Marihuana (4 page)

She came this time without the help of music. She was never very far removed from his thoughts, Eleanor. She was golden letters lighting up the frightened darkness of his mind. She'd help him. She was the only one he could' trust. She'd once loved him. All that love couldn't be completely gone, there must be a little of it left.

But where was she? He couldn't remember, he couldn't remember that name. Some hotel, but he couldn't remember the name.

Sometimes it seemed almost to come to the tip of his tongue, then it receded again. Commodore? No. Concord? No. Con-? Con-?

He dogtrotted along through the dark, whimpering disjointedly: "Eleanor! Eleanor! I've got to find her."

A cop from a radio-car had just let them out of the back room when Spillane got there. Half the neighborhood had come crowding into the store, was milling around inside it. The crowd hid the dead cop on the floor from Spillane's sight for a minute. He nearly tripped over him when it gave way unexpectedly at his pressure.

The storekeeper's wife made straight for the fountain, wrenched at one of the spigots, gulped a mouthful of soda water from the hollow of her hand. Then she darted to the cash register, shut the drawer, hastily clawed at its contents. She gave a bleat of relief. "It's ull right, Poppa! Dolla ninety-seven! He didn't take nothing!"

"For no rizzon," the little storekeeper panted amazedly.

"Like gless, his eyes!" the woman shuddered.

Spillane had picked up the much-trodden-on hat. "K. T." he read from the sweatband. "Yeah, I think I know who he was," he said gloomily.

"For no rizzon," the shopkeeper heaved again. "Ufficer O'Kiff didn't even know he was in there. I didn't myself! Did you, Momma?"

"Sure, but I forgat."

Spillane eyed the glass-littered booth. Then he reached in and from its furthermost recesses picked up a dislodged "Out of Order" placard, that must have fallen unnoticed long hours before Turner had ever sought refuge in it.

"Yeah, that was him," he repeated. He questioned them on his appearance. They told him. They told him copiously, nearly breaking their necks nodding in confirmation.

He started out toward the locked store entrance, beyond which the shoals of excluded onlookers now stood peering in.

They didn't understand what he meant when they heard him mutter troubledly: "Now it -is- too late——— Now there's only one language to speak———"

The key to memory had been a simple one after all; simple but effective. An unguarded telephone directory, this time hanging on the wall, almost at the entrance of a long narrow, all-night lunchroom, with a dozing vagrant or two nodding in the one-armed chairs. The huddled entrance, the book snaked from the hook and cowered-over in the corner with back turned, the vibrating finger tracing the classified list of hotels, recognition — like striking a match on sandpaper — when his nail struck the name. The Continental.

And now, the Continental itself.

She stepped out of the car in a peach-colored wrap, and she was beautiful enough to have caused even death to relent and pass her by. The man who loved her was standing beside her, holding her hand, and she was right under the lighted marquee of the hotel she lived in; how could anything happen to her. There was nothing waiting for her but sleep, upstairs.

"Goodnight and thanks, Matt. I enjoyed the evening tremendously."

"Won't you let me come up for a minute?"

She smiled disarmingly. "It's late and I'm tired. Call me from your office tomorrow, instead."

"Well, at least let me take you in as far as the elevator."

This time she laughed outright. "You don't have to be so formal. You'd better run along home and get some sleep yourself. No one will kidnap me between here and the lobby."

"Well, may I call you back in ten or fifteen minutes, just to say goodnight? It's hard to say it the way I'd like to, down here in the middle of the street."

There was another machine, blocked off from the entrance by his, trying to reach it and discharge its occupants. It had already sounded its horn querulously a couple of times. He had to get in and drive off without waiting to hear whether he had her permission or refusal for the last request.

She waved and turned away. On the bottommost entrance-step she dropped her handkerchief or something. She had to stop a minute to pick it up. Otherwise perhaps———

That was when the whisper reached her, from the outer darkness beyond the marquee. "Eleanor! Eleanor!" She turned and looked that way, uncertain she had actually heard anything, and a blurred form seemed to draw still further back into the gloom. There were a line of shrubs, growing in tubs, ranged on each side of the entrance, and it seemed to sidle in between two of them.

She hesitated, stepped toward the border of the light. The whisper came again, clearer now. "Eleanor. Come out of the light, I gotta speak to you———" She could make out a crescent of pale face looming there between the shrubs.

The darkness fell over her peach cloak like a gray curtain as she advanced a step further in that direction. The crescent-face enlarged to full. "King!" she gasped in sibilant astonishment.

"I have to see you. I have to see you right away. I called your room from the outside, and they said———"

"I'm always glad to see you any time, King. Come on up a minute then."

"I'm afraid to go in there with you. Somebody might see me———"

She could make out his harassed, disheveled condition, misunderstood the cause of it. "You've been drinking again," she reproved forgivingly. "Never mind, come on up and I'll straighten you out."

"But I'm afraid to let them see me———"

"There's an all-night drugstore down at the lower corner there. From the back of it you can go directly into the hotel; without having to pass in front of the desk. Suppose we go in that way."

Even before they'd reached it, a surge of cold fear drenched him. Could he trust her? Should he take a chance and go up? Once he was up there, escape might be cut off. Then the reassuring thought came: she didn't know what he'd done yet, so there was no reason for her to give him away.

There was no one in sight in the drugstore, only a night clerk busied behind a partition filling a prescription. They I passed through completely unseen. A passageway to the rear of it, leading to the hotel coffee-shop, was serviced by the elevators. She brought one down and they got on. She had the moral courage of utter respectability. "Straight up, Harry; don't stop at the main floor."

"Yes, Miss Philips." She got the respect due utter respectability. Though he'd seen the man step into the car after her, he kept his eyes straight front, didn't leer around over his shoulder. He kept on living, because of that. Turner's hand was on his back pocket the whole way up.

The main floor passed with a blurred flash of black-and-white tiled floor. The desk was off side out of sight somewhere; even if it hadn't been, no one could have focused the car's occupants as it shot up past the opening.

They got out, and she made a turn, keyed a door, threw it open. She lighted up the room beyond. Then she turned and said, "Now, King, what's all this great———?"

He said, "Close the door, first. Hurry up, come inside, first."

She did. By that time he was already over at the first of the two other doors it contained, looking into a closet. Then at the next one, looking into a bath. He said, "Are you alone? You sure you're alone?"

"Come here, King," she said soothingly. "Sit down in this chair. You're all unstrung. I don't like the way you're acting. What is it?"

''Eleanor, if I told you something, could I trust you not to give me away?"

She smiled rebukingly. "Have I ever let you down?"

"But this is something different. Once I've told you, I'm wide open, I'm at your mercy."

She said with charming ruefulness. "If you think I could take advantage of you, then maybe you'd better not tell me."

"But I have to. I'm all choked up with it." He tore open his vest with both hands and a button popped off. "And I need your help, I'm cut off, surrounded!"

"Tell it, then. I think you can count on me." She had forgiven him in advance; a bad check, a mess with a girl, no matter what it was.

He sat down at last. He let his hands dangle limp over his knees. "Eleanor, I killed a girl over in a place where I was."

He saw her go down out of her depth for a minute. He saw the blue-gray tinge of shock course through her skin, mottling it, as from an immersion. She hadn't been thinking along those lines. This was finis. "Are you sure?" That was just a cover-up, to gain time while she was fighting for self-mastery. She kept her voice steady. The end of the last word shook a little, that was all. She knew he must be sure; he wouldn't have come to her if he hadn't been.

"I saw them pick her up. I heard them say she wasn't breathing any more. I was holding the knife in my hands, all red."

He was a thing apart now; one of those things you read about in the papers, but didn't have a right in the same room with you. But still she tried to help him; she was that kind. "It's ghastly, but the only thing to do is to go to them and———"

"But you don't understand. There was a second one. A policeman, in a candy-store. He came in and — I did that one purposely."

She took a step back. Then another one. The peach cloak dropped in a puddle. Her voice was thin and still, he could hardly hear her.

"What is it? What's acting on you? What's the matter with your eyes? It's not drink, I can tell that———"

"Marihuana."

She looked down at the floor. Something made her shiver. He could see her doing it quite plainly. Something made her feel cold.

A spark kindled in the room. A spark of suspicion in his mind. Once lit, there was no way of reaching it to put it out again. Everything she did from now on simply fanned it brighter.

"Who was that man, in the car down at the door?"

"A friend."

"Is he coming back? Is he coming up here?"

"No, no." Her voice was shaking now beyond control. Only her demeanor was still steady, her facial expression. She was so used to peace and safety, it hadn't cracked yet. "Don't you want to lie down on the bed, King? It might help you — get over it, wear it off———"

He glanced over at it longingly, as if worn out; almost seemed to incline the upper part of his body toward it. Then he checked himself, drew back. The spark glowed bright, and he darted her a suspicious sidelong glance.

She drew slowly back across the room, without turning her back on him; the way a person does who is already in mortal terror, but trying not to give offense.

Presently he pointed to the bath door. "Can I go in there a minute?"

"Yes, surely."

He closed the mirrored door after him. Instantly it flashed open again. "What were you reaching for? I saw your hand go out."

Horror showed in her eyes, but she overcame it. "I was only reaching down for a cigarette. Here they are. See them?"

"But you're standing nearer the outside door than you were a minute ago." He came out into the room, stayed out, on guard.

The cords at the side of her neck were pulled taut. She tried to smile waveringly at him, re-establish a normal atmosphere. "Here, I'll sit all the way over here; I promise you I won't move------"

He sat back in his original chair, nearer the door. He never took his eyes off her for a single instant. She faced him, eyes steady by sheer will power alone in a face calcium-white with tension, while the minutes seemed to explode around them like popcorn. Once she broke, heeled hands to her eyes as if overcome. "Don't! You're torturing me. My nerves are tearing. That devilish drug———"

He slitted his eyes at her. "You're scared of me," he said accusingly. "That must be because you———"

"Only because you're making me so. You're acting so unpredictable." She was twining and untwining her fingers desperately. "Lie down for only a minute, give me a chance to pull myself together. I've just experienced a shock, I need time to adjust myself. Then, in five minutes from now, we'll be more used to each other, not so jump———"

"In five minutes you could be all the way down in the lobby———" He stopped short, blinked puzzledly. "What were we talking about just then?"

She clawed at her lips, forced back a scream. She quickly recovered, smiled at him again with dearly-bought composure. "For my own sake and yours, let me try to clear it out of your mind. What's good for it? Please lie down. I'll sit beside you; you'll hold my hand if you want; you'll tie my wrist to yours———"

She seemed on the point of winning him over. He looked yearningly toward the bed. She could sense that he was about to give in, relax this deathwatch, if only for a moment. And once his eyes dropped close———

The telephone shrilled out janglingly in the coffin-silent room. She gave a spasmodic start, that was almost a leap in air. Instantly he was on his feet, hovering watchfully between her and it.

"Who is it?"

"I don't know; how can I tell, until I answer?"

"Don't touch it or I'll———!"

She had made an inadvertent little gesture toward it; she quickly whipped her hand back again, as if it had been burned. She shivered, stroked her own upper arms as if she were unbearably cold. Help — that was so near and yet so far.