In a Lonely Place (20 page)

He passed the piano, a magnificent baby grand of a strange, bronze-looking wood. The piano had caught his eye before. It was meant to. He must have noticed the photograph, but he hadn’t seen it. He’d taken it for granted, a picture of Laurel or of someone in her family. It wasn’t. He saw it now. A too handsome, patent-leather-haired gigolo, smiling his too pretty smile, holding the inevitable cigarette wisping smoke. It was a theatrical photo and it was inscribed in bold and banal theatrical style. “To the only one, the wonderful one, Laurel. With all the love of Jess.”

Dix was turned into stone. He knew he had been turned into stone, he was fully conscious of it. The heaviness, the coldness, the roughness of stone. He was perfectly normal otherwise. He could think more clearly than ever. This photograph wasn’t something old, someone discarded. It still held the place of honor. Nor was it something new. Not that new. The look of the ink wasn’t that new.

He was surprised that stone could have movement. Movement that was noiseless. He entered the bedroom, her bedroom, as lush, as feral as she. From the dressing table, that face smirked at him. From the bed table that lace leered. From the chest of drawers, whichever way her eyes would lift on waking, she could see only that face. As if the man were a god, her household god. And she’d cheated on him! She’d cheated even on her god.

The sound of running water had ceased in the bathroom. There were only little sounds, the gathering up of towels, the closing of a medicine cabinet. He stood there waiting.

When the door opened he was as silent as stone, only his eyes had movement. The door opened and the cleaning woman came out. She took one look at him. Her face twisted, her voice was shrill. “What you doing here? Don’t you look at me like that! Don’t you yell at me!” She lifted the bath brush, threatened him.

He spoke with quiet dignity, “I thought Miss Gray had returned.” He turned and stalked out, leaving her standing there brandishing the brush. He stalked out of the apartment. But he picked up the beer as he passed the couch. He wouldn’t leave it for the vicious old harridan.

He didn’t relax until he was within his own apartment. The hag would go running to the manager. Sniveling about a man yelling at her, about a man following her to Miss Gray’s apartment. A certain man. The one in Mr. Terriss’ apartment. He wouldn’t deny he’d spoken to her sharply. Not yelled at her, a gentleman didn’t yell at a charwoman. He’d spoken to her courteously, asked her not to use the vacuum cleaner this day. That was perfectly reasonable. He wasn’t the only man who couldn’t stand that infernal din. As for his following her to Miss Gray’s apartment, that was absurd. He’d gone upstairs to see if Miss Gray had returned from her trip. He would deny, of course, that he’d entered the bedroom. He had been in the living room when the char appeared and started berating him. His word was certainly better than that of a desiccated old hag.

He put the beer on ice. He didn’t want it now. He was cold, too cold. He poured a shot of rye. To warm him, for no other reason. He didn’t taste it when it went down his throat.

There had been another man all along, a man she loved, the way Dix loved her. Perhaps the way in which her husband had loved her. There had always been this other man. She couldn’t marry him, Henry St. Andrews had fixed that. It explained her bitterness against St. Andrews. She couldn’t marry Jess because he didn’t have enough money to give her what she wanted. She didn’t love even Jess enough to give up the luxury she’d learned with the rich man.

Why had she played Dix? Why had she given him what she had, where had Jess been then? Dix rocked his head between his tight palms. Why? She alone could tell him: if there’d been a lovers’ quarrel, if Jess had been on tour, if she and Jess had decided to split up and do better for themselves. But it hadn’t worked. She’d gone back to her love, her little tin god.

And after she got into it with Dix, she’d been afraid to tell him. Because she knew him too well. Because she knew that he wasn’t a man to give up what was his. She had been his; brief as it was, in that time, she had belonged to him. She’d even cared for him. He knew it, he wasn’t fooling himself on that angle. That was the hardest part of it to face. She had cared for him. The way in which Brucie had. But he’d been second best. He’d been good enough only if the number one was out of the way.

He sat there while the early twilight dimmed the room. Sat there and hurt and bled until he was again cold and tough and unyielding as stone. Until even the hot blade of anger gave him no warmth.

He sat there trying to understand. So many things. Why he had been born to live under the rules of Uncle Fergus. Why he couldn’t have had what Terriss had, what St. Andrews and the Nicolais had without raising a finger. Why Sylvia had distrusted him. From the first moment he’d walked into their house, he’d known she raised a barricade against him. Why? Why had she been suspicious of him, without any faint reason to arouse her suspicion?

Brub had said it once: Sylvia looks underneath people. Yet how could she see what was beneath the facade? Brub had not been suspicious; even now Brub didn’t trust his suspicion. Yet Brub listened to Sylvia and passed it on to Lochner in line of duty. How could they suspect him? He could open the pages of his life to them; they would find nothing there. Why, why should they suspect?

There were no slips, no mistakes. There had never been. There would never be. He had no fear, no reason to fear. They could not hold him. He would go back East. He’d get the trunk off tomorrow by express. He’d go by plane. He’d tell Brub goodbye. Goodbye Brub, goodbye Sylvia. Thanks for the buggy ride.

He could find a room, not too far away, a room to hole up in for just a few days. Once he was gone, Laurel would come back to her apartment. He’d be in the shadows watching. He’d take care of Laurel before he actually left town. He would take care of Laurel.

The room was dark now, he sat there in the heavy darkness. His fingers ached, clenched in his hands. His head was banded with iron. He’d been hounded all of his life by idiot fate. He’d had to smash it in the face to ever get anything good. He wasn’t licked. He could still smash, walk over the broken pieces, come up bigger than ever. Bigger and smarter and tougher than anyone. He was going to get what he wanted. He was going to have money and he knew where he was going to get it. Once he had his hands on the money, there’d be no more second best for him. He’d be the top man wherever he wanted to go. No one would put him in second place again.

While he sat there he heard the steps in the patio. He swung around quickly and looked out. It wasn’t Laurel. It was some man coming in from the office, brief case in hand. The man entered one of the apartments across the court.

Tonight Dix would watch. Tonight she might come. Because he’d been cleared by the police; he’d even cleared himself with the lawyers she’d set on him. Because no one need be afraid of him tonight.

He watched. A man and woman went out, dressed to the teeth. A couple of fellows went out talking about their dates. Another man and a petulant woman who railed at him for being late. It was Saturday night. Everybody going out, putting on the dog, Saturday night out.

He watched the mist begin to fall over the blue light of the patio. To fall and to hang there, listlessly, silently. He waited there in his dark room, behind the dark window. Waited and watched.

His anger didn’t diminish. Not even when the hopelessness of his vigil filled him as mist had filled the patio. Even then the spire of his anger was hot and sharp. Yet so heavily did the hopelessness hang on him that the sound of a woman’s footsteps wasn’t communicated to his anger until she was within the patio. High pointed heels. Slacks, a careless coat over the shoulders, the color washed out by the blue mist. A scarf to mask her flaming hair. He moved swiftly, moved before recognition was telegraphed to his anger. He was out the door, softly through the shadows.

He came up behind her just as she reached the steps. “So you decided to come back,” he said quietly.

He had startled her, she swung around in quick terror. It wasn’t Laurel. He looked into the face of Sylvia Nicolai. “What are you doing here?” he asked. And he saw that he was not mistaken, this was the very coat that Laurel had worn so often. It had the feel of her coat.

Sylvia shrank away from his touch. She didn’t answer him. Fear alone spoke from her wide blue eyes.

“Where’s Laurel?” He demanded again, still softly but more sharply, “Where’s Laurel? What have you done with her?”

Sylvia was caught there, backed against the step. She wanted to move away from him but she couldn’t; she was trapped. She found her voice. “Laurel’s all right,” she said gently.

“Where is she?” He caught her shoulders. His hands tightened over them. He held her eyes.
“Where is she?”

“She—” Her voice failed. And then swiftly she moved. She twisted, catching him off guard, breaking through. Leaving the coat in his hands.

He turned. She hadn’t run away. She hadn’t sense enough to run away. She was standing there, only a slight distance from him, there by the blue pool. Her breath was coming in little gusts. She spoke clearly, “She isn’t coming back, Dix. She’s safe. She’s going to stay safe.”

He unclenched his hands and the coat fell. It lay there on the ground, slumped there. He said, “You’ve poisoned her against me. You’ve always hated me. From the beginning you hated me.” He took one step towards her.

She backed from him. “No, Dix. I’ve never hated you. I don’t hate you, even now.”

“From that first night, from the beginning—” He was about to step towards her but she was ready for him. He didn’t move. He wouldn’t warn her when he moved again.

“From the beginning I knew there was something wrong with you. From the first night you walked into our living room and looked at me, I knew there was something wrong. Something terribly wrong.”

He denied it. “You didn’t know. You couldn’t know.” Neither had to fill in; both knew they spoke of the same terror. He jeered, “You were jealous. Because you wanted all of Brub. You didn’t even want a friend to have a part of him.”

She didn’t get angry. She shook her head, a little sadly.

“But that wasn’t enough. You had to take Laurel from me too. Because you hated me so.”

She spoke now. Without emotion. “Laurel came to Brub. Because she was afraid. Afraid of the way you looked at her. That night she asked you to take her to the drive-in.”

He gripped his hands. “And you lied to her.”

Sylvia ignored him. “It wasn’t the first time she’d been afraid. But it was beginning to grow. Every time she spoke of Mel—”

”Damn Mel!” he cut in.

“What happened to Mel?” Her voice lifted. “Where is he? Without his car—and his clothes—without the cigarette lighter Laurel gave him. the cigarette lighter he wouldn’t let out of his hands?”

He watched her, watched her in her little moment of triumph.

“What happened to Brucie?” she went on, softly now. “What happened to the girl who drank coffee in the drive-in with you? What happened to the girl in Westlake Park, to the girl who let you take her to the Paramount, to the girl on Spring Street—”

He broke in again. It didn’t sound like his voice when he whispered, “I’m going to kill you.” He leaped as he spoke. He didn’t telegraph the movement and he was on her. his hands on her throat before she knew. It was his hands that failed him. Because they were shaking, because before he could strengthen them enough, she was screaming and screaming. By the time he’d throttled the scream, the men were running to close in on him. One from the patio entrance, one from the shadows beyond the steps, one from the shadows behind him. He didn’t release his grip, not until he saw who it was running full towards him. Brub. And Brub’s face was the face of a killer.

It was Sylvia who saved Dix. Because she whirled and went into Brub’s arms, clung to him, keeping him from killing. She wasn’t hysterical. What she cried was bell clear. “It worked,” she cried in her husky voice. “It worked!”

They took him into his own apartment. Into Mel’s apartment. Brub and Sylvia, although they didn’t want Sylvia to come. They wanted to protect her from the ugliness they expected. Brub and Sylvia and Captain Lochner who had come from the shadows. The shapeless man with the cigarette who had come from other shadows. And the two cops who had driven him to the Beverly station earlier today. They’d come from somewhere.

They turned on the lights and they sat him down on his own couch. They stood around him like vultures, looking down on him. looking down their noses at him. All but Sylvia. They stood between him and the chair where Sylvia was huddled.

Lochner said, “I’m arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Mel Terriss.”

He laughed. He said, “Mel’s in Rio.”

Lochner went on, “And suspicion of the murder of Mildred Atkinson.”

He laughed again.

“And suspicion of the murder of Elizabeth Banning.”

They didn’t have anything on him. Not a thing.

“And the attempted murder of Sylvia Nicolai.”

He hadn’t hurt Sylvia. He’d lost his temper over her vicious taunts but he hadn’t done anything to her. A good lawyer would take care of that one.

“Have you anything to say?”

He looked straight at Lochner. “Yes. I think you’re crazy.”

The shapeless man said, “The girls were safe in August. You killed Mel Terriss in August, didn’t you?”

“Mel Terriss is in Rio,” Dix sneered.

It was Brub who began talking to him as if he were a human being. “It’s no use. Dix. We have Mildred Atkinson’s fingerprints in your car. There’s only one way they could get there.”

Brub was lying, trying to trap him. They hadn’t had time to take all the fingerprints out of that car while they talked with him today. They had time to take them while the car stood in the garage or at the curb, while a gardener guarded each door of the apartment by day, while men in the shadows watched the doors at night. “We have the dust—”

He’d covered the dust. His lawyer would make a monkey of the dust expert.

“—lint from the Atkinson girl’s coat—”

His eyes lifted too quickly to Brub’s impassive face.

“—hairs from the Banning’s Kerry Blue on the suit you took to the cleaners this morning—”

You couldn’t think of everything. When you were rushed. When your luck had run out.

For one moment the old Brub broke through the deadly, grim-visaged cop. The old Brub cried out in agony, “For God’s sake, why did you do it, Dix?”

He sat there very quietly, trying not to hear, not to speak, not to feel. But the tears rose in his throat, matted his eyes, he could not withhold them longer.

He wept, “I killed Brucie.”