I said, “You’re drunk, Gwen. You must be drunk.” My tongue did not harden on the words. It was an effort to speak at all. I whispered. I spoke from my throat, shakily, hesitantly.
The man stepped forward. He had a face for anger. His heavy brows knotted and he licked at his upper lip. “You want me to take this jerk apart, baby?”
“Leave him alone,” Gwen said. Her words stopped him. He put his fists on his hips and stood there measuring me. Gwen set down her glass. “Why don’t you take a walk, Stevie darling? We can talk about this later.”
I said, “Take a walk?”
“You heard her,” the man said. “Scram.”
I lifted my eyes and stared hard at his face. He was a caricature of a dressed-up shill, a tout, a cheap-john. I told him with my eyes that he wasn’t frightening me. He was breaking through to me now. He was clearer, closer. It became important, suddenly, that he understand that I could handle him if I chose.
I said, “Keep out of this, gizmo.”
He met my eyes brazenly. Behind the tightness in my head a small part of me struggled for sanity, fought down the violence that was hardening my fists. There was no need to fight, really. The battle was lost. What could I win? Gwen was gone now, a strange woman on the couch. Gwen was gone forever. But I didn’t want her to leave me. I turned my head her way. She was sipping at the other glass now—his glass. She raised her eyes, and when I saw her smile something died inside me. She mocked me with her smile. It would be very easy for me to hurt her now. It was time to leave. I didn’t want to hurt Gwen. Suddenly we were alone, Gwen and I. And she was calling me a fool with her brittle little smile.
I said, “I could kill you for this, Gwen.”
The man came into focus again when she laughed. He tried to hit me. His fist came at me. I stepped away and swung. He went down. I saw his hand reach for his hip. I kicked him. In the stomach. Hard. He doubled over and grunted, “Oh, oh, oh, oh,” deep in his chest, sucking for air. Gwen slid off the couch and bent over him.
“Leave him alone,” she said.
I caught at her hand and brought her up. I slapped her face. She cried out, but I slapped her again until my hand hurt. I dropped her arm and she slipped to the floor, sobbing. She fell over him and began to cry, high and hysterically.
I went out.
CHAPTER 2
Shock. The streets of the city were gray paths before me, concrete corridors, leading everywhere and nowhere. I walked uptown slowly. I saw nothing but the inner pictures of confusion and chaos and torment. All around me people laughed and shouted, horns blared, traffic rushed. I went with the tide, out of control yet controlled by the rules of the street, the traffic lights, the policeman’s whistle, the little reflexes that city dwellers depend on to keep them out of danger. The world outside my brain was fogged and dim—the faces, the shops, the signs, the buildings. I moved with a vague purpose. Yet, I traveled toward no goal. My first impulse carried me away from the Village. Immediately. I crossed to Fifth Avenue. I rejected the Village. There could be relief for me away from Bleecker Street, away from the familiar sights, the remembered bars and restaurants, the movie houses, the food stores, the shopkeepers, the thousand and one reminders of my life with Gwen. But the hurt stayed with me on Fifth Avenue. And Gwen, too, she was with me as I walked.
When it began to rain I found a small bar. I was far uptown now, in the upper Forties. There was a dock over the bar and I stared at it as I sipped my Bourbon. Two-fifteen. I found myself laughing softly at the clock. What hidden springs control the mechanism of the mind? I thought of another clock, the archaic relic that stood in Jonas Tripp’s reception room. Three hours ago that clock meant hope and joy and freedom to me. Three hours ago I had started for home to bury all time with Gwen. For Gwen hated clocks. “You’re working for a timeclock, Stevie,” she would say. “You’re knocking yourself out for a machine. You can’t enjoy life with your eye on the minute hand.”
In the beginning we had argued about such things, especially at parties. Gwen enjoyed staying out late. She would laugh at me when I reminded her of the hour, and my job. Sometimes I would leave without her and Ken Sisley would take her home. Sleep was important to me. Too important? More important than taking care of Gwen? But I had trusted Gwen. We were in love. There were no other men in her life, I told myself. Not until today. Not until this morning, and the man in the striped shirt.
The liquor dulled me, loosened me; quieted me. The dark cloud of self-pity lifted a bit. The man at the apartment—who was he? How had Gwen met him? And where? I went back over the activities of the last few months. I dug deep into the background of our social activities. The party at Mitzi Granger’s? Here we had met an assortment of queer characters. It was a small affair in a crowded room, Mitzi’s new studio apartment in MacDougal Street. She had introduced us to everybody there, a dozen men and women, some in radio, some in stock, and a married couple who wrote kids’ books. The man with the striped shirt would have made his presence felt in that group of people. He would have stood out—a living bit-player, a type, a character out of a gangster movie.
Where had Gwen met him? She had been going to night classes the past few months, studying miniature painting with a certain Guido Romani who taught a small class on Seventh Avenue. On Tuesdays and Thursdays she left home immediately after dinner, carrying her paint box and smock. She was excited about her progress with Romani. I had never questioned her about her work. I have a small knowledge of drawing, but I have no eye for the finer nuances of art, the business of painting with the brain and not the camera eye. I recalled only the fact that Gwen was enthusiastic, eager, sparkling with sudden brightness on those nights when she went to school. Could it be that striped shirt was an artist? I had read much about the vagaries of artistic talent. There was a house painter who became famous at oils, a middle-aged genius who painted “primitives.” On the corner of Bleecker Street, Mr. Diamond, an old tailor, was becoming recognized as a religious painter. Once I had seen him at work behind his tiny store, hunched over his easel and attacking his painting with the dainty concentration of a watchmaker. If Mr. Diamond could paint, then why not the man in the striped shirt?
Gwen usually returned late from Romani’s class. How late? I didn’t know. Steve McGrath, the timeclock personality, was in bed at eleven and up at seven. Once I had stayed awake, wooed by a Steinbeck book. And on that night she came in at one. I remembered because I had made up my mind to put the book down at one.
I ordered another drink. I forced my mind to cling to the memory of that night. Only that night. I closed my eyes and relived the incident. I focused on details. Again I sat myself in the easy chair in the corner of the room near the window. The light from the lamp accentuated the end table. When I lit a cigarette a flickering highlight sparkled on the ashtray. Outside, Bleecker Street sighed in its sleep. I was wide awake to the book. And when the door opened slowly, I turned to Gwen and yawned.
“Stevie, darling,” she said with a little laugh. Self-conscious? Or only surprised? “You’ve been waiting up for me?”
“It’s Steinbeck,” I said. “This guy can write.”
Her eyes told me nothing. She put down her paint box. When she stood erect I saw her brush the hair away from her face. It was a careless gesture, a normal gesture, yet, somehow, it was not Gwen’s. She was thinking. She was planning. And when she turned her head, she gave me her laughter. She dropped her coat and crossed the room to lean over me and kiss me. And when I pulled her into my lap, she seemed content. The book dropped to the floor.
I said, “How’s the female Picasso?”
“Better every day.” She laughed. “One of these nights I’ll bring home my masterpiece, and won’t you be surprised?”
Gwen went to the cupboard and brought out some Bourbon. And for some reason, we began to drink. Seriously, the way we drank in earlier days, not only for the liquor but for the spirit of abandon
, the camaraderie, the foolish talk, the silly laughter, the closeness, the warmth. This was Gwen, my Gwen, the girl I married. Why had she waited so long to give herself to me this way again? For the next hour we were lovers. For the next hour we were young.
But after that night our closeness ended as though it had never begun.
“One of these nights, I’ll bring home my masterpiece, and won’t you be surprised?”
How long had she studied with Romani? I calculated the days and weeks. She had started in November, and this was May. Six months of painting, and no masterpiece? How long before an artist shapes a picture, checks it, corrects it, and finally paints it? Why had she never brought even a small canvas for me to see? A sketch? A drawing?
My hand tightened on the glass. What a fool I’d been! Steve McGrath, the machine man, the routine robot, the ever-trusting husband who lived only to punch a clock and worry over his Jonas Tripp mania. I had been blind, of course. I might have prevented all this. The man in the striped shirt was a symbol of my stupidity. Gwen had needed companionship, somebody to share her interests. I had given her only the outpourings of my own frustrations. I had offered her nothing but my trust.
I left the bar. I could go back to Gwen now. There was still time to save ourselves. We had revived our love before, when I came out of my shell of habit. Gwen would come back to me, I told myself. Gwen had not yet really left me.
I took a cab downtown, chafing at its slowness now. I got out at Eleventh Street and bought her a gift, a new paint box, complete with oils and brushes. I hurried through the shadowed streets to Bleecker.
Our front windows were dark. My heart sank. I went inside slowly. The door to our flat was open a crack. There was a stillness in the hall, unusual at this hour. At dusk I always heard Ken Sisley’s phonograph, playing his muffled mood music. I missed it now. The silence seemed to change the pattern of things. It seemed to add import to this moment, this homecoming.
The apartment was dark. I reached for the switch and called “Gwen?” tentatively, gently. The sound of my voice was flat and unreal in the silence. I walked into the kitchen and stared at a Scotch bottle on the sink and the empty glass alongside it, a wandering ant crawling cautiously around the blot of dampness near the bottle’s edge. The little curtains at the window blew in a fitful breeze, carrying the threads of sound from the dark yard beyond, the small noises of dusk, a child sobbing, a dish clattering, and over it all the foreign flavor of Mrs. Monati’s cooking downstairs. I turned away from all this and started for the bedroom.
My hand froze on the light switch and the shock of horror held me there. Gwen lay on the bed. Her red robe was open. The pattern of it against the figured bedspread made a background of terror for her body. She had on a black nightgown incongruous for this pose. Asleep? Drunk? I stepped forward. Matching her robe, her breast was crimson above the heart. And I knew before I felt her pulse that Gwen was dead.
CHAPTER 3
The kitchen oppressed me. It was a closet, an overgrown closet, a builder’s whim, created out of a tiny gap between two rooms, lined with the usual fixtures, a stove, a clock, a refrigerator, a midget table, a chair enameled red. And over all this, the cupboards closed in on me. Gwen had decorated the cupboard doors with cupids, floating cherubs, decorative and carrying flowing ribbons. I stared hard at the cupids. I gulped a long drink of Scotch and studied the cupids. But they were no good for me. They carried me back to the early days of our marriage, the carefree, happy times, when cooking my meals was an enterprise for Gwen. All that had died, long ago.
But the memory lived here, in this kitchen. My eyes fought away the cupids, searching for everything and nothing. I was suddenly claustrophobic here. These walls whispered of the past to me. These walls pushed out at me, squeezed me, closed me in; bound me irrevocably to Gwen. It was an effort to stand and drink, to try for composure. I became aware of every crack in the mottled linoleum, every detail in the calendar hanging over the refrigerator. It was a painted New England farmhouse, alone in the snow, at night, two tiny windows blinking like yellow eyes against the brittle landscape. And under the picture—May. And what of May 7th—today? Gwen had circled the date, lightly. The number held me. I studied it. She had used a lead pencil here, delicately. So that I wouldn’t notice the day? So that I might not ask questions?
The Scotch was gone. I moved out of there. I stood at the telephone table in the hall. The kitchen clock ticked, loud, too loud in my ears. Time was moving. Minutes were passing with awful urgency. The pressure of the moment fogged my mind. If I could reach Harvey, if I could talk to Harvey, he would give me advice, he would help me adjust myself. But before my hand completed the dialing, I knew that I was to be disappointed. The phone rang in the office, but there was no answering voice. Harvey would not be at home. He had told me so. He’d be on his way to Connecticut, to Cousin Arthur. Arthur? I searched my memory for the last name. But this was no moment for remembering.
I fought down my panic. Linda! My hands fumbled the pages of the phone book. And when I found her number and began to dial, my threat went dry. I needed her now. The phone buzzed. There was no wait—no disappointment.
I said, “Linda? This is Steve. When can I reach Harvey? It’s important.”
Her voice came through, steady and calm. It braced me. “Is there anything wrong, Steve? You sound upset.”
“I am upset. How can I get in touch with Harvey?”
There was a silence. “I don’t know. He’s up in Connecticut, at his cousin’s.”
“Which cousin? Is it Arthur? Do you know his last name?”
“It’s Arthur all right. But I don’t know him. Can’t you wait? Harvey should be home tomorrow night.”
I tried to control my anxiety. “Isn’t there any way for me to find out? I’ve got to get to Harv! I’m in a spot—a bad spot.”
“I could go back to the office and try to find it for you,” she said. “Perhaps Arthur’s last name is in the old man’s file somewhere. Do you want me to go? Tell me what’s happened. Maybe I can help you.”
And then I told her. Everything. I heard no gasp, no sigh of displeasure, of disbelief. Her personality came through to me, sharp and clear, as though she’ were standing next to me, listening to me sympathetically. And thinking for me. She heard me through to the bitter end, to the moment at hand.
“Who was the man, Steve?”
“I don’t know him. That’s what’s driving me nuts.”
“You’ve got to get him. He staged it to set you up as the murderer.”
“I don’t know him.” My hand was hot on the phone as I closed my eyes and tried to remember his face, the intimate details, the little things that might brand him, set him apart from other men, fix him in my mind as a personality who could be tracked down. I saw him only as a vague and hateful image, a middling man, shorter than myself with a swarthy face and a striped shirt. “Get Abe Freedman for me, Linda. Right away. I’ll wait here for him.”
“Of course. But don’t just wait, Steve. You’ve got to pull yourself together and think your way out of this. You’re equipped to do a job on it, even alone. Remember that. You’ve been trained to handle this—you’re the best locater in the skip-tracing business.”
I said, “From behind a desk, maybe.”
“Nonsense. Your brain doesn’t die when you’re on your feet. Keep it alive. Use it. Now. Give me a lead to Harvey’s cousin.”
“I can’t think,” I muttered. “I’m mixed up. I’m all mixed up.”
“Think.”
I thought. Mentally I put my feet on the desk. I closed my eyes. The subject was a funeral in Connecticut. The locater wanted the name of the deceased. It was a simple assignment. It would be a one-two-operation in the office. I thought myself back to my desk. And when I sat there, it came to me.
I said, “Try the funeral parlors in the area close to the New York line. Try the bigger tow
ns first. The town is somewhere within commuting distance. Remember, the bigger towns first.”
“The locater is back on the ball,” she said. “Call me later. Or come up to my apartment.”
“I’ll be there. I don’t know when, but I’ll be there.”
“Good luck, Steve—and good hunting.”
I put down the phone, steadily now, the tremor gone from my hand. Through some magic, Linda had set me straight. I had a purpose now. I must search. I must hunt. I must begin to act rationally, with some system, with some goal.
I went into the bedroom. It was an effort to look at Gwen now. She would be smiling at me, her mouth curled, mocking me. I pulled down the blind. I lit the small lamp on the end table near the window. That way the light fell only in the corner—near the dresser. That way she lay in semi-darkness and I could try for thought.
Move fast, I told myself. You’ve got to get out of here. You’ve got to escape. They’ll be coming after you—hunting you down soon. Somebody’s set you up as a murderer. There’s a reason for all of this. Remember that there’s always a reason for murder. You used to talk about it with Harvey, a long, long time ago, when the business of crime was a fascination. You used to plan your stratagems for the Jonas Tripp Company—the skip-tracing business. You were considered clever then. Harvey always said so. Your mind ferreted far reasons, motives; methods of thought. Your mind tried for an in to well laid plans, devious devices, snares, traps. And when you managed to get inside a brain, the rest was easy.
Whose brain? Whose brain had created the horror on the bed? I came alive suddenly. I began to search. Gwen’s dresser drawers were a masterpiece of confusion. This was Gwen’s way of life. She had never believed in neatness. I felt the silkiness of slips and brassieres under my fingers. I couldn’t see well. I groped. I went through the top drawer quickly, listening to the sound of my own breathing, fevered and loud in my ears.
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