“I wish you didn’t have to.
He raised her chin with his finger. “Step by step, remember?”
“I know, darling.”
He watched her walk away with her straight, proud stride; she didn’t turn around and after a moment her figure merged with the dimness of the road and she was gone. Carmody turned and walked along the narrow boardwalk that bridged the inlet and then went down on the beach and walked past the Beachcomber to his house. Sam Link’s car was gone. He paused by the plum-colored Ford for a moment and listened with some surprise to the piano being played inside the house. When he went in he saw it was Lila, playing from one of his scores propped on the rack.
Carmody listened without letting her know he was in the room and he knew that she had had expert training at the piano. She played as if she understood what he had been trying to say in his music. He tried to think what it was that made the dark-haired girl look different. She wore a nubby tweed skirt and a soft pink cardigan sweater and her long hair was tied with a matching pink ribbon. Pink ballet-type slippers went with the rest of her ensemble. She looked like the schoolgirl that she actually was.
He went all the way into the room and stepped on something soft and picked it up. It was another slipper, a green one, crusted with wet and drying sand and mud. He looked for its mate, but didn’t see it, and tossed the slipper aside into a chair. He stood beside the girl at the piano and saw the dark, mottled bruise on her face and the stains of tears on her cheeks. She jumped in startled fear when she first saw him and her fingers made a violent discord on the piano keys.
“Take it easy, Lila.”
“You scared me.”
“You scare pretty easily, don’t you? Who hit you?”
“Who do you think?”
She got up from the piano bench, twisting away from him, and her face in the dim light of the single lamp that lit the shabby living room was twisted with young and confused anguish. Her hands were small clenched fists at her sides. He stood still, waiting for her to answer.
“Was it Robbie?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Why did he do it?”
“I went for a walk.” She spoke with her back toward him. “I went to the hotel, just to see people, to see a little life and hear some people talking and laughing. Was that a crime?”
“No, Lila.”
“Robbie found me in the bar and went a little crazy. That’s when he hit me. He told me to come back here and stay here. They’re all looking for you, you know. They don’t like you to wander away, either.”
He hesitated. “Tell me something. Honestly. Why did you come here with Robbie?”
“He looked like fun.”
“Fun?”
“I came here for kicks.”
“And did it turn out to be what you expected?”
“No.”
“Do you want to go home, Lila?”
“I’m afraid to.”
“Because of your folks?”
“Because of everything. I’m just afraid to.”
He heard her teeth chattering and saw her hands unclench and she suddenly covered her face and sank down on the floor, her legs tucked under her, her head lowered as she sobbed into her hands. Carmody breathed out slowly and walked toward her and knelt beside her on the dusty, sand-gritted carpet and tried gently to take her hands from her face. For a moment he succeeded and he felt the air sucked between his lips as he saw the deep, frightening panic in her eyes.
“You’re afraid of something. What is it?”
“Nothing.”
“What happened here today?”
She shook her head and didn’t answer.
“Did something else happen at the hotel when you were there?”
He saw her start to say yes and then she shook her head and twisted away and stood up and started to run from the room. He took a quick stride after her and called, “Lila!” and then paused as she slammed the door and ran out on the beach. At the same moment he heard the sound of Sam Link’s car grinding over the road that came across the dunes behind the house. Something came over him and he hesitated between his instinctive desire to help the girl and the need to face Sam Link. He saw that Lila was already out of sight on the darkened beach and he thought he could talk to her later, persuade her to tell him the truth about herself so he could help her. Then the back door slammed and Sam Link came in.
Sam wore a dinner coat and a black bowtie and his bald freckled scalp looked polished and waxed. He almost, but not quite, succeeded in looking respectable. He seemed happy and jovial.
“Hey, Billyroony, we been lookin’ for you. Monte sent me over on the chance you come back. We got work to do tonight, music man. The crowd is like flies on molasses.” Sam chuckled and slapped his head. “That Monte! You got to hand it to him. He’s got an eye for the place and the time, wherever the moneyroony is, all right.”
Carmody said: “Sit down, Sam.”
“Come on, change your clothes. You got a new dinner suit in your closet Monte bought it for you. He needs you in the ballroom.”
“Sit down, Sam.”
“What for?”
“I want to talk to you about Paul Sloade and Major Deegan.”
Sam Link sat down on the piano bench. His voice shaded off from the jovial to the cautious. “There’s something on your mind, music man. That’s it, isn’t it?”
“A lot on my mind.”
“What makes you think about the old stuff now?”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“We got a lot of other things to think about tonight.”
“This is important to me,” Carmody said.
Sam Link moved a little, bending forward on the bench. The dim light shone on the big orange freckles on his bald scalp. His eyes were hard and shrewd. “So something suddenly comes up and kicks you, hey?”
“A memory came up and slapped me in the face,” Carmody said. He spoke quietly, reminding Sam Link of the poker game back in the prison camp, and how Paul Sloade had accused Sam of cheating and how a week later Sam had pinned the blame for what happened to Lucas Deegan on Paul Sloade. As he talked he saw that Sam Link remembered it all very well and didn’t like remembering it and liked Carmody’s remembering it even less. He saw the planes of Sam Link’s bony face grow tight and waxen. “I’ve been thinking about it ever since it came back to me,” Carmody said. “And the answer is pretty obvious, don’t you think?”
“You’re running the tap. Keep talking.”
“Paul Sloade never turned the Chinese guards on Deegan.”
“No?”
“It was you,” Carmody said.
Sam Link’s nose was long and shiny and pointed, and it seemed to grow whiter and shinier. He moved a little on the piano bench and put his hand inside the handsome new dinner coat he wore and then took it out and it had a gun in it. His mouth said something that Carmody didn’t hear or understand because he was jumping for the gun. He heard Sam Link yell and then he got his hand on the gun and for a moment he was surprised at the wiry strength in the little man and then the gun came free, into his grip. Sam Link kicked at his legs and tried to knee him and Carmody grabbed the slack of Link’s coat and hauled him up off his feet and held him there for an instant. Sam screamed Robbie’s name and Carmody threw him away from him toward the wall. The house shook. Link went sliding down with his shoulders against the wall until he sat on the floor.
“This time Robbie isn’t here to help you,” Carmody said. He stood over the shaking man, breathing hard, the gun in his hand.
Sam Link sat there and cursed him in a quiet monotone. Carmody felt cold all over.
“It’s true, then,” he said, and he heard his voice shake. “You’re the one who ratted, who got extra food for saying Deegan handled germ warfare.”
“Give me back my gun, Billyboy.”
“Admit it,” Carmody said. “Admit that it’s true.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“But we’re still l
iving with it.”
“You ought to bury it.” Sam said.
Carmody pointed the gun at him and Sam’s face drained white. Carmody said: “You lied about Paul, didn’t you?”
“He was a rat anyway.”
“But you lied!”
“All right,” Sam said.
“All right, what?”
“So I lied.”
Carmody looked at Sam Link and saw that Sam would like nothing better in this world than to see him dead and he shivered inwardly and listened to the rumble and the grumble of the surf on the beach outside and he knew this wouldn’t end here, and he knew, from looking into Sam’s eyes that were like the eyes of a snake that it wouldn’t end as long as Sam hated him and feared him for what he had forced Sam to say.
He felt the weight of the gun in his hand and put the gun away in his pocket
“If you’re satisfied now,” Sam said, “Monte still wants you in the ballroom. There’s a lot of work to be done tonight.”
“I’ll be there.”
“You keeping the gun?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve got others,” Sam said.
He got up quietly and walked out.
Carmody went into the bathroom and stripped off the salt-stained clothing he wore and showered with hot water and plenty of soap, and he kept the gun on the lavatory seat within quick reach if he needed it After a while he began to laugh, softly and with a deep, inward pleasure. One and two makes two, and one lie compounds another, and since Sam Link lied there was a good chance that Monte Bachore lied, too, and there never was a confession signed by Lou Cannon; and if that were true there was nothing to stop him from going to the police—the State Police, he reminded himself, not Potato Head Hallowell—with everything he knew and everything he suspected about the murder in the past and the murder in the present, the murder of Irene Sloade. The more he thought about it the better he felt, and when he changed his clothes and put on the new dinner jacket he found in his closet he was surprised to realize that he was quite hungry, with a healthy new appetite.
He put the gun inside the black dinner coat and looked at it in the mirror and saw it didn’t show very much, and then he adjusted the black bowtie once more and walked outside and down the beach in the new black patent-leather shoes that Monte had thoughtfully provided for him. Harry Corio’s place was almost deserted and Harry’s puckering mouth looked worried as Carmody came in and chose a table on the screened veranda and ordered dinner.
Harry took his order and brought him a bottle of beer and said: “I’m surprised to see you eat here, Billy-o. I haven’t seen you all week, but tonight of all nights you come in here.”
“Is something wrong, Harry?”
“You can answer that one better than I. I never figured you to work for that Monte Bachore phony.”
“You think he’s a phony?” Carmody asked.
“He’s a phony.”
“You know what the phony is doing?” Carmody asked.
“He’s putting me out of business with his gambling joint in the hotel and he’s making a lap dog out of you and I figured you were more than that, Billy-o. I figured you had real music in you, something to give folks that was better than a raw shake and a flip at a wheel.”
“He’s a phony, all right,” Carmody said.
“Then why are you working for him?”
“It won’t be forever.”
Harry sighed heavily. “It might be longer than you think. Why are you toting a gun, Billy-o?”
“Does it show?”
“To me, it shows. Why?”
Carmody nodded toward the lights of the hotel across the yacht anchorage. “There’s a lot of money over there, and most of it is going to change hands tonight and I’ll be in charge of it.”
“To me, it stinks.”
“To me, too,” Carmody said.
When the steak came it was done rare with tarragon sauce and fluffy mashed potatoes and pickled beets. Carmody ate hungrily and was aware of Harry Corio’s disillusioned eyes on him from behind the bar and he tried not to think about it and enjoy his food. Even before he was well into the steak it seemed to lose its flavor and his appetite waned. His recent sense of elation faded. All the unanswered questions flooded back on him in a dark tide of doubt, and he felt the pressure of all the hates and fears and greeds he had been living with for the past week, surrounded by it in the persons of Sam and Robbie and Lila and Paul and Monte Bachore. He felt the push and pull of all these people as if in a drowning sea, building up to an ominous climax that would shake the earth loose from under him. He didn’t finish the steak. You kept silent for three years about the square, he thought, and that makes you an accessory after the fact, and even if you help the police with this thing about Irene Sloade, they’re going to look at you with the look of an honest man toward a murderer. You were afraid of Monte and afraid of the law, and even if you were just a kid then and you’re much older now in wisdom if not so much older in years, that’s no excuse. You saw that in Martha’s eyes, even though she feels about you the way she does. The longer you wait now, the more of a coward you are.
He thought of all this and he thought of the lightest sentence the judge might give him, taking in all the extenuating circumstances he could think of, and he felt the sweat come out over him as he pictured the gray years behind gray prison walls. Years without Martha, years without hope, without music. He couldn’t ask Martha to wait for him. She might want to, but he couldn’t let her.
He heard the telephone ringing behind the bar and he stared at Harry as Harry answered it and he felt the sweat dry on his face in the sea wind that came whistling and whining through the screens of the veranda.
Harry crooked a finger at him and Carmody got up and went to the bar and answered the phone.
Martha’s voice said, “Bill? Bill, is that you?”
“Yes, Martha.”
“Can you come here right away? To my place?”
“What did you find?”
“Find? Oh, you mean in the library?”
“Of course. You sound strange, Martha.”
“Yes. I feel—please come here, Bill. Right away.”
He felt a prickling on the nape of his neck. “What’s wrong?”
“Hurry,” she said, and hung up.
Carmody stared at Harry. “It’s a funny thing, but I don’t suppose Martha Courtney sleeps on her boat, does she?”
“No, she don’t.”
“Where does she stay, then?”
“She’s got a little house down the road a-ways, toward Matachogue.” Harry described it. “You can’t miss it, Bill.”
“Thanks,” Carmody said.
“Bill?”
Carmody paused at the door.
“Bill, you want to leave your gun here?”
“No. I may need it.” Carmody said.
He went out fast.
11
AT 9:15 the headlights of Carmody’s car picked up the cottage he wanted on the graveled back road to Matachogue. It turned out to be less than a mile from the hotel, a small gray-shingled Cape Codder tucked away among wind-bent pines that looked black and silver in the starlight. There were no other houses in sight. The thought crossed his mind to wonder why Martha chose to live here alone when she was in the vicinity, rather than at the hotel her sister had owned; he shrugged it off as evidence of Martha’s stubborn independence of her older sister and turned off the headlights to get out of the car. No lights shone in any of the windows, but Martha’s car was parked just inside the low picket fence and he went over to it and looked inside at the ignition keys in the lock. While he was bent over the door of the car he heard footsteps crunch on the driveway directly behind him and he whirled around with a swift, defensive savagery that surprised him. The man standing there in the starlight was Markham Dunning.
Dunning looked haggard. “Oh, Carmody.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I was worried about Martha because she was out
in her boat all day and I just walked over to see her; but she won’t let me in.”
“She won’t?”
“She won’t answer the bell or my knock.”
“Are you sure she’s inside?” Carmody asked.
“I heard her in there, and she called out to tell me to go away. She sounded a little odd.”
“Odd?”
“I don’t know how else to describe it. I’m glad you’re here.”
Carmody looked hard at the man’s thin aristocratic face, but he saw nothing except puzzlement and concern on the drawn features, and instead of wasting any more time he walked directly to the front door of the cottage and rang the bell. Dunning followed close behind him.
There was no immediate answer. The small multi-paned windows shimmered blankly in the starlight. The wind made a dry whispering sound in the thick stand of pine trees surrounding the house.
“Do you think something is wrong?” Dunning asked in a hushed voice.
“What could be wrong?”
“I don’t know. What brought you out here?”
“Martha phoned me,” Carmody said.
“Then she must still be inside.”
A sense of intolerable pressure mingled with worry and a vague, inchoate fear began to fill Carmody and he rang the doorbell again, and heard the chiming sound inside the house, and still there was no reply. He tried the doorknob and shook it and rattled it and called Martha’s name and stepped back to slam his shoulder against the door, and just as he started forward to try to smash it open, the door opened and Martha stood there, looking out at him from the darkness inside the house.
“Bill? Mark?”
Carmody felt a moment’s anger as an outgrowth of his relief and he said tightly: “What’s the matter with you? Why are you hiding in here?”
“Mark,” she said. “Go away.”
“My dear—”
“Please.”
“Are you all right?” His voice held a note of anxiety.
“Yes. I just want to see Bill,” she said. Carmody knew by now that something was wrong, something serious and bad. It was something that didn’t have anything to do with the errand for him to Matachogue, he thought. There was a rigidity in her posture as she stood facing them in the doorway that heightened his alarm, and he turned to Markham Dunning and said: “Why don’t you wait in my car for me, Mr. Dunning?”
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