Death Kit (20 page)

“Whew,” said the woman. Falling back heavily into the chair. “It's a good thing I don't have a bad heart. You sure had me scared for a moment … Paul? Is that your name? I thought you was some creep, gettin' into my place under false pretenses. Like a burglar or what's his name, you know who I mean … the Boston Strangler.”

Diddy laughed. For the first moment, enjoying himself in Incardona's house. All the lies he was telling had become so absurd and ironical they seemed on their way to becoming true. If only he weren't so uncontrollably sleepy.

At this moment, Myra Incardona is saying something about how she'd spotted him right away, just by his clothes. “It's that kooky tie,” she said.

Diddy involuntarily glanced down at his tie. Something unusual about it? Looks to Diddy quite ordinary and conservative.

The woman was watching him. “Sure you don't want some strawberry ice cream? It's still sittin' out there in the ice box.” Diddy shook his head. “Or I could fix you a whisky and soda. There's gin, too. And there's a couple of bottles of Dago red stashed in the broom closet. Joe liked that stuff, but I know I'm never gonna drink it up myself.”

“No thanks. It's nice of you, but I'm just fine. I'll be going in a few minutes.”

“Well I dunno,” she said archly, leaning back in the chair and crossing her legs. “I never met a man yet who didn't like somethin' nice. And there's a lotta nice things around here.” She looked at Diddy quizzically. “But I can see you're a very particular fella who ain't satisfied by the first thing that comes along. Am I right?”

Diddy suddenly very tired. A prodigious wave of fatigue that seems to have knocked him down; was pulling him under.

“Right?” she asked again.

“Right,” said Diddy in a dull voice. Feeling faint, overpowered. As if he'd been drugged. Would it be a mistake, he was wondering, to ask Mrs. Incardona to let him lie down for a few minutes?

“You know,” Diddy said, “I don't feel well all of a sudden. Would you mind if I took off my shoes and lay down over there on the sofa for a minute?”

She got to her feet. “Why sure, go right ahead. Maybe you ate somethin'.” Diddy shook his head; still didn't get up himself. “Want me to get you an Alka-Seltzer?”

Again Diddy said no. “I just have to lie down for a minute. I don't want to put you to any trouble. Please don't let it worry you, because I'm sure it's nothing.”

The woman alongside him as Diddy reached the couch. “I'm not worried. And you ain't puttin' me to no trouble. Listen, I got an idea. The springs in that couch are shot and it ain't really comfortable. Why doncha go upstairs to my room 'n lie down on the bed?” She put her hand on Diddy's sleeve as he sat on the edge of the couch; unlacing his shoes. “It's a whole lot quieter up there. You can rest for a while, long as you like. I'll see that Tommy gets to bed. Then I'll come see how you are and if there's anythin' I can do for you.”

Diddy sitting; looked up at her enormous face. As with a magnifying glass saw the large pores in her nose, the badly applied rouge on her cheeks, the folds of flesh along her jaw, the creases on her neck. And the scary dead expression on her face—not at all the look of someone who wants to make love.

Although he's about to lie down (now), perhaps that's not what he wants. The feeling of faintness was passing; what Diddy started to feel (now) was nausea. Afraid he is going to throw up. And embarrassed that she would understand why. Perfectly true that the woman was atrocious. But she was also a human being; probably, like most people, perishing from lack of being touched and being able to touch. Diddy wished he didn't find her so unattractive and oppressive.

“I don't think I want to lie down after all,” Diddy said firmly, and started lacing up his shoes again.

“Hey, what's the matter?”

“Nothing,” said Diddy. “It's passed, that's all. I told you it wasn't anything. What I need now is fresh air.” Didn't have the kind of metallic resolve that would permit him to look Myra Incardona in the face at this moment; a moment he knew she took to be one of rejection. Nor the hardness of heart to walk straight to the front door (now) and leave.

“Are you goin'?”

“In a few minutes. I'll have one more cigarette. Let's sit over there again.”

Diddy suddenly angry with himself. For the last half hour he has almost forgotten why he's here. Why? Because Diddy has killed this woman's husband. And because Diddy has to know how and in what sense he, Diddy, is guilty.

Seated again in the pair of identical high-backed easy chairs. “I suppose there's still some information you want,” said the woman sullenly. “But I don't know if I feel like answering any more questions. Maybe you better come back another time.”

Was there really anything more to ask? Hadn't Myra Incardona told Diddy all that could be of use to him? True, she hasn't resolved Diddy's contradictory view of himself—as guilty and as innocent, as the aggressor and as the victim. But at least the information she's supplied has kept the possibility of choice alive; prevented it from being closed down for lack of evidence on the other side, and an unequivocal verdict of Guilty brought in on Diddy. In the light of the man's consistently brutal character as revealed by his widow, Diddy can spare himself in the future the thought that Incardona couldn't have meant him any real harm.

Is an even more weighty exoneration possible? Until this evening, Diddy had scarcely dared to think that possible. But perhaps he's been too quick at self-condemning. Given the right kind of reliable information about Incardona's character and habits, it's possible that Diddy's act could be construed as self-defense. Even without any witnesses to the act.

With a start, Diddy realizes he has been staring at his trousered knees, but without seeing a thing; has neither heard nor spoken a word. Looks up to find the woman's eyes upon him, an opaque gaze that he can't decipher. “Say, do you want to ask me any more questions or not? It's gettin' late and I ain't got all evening to waste.”

Diddy knows she's bitter (now), but can think of nothing to say that won't make matters worse. His plan: to get Mr. Paul Dalton out of this smelly shabby house, reeking of staleness and brutality and self-deception, as quickly as he can. But, as long as he's still here, has to play out his role of sleuth and impersonator, to build a dossier for the attorney who will defend Mr. Dalton Harron at his trial.

“I believe there's only one more question I was supposed to ask you. I saved it for last, I guess, because I thought you might take it the wrong way. Did your husband drink?”

The woman's face changed, darkened. “Whad'ya mean?”

“I don't mean just a beer now and then. Did he get drunk?”

“Are you tryin' to prove that Joe was drunk on the job? That that's how he got killed? Of all the low-down—”

“Wait a minute, Mrs. Incardona.” It was vital to stave off the woman's rage. If she gets angry, he won't be able to come back another time, if he thinks of any more questions. Diddy held out his hand. “I'm not trying to prove anything. I'm just asking you some routine questions.”

“And I'm answerin' them, ain't I? I'm being cooperative, right? You said so yourself. You know, I could sue you people. I could probably collect a million dollars for Joe's death. I seen cases like this in the papers. Tommy and I would be sittin' pretty for the rest of our lives. I'd get the law on my side, and that crooked railroad of yours would just have to shell out, Mr. High and Mighty—”

“Mrs. Incardona, please!”

The woman stood up, marched over to the TV set and turned it on. A glare of hate. “What time is it?”

“Mrs. Incardona, no one is criticizing your husband. All I wanted—”

“Tommy!” The boy appeared instantly at the doorway. Could he have been just out of sight all along? “Yeah, Mom?”

“Come back in here and watch your TV. I know it's late. But Mr. Dillon don't have nothin' to say that you can't hear. Your dad was a fine man. I wancha to know that. I don't care who knows it, I'll stand up and tell the whole world.”

The boy made a face at Diddy and strutted triumphantly across the creaking floorboards to his chair. When something that looked like Superman sprang to black-and-white life, Diddy's eyes kept wandering to the TV screen. It was hopeless with the woman. Diddy hasn't meant to offend her. But he had. And she, believing in this Mr. Dalton from the railroad with his unspecified investigator's powers, was probably regretting her indiscretions. Feeling rejected, anxious, and annoyed with herself; she'd then charged Diddy with saying something he should not have said. Understanding herself to be on the defensive, she'd decided to attack. Well, just because she wanted to be angry, Diddy doesn't have to get angry in return. Widow Incardona was coarse and stupid, like her loutish husband. But Diddy's sense of justice informs him that he is the stronger, even if he didn't feel strong; and she the underdog, irate and potent as she was. She had been injured by Diddy, though she didn't know it. And if, as seemed likely, she had reason to worry over her future, her husband's assassin had an obligation to assist her.

“Mrs. Incardona, one last question. Did your husband carry life insurance? Did he have any savings? What I want to know is whether you have funds for the future, besides what you'll get from the union.”

“I know what you're up to, you son of a bitch,” screamed the woman, flailing out with her hands and knocking the ashtray full of cigarette butts off the low table between them onto the floor. “Tryin' to make out as we don't need the rotten money we're goin' to collect from the railroad. Well, you listen, mister. My cousin's a lawyer, and a pretty good one, too. And he told me yesterday that it don't matter at all. Joe was killed in the line of duty, run over by one of your fuckin' trains. You people are gonna pay and pay plenny. You're gonna pay through the nose.”

“We'd better stop. I've had enough of this,” said Diddy, feeling claustrophobic and nauseated. How could he ever have been attracted … He stood up to go, stepping over the tiny gray dump of butts, used matches, and ashes. The woman had already bolted out of the parlor ahead of him. Diddy turned to the boy, longing to voice (now) some of the things he would have liked to have said to him. Such as: Are you the son of the man in the tunnel? Such as: I'm sorry. Such as: I want to give you and your mother some money. Diddy the Silent, looking. The boy stared back coolly, then reached to one of the dials of the TV and turned the volume way up.

Diddy joined the red-faced woman in the hallway. She pushed his coat and hat at him, pulled open the door. “You may be sorry you've acted this way, Mrs. Incardona.”

“
You'll
be sorry, mister, before I'm through!”

Diddy was prepared for the slamming of the door behind him, but not for the emptiness in his gut when he reached the sidewalk. Dismayed that he had botched the meeting. He would have liked to have found a plausible pretext for offering the woman some money. Yet, from a purely selfish point of view, he'd done all right. Probably Diddy had learned all he could from the woman—assuming that she was as artless as she seemed; and was telling the truth. He'd found out, for instance, that Incardona's widow seemed to attach no special significance to the cremation. Yesterday evening, when he'd learned about it by phoning Floral Gardens, Diddy had instantly figured that this provision couldn't have been in the man's will. Someone, the railroad or the police or the widow, must be covering up something. (Now) all that may be, seems likely to be, just fancy. Though such a wish on the part of a workman of Incardona's background is eccentric, its authenticity can't be dismissed for that reason.

Confused Diddy must beware of seeing demons everywhere. That's almost as bad as not seeing anything. Maybe worse. If he's not careful, his brain will be fit for concocting only lurid hypotheses.

Remembering that there is a world of lucid, explainable, calmly proceeding events. Just as there is a world of the tunnel. A world of opaque, blind, high-speed events shrinking and distending, withering and swelling without any apparent logic.

But no, remember the first world. That's the one to think about (now), the clear one: furnished with low voltages and ordinary lighting; in which one can take at face value newspaper prose and shopping lists and sales figures; in which people speak, if not politely, at least when they're spoken to; in which one may expect apartments and houses to be either clean and orderly or dirty and messy.

Sure, there is some kind of portentous commentary on Diddy's deed expressed in the workman's cremation. But it's he, Diddy, who finds it there; having himself brought about Incardona's death and therefore the premature fulfillment of Incardona's whim.

More generally. As a result of the violently oppressive hour just spent with Incardona's widow, a sense of the reality of the entire situation has decidedly gained on Diddy. There seemed no cause, within the boundaries of reason, for Diddy to doubt the existence of the workman; and his role in the man's death. Nor hesitate to identify his workman with Incardona, whose existence seemed to derive posthumous credibility from the sour vexing impression made by his wife and child. So Diddy's visit has been a success after all. Unless he insists on learning something so unexpected that it confounds all his previous theories, throws his seasoned memories into disarray. Was that what Diddy wanted? A surprise? Confusion?

But if some objective had been achieved this evening, why isn't Diddy willing to return to his hotel? It's already eleven o'clock. And he has nowhere better to go. On Wednesday night in a smallish city at this hour, the movies are about to let out, restaurants are closed, and the bars will be shutting down soon. He could stroll in the park, but that's located on the other side of town, near the Museum of Science and Industry and the college. And maybe the park closes at midnight.