lots. Jake wanted to get me a television set, but I don’t like wrestlers. They’re so hairy and sweaty.”
Ellen should see me now, I thought. Look what is mixing me a drink, my proud Irish beauty.
Miss Lincoln came from the kitchen with two drinks and handed me one. She lifted hers. “To—us.”
“Long may we live,” I said, and smiled at her.
She seemed more at ease, more a person here than she did when she was out and facing the world.
She sat on the end of the davenport still warm from her earlier presence, and I took my former seat. I asked, “Get the Stude yet?”
She rattled the ice in her glass. “Not yet. Soon, though.”
I sipped my drink.
She said, “Jake’s afraid I’ll get around too much if I have a car. Jake’s awful jealous.” She curled her legs up under her. “He wouldn’t understand something like this, you dropping in to say hello. He’d think something wrong about it.”
“He should know you’d be safe with me.”
“Should he?”
I changed the subject. “Do you hear anything around about the murders? Any casual remarks that might have been dropped?”
She shook her bleached and powdered head. “Nick Arnold is certainly worried about it, though, isn’t he? He’s worried more about it than you seem to be.”
“Right.”
“And yet, you’re the one who found both bodies. Was it bad, Pete?”
“Bad enough. Did Jake tell you about the horse he gave me yesterday, the cinch bet?”
She shook her head, the blankness on her face undisturbed. “He doesn’t tell me much about his business. Something wrong?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been getting a feeling of being crowded lately, of being shoved.”
My glass was empty, and she leaned over to take it from my hand. I didn’t know what to expect, but it was logical enough. She took it out into the kitchen to mix another. Her perfume lingered.
She brought it back loaded again, and sat a bit closer this time. She said, “You’re different—than most of the men I know. You’ve got—class, Pete.”
“Gee, tanks,” I said. “You’re no slouch yourself, Vicki.”
“Are you ever going to marry Ellen, Pete?”
“That’s a good question,” I said. “Isn’t there any Seltzer in this drink? It takes like whisky and ice.”
“It’s almost all Seltzer. Are you going to—join Nick’s organization, Pete?”
I looked at her. “Think I should?”
She shrugged. “We have to eat. Though I guess you’ve got money, haven’t you?”
I shook my head. “Not unless I settle down and be a model citizen. Not unless I get a job. My brother has charge of the family money.”
“Oh,” she said.
I went on casually. “You know, there could be another tie-up in this business. Calvano sold reefers and Lister smoked them. Maybe this neighbor of mine wasn’t just a witness who had to be killed; maybe there was a dope tie-up.”
I watched her reaction and saw only a flicker of interest on the stiff face. She said nothing.
“Nobody knows anything,” I said, and my speech sounded blurred to me, which was ridiculous on two drinks. “Nobody seems to give a damn.”
“Nobody gives a damn about what, Pete?” Her voice from where?
“About Tommy Lister.” I turned to look behind me. “I thought I heard the door open.”
“Nerves,” she said. “You’ve been through a lot, Pete. Here.”
There was now a fresh drink in my hand. Was the hand trembling? I looked at her, and she was still sitting on the davenport, only she looked about the size of a grasshopper.
“What in the hell is going on?” I said.
“Don’t shout, Pete. There’s no reason to shout. Are you drunk? What’s happened to you?”
I could hear her clearly, but she looked so small. I put a hand out to feel her smallness, and her hand took mine. It was soft and moist and strong, but not small.
Chills, and that horrible sense of loneliness, of puppetry.
“Relax, Pete. Pete, honey, Petey boy, relax—gee, you look about seven years old. Aw, Petey, don’t tremble—”
Her arms tight around me, her full body close and comforting. I heard a murmuring and knew they were talking about me, but to hell with them, to hell with all of them. The large and small, the short and the tall, feed ‘em beans.
Delirium, I was to learn later, the
first phase psychogenic. These clinical evaluations, these learned diagnoses are, of course, based on the patient’s later revelation of the events leading up to the state. Hysteria, panic, what have you? It wasn’t toxic, not on a few drinks, not yet.
In any event, it was real enough to me. I’ll never know what I said or how much of what happened was true. I know she whimpered and the voices from somewhere murmured. I didn’t know what they were saying, but I knew they were talking about me.
I know she was warm and highly perfumed, and she said she had often dreamed of me. Maybe this was a dream. There’s no way I’ll ever know.
Some clarity returned when the room was dim. I was on the davenport and she was on the floor, sitting with her knees up, smoking a cigarette.
I’d like to think what happened then was an accident on her part. Perhaps she had them with her regular cigarettes.
I said, “How about a smoke, lady?”
She gave me one and held the light for me and I inhaled heavily. It was undoubtedly toxic from then on.
I wanted to cut her throat. I loathed her. And then she wasn’t there, and I was lost in time, and the voices came back, and I turned toward the door, looking ghostly white in the immeasurable distance.
Hands pulled at me, but I slapped them off and swore, and kept moving toward that white door on the horizon. Tommy, I knew, was behind that door, his typewriter hammering. I could hear it pounding away.
I heard the crash of a small table and stopped to stare stupidly at the floor. A light came on, and I saw the littered cigarettes on the floor and the ash spilling over onto the Chinese hooked rug.
I turned to stare at Vicki, and she stood like a Dali portrait, the white face seeming disembodied, one crooked black arm to the right of the face, the back of her hand to her mouth. To the left of the face and below it, the black robed body of Vicki Lincoln.
She said nothing, staring, her face a death mask.
Someone said, “—always was yellow. That’s why he’s not a running back. Ya ever see him run with the ball?”
Vicki went away; the voice went away. Something burned my hand and I put the thing in my pocket. They weren’t taking anything away from me.
There was something in my hand, something larger than the thing I’d put into my pocket hours ago. It was a doorknob, I saw, brass, gleaming between my fingers.
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