The Damned Don't Die

by Jim Nisbet

  Windrow turned his head so that he was looking at the ceiling and closed his eyes. Gleason’s voice floated to him through a gathering dusk. “There was another one, another picture pretty similar to the one of the Sarapath girl. We found it in a sheaf of papers in his suitcase. Same shot, same wall, different party. It was Mrs. Trimble. The real one.” Gleason fell silent.

  A moment later Windrow heard the door swish open. Conversation, the soft, doorbell-like chime of the paging mechanism, the rattle of metal food trays on a rubber-wheeled cart, drifted in from the hall. He fell asleep.

  Marilyn was laughing. Braddock was there talking, too. “The guy with the ambulance told me you had so much junk in your pockets—all those tools and stuff—when they picked you up to put you on the stretcher, you clanked and rattled, like they were rolling around a coffee can full of bolts. He said they thought they’d been called to pick up a robot. ‘Where do we take him?’ the driver asked him. ‘Silicon Valley,’ the guy on the other end of the stretcher answers, ‘and step on it.’ “Marilyn giggled, and Windrow smiled weakly, his eyes closed.

  Gleason handed a cup of steaming coffee to Marilyn. Together they stood and watched the form of Martin Windrow breathing deeply and regularly, a slight husking whistle audible when he inhaled.

  “Tell him when he wakes up that Bdeniowitz is real grateful for the tip on the real Mrs. Trimble,” Gleason I said, sipping gingerly. “Tell him he’s sorry he sent back that bill for the messenger, unpaid.”

  Braddock showed him the flat black prybar, and pointed to the shiny, teardrop-shaped crease in it. “They gave me this to show to you,” he said. “They found it in the breast pocket of your overcoat.” Braddock turned the bar over and over between his two hands, admiring it. “Said it was hard to tell, but it seemed likely that it deflected the bullet from a more destructive path through your body, and that in any case it absorbed a lot of the slug’s energy.” He placed it on the little table next to the head of the bed. “Seems like it might have saved your life.”

  Marilyn ran her finger along the crease. Braddock looked pensive, steepled his fingertips just below his lips.

  “You remember the brand name of that bar?” he asked, musing.

  Windrow remembered it immediately. “Wonderbar,” he said weakly.

  “Wonderbar,” Braddock repeated.

  “Sometimes when he sleeps, the tiniest frown shows up on his face,” Marilyn said, watching Windrow sleep.

  Gleason eyed the dusty stacks of paperbacks on the bottom shelf of the nightstand. “What do you suppose that’s about?” he said absently.

  “Something, I don’t know. He won’t tell me about it but we’ll be talking, and he’ll suddenly fix his mind on something not in the conversation, some problem he’s worrying on.”

  “Could be he sees now how close he came,” Gleason suggested.

  Marilyn looked at Gleason. Her arms were folded, and she had a sweater draped over her shoulders. Gleason himself, she realized, had his mind on something else. It was as if he were waiting for something, waiting for Windrow to say something. She returned her eyes to Windrow’s gently breathing form.

  “Could be …” she said doubtfully.

  “Did you find a checkbook on Feyn?” He could sit up now. “Or any money?”

  Gleason thought. “No, no checkbook. About five hundred cash, though. Why?”

  “And just the two pictures? No others?”

  “Just the two pictures. Why?” Gleason leaned closer. “What’s up, Marty?”

  Windrow’s eyes fluttered closed. “Oh,” he said dreamily, “I don’t know, nothing. Just … curious …”

  Braddock patted his shoulder. “You did fine, Martin. Don’t worry about a thing. As far as the committee is concerned, you’re still on the case.”

  “You mean, I’m still getting paid?”

  “We’re taking care of everything.”

  “Gee …”

  “Yeah,” Braddock grinned, standing in the open door, “gee whiz.” He left.

  Marilyn watched the door close and turned to Windrow. She leaned over and kissed him on the mouth. A long, lingering kiss. Her fingers toyed with his ear. “Feeling better, darling?”

  “Mmmmm,” he said.

  “Very much better?” she stroked his neck.

  “Mmmmm …”

  “Much, much better …?”

  “Come on, Marty, is there something else? Something you got that we ain’t?

  “… just … cur … ious …”

  “Bdeniowitz says the case is closed, Marty.”

  “… curious …” Windrow’s voice trailed off. His breathing become deep and regular.

  Gleason sat back on his chair. “Fell asleep again.” His voice betrayed a trace of irritation.

  “Yes,” Marilyn agreed.

  But only Windrow’s eyes were closed. Lately he’d found that he didn’t drift off to sleep at the whim of his body’s need to rest. More and more, he slept and woke up more or less regularly. Let Gleason think otherwise, it wouldn’t hurt him to think Windrow was asleep.

  The new book gathering dust on the nightstand was titled The Collected Love Letters of Feyn and Trimble, edited by Hanfield Braddock et al., Bat Press. Gleason thumbed fitfully through it.

  Chapter Eighteen

  THE NURSE NO LONGER CAME TO CHECK ON HIM EVERY hour or two. They let him sleep the whole night undisturbed and it would only be a week or so before he’d be allowed to go home. A good thing. He’d been in the hospital for nearly two months. The answering machine had probably run out of tape by now.

  But at midnight on a Tuesday, Windrow slipped quietly out of his bed and dressed. He put on the clean clothes Marilyn had brought for him to wear in the daytime, and put the souvenir prybar, still on the nightstand next to his bed, into his belt.

  Then he just walked out of the hospital. It was easy.

  He had to walk awhile. The bus was slow in coming so late at night. But it felt good to be out of doors after so long a time in bed. He breathed the cool night air of San Francisco deeply, through carefully. He thought the healing lung worked okay; good enough, anyway. The rib had long since repaired itself.

  When the bus came he took it to Franklin Street then got out and walked three blocks to Washington. At the entrance gate to the small, modern apartment house there, he found the button he wanted and leaned on it until he got an answer over the speaker box. The voice was sleepy and sluggish and very annoyed.

  “Go away or I’ll call the cops,” it said.

  “Mr. Driscoll?”

  “I’ll give you ten seconds.”

  Windrow held down the button. Time passed. The voice came back with a click.

  “Okay, buddy. The cops are on the way.”

  “That’s too bad, Mr. Driscoll,” Windrow said quickly, “because if they find me here, I’m going to have to tell them all about you and Harry Feyn.”

  Silence. A car, its horn blaring, ran the blinking red light at the Washington intersection on Franklin Street. The horn was loud, but as it passed its pitch lowered enough for Windrow to hear the buzzer on the front-door lock. He pushed on the door, it yielded, and he went in.

  The number under the buzzer said 208. Windrow limped up the stairs, favoring his left side. The prybar hung from his right hand.

  At the second floor landing he turned right and went to the back of the building, to the door marked 208. He knocked softly.

  The door opened a crack. The safety chain was on and the room beyond it was dark. Windrow could see the sleeve of a dressing gown crossing the gap between the jamb and the inside doorknob. Above that half a face appeared, topped by thinking sandy hair. It had thick lips and the eye of a dead fish. The gun would be flat against the door in the man’s left hand, over his head.

  “Let me in, Driscoll.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m the guy who’s going to answer about three questions for you, and then you’re going to hand over the rest of that four grand you took of
f Feyn. Who I am isn’t one of them.”

  The man behind the door said nothing.

  “When did you take it off him, Sammy?” Windrow spoke softly, but his voice didn’t conceal his hatred. “After you used the razor? For that matter, Sammy, when did you use the razor? After you used the lampcord?”

  The eyeball visible in the cracked door jerked from side to side. It was looking for a retreat, thinking about the window behind it across the room, wanting to look at it to check on a few details it had forgotten. But it didn’t dare take itself off the knowledgeable stranger in front.

  Then it stopped jerking around, and Windrow knew, could see the decision. Each time it got easier for the man with this eye, which now fixed itself on Windrow. If this strange man in the passage knew so much, he would have to join the others. There was a simple, effective, and sure way to get rid of animate knowledge; and he would be almost—the eye widened—as much fun as the others had been. But the eye looked past Windrow—was he alone? The eye widened again—yes—and looked back to, almost down on, Windrow, for the eye was contained in the head of a big man.

  “Or do you make them watch?” Windrow said very softly. “Not that I care,” he added quickly, changing his tone. “I just need a little money, you know?”

  The eye, quite dead when Windrow first saw it, was now quite lit up. It smiled and the tip of a tongue flicked between the lips below it and then the lips moved, shaping syllables.

  “Ah, yes, Mr. Windrow.”

  So he knew who Windrow was. That settled a few more things.

  “I’d quite forgotten the money.” The voice was sly, unctuous. “Please, come in.”

  The door pushed toward the jamb, and Windrow heard the tap of something hard against the top of the doorstyle, as Driscoll used his gun hand to push the door far enough closed to slip the night chain with his free mitt.

  Windrow made his move. He hit the door with all his weight in his right shoulder, until he heard the chain anchor tear off the door casing. Then he kicked. The door flew open. Driscoll avoided being hit by the door; he simply stepped aside, but the sudden blow to the door had popped his gun hand off it up in the air, so that he wasn’t quite in position to bring the butt down on Windrow’s head. His arm was pointing almost straight back into the room. Windrow straightened up and simply swung the prybar up hard and flat, perhaps a little too hard, and it whanged against the point of Driscoll’s elbow. The bar sounded as if it had been dropped on a cement floor.

  Naturally, Driscoll yelled and dropped the gun. Before it had hit the floor, Windrow made the bar turn and arc and cut Driscoll a precise blow in the ribs, then landed a meaty left fist square in the middle of the pained expression on the man’s face. With a yelp, Driscoll fell into a chair in the darkness behind him, and half out of it grunting.

  Windrow turned on the light and closed the door.

  He found himself in a small apartment. The walls were white, the wall-to-wall was a brownish yellow. The ceiling had been sprayed on, and glittered. The kitchen, dining, and living areas were all the same room. The bed would fold into a sofa, with some help. Besides the one Driscoll was using, there were two other chairs in the room. A small low table with a drawer squatted between the bed and Driscoll.

  Windrow picked up the gun. It was a small .22 automatic. He checked the load in the chamber and put it on the kitchen counter, its safety still off. He laid the prybar beside it.

  Driscoll writhed in pain, half in and half out of the big chair. His big, white, fair-haired legs stuck out of the shiny dark blue of his dressing gown. Blood trickled out of his nostrils. He balled himself up, so he could hold his left arm against his side, his left elbow with his right hand, and his face with his left hand. He alternately whimpered and cursed.

  Windrow took the entire apartment to pieces. He took the sheets off the sofa bed, removed the cushions, looked in its cracks and under it. He went through every drawer and cabinet in the kitchen. He looked in the bathroom, which was in a closet off the kitchen. While he moved around the room, he talked.

  “You were the guy Herbert Trimble found next door to his place the night Virginia Sarapath was murdered. He walked in just in time to watch you help her cut her own wrists, and it was the last straw. It sent him over the edge. He retained enough sanity to call Harry Feyn, on his own phone, before you’d decided whether or not to kill him, too. He handed the receiver to you, and Harry talked you out of it. Something like that.”

  Driscoll propped himself up in the chair, still holding various throbbing parts of his anatomy. His expression indicated that he might bawl, like a kid, but it also indicated that his fun was being spoiled, and that he had deep-seated intentions of getting even with the guy who had spoiled it.

  “But why? What possible hold could Harry Feyn have over you that would be strong enough to prevent you from eliminating the only witness to a murder you’d committed?” Windrow dumped all the silverware out of a drawer in the kitchen.

  “No answer, handsome? That’s okay, I already know. The answer is that Harry Feyn knew you killed Honey Trimble. In fact my guess is he could prove it. Another one of my patented guesses is that it happened in Feyn’s basement, as a result of a bondage session that went too far.” He emptied another drawer onto the countertop, full of napkins and candles, wooden spoons, and a spatula. “Am I warm, Sammy?”

  Driscoll suddenly spoke. “She asked me for it,” he said in a flat voice. “She begged me for it.”

  “Yeah, sure, Sam. Just like the Sarapath girl begged you for it. Everybody secretly, way down deep inside, wants to die in extreme agony. Right?”

  “You’d be surprised, you, you creep.” Driscoll said the words as if he expected violent retaliation from Windrow for using it. Windrow looked at him. “How long you been sick, Sammy?”

  Driscoll, still holding his elbow, but sitting up straight now, looked surprised at the question. Then he laughed a short, chopped laugh through twisted lips.

  “Feyn looked like a smart man,” Windrow said. “But for some reason, he was a sucker for your act. He liked you enough not to turn you in for killing Honey Trimble, even though he could prove that you’d done it. He liked Herbert Trimble enough to take care of him, even though, after the second murder, he went right off his nut. What a guy. He was running a regular halfway house. He should have dumped the lot of you.

  “And he must have considered it. But then of course it wasn’t all that simple, because he was an accessory. Am I right Sammy? Then you showed up with the Sarapath girl, a new—what would you say—a new pleasure victim? And he let you use the facilities. Life went back to its premurder frolics in the old torture chamber, didn’t it? Just like old times.

  “But Feyn saw what was going to happen. The police found two photos in Feyn’s motel room. Of course you planted them there, after you killed him. But they showed Virginia and Honey in about the same state of—what? pleasure? pain? shock? What would you call it Sammy?”

  “Ecstasy,” Driscoll hissed. The light was back in his eyes.

  “Right. Ecstasy. Well, the other side of those pictures is what was behind the camera. What did you look like when those two girls were tied up on the wall?”

  Driscoll said nothing.

  “Feyn saw it. He didn’t catch it the first time around, being the liberal sadomasochist he was. Before he could do anything about Honey Trimble, it was too late. But when things got to about the same level again with this new girl, with Virginia, Harry blew the whistle. He threw you out.”

  Driscoll was looking at the window and breathing short, sharp breaths. Windrow crossed the room and opened a closet behind the front door. The closet was full of clothes, shoes and boxes, the contents of which he began to examine systematically.

  “The only real mistake he made as far as Virginia was concerned was in not telling her what was going on. Or maybe he did. At any rate,” Windrow began dumping the contents of boxes onto the floor, “you finished what you had started.” He patted all the pockets in
the clothes hanging from the rack.

  Windrow turned around and faced Driscoll, hands on his hips. He surveyed the room.

  “Did you have any idea Virginia Sarapath lived next door to Herbert Trimble?” He looked at Driscoll. “No, I guess not. Did you know that Herbert was going crazy in public? That Harry had lost control over Trimble, to the point where Trimble went to a lawyer, disguised as his own wife, to file for a divorce from himself?

  “How can you explain behavior like that? Trimble would do anything for Feyn, and vice versa. They were somehow in love, those two. And when Feyn made Herbert promise not to go to the law about Honey, not to tell anybody, Herbert promised. But his brain went flippety-flop, and figured out a way to help the world catch on without actually telling it, without pointing the finger himself. In the beginning the problem was, simply, Herbert was too good. He made a great chick. He fooled everybody”—Windrow jerked a thumb at himself—“even me.”

  Driscoll snorted.

  “Eventually, all that bizarre behavior would begin to make sense. People would begin to catch on. But you killed Virginia Sarapath first.

  “When Herbert caught you at it … Why did you leave the door unlocked, Sammy? You really think you aren’t crazy? Maybe not. Maybe you’re just dumb.”

  Driscoll continued to say nothing. But Windrow could see his body working itself up. He could see the muscles tensing under the bathrobe, a little tic in Driscoll’s face.