The Damned Don't Die

by Jim Nisbet

  Then he thought he heard a door close, softly, somewhere behind her.

  “It might have been you,” she said. She blew a kiss at him and slammed the door.

  Chapter Six

  FROM THE PASSENGER SEAT OF HIS OLD TOYOTA, WINDROW could watch the front door of Honey Trimble’s house. It was a shingled, cut-up affair, the shingles long since turned black in the weather. Once he saw a light go on in an upstairs room.

  Outside, the fog thickened. Windrow sat with his pint of stakeout brandy in his lap and listened to the foghorns on the bay. Beyond the Trimble house, much higher up, he could see the red glow from the Sutro Tower, its individual lights diffused by the dense fog.

  So someone had listened in on their conversation; probably had witnessed the attempted rape. He ran the scene backward and forward in his mind. The scene had been lurid enough to be compromising; had photos been taken? Compromising, that is, to a man who had a reputation to look after. Windrow didn’t have that problem. If anybody had anything to lose, it was Mrs. Trimble. If a picture of that scene were to get out, what would the neighbors think? Nothing, that’s what they would think. This is the Wild West, where men can be anything and women do whatever they want to do.

  Windrow permitted himself a mirthless laugh and sipped his pint. His mind began to wander, and his eyes flitted up and down the block, looking for nothing in particular. He looked at his watch: 10:30. This is much worse than being a cop, he thought, much worse. He hunched down in the seat, and flicked on the radio. If he left it on long enough, it would run the battery down. Nice thing about San Francisco, though, there are lots of hills. Could always release the brake, turn on the key, and let her roll. She’d start in fifty feet, or a half block.

  He thought of the last high-speed chase he’d had, as a policeman. The guy he was chasing was a good driver with an excellent car, and Windrow couldn’t keep up with him. Finally, trying too hard, Windrow had sideswiped eleven cars parked on both sides of the street. The police vehicle was completely destroyed, and Windrow wound up slumped over the wheel, laughing very contentedly. The good old days. Do that now it’d be jail, pure and simple. The Toyota wasn’t even insured.

  The light upstairs in Trimble’s place went out. What did Windrow know about the hand that turned out that light? Did it belong to Honey Trimble? Or to Herbert? Had it been Herbert there in the house, listening? Or someone else? It didn’t seem likely that Honey Trimble’s “master,” as she’d called him—her?—would be her ex-husband. Who, then? It was more in line with an ex-wife’s behavior toward an ex-husband that she’d tried to get Windrow to leave with a Polaroid of her ex in bondage. Or maybe she was just crazy. Definitely, he decided, taking a small sip of the brandy, she wasn’t normal.

  He put the bottle into the glove compartment. And those bruises. Who did her that favor? For, undoubtedly, they had been a favor. Was she, even now, running her fingernail over the new bruises he’d almost certainly left on her mouth? He wiggled the little finger of his right hand. He could still feel the sting of the two unintentionally hard slaps he’d given her. How had she provoked that?

  Easy. I’m working for the firm that’s working for her. She can make me do anything she wants, as long as I take the money.

  The man with the answers.

  Anything?

  A rectangle of yellow light opened up in the side of the Trimble house. Through the fog, Windrow saw two figures gesture at each other. One came away from the house; the other, the silhouette of Honey Trimble, retreated. The first figure walked, unhurriedly, up the hill, toward Windrow’s badly parked Toyota, using a cane. It was a man. As he passed the Toyota, Windrow slid under the wheel and opened the driver’s door. The dome light illuminated the man’s startled face. It was the face of the man in the two photographs.

  Windrow stood up on the sidewalk, leaving the door open. As he did so, the fog surged through the dark trees over their heads, and their leaves hissed and rattled. The man shivered visibly.

  “Mr. Trimble? Herbert Trimble?”

  “What—Oh.” Apparently the man recognized Windrow, for when he saw his face, he smiled, as if the two of them shared a secret. “Mr. Windrow, I presume, though we’ve never met.”

  “I guess that now you’re going to make some crack about common ground.”

  The man sniggered. “No, no. Not at all. What takes place on the premises of the former Mrs. Trimble is certainly no concern of mine.”

  “Oh, yeah? What exactly has been taking place, Mr. Trimble?”

  “Oh, my friend …” the man said, looking both ways, up and down the sidewalk. He leaned closer to Windrow; Windrow found himself leaning imperceptibly away. “She sponsors the most incredible, ah, sexual events. …” He laughed. “You haven’t heard?”

  “I don’t get around much.”

  “Perhaps you’d be at home in a slighty, ahm, lower neighborhood.”

  “You certainly have a way with the words, Mr. Trimble,” Windrow said, reaching into his coat pocket.

  “Well, I am a writer, Mr. Windrow.”

  “Right. Well, then you can probably read, too, huh, Mr. Trimble. It’s my current mission to present you with these papers, concerning certain legalities involving your divorce.”

  “Why, thank you.”

  “Though, personally, I don’t see why you couldn’t have worked this out with the lady face to face, and saved yourself a bunch of money. Lawyers, errand boys … we all have little meters on us.”

  “Yes, yes, I quite understand, and you’re quite right, we do get along famously; but, really, the poor bitch wants absolutely everything.”

  It was true that Trimble’s way of putting all possible intonation on every second or third word he said was annoying enough, and that most of what the man said had a distinctly false ring to it, as if his exaggerated manner of speech was an act, employed merely to throw Windrow off the track of the smallest grain of truth. But Windrow had a less specific and more insidious feeling, akin to the one that occasionally rose in his sternum to indicate the scene or aura of nasty events, a vague stirring just below his conscious awareness that he was being completely had, but didn’t understand how. He saw that, though it was dark on this street, Trimble, too, felt Windrow’s growing awareness, but made no attempt to distract or staunch it. Rather, he continued with his mincing calumnies about his wife while, behind them, he waited for Windrow to make some kind of move.

  Windrow changed the subject.

  “Did you murder the Sarapath girl, your neighbor, Mr. Trimble?”

  The man called Trimble allowed his face to be overwhelmed by a huge and, Windrow thought, demonically amused grin, but said nothing.

  “Well, Mr. Trimble?”

  The man composed his features and said, “Really, Mr. Windrow, I won’t even countenance that kind of suggestion. I hardly—in fact, I didn’t know her at all.”

  “So?”

  The man looked at Windrow a bit more intently. “What do you mean, so? One would like to get personally involved with the people whom one murders, get to know them a little before the ax falls, wouldn’t one?”

  Windrow allowed as how he imagined one would.

  “Yes,” the man said, nodding his head almost as if to himself. “Yes.”

  Windrow took a shot in the dark. “But tell me, Mr. Trimble. How did you know about the ax?”

  Trimble’s eyes narrowed. “Ax? What ax …? Oh, the ax! Oh, come, come, Mr. Windrow, that’s merely a figure of speech. You know that. I may just as well have said—er, the, uh—the whip, the whip, yes. Before the whip comes down.” The man cackled. “You see,” he added.

  “I see that the police are wanting to talk to you, Mr. Trimble, about the Sarapath girl.”

  “Well, I imagine they’ll find me when they need me.”

  “You want to leave me your number, so’s I might pass it on?”

  The man was looking up the sidewalk. “I’m in the book,” he said.

  “But you’re not in my book, Herbert.�
� Windrow moved to face him. “Don’t you want to be in my book?” He heard the tang of steel, a swish, and saw a long gleam in the man’s hand. A sword cane, Windrow thought. I don’t believe it. The point shimmered a few inches from his throat.

  “Could be the last page of your diary, gumshoe,” the man hissed. “Get back in the car.”

  “Look, Zorro …”

  “Get back in the car!”

  Windrow got back in the car.

  “Close the door.”

  Windrow closed the door.

  “Now beat it.”

  He turned the key. After a few sluggish groans, the motor caught. The Toyota took a few rounds of jacking back and forth to get out, but the unsheathed threat assured the process. Windrow let the Toyota coast down the hill and around the corner; he watched his rearview mirror until the shadowy figure backing up the sidewalk turned out of the glass. He killed the motor and the lights and coasted into a driveway.

  He lay down on the seat. Soon a small car came around the corner, very fast.

  Windrow started the Toyota, backed out, and followed the two red taillights.

  Chapter Seven

  AN OLD TRANSISTOR RADIO ON TOP OF A STACK OF PAPERBACK books played tunes from the forties quietly.

  Marilyn Sarapath wrung the washcloth over the bathroom sink, rinsed it, and wrung it out again. She emptied the bowl of pink-tinged water and refilled it with fresh, cold water. She took a bottle of peroxide and another of iodine out of the medicine cabinet. With the practiced artifice of an experienced waitress, she gathered these things into her arms—the bowl perched on the leveled thumb and forefinger, which pinched the twisted cloth, the necks of the two bottles caught between the lower fingers of her right hand, a dry cloth draped over her wrist. Carrying her drink in her left hand, she walked into her bedroom. She placed her articles of first aid on the cluttered nightstand next to the bed and, taking a drink, surveyed the prostrate form on her bed.

  It was the form of a man with no clothes on, lying on his stomach. Between his stomach and the bedclothes a white towel interceded, catching the slow trickle of blood, now virtually ceased, from the wound in the left buttock. Black, ugly thread ends stuck up from the recent tear, like the legs of an upturned centipede; but Marilyn didn’t let this startling sight distract her from a proper appraisal of the rest of the torso: white, well muscled, thinking about going soft, slightly hairy. Nice legs, too. Only the neck showed signs of having recently seen the sun; the rest of the body was smooth and pale. She’d seen the scars, new and old, and the slight paunch, not quite overhanging the fresh wound in front; she’d heard the sharp intake of breath as he’d rolled over. On the whole, she’d reflected, it was just as well he’d turned the other way, face down, though her eyes drifted curiously to the dark hair, high up, between his legs. This side looked like it had seen slightly less action than the front.

  The front side, propped on its elbows, extended itself far enough toward the side of the bed to hang up the telephone, then, turning its face sideways, lay itself down on the pillows and closed its eyes.

  “Ready?” she said.

  “Ready.”

  “Have a drink first,” she counseled.

  “You have one.”

  “I just did.”

  “Have another.”

  “Thanks.” She took a big slug from her glass and set it down on the night table. She sat on the edge of the bed and pressed the wound with the washcloth.

  “Mmmm,” said Martin Windrow.

  “I’ll bet.” Marilyn dipped the washcloth in the basin and gently blotted the fresh blood as it welled out of the wound.

  “Well, something’s going on,” Windrow said sleepily.

  Marilyn rinsed the washcloth, wrung it out thoroughly, and poured hydrogen peroxide directly into the wound. The stuff foamed up out of it and ran down both sides of the thigh. She dabbed at the runoff with the washcloth.

  “So,” she said, “the detective sits in his car, down the street from the suspect’s house, for half an hour after he’d said goodnight. He is said to be staking the place out.” She squeezed more peroxide into the cut, and dabbed at the runoff. “A man comes out of her house, walks past the dick’s car. He stops long enough to threaten the dick with a”—she giggled—“a sword cane. Intimidated, the dick leaves. D’Artagnan, he gets into another car, two shorts up the block.” She put the washcloth in the basin and picked up a spool of thread and a needle from the night table. “You sure you want me to do this?”

  “Positive. Think of the money I’ll save.”

  “Think it’ll cover the price of a new ass?”

  Windrow opened one eye and winked at her. “How much for a used one?”

  She jabbed his good buttock with the needle. A little dot of blood appeared. Windrow said nothing and smiled up at her.

  “I saw your jaw twitch.”

  “Impossible,” Windrow said, closing his eyes again.

  “Next time it’ll be right in that gash, tough guy, and we’ll see what happens.”

  “Don’t forget to twist it.”

  She stuck out her tongue, squinted, and tried to thread the needle. “Back on the television, the dick tails a late-model Buick to an address in Hayes Valley, to a block where it is so dark the dick can’t get a make on the john, or the house number.”

  “Different racket.”

  “Hm?”

  “Different racket. Guy’s not a john, he’s a subject.”

  “Subject? What’re you, an artist?”

  “Subject, subjection, subject.”

  “Got it. Ready?”

  “I thought you were almost finished.”

  “I haven’t even started yet!”

  “Oh. Did you cook the point?”

  “Ha? Whazzat? You want another bowl of argot?”

  “The needle. You gotta flame up the needle, for the germs.”

  “Oh, right! Germs! Guy’s got a new hole in his ass, from a straight razor some child pornographer pulled out of his shoe, and he’s worried about germs on a nice girl’s needle.”

  “I might get hepatitis. An aneurysm.”

  She retrieved a cigarette out of a pack on the night table, and a lighter. She lit the cigarette and, squinting through the smoke, held the gas flame under the needle, which glowed red almost immediately.

  “Matter of fact,” she said pensively, watching the flame, “I’ve had done with all that … ouch.”

  “What do you mean, ‘ouch’? I’m the patient.”

  “Listen, gumshoe. You were supposed to come over here to help me through the whirlies.”

  “Nothing like occupying the hands to take the mind off one’s problems.”

  “Look, are you sure—”

  “Do it.”

  She took a long drag off her cigarette, propped it in an ashtray on the nightstand. She caught the bulge of flesh along the inside of the buttock, between her thumb and her fingers, and did it. Two neat sutures on one end of the knife wound, to replace the two that had torn out when Honey Trimble pushed Windrow onto her sofa. She tied each with two square knots, not too tight. Martin Windrow didn’t say a word. Marilyn cut a large piece of gauze from a roll and doubled it over several times to make a thick pad and soaked it in iodine. This she placed over the sutures, pressing it a little to squeeze the disinfectant into the wound. Over this piece of gauze she placed a gauze pad with a plastic backing and secured the whole bandage with several pieces of tape. When she’d finished, Marilyn said nothing, but pressing the tape ends into place around and over the wound, she let the palm and fingers and fingers of her free hand brush up and down the small of Windrow’s back. She flared the motion up under his shoulder blades and gently back down the side of his rib cage, and repeated it. Still, with her other hand, she fussed slowly about the dressed wound.

  “So the detective calls the cops,” she said softly, with pauses between her phrases, “and gives the location as being the hideout of one Herbert Trimble.” She was using both hands now. T
hey slid up Windrow’s spine and grasped the thick muscles behind his shoulders and neck and kneaded them.

  “Really,” Windrow said into the pillows.

  Her hands sculpted his hips. “Ahhhh,” she said, exhaling. “Medicine’s a demanding profession.” Her thumbs traced the lines where his buttocks met his thighs.

  “So why—” Windrow said, one hand scratching an eyebrow, “why did Honey Trimble give the detective a picture of a man hiding in her house? A little higher. Is she afraid of her husband? Was it a veiled call for help? Was that man her husband?”

  “Not necessarily,” she said. “But he was the man in the photograph the detective had in his pocket when he left Mrs. Trimble’s.

  “Subsequently, the detective, after waiting a decent amount of time, called police headquarters and spoke to a friend. Who was the man to whom an anonymous tipster had led them?

  “‘None of your goddamn business,’ the detective was told. Hmmm.”

  “So he called another friend downtown. Court reporter. Had homicide just brought in one Herbert Trimble? And if so, on what charges had they booked him? Ahhhh.”

  “‘Who? Herbert Trimble? Never heard of him,’ the reporter says.

  “‘Ah so,’ says the clever dick, stumped. ‘So, Charlie, what’s new downtown?’

  “‘Well,’ says Charlie, ‘they just brought in a guy on suspicion of being Herbert Trimble. Turned out he wasn’t.’

  “‘Ah, yes. The endless hours of fruitless police work. So the guy looked like him, eh?’

  “‘Not at all,’ says the newspaper man, obviously relishing the detective’s fishing expedition. ‘He looks like some guy called Harry …’

  “He looks like some guy called Harry—Harry …” She tugged gently at Windrow’s shoulder.

  “Harry Feyn,” said Windrow, rolling over.

  “The editor of, of …” she was losing the thread of the story. She was staring at him.

  “Brandish,” he said.

  “The magazine of—oh, my God,” she whispered, smiling.