The Order of Death

by Hugh Fleetwood

  She did, and he drank it, and then lay back in the armchair and closed his eyes and breathed in deeply. He lay there, still, for what must have been about five minutes, and slowly, as the oxygen returned to his brain, began to feel better. He looked up at the cracked ceiling and thought that, after all, this apartment, like his own in Brooklyn, wouldn’t be so bad with a bit of plaster and paint. Then he sat up straight in the armchair, smiled once more at Lenore as she gazed at him with an expression half of concern and half of irritation, and repeated, ‘I’m sorry.’

  Lenore nodded, and muttered, ‘That’s okay. It happens to the best of us.’

  ‘Yes,’ Fred said.

  ‘You want another glass of water?’

  ‘No. I’m fine now, thank you.’

  They looked at each other in silence for a while, Fred trying to decide what to do or say, and Lenore obviously torn between wanting to hear what he had to say, and get him out of here, and a feeling that she’d better show some sympathy for a bit longer.

  At last Fred said, ‘Lenore—’

  ‘Yes?’

  He closed his eyes again briefly, and put his hand in his pocket. And then slowly, carefully, he took Bob’s gun out….

  The grey eyes didn’t even flicker. Good old Lenore, Fred thought. After all, and in spite of what Smith had said, in her neat edited world there was no room for violent death. Not her own, anyway.

  He said, ‘Here, take it. It’s Bob’s. But be careful. It’s loaded.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  But then, as she took it, there was fear in her eyes. There was fear, and doubt, and as she put it down on her work table, and spoke, there was fear and doubt in her voice, too.

  ‘How the hell did you get it?’ she said.

  Slowly, and very clearly, Fred said, ‘He left it in my apart­ment.’ And then, even as Lenore was saying, ‘What the hell was he doing in your apartment?’ he added, more quietly, but even more distinctly, ‘Our apartment.’

  Then he lay back again in the chair and had the feeling of the most wonderful, profound relief. It was like being washed out to sea on warm waves, he thought; or perhaps, more, it was the feeling ice must have when it is released by the sun, and can return to the streams, to the rivers, to the lakes, to flow out through the land once more and give life to crops and flowers and trees. Oh it was wonderful, wonderful to be released….

  ‘Okay,’ Lenore said, sitting down on the Indian cotton covered divan, ‘explain.’

  ‘Do you think we can go out?’ Fred murmured. ‘I need some air.’

  *

  They went out, and walked down damp Jane Street to the waterfront; and there, looking across to a New Jersey floating in the mist as delicately as an old Japanese village, Fred started to tell Lenore about his and Bob’s relationship. He told her how he had spoken to Bob that day in the bar on Avenue B; of the sense he had had of finally being able to speak to someone who could understand him, and possibly, in some way—he wasn’t sure how—help him. He also told her how soon he had realized that this was not so; but that, by then, it had been too late.

  ‘Too late for what?’

  He told her about Bob’s father dying of cancer—‘I know that’ —and needing money for an operation; he told her about Bob’s corruption. He told her about Bob’s suggestion of buying an apartment, and he told her how they had bought it.

  He didn’t tell her where.

  At this point, since the mist was clinging in droplets to their clothes, and New Jersey was disappearing altogether, Lenore suggested that they go and have lunch somewhere together.

  ‘But for God’s sake let’s go somewhere normal,’ she said. ‘I need familiar surroundings to hear this.’

  They took a taxi to Schraffts on Fifth Avenue, and there, sitting in a booth, amidst the dim greyness and shiny seats, amidst the pale, heavy, unpainted Irish waitresses in their black dresses and white aprons, and over two vodka martinis—‘Here’s to hepatitis,’ Fred said weakly—he continued the story.

  He told Lenore how, to get his own back, sort of, on Bob, for having so taken him in that first day, he had insisted that they do nothing with their apartment, but just keep it as an empty monument to—

  ‘To what?’

  ‘I don’t know. Just as—an empty monument.’

  Then he told Lenore how he had slowly fallen in love with the apartment, how it had come to obsess him, and how it had come to represent, in a way, his whole dream of the world.

  He didn’t tell her what his dream had been; strangely, he could hardly remember.

  He told her how they had both, occasionally, visited it, but that while Bob was always only a kind of guest, he ruled there, reigned there.

  And then he told Lenore how he felt when he had met her, and how he had felt that they had something, profoundly, in common. (Lenore didn’t smile at this, or even wince. She took it all in without a word.) And then he told her how, after Helen had left him, he had felt betrayed, and how he had planned his revenge on the two people he thought were responsible. He told her how he had introduced her to Bob with the intention of having her marry him, and how—‘well you know, you did’. And finally, he told her how, a couple of weeks before Bob had died, he had bought out his share in the apartment.

  And then he stopped talking, and waited for Lenore to say something. But she ate a chicken salad before she did.

  Then, with the air of getting her notes in order, she said, ‘And the gun?’

  ‘Just before he died Bob called me in Brooklyn and told me he was going round to the apartment to pick up the few things he had there. I went round this morning—it’s the first time I’ve been since I got sick—and found the gun there. He must have left it there. And then—I don’t know—I just felt that I no longer loved that apartment, that I no longer wanted anything to do with it. And I thought it—the gun—was a sort of sign from Bob—to tell me that—I should tell you what you wanted to know.’ He bowed his big red head.

  ‘Jesus, as they say,’ Lenore murmured.

  ‘Please don’t ask me where the apartment is,’ Fred said. ‘I can’t—I mean I don’t want to tell you.’ He tried a faint smile. ‘I guess I can’t stop you from going to the police and telling them what I’ve told you—about my corruption and the apartment, but —obviously, I’d prefer you not to. I mean—it wouldn’t really do any good, would it, and there’d only be a lot of unpleasantness about Bob, and—’ he shrugged. ‘But I guess you must decide that.’

  ‘No,’ Lenore echoed him. ‘It wouldn’t do any good. It wouldn’t—’ and now she shrugged. ‘Do you want an ice-cream?’

  ‘No,’ Fred said. ‘But you have one.’

  Lenore raised a hand, and an Irish waitress approached. Oh, they had been right to come here, Fred thought. It was normal. Terribly, appallingly normal. A strange, old-fashioned normality, like a dream. A dream of Schraffts…. He suddenly started laughing.

  Lenore raised her eyebrows, and he said, ‘I was just thinking —you know—if walls had ears.’

  ‘Oh, these walls must be deaf by now,’ Lenore muttered, look­ing the grey businessmen and the pink and violet old ladies around them. ‘They must have died of boredom years ago. I’m sure a hundred murders are discussed here every day.’

  Fred stopped laughing, and began, slowly, to stir his coffee. The word murder had brought him back to earth; had reminded him that his confession was incomplete. He shivered. The sun had gone behind the clouds, he thought. The ice had stopped thawing….

  The word murder had obviously reminded Lenore of some­thing, too. She said, ‘Just tell me—is this apartment anywhere near where Bob was killed?’

  It was strange, Fred thought, that she didn’t know—that she hadn’t been told—that Bob was already dead when his throat was cut. But perhaps she did, and had. Perhaps this was a trick. Perhaps she wasn’t satisfied with his confession. Perhaps she realized he hadn’t gone far enough….

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Nowhere near.’

  Lenore a
te her ice-cream. When she had finished she said, ‘If you bought out Bob’s share—there should be a lot of money somewhere. What did you do? Give him a check?’

  ‘Yes,’ Fred murmured. ‘But maybe he’s got another checking account somewhere.’ Then he said, ‘When you put the money down for your house in Connecticut—?’

  ‘That was my money.’

  ‘Then,’ Fred said slowly, ‘I think Bob probably gave the money away. He said he would. He was—very honest, you know.’

  Lenore lit a cigarette, and sat back in the shiny plastic seat. She watched the smoke drifting up into the air. She watched it for a long time. And then, finally, she said, ‘Well I guess it doesn’t matter anyway.’

  ‘Are you satisfied?’ Fred asked her gently.

  ‘Satisfied?’

  He flushed, and looking at the table, said, ‘I mean—have you had enough? To eat?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ Lenore watched the smoke again. And then she said, ‘But no. I’m not satisfied.’

  Fred felt sweat on his hands. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, you’ve told me all this, and it’s all a sort of shock, obviously, even if at times—’ She didn’t finish her sentence. ‘Let’s say you’ve filled in some gaps. But—’ and now she looked sharply at Fred, ‘it’s not enough. I mean—all this has got nothing to do with Bob’s death. And there has to be some connection.’

  ‘Why? It was some maniac who killed Bob—like all the others.’

  ‘No,’ Lenore said. ‘I don’t believe that. I can’t believe that. Even maniacs—and especially this one—has some methods in his madness. There must be some connection. Some pattern.’

  ‘That’s your literary mind at work,’ Fred said, with an attempt at a smile. ‘There’s no connection. I just told you because I thought you wanted to know. And as the apartment—well, Bob’s death has made it kind of meaningless to me, and as you wanted to know—I mean—I knew—I know—that there’s a risk that you’ll tell someone, but I thought that as I was responsible in a way for you and Bob getting married—’

  ‘You weren’t responsible for that. We were.’

  ‘I know. But—’

  ‘There has to be some connection between what you’ve told me and Bob’s death. There is, anyway. He left his gun in this apartment of yours, and if he’d had it he might have been able to save himself.’

  ‘All the others who were killed were armed. It didn’t save them.’

  ‘I know. But—he might have been able to do something. And then the fact that he sold you his share in the apartment just before, as if he knew—’

  ‘I tried to persuade him for years to sell me his share.’

  ‘Yes, okay, but the fact that he didn’t sell it until just before —and then—what you said about now that Bob’s dead the apart­ment has become meaningless to you. It’s like what I said about our marriage. But why? You should feel glad that Bob’s dead. You hated him. You said so. The place should mean more to you than ever. No one in the world knows—or knew—about it once Bob was dead.’

  ‘No. But—I was happy when Bob sold it to me. I didn’t care if he knew. He would never have told anyone. He couldn’t. But when he died—well, it was the fact that Bob had found the place, and gone into it with me, and no. How could I be glad? His dying just made me see—’ he shrugged, ‘the futility of the place—and of my hating him.’

  It sounded, he thought, very feeble.

  Lenore must have thought so too, because she said, ‘Let’s get the check and get out of here.’ And then she added deeply, gravely, ‘I’m grateful for your having told me Fred, but I wish you hadn’t. Or if you had to—I wish you’d told me everything.’

  ‘So do I,’ Fred murmured. ‘But I can’t. I don’t know every­thing—if there is anything more to be known.’

  ‘Oh there is,’ Lenore said. ‘There always is. I know there is. There has to be,’ she ended.

  It was actually raining when they got outside; but, Fred thought, as he stood silently on the edge of the sidewalk with Lenore, waiting for a taxi, it would have been more appropriate if it had been snowing. Because as he looked down at the small, thoughtful girl, who had lit another cigarette, and was biting one of her long nails, he realized that she was right. It would have been better to tell her nothing than to tell her only half the story. And having told her only half, and lied about the rest—oh hadn’t he, he asked himself, made the ice that remained within him only freeze more deeply, more destructively? Or was it that the rivers and streams that had thawed only made the still frozen wastes more bitter, more barren than ever?

  As a cab drew up, and Lenore got in, he said, ‘I’m sorry Lenore.’

  ‘Yep,’ she said, ‘and so am I. And now I must go home and think what to do about it.’

  So, Fred thought, must he. But then, as he waved to the girl —she didn’t wave back; she wasn’t even looking at him—he told himself that he knew what he would do about it. And Smith, this time, had been right. Soon, quite soon, he would tell her everything. He would tell her everything, even if he had to—as, according to Smith, he already should have done—kill her afterwards. But he didn’t think he would kill her. After all, he had had his chance, and had passed it up. No—he wouldn’t kill her. He didn’t want to kill her. He didn’t want to kill any­one. He just wanted to tell her everything, and then—be free.

  *

  Be free. What did it mean? How could he be free if he went to prison? But how could he be free if he didn’t? Fred asked himself these questions and others, as he walked slowly back to the apartment; but he could find no answers to them. All he managed to do in fact was confuse himself, so that by the time he got to his block, he was soaked to the skin—although it stopped raining as he walked the last hundred yards, and the sky even looked as if it were clearing—exhausted, and too totally worn out to think, let alone return the doorman’s greetings.

  Let fate take care of the future, he decided.

  *

  But when he got into the apartment there was an air about the place, a silence, that, he immediately felt, required all his attention, all his faculties; and he forgot about his confusion, his weariness, his wet clothes, and fate, and all his nerves readied themselves to deal with—what? Like antennae, they reached out and sought to take in the invisible messages and meanings that the quiet dark air was heavy with.

  And these messages told Fred that Smith was no longer in the apartment. It was too quiet, too still, too altogether aban­doned. The boy should have come out to meet him, to see if he had accomplished his mission; or should at least have been watching the television. But the television was turned off, and there were no lights on anywhere, and there was—that silence.

  He walked slowly down the corridor, holding himself stiffly, tensely, half expecting someone to jump out at him. But he got to the living room, and no one jumped out at him. Smith had gone. He sat down in one of the armchairs and looked at the bare walls.

  Smith had gone.

  Had the boy believed that he had killed Lenore—and left already? Was he already on his way back to his grandmother’s big white house, to a few casual explanations and a future in banking? Had he been scared that something would go wrong, and thought that he’d better get out while he had the chance? Had he—Fred didn’t know. And as he sat, still, in the empty room, and looked through the windows at the sky that now was showing traces of blue, it suddenly, and briefly occurred to him that maybe Smith had never existed at all. Maybe the boy had been a dream; the embodiment, as Bob had suggested, of his conscience, come to haunt him, taunt him, and lead him to—where he was now. A big, red man, sitting all alone … but no. That was ridiculous. Smith had existed all right. Bob’s death was the proof of it. Bob’s death and his own present condition; which was that, he told himself, not of a man sitting all alone, but that of a man waiting on the edge of freedom, just gather­ing his strength and breath for that final crossing of the frontier. Yes, Smith had existed all right—but now he existed no lon
ger. Just as, very soon, this apartment would exist no longer. Both of them, the boy and the eight or nine empty rooms, would belong only to the past; to a captive dead past that he would have cast off forever. Oh how he longed for that time! When everything could be thrown away, when everything, everything in the world would be new. What a wonder it would be to see a blade of grass for the first time, or a tree, or, even more per­haps, a living human being; a weak, guilty human being strug­gling to live, to accept compromise and disappointment, to love, to do all the things that a human being could and had to do while he or she was so briefly alive. Oh, what a wonder it would be….

  Meanwhile, he sat quite still in the room and gazed at the walls and the ceiling and the greenish brown carpet, and whis­pered goodbye to them, and told them silently that he hoped whoever lived among them next would be happy.

  He sat there for an hour, maybe more, and outside the sky was becoming bluer and bluer, and the clouds whiter and whiter as they were lit by the afternoon sun. He would wait for the sun to set, he thought, and then he would call Lenore for the last time. He sat there with a gentle smile on his face and wished, just for a second, that he had a mirror with him. He would have liked to look in it. He was sure that what he would have seen would have been beautiful. Yes. He, big, ugly, red O’Connor, would have been beautiful….

  But he didn’t have a mirror, and simply sat there, looking at the blue sky, and waiting for the sun to set.

  *

  He didn’t have to wait that long, however; because the end—or the beginning of the end—came sooner. It came, in fact, only five minutes later; and not in the way he’d been expecting….

  *

  He was still sitting, looking out of the window, when sud­denly he heard a noise; a noise that made him sit up, rigid with shock, and fear, and made the hairs on the back of his red neck stand on end. It was a strange, gurgling strangled noise; but it was a noise that was coming from somewhere near. From some­where very near. And there was no mistaking what it meant.